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7/11/2018

Mattering and Mothering

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I see you.  You matter.  

In a medieval love story told by Chaucer, two young lovers, forbidden each other because of war and politics, catch each other's gaze from afar--and that gaze seems to be the beginning of their love story.
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We love to look into each other's eyes; it is powerful. 

​But gazing is not always simple, loving, and mutual; it is sometime pandering, destructive, unequal.  And there is an ugly power in  "the male gaze"--a toxic form of machismo that focuses on bodies and body parts as objects to be owned through a lens of possessive looking.

Aggressive looking is, in fact, probably the OG bullying behavior.  It is often aimed at someone who is about to get popped. 
​

Looking changes reality

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So--looking is not passive.  It changes things--and those changes are measurable. They have a name:  the observer effect, which simply means that very act of watching something changes it.  ​

​Even in Chaucer's story, the lovers themselves are gazed at, noticed, watched.  Betrayal and tragedy unfold. 

​When we are looked at, we are vulnerable. And at the Enneagram 9-point, our bodies respond to that vulnerability by disappearing from view. 


If we are not seen (even better, if we are not
seeable), 
then we cannot be threatened or changed by anyone.

If you can't see me, I literally don't matter. 

At the 9-point, we become like Emerson's transparent eyeballs--where we see but are not seen.  Our experience is a transcendent merging between our individual self and all that is. 

​We cease to exist as separate from the whole.
​
Making yourself "not matter" seems at first like the ultimate act of accommodating--but it actually more complex than that.  The 9's self-erasing is rooted in the driving need for autonomy that 9's share with 8's and 1's (the other points in the Enneagram's  body triad.)   

​(The body triad, by the way, is associated with the brain stem and is concerned with the body's instinctual need to exist, to have form--literally to be matter.)

And this makes sense, even though it also drives us crazy.  If we are not seen--even better, if we are not seeable--then we cannot be threatened or changed by anyone but us.

Click for August retreat (18 CE's) --only four spots left!
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Women and mothers are rewarded for Enneagram 9-like behaviors

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Knowing how the 9-point functions is super-important for women and mothers, even if their personalities are not patterned at the Enneagram 9-point.
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Because women and mothers are rewarded for 9-like behaviors:  making their own needs less important than those of their bosses, co-workers, husbands, children, pets, neighbors, and neighbors' pets.  

Mothers especially are pushed into the 9-point. Inwardly apologizing for taking up space.  For being matter.  For mattering.  ​
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​Mothers especially are sort of pushed into the 9-point of inwardly apologizing for taking up space.  For being matter.  For mattering.  
​

But the word mother comes from mater

Making mothers "not matter" is incredibly ironic because our English word mother comes the Latin word mater. 
  • Mothers matter because they are mater (matter).
  • Mother-love, which is how each of us learns (more or less functionally) the primal forms of all love in our life:  this love flows through not as angel dust, but flows through the very body of the mother.
  • Mothers both are and provide the very matter of life.

This truth is so powerful that we cannot bear it.
  • ​Mothers are magnets in public spaces, easily becoming the focus of attention, and often being shamed.  So why not just disappear into the children?
  • And mothers do just that.  Their energies are endlessly drawn into the children, their needs being always the first consideration--before sleep, nutrition, exercise, or restoration for themselves.

Virginia Wolf's Angel of the House is a 9-spirit at an unhealthy Level of Development.  She "kindly" insists that we 9s, we women, we mothers, we others, we make ourselves not matter.

But we are matter. 
We matter.

And what does it mean to matter?

What does it mean to matter?
To know that we are matter? 
To know that we are body, that bodies exist in space and time, that showing up in our lives means being vulnerable enough to be seen?

These are the most important, meaningful, and sometimes most difficult questions to address directly.  So the invitation is to address them playfully and with curiosity, either in the comments below or in a workshop or or coaching session with me.

If you are drawn to explore this retreat, please click that button to the right to find a fuller description of what we will be covering.  
Register now for Your August retreat:  Beyond the Story of Your Personality Patterns.  Only Four Spots left!
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7/10/2018

Grace Appears at the Level of Imbalance

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In Flannery O'Conner's super-creepy short story "Revelation," the good and respectable Mrs. Turpin is literally conked on the head and choked by grace. 

By Mary Grace, that is--a college student who can't bear to hear Mrs. Turpin's gossipy hypocrisy in the doctor's office one more second and throws a book at her before jumping on her and choking her. At home, where she is hurt more in spirit than in body, Mrs. Turpin wails Why me?! and basically demands that God explain himself to her,

Which He does. 
Kind of. 

After her violent encounter with (G)race, Mrs. Turpin has a vision--a revelation about the true nature of virtue--beside a pig parlor.   

​ 
I think of this story every time I hear the word ​grace.  Growing up, I heard grace defined as unearned favor with God--which sounds very sweet. 
​
​But in real life, I have found grace to be both the thing that knocks me off-balance, and the thing that appears when the center does not hold.

​

​
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But in real life, I have found grace to be both the thing that knocks me off-balance, and the thing that appears when the center does not hold.
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​Which is why I am utterly fascinated by Level 4 of the Enneagram Levels of Development, called "The Level of Imbalance."  Below Level 4 is "Interpersonal Conflict" (L5), followed by "Overcompensation" and various levels of unhealthy development.  And above Level 4 is "Social Value" (L3) and various levels of healthy development. 

Basically, below Level 4, our pre-conscious patterns of behavior, emotions, and thought are totally running the program--or rather--running us.  Because, icky as it may feel, we are the program the patterns are running--like non-updated software.  Below Level 4, our actions are not free; they are deeply conditioned.  But at those levels we don't know and can't care--because pre-conscious personality patterns just feel totally normal.  (Of course they do!  How could it be otherwise?) 

At Level 4, though, somehow, the patterns loosen, and things become unbalanced.  Something happens--some grace occurs--and we feel . . . different.   Maybe lighter, maybe more expansive, maybe brighter or clearer or more "real."  This shift from Level 5 to Level 4 is the beginning of transformation.  
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So how does this shift happen?  How do we move from interpersonal conflict up to the not-always-comforting grace of imbalance?  
  • Suffering can take us there.
  • Practices can take us there.  (Breathing, yoga, qigong, hip-openers, heart-openers, self-awareness and mindfulness practices.)
  • Nature and children and animals and love can take us there.
then I'm in love with grace, with the unknown whatever-it-is that cracks us open, and light shines through.  That's why I developed this workshop--a whole weekend of nature and breathing and art and Enneagram learnings.  18 CE's for social workers and therapists.  One more earlybird spot for August; four more for October.  
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REgister for August Retreat
REgister for October REtreat
copyright:  The Enneagram Institute

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    Lynnea (her Ph.D. being in English) shares her training and wisdom here, to help her gentle readers live freely and fully in the unfolding present.

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