To the extent that the environment provides adequate holding, the child can develop in the context of a continuity of being which allows and supports the individuation of the soul—one’s unique embodiment of Being. Because there are degrees of holding and of impingement, and because no holding environment is without failures, we typically develop a real (essential) and a false (egoic) self in varying proportions. Basic trust is usually not totally missing, but it is seldom complete. To have absolute basic trust is to be completely realized. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, Ch. 6
As we explore the barriers to self-realization, we need to inquire into our basic distrust. This will take us into exploring our early holding environment and its effects on the development of our sense of self. Investigating the inadequacies of our early holding environment reveals the effects of these inadequacies on our particular self-identity structure. Working through this history, and illuminating the psychic structures it has created, leads finally to the awareness of the absence of basic holding. This absence is associated with a certain emptiness, the hole of a specific manifestation of Being. Learning to allow this emptiness finally ushers us into this manifestation of Being, which turns out to be a quality of love. It is a quality of boundless and gentle love, a delicate light experienced as the presence of softness, sweetness and generosity. It is not exactly a personal kind of love. It is love for everything and everyone—universal love.
Its direct effect on the self is for her to feel lovingly held, as if cuddled in the infinitely loving arms of the universe. It also brings the perception that this loving, holding quality is intrinsic to the fundamental ground of all existence. The more she experiences this loving manifestation of Being, the more her basic trust develops, and the more her faith in reality is restored. – The Point of Existence: Transformation of Narcissism in Self-Realization, Ch. 34
The loss of the sense of holding will lead to the loss of contact with Living Daylight, and this will result in a sense of deficiency particular to each ennea-type. The absence of holding is experienced in a certain way that is determined by the particular Holy Idea that is lost, and it is then experienced as a specific painful, deficient, and difficult state we call the specific difficulty for that ennea-type. The specific delusion, the distorted view of reality resulting from the loss of the Holy Idea particular to each ennea-type, shapes the specific sense of deficiency. That sense of deficiency is the embodiment, as it were, of that conceptual formulation. The delusion also shapes how each ennea-type reacts to its specific difficulty. We have seen how the absence of holding leads to a lack of trust, which in turn causes the soul to react rather than to continue its spontaneous unfoldment, and each ennea-type has a particular way of responding to its deeply painful sense of deficiency. We call this the specific reaction of each ennea-type. Out of the interaction of the specific difficulty and the way it is responded to, which is the specific reaction, the core of each ennea-type is formed. Out of that core arise all of the emotional and behavioral patterns associated with that type. – A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas