Insight into the Inexplicable: the Terrorist Mind
We are truly living in a "connected world," and as the Enneagram teaches, beneath the many superficial cultural differences that tend to separate us, we see that we are more alike than we ordinarily realize. The world today needs this message more than ever—that, from a spiritual perspective, "we are one."
It is not for us to suggest what responses our political leaders must take in their efforts to balance justice, security, national honor, international peace, and many other legitimate values. To find the right course will require being able to constantly attend to the voice of wisdom—and this our leaders can do only if they have mastered their own passions sufficiently to be available to their essential nature and its inherent wisdom. Without self-knowledge, they will all be swept away by the distortions of their type and we will not be able to act with wisdom, true courage, or compassion. The nobility of spirit that inspires real solutions will be drowned out by angry and confusing inner voices—the voices of ignorance, revenge, and hatred.
It seems that we human beings forget everything truly important and need to discover over and over again the "ground rules" of life. One of the most useful is that nothing can be resolved through hatred or violence. When we act this way, we only further divide and destroy ourselves. Only through self-realization—and the perspective that comes from it—can the world's problems ultimately be solved. After all, the world's problems are created by distortions of the human heart, and the healing of those distortions is the only way that the pain of the world will one day be healed. Hence the importance of Inner Work—and of the Enneagram itself.
But as an integral aspect of healing, we must be willing and able to tolerate whatever lies within. The Enneagram reminds us that the darkest passions of human nature are what we need to acknowledge in ourselves and be willing to bring to light. Indeed, if we are really honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that, under certain circumstances, we, too, could commit murder, suicide, or acts of terrorism. It teaches us that we cannot condemn anyone else for being "evil" without acknowledging the presence of the same impulses in ourselves. Each of us is a potential terrorist in our own hearts; each of us has been a terrorist of our own soul.
The nine personality types of the Enneagram are complete "mindsets" that can range from the healthiest reaches of human nature down to the lowest manifestations of human depravity. They show us nine ways of being in the world either as a positive force for consciousness—or as a negative force for "sleep." From this deeper point of view, the Levels of Development are a measure of our identification with our personality structures: they are a yardstick of our degree of "sleep" and our ability to get out of touch with reality.
Indeed, the Levels give us a way of understanding and describing the wide and bewildering states that each type gets into as it deteriorates into increasingly mechanical and inhuman behavior. Because human beings are capable of objectifying reality and rationalizing their actions in irrational ways, they are able to become terrorists. By distinguishing the most pathological Levels for each type can we hope to account for the actions and motivations of those who have acted in an otherwise "inexplicable" way.
Moreover, when we take the Levels into accounts, it becomes clear that pathology in an individual is not related to the capacity to function effectively: "insane" people get the job done, as we have seen. Effectiveness is not related to health—any more than intensity of beliefs is related to being right or being good. Thus, with insight provided by the Levels, the Enneagram can begin to account for what might be called "moral insanity," as distinguished from deep emotional conflicts and personality disorders. Only the Enneagram as a psychological system can account for how we humans act as we do, and only the Enneagram as a spiritual psychology can offer us some hope of deeper meaning and an eventual resolution to our suffering.
In fact, we sense throughout our country and the world a growing movement towards being more authentic and more awake. If so, then perhaps these tragic and wasteful events will become a catalyst for the growth of consciousness in the world. Ultimately, we are optimistic that this apparent catastrophe can be taken as a call from Being itself to continue to awaken. If that happens, then we will again know the inner message of the Enneagram—that we are not our personality—reminding us that this world is not our ultimate home. Everything is passing: may we not be attached to anything while giving thanks for everything.
Don Richard Riso
Russ Hudson
New York City
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