A CHRISTIAN TRANSPOSITION OF THE ENNEAGRAM: WITH ...

3.2.6 From hyper-awareness to fluid alertness:
When we turn our focus on ourselves and our own ultimate welfare as human beings, we have
a whole inner world to explore: our desires, anxieties, need for survival, feelings, our acts of
experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding. This can so easily be a fruitless exercise. We go
around and around in our thoughts without becoming aware of what is most significant within
our psyche, what would lead to insight and breakthrough. We are invaded by repetitive
thoughts and images that keep us awake when we want to sleep or distracted when we need
to concentrate. By contrast, in many other areas of our life, especially where we have acquired
some expertise, we move easily to and from between potential and focused awareness as
required.
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What we are seeking is for this fluid alertness in the area of our own self-appropriation as
authentic human beings, which means that we can move the focus of our mind easily and
gracefully, that we can catch ourselves in the act of being stuck in our fixation or compulsion,
before it gets out of hand. How can we escape from the vicious circle of an awareness that is
infected by the very same bias that we are trying to uncover We will deal with this later in our
essay. Frozen awareness is closely linked with faulty ego, which is our next topic.
4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FALSE EGO
All humans develop a false ego (the term used in classical enneagram teaching for false ego is
personality) in the first crucial years of their human development. Is this the same as saying, in
Christian terms, that all humans are affected by original sin Let us explore this issue:
4.1 ORIGINAL SIN
According to two converging definitions of human beings, we are rational animals or incarnate
spirits. As animal beings we are focussed on survival in the here and now of the physical
universe. As spiritual beings we are open to the whole of being, including God who is Being in
its fulness, and fulfilled only by God’s gift of a personal relation with Himself. This fulfilment
we cannot claim or control but only receive as a free gift. The tension between the animal and
spiritual components of our nature is at the root of what is known as original sin:
As incarnate spirits we come into the world asleep to ourselves, in a state of
helplessness and vulnerability, dependent on parents, unable as yet to take hold of our
lives and make meaningful decisions about them. By the time we reach the stage where
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When dealing with this topic, Riso/Hudson uses the term “awareness”, whereas in my
presentation awareness is more generic. I prefer “alertness” and use the term when the issue is
bringing to light what in me impacts on my development as a human being in the image of God.
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