Enneagram 8

How the COVID-19 pandemic boosted this enneagram type 8’s spiritual practice

Enneagram type eight, are they a riot or what!!!?

Enneagram 8 has a predilection for intensity and excess. Some of us like to be Master & Commander of our ship of consciousness. At least we love the delusion that we are.

The influences of intensity and excess can contribute to the formation of addiction issues in type eight. Throw in a couch-potato nine wing and an I-want-to-sample-every-video-on-the-planet seven wing, and you have a perfect-storm character structure for meeting the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown head on! Throw in a recliner and a widescreen, and we’re all set for the battle of champions — Pandemic vs. Enneatype 8.

Let the binge-watching begin!

Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, BritBox, Acorn, YouTube – they threw everything they had at me for two years. At times, it was a knockdown and drag-out, bare-knuckled affair. Until I reached the point of being satiated with streaming (reruns were of no interest) and bored with channel surfing and searching.

I even grew tired of signing up for the “one or two months free” deals, which I did, and then immediately canceled and streamed the channel for the free time offered.

So, I found myself in a situation of simply turning off the TV, closing my eyes, and sitting – meditating. Right then (now), right there (here) in the middle of an active house. I’ll give you a sense of the scene:

Sitting upright in the recliner, over to my left in the dining room, is my daughter’s boyfriend playing video games with friends worldwide – laughing, yelling, jabbering. My daughter is cooking in the kitchen and walking around the house, talking (yelling) at her boyfriend. My wife and Amy, a woman who works in my wife’s shop and lives with us, come in from work and join the melee.

They all start jabbering in Mandarin about me – they’re Chinese. Is he okay? Is he sleeping? The three women come over to inspect me. My wife sticks her face to within inches of mine… jabber, jabber, jabber as they try to figure out what’s happening.

While I know all of this, about 80% of my attention is engaged with space/presence. It’s like having noise-canceling headphones on – I can hear and feel them, but they aren’t disturbing. I’m more aware of the field of the soul and the absence/presence sourcing all that is happening.

This has been going on for weeks now.

In addition to spontaneously closing my eyes and meditating at any moment regardless of others in the house, I’m rolling out of bed at 5 a.m. and heading immediately to the chair – after the pause that refreshes.

For years, I’ve meditated in the morning after half an hour or so of being awake. This is different. It’s matter-of-fact, a matter of course, a gravitational force between my soul and that chair. I’m (me) not deciding to go meditate. Meditating is not an action or activity. There is a sense that it is happening constantly, under the radar.

There is curiosity about what’s happening – the process of moving to the chair or already being in the chair and closing the eyes. THIS SITS is what arises as an explanation.

My eyes are closing more and more often to join the show already in progress. It’s a new level of insight into what A. H. Almaas refers to: “Practice is realization, and realization is practice.”

So, thank you, COVID-19 pandemic and government and streaming, for helping me to reach the point where closing my eyes was more inviting than steaming the latest mind-numbing offering from Netflix.

This video speaks to this experience even though it was written twenty years ago out of a different experience.

I’m curious as to how the pandemic may have supported your spiritual practice/realization. Leave me a comment.

Diamond Approach Enneagram On-demand Courses

In this 11-module course, Sandra Maitri and Russ Hudson will synthesize decades of Enneagram knowledge and teaching experience with a lifetime of Diamond Approach spiritual development and methodology to help us reconnect to our essential being through the Enneagram. Click Here for Access

This course will explore how the particular ‘take’ on reality at the core of each of the nine types begins and the resulting belief structures, emotional patterns, and behaviors. Click Here for Access