Episode 200 Love at the Core of our Being: Rediscovering Our Soul's Essence

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we delve into the profound topic of peace, its connection to our soul child and how our early experiences shape our understanding of peace and how our ego can often lead us away from it.

Joe shares insights from his daily reflections, emphasizing that while life can be fraught with anxiety and conflict, our essence is inherently tied to peace, which is a quality of the soul. We discuss how each Enneagram type has its unique fixation that can obscure the peace that is already within us.

Scott reflects on his personal journey, highlighting the importance of self-love and acceptance in overcoming self-criticism, which can block our access to peace. We also touch on the significance of spiritual practices in reconnecting with our divine origin and embodying true peace rather than merely conceptualizing it.

To conclude, we invite our listeners to engage in a reflective inquiry: "What is it about love that makes you feel most alive? And how might embodying that love bring greater peace into your life and your relationships?" We hope this episode inspires you to reconnect with your inner peace and the love that flows through you. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to our next conversation!

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:
You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O.

Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram, a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here today with Dr. Joseph Howell and Scott Smith. Hi, you guys. Hi, Nanette. Hi, Nanette. Looking forward to having a good conversation with y'all today.

Scott: Oh, me too.

Nanette: Y'all doing okay?

Scott: Doing well.

Nanette: Good. I mean, we really want you to be doing well, right? We're going to have a deep discussion about all the things that are going on in our personal lives right now, aren't we?

Scott: I know I want I want me to be doing well.

Nanette: So thank you. And it's funny because that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. We're going to have a conversation today about peace. And this is something that you might find reference in Joe's daily reflections that are an email that is sent out daily, which is the expressions of many of Joe's meditations, his practice of daily meditation. So if you're interested in the daily reflections, please Check out our website and check out a link in this podcast. You can sign up for those daily reflections as well. So, guys, in talking about peace today, which obviously is something we would all like more of, right? The world is not exactly a peaceful place. Life inherently is not peaceful. It tends to be an anxious endeavor, would you say, Joe?

Joe: Sure. I think it is fraught with anxiety. My ego sees that very clearly. My soul, when it's doing well and not overlaid by that sixth ego of mine, it has access to a lot of peace. And in my soul child years, I remember that peace. I was very connected to the earth, to the living daylights, to okayness, to a type of experience that I perceived the world as safe and abundant.

Nanette: So for someone who is very familiar with the Enneagram and understands that your soul point is nine, they might say, well, of course, peace was your soul child's natural inclination, that it was its nature, divine nature. But isn't that true of all the soul types that somehow they were in peace? Is peace a characteristic of the soul child?

Joe: Yes, because it's a quality of the soul. The reason it is a quality of the soul is because the essence, our soul, child, our soul, is forever tethered to the divine. Because it's part of the divine. Our little essence is part of the big essence. As a result, it is never really completely alone from that big essence.

Nanette: And would you say that peace could be described as overflowing love?

Joe: Yes, it could be. That's one of the byproducts of overflowing love is peacefulness.

Nanette: And we talked about in a recent podcast how back in hippie days, peace and love always went together. They seem to be intuitive to one another, correct?

Joe: I believe so. And I think that that peace is something that we all long for. Because the ego's fixation is full of conflict and pain. Although the fixation seems like it's going to solve our problems. It really, by midlife, especially for most of us, we realize that egoic perception of the world is not working for us. And we don't want the pain and the suffering that we have had to endure. But what is it that lets us know that there is an alternative to suffering? Have you ever thought of that? What is it in our experience that lets us know that we probably don't have to suffer because there's probably peace somewhere? My own answer to that quandary is we have already experienced peace in our soul child before the ego really overlaid our soul. And because we have experienced it, except for those born into terrible trauma and upheaval, and we've got to honor the fact that that is true. And we've got to honor the fact that some people don't even remember their early years. But by and large, if We know that we want to experience peace. We have had some degree of that feeling. And what better place to look for it than our early childhood before we had a fixation that caused us any conflict.

Nanette: If someone is struggling with not living in peace and they are so, that would be the deepest desire of their heart is to experience a state of peacefulness. how can they connect with their soul child in order to reconnect to that peacefulness? Like, okay, yeah, maybe I was peaceful when I was little, but I mean, obviously I've grown up and obviously my life is maybe not good or my job or my relationship or my health or, and my circumstances are entirely unpeaceful. I mean, I think about, you know, we all look at kids and just think, Especially, obviously ones who are living in good circumstances that you think, man, you just don't know how good you have it. Somebody's paying your bills. Somebody's deciding, you know, what you're going to eat and telling you what to do and telling you you can go to sleep. Hello. And yet we grow up into very not peaceful lives. How does my soul child help me with a not peaceful life now, Joe?

Joe: Well, the number one who says, I'm always right, has a soul child who says, rightness is not what we're after or wrongness. What we're after is peace. And number twos who say, I am good because I am helpful and helpfulness will bring me peace. Their soul is not having their peace depend on how many people they help. because their soul knows their worth already. And then number three, who says to the world, I'm successful, and success is going to give me peace. Their soul knows that regardless of how many buildings they build, organizations they start, friends that they have, their soul knows that that doesn't matter. Because peacefulness, real peacefulness, is built on self-worth and the understanding of our own lovability, not having to win it through success. And then the four say, I will be peaceful when I find my uniqueness and specialness. But the soul of that four knows it's already special. It doesn't have to work for being a star, because coming from a divine origin, they know who they are, and that can never be taken away from them. Their source can never be taken away. And then fives say to the world, I am wise. And they have the fixation of stinginess to keep that wisdom because they don't want it to be taken away. They think wisdom is going to give them peace. And that isn't true. Their soul knows that what is giving them peace is their transparency to the divine, who's going to give them everything they need when they need it. And they don't have to struggle to know more or batten down all the hatches because this flow of omniscience is coming through them when they live in that essence. And then the six who says, I'm loyal and who's fixated on cowardice, that's not going to give them peace. Even having an alpha to take care of them isn't going to give a six piece or an authority figure because anybody can betray us. Anybody can leave us. This world is, you know, practically is not safe. But the soul of the six knows that it is rooted in a love that will always supply it some kind of safety to get through. But it's not safety as the world gives us. It's another kind of safety. It's a transcendent safety. It's a transcendent peace. that you can't get through security. And then the seventh says, I will gain peace because I'll have more and more and more and more and more joy. And if that runs out, I'll find a place to get more joy and do something else to get more. And they end up being so unpeaceful because they can never get enough. And they're always worried about what they're going to lose, what they're going to be deprived of. But underneath, their soul knows that that ever-present joy, because of the connection to the divine, is always going to be fed. And that the supply will never, ever stop. And that it doesn't have to go around collecting more and more gratification. It has to go to the present moment and allow that gratification to come to it from the divine. And then the 8 says, I'm going to have peace. Come hell or high water, because I'm going to make sure I do, because I'm going to fight everybody to make sure I've got a peaceful environment. This just. And that doesn't give the ape peace at all. So by midlife, they end up, if they're conscious, returning to their essence where there's a soul of compassion. The core of an ape is just so compassionate. which is love. And when they can return to that, peacefulness rushes in. And then there's the nine who says to the world, I'm okay. Regardless of anything, I'm okay. And they avoid conflict. And they think that avoiding conflict is going to make peace. It's going to impose order by avoiding any conflict. Well, that can't be done. That's not realistic. By midlife, they realize this avoidance of conflict is causing more conflict. And when they step aside to their core, to their essence, they understand that they must love themselves first in order to love others. And in doing that, they can step out into any conflict because there's love protecting everything. And so they begin to matter. And their soul allows peace to come in that they experienced in childhood because they're not always trying to put out fires. So there you have it. Each fixation has a layer of peace right underneath it.

Scott: It feels like in all these cases, we're trying to create or earn or obtain something that we didn't actually lose. We just lost the ability to feel it. Why is it so hard for us to accept that it's already there? I mean, what is it that gets in the way of that Joe?

Joe: I think it's the wound. I think when, when we were told we could not be that person, That we had to shape up. That we got to get ready for school now. You cannot be the way you are. Slowly that ate away at our life force. We had to put it under a crust. We had to protect it and become somebody else.

Nanette: When you say the wound, you're talking about the early childhood wounding that we all inherently experienced. Whether or not we lived in a healthy home or a loving home, we all experienced something in our childhood that tells us it's not okay to be who we are. It's not okay to be this version of yourself. Correct, Joe? Right.

Joe: like the wound of the six is a terrorized heart. What happened to me as a little nine is in having to separate from my true nature, fear set in.

Nanette: And that is a soul child nine. And then you put on the ego six to protect yourself.

Joe: So my heart wound is the terrorized heart. I believe the heartwound of Of the nine who had to leave the three is the severed heart, severed from your core. The wound of the five ego is the desert heart or the decimated heart. They had to give up all of that transparency to wisdom that was just part of their nature. They were ripped away from that. So they feel that they're in a desert.

Nanette: Yeah. And you certainly can't find this peacefulness that we're all looking for when you're not okay, when you need an ego to protect you. And it's quite normal that we decided that we needed this way to move in the world. But I think as Scott so rightly pointed out, We forget the fact that we had peacefulness to start with. Somehow we got diluted into this idea that we didn't have access to it and that we needed to work for it or connive or manipulate or try to create circumstances that would be peaceful. I know for my own ego type 9 that you know, that I tried to create peace that isn't really real peace. It's not authentic. I just want to say it's okay, but it doesn't mean that it actually is okay. Because sometimes it's obviously not.

Joe: What is an example of that? I think this is real.

Nanette: Well, I mean, that can just be sometimes not owning what I want. You know, it might be saying, my husband saying, you know, what do you want for dinner? And you know, maybe I don't tap into the part of myself that even says what I want. I think it's so putting aside myself in an effort to create peace when it's not even necessary. It's okay for me to say what I want for dinner, but first, Joe, I might have to know. I might have to ask myself. And that's the waking up. And that's not just true of a nine, right? We're all asleep to this real soul that's on the inside of us, right? That has the real truth, the real peace, the real love, the real path for us if we can tap into it. And that is where the overflowing love that is truly peaceful comes from. What's your experience been in that, Scott?

Scott: in my ego is I'm very hard on myself. I consider unconsciousness to be a form of self tyranny. Like you've divided yourself and one part of you is the master of the self and the rest is the slave and you're organizing yourself into the imitation of whatever it is that you feel, feel that you've lost. And for me, you can be so hard on yourself, and then you're hard on everyone else. When I went to my first ICB conference, I think the biggest revelation I had, I actually had by myself the evening after the first day, and that day we had done the soul child meditation, which is lovely. I mean, lovely is an understatement. And if you haven't experienced it, please come to one of our conferences because it was quite vivid. I was quite emotional after it. But then that evening, everyone else had gone to bed. I wasn't quite ready to go to bed and I caught myself being hard on myself. And somehow, and I think the experience of that day facilitated this, somehow spontaneously this response of, but that's okay. You're trying, you're just human. And for the first time in years, I was able to acknowledge, to say to myself that I love myself. I hadn't been able to do, I couldn't remember if I'd ever done that. It just derailed the whole inner critic and that love facilitated a deep felt sense of peace. It completely arrested that cycle of self-criticism.

Nanette: One of the words that I noticed that you said that is so true and characteristic of the ego is that it offers an imitation.

Scott: Yes. I find a lot of helpful imagery in Joseph Campbell's description of the monomyth and the hero's journey. And I see a real correlation between his description of the mythical tyrant and our unconscious ego and the mythical hero and our soul, essence, soul child. And something he says is the time, the mythical tyrant is a man of self achieved security. The mythical hero is a man of self achieved surrender. And that's not a surrender to a specific person or to some organization or authority. It is, it is a surrender and an acceptance. And to me, a receptivity to what is. to the present, and to, in my opinion, the divine that flows through it. He also talks about the mythical tyrant as being like a system of organized inadequacy, and I think that falls back into the unconscious ego's obsession with organizing the self. The compartmentalization is endless. And in my experience, that takes up space. It physically takes up space. It creates tension in my body. I feel a strong correlation between my sense of spaciousness and my sense of transparency to the divine. Like if all my attention is focused on myself and I'm just full of these things, there's no room to feel the present, to feel the divine, and to feel its companionship and its guidance and its love. Peace is spaciousness. Yeah, to me, peace is spaciousness. Peace is an embodied and a felt reality. It is not conceptual. The mythical tyrant lives in a world of concepts. He feels his ideas about the present more clearly than he feels the present itself, and that's dangerous. So yeah, we can't create peace conceptually, but we can embody and experience it.

Nanette: Well, and this spaciousness also makes me think about alignment, that as our bodies, our hearts, our minds are aligned, that there is space for peace to flow, to unfold, that there is a natural flow in our souls. that provides the peace and love and not the imitation or not the striving of it, but the actual authentic peace and love to flow. It is the current of what we're looking for.

Joe: Well said.

Nanette: Peace flows when we allow love to pass through us into the world.

Scott: Whether you call it spaciousness or transparency, that is the quality that makes room for that to pass through us. In a way, it's always passing through us. We have just desensitized to it. And so the heart of the matter for me is how do I resensitize? As we've said many times on this podcast, it comes back to our spiritual practices, in my opinion.

Joe: I agree. I think what Scott says about the spiritual practices is the only way that I know of that we're shaken out of the ego. Maybe another one could be a shock point that brings us to our knees and we will not go through what our ego wants us to go through again. But the spiritual practice, as Scott says, it puts us in contact with our divine origin. And then we can embody it, not just, as Scott says, we have the option of mentally conceptualizing peacefulness, connection, but that is only a mental structure of the ego. actually embodying it, which we teach in our institute how to do it. Scott is one of the teachers of embodiment. It teaches us how to put a mental concept into activated in our bodies. So it's not just something we ho-hum think about, but we express because we are.

Nanette: Well, that's been a beautiful discussion today, I think, of peace and And so we will close today in a way that we have recently started closing with a question of inquiry for our audience. This is a question that you can take and use in a two-person inquiry. We suggest you ask it three times. And of course, without discussion in between that you don't comment on the person while they're answering the question and that you let all of their answer come out. And then ask the question again, and do that three times. And we hope that by doing this, that we get to a deep awareness of our soul and the soul's answer. And you can also do this in by yourself. through asking it out loud to yourself and just having a monologue about that, or either by journaling the answer to this question until you can't write anymore. So we believe that this is a spiritual practice, and we're hoping that this tool that has been so helpful to us in gaining a deeper awareness of our soul as students of the ICB, that you will also be helped by this practice. So here's the inquiry question today. What is it about love that makes you feel most alive? And how might embodying that love bring greater peace into your life and your relationships? We thank you for joining us today on The Real Enneagram, and we look forward to having you back in our audience soon. Thank you.

Scott: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.

Nanette: Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.