Gettin' hip

One of the ways to loosen the hold our Enneagram style has on us is by mindfulness - becoming aware of patterns. Simple information doesn't quite cut it. If you have an iphone, there is a new app to play with to increase your mindfulness. Here is a link to an article that explains how it works.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149169/vision%3A_can_human_beings_drop_their_divisive%2C_reactionary_thinking_and_move_to_a_higher_level

RAS

A root of our problem in life is our reticular activation system. Didn't know that, did you? RAS is the neurological setup at the top of our spine that filters and expedites certain messages and piece of information before (aye, there's the rub, before) it reaches our neo cortex and the free choice that that organ allows.
So if you suspect your RAS is causing you problems, look for bringing forward into today what was a problem pattern for you as a child. When you keep getting the same information, you keep having the same problem.
So just take a look at how you define a problem you have and think back...does this pattern remind you of a childhood pattern?
The beauty of the Enneagram is that it gives you pretty strong hits about what patterns you are probably acting out as an adult. So...given your RAS filter how might you relax that pattern a bit?

Agere contra

"Agere contra" is Latin for acting against one's impulses as a means of personal growth in spirituality. Here is an example from William Atkinson: if we wish to conquer emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must assiduously, and in the first instance, cold-bloodedly, go through the outward movements of those contrary dispositions we prefer to cultivate.

With Enneagram sophistication, we understand there are perils to that. We might be able to alter and improve a small behavior pattern, but usually when we try to change, we use our Enneagram energy in the service of changing something we're doing because of our Enneagram style. A style one will be self-critical and then resolve to stop, but will criticize every effort to change.

Factor of 10

Why is change so hard?
One reason is that we are hardwired to see what we have seen before, hear what we have heard before and think what we have thought before. Homeostasis is the neurological and chemical tendency to maintain the status quo.
That's why the educational research shows that it requires 10 times the psychic energy to unlearn something as to learn something.
So any learning that doesn't "fit" our previous information is difficult. That applies to simple cognitive data (the price is wrong) or the muscles needed to learn to thread a needle, shoot a free throw or drive a car.
Practice does not make perfect: it makes consistency. Practicing doing it wrong makes you do it wrong more consistently. Watching Fox news makes you perfectly Republican. Watching Bill Maher makes you perfectly angry.
Reading all sides of a question is tiring. But that's the way to go.

Overlay

When we assign or infer an enneagram style, that's not as accurate as when we discern a style in a person.
However, it has some validity; when I coach North Americans I keep in mind the Three characteristics of the countries (US and Canada. I've not coached any Mexicans). No matter what the basic style of someone is, you can see an overlay of cultural characteristics.
For example, regardless of the style, many Americans give me a blank look when I ask them what they have that they didn't work for. Especially if they are politically conservative, they assume they worked for everything they have. They ignore race, gender, health, opportunity, IQ and all sorts of systems that support them - both political and natural.

Reality, really?

In most futile arguments, one of the most common telltale phrases that indicate this is going nowhere is "Well, the reality is..."
Every Enneagram style has, in a minor key, its own reality. An argument is precisely about what is real. If one side insists that his/her reality is THE reality, then no real discussion can take place. The only way to have a discussion is to ask "what is your reality?" Reality here means where do you place your weight, your emphasis, your concern, your primary values etc.
The "reality" is the conclusion, not the starting point.
One of the lovely benefits of learning the enneagram is to realize that what is real for one person is quite different from what is real for another.
One way to get at the reality concern is to learn, by osmosis, inference or direct questioning, what is at stake? What does the other person think might or must happen if they don't get their way?

Nines are beautiful

Nines have a natural modesty that they sometimes push too far -- into "I don't count." They see assertion as something that will get them into trouble. Self advertising seems "pushy" or in bad taste.
I recommend to all you Nines that you have a blooming flower in the area you spend the most time. Flowers are nature's way of advertising. "Here I am!" is the alluring component of the flower's color. Nines must allow themselves to bloom. It won't hurt at all.

Listen, Eights

If there is one thing an Eight can learn to do to grow spiritually it is listen. The following public obvious Eights on TV irritate me and probably a lot of others because they frequently interrupt their guests or commentators and apparently don't "get" what the person is saying:
Reading from Left to Right: Ed Schulz, Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. What they all should do is access their Seven wing and listen to Rachel Maddow and Charlie Rose, both intellectual Sevens who listen uncommonly well.

Lying in style

A style 7 standup comic was talking about his weight. He was carrying an extra 30-40 pounds. He told the audience that he purchased membership in a gym. He hadn't decided yet if he would actually go to the gym or not. He said that if he didn't, he would keep the membership and call it a "fat tax."
That is how a style 7 reframes unpleasant reality. Sevens take a natural creativity and deceive themselves and others by reframing.

Judgement

The Onion, a satirical news source, has an article today that says Obama sent out a 75,000 word e mail full of incoherent statements, contradictions, obscenities, typos and general disorientation. www.rawstory.com
The website Fox Nation jumped all over it as authentic, commenting on it, not understanding it was satire. (For those not used to publishing, many novels are only 50,000 words long. A 75,000 word e mail would cover 350 printed pages!)
Why did they not see the satire? The folks at Fox probably did, but deliberately promulgated it simply to reinforce their narrative.
But the bloggers and comment-writers did not see the satire. Why not?
Stupidity is not the deepest answer. We all have a tendency to believe what fits the mental world in which we live. Objective criteria (75,000 words one night!) and congruency (elite intellectuals don't write that, even if you hate elite intellectuals) are easily brushed aside if the information fits with what I already think.
We all have a rather subjective world that we have to monitor by reading, discussion with people who don't agree with and the art of critical thinking.
Ideology is communal, egotism is personal, but they both prevent us from making good judgments.

To see and not to see

Style sixes have an interesting information processing quirk. On the one hand, they are keen observers, scanning their environment at all times. Counterphobic sixes are often reckless or indulge in dangerous sports. I was watching a mountain climber being interviewed and when asked what was the secret to not getting hurt he replied, "You have to know where you are at all times and constantly scan the environment."
That's from their fear base. But they also do something else to frighten themselves more: they don't believe what they hear or see -- not entirely. They look beyond appearances to look for hidden meanings and deleted information. Sometimes they even miss the information that is there when they look for what is NOT there.

Doing splits

I blame our cultural split between mind and body on Fives. Descartes was a Five and he split all of reality into two: res extensa and res cogitans - things you can measure (they have extension) and things of thought. So scientific thought focuses on what you can measure while human experience, tainted by consciousness is not considered "scientific." So if you go to a doctor, basically a chemist, he will not ask you what you're thinking or feeling, he just measures stuff: pressures, proportions, and percentages. Then he prescribes pharmaceuticals. It's all very scientific but not human and I blame Descartes, rather universally acknowledged as the father of modern science and his style Five split between body and soul.

Common sense

For reasons philosophical and perhaps (my detractors say) personal, I've never trusted people who use "common sense" as their platform in politics, their interpretation of scripture or their financial decisions.

Common sense tells us pictures can't travel through the air, any more than metal airplanes. Common sense tells me machines can't add and hummingbirds can't fly backward.

Reality is a lot more our creation than a given. The more we learn of the Enneagram and how different each person's world is, the less credence we give to "common sense." Here is an opinion I like -- by the British philosopher, Erich Heller.

Be careful how you interpret the world; it is like that.

Feelin' it!

Style Four has an emphasis no other style has in quite the same way. They often insist, in one way or another, that their emotions be an important part of any decision. None of this "just do it" stuff. They have a strong sense of being entitled to their emotions and having their emotions be an important part of your (or anyone's) decision. Threes might be motivated by money, Eights by power, but Fours are motivated, both in direction and force, by their feelings.
For an enjoyable display of this style, go watch some reruns of Allie McBeal. Not only is she a 4, but the whole show is about the feelings of people. The legal background is really "back," because everything is focused on how people feel. It would be fair to say that the show is a style 4 show, much in the sense that a community, tradition or culture has a style.

Morphous

Style Threes are the natural marketers of the internet. They know what will please people and are often talented at giving customers/clients/friends/spouses exactly what they want.
If, however, Threes slip from integrity, they become somewhat like a category in Role-playing games called a "shape-shifter." They will morph into what they really are not.
Sarah Palin is a fine public figure who is expert at morphing into what the political desires of a certain segment of people want. She embodies, or rather appears to embody what the ideal American is. When she says to a group of people that they are the "real" America, she is identifying (and morphing into) a certain ideal. You can please some of the people all of the time - by becoming or at least becoming what they want.
Palin is a Three.

Two for the money

How do you pay a Two for all that s/he has done for you? With appreciation.
If you are a Two, when you don't protect your boundaries (by doing too much or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of), look out for doing things for people for appreciation. Sometimes those who appreciate most received the most from you.
A special note here has to be made of religious motivation. People with unsophisticated religious understandings will often do too much or allow exploitation if they think God will appreciate it. (High places in heaven, stars in your crown: these are metaphors for Divine appreciation). See a theologian and/or a therapist for beliefs like these.

Ones in trouble

Ones can get in trouble for being too righteous or by flipping their righteousness into hypocrisy. Ones are vulnerable to hypocrisy because they have high standards they don't/can't live up to.
We happen to have several public example. Lou Dobbs is coming back on the air after having been publicly exposed as hypocritical in his fulminating against illegal aliens and at the same time hiring them. (Lou they aren't aliens - they're just hungry people from across the river).
Keith Olbermann got suspended for being too angry about right wing nonsense. The ostensible charge was giving money to democrats, but it was all legal. The real reason he was slapped was more likely his boss didn't like his vituperative defense of the reality principle in the face of the triumph of fantasy.

Lou D and Keith O are both pretty clear style Ones. If you want to study Ones, they'd be good examples. The other strong political media One is Bill Maher.

Seeing is believing

An old, often abused, spiritual tradition was called "custody of the eyes." (It was given to me in Latin - custos oculorum). The understanding was that to focus on what you were all about, you had to control where you look.
Here is a contemporary experience that illustrates that what we see can actually over- ride what we feel. http://myhealingkitchen.com/soul-food/the-rubber-hand-illusion/
See how important our Enneagram focus of attention is? What we look for is what we see, and what we see is what we feel. So if you're feeling bad, I have bad news for you - you're looking bad.
So if you would like to make any change in your life, what might you start looking at instead of what you're looking at now? Whatever you look at, you will believe.
A large social observation illustrates that. 17% of Americans still believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth and 25% of Fox viewers believe that Obama is a Muslim. What you see really is what you believe.

Election, of course

Chris Matthews doesn't know the Enneagram, but he asked Michelle Bachmann a pointedly specific question and she gave a non-answer, just sort of a series of platitudes. So he asked her the same pointed question and she gave him the same series. Exasperated, he asked if she was hypnotized.
She wasn't, but she is in a trance. Her trance is ideological, but the vivid exchange illustrated what a trance is: a trance is a set response that we give, no matter what the stimulus is. If I am a Six, really entranced (think Woody Allen), and I'm given a piece of news, I can predict that no good will come of this. I don't have a preset series of talking points like Bachmann, but I do have a default set of responses. If I am a Four, no matter what the situation, if I am really entranced, I will know that my emotions are the important factor. My mood triumphs "consensual reality."

Hint: to tell when the politicians are in a trance, watch for generalizations, not specifics. Lower taxes, but no specific cuts. "Get things done," but no practical plans. Sometimes it is even more sweeping: "No compromises."
Generalizations are how we hypnotize ourselves and keep our Enneagram trance. Individually, it's an enneagram style, politically it is ideology.

Generally

One way to think of your enneagram style is as an excessive generalization. When we are young, we have to generalize. "NEVER" cross the street without looking. If you do, you will die.
But we absolutize other generalizations. Dogs bite. I have to be good. I am weak/strong/pretty/shy/or just different.
Some of these generalizations cluster into an Enneagram style.
So take your favorite Enneagram conviction and see if you can specify what is true and what is doubtful about your style. For the next few days, I'll parse some generalizations.
Let's start with Ones. You know you have to be a good boy/girl. And you know the rules for being good are within you. Can you make a distinction between one rule that you have that is absolute (Never vote for a Tea Party Candidate) and one that is relative (sometimes it is OK to leave work an hour early and go have a drink with a friend). Not very often, of course, but maybe sometimes.