The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram

324 Pages·2021·2.301 MB·English

by  John Luckovich

Cover Art "Gestures Resonant With Eternity" by John Luckovich
© John Luckovich 2021
ISBN 978-0-578-78497-7
THE
INSTINCTUAL
DRIVES
AND THE
ENNEAGRAM
JOHN LUCKOVICH
• • •
“This book can fundamentally shift how you understand yourself,
how you became who you are and how you can transform into a
more real authentic you. John Luckovich accomplishes what’s nearly
impossible in one book. He thoroughly transparently combines the
roots and history of Enneagram studies with clear, deep, bold
methods for taking it powerfully into our daily lives. His main method
is taking up the instincts, an often neglected and misunderstood
aspect of the Enneagram, and powerfully showing how they
simultaneously keep us stuck and asleep and can be the pathways
to profound awakening. An indispensable guide for anyone on the
inner path.”
— James Flaherty, MCC
Founder New Ventures West & Integral Coaching
“I believe what you’re doing is singularly mature, insightful, and
original and establishes a new benchmark in Enneagram of
Personality studies, as well as the strongest bridge I have seen
between the Enneagram of Personality starting points and the more
subtle, sensation/attention-based transformational psychology of the
Gurdjieff work. You bring them together in a way that is bold,
sophisticated, and practically useful—for both camps. And that will
be there in this book for “those with eyes” to dig out, even in the
state of relative disarray in which you have sent it to me.”
— Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, author, The Holy Trinity and the Law
of Three and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene.
“In The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram, Enneagram teacher
John Luckovich draws together many influences and synthesizes
them into a unique model. The book presents the Enneagram and
Instincts as deep pathways to spiritual and psychological growth. It
offers a dense range of useful insights - from the arcane to the
practical - that further opens up the Enneagram as a tool for powerful
positive change.”
— Tom Condon, author, The Dynamic Enneagram
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
1. INSTINCT 7
Instinctual Needs 9
Self-Preservation Instinct 15
Sexual Instinct 18
Social Instinct 22
A Real Human Being 26
2. SELF-REMEMBERING 29
The Centers of Intelligence 32
Self-Remembering 37
The Enneagram 39
3. INSTINCTUAL STACKING 49
Instinctual Ego-Patterns: Habits, Objectification,
and Positioning 50
Instinctual Stacking 54
Dominant Instinct 55
Blindspot 57
Secondary Instinct 61
Instinctual “Cycling” - Preferences for Needs 62
Instinct Types 67
Self-Preservation Types 68
Sexual Types 76
Social Types 83
4. INSTINCT, EGO, AND INDIVIDUATION 91
Instinctual Resources and Libidinal Energy 94
Object Relations 96
Separation-Individuation and Autonomy Conflicts 99
Autonomy Conflicts II: When the Source of Regulation
is Another Person 104
Autonomy Conflicts III: Ego-Identity and Object
Constancy 111
Autonomy Conflicts IV: Dependency and Capacity 115
5. INSTINCTUAL APPROACHES AND INTEGRATING
THE BLINDSPOT 126
The Approaches of the Self-Preservation Drive: 128
The Approaches of the Sexual Drive 129
The Approaches of the Social Drive 129
Compartmentalized Approaches 137
Higher Approaches 140
Blindspot Types 142
Self-Preservation Blind (SX/SO and SO/SX Stackings) 142
Sexual Blind (SP/SO and SO/SP Stackings) 146
Social Blind (SP/SX and SX/SP Stackings) 149
6. THE ESSENTIAL ENNEAGRAM 153
Point Eight: Power 156
Point Nine: Harmony 156
Point One: Integrity 157
Point Two: Love 157
Point Three: Value 158
Point Four: Depth 158
Point Five: Insight 159
Point Six: Truth 159
Point Seven: Freedom 160
Being and Function 162
7. THE ENNEAGRAM OF PASSIONS 165
The Passions and Enneagram Types 168
Type Eight: Power and Lust 170
Type Nine: Harmony and Sloth 171
Type One: Integrity and Anger 173
Type Two: Love and Pride 175
Type Three: Value and Vanity 176
Type Four: Depth and Envy 178
Type Five: Insight and Avarice 179
Type Six: Truth and Fear 181
Type Seven: Freedom and Gluttony 182
8. THE ENNEAGRAM TYPE-INSTINCT COMBINATIONS
Eight 186
Nine 191
One 196
Two 202
Three 207
Four 212
Five 218
Six 224
Seven 230
9. BREATH AND SENSATION 237
Conscious Breath 240
Breath Practices 246
10. THE OPENING OF THE WAY 251
Likes and Dislikes 254
Impartiality and The Virtues 259
Sacred Need 265
Conscious Humiliation 269
REFERENCES & FURTHER READING 274
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 280
FOREWORD BY RUSS HUDSON
The basics of the Enneagram can be learned in a short time and
basically consists of nine type descriptions. Most of us are
introduced to the system this way, and as we read the descriptions
or have someone tell us about them, we decide which number “fits
us best,” and voila! We can join the Enneagram conversation and
speak about being a certain type. Not much is required of us, and
while it can be a little bit humiliating to realize that in many ways we
are quite like one ninth of the people on the planet, there is also
great comfort in feeling understood—knowing that people have
indeed felt similar things and that there is a logic to the way our
consciousness works. It is not random.
If we go a little further, we get interested in the types of our friends
and loved ones. Some of us get a bit “type-happy,” applying numbers
to everyone we meet (and sometimes with less than enthusiastic
responses from those we have typed). However, as we get a little
more skillful, we learn that knowing the type patterns of our spouse,
our lover, our children, our parents, our co-workers, or our boss can
be enormously helpful. Some of their hitherto “strange” behavior
makes more sense. This can be a big support if and when we
remember to use the tool and to step out of our own pattern for a few
moments. Many of us may never notice how rare that is, and how
difficult it is to remember that our habitual ways of being are not the
only way we can proceed—there are other responses available to
us. But often people learn the basics and are happy with that or
simply do not know there is more to it. People say things like “I
already did the Enneagram” after listening to a blog or hearing a
three-hour talk on the subject. Others use it occasionally to help
them figure people out, to explain themselves to others, or simply to
enjoy sharing theories and chatting about it with fellow enthusiasts.
But if we stop there—and many do—we miss the real power and
magic of the Enneagram, which is explicitly about transforming our
identity. If we keep looking into it beyond the popular social media
blogs and articles, we start to get a sense that there is much more to
this subject than we could have imagined. For one thing, we learn
that the modern Enneagram is based in teachings that have been
around for a long time, and that it was brought into the modern world
by a small number of people who really devoted their entire lives to
studying it, and thus studying human nature at a deep level.
Originally, the Enneagram map of personality was part of an
approach to the awakening and development of human
consciousness. The overall schema of the system was brought to
the attention of the modern world just prior to the First World War by
the Greek-Armenian teacher Georges Gurdjieff, who taught the
Enneagram not as a collection of types, but as a way of looking at
the phenomena of reality through more awakened eyes. He sought
to open to a deeper set of possibilities for human evolution.
Most centrally, for Gurdjieff and those who practice his teachings,
the Enneagram is a system designed to help us cultivate our
capacity to be present—to be more fully awake in our body, heart,
and mind. Over the course of working with his students for several
decades, he taught the inner meaning and uses of the Enneagram
symbol but not the system of types. Nonetheless, he brought forward
many concepts and teachings which are central to the deeper
Enneagram work: the Centers, the Instincts, the transformation of
the emotions, the relationship of personality and essence, and so
forth. He called his overall approach the Fourth Way—a way in
ordinary life that requires working on all the different elements of our
psyche.
It is hard to imagine how breathtaking it must have been to
encounter these ideas over a century ago when Gurdjieff was first
presenting them to European and North American audiences. And
today, even though many people may never have heard of Gurdjieff
or been directly exposed to his writings or teachings, they are very
likely to have been influenced by his ideas which have seeped into
many subsequent teachings of self-development and into various
expressions of art and literature.
When I learned the Enneagram back in the 1970s and 80s it was
absolutely in this Fourth Way sensibility, and what I learned, this
developmental approach to the system, has remained foundational
for me. Now, following this path of authentic inner work, John
Luckovich, the author of this wonderful book, is also working with the
key concepts arising out of the Fourth Way orientation.
While Gurdjieff’s contributions to the underlying framework and
philosophy behind the Enneagram is enormous, the map of
personality that is the most popular part of the system was derived
from the work of Oscar Ichazo. Having learned Gurdjieff’s teachings
and having immersed himself in a variety of spiritual disciplines, both
Eastern and Western, Ichazo was inspired to put several key maps
of consciousness together through the patterns revealed by the
Enneagram, and it was he who realized the correct sequence of the
types around the symbol. He was particularly inspired by the
Neoplatonic works of Plotinus; the forms of distraction and vexation
from the Christian Desert Fathers of Egypt who were the first
Christian monastics in the world; and the Hebrew Holy Qabalah with
its Tree of Life and Spheres (sephirot) of Divine Consciousness. He
saw in these diverse teachings aspects of a profound understanding
of the human soul, and he sought to find a new level of unity of these
perspectives. Only someone who has pondered the Enneagram
seriously can truly appreciate the enormity of Ichazo’s realization.
All subsequent work on the nine points is based in his seminal
teachings. He, like Gurdjieff, saw the typology explicitly as a tool for
awakening. He did not think the types were a person’s identity. He
called them fixations and could be described more accurately as a
way of pointing to the particular ego patterns that we tend to get
stuck in. Nonetheless, as both Gurdjieff and Ichazo taught, these
patterns are based in real qualities of our consciousness. These real
qualities of presence, found in all human beings, are referred to as
Essence in the Fourth Way teachings.
The central idea here—and one that will be presented in this book
again and again, is that the real inner work is not about fixing or
polishing the ego, nor is it about eradicating the ego. It is about
recovering and developing our essence and bringing our egoic life
into greater integration with our core of consciousness. When you
understand this, you begin to grasp what the Enneagram is really for,
and it becomes a truly magnificent means of seeing our ego patterns
in action as well as getting more and more vivid impressions of what
we are beyond those patterns.
It was the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo who brought
Ichazo’s teachings to the United States in the early 1970s. Naranjo
wanted to demonstrate the congruence between Ichazo’s brilliant
theories, and the findings of contemporary psychology. Naranjo
himself had worked extensively with Fritz Perls, the founder of
Gestalt Therapy, and was keen to develop a true marriage of
psychology and spiritual practice. He originally kept his teachings
within a private group he was leading in California (which included
the modern teachers Hameed Ali, a.k.a. A.H. Almaas, and Sandra
Maitri), and like Ichazo and Gurdjieff, he was dubious that much
good could come from the Enneagram map without the context of a
real inner work orientation. Nonetheless, word got out, and the
system spread rapidly through different channels in the spiritual
communities of the time.
In the 1980s, books by Don Richard Riso, Helen Palmer, and
others introduced the Enneagram typology to a large new audience.
While both of those teachers had an orientation toward spirit and the
development of consciousness, the popularity of the system quickly
outgrew the groups that were seeking to teach it in a responsible
way, and increasingly, many people knew about the nine types, but
knew next to nothing about the inner work behind the typology—
which is its very reason for existing.
I learned the Enneagram originally and explicitly through the
Gurdjieff Work and had the great fortune to learn under a number of
teachers who had lived and worked directly with Mr. Gurdjieff. I had
dedicated over a decade of my life to this practice when I met Don
Riso, who had published his first book, Personality Types. Don, a
former Jesuit, sought, like Naranjo, to demonstrate the psychological
validity of the Enneagram model. He worked for over a decade on
that first book, and when we met, he was curious to learn about
Gurdjieff and the methods of inner work. From those conversations,
our business and teaching partnership was born. We went on to
study together in the Gurdjieff Work, and later in the Diamond
Approach of A.H. Almaas. We knew instinctively that good teachers
must remain good students.
When Don and I wrote The Wisdom of the Enneagram back in the
1990s, our aim was to write a book that would introduce the growing
audience of Enneagram students to its original purpose. We wanted
to show how it was a possible entrée into a life of inner work and
spiritual service. We wanted to show also how seamlessly the
psychology and the spiritual work were two sides of the same coin—
not two incompatible orientations forced together. To our great relief,
the book struck a chord and remains for many a central text for
Enneagram studies. And perhaps again this is because the book is
directing students to the deeper journey that is possible with this
work. That book was published in 1999, over 20 years ago, and the
time is ripe for a new wave of Enneagram books dealing with the