Episode 177 The Journey from Ego to Authenticity with Reverend Barrett Owen

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we dive into the complexities of Type 3, the Winner, with our special guest, Reverend Barrett Owen, who is a dear friend of the Institute for Conscious Being. Barrett shares his journey as the senior pastor of First Baptist Wilmington, North Carolina, and reflects on his experiences with the Enneagram, which he first encountered during his college years.

Barrett discusses the unique challenges and motivations of being a Type 3, particularly the feelings of shame that often accompany the desire to impress others. He emphasizes the importance of truthfulness and how it has transformed his approach to leadership and communication within his church community. As we explore the holy ideas associated with Type 3, Barrett highlights the significance of holy harmony and the realization that we are not separate from the divine, which alleviates the pressure to constantly achieve.

Throughout the conversation, we touch on the interconnectedness of the Enneagram types, particularly how Barrett's experiences resonate with Nanette's as a Type 9 and Joe's as a Type 6. We reflect on the importance of self-awareness and the journey toward embracing our true selves, rather than the personas we often feel compelled to present.

Join us as we learn from Barrett's insights and experiences, and discover how embracing our authentic selves can lead to a more harmonious existence. Thank you for listening, and we hope you find inspiration in this episode!

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:
You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. And now, here are your hosts, Dr. Joe Howell and Nanette Mudiam.

Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram, a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howe, and I'm so happy to be with you, Dr. Joe. How are you?

Joe: Happy to be with you, Nanette.

Nanette: Good, good. Well, we're really plowing through our numbers here on the wheel of the Enneagram, and we have come to Type 3, which has a special place in my heart because that's the point of integration. So I'm going to be inspired by today's guest and a very dear and personal friend of the Institute, a former student, a graduate, Reverend Barrett Owen is here with us today. Say hi to everyone, Barrett.

Barrett: Hey, thanks so much for letting me be here. I love it. I'm always glad to come back.

Nanette: Well, a lot of people may recognize you because you have done host duty for this podcast. And so we're happy to see you back here with us. And we don't get to see Barrett very often. Today, we're actually with Barrett on zoom, because he is now in Wilmington, North Carolina. So we see him a little bit less just because of geographics, unfortunately. So Barrett, tell us a little bit about what you're doing in Wilmington as the pastor of First Baptist Wilmington, North Carolina.

Barrett: Yeah, exactly. So I'm the senior pastor of First Baptist here in Wilmington. I've been here for a little over two years, and so I'm not new anymore, but I still haven't eaten at all the restaurants. I'm working my way around. Wilmington is at the edge of America. You just take I-40 until it stops, and then you're in Wilmington. And so we really are kind of out in the middle or out in no man's land, so to speak. But it's such a cool town. I mean, it has a riverfront, but it also has oceans and it's city life, but it's also rural. And so it just has a little bit of everything. It's super fun to raise our kids, to be so close to the beach. The community itself is really old. Wilmington is an old town. one of the first developed in North Carolina. And so our church is started in 1808. So we've got quite a legacy of being a Baptist entity in Wilmington. So I'm just kind of just I'm one of 10 ministers on our staff. So we've got kind of an operation happening over here. And we love it. And it is fun and exciting to go to work. And so I've wear a lot of hats, but they all fit under senior pastor or first Baptist.

Nanette: And that's beautiful. Well, Barrett, tell me a little bit about being a Baptist pastor, because when I hear you say first Baptist, I, you know, I'm a girl who's pretty much grown up in the South. So I think, I think, you know, evangelical, I don't think of spaces where you might actually pastor. So tell us a little bit.

Barrett: Oh, absolutely. So, I mean, I was raised in Nashville, Tennessee, just north of Nashville, home and incubator of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, which is now LifeWay Christian Resources. I was raised in Southern Baptist life. And in the mid 80s, early 90s, a pretty seismic shift occurred in the denomination. There was a real fight over doctrine, how we handle scripture and the role that women play in leadership. And there was a split and a new denomination formed that landed more on the progressive side. And the name of that is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. And so in that time span, First Baptist Wilmington decided to jump ship away from Southern Baptists and they aligned themselves missionally with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Their headquarters are based in Atlanta, Georgia. They're very, it feels very similar to Southern Baptist in the terms of how we worship and the style of worship, but the biggest difference is polity and the way, and we're a much more inclusive community. And that really flows down from how we handle scripture. And so we've been at this since 1993 at First Baptist in Wilmington. So this is not new for me. And actually, every church I have pastored has been a cooperative Baptist church. My home church growing up, I was born in 1984. We left, you know, when I was still a student. I remember the first female deacon when I was a little kid who got ordained at our church. We've ordained, we've been ordaining women in Wilmington since the 70s. I mean, we would, I mean, there's no possible way. We have three ordained minister, female ministers on our staff and there's no way we would even be Received into the Southern Baptist Convention today, but also we don't want to be we've got our partners. We're not enemies. We wish them well. We're just over here doing our thing. And it's got a whole system, and we've got an entire international web of influence, missionaries, sending agencies, nonprofits. And so we're just doing our thing over here. I would say the initial conversation I have with people who stumble into First Baptist is they assume we're Southern Baptists, and they learn pretty quickly we're not. That's cool.

Nanette: And you're either ready for that or you're not. And so no shade to the Southern Baptist system. No, not at all. I wish you well. Yeah, I definitely knew that that's not exactly descriptive of who you were. So I wanted to clarify that.

Barrett: We don't use the word evangelical. We're very historically Baptist. The autonomy of the local church is very important. The centrality of scripture, priesthood of all believers, separation of church and state. I mean, those are all historical. load-bearing tent poles of Baptist distinctives. And we claim those. And so we're historically Baptist.

Nanette: Well, and you know what I love about the Institute for Conscious Being is that we have people from many faith backgrounds and persuasions and schools of thought, and we're open to embracing those and learning from one another. So thank you for sharing that. So tell me, did you find the Enneagram first or did you find ICB first? How did you come to the Enneagram?

Barrett: So I went to Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee as a college student and I was a religion major and I was introduced to it then as a sophomore in college. The university itself? No, not at Swanee, at Belmont University in Nashville. It's another liberal arts school, formerly Baptist. They broke away. But anyway, we had just a wonderful, very intellectual school of religion that taught the just advanced literary critiques of scripture. And part of the pastoral care curriculum was to learn thyself and to know thyself. And we use the Enneagram. When I went to seminary, we did the Myers-Briggs. So I shelved the Enneagram. It was just on my shelf for kind of years. And it was in 2008. I couldn't quite remember, Joe, when we started. You and I together is either 2016 or 17. But I just needed to use some continuing education money and credit. And Joe happened to be at Swanee. That was the first time that I had met Joe and Lark. And my in-laws live in Chattanooga. And we were visiting that very weekend. So I just was like, I'm going to ride over to Swanee. And it changed my life.

Nanette: That's beautiful. Do you remember that, Joe?

Joe: Do you remember me? Absolutely. I was so glad to see Barrett because he was a friend of John Adams, who was a mentor for Barrett. And John was on our faculty. And then there are other connections that I have with Barrett that are family, but we didn't meet each other through those.

Nanette: It's a small, small world.

Barrett: It is a small world. He is the uncle to my sister-in-law. And I remember being at Joe's mother's funeral. And I went, not knowing Joe or Lark, but I was there to be present for my sister-in-law. And I remember that this man stands up and just waxes poetic, like the room changed. While this man was speaking, and I didn't know who it was, but it in my mind seared a memory of This is what the power of the spirit can do when we're coherent together. The room moved because of this moment. And it was Joe, you were hugging his mother. And I had no idea. Yeah. Anyway, I was very smitten.

Nanette: And I think I think sometimes too, we have we have we hear voices that somehow resonate with our future. And we know like there, it was like something in you maybe just felt like I feel connected for whatever reason, something resonated with you. And you ended up here, you know, being with us. And, you know, I know I and I only say that because because I had the same experience the first time I heard Joe speak as well, and just had a profound moment and then didn't connect with him till several years later. But the first time I heard him, it really is really stuck with me. So thank you, Joe. Yeah. You've been a mentor to many of us. So we're so grateful for your influence. So how did you finally end up at ICB after that?

Barrett: Well, I went to a conference.

Nanette: Oh, you went to the Suwannee conference.

Barrett: The Suwannee conference and then immediately registered. And then I jumped into the scholars program, did the master's program the year of the

Nanette: Deepening Roots. Deepening Roots. I was going to say nurturing. That's not right. Deepening Roots. You did that during COVID, I remember, because that was the year we were all so grateful. Grateful for Zoom and then, you know, grateful when Zoom was over. But still, I mean, obviously, it's letting us talk to you now. So that's been wonderful. And your Deepening Roots students, fellow students, definitely miss you. So tell me about what it's like to be a Type 3.

Barrett: It is amazing if the people you are around have not read your shadow side yet. If you are still… If you can operate in a way as an eager type 3 and you can impress the room, it feels great. It's amazing. If the room becomes aware that you are deceiving them, then it feels threatening. There's a great shame in being a three because you feel exposed half the time or there's this undercurrent of people honestly knew and you just you shame yourself you feel shamed by others but if you know people are blissfully unaware of your of your ego, then it's, it's pretty amazing to be.

Nanette: No, is this your experience? Every three I know, if you talk to them about being a threes, you will hear the word shame. Every, every three I know that is aware, you know, who's done some work, I will hear the word shame from every single one of them in their first introduction.

Joe: Is that is that true of your experience? Yes. I mean, because Most of them are very successful people. And when they find out, as Barrett says, their shadow side, which has deceit in it, they have to reconcile the pristine image of success with the darker image of deceit. And those two opposites really clash. And that's why I believe a lot of aware threes use the word shame. Because something is brought into the light. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Nanette: I also find, of course, so Joe is here today as as many of you know, as a type six, and I am a type nine. And so I feel like on the triad, we just kind of we all loop into one another. And I always feel like if I'm with a three, six or nine, I kind of know you because I've been you at some place, you know, either in stress or in health. And so it's it's it feels very familial. And so, I would say that's probably true. Of course, as many of you know, I'm also married to a type 6 Cy. And he's, I definitely recognize when he spends time in three spaces, you know, that are maybe not the healthiest, you know, and it's quite comical when you become aware and you can when you can help one another to just heighten the awareness of our types, especially, obviously, when we're not very healthy. Joe, how's it been for you to experience three spaces as a six?

Joe: My three space, if I go directly to three, from the six, I go, if it's my stress point, of course, I go to the negative aspects of three. And my My motivation is to prevent bad things from happening. It's not necessarily to look good to be loved. It's to look good so that I am not caught as a deviant person with a lot of deficiencies who's going to be punished by the group or fired or thought about in a bad way. So there's a different motivation at three for me than there is for Barrett and you. for me.

Nanette: Yes. Yeah, that's a great that's a great thing to be pointed out. So our motivations for being in health or in stress are obviously different. So well, Barrett, when when you think about yourself as as a healthy type three, and I know you that you're seeing that in yourself. as you're doing the work, as you've continued to pursue your own spirituality and your own maturity. You have a young family. How does a healthy type 3, how are you experiencing that?

Barrett: Yeah, I become very efficient. That's the first thing. I think that's not really a healthy three. It's more just average. If I am up at 5am, I'm reading, I'm writing, or I'm running at some point before the sun comes up every day. And that just starts the day. And then if I can you know if i can hold laundry and before the kids go to school and i don't have to do it afterwards if i can prep something for dinner before we leave for work you know that's just, i just get up and i just get hyper fixated on getting stuff done and i value it and so there is a sense, That is like at least an average consciousness. When I'm unhealthy, I fall asleep on life because I go to the basement of the nine and I don't get stuff done. I'm very inefficient. I can't make decisions. So I'm very aware of when I'm in a headspace of getting stuff done. But When I am super healthy, I realize the motivation for getting stuff done is for the good of the group, is for the family. I'm not doing it so I can get credit or be seen as someone who accomplishes it quickly and better than everyone else. So that efficiency is not necessarily a great barometer for health, but it can be, but it becomes its own kind of slide. Like what's the motivation for being efficient? I'm making decisions. that benefit the group. That's when I know that I'm in a healthy headspace. You slide in and out of that pretty quickly, though. It's not like you just, oh, I've arrived and I stay there for the next 12 hours. That's not really the case. I mean, I can spin a story to make you be impressed by something that I've accomplished. And in the back of my mind, I know I haven't quite really finished that task yet, but I made you believe that I did. because you're not going to really ever find out if I did or didn't. It just impresses you in this moment. I made that judgment call in real time and then you move on with your life and I shame myself for deceiving you. And now I'm back into a negative headspace and then I forgive myself and I drive to work and now I'm in a new space and I can be truthful in this new space and I don't have to rely on being deceiving. So it's a constant barometer, but I pay attention to how am I in terms of efficiency, and then what's the motivation for that efficiency.

Joe: I'd like to echo that, Barrett, your consciousness. I know that you're like me and everybody, our consciousness levels decrease and increase according to stress level and awareness and many other factors. But a couple of weeks ago, Lark and I were at your church on invitation to present with you an Enneagram program, a deeper dive into the Enneagram, and we had, wow, probably 65 people who you have been nurturing along at your church who wanted to learn some of the more nuanced aspects of the spirituality of the Enneagram. And during the course of the weekend, I had the chance of coming into your sanctuary and participating in a worship service. And of course, the preacher of that service was you. And you did a great job. I loved what you had to say. It was profound. It was personal. It was energetic. But I recall after that sermon, we were in a conversation with a gentleman, and you said to him, there is something that I said in the sermon that I am reviewing because I think I may not should have said that. And I am critiquing myself because of it. And I don't know what to do if I decide that I shouldn't have said it, but I'm thinking about it. And I remembered that because I thought there is an aware human being who is the senior pastor, but he is not trying to portray himself as invincible, and he is fine with questioning his own self in front of other people. I love it.

Nanette: It's a real tense place to be.

Barrett: Yeah, it's one-on-one, but when I'm in front of everybody, I just said it anyway. I'm sure I calculated the cost and rolled with it anyway.

Nanette: Now I'm really curious, I might have to stay with you afterwards and find out just what this thing was that you said.

Barrett: You know, the funny thing about a three is I don't probably could not recall.

Nanette: Are you a, would you describe yourself as a transparent communicator? Would you make this question in front of a large group of people?

Barrett: Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And so that's a great realization for someone that's in a public kind of sphere like me. So I do say a lot of words publicly. That can really weigh you down if you are not a conscious person and comfortable in your own skin, because people will ask questions and probe. And if you if you embroidered the truth intentionally, hoping to get away with it, and then someone questions you on it, it can send you spiraling in a kind of a trauma state. And I, I mean, I used to do that 10 years ago, because I was, I wasn't confident in what I was saying. So I would just try to say it well, which meant that you could embroider some things. And usually not with scripture, although I can't say I have always done that. But mainly with like personal stories, like you just embellish because it makes the moment better. Well, when I was 20 something years old and preaching, I would tell these stories and I would embellish them because I thought the moment needed it. And when you do life with people, my 20 year old self did not realize that people will remember the things that you say to them. And so when they ask you about it years later or remind you you said something, it's better to just be truthful on the front. So one of the, and so I will say that's the, the virtue of a three is truthfulness that moves us out of our deceit. I have learned for a three, It's less about me trying to deceive the world, although that's very true. There is a deception in how I am presenting myself and things that I unconsciously am able to say that others don't feel, that may feel more morally ambiguous to say. But my unconscious self can lie, cheat, and steal to control a narrative. But what I have learned is that Truthfulness is way better. And that there's that the truth is enough. It doesn't have to be embroidered. And it lands in a much more solid foundation when you are investing your life into a community of faith. And so that I learned a long time ago, it is not worth telling that story. And by embellishment. And so truthfulness is it will actually save you down the road, especially as the three.

Nanette: Especially when now in this day and time, everything is so recorded, you know, at the moment, you know, someone can play it back to you or pull it back up. I would imagine the truth is a much better protection than embellishing a story for sure. So do you kind of have a story that maybe encapsulates that your virtue of truthfulness or your holy idea of it's holy faith, correct?

Joe: Holy ideas, holy harmony, holy law, and holy hope.

Barrett: Yeah, we have a lot of holies in the three. We have a lot of work to do.

Nanette: Yes, you have a lot of holies. We do. Holy law and harmony and will.

Barrett: Yeah, I think about just my just who I was growing up. And so I got, this is a little self-serving, I apologize, but I'm a three. So of course, I'm going to tell you a story about something I was invited to that was super exclusive. But when I was a senior in high school, I got invited to Boys State. I think several states do it. You're nominated by the administration of your school, you represent your school, you go off to a college campus. For us it was Tennessee Tech University and you learn about government and you get to meet judges and lawyers and it was a really wonderful honor. I go as the representative of my little town that I grew up in, and I just decided I'm never going to see these people again. There's 400 other high school seniors at this week-long learning intensive, and we're all staying in dorms. I just leaned in to the largest level of ego that you could imagine. I told stories about a girlfriend I did not have. I told stories about sports achievements that I did not make. I ran for a public office that week and told stories that were not true, but had people both laughing and crying. I participated in the talent show by telling people I could do something that I had never ever done publicly before. And I just leaned into it. And I deceived everybody, including myself. There was so much self-deception more than there was. I thought I needed to tell these people who I wanted to be instead of who I was, because who I thought I was wasn't going to be good enough. What they heard was the just most ridiculous, outlandish presentation of who I was. Well, to this day, I'm not friends with anybody that I met that week. I was 18 years old. That was over 20 years ago. But I do very, very keenly remember going into a space where I've just decided I'm going to do this. This is going to be me. And I leaned into it and got away with it. And so, I mean, I never got found out. No one, I mean, I didn't say anything bad enough to get to be bad, but it was, I just presented myself deceptively. That would show you what an ego type three can do when it goes unchecked and unnoticed. So I've always had this affinity towards religion, spirituality. It is a language that I deeply resonate with. I feel it in my heart space. It's how I know that I come from the feelings or heart triad. And I am very, very comfortable with trusting what I feel is from God. And I just have a real high trust for that. It is not lost on me that the space in which I feel most alive and inhabit is in the local church. And so I've got this entire group of people as an Enneagram three with the strong four wing every single week, I get to participate in the performing arts and I stand up on stage in front of people and everyone's quiet except for me. What could you not love more than that? And I can go as long as I want. I've got the microphone. And they trust me. And they keep coming back. It's the best, most ego-fulfilling reality. If you're unconscious to it. Because it just fuels the need to feel like you're being spectacular in some way. But I also have a strong two-wing. And so I get to help people and go to the hospital and sit with people in very difficult situations. What I have learned along the way, as I was saying earlier, about my virtue of truthfulness, is when I lean into a deep truth that's bigger than me, that has nothing to do with what I'm presenting as Barrett Owen, but rather reflects what I believe to be deep universal truths found in scripture and in nature and life between humanity and God and one another, then it sends me to my six. Because I've become so much more group-oriented than I do egocentric. And that is wonderful. What I have learned about holy ideas is that they send me to my six real quick. And I think, Joe, you use the word, it's the bridge that moves us back to our soul child. And holy harmony is such a key phrase for me. When I feel balanced, in my mind, body, and spirit. When I feel balanced in my work life, personal life, spiritual life, my relationships, when I feel balanced in what I have to negotiate at work, There is an awareness. I feel it. There is a harmonious feeling that exists. And that's when I know the holy idea is I'm present to it. And I feel God's space in my space. So holy harmony means a lot to me. I do think there is a real deep sense that the I don't, I like someone trying to say that I don't love holy law. I don't love that phrase because the ego in a three will break the law if it's, if it fits their needs. And so like, I don't like the idea that we're chained down. I like, I like, uh, I don't like law, I like principles. And so it just gives you a little gray to work with, uh, When I dove into Holy Ideas, I realized it's not law that keeps us living without hurting one another. It's not law in the sense of the government lording over you, and you'll get arrested if you break a law. It's a universal law that can't be broken. that there exists in this world such a harmony between God and creation that we can't break it. It is a holy law. It is mathematical. It can never not be what it is, and it exists in our world. And you don't have to achieve it. There's nothing you have to claim in order to have more of it or less of it. It just exists. And so it tells a theory. Just put your armor down. Just let go of the tools that you're using to try to make yourself spectacular. And once I learned holy law, is that we are all living harmoniously in rhythm and unity with God. And there's nothing I have to do to keep that plate spinning. It's game changing. It makes you want to be a six and not a three.

Nanette: Hmm. That makes sense. Oh, yeah. That's that's that's profound and so insightful, I think, for anyone who who is experiencing life as an ego type three. I think it's just inspiring. And I I love the word spectacular. You've used it several times. And I did. And what's what's beautiful is that our souls are spectacular. Our souls really are. I mean, if we could see that, it would be worth the work. And it is worth the work when we find that space where it's just already written.

Barrett: You know, Joe quotes Almas, A.H. Almas, a lot. He's got a whole book on facets of unity on the holy ideas. And I don't have it in front of me. I think his phrase, I've memorized it so many times, the three, the ego type three, has a delusion of separateness. And that's the phrase, delusion of separateness, that I have to achieve in order to keep unity spinning. It's up to me. The world needs me. And you're lucky to have me, but you also need me. And I have to work my tail off in order to keep it all working or it's all going to fall apart. And that delusion that we are separate from the holy law and the holy harmony is what causes that fear, that shame to keep spiraling And it's just wrong. I mean, it's just a misconception of what really is there. When the three, specifically me, when the three, ego type three, when they realize, when I realize that I'm not separate, and that I didn't have to do anything to achieve or to keep the plate spinning, It is a balm to my soul. And I no longer feel the weight of needing to be successful to achieve. I can just be, which is a very difficult space for a three to do. It is very hard for us not to be working on something constantly. So to just be is that's the goal. That's the ultimate space to feel harmonious. And I'm not sure that ego type three loves it. It really takes a healthy three who has embraced this, this sixness, this loyalty to really feel like being is worth the effort. Because I don't have, there's no impression to make if we're living in a holy harmony. But if you're not conscious of that, that's a lot, that's a deep work. If an ego type three is not conscious of that, they're going to go to the heck with that. I don't, I don't want, I don't want to be like everybody else. But if you knew that the deepest sense of reality is that you are a part of the harmonious unity that is found within God and it didn't really require you to do anything, that is a bomb.

Nanette: Well, you've been a balm to not only the threes out there, but to us as well today. Thank you, Barrett. Thank you for sharing so transparently and really inspiring us to learn how to be and to be present and to be ourselves in our souls. And so really, I thank you for sharing so honestly and openly with us today. It's been a real blessing.

Barrett: Thank you. Or maybe I lied about all of this. We'll find out. We'll find out. I bet you won't, actually.

Joe: Thank you, Barrett.

Barrett: Thanks, Barrett.

Joe: God bless.

Barrett: Thank you.

Scott: Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.

Nanette: Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.