Taking Action
The Structure for Action
“Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness, becomes sacred.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Changing habitual behavior is challenging because so much of what drives it is generally hidden from us. In the context of mindfulness and our Enneagram work, the practice of Taking Action is one of conscious conduct as we increasingly bring into conscious awareness these patterns that are hidden and automatic.
With the help of the Enneagram principle, the Three Laws of Behavior, we can see the elements in the process of changing habitual behavior:
Wherever your pattern of attention and energy go, your behavior follows.
To change your behavior requires self-observation of your pattern of attention and energy.
Although it will become easier as you practice it, self-observation never becomes habitual and requires continuing practice.
These Three Laws are inherent within the structure and elements of the kindful self-inquiry framework used in our work together. As you explored in the Universal Growth Process through the 5As Practice, you discovered the foundation of Taking Action in Enneagram work is constructed from receptive awareness, non-judgmental acceptance, and appreciation. Interweaving these with action—conscious conduct—enables us to reconnect to and integrate higher essential qualities so we express them more in our daily lives.
When we act harmoniously and with care toward the life around us, our mind is able to settle and ground into unselfishness and truth. Concentration and wisdom develop and our heart is able to open.
The 5As Practice and this practice for Taking Action work together to help us see what unconscious projections and stories we are telling ourselves, so we can interrupt and challenge the reactivity of our ego defenses and repair strategies. In reactivity mode, the ego pulls us back into the dance between unconscious projections (stories we tell ourselves), and reactions (ego defense, damage, and repair strategies).
The more you notice your reaction and pause to reflect before action, the more you create possibility for shifting out of your habitual behavior pattern. You then can coach yourself to consciously take action that is more compassionate and respectful to yourself and others, and more expressive of your Essence.
Essence & Objective Vision
Within all of us, there are certain universal qualities that express the essence of the human person. We prize these essential characteristics as values and strive to realize them in ourselves and in the world. These principles, such as goodness, truth, and compassion, have an adaptive function whereby if we follow them, we will have an objective vision toward ourselves and others in which we experience the world through our Essence rather than through the filters and protections of habitual behaviors. From our Essence, we use adaptive cognitive patterns (such as our type’s Holy Idea, that distinct and direct perception of reality as perceived without the filter of the personality), and we will live in a virtuous state of being with adaptive emotional patterns.
A note on definitions:
Adaptive = making the choice to solve a problem or minimize an unwanted outcome. You might do something you don’t necessarily want to do, or find a way to work around it. Adjusting to circumstances.
Maladaptive = going out of your way to continually avoid stressors rather than seeking a way to solve the problem. This includes avoidance, withdrawal and passive-aggressiveness as a go-to strategy.
If our values and visions are threatened or discounted, we experience vulnerability and may develop a personality strategy to protect our sensibilities and to compensate for characteristics in our selves we fear might be lacking. This personality is usually an overly exaggerated expression of some valued quality of our true person—one or more aspects of ourselves that we like and identify with. It attempts to defend and maintain our self in the face of our critics, to appease them, to gain their attention and approval, to win them over to our side, or to defeat them. Personality relies on repetitive thought, feeling, and behavioral patterns giving us a distorted subjective vision with maladaptive cognitive patterns that are driven by maladaptive emotional patterns or vices.
When we are functioning from our true self—our Essence—our values and vision are clear and our problem-solving capacities are optimal. When we operate from the strategies of our personality, our values are conflicted, our vision is narrow and opaque, and our actions are impulsive, compulsive, scattered, and less effective.
Forces of Life & Action
We all operate from three life forces all the time, and all of them are inherent within us. Becoming more fluent in experiencing and understanding their role within us supports us in learning to take action that honors and expresses our Essence and respects the others involved. As we gain in our mastery of these three forces, we move more into flow with life as it moves through us.
Active Force. The active force that provides the energy for action and expression also animates your thoughts, feelings, and imagination. All that you do and accomplish in the material world uses the active force. This force is penetrative and masculine in its energy. Sometimes the active force is referred to as the creative, affirming, or positive force, because it makes things happen. Western cultures especially value this force.
Receptive Force. The receptive force takes in, processes, and digests all the stimuli received by your senses. It is vital to understanding and appreciating the world you live in, to communicating effectively, and to taking right action. Receptivity is the basis of empathy and compassion. This force is softer and feminine in its energy. It is sometimes referred to as the understanding or negative force, because it takes in and “digests” impressions and because it counters or reacts to active force. Western cultures tend to subordinate the receptive force to the active force and even to devalue it.
Reconciling Force. The reconciling force is the force of consciousness or awareness. It brings your active and receptive forces into correct proportion—into balance and harmony. In this sense, the reconciling force is the master force that you need to develop in order to carry out right action. Neither masculine nor feminine, this force rather is a union of the two in its energy. The reconciling force is sometimes referred to as the preserving, neutralizing, or neutral force, because it has no position per se but balances the other two forces and ultimately sustains you.
Mastering these three forces requires recognizing them and understanding how they interact. You need to use your continuing effort every day to bring the active force and the receptive force into awareness and balance.
Additional Key Themes for Reflection
Stopping for a minute or so, 3-4 times per day, to center and reflect on one of the following themes will build important energy/life force awareness, as well as create additional space to observe your patterns of behavior.
TYPE 1:
What the mind sees as wrong or needing to be corrected. Simply stop to notice how your mind repeatedly goes to error and what you judge as needing correcting and practice discerning what really needs correcting.
Inner critical voice. Simply stop to notice the judgmental edge and bodily energy in your inner critical voice and how often it is present and practice softening and releasing from it.
Judging others and being judged. Simply notice how often you are in reactivity in your body and how this points to judging yourself and feeling judged. Then inquire of yourself about just releasing from judgments that are just associated with old no longer valid beliefs.
Type 2:
Sensing others’ needs and jumping in to fulfill those needs. Simply stop to sense in your body and notice how quickly you move forward with active energy to help others often without reflecting if this is really best or fulfilling for the other.
Indispensability. Simply stop to notice your pride in fulfilling others needs and how this imperative drives your giving.
Own needs and desires. Simply stop to ask yourself, “Have I been tending to my own needs and desires and receiving from others?” If not, work at allowing this precious gift to self and to others into your daily life.
Type 3:
Image. Simply stop to sense in your body and notice how looking good and behaving in ways that gain approval and recognition can run your life. Then do your best to allow in your own true feelings.
Focus on tasks. Simply stop to notice how you focus attention and energy on doing and performance and do your best to expand your pace by slowing it.
Feelings. Simply stop to ask yourself, “Have I been paying any attention to my feelings?” And when not, pause further to encourage your feelings to manifest themselves.
Type 4:
Longing for what is missing. Simply stop to sense in your body and notice how your attention and energy recurrently go to what you feel is important yet missing. Then come back to what is present and positive as best you can.
Emotional intensity. Stop to observe the bodily intensity of your often fluctuating feelings and allow yourself to come back to a more calm stance.
Idealizing specialness. Simply stop to notice how you often focus on being unique, unusual, different and spurn the ordinary. Allow yourself to make the ordinary extraordinary.
Type 5:
Reflexively retracting. Simply stop and do your best to just come back and open your heart knowing that you will be nurtured, not drained of energy.
Detaching to observe. Simply stop to notice the contraction in your body when withdrawing away from intrusions. Use this as a signal to relax your contraction and move forward into life.
Limiting needs and desires. Simply stop to remind yourself that this protective habit of over restricting needs and desires actually can lead to deprivation and deficiency, not sustenance and nourishment. Then accordingly allow your wants and desires to be expressed.
Type 6:
Fear. Simply stop and notice where fear in your body is and inquire of yourself to discern if there really is anything to avoid or challenge, knowing that mostly this is the result of magnifying what seems fearful. Then act accordingly.
Imagination. Simply stop to remind yourself that your “blind spot” is magnifying in your imagination what you experience as hazardous and unpredictable. Then act accordingly, moving into rather than away or against what seems fearful but truly isn’t.
Doubt/contrary thinking. Stop and notice how doubtfulness, questioning, and contrary thoughts keep coming up in your mind. Do your best to release from these and move forward into action.
Type 7:
Planning for possibilities. Simply stop and notice your recurrent planning for positive possibilities associated with your energy going up and out. Use this awareness to bring yourself back to the full spectrum of what is present in the moment including both joy and pain.
Self-referencing. Stop in order to notice your thoughts often go to what pleases and fulfills you. Complement this tendency by putting equal amounts of attention and energy on others as to yourself as best you can.
Reacting to pain or distress. Notice the felt sense in your body when painful and distressing situations arise and your tendency either re-frame these into positives or elude them. Breath back down and with discernment do your best to face these.
Type 8:
Observing impulsivity or impulse to action. Simply stop and notice your urge to act and where this urge resides in your body. Pause and give yourself the gift of time and receptivity. Then take action befitting the situation.
Impact on others. Simply stop, breathe back down, and witness your impact on others, knowing your tendency to be over impactful. Then moderate your exuberant energy as best you can to fit the situation.
Distinguishing vulnerability from weakness. Simply stop and remind yourself that allowing in the vulnerability, the tender softness that accompanies genuine receptive force is a great strength to complement your exuberant active energy.
Type 9:
Attention being pulled by multiple environmental claims. Simply stop to notice how your focus of attention tends habitually goes out to others and environment needs. Use this as a clue to come back and focus on your own priorities and needs.
Resistance in your body. Do your best to stop and notice where your resistance manifests in your body. Practice realizing that this digging in means there is something of importance to you or you wouldn’t have resistance. Then explore what of importance underlies this resistance.
Seeking comfort and avoiding conflict. Stop and notice how disharmony and conflict upset you and where this is in your bodily felt sense. Use this to remind yourself that conflict is naturally occurring and the issue is dealing with conflict constructively. Then do your best to manifest this principle in your life.
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
~ Maya Angelou
Before you begin the audio for the Taking Action Contemplative, here are some guidelines to optimize your experience:
Let yourself be as centered and grounded in the present moment as you can.
Allow yourself to have an open, receptive, compassionate heart, beginning with yourself.
Allow yourself to have an open, receptive, and non-judging mind that is not busy forming responses and defenses.
Let yourself be curious and exploratory, as a child naturally is.
Anticipate personal gain or value regardless of the difficulty.
Be committed to making the necessary effort to change, since spiritual growth requires real change.
Audio Track Note:
The pre-questions content is somewhat dense and doesn’t offer much blank contemplative space to accompany it so as to be time efficient. It is suggested that you manually pause the recording at any point you would like to more deeply contemplate what’s being said.
During the last section of the recording—the contemplative portion of the audio, there will be 30 seconds of time given after each question for contemplation. A chime will sound, concluding that contemplation and the next question will follow. Feel free to pause the track to give yourself more time as needed for contemplation or to journal as desired, then continue on to the next question when you’re ready.
