Episode 204 Healing the Heart

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we continue our heart series, diving deeper into the theme of healing the heart. We explore the complexities of the heart's emotional landscape, including its capacity for both tenderness and turmoil. We also discuss the concept of emotional self-regulation and how the heart can be affected by negative passions such as envy, pride, and shame, particularly in the context of Enneagram types two, three, and four.

Joe shares insights on the Enneagram's understanding of passions, which correlate with the seven deadly sins, and how these passions can dominate our emotional experiences. We emphasize the importance of recognizing these patterns as the first step toward healing. Scott reflects on his personal journey of navigating anxiety and the walls he built around his heart for self-protection, highlighting the necessity of extending grace and love to ourselves and others.

Throughout the conversation, we touch on the significance of equanimity and groundedness in achieving emotional balance. We encourage our listeners to consider how they can let the divine regulate their emotions and restore balance within, especially during challenging times. As we wrap up this episode, we remind our audience that healing the heart is a divine work that requires community support and self-compassion.

As we take a break for the holiday season, we express our gratitude for our listeners and invite them to stay connected through our website and social media. We look forward to returning in the new year with more enriching discussions. Thank you for joining us!

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 here with Dr. Joseph Howell and Scott Smith. Hey, guys. Hi, Nanette. Hi, Nanette. I'm looking forward to having this conversation week two. of our episode on the heart series. We talked about heartstrings on our previous episode. And, you know, I loved some of the topics that we talked about, really about the moral wisdom of the heart and some of the topics that we really discussed on. And, you know, one of the things that we discussed is the heart's vulnerability. And it really, really, I think is going to help us talk about today's episode, which is focused on healing the heart. There's a lot of heartbrokenness out in the world today. And many of us have things that still are in our hearts that need to be healed, despite maybe the work that we've done. and efforts that we've made towards healing them. So today we're gonna talk a little about emotional self-regulation and the divine work of healing the heart's wounded places. You know, Joe and Scott, the Heart Center holds this capacity for both tenderness, but also for turmoil, compassion, and negative passions like envy, shame, or pride. We see these in the specific traps of those in the heart center, egotypes two, three, and four. And it's amazing that the heart has this beautiful capacity for rich and meaningful emotion that helps us connect in our relationships with other people. But it also can sabotage our relationships with other people when we function in envy or pride or arrogance or shame. And so, Joe, can you just talk to us a little bit about that and what you've seen, I know, in a lifetime's worth of practice and family practice in your own experience?

Joe: Well, you bring up the passions, and in Enneagram work, the passions are actually what Pope Gregory listed in about 500 AD. He listed the passions as the seven deadly sins. And so the Enneagram has taken the word passion, and it really does equate with one of the seven deadly sins. Now, we have nine passions, but they correlate not only with the seven deadly sins, but with two others. that Evagrius of Ponticus, a desert father who began all of this, listed as nine deadly sins, and Pope Gregory contracted them into seven. But the word passion in Enneagram language means sin. Versus what passion means in the vernacular. Last episode, we were speaking of the things we were passionate about. That's the things that our heart is focused on. The things we're enthusiastic about. But in Enneagram language, I just wanted to point out that the passion is not necessarily a positive thing. It is a drawback. we can get caught in. Like I know the passion for type 6 is fear and cowardice. The passion for type 9 is sloth and laziness. The passion for 3 is deceit. The passion for 4 is envy. The passion for five is stinginess or greed, sometimes called avarice. The passion for seven is gluttony or overindulgence. The passion for eight is lust. The passion for one is resentment. The passion for two is pride. Those things, if they are fueled, set up shop in our hearts, and they become the most powerful thing that our hearts are preoccupied with. And it's funny, for each type, that passion has more of a sway on that type than any of the other types passion does. It's just amazing how that happens. For example, I can get envious, yes, but a four will have much more of a fight with envy than any of the other ego types. The six has much more of a fight with fear and cowardice than do the other ego types. So we have a specific passion that can set up shop in our heart and basically dominate our heart strings, distort our other feelings, distort our soul qualities, because this passion is, you've heard the expression, they were so angry that they saw red Yes. The red colors, the red of anger colors everything they see. So the passion is like that. Its color colors everything that we feel.

Nanette: Yeah, it's like there's a a reservoir of it. It's an easy energy to incite in whatever ego type you are. Your passion just can come to you so easily. There's such a natural energy towards it, sadly. And as I think it's a great point that you're making, Joe, to to remind our listening audience that passion in this case is not a good thing. It certainly can be quite devastating when someone lives in the throes of that type of passion. It is the opposite of self-regulation. Like if we are in connection with our soul, we are not going to be given to our passion in the same way we will naturally self-regulate. Would you agree with that?

Joe: I do.

Nanette: Yeah. How does that start to look when we begin to recognize this? Because of course, recognition is the first step. So somebody today maybe heard their egotypes fashion and thought, Oh, yeah, that that is me. Oh, boy. You know, so recognition is is honestly the first and most difficult step because we have to own it. But once we do, we can start to really find the peace that can be found only in our soul.

Joe: If you read scripture, I'm more familiar with Christian scripture, so that I can tell you that every one of the passions is addressed in scripture, whether it be in a parable or in a verse that was written by one of the disciples or Paul, They are addressed because these nine passions are the undoing of humanity. Those nine passions, when they take hold, they other people. They reduce people. They desensitize us to what is really important. The Enneagram does something beautiful. It gives us what is called our holy ideas and our virtues that are specific to each of the types. And you can talk to any well-seasoned Enneagram student, and you can find out that their holy idea and their virtue are the antidotes to their passion. They're the way to heal the heart. Yes.

Nanette: So let's talk a little bit more about emotional self-regulation and the idea that very often we can either wall off our emotions or be flooded with our emotions and that somehow we can find an equilibrium, a balance. And I just wonder, Joe, what your experience has been with this. I know we've talked about in your reflections, you talked about a friend of yours who was a chaplain that you worked with. who you said really modeled this behavior, a Buddhist philosophy that says we can live in such a way not to be so elated by good news nor devastated by bad news. And so can you talk to us about your friend and how you saw that modeled?

Joe: Well, he was just a wonderful a human being who was an artist and also a minister and a clinical chaplain who walked with people into deaths and back. George died a conscious death himself. with family and close friends around his bedside. He spoke to everybody, a very special kind of private talk, not in private. But he gave everybody a blessing around his bedside as he drifted into his last sleep. He modeled that for me. But in life, he also modeled, don't ever get upset unduly about any bad news. Because there's always something good in bad news. And there is some shortcoming in all good news. And so don't ever get over elated when you hear good news. Like, oh, my problems are solved. Oh, I won the lottery. There are problems in winning the lottery. And lottery winners will tell you what those are. So the virtue of type four is equanimity. But that's a beautiful virtue for all of us. And equanimity is the balance of emotion. Never riding a roller coaster, thinking the sky is going to fall, or thinking all my troubles are over. And if we can be have equanimity, we can go through life much more consciously. Because equanimity is fed by the soul, where it's the ego that feeds the roller coaster of emotions.

Scott: I think that in a way loops back to the idea of groundedness that we talked about in the last episode. When the sensitivity of the heart is ungrounded, things can seem bigger or smaller than they are. We can feel our ideas about people or situations more clearly than the reality of them. I mean, for me, self-regulation is an entry point to feeling myself being regulated by the present. And for me, there's an equivalency with being regulated by the present and being regulated by the divine. I can't simply organize myself in a vacuum into a state of perfect regulation. I can get started. I can notice how my energy is showing up, how my breath is showing up. I can notice the things that get in the way of feeling that regulation. to help move into being regulated. And then it's like the charge falls off of things. And that equanimity in a way emerges on its own. I mean, it's not a passive thing. It's not like I just melt into a blob and the divine just takes care of it all. It is a co-creating sort of thing co-creating a more conscious state of being, if you will. But yeah, for me, it just comes back to not just what are the emotions, but what's the energy behind the emotions? And is it stuck? And am I trying to hold on to it and manage it with my ego? Or am I, am I letting it flow? Like, am I, you know, I'm an ego type five. So am I, realizing and embodying my holy idea of holy transparency. Because there's a spaciousness to that where the energy can move and be grounded. And if I bring my skill to it from my spiritual practice, it can come to rest on the earth and be supported. by the earth, by the present. That's beautiful, Scott. Yeah, I like the thing you're talking about, the red. I've come to experience my emotions like a lens. And there's always energy behind that lens. But I feel like our culture conditions us to focus on what the lens is projecting, or the lens itself, rather than the source, if you will. the language is a little insufficient sometimes. But yeah, it's so much easier for me to work with the energy behind the emotions than the emotions themselves, if that makes any sense.

Nanette: Well, that leads me to my next question. Has there been a time when either of you had a wall around your heart that either protected it or numbed it? Because the heart is vulnerable, right?

Scott: Yes.

Nanette: Tell me about that, Scott.

Scott: Well, it was not a conscious thing. It was more something I did entirely unconsciously for the sake of mere survival. And I think in a way it exacerbated my critical mass of suffering to borrow. a phrase from Joe's first book. I am a gay man in Alabama that can be challenging sometimes. I worked at a local foundry, first in the office, and then I got moved out to a little corner office in a shop floor. I'm trying not to be too detailed, you know. But I was not out at work. This was not a safe environment to be out in. I also identified as an atheist at the time. And that's another thing you did not want people to know. So I built a wall, like a mile thick steel wall around my heart. Because to be open to that, it felt like It felt as if to be open to that would mean my own annihilation in some way or another. But what I learned is that sensitivity was not so much blocked. I was just numbed to it. That energy was still there in me. It was just stuck. It was like shoving something down thinking that you're getting rid of it, but really you're shoving it down into yourself. And then one day, You try to shove it down and it won't go down because the trash can is full, so to speak. And that's when my anxiety started to really manifest. In a way, it was my body demanding that I, that I deal with what, that I dealt with what I, um, in a way it was my body demanding that I finally deal with what I had been ignoring for so long. Um, I mean, I would say in a real way it saved my life, that numbingness, but it also had a toll to it. But in retrospect, I'm grateful for that hardship and that anxiety because it's what made me realize that the way I was moving in the world and my ego was no longer sustainable.

Joe: That's huge, isn't it? Yeah, it's pretty big, pretty big.

Nanette: You know, it just reminds me that there are very real world applications to the topics of conversations that we're having. You know, this, this is not just some sort of out there aspiration to talk about heartstrings or healing the heart. But it is really dealing with the everyday realities of our life, of your profession, Scott, and you know, what you do. and how you move in the world, and how that really came to a crisis for you, and where it brought you to. It brought you to our community. So I'm grateful, as you said, for that. And I thank you for sharing that. transparently, because we do need to move authentically in the world. So, very often people are not, they are numb or asleep to who they are, and we're not honest with people, so they don't see the real us. And yeah, some places aren't safe to be the real you, but then we should recognize that there are places for us, that there are communities of people who genuinely love people despite whatever labels they might bring with them. And so thank you. I really believe that's important today. There is really an innocence in all of us, a part within our hearts that's sincere. And that aspect draws us to heal and to forgive and to extend grace. And despite, I'm just thinking about Scott, your story and also the story of many of us who have been hurt or rejected by communities to recognize that it is to our benefit to extend love and grace to them even though they may not be able to extend that to us. And that that is part of healing the world because there's lots of people if we look around who don't agree with us or think like us. And yet, if we want to have healthy hearts, we're going to have to extend grace and love and mercy, even in discord that we seem to be living in.

Scott: Yeah. And can we also extend those qualities to ourselves, to all the parts of ourselves? My anxiety When it first started popping up, I experienced it as a nuisance, as an invader from the outside, as something to be gotten rid of. And that only made it worse. But when I recognized it as like an unintegrated orphaned part of myself that was afraid and trying to protect me. And when I could extend that grace, that love to it, that's when it was able to start to change. and the difficult, the challenging people in our lives. I think, you know, they're the same way. Just because you extend those qualities, it doesn't mean they will change. But they have more space to do it than if we come at them with judgment or hate. least I think so.

Nanette: Well, and I think, sadly, the likelihood is that most people don't change. But as we as we do the work of the divine work of healing our hearts, and as you said, learning to love ourselves, we change in our responses to those people, then then we have space to hold them in a way we didn't have before. Yeah. And so, I think truly that is the work. And that is the divine work. I think that is when you know there is some supernatural intervention because it just can't be done in our natural egos. In those passions, you won't find any of that. There's no grace for any of that when we're living in the passions.

Scott: It's like sometimes the work is just stopping ourselves throwing fuel on the fire, recognizing that we're doing that and then stopping. Maybe the other people keep throwing fuel on the fire, but at least there's fewer people throwing fuel on it. That's all.

Joe: And when we have a community of people who support each other, we can do far more together than by ourselves. Amen.

Nanette: Well, thanks so much, you guys, for this beautiful conversation today. Thank you, Nanette. Well, thank you. So our closing inquiry today that we're going to leave our listeners with is when your heart is flooded or walled off, how might you let the divine regulate your emotions and restore balance within? So in closing today, I would just like to say that we will be taking a short break for the holiday season. And so this is our last episode until the new year. So we will be recording some episodes. to bring back to you in the new year. I'm looking forward to doing that. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season. If you would like to stay connected with us, you can do so by checking out our website or connecting with our social media. And those accounts will be listed in the show notes. Thanks, guys.

Scott: Thank you. Check out our backlog of episodes. We have over 200. There's a lot of them.

Nanette: Yeah, there's a lot to listen to. So if you want a specific topic, it's probably out there already for you. Everything from the basics to deeper topics of conversation that we would love for you to participate in.

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.