Identification

What makes the Enneagram useful is that it helps us to see our unconscious and automatic identifications and how they contribute to “who we are”.  Identification is imbuing something, internal or external, real or imagined, with a sense of one’s identity. It is the chief difficulty that the Enneagram is used to work against.

Identification as a Loss of Perspective

Identification is as a loss of perspective. When I’m identified with something, I make no distinction between the object of my identification and what I feel to be “myself.” It is collapsing the feeling of being oneself into an association with an object within one’s experience, external or internal, real or imagined. Without inner work, it becomes impossible to experience “I” apart from the object.

I can be identified with anything, including my feelings, thoughts, beliefs, reactions, and relationships. I might appreciate living in a particular place, or enjoy the work that I do, but when I am identified with these aspects of my life, it means that I base my self-worth on these things.

Often, it means that there is an unresolved emotional issue motivating my attachment, such as a fear of being empty or lacking value. If I’m identified with my work and I lose my job, not only would it evoke a normal anxiety around how I earn my living, but I might plunge into an existential crisis about my place in the world, since my identity and meaning, at least in part, is based on something outside myself.

When you are identified with something, positive or negative, it usually is a cover for some deeper and unresolved within, often overwhelming emotional pain. If you become identified with your romantic partnership, for example, it may mean that you have deep fears of being abandoned and alone.

It’s important to recognize that Identification has no reality of its own. The content of your identifications must be constantly re-engaged and reinforced in order to keep your attention fixated on old patterns, rather than engaged with objective, ongoing presence. Identification is like a process of overlaying archetypes from your history onto the present. Although it may make you feel like life is familiar and manageable, it virtually guarantees that no substantive growth or change will occur.

While all identification is delusional from the perspective of Essence, some identifications are more or less realistic and accurate. It is useful to realize what our actual Enneagram Type is, for example, and use our understanding of that identification to deepen our self-observation, and recognizing we’re identified with the personality is more useful to that aim than being mistyped.

The patterns of your Enneagram Type and Instinctual Drives are rich territory to learn about your unconscious identifications, and a primary use of the Enneagram is to help you to see and struggle against your identifications. This struggle is what ultimately transforms the limited patterns and dynamics that lock you into suffering into a more free and unconditional presence.

Growing Beyond Identification

Real growth asks you to evolve from a psychological dependence on identification by learning to be more whole, present, and rooted in who you are apart from changing circumstances. This growth is so difficult and challenging because it means that the emotions and pain that may have been covered over by identification become exposed and need to be compassionately acknowledged and healed.

Both Psychological Work and Spiritual Development are, at their core, about working to expand your sense of self beyond your identifications. From either point of view, Identification creates a deep lack of awareness. The effort to be more aware starts by becoming more conscious of your identifications and by learning to see yourself beyond them.

Clues that you are stuck in a pattern of identification include reactions of resistance and defensiveness. At first, it can be quite difficult to free yourself from the grip of these reactions, which are powerful emotions that keep your ego structure in place. Over time, you can develop the ability to notice and tolerate this resistance without acting out or discharging its energy. You can be humble about noticing your egoic attachments,and then let them pass.

Developing Presence

Presence is what helps you to see and grow past identifications. To be fully present means being aware of all three centers of intelligence: body, heart, and mind.

Presence in the body begins with Sensation. Presence in the heart begins with being in contact with your feelings. Presence in the mind begins with being in contact with your perceptions.

Presence is never automatic — it requires attention and intention. Is your contact with your awareness intentional? Or are you simply going through the motions of your life on autopilot?

Intentional presence is what can relax the need to identify. When you are not identified, real transformation becomes possible.