When I was young, maybe around ten years old, I remember looking at my face in the mirror in confusion, curiosity, and wonder and asking myself aloud, "Who are you?" "What are you?" "Why are you here?" "What IS here?" I still see the image of my face with blackness all around, though I know my face wasn't magically appearing in the darkness. 🤣 I suspect that experience began my interest in human consciousness and what led me to psychology in college.
Though psychology offers a lot of theories on neuroses and psychoses, it doesn't provide much in the way of consciousness. Fortuitously, philosophy filled that fascination. There, I found scholars asking what I thought were vital questions like I was. (Looking back, I can see the influence of a scholar's Center of Intelligence in their insights; "I think therefore I am," René Descartes; 1637 [Thinking Center]).
I found the psychology of dreams endlessly fascinating and would have majored in dream psychology if I could have earned a living in that endeavor. Still, studying dreams is a valuable window into our unconscious with unending insights should we take the time to look.
In 2011, I met the Enneagram. I was instantly fascinated (as most are) because I sensed the convergence of psychology, philosophy, and a spiritual aspect akin to dreaming. It's not about science or woo-woo ideas, and it's not religion; it's about consciousness and transformation. It checked all the boxes I had long been searching for and hooked me. I took my first live six-class course in early 2012, and the passion and fascination have never left. But why?
The Enneagram system accurately describes our non-random, predictable human thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns, from healthy levels of well-being to dangerously unhealthy levels of ill-being with objectivity, and it offers practical instruction to navigate change. The Enneagram provides the guidance and expertise one might learn in therapy over years of effort and commitment—it fills in the blanks when we're stuck, even providing an exit strategy if we endeavor to get free. What's not to love in these possibilities?
And then came 2018, and my son, Nicholas, died. Traumatic grief is a darkness that is arduous from which to return. I felt like a hunted and gutted animal in grief's embrace, with every moment as salt in my open wounds. Grief made seeing a future impossible; I didn't want to live with the enormous pain of grief or without my son. So, for a long time, I was not living; I was waiting to die.
In 2021, I decided to explore the Enneagram as a path to figuring out who I was without my large child (my nickname for Nicholas) and how to go on living what didn't feel like a life worth living anymore. The Enneagram once again opened my eyes to see there's more to life than duality—more than living or dying, here or away, lost or found.
The design and intention of the Enneagram diagram is the gift of serenity in being present—the space between the past and future, freeing the thoughts and feelings held hostage. It illustrates that our filter of life's experiences differs from others, providing spaciousness and compassion rather than rigidity and judgment. It shows us that we are constantly traversing through levels of ego fixation and supplies precise guidelines for choosing our direction of travel.
At its core, the Enneagram teaches us how to find the present moment, where there is no chaos, only calm. Moreover, it illuminates how presence co-occurs for us all. And so, in presence, the Enneagram helps me connect with Nicholas now, in this moment, not the past and allows me to feel a little more whole.
Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.
