It Only Took Five Minutes for the Biggest A-HA
Why doing the work with others matters
The Power of Community
The other day, when I was meeting with my Enneagram group, we broke into groups of two or three and with a focus on the Virtues. Virtues aren’t something we practice or earn, they emerge when our usual patterns relax and we’re fully present. But we will get to that.
In our small groups, we worked with a repeating question. A repeating question is simple. Someone asks you a question and you answer. When you finish, the asker says, “Thank you,” and then asks the same question again. You repeat this over and over until your agreed-upon time runs out.
That day, we chose five minutes.
My question was, “What abundance arises from letting go?”
I wanted to play with this because I’ve been working on discerning the lived experience of non-attachment versus detachment. I do detachment very well. Too well. The more I learn about non-attachment, the more I understand that it is not detachment at all. And as I see that difference more clearly, I see my own patterns more clearly. too.
For the past few times we’ve shown up to our group, when we are doing our check-in, I’ve said something like, “I want to live what I experienced at the retreat. I feel like I’m falling asleep again and I just want to go back to that awakeness.”
You see, my personality struggles with closure. I’ve longed for the retreat and that feeling ever since I left. I didn’t know this not-wanting-things-to-close about myself until Russ Hudson pointed it out in a book I was listening to. I had one of those almost veer off the road moments of, “Oh my God, he is so right about that.” Five’s don’t like closure.
So when I was asked the repeating question, “What abundance arises from letting go?” I thought it might be interesting to explore.
I had no idea the bomb that was about to drop.
A big one.
I realized I have been so attached to the feeling I had at the retreat that I haven’t been opening myself to the abundance of the moment now. Pining for that time is keeping me from this time, this moment. This offering of Presence, right now. The inability to let go of what was, is blocking in from what is.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
It wasn’t until someone stayed with me as a witness, allowing space for me to go deeper and deeper into the question and my answers, that I arrived at this moment. This big a-ha.
Letting go is the lesson for all of us, but we each hold on in different ways. Some of us want to control. Some of us want to be comfortable. Some of us what to achieve.
We all have patterning.
Before going further into that, I want to share a little side conversation I had with CHAT, because it connects directly to this realization.
I’ve been sitting with an idea. A full-of-thought idea.
What if we have misnamed God as Love?
When you think about it, and more importantly feel it, Love is infinite. Just like the energy we call God. What if we made God small by labeling, doctrining, and dogma-ing something that is actually beyond us, bigger than us?
My dad used to say, while kissing my kids, “Don’t fight it. It’s bigger than both of us.”
Love is bigger than us. God is bigger than us. And true to my dad’s affection, it really is bigger than both of us. All of us.
As I watched the dots across my screen (CHAT was “thinking”), CHAT came back, (after telling me how amazing I was, which if you know CHAT you know it does this), and said, “Love is how humans experience God.”
Oh.
Okay. That makes sense.
(pretty cool that CHAT knows this, just sayin’)
When I asked about the Enneagram virtues (which we are getting to) and our oneness with God, it said, “Virtues are what naturally arise when ego relaxes and Love flows unobstructed through a particular pattern.”
Yes! What a great way to express what we are all looking for, and have been looking for.
This felt like the opening I needed around non-attachment (my virtue). Not letting go to detach, but letting go so something larger can move through.
So now you know why I wanted to explore Love, God, and the Enneagram virtues. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how this shows up across different patterns.
A Virtue Map
When armor and force soften, innocence appears. Life is met without defense, and Love is experienced as raw aliveness.
When disappearance and numbing fall away, engagement arises. Love is experienced as being here fully, not on the sidelines.
When judgment loosens, serenity arrives. Reality is allowed as it is, and Love is experienced as inherent rightness.
When pride and earning relax, humility appears. Love is experienced as right sized belonging, mutual and shared.
When image drops, authenticity comes forward. Love is experienced as being before doing, essence before effort.
When longing and comparison dissolve, equanimity emerges. Love is experienced as sufficiency, nothing missing.
When hoarding and withdrawal soften, non-attachment arises. Love is experienced as a sustaining field, always present.
When external authority loosens its grip, courage appears. Love is experienced as a quiet companion walking beside us.
When excess and escape fall away, sobriety arrives. Love is experienced as awake simplicity, enoughness in this moment.
When we recognize what is happening in the moment and allow ego to relax, virtue naturally arises. And with it, a lived sense of oneness, the non-dual relationship with Love that we have been longing for all along.
The Enneagram gives us a blueprint.
Community gives us the space.
And we decide how we show up, in body, heart, and head.
Because it is only when all three are present that we experience the freedom, connection, and limitless Love that has always been here.
OK, so you weren’t ready for AI. That’s ok. We can still work together. Here is an affordable option to begin to understand your patterns: From Conflict to Compassion. This workshop, offered once a month, is a fabulous way to begin to look at how you are showing up in the world (and how others are too!). Meets at 10:00 am EST on the first Saturday of the month. Block out an hour and half, and let’s dive into this! ($29) Register here
That insight about needing someone else there to see it makes sense.