With this post, we’re shifting gears a bit. The last few posts have been about the dynamics of the Enneagram and how our personality forms. This post will start to explore one of the Holy Truths. Future posts will include further exploration of the Holy Truths and continued sharing on the dynamics of the Enneagram. I hope you enjoy.
The first and most fundamental existential truth, according to the spiritual teaching of the Enneagram, is of Holy Unity. Most simply put – All is One. This is the same truth highlighted in other non-dual teachings – India’s Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism’s Zen, and the mystical teachings of other wisdom traditions. It’s easy to say and hard to perceive, though I believe all of us have occasional inklings of it.
The most helpful metaphor I’ve encountered is that of the ocean and waves. The vastness of all existence is the Ocean. Infinitely wide and deep, silent and beyond all conceptualization. Beyond what our minds can picture or even understand. Then, as in the ocean, there is movement and a wave forms.
This wave is something becoming manifest, something appearing – the chair I’m sitting on, the weather outside, this idea I’m writing down right now, a distant star, my entire life and each moment in it. Like a wave, each manifestation lasts as long as it lasts, then returns to the ocean. Even as it is manifest it is still the ocean. Each wave is made up entirely of ocean, there is nothing that arises in life that is not entirely ocean. In this way there is only ever One thing happening in the entire universe, which is the entirety of the universe, continuously and completely unfolding as one entity. Complete, absolute Unity. This Unity is referred to by different names – Consciousness, Tao, God, All That Is, the Universe and more.
Ok, “great!”, you might say. How can I experience this? In the end, there is nothing “I” can do to cause an experience of this Truth. The totality of this Unity is unfolding in unison, and my individual self has no control. In fact, this “I” that I’m convinced exists independently is itself a mis-apprehension. More about this as we explore the other Holy Truths over time.
In the meantime, our lives appear to happen not only on an “ultimate” level, but also on a “relative” level. The relative is our day-to-day lives, the ones we’ve always lived and felt, circumscribed by our individual and collective understanding. The teaching of “two levels of truth” can be found in multiple wisdom traditions and is very helpful in the practical living of our lives and engaging in the spiritual path.
The Ultimate is the all-pervading source of everything (the Ocean) and what appears as life is the Relative (the Waves). So while perception of the Ultimate isn’t up to us, we continue to live our Relative lives. At the level of the Relative we can work with each of the Holy Truths. Working with each Truth can help us to grow in wisdom and reduce our own suffering and, perhaps, the suffering of others.
Regarding Holy Unity, on the Relative level, we can reflect on the interconnection of all things. The Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh called this “Interbeing.” Everything we see and interact with is connected to everything else, every thought and feeling we have is part of a vast interplay, every event in our lives and the lives of others is part of and embedded with every other event.
This perspective is perhaps beyond our grasp most of the time, but I think all of us experience it occasionally, and we can practice viewing the world “as if” we understood this. It’s a bit like the image below, is it an image of two faces or a vase?
It’s both and it takes some mental exercise on our part to see each. Likewise, we can make a mental exercise of seeing the inherent wholeness of all things. The exercise doesn’t bring Ultimate understanding, but it can affect us in our Relative lives.
How do you feel when you start to recognize this wholeness? I could offer some of my experience but I wouldn’t want it to interfere with your own. Suffice to say, I feel something meaning-full from this inquiry, something that prompts me to suggest it to you as well.
The implications of Holy Unity are deep and multi-faceted and form the basis of the remaining Holy Truths of the Enneagram, which will be explored in future posts.
Thank you for reading this post, I welcome your comments and questions below. Please do share this with anyone you think may be interested. If you’re interested in classes, discussion groups or one-on-one consultation please contact me at keith at theawakenedenneagram.com.