Spirituality Studies 10-2 Fall 2024 17 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos we must follow the Sun Dance way all the more carefully, because it contains the key to our sacred warfare. The conflict between human beings and the world is, in reality, a spiritual battle between the higher and lower nature of a person; our animality is drawn to the seductive world of sensory forms, whereas our theomorphic nature gravitates towards the Divine. The chief weapon in this combat is to, “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Accordingly, to understand the Enneagram or any other sacred psychology is to engage in spiritual practice. In particular, the universal method of invoking a Divine Name – which is capable of being practiced by all – is an especially effective antidote to the malaise of modernity. The Sufi master Shaykh ad-Darqāwī (d. 1823; 1998, 76–77) writes: Listen to what I am about to say to you and do not forget it, do not take it lightly or let it go unheeded. In the course of the past fifty-five years or so, I have said to many a brother: every single man has any number of needs, but in reality all men need only one thing, which is truly to practice the remembrance of God; if they have acquired that, they will not want for anything, whether they possess it or do not possess it… Without fail, without fail, be constant in your remembrance of your Lord, as He ordained, and cling to your religion with all your strength; God will open the eyes of your intelligence and enlighten your inmost conscience. A peculiar fate has befallen all things sacred, in that they are often victims of Western consumption, and this is no less the case with the Enneagram. The nine-pointed symbol has been usurped to the point where it has become disfigured, and its contemporary uses no longer resemble its original purpose. As elusive as the Enneagram is, its proponents for the most part have stopped asking the fundamental question as to its origins; yet without knowing this, the Enneagram will forever remain veiled in mystery. At the heart of the modern psyche lies a pervasive hunger that has been exacerbated by the spiritual vacuum created by a desacralized world. Richard Leviton (1991, 36) laments the fate of all things of a higher order in the present-day: “What was formerly hard-won esoteric knowledge is now available in mass-market paperbacks. The metaphysical world has been turned inside out and dumped into the fertile American marketplace. Mystical truths now have a price tag as if they were consumer products.” 11 Conclusion With the loss of a sense of the sacred, our spiritual vision has become fragmented and disfigured. Having lost our ability to see the theophany of nature, we can no longer discern the “signs of God” (Lat. vestigia Dei; Ar. āyāt Allāh) within the cosmos and in ourselves. We are interested here in the connection between a science of the cosmos (as informed by divine manifestation) and a science of the soul. Thus, the distinction between a science that is empirical from one that is sacred is that the former “seeks to derive principles from phenomena, the other seeks to see phenomena in the light of their metaphysical principles” (Northbourne 2001, 46). These signs are of a supra-individual or archetypal order; they transcend the human psyche but, at the same time, completely encompass it. As St. Paul says: “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20). By returning to the spiritual roots of the Enneagram or the “face of God” (Ar. wajh Allāh) – which lie beyond the codification of personality types and the confines of what is merely psychological – we will have access to a sacred psychology that can heal our many existential maladies. The root of this crisis can be attributed to a confusion of levels, along with their corresponding modes of knowing, which simply cannot be grasped by a profane apprehension of the nine-pointed symbol. The modern Enneagram of personality types utterly fails to discern the transcendent nature of our personality as rooted in the Divine. When properly understood, the Enneagram presents itself as a universal symbol for contemporary seekers and mental health professionals, as they now have another tool with which to discover a rich “science of the soul” – available in every authentic spiritual tradition—that can lead to enduring inner wellbeing and transformation. Thus, the nine-pointed symbol is invaluable to those who seek answers to the most compelling of all human questions “Who am I?”. In the words of Rūmī (1983, 173): “Make a journey from self to Self… Purify yourself from the attributes of self, so that you may see your own pure essence!”
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