Episode 196 The Trickster Within: Understanding the Obscured Soul

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we delve into the concept of soul development, a central theme from the book Know Your Soul. We explore the three major levels of soul development, starting with the first level, which we refer to as the "obscured soul."

Dr. Howell shares insights on how this level represents an unawakened state, where distractions, ego, and various fears obscure our true essence. He emphasizes that many people live in this obscured state, unaware of the beauty and potential of their souls. We discuss how suffering often acts as a catalyst for awakening, prompting individuals to question their assumptions and seek deeper understanding.

The conversation touches on the role of the "trickster," a concept introduced by Carl Jung, which highlights how our subconscious can push us to confront our inner challenges. Both Scott and Dr. Howell share personal experiences of how anxiety and suffering have led them to explore their souls more deeply, ultimately recognizing that true peace and joy come from connecting with our inner selves rather than clinging to ego-driven pursuits.

As we wrap up, we acknowledge that while the journey of soul development is ongoing, glimpses of our true selves can provide hope and encouragement. We look forward to continuing this discussion in our next episode, where we will explore the next level of soul development, the "emerging soul." Thank you for joining us today, and we hope you found value in our conversation.

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.

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 happy to be here today with Dr. Joseph Howell and Scott Smith. Hey guys, how are y'all?

Scott: Hey. Hi Nanette, how are you doing?

Nanette: I'm doing really well. As I said, I'm happy to be here with you guys and looking forward to another great conversation. We've been talking about basically as a kind of under guiding theme this year, the book, Know Your Soul. And it's been kind of a little line we've been trying to pull through all of our podcasts this year as we delve deeper into this real pursuit of the Enneagram for us, because that's what our work is about. It's not the Enneagram of personality, but we pray and it is our intention that it would be the Enneagram of soul. And so today, I thought we would talk about one of the chapters in this book is called the three major levels of soul development. I thought that maybe we could just talk about that deeper, Joe. And because I know this is really the heart of why you wrote this book. And so can you briefly introduce what you mean by soul development?

Joe: Well, soul development goes back as early as the Greek philosophers and also Jesus Christ himself, who made a distinction between those who pray so that other people will hear them praying, and those who pray in their closet where no one can hear them. That is a distinction of one's approach to spirituality. And when he said that, that let us know that not everybody who is spiritual, per se, has the same idea or the same, I'll go ahead and say it, level of spiritual growth as the next person. So I certainly have been fortunate enough in my life to meet people who are very spiritually advanced. And they came from all walks of life. One was a an old lady who lived near my apartment when I was in graduate school. I ended up spending a lot of time with her simply because something in my heart told me that I could learn a tremendous amount from her. She came from humble origins, and she lived, she was a shut-in, and lived basically in just a two-room little cottage. But I would visit her regularly because her presence taught me so much about spiritual presence. And at that point in my life, I was in graduate school learning theology and psychology. And my professors were the people who I looked up to and sought their wisdom. But this one lady taught me just as much, if not more, about the spiritual realm. Because she lived it. And everything she said, because she lived, I lived so near her, was something that not only she spoke about or taught, but that she lived out. So I knew that she was more advanced than I was spiritually, and that's why I wanted to sit at her feet. And there were my professors who also were far advanced from me, but they had a different quality to their being than did I'll tell you her name. It was a nickname that her family called her. And her name was HeHo. And I was in my early 20s, and she was in her early 80s. And who would have thought that we would ever want to sit together and talk, but we loved each other very much. And I always have a spot in my heart for HeHo. But going back to what Christ said about the people who pray in secret versus the people who pray, but they want to be acknowledged for their spiritual, their spiritualities. When he said that, I'm sure he had many reasons. But that was a distinction. And that was levels of spirituality right there and then. And of course, many others have spoken about it, like, not that scripture, but levels of spiritual and religious development. Robert Fowler is one. who wrote a book on it, and Richard Rohr, who did the same but in a different kind of spiritual way. There have been others who have spoken about this phenomenon. And so as I looked back over the Enneagram and saw my own levels of development as I've used that spiritual tool, it made me want to put it in the book, Know Your Soul, Because I believe it helps people understand the different phases that we can get into as we integrate and disintegrate. But hopefully those three basic levels are our pathway to enlightenment.

Nanette: So talk to me about the first level, the obscured soul. You described this level as maybe like an unawakened state. What does life typically look like for a person in this stage?

Joe: Well, I think Rooney put it very well in one of his poems that The moon is there, but frequently the clouds hide it. Another word for hide is obscure. So the beautiful bright moon is covered by these clouds. And in my own mind, I know that when my soul is covered and is not shining, it's obscured by certain real things. One of them being my distractions, my egoic thought, my own moods, my own fantasies, relationship issues, worry, fear, the lack of strength, I'll just go ahead and say weakness can obscure my soul, and the lack of faith can obscure my soul. Those are just a few of the things that stand in between me and my original goodness, which I know shines like the moon, as does yours and as does Scott's, and as does everyone's in this audience today. But the obscurations of that beautiful shining soul get in the way of its illumination, of enlightenment, so to speak. And I know that people following the Enneagram will like to know that one of the biggest obscurations of soul is the unchecked ego. Having lived in it myself, and from time to time still do, I can't say that it's a very soulful state of being. It is a mental structure that clouds my being able to be transparent to the divine. Everybody's ego is different, but there are nine basic types, as you know. Some people's ego is obscured by not feeling that they're worthy or even having the energy to find their worth. Some people's beautiful illumined moon is obscured because they have this nagging beat that something's wrong. And they want to correct it before they can talk about a moon of theirs. And then other people are so distracted by the deficits of other people, not even realizing they're focusing on that instead of their own deserts, that it obscures their beautiful soul. And some people are so obscure, some people's souls are so obscured by wanting and needing to be out there moving things forward. that they can't see how their own soul blends with the already existing forward movement of the universe. And some people's soul is obscured because of their own depression and melancholia. their own absorption in their own selves, which keeps them in the ego and doesn't ever let them see if they're entrenched in it. It doesn't allow them to see their beautiful soul who knows exactly who they are. And then there's Though there are those whose beautiful shining soul is obscured by a type of fear that they will not know enough. that they are missing very essential information, that if they could find that, it would be the answers to all that they feel that is amiss. And that shuts them off from their own accessibility to all knowledge. And then there are those who are so afraid of what's going to happen to them, how their life is going to go, and what will annihilate or stop them in their tracks. They're deers in the headlights, not able to see. They're looking at headlights instead of the moon. and therefore their soul is obscured by their abject fear. And then there are those of us who are so unbelievably fearful of our weaknesses and ashamed of that weakness that we flip into being so powerful that our weaknesses are hidden. And the quest for power is so all-consuming that it obscures their soul, who not only can tell them the real origin of their power, but also it obscures their own inherent compassionate self. So there you have it, nine obscurations that keep us from the illumined moon inside each of us.

Nanette: And as you talk about it, it makes me feel or recognize the weight of the obscurities in the world, right? There's so much unawakened soul in the world, right? Most people, unfortunately, are living asleep to the real value of their soul. They're lost in these distractions or these fears or, you know, these pursuits that are keeping them from what they're actually looking for. So, How do we get out of that? How do we wake up to something that we don't even know we can't see?

Scott: How do you question assumptions you never consciously made? Well, that's where suffering comes in.

Joe: I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced some suffering. Because I'm very close friends with both of you. You know, I've suffered and I know that Both of you have had your sufferings. Oh, yeah. You know, suffering can push us over the edge so that we begin to question our obscurations. We realize that that's what we're living in and we don't want it anymore. We want something that will give us relief from what is ultimately caused our suffering, which paradoxically, is the ego which we adopted to help us not suffer.

Nanette: It seemed like it worked for a little while. Yeah, it did.

Joe: I mean, it took us off the hook.

Nanette: Yeah.

Joe: It took the soul child off the hook and gave the soul child protection for her vulnerability. But as it progressed through life, we realized that In ego, the suffering is terribly painful. That is what makes us question, Scott, what you spoke of as our operant assumptions about the universe.

Scott: Yeah, it was my suffering that got me into the Enneagram and similar things that made me start to question my way of being that made me realize that my way of being is just one way of being and not the default for all humans or even for myself. It was the discomfort that led me to look deeper. If I was perfectly comfortable, I don't think I would have questioned or search. You know, there's a clever little thing I saw on the internet, a phrase, a comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing grows there.

Nanette: So can either of you talk to me about your own experiences with the trickster? What is that to you? When I say that to you, Joe, because that's that sounds a little maybe out there, but

Joe: Well, the trickster is a word, the concept of which was expounded upon by Carl Gustav Jung. You know, Jung was an expert on the subconscious and dreams. He knew the force of that that went beyond the libidinal force in our bodies. he had the notion that the subconscious wanted to make known through dreams and coincidences and other things, other things that we noticed that we wouldn't have noticed before. It wanted to bring up to us what our infirmities are, mostly what our mental and emotional infirmities are. If we get enough warnings from our subconscious and dreams and coincidences that happen, then we can change what is painful or what's going to hurt us. But sometimes we get these messages and we get these inner knowings and we get these intuitive thoughts that something's wrong. And we've got to change majorly, but we don't. We persist in the ego's fixation because we believe that. We believe it's got the answer. We're never going to shed that. It is so powerful. This is when the need for healing in the subconscious reaches an apex, and something called the trickster is sent to trick us into acknowledging what we had denied, what we had ignored. And the tripster can be any kind of accident we have that slows us down and makes us rest. It can be being susceptible to an illness that stops our ongoing foray into our next vista and makes us stop and take stock of what did it. The trickster has even been known to make us fall and on the ground realize that our walk forward has been arrested and that we can fail. The trickster gives us all kinds of psychological difficulties that impair our lives so that we can see that something has got to change. I mean, for example, claustrophobia. Well, there was this gentleman who worked in the recording business, and he had to be in a recording booth all day long. But he developed a fear of close places. And as a result, he couldn't go to work. a living. And he was forced to go into therapy for his inability because he was going to lose his job. And he had to discover at that point, what was psychologically closing him in? What was walling him in to a space in his life that he couldn't breathe in, that was going to kill him. What forces was he not dealing with that became impediments to living a healthy life? There was a lady who couldn't stand to be in the mall or go outside her house. It's called agoraphobia. And it's the fear of open places or being outside one's safety zone, as you put it, Scott. And she couldn't be with her friends or family unless they came to visit her. And that was a tremendous impediment because she was a very active member of her community and was into, have you heard of Meals on Wheels? She was one of the people who gave the Meals on Wheels every Tuesday in her little town. And this prevented her from doing it. It prevented her from doing anything for other people. It shut her down. And she, too, had to go into some spiritual direction to find the answer about why. Well, the blame for all these things is the trickster who tricks us in to acknowledging what we wouldn't acknowledge in our own consciousness.

Nanette: in a way coming to the question that Scott referred to that we didn't even know we had. You don't know till you get in the circumstances to ask the question like, what is wrong with me? Why can't I leave? What about this suffering? Am I supposed to learn? What does it have to tell me underneath it?

Scott: Yeah, I mean, my experience was I developed a severe anxiety disorder. And it forced me to look deeper. And I think the common thread in all of these is the ego is seeking control. whatever, you know, the strategy is, like you told us there are nine broad ties, it's all forms of seeking control over our environment, trying to create our own security, by our own will, by our own actions, in isolation. Contrast that with surrender, surrendering to what is, falling into the flow of the divine, Not creating security, but finding the security of being that is there, just like that moon, but we have desensitized to it because our ego can't feel it. Our soul feels being, feels the present. And the present has all these qualities that we want, like peace, ease, a sense of belonging, of purpose. Egoically, we think those are discrete things that we can find in the world and acquire and bring into ourselves, that we can conquer in a way, but they're not. They are qualities of the present moment, of being itself, of the divine, and we can't own them, but we can share in them if we can resensitize to it through our souls. And to me, part of that is surrender. As I understand it, my anxiety manifested because I was clamped, white knuckle clamped down on life trying to control every last thing. And it just is self-defeating. And I tried to control the anxiety. And there's the trickster because the more you try to ignore anxiety, the more it ramps up. Yeah, yeah. And you can't indulge in the anxiety either. You know, that's all I knew was to run off with, you know, the catastrophizing in my own mind or just try to ignore it. It was the soul that helped me find a third way of one, accepting it as it is. working with it and rather than treating it as something to be conquered or eradicated, recognizing it as one of those shadows in myself, one of those broken parts, one of those orphaned parts of myself that needs my acceptance, awareness, and love so that it can integrate and lose its reactivity.

Nanette: Yeah, and that beautifully brings us to the next level, which is the emerging soul. Our soul emerged out of that suffering, right?

Joe: Yes, and this is such a big topic that it deserves as much time as we have taken on the first stage today.

Scott: Yeah, we're already coming up on our half hour and perhaps we'll continue this in the next episode.

Nanette: Yes, I think that would be good. And you know, the truth is that when you realize this, when you see this, the truth is you can never unsee it. Once the questions emerge, once you see a glimpse of the soul, once you know the real peace, the real joy, the real love and self-acceptance that the soul offers, then the ego has lost, it's lost its grip on us. It's not that we won't have to do more and do more work, But I think the soul has a way of enticing us, of encouraging us, of supporting us, because it knows what's best for us. And I believe that when we have this obscurity, and once it retracts in any amount, that you're on the way.

Scott: I mean, I'll put absolutely. I mean, it's not as if my anxiety disappeared when I got back in touch with my soul, my relationship with it changed, the charge of it was lessened. I have days still where I can still lose the sense of my soul and find myself lost in my ego. But the memory, the felt, sense memory of what it is to live from soul is there, which wasn't there before. So I know it's there. I can have faith that it's there. Even when it might be hard in the moment. And sometimes just that is enough. It may not make the anxiety go away, but it lets me keep moving forward. And I'm not moving forward alone.

Nanette: Thank you for sharing so transparently today, Scott. I really appreciate that. And it's been such a blessing to see you in this journey. And thanks, Joe, today, as well, for your knowledge and wisdom that you've shared with us. And I look forward to continuing this discussion.

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.