Breaking out of shame with the help of the Law of One, Michael Teachings, and the Enn

[fairyfarmgirl]

What is the Group W bench? Pardon, Q? --fairyfarmgirl

[LsavedSmeD]

I noticed after finding out that I was definitley type 2 that the basic force behind the unhealthy loop for all of those was fear.

So if fear was cut from the equation then would that mean a healthy loop?

[Confused]

So if fear was cut from the equation then would that mean a healthy loop?

But how can we cut fear off from the equation. From the perspective of an average human being, it is one thing to read the pithy saying 'fear not' from any spiritual text; but how? Of course, no body else can do it for us, but how can we do it for our own self effectively.

When viewing the landscape below through the window of an aircraft, there appear to be no borders. But get down from that elevated level, and you have the passport checks.

[LsavedSmeD]

I believe it is just that word How?

What if it so easy to just instantaneously have no fear. Instead replace that fear with love? Love can't fight fear off but love can replace it, a light in a dark room.

The only way to not have fear is to truly believe deep deep down just as you believe that you exist that everything is truly always alright and that there is not an end to you whatsoever.

I do not hold the answer but I surely think more can be expanded from this.

Also, I believe the enneagram, if followed in a correct matter, is a key to opening the first four energy centers. As the last one would most definitely would be an entity with an open heart and, coincidently as seen in the enneagram, the previous types before the last must be balanced for the last to be in full.

What if you are not a certain type but what type you feel you are is a type that your inner self is telling you to work on for maximum flow of the infinite energy through the energy centers?

[Confused]

Instead replace that fear with love?

Hmmm....that is a good thought to hold. But I often wonder at what point love becomes appeasement that can lead to manipulation (like Questioner pointed out earlier). What is it to take love? It is the fundamentals that have to be questioned. But you are right. No one has all the answers. I at times wonder as to whether even the One Infinite Creator has all the answers.

[Questioner]

What is the Group W bench? Pardon, Q? --fairyfarmgirl

Arlo Guthrie made a famous story song called Alice's Restaurant, which is about 20 minutes long. He rambles along with a very shaggy story, apparently building up to a point but with a lot of humorous diversions and reversals along the way. If you have a spare 20 minutes, look it up on Youtube, you'd get a kick out of it. The story was expanded to a feature movie which I haven't seen.

If you're short on time, here's a summary that spoils the surprise:

In the story, friends of Arlo's hosted a nice Thanksgiving dinner. In appreciation, Arlo did a favor: he took the friends' excess trash to the city dump. The dump was closed for Thanksgiving, so Arlo dumped the trash by the road. The police noticed the pile and figured out that Arlo was the culprit. As a result of trying to do the favor, he was arrested for littering, forced to clean up the garbage, and now had a criminal conviction on his police record.

Later, when Arlo was drafted by the military, his prior conviction record as a litterbug made him flunk out as a suspected ex-con, too immoral to beat up innocent civilians. The Group W bench was where ex-cons had to prove to the recruiter that they'd since been rehabilitated into productive members of society. Comparing littering to the atrocities of the Vietnam War, Arlo suspected he was actually the moral one there. When Arlo pointed out this irony to the recruiting officer, they considered him a threat to national security.

Arlo's recommendation to the audience is that if one's ever drafted for the military, they should sing a few bars of "Alice's Restaurant" to the recruiter. This will create such a backlog of passive resistance that the military establishment breaks down. That would be a great time for everyone to go to Alice's for a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat.

[LsavedSmeD]

Instead replace that fear with love?

Hmmm....that is a good thought to hold. But I often wonder at what point love becomes appeasement that can lead to manipulation (like Questioner pointed out earlier). What is it to take love? It is the fundamentals that have to be questioned. But you are right. No one has all the answers. I at times wonder as to whether even the One Infinite Creator has all the answers.

The Creator does not properly create as much as it experiences itself

Which means, I think, as the Creator gets answers it creates more questions, thus it's seeking is infinite. Just like we are doing now, as we get a question answered it gives rise to more questions. Beautiful.

How about not to take love but to radiate it from your self. Positive polarity means to radiate that love/light light/love. To take in that light would be negative a dark hole - symbolically if you ask me. However; the paradox is that when giving light you receive light. Confusing nonetheless.

[Questioner]

The only way to not have fear is to truly believe deep deep down just as you believe that you exist that everything is truly always alright and that there is not an end to you whatsoever.

That is the ultimate enlightenment goal for every type: giving up the feeling that one particular type of behavior, attitude or feeling is the source of infinite love and goodness; being free to both fulfill and leave behind one's type by transcending it through the inner connection to the Creator. I'll say more about this as we go. I'm very interested in what you will have to say about the developmental pattern that I'll discuss tomorrow.

What if you are not a certain type but what type you feel you are is a type that your inner self is telling you to work on for maximum flow of the infinite energy through the energy centers?

First, look for the enlightenment present within the moment, through the lens of the type of energy you feel called to express at that time. Remember that each of the nine states of consciousness are available to any person at any moment. Type simply means an inherent affinity for one of those states of consciousness to be more easily reachable, by innate character and/or habit.

A key point I'm just about to get to is that in a balanced mature life, we constantly cycle around the enneagram, using each energy as a tool, then releasing it to move on to the next tool in the next moment. Think of a toolbox containing screwdriver, saw, tape measure, etc. If you glued any one tool to your arm, no matter how useful that tool is in some circumstances, you'd be really stuck when you have a different next step of your project.

---

I noticed after finding out that I was definitley type 2 that the basic force behind the unhealthy loop for all of those was fear.

So if fear was cut from the equation then would that mean a healthy loop?

The fundamental fear for everyone is that we might not be good enough to deserve God's love, unless we try harder to be something other than ourselves and to do something other than be present with love. The only difference between types at their worst is what hallucination we have about how little God loves us. The only difference between types at their best is which color of the rainbow most inspires us to follow the light to its source. Much more about this as the series continues.

[LsavedSmeD]

The only way to not have fear is to truly believe deep deep down just as you believe that you exist that everything is truly always alright and that there is not an end to you whatsoever.

That is the ultimate enlightenment goal for every type: giving up the feeling that one particular type of behavior, attitude or feeling is the source of infinite love and goodness; being free to both fulfill and leave behind one's type by transcending it through the inner connection to the Creator. I'll say more about this as we go. I'm very interested in what you will have to say about the developmental pattern that I'll discuss tomorrow.

What if you are not a certain type but what type you feel you are is a type that your inner self is telling you to work on for maximum flow of the infinite energy through the energy centers?

First, look for the enlightenment present within the moment, through the lens of the type of energy you feel called to express at that time. Remember that each of the nine states of consciousness are available to any person at any moment. Type simply means an inherent affinity for one of those states of consciousness to be more easily reachable, by innate character and/or habit.

A key point I'm just about to get to is that in a balanced mature life, we constantly cycle around the enneagram, using each energy as a tool, then releasing it to move on to the next tool in the next moment. Think of a toolbox containing screwdriver, saw, tape measure, etc. If you glued any one tool to your arm, no matter how useful that tool is in some circumstances, you'd be really stuck when you have a different next step of your project.

---

I noticed after finding out that I was definitley type 2 that the basic force behind the unhealthy loop for all of those was fear.

So if fear was cut from the equation then would that mean a healthy loop?

The fundamental fear for everyone is that we might not be good enough to deserve God's love, unless we try harder to be something other than ourselves and to do something other than be present with love. The only difference between types at their worst is what hallucination we have about how little God loves us. The only difference between types at their best is which color of the rainbow most inspires us to follow the light to its source. Much more about this as the series continues.

Yes a constant cycle, balanced.

Like my previous quote.

Also, I believe the enneagram, if followed in a correct matter, is a key to opening the first four energy centers. As the last one would most definitely would be an entity with an open heart and, coincidently as seen in the enneagram, the previous types before the last must be balanced for the last to be in full.

It would make perfect sense considering the balance needed when you look at all nine types and the correlation to those four chakras.

[fairyfarmgirl]

Love with a capital L seeks only to empower. Thus manipulation which seeks to disempower will dissolve in the prescence of Love with a capital L. Now love with a little l is using emotional shennagians to get what the self wants. This is manipulation in the name of the little love also know as sexual love. Platonic Love is the Love of big L. It is unconditional and empowering and freeing full of unity consciousness or oneness that Ra so speaks about.

fairyfarmgirl

---

Thank you for the plot of the Arlo Guthrie Song. I will have to give it a listen. I am sure I will be laughing hysterically. It is the type of comedy that I find most funny--- with a lot of people giving me the "OMG you just found that funny... you know there is a special place in hell for you"... LOL

When I saw K-Pax in the theatre I laughed through the whole thing. No one else was laughing... LOL

[Confused]

...., as the Creator gets answers it creates more questions, thus it's seeking is infinite. Just like we are doing now, as we get a question answered it gives rise to more questions. Beautiful.

A very powerful message. Addresses a lot of pain that assails me now. Thanks

[fairyfarmgirl]

The acceptance that there will always been indefinite questions to be answered allows for solace and also to seek knowing instead of questioning.

Knowing is relying on your innate wisdom inherent within your HEART and Soul.

This is my salt.

fairyfarmgirl

[AnthroHeart]

That may have been me about posting the online test where I scored a 9. Yes, your description resonates true for me. Though being in a hammock all day I would get a little restless.

Lorna, you mentioned an online test suggested you're type 9. Does this type 9 description resonate for you?

[Questioner]

The Enneagram can take us directly to a core question of life experience: what do you believe about God?

Let me use God in the broadest possible sense. As far as I know this is an original definition from me: Your God is whatever you feel certain exists, and has a greater ability to influence how your life turns out than anything else. What you really believe about God is demonstrated by your behavior, not be statements of faith.

For a monotheist - Christian, Jew, Muslim - God is a person who is like our human personalities in many ways. God can have loves and hates, joys and sorrows, expectations and disappointments, actions and reactions, opinions that can be changed by others and self-determinations that can't.

Unlike people, God is the creator of the universe from nothing, can make any arbitrary change in the universe at any time but usually doesn't, and will one day judge us for whether we did what fulfilled and delighted God's hopes in us. If we performed well enough we join God in heaven, if not we are condemned to continue our separation from God in hell.

For a Hindu, God is the ultimate force of creative life pulsing and expanding through the entire universe and inside the human heart. God is not a person as we understand personality, but God is loving and gracious enough to provide a variety of personality manifestations so that we have a personal metaphor of God that we can relate to like a person. These deities or avatars let us relate personally to God, while we remember that they are ultimately only illustrative metaphors about the ultimate reality of God beyond a human personality's comprehension.

For an animist, God is the total summation of all the individual deities that are throughout the world, controlling its operation and approachable as individual personalities.

For a deist, God is the force that set the universe in motion and then sat back to see what would happen without further hands-on involvement.

For an atheist, God is the sum total of random chance and circumstance.

For a communist, and members of other political cults, God is their vision of how government could ultimately be involved in the lives of all people to fulfill an inevitable historical march towards justice.

We all strive to do whatever we can to influence God's involvement in our own lives, and to protect ourselves from whatever we imagine even God can't change. If God is the most powerful force to influence our lives, then there may be quite a bit about our lives that has no single point of influence and therefore can't be affected by our actions.

What we imagine about God, about humanity, and about our role in relation to God and humanity, has this interesting fact about it: for most people, these are all completely unconscious, feeling-based associations that became fixed in our lives long before we learned to talk, or to use logic. Therefore, it's as hard to put them into words as to explain just what it means that the sky is blue.

Most of those associations came from our perinatal, birth or infancy experiences; and from what happened when we were very young; or what happened at any time in our lives that we were helplessly vulnerable to a force greater than we could control, or perhaps even greater than we could comprehend. Those in turn defined what we truly believe about God.

If we believe that someone else blasphemes against our God, that is a terrifying situation for us and for the other person. Blasphemy attempts to undermine or destabilize our connection with the most powerful force in the universe. If the threat isn't dealt with, then we may lose our ability to relate to God and influence God's actions towards us. This is why the apostate, heretic and heathen always has to be killed, whether they disrespect Krishna, Marx, The Prophet, or the Current Scientific Paradigm, depending whose sacred ox is getting grilled for dinner.

The Enneagram describes, among other things, nine different visions of where God is found and what we have to do to be at one with God's best for our lives.

I'll demonstrate this, in my next post, with types 3, 6, and 9.

---

GW, I only referred to an afternoon in the hammock. The morning is yours to do as you like, and the evening is for dinner and watching ET's hello lights.

[fairyfarmgirl]

Q-- I am can not help but OMG LOL. Thank you for that description of the heretic... LOL

fairyfarmgirl

[Questioner]

Type 3's best vision of God is as the force of evolution that strives and grows through diverse opportunities that are fulfilled by willpower. Any other explanation of God is best subordinated by a type 3 to this understanding. An infinite spiritual personality is the cause of this opportunity for growth, delighted to see creatures fulfill their potential. An abstract ultimate force of nature is best responded to with self-created meaning through individual achievement.

With this feeling about God - the cosmic ultimate version of "Mom would be proud," however justified intellectually - a type 3 person can find the strength to carry on with heights of achievement that satisfy their inner desire for well earned self-admiration. The U.S. Army used to have a recruiting slogan, "Be all you can be," and the Navy Seals say "The only easy day was yesterday."

This kind of pep talk is the perfect motivation for type 3 energy to seize the day, live up to their potential, break through their previous limitations and all that wonderful stuff that leads to gold medals and ticker-tape parades.

The ultimate service to others for type 3 is to make themselves the best they can be, going beyond their previous limits through dedicated hard work and persistence that pays off.

Remember that any type can use any of these energy patterns. We can see that Ra used type 3 energy in reconsidering their approach to humanity, and in their relentlessly persistent search in time/space for a team that could receive their communications with excellent clarity.

A type 3 is way out of line when they try to use this motivation on other types, or to disrespect other types for having different types of motivations.

As I see it, Ra's and Carla's concerns about Carla pushing herself too hard is what led to the stepped-down Q'uo contact, the highest contact Carla could receive with stability of consciousness and without physical depletion through the contact.

The negative side of type 3 believes in a God of external judgment through other people's disrespect, causing the lack of admiration to lead them to withdraw their support, and ultimately alienate the poorly performing type 3 to be banished outside the reach of God. This is why the ultimate blasphemy against a negative type 3 is the suggestion that they just aren't working hard enough to be admirable in their self-development. If word of this sin reached God's ears, the type 3 might be cast out of heaven. For most type 3's, all of this is a feeling based concept rather than something to put into words.

At worst, type 3 tries to get God's love without doing the performance improvements that would merit God's love. And if you criticize them for that tactic, they'll try to kill you for threatening their underhanded way to reconnect with God. The ultimate service to self distortion for type 3 is to enlist other people to be the God who bestows favors, medals, and help, onto the person who clearly doesn't deserve any of that favor.

Posts about the Gods of types 6 and 9 coming up, but I need to have someone else post between them so the forum software won't automerge the posts.

[origin]

Dear Questioner,

Thank you for sharing this with us. I have been lurking on the forums for months now without really contributing anything. I also have Enneagram type 4. It can be very hard to say or do anything (here and the outside world) because I often feel deeply ashamed of myself. I read about the Enneagram in the past, but I have not done any extensive studying. I think that I might now.

love and light,
origin

[Questioner]

Origin, I would love to have your participation. Comments as simple as "this makes sense" or "I don't follow what you're saying here" are very helpful for me as I continue the series.

If you feel like contributing anything further, that would also be fine and dandy.

As you know, type 4 has the challenge of feeling isolated, apart from all the rest of humanity from some secret defect. Yet there is also the opportunity of a healing transformation, to feeling connected through the realization that our own experiences of heart, mind, and soul are really what unite us with all of humanity.

My great hope here is that sharing this information will not only help me clarify it in my own mind, but more importantly, help others; with a particular hope that other type 4's can also find God's presence within to overcome the sense of shame.

Welcome!

[Confused]

At worst, type 3 tries to get God's love without doing the performance improvements that would merit God's love. And if you criticize them for that tactic, they'll try to kill you for threatening their underhanded way to reconnect with God. The ultimate service to self distortion for type 3 is to enlist other people to be the God who bestows favors, medals, and help, onto the person who clearly doesn't deserve any of that favor.

In many ways, that bespeaks of my approach.

[Questioner]

C--, the solution is always to have a bigger view of God.

For type 3, the challenge is to imagine and connect with a God that is big enough (and fair enough) to not only inspire other people to admire your self-development, but more importantly to also provide you with the means to inspire yourself to rise to the greatness that you're capable of. If with God's help you can amaze yourself with your growth, then it becomes less important (but also paradoxically more likely) that you'll also get the acclaim of other people.

If God is this big, then a person does not have to be so petty and small as to seek undeserved acclaim. There will always be a way for a person to be bigger than that, aspiring towards the greatness of God.

For type 6, the challenge is to imagine and connect with a God that is big enough and fair enough to provide worthy opportunities for one's vigorously loyal contributions.

If God is this big, then a person does not have to be so small as to cast their pearls before swine.

For type 9, the challenge is to imagine and connect with a God that is big enough and fair enough to provide a flow of peace, harmony, and unity, from within, even if one needs to stand against disunity from outside.

If God is this big, then no outward condemnation or commotion can ever be so great as to cut off one's connection with the infinite ocean of light and love.


Does this make sense?

[Confused]

Does this make sense?

I intuitively know it makes a lot of sense, but whether it converts into pragmatic wisdom within me is dependent on the level of spiritual awareness that my being currently holds. I am closely studying your posts for better understanding. Thank you Questioner. Your eye for detail is amazing.

[Questioner]

I intuitively know it makes a lot of sense, but whether it converts into pragmatic wisdom within me is dependent on the level of spiritual awareness that my being currently holds.

Fair enough. Continuing with type 6:

At best, type 6 has a vision of God as the ultimate force inspiring positive collaboration in mutual trust and goodwill between all people.

A more limited version is that God is the hard work and favorable results of The Elect or The Elite as they strive together to fulfill the Will of God and create Heaven on Earth.

Either way, the ultimate feeling is that if we mind our manners and fulfill our apprenticeship, Dad will be happy to have us join him in the workshop. Almost always put unconsciously, as the need for The Colony, The Party, The Family, The State, The Company, The Team and so on. And consciously chosen by social memory complexes, according to Ra, as their form of blended service.

The greatest service to others that a type 6 can offer is totally trusting, heartfelt collaboration at the highest level, with those equally able to contribute to a shared Work of Ultimate Value.

The most depraved service to self that a type 6 can manipulate is trying to buy the cooperation of the untrustworthy by unwisely trusting them, as though if they were only given enough cooperation that would somehow heal the ethical holes in the other people's hearts, or substitute for their lack of competence, goodwill, or teamwork capability.

This negative attitude ultimately embodies a vision of God as the esprit de corps of the only winning team, who have to be buttered up even though they're miserable people. You can this put into exciting action form in movies about spies, infiltration of crime rings, and so forth; The Usual Suspects is a superb example of this kind of violent mind-twister about which bad guys should trust which other bad guys.

I suppose that "A Message to Garcia" may be highly motivating to type 6. For those not familiar with it, Garcia was a soldier who was entrusted to memorize an offer of political help to some rebel forces in a hostile land. Garcia's only role was to be willing to risk his life as he did what he was told, went where the teams of rebel forces took him, forwarded the message about available teamwork, and accurately remembered it so the home team and the away team could coordinate their war effort.

Trying to motivate other types with the joys of better teamwork is easy enough for an unaware type 6 to do. But it leaves everyone bitter, confused, unhappy and resentful, since this is not the primary motivating force for the other types all around the Enneagram.

Coming up: Type 9 tomorrow, then the part that really excites me most, the lines of integration connecting up life experience between these types. Then on to types 2, 5, and 8; the last batch will be 7, 4, and 1, letting us complete the diagram. I'll then bring in the link to the Directional article explaining why I presented the types in this order, and we'll go back to look at them in a numerical order approach that may relate more closely to the chakras.

Please continue with any questions or comments.

[Confused]

And consciously chosen by social memory complexes, according to Ra, as their form of blended service.

I am not sure I understand this. Does it mean that social memory complexes search for entities (individuals and groups) with certain personality types that matches their own range? May be I do not make sense in my questioning, but I feel there is something I am missing here.

[Questioner]

I might have got too tangled in my own words there... it's a danger of being wordy.

The desire to merge with the greater community can be an unconscious drive in 3D people who embody type 6 energy.

In higher densities, according to Ra, entities tend to form social memory complexes. In these complexes, the merging with the community is a fully conscious, self-aware process.

That's the distinction I meant to point out. Type 6 energy can be an unconscious drive of some people. Type 6 energy can also be a deliberately chosen tool of higher-density entities.

[Confused]

That's the distinction I meant to point out.

And I understand it clearly now. What an ignoramus I am. But the barrage of questions will still continue as you proceed

[Questioner]

Look up the history of the word ignoramus: http://www.drbilllong.com/LegalHistory/Ignoramus.html. It comes from a grand jury that said "we do not know" (in Latin) when they did not see enough evidence to go to trial.

"If they (the grand jury) do not find it (the indictment) true, they write on the back-side Ignoramus ("We known nothing of it"), and so deliver it to the Justices."

If that's what's happening, then it's not the jury's job to go get some better evidence!

The term became a put-down with a satirical comedy play that had a foolishly arrogant simpleton lawyer - NOT a simpleton jury. The play was a hit with audience who didn't care for pretentious nincompoop lawyers - that's not changed in 400 years since the play.

But the King also liked it very much, and not just because it poked fun at fools. The lawyer Ignoramus in the play worked with the common law. The common law was in part a historical tool of defense for the rights of the common man, against the monarch's attempts to deprive those rights. If the common law was something associated with simpletons and fools, then who would be so dumb, naive, easily duped, carelessly indifferent as to honor the common law's limits on the king's power?

How the failure to think somehow got transferred to the jury, as though it was their responsibility to be smart enough to make up for a stupid lawyer, is a mystery to me. There is a reference to one novelist who misused the word to mean "someone who can't be bothered to learn anything," and my guess is that her work was assigned to generations of English students who didn't get an explanation of the history.

But had it been perverted before then?

This switch of the word is consistent with the way service-to-self manipulation tries to redefine the very tools of thought. Ignoramus was the reasonable opinion of a group of people protecting freedom by thoughtfully noting when justice is not served by continuing a prosecution. At some point it got changed to mean the unreasonable opinion of a single individual making problems for him or her self and others by negligently discarding important information.

Now who would best be served by redefining the word? How about prosecutors and politicians misusing the justice system against their political enemies, and any jury that said "NO" to that abuse must be full of naive fools?

As in the animated magic sci-fi martial arts TV series Samurai Jack. The ultimate evil demon Aku says "now the fool comes forth to oppose!" It's not that the noble samurai is a fool. It's that Aku is terrified of Jack's righteousness that might destroy Aku!
http://www.auntiemomo.com/samuraijack/

This reversal of value isn't quite the same thing that happens when type 9 goes bad. As with everything in type 9 the switch there is far more subtle and looks peaceful, even if it isn't really at peace. I'll post that essay next, once there's another post from someone else to prevent the forum software from merging my posts. I hope to have the subsequent one, on lines of integration, ready later today.

[Confused]

That essay is ready, but I need another post from someone else to prevent the forum software from merging my posts.

I have done the interim post. You can now go ahead with the Type 9 description. It is all getting very interesting.

[fairyfarmgirl]

Please post essay on the 9's. When I originally had my M chart done I was told I was a 9. Which I found interesting as numerologically I am a 9 and an 11. --fairy

[Questioner]

Thanks folks.

For type 9, the highest vision of God is equally difficult to put into words, but is something along these lines: God is the ultimate force of unity expressed through harmonious peace and loving flowing through every moment.

Any other type of God is best subordinated, for type 9, into this ultimate flow. For example, a type 9's Christianity is mystical, as in this quote from George Fox, founder of the Quakers: "The Lord answered, That it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions!' and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings."

In spiritual community, Quakers don't vote. The clerk of the meeting intuits "the sense of the meeting" and explicitly asks, "Are all hearts clear?" before officially documenting the decision in legally binding minutes. That's about as far as you can get from the divide-and-conquer, command-and-control, respect-the-authorities mentality behind shouting down or outvoting your opponents, then taking a majority vote to change the record to record the vote as unanimous.

Applied in everyday life, any kind of innovation that uses fields, forces, or the way things are flowing, comes easy to type 9. Cook food without touch by escalating the vibration of the water molecules within? Of course! Send information by pulses of light that are so perfectly aligned they pass through any environment? Naturally, that's what all the cool planets are doing these days.

The unusual claims of the Law of One, all about fields of light and energy, focused transfer of thoughts through narrow band mental communication, etc. are no stumbling block to type 9's understanding. Instead of "no shirt no shoes no service," for type 9 it's more likely "no tangible matter, no guaranteed particle of proof, no problem - after all we're dealing with waves here."

(Edited: I removed a complex and irrelevant speculation about astrology that isn't necessary for understanding the Enneagram. The Enneagram doesn't require any point of view about astrology. Left the placeholder here so Aaron's subsequent post will make sense.)

I don't know if the inventors of the Radar Range or the Laser were type 9's, but they certainly demonstrated type 9 thinking. My type 9 Dad's primary inventions used information in the environmental field around the devices to provide the missing pieces to their puzzles. I don't want to say more about that now because I prefer to stay anonymous on the forum at this time.

If the ultimate blessing of type 9 is an ocean of love in which one swims with unity through accepting all things, then the ultimate curse is an ocean that escapes before you have a chance to get wet, leaving you high and dry, stranded, all alone. At that point the negative type 9 feels forced to accept any puddle by calling it the ocean and pretending it's everything you need to sail around the world. Few things sadder than seeing someone hoist a ragtag sail and holler "Hello, China!" in the bathtub, trying to convince themselves they're the great explorer!

If the infinite flow of God's love is only available when mediated through the Group, then one has to accept whatever Group one can find, rather than having the courage to stand with God within and "speak truth to power" (Quaker term from abolition of slavery) with courage. The courage comes from correctly identifying the infinite flow of God's love with an ever-present experience inside the enlightened type 9 heart and soul , rather than a flow contingent on whatever drops and drips float by from outside.

The service to others of type 9 is obvious. The service to self is far more subtle: it's when they simply can't be bothered to do their part, when it's their turn to serve as the foam on top of the wave or to take the lead in splashing God's love into the dry lands, rather than comfortably relaxing in the ocean depths at the cost of the infinite expansion desired by the infinite ocean of light and love. The fear is ultimately the child's: if I speak up about what Mommy and Daddy are both missing, maybe they'll both reject and abandon me, and then nobody will represent God to this isolated little life.

[Confused]

The service to self is far more subtle: it's when they simply can't be bothered to do their part, when it's their turn to serve as the foam on top of the wave or to take the lead in splashing God's love into the dry lands, rather than comfortably relaxing in the ocean depths at the cost of the infinite expansion desired by the infinite ocean of light and love.

I think I need a little more explanation on the above.