THE ENNEAGRAM — Know Thyself

“Know Thyself” (Gnothi Seauton) were the words that greeted all comers to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. I first learned of this sage counsel through the writings of Plato, as quoted by Socrates (I was a phil. major in college). Socrates also famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living” (Greek: “ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthrôpôi”, which more closely translates as ‘The unexamining life is not worth living for a human being’). In Latin, the dictum “Know Thyself” is “nosce te ipsum,” and in Sanskrit it is “atmanam vidhi,” which is perhaps more accurately translated as Know Thy/The Self.

What’s the difference between “Know Thyself” and “Know Thy Self”? Maybe there is no difference, if you think that the more you know yourself, your soul, the more you know God (Self, Brahman). But if “self” just means your little ego personality, then there is a big difference. While it may be useful to better understand your personality, temperament, inclinations and idiosyncrasies, this won’t necessarily bring you wisdom and understanding. On the other hand, it could if you delved deeply enough into the question of “Why do I have this particular personality?” The Yoga Sutras tell us as much.

So that’s a long-winded intro. to this next topic, which is the Enneagram, arguably the greatest personality assessment device known to humanity at this time. I’m going to provide you with a few resources to learn more about the Enneagram, but before you look into the “Nine Types” (one translation of “Enneagram”), I would suggest you first take an Enneagram test, and there are a number of them out there. The best seems to be the Stanford Enneagram Test, which you can find
here:

http://www.enneagramworldwide.com/determine-your-type/index.php
And that’s also a good website on the subject.

You also might want to read the following wiki article on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality

As well as to watch the following video:

After you do all that, if you’re interested, you can read the following about where I fit into it (or rather, what my personality tendencies have been, because as I learn more about myself, and as I evolve, I begin to transcend my type, just as when I learn more about my astrology chart, I have
a tool to help me move beyond my chart).

The Enneagram — The Fourth

According to the Stanford Enneagram tet, I am a “four,” which is the “Romantic individualist,” or as I prefer, “Depth Seeker.” You can see the connection between the four and the three as the three is the actor, and for the four there is certainly a lot of drama, I can tell you. According to the Enneagram cognoscenti, there are three different kinds of fours. Although I had aspects of all of these, I have tended more towards the “Self-Preservation Four,” which in my case means that from as far back as I can remember, I was always obsessed with preserving my physical body, and I do mean obsessed. As a teenager, I was borderline anorexic, gradually stopped eating all meat, began reading food labels fanatically, hated with a passion alcohol, drugs, and smoking, etc. Once when I saw that I was getting some “love handles,” I was freaked out. I basically never wanted my physical body to become old, fat, or anything other than young and beautiful (like a lot of people in our culture, of course, but not everyone goes to the lengths that I did).

So I early on found a kind of salvation in physical fitness, particularly distance running, which I thought would build my body, and it did to a certain extent, but I trained so intensely that I actually ended up looking more like a hungry wraith, and do to this day. And running was hard for me because I pushed myself so mercilessly at it, both to exorcise my demons, and also in pursuit of achievement/excellence. You can also understand what someone like me would see in yoga: A proven method to attain perfect health, vitality, longevity, and perhaps even immortality (what did I know?) Not that this was the only draw for me, because there were others, too, such as communion with God (or any mystical experience whatsoever!), and in particular a desire to re-experience what I now believe was a spontaneous kundalini awakening I had when I was 19 (more on this later).

Even writing this “Song of Myself” is an obvious “four” undertaking. One of my favorite “fours” is Walt Whitman, who I first really encountered and read in Grad School, not long before getting into yoga. Whitman is a classic four in the sense that he glorified the individual soul and wrote in such a free-styled, free-wheeling way (for his time). Needless to say, I just ate that stuff up, it was quite similar to what I had already been writing in my journals for years. Yes, I was a journal junkie. For years, I scribbled anything and everything in my notebooks — poems, memories, dreams, reflections…

So writing this blog/book was almost inevitable, you might say, given my personality, but actually for a long time I resisted it. Mainly because, being a “self-prez four,” I would never want others prying into my life. Maybe after I was dead, but not actually during my life. And there was also the sense that my story can’t really be told, and telling it would do it an injustice, and most people aren’t really interested in deep thoughts or profundities anyway, but really only care about surfacey stuff like your sex life and fecal matters. So why would I want to “throw pearls before swine” (you, swine, you) and risk being misunderstood, let alone being in the public eye? I don’t have clear answers to these questions, but I can say this: No one can really give a full accounting of their life, but given my Fourness and years of expository writing in journals, I can at least make a fair start. This is a Four’s forte, you might say, because of the Four’s romantic tendency toward revelation…

And now that I have decided to embark on this journey, being a Four, you should feel secure in knowing that what you will be reading here will be the pure, unadulterated truth — as I see it, and remember it. Because Fours also have a tendency to be painfully honest, sometimes saying things which others would think are better left unsaid, but fours, being “depth seekers” tend to want to plumb the very bowels of the psyche.

Famous Fours

Three with Four Wing (3w4) – The Professional
Truman Capote
Jimmy Carter
Dick Cavett
Tom Cruise
Richard Gere
Bryant Gumbel
”Iago”
W. Somerset Maugham
George Stephanopoulos
Sting
Meryl Streep
Barbra Streisand
Michael Tilson Thomas
Andy Warhol
 
Four with Three Wing (4w3) – The Aristocrat
Maria Callas
Albert Camus
Frederick Chopin
”Blanche DuBois”
Judy Garland
Martha Graham
Jeremy Irons
E.M. Forster
Michael Jackson
Gustav Mahler
Rudolf Nureyev
Edith Piaf
The Artist Formerly Known as Prince
Marcel Proust
Don Richard Riso (creator of this list)
Paul Simon
Peter Tchaikovsky
Walt Whitman
Tennessee Williams

Four with Five Wing (4w5) – The Bohemian
Ingmar Bergman
William Blake
Cory Caplinger (me, of course!)
Johnny Depp
Bob Dylan
Hermann Hesse
Soren Kierkegaard
D.H. Law`rence
Yukio Mishima
Joni Mitchell
Edgar Allan Poe
Anne Rice
J.D. Salinger
Saul Steinberg
”Laura Wingfield”
Virginia Woolf

Five with a Four Wing : This is my own personal take on someone whose books I am currently reading: Daniel Pinchbeck. I would say he’s basically a five because he began as an intellectual, and has a tendency to introversion and investigation. But he has a four wing because he was seeking depth, and also because he, too, took the four route of personal revelation via expository writing. (And by the way, I would highly recommend you read his books, “Breaking Open the Head,” and “2012.”)

Also, I believe Yogananda would have been considered a 4 type, at least in his youth, due to his
deep desire for awakening, but also his romantic idealism and individualism. Perhaps many of the great Bhaktas (Divine Lovers) like Yogananda tended more to the 4 type. But again, a great master
like Yogananda would have transcended identification/categorization into any one type.

Final word on the Enneagram: It can be a useful tool, but don’t get too caught up in it: It alone will probably not bring you to that Gnostic Knowing of Thy Self to which you deep down truly aspire.