Suzanne Stabile - The Journey Toward Wholeness: Enneagram Wisdom for Stress, Balance, and Transformation

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for whats there: all of it.

RICHARD ROHR

T he first time I taught the full content you encounter in these pages was at a workshop in Dallas during the summer of 2019. In the months leading up to that event, I became fascinated with some reading Id done on the accelerating pace of change and the effect it was having on all of us. I was particularly concerned with technology, climate change, and the realities of globalization, and how, in each of those realms, what had worked in the past was no longer relevant. Which meant that the present was tumultuous. And the future, unknown.

I had been saying for a while that there was anger and anxiety everywhere, falling on all of us, unbidden and unnamed. It seemed to have no focus; it was everywhere in daily lifein families and churches and politics and workplaces and communities. People in places where I was teaching around the country were talking about an erosion of their sense of security and stability. Things felt more chaotic in my own life than usual, and there was an obvious change in some of the things Id always been able to count on.

The more I read, the more it sounded like what we were and are experiencing is liminality, an existential state that I describe as being betwixt and between. In other words, its not where were going and its not where weve been. Having taught the wisdom of the Enneagram for twenty-five years, I was certain it could help us navigate such uncertain times. I just needed some space to clarify how it would be helpful and what parts of it I should teach in relation to liminal space.

So on the first evening of that event in Dallas, I confessed to a room of three hundred people that I was feeling a lack of peace, and that answers to my questions felt inadequate. But I had no idea how much uncertainty we would be facing only nine months later when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Since then, and as I write this, people around the world have experienced the uncertainty of liminality even more acutely and for a prolonged time. We spent months wondering if and when the surges of infection would recede. We waited anxiously for a vaccine, and then just as anxiously sat in our cars in very long lines, waiting to be vaccinated or to receive distributions from food banks, wondering if there would be enough for all of us. Even as infection rates improved, no one knew what the future would hold for any of us and we wondered if we could even hope for a return to normal.

The pandemic era is not the first or last liminal time, but it is ours and it is especially acute. Living life during a betwixt and between seasonon the threshold that separates what was from what will beis a balancing act that few are prepared for since our usual ways of managing life no longer work.

We dont like it when the world around us seems out of control, but lets face it: control is an illusion. It is my favorite illusion, but that doesnt make it real.

The truth is that nothing new happens as long as we are inside our self-constructed comfort zone. More importantly, nothing creative comes from business as usual. Every momenteven, dare I say, a liminal moment is full of potential if we have the desire and the courage to walk toward it. And the Enneagram is an extraordinarily helpful tool to help us do that.

While liminal space is challenging, it may paradoxically be the best, if not the only, teachable space. We can no longer locate a single cause for anxiety and discomfort, and we cant fall back on our usual explanations or habits or assumptions. Nor can we discern the meaning of the unrest, anxiety, anger, shame, and dis-ease we feel. So we have to seek new ways of seeing and making meaning, of letting the uncertainty teach us.

Everyone responds to the discomfort and stress of a liminal time according to their personality type, often with unfortunate results. If we are risk takers by nature, we are anxious to quickly move forward toward a future of our own making. The move is often hasty and lacks the pieces of the past that have value. If we are risk averse, our nature is to go back to the way things used to be, unaware that there is no such place and that we will have to find the comfort we seek somewhere along the path that lies before us. For those who are present to but confused about what could be accomplished while on the threshold, doing whatever is right in front of us alleviates our cares and woes, but only momentarily.