Transforming Personality with HBLU™: Explanation of the Enneagram Operating System.

Judith A. Swack, Ph.D. Copyright 2006

This paper describes the basic structure of the deepest wounds of personality and the Essence Process, a technique for transforming them. These wounds cause fundamentally limited world views and a limited sense of identity.
They drive compulsive behaviors and are often out of conscious awareness. After people experience this process, their world views expand, and they have more behavioral flexibility and choice. They find it easier to permanently clear life experience trauma and to grow through the developmental stages of their life. The Essence Process allows people to know that they are more than just their personality structure and life experience. It leads to knowing that true identity includes a person’s sense of individual and universal self-aware consciousness, experience of aliveness, and sense of personal (soul) mission.

The best model that I have found to describe the dynamics of personality is the Enneagram system that links behavior and motivation with personality structure and Spirit (Essence). It describes 9 different personality types each driven by a central compulsion. The types are 1 – The Perfectionist, 2 – The Helper/Giver, 3 – The Achiever, 4 – The Tragic Romantic, 5 – The Observer, 6 – The Questioner, 7- The Dreamer/Optimist, 8 – The Boss, and 9- The Mediator/Peacekeeper.

How do we acquire our Enneagram personality? Using the Essence Process as a research tool, I discovered that the compulsions, wounded sense of ego identity, and distorted world views were practically identical for people of the same Enneatype regardless of their life histories. Interestingly, the negative emotions, limiting beliefs, rationalizations, and avoidance mechanisms found in the Enneagram layers closely resembled the standard reactions that people imprint during loss or violence trauma.
In discussing these findings with my collaborator and Enneagram teacher, Andy Hahn, we hypothesized that this trauma occurred at embodiment, i.e. the process by which the soul enters the physical body, sometime around conception. Every embodied human being experiences this extreme transition from spirit to material state as a traumatic shock with slightly different wording and emphasis on different layers of the trauma structure unique to each of the 9 points.

What is the function of an ego?

I believe that our soul is embodied in the material world to do our soul mission, ie. make a contribution to the planet, and to experience the fullness of life. We have to be material to function on the material plane. In order to live in the world and be productive (soul “throughput”), we need to be equipped with:

a material body with a sensory system to take in information and act (hardware),
conscious and unconscious minds (software) with certain gifts and skills to process information and make sense of things
an ego structure (operating system) that holds a sense of identity and a world view to coordinate the high vibrational soul energy/consciousness with all other functionalities of living in a body.
Damage to any of these areas can interfere with life goals and needs to be healed by properly understanding the distorted patterns and applying the appropriate techniques. Extensive testing with many clients revealed that Energy Psychology i.e. meridian tapping/applied kinesiology and NLP techniques do not heal Enneagram personality wounds. Fortunately, Andy Hahn and I developed the Essence process for transforming personality wounds allowing healing at a whole new level of the being.

How are “bugs” in the Enneagram structure coded?

Basic structure of one layer of the Enneagram wound.

Central Identity is the negative side Compensating Energy is the positive side

We have many layers of “buggy” code in our operating systems. Each layer contains a story of mythic proportion that is comprised of a minimum of two energies (often in two different locations in the body) that are polarized extremes with no in-between. The two energies are the flip side of the same coin. The negative side (Central Identity) claims to be your ego identity, and is completely and extremely negative. It says, “I’m the only truth about you, everybody else, the universe and God (and you are the only person who this is true about).”
I think we’d all kill ourselves if we walked around with layer after layer of naked negative identities. So, at the same time that the negative identity is issued, the compensating energy (CE) (also known as the overcompensation) is issued. The compensating energy feels that, “it is my job to prove the negative ID is wrong and to hide it or get rid of it.” It attempts to do so using five types of strategies:

1. Arrogances are polarized equal and opposite qualities to the negative ID. The arrogances range in extreme from “I am better at X than everyone else in the universe” to “I am better in quality X than God.” An example from the Enneagram 1 program is “I’m bad; I’m worse than Satan” (Central ID) / “I’m good. I’m gooder than God. The universe would be a much nicer place if I had created it” (Compensating Energy).

2. Use other people strategies include using reality examples to “build a case” or asking other people to do for you what you are not good at. In the Enneagram 1 “I’m bad” example, a common use other people strategy is, “I’m nice to everyone and everyone tells me how nice I am; you (central ID) must be wrong.”

3. Avoidance mechanisms include avoidance, denial, confusion, distraction, going to sleep, etc.

4. Justification strategies say, “It’s a good thing the negative ID is true because…”

5. Miscellaneous strategies may be common to a particular compensating energy, or may be idiosyncratic to the individual.

The compensating energy’s worst fear is that it cannot prevail 100.00% of the time, and therefore the (negative) Central ID is right; it is the only truth. Meanwhile the Central ID says to the CE, “ha, ha, ha. Anything you do to prove me wrong is nothing but a fraud and a sham, because (see above) I’m the only truth.” Thus, each layer has two polarized energies that weave together through the same rigid story while struggling mightily against each other. In some layers there may be two or more compensating energies all struggling to hide the central ID. No matter how you struggle, you can’t win within the wound’s story.

I believe that the reason for there being nine different Enneatypes is so that we can combine the strengths of each type to produce a synergistic effect that benefits all humanity. On an individual basis, however, we don’t get to appreciate our gifts because they are often compensating strategies used to prove a negative identity wrong.

The energetic composition of each layer.

Each section of each layer is composed of fear and shame with (depending on the layer) hopelessness, despair, anger, grief, regret, or emptiness thrown in for flavor. The Central ID is so emotionally charged that it’s like an active volcano, too hot to approach. The compensating energy’s job is to keep the ID deeply hidden away from the conscious mind, thus maintaining some kind of dynamic equilibrium.
Although no amount of life experience changes the wound structure or story,
life experience can influence how badly people polarize into and experience the Central ID. In the best of all possible worlds, we wouldn’t be born with these wounds. In the next best of all possible worlds, we’d grow up in families that understood our Enneagram structures and helped us to compensate so that we’d be bothered very little by the Central ID. In reality, many families bash on the negative identities thus tilting the balance and throwing us into the volcano. I call this Enneagram abuse. In fact, if life experience polarizes us so severely into the Central ID that the standard issue compensating energies cannot maintain the equilibrium, we craft and insert additional compensating energies in the form of illness and addiction identities. This is why chronic illnesses and addictions are so difficult to get rid of behaviorally. People mistakenly think the illnesses and addictions are the problem when in fact they were created to be the solution to a bigger problem. I have found that the Essence Process is the most effective way to eliminate addictions and facilitate the healing of serious or chronic illnesses.

The energy efficiency problem.

Each layer of the enneagram wound contains a tremendous amount of energy. While we are inside these stories they feel absolutely real and true. It’s absurd, however to have different layers of buggy code, each with different stories, claiming to be the only truth. Also, in what way does it serve your ability to manifest your soul mission when your ego structure says, for example, “you have no purpose” (9’s), “you’re invisible” (2’s), “you’re stupid/mentally incompetent” (all types), and “you’re not safe in this world” (all types). If you walked up to a soul that was radiating golden light, vibrating warmth, and humming and asked it if it was invisible it would make no sense. Hence the saying, “ego is illusion.” Furthermore, at any given point in time, for a layer with two sections, you can only use 50% of the energy because you can only be in one side or the other (since there is no in-between). This is a waste of the energy.

What is the solution?
The solution is to upgrade the “bug” in the operating system to bring a particular function on line and to harvest 100% of the energy so that it can all be used in the service of the soul. We can do this with the Essence Process.

The Essence Process (in its simplest form).
This process is best done with a partner who can muscle test the answers and hold the reality space while you interview the ego illusions. Make a diagram of circles labeled ID and CE, and write the answers that come from each section in the appropriate circle.

1. If a layer of the enneagram wound is interfering on your goal, stretch into your soul space/soul perspective/highest consciousness. From this point of view and with a neutral or compassionate attitude, find the locations in the body and interview the Central ID and the compensating energies to get their story and emotions while holding both sides with grace.

2. When all sections of the layer has shared with you everything it wanted you to know, peel out the energies, as well as all the life experience damage from this life, past lives and ancestry that contributed to this story, and put them on the floor in front of you. Describe what the layer looks like in its current configuration (usually an unpleasant color/often slimy). Notice that although the layer claimed to be universal truth, the real universe extends out to infinity in all directions and contains a variety of forms of matter and energy including this one.

3. Radiate your soul energy right through the wound material and out to infinity in all directions. As your soul energy passes through the wound material, it raises it to a higher vibrational speed. The wound energy is released and transformed into a unified flowing energy. It’s like microwaving two ice cubes. They start out as dense solids and transform into a single gaseous flowing energy, 100% of which can be used for work i.e. steam power.) As you continue expanding your soul energy to infinity you reabsorb all of the transformed energy in the service of your soul.

4. Interestingly, this energy has an intelligence of its own and secretly did not want to be trapped in a rigid story. Once transformed, it decides where to go in your body and what to do for you. Interview the transformed energy and find out what its greatest hope is for you now that it is freed. Note that you get to keep the gifts of the layers, i.e. generosity, ability to love, intelligence and wisdom. Now, however, you do these things from choice rather than compulsion, so you actually get to enjoy your own gifts and contributions.

The more layers you transform, the more energy you harvest, and the easier and more satisfying life becomes. It’s like developing soul muscle. As you transform the wound you move not to another Enneagram type but to the center of the circle where you experience the gifts of each type and the high side of the human condition.

Judith A. Swack, Ph.D., mind/body/spirit therapist/healer, is the developer of Healing from the Body Level Up™ (HBLU™), a holistic psychotherapy system integrating biomedical science, psychology, NLP, energy psychology, and original research. She has a private practice in Needham, MA and works with clients both in person and over the phone. She offers training internationally in Healing from the Body Level Up™ methodology. Dr. Swack will be demonstrating her work live at the ACEP conference, Chantilly,VA, April 19-21,2007 and offering her HBLU™ Level I training April 22-25(to www.energypsych.org.)

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