I want to talk about an insight I had earlier this week. I have been preparing for a talk on the Enneagram that I’ll be giving at the Regina Public Library, but as with everything that involves producing something tangible, I have been struggling with a feeling of intense paralysis around the writing process. I know this material- it is in me, but it’s like I’m locked up, and getting every phrase out is a a hurculean struggle.
By the way, this is a blog post on the cross-over betwen the Enneagram and Astrology, both of which are at the heart of the age-old philosophical argument between fate and free will. Do the stars demarcate our lives, or do we have free will to determine our path through life? Astrology maps out our fate, and the Enneagram maps out what we can change in our lives.
I believe in a very rough fifty-fifty mix in our lives, and that we have more and more choice as we become more and more self-aware. But I don’t believe that we’ll ever escape fate. Life is just too short to do all the work, and there are too many things that happen to us beyond our control. Those of us with intense inner critics, who blame ourselves for everything external that happens to us, need to be back off and be kinder to ourselves; sometimes our “failure” is that we’re being bullied by someone more powerful, or we are trapped in a socio-economic position beyond our control.
Anyway, I was walking to work on Monday, and a turn of phrase entered my mind. I forget what it was, but it was a transition phrase that you’d use between two sentences, or two thoughts. Something in my mind challenged me to use it in the context of my upcoming Enneagram talk. I felt a pressure to think of it right away, with the adjoining insult that if I couldn’t think of it right away, I didn’t know the Enneagram authentically. I always think about Enneagram teachers who can teach without any notes and I compare myself to them- their thoughts can flow easily from the initial basic description of the type, to holy idea to basic fear to basic desire to our inner contradiction and irony, to how we heal and demonstrate our greater qualities- that journey through the type is the most beautiful, deep and complex mental journey in my estimation, and I highly respect teachers who can do it- in other words, teachers who are in presence.
This gave me a very clear insight into the damage that my north node has done to my life. My north node is in Virgo (skills, speaking, duty, etc) , and conjunct Saturn (discipline), and I am constantly trying to push myself to do something hard, beyond what is both necessary and within my skill set, so I lose heart and get discouraged, and end up with a smaller creative output than my peers. As an Enneagram SP4, my whole life, I’ve been discouraged. SP4’s push themselves too hard to produce, and end up not being as productive as they could be because they’re addicted to frustration (as a way to stay with their sad feelings and thus reinforce their identity), so the ego is constantly pushing them to do a more difficult task. This Monday, I was finally able to put a microphone up to my inner critic and hear it “talking”. It was humbling- I saw myself as a harsh task master whipping my poor self for not being able to be at the next step while I was still one step behind. I was putting myself in a constantly impossible position.
Of course, the North node isn’t conjunct a planet in everyone’s chart, but I question if that means the role it plays in their ego structure is any less important. As always, it just means studying more charts to find out.