Finding the Flame

What if somebody zapped you and suddenly all of your imperfections were gone and you became your best self?  What if there were a doorway that you could walk through and the same thing would happen.  Would you walk through it?  Yesterday was the feast of Pentecost, which in the Christian faith is a story that is relevant to any of us.  People gathered together were zapped, and were changed.  They found in themselves capabilities that they had not previously exercised. 

Animated characters.  Does that term make you think of Shrek or Homer Simpson or Mickey Mouse?  The folks that got zapped became literally animated, filled with a spirit, in-spired, breath/life breathed into them.  They came alive.  When I was a kid, television was new.  It brought into our little living room wonders akin to the internet today, except that there was just one screen, smaller than a laptop’s, that all of us would watch together.  Parents would sit on the couch and kids would lie on the floor, our chins propped up on our hands.  And among the wonders was a Walt Disney program that showed the process of animation, of bringing Mickey Mouse to life.  First the artist would draw and paint in a picture of Mickey on a clear sheet.  Then he would lay another clear sheet on top of it and re-draw the picture with a little bit of movement.  Mickey’s eyelid would begin to blink, his hand would begin to move, and his foot would come forward.  The next sheet would continue these movements, until the artist would take the pile of drawings and riff through them and bingo, there was Mickey walking, his eyes blinking.  A voice track would be added, and Mickey was walking along singing.  It was as if he had come alive. 

Don’t we all have times in our lives when we come alive, when we become animated by some circumstance or situation?  A child is about to walk into the busy street.  Zap!  We’re running to grab them.  Somebody says something that we just can’t accept.  Zap!  We’re speaking up.  We are walking by and see a perfect scene, a sunset perhaps, or the rising of the full moon.  Zap!  We’re sitting fully present to the beauty of the moment.  Oscar Ichazo, a South American psychologist, designed a way of describing this animation, this coming to our true selves, rising from that place of half-sleep where we seem to spend most of our time, in our ego, our personality, our veneer of quirks.  "We have to distinguish between a man as he is in essence, and as he is in ego or personality. In essence, every person is perfect, fearless, and in a loving unity with the entire cosmos; there is no conflict within the person between head, heart, and stomach or between the person and others. Then something happens: the ego begins to develop, karma accumulates, there is a transition from objectivity to subjectivity; man falls from essence into personality."  (The Enneagram Institute – click for a link)  Here is the ninth of his types, as an example.

Characteristic role: The Peacemaker
Ego fixation: Indolence, self-forgetting
Holy idea: Love
Basic Fear: Loss and separation; of annihilation
Basic Desire: To maintain inner stability and peace of mind
Temptation: To go along to get along
Vice/Passion: Indifference
Virtue: Right action
Stress/Disintegration point (what pulls us apart): may become anxious, suspicious, and negative and may express more aggression
Security/Integration point (what pulls us together): may begin to work at developing themselves and their potential and move into greater action in the world

I happened upon Ichazo’s Enneagram because of the image in the photo at the top of this blog, that popped up on my web search for the “Fruits of the Holy Spirit”, the characteristics of those 2000 years ago who were “zapped”, who were in-spired, who were animated. Over the next several days, I want to commit myself to spending time with you looking at each of these nine “fruits” of the Holy Spirit, not as articles of a particular faith, but as facets of the humanity we all share.  Perhaps we can walk through that door, to allow ourselves to be zapped by the spirit that is like a pilot light inside us, the flame of essence in ourselves, to be illuminated and warmed by it, to return to our best selves from this pile of quirks and fears and adaptations that we call personality. 

Love (Latin: caritas)

Joy (Latin: gaudium)

Peace (Latin: pax)

Patience (Latin: longanimitas)

Kindness (Latin: benignitas)

Goodness (Latin: bonitas)

Faithfulness (Latin: fides)

Gentleness (Latin: mansuetudo)

Self-control (Latin: continentia)

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.