07-26-2010, 07:14 PM
Thanks, Lorna.
Every type 2 implicitly shares this definition of God:
God is whatever force in the universe fills the hole in the type 2's heart, the hole that makes them wonder whether they can be and do enough to be loved by God.
The wise choice for type 2 is to believe in a God that actually can provide that filling satisfaction. Content that they don't have to be or do anything more to be loved by God, they are then free to be loving to themselves and to those around them. If other people don't respond to their love as well as might be hoped, that's still OK. It's no threat to not be loved enough by other people, because that doesn't threaten the healthy, mature type 2 person's connection with God.
The unwise choice for type 2 is to believe in a God that can't be any more loving and fulfilling than the sum total of other people's behavior, as interpreted by how that behavior inspires the type 2 to feel about themselves. This faith places the type 2 at a very unstable, risky situation, for a pair of reasons. Not only do other people have to behave properly, but the type 2 has to then interpret those behaviors correctly, in order for God's love to be present in the type 2's life.
These are generally not conscious choices made every day as an adult. They are a long since submerged subconscious sense of whether there could be a loving and caring Heavenly Father, based on extrapolation from whether there was a loving and caring earthly Daddy. This feeling about what life is all about is defined not just in young childhood. It can be influenced by other Fatherly roles throughout youth, or when the person really needed someone with that kind of protective energy. If they got that protective caring, they likely have an preconscious sense that they live in a benevolent Universe and are a good enough person to do well in that Universe.
For any person, if there is something far more destructive than our nervous system can handle, consciousness can temporarily shut down as a protective measure. Sometimes, if there is great physical pain, this truly is protective and it's just as well that we never remember the injury. Sometimes, however, if the pain is of the inner life - psychological, emotional, spiritual - the dissociation continues long past a point of protection. When there is utterly overwhelming pain, we can take leave of our senses.
When something reminds us of that past pain - whatever happened just before or after, or in the same alignment or situation as the past pain - all the warning signs are triggered. The dam bursts open, the emotional floodgates release an utterly overwhelming surge, and our awareness flees the present moment out of fear that it is about to hurt as much as the past overwhelming moment.
But here's the hell of it: if the original pain was never dealt with, then our floating awareness re-enters our body's time-stream at the experience of the original pain. It seems to me that perhaps, when the mind tries to escape the body's existence in space/time, if there's a hole in space/time from a previous escape than the mind/spirit will be sucked right back in to plug the previous hole.
This is why abuse victims, war survivors, and people dealing with other trauma related injuries can slide back into reliving the attack. Unfortunately, they then relive the experience of feeling helpless, thinking that they were certainly about to be destroyed and powerless to stop it, wishing to last out in anger against whatever threat they encounter, and so on. That unfinished business then becomes a hallucination preventing them from seeing the present moment.
Enneagram theory, at its core, points out that there is nothing more traumatic than feeling certain that God hates you or has abandoned you. Remember I'm not just talking here about the concept of a spiritual personality, but in the broader sense, whatever it is you believe, with deepest feeling, is more powerful than anything else at determining how your life turns out. If God doesn't love us, perhaps we can become more loving and then God will have to love us. If God doesn't notice us, perhaps we can become more extraordinary and then God will have to stop overlooking us. If God doesn't help us, perhaps we can become more powerful than God and not have to depend on any outside force to help us get what we need and want.
For a young child, their parents have the role of God in providing the love, help, acceptance and celebration of their own life which they can't create for themselves inside themselves. But at a time of helplessness, whether from illness, poverty, injury, or imposed circumstance such as war or calamity or abuse, any number of other people may need to play the role of God to us.
If we generally find that other people, when we need them, are good enough at providing enough help (even if imperfectly and incompletely), then we can feel safe about God's care. And if they aren't, then we wonder what more we have to be and do to meet God's needs or to surpass God's limitations. These three fundamental strategies - overcome by power, entreat by lovingness, make irrelevant by withdrawal - are the foundation of neuroses to the extent that they're the reliving of past pains when our mind flees the painful present, and re-enters the unhealed painful past.
Damaged type 2 people of either gender are trying to get certainty about Daddy's loving protective care for them, and the strategy is to be so loving that Daddy can't overlook those needs any more. The spouse, family, kid, boss, colleague, doctor or professional gatekeeper may be the Daddy to please with lovingness. The hell of the situation is that if the type 2 were to give his or her OWN loving, empathetic, truly helpful care to whoever they wish to honor and serve, throughout life, then they would receive back all the loving help and support they could ever wish for... just not necessarily from those to whom it was given, until the type 2 gains wisdom.
Every type 2 implicitly shares this definition of God:
God is whatever force in the universe fills the hole in the type 2's heart, the hole that makes them wonder whether they can be and do enough to be loved by God.
The wise choice for type 2 is to believe in a God that actually can provide that filling satisfaction. Content that they don't have to be or do anything more to be loved by God, they are then free to be loving to themselves and to those around them. If other people don't respond to their love as well as might be hoped, that's still OK. It's no threat to not be loved enough by other people, because that doesn't threaten the healthy, mature type 2 person's connection with God.
The unwise choice for type 2 is to believe in a God that can't be any more loving and fulfilling than the sum total of other people's behavior, as interpreted by how that behavior inspires the type 2 to feel about themselves. This faith places the type 2 at a very unstable, risky situation, for a pair of reasons. Not only do other people have to behave properly, but the type 2 has to then interpret those behaviors correctly, in order for God's love to be present in the type 2's life.
These are generally not conscious choices made every day as an adult. They are a long since submerged subconscious sense of whether there could be a loving and caring Heavenly Father, based on extrapolation from whether there was a loving and caring earthly Daddy. This feeling about what life is all about is defined not just in young childhood. It can be influenced by other Fatherly roles throughout youth, or when the person really needed someone with that kind of protective energy. If they got that protective caring, they likely have an preconscious sense that they live in a benevolent Universe and are a good enough person to do well in that Universe.
For any person, if there is something far more destructive than our nervous system can handle, consciousness can temporarily shut down as a protective measure. Sometimes, if there is great physical pain, this truly is protective and it's just as well that we never remember the injury. Sometimes, however, if the pain is of the inner life - psychological, emotional, spiritual - the dissociation continues long past a point of protection. When there is utterly overwhelming pain, we can take leave of our senses.
When something reminds us of that past pain - whatever happened just before or after, or in the same alignment or situation as the past pain - all the warning signs are triggered. The dam bursts open, the emotional floodgates release an utterly overwhelming surge, and our awareness flees the present moment out of fear that it is about to hurt as much as the past overwhelming moment.
But here's the hell of it: if the original pain was never dealt with, then our floating awareness re-enters our body's time-stream at the experience of the original pain. It seems to me that perhaps, when the mind tries to escape the body's existence in space/time, if there's a hole in space/time from a previous escape than the mind/spirit will be sucked right back in to plug the previous hole.
This is why abuse victims, war survivors, and people dealing with other trauma related injuries can slide back into reliving the attack. Unfortunately, they then relive the experience of feeling helpless, thinking that they were certainly about to be destroyed and powerless to stop it, wishing to last out in anger against whatever threat they encounter, and so on. That unfinished business then becomes a hallucination preventing them from seeing the present moment.
Enneagram theory, at its core, points out that there is nothing more traumatic than feeling certain that God hates you or has abandoned you. Remember I'm not just talking here about the concept of a spiritual personality, but in the broader sense, whatever it is you believe, with deepest feeling, is more powerful than anything else at determining how your life turns out. If God doesn't love us, perhaps we can become more loving and then God will have to love us. If God doesn't notice us, perhaps we can become more extraordinary and then God will have to stop overlooking us. If God doesn't help us, perhaps we can become more powerful than God and not have to depend on any outside force to help us get what we need and want.
For a young child, their parents have the role of God in providing the love, help, acceptance and celebration of their own life which they can't create for themselves inside themselves. But at a time of helplessness, whether from illness, poverty, injury, or imposed circumstance such as war or calamity or abuse, any number of other people may need to play the role of God to us.
If we generally find that other people, when we need them, are good enough at providing enough help (even if imperfectly and incompletely), then we can feel safe about God's care. And if they aren't, then we wonder what more we have to be and do to meet God's needs or to surpass God's limitations. These three fundamental strategies - overcome by power, entreat by lovingness, make irrelevant by withdrawal - are the foundation of neuroses to the extent that they're the reliving of past pains when our mind flees the painful present, and re-enters the unhealed painful past.
Damaged type 2 people of either gender are trying to get certainty about Daddy's loving protective care for them, and the strategy is to be so loving that Daddy can't overlook those needs any more. The spouse, family, kid, boss, colleague, doctor or professional gatekeeper may be the Daddy to please with lovingness. The hell of the situation is that if the type 2 were to give his or her OWN loving, empathetic, truly helpful care to whoever they wish to honor and serve, throughout life, then they would receive back all the loving help and support they could ever wish for... just not necessarily from those to whom it was given, until the type 2 gains wisdom.