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The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram: A New book BY JOHN lUCKOVICH

"John Luckovich does not beat around the bush and lets us know right away that the material in this book is explicitly for inner work and soul development. And with great eloquence and patience, he unpacks this potentially complex material in a way that makes it understandable and relevant. While there are a number of teachers working in this area who have my love and respect, I dare say there is no one in the world who has spent more time contemplating the meaning and context of this material than John."

- from the introduction, written by Russ Hudson, author, The Wisdom of the Enneagram

The Enneagram is a profound tool for self-observation and inner work. While there are plenty of resources on the topic, most Enneagram literature is largely limited to entry-level descriptions of the Nine Types. The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram focuses on a crucial but misunderstood facet of the Enneagram Typology--our “animal” Instinctual Drives and how they are related to our spiritual nature.

While nearly every school of thought on the Enneagram acknowledges the importance and role of the Instinctual Drives, there’s a deep lack of understanding what they actually are, the role they play in personality, and most importantly, their implications for inner work. This book achieves, for the first time, a coherent theory of the instinctual drives based in biology, evolution, and developmental psychology, and it paves the way toward a more accurate view of inner work that directly addresses our animal nature. In so doing, it turns our current understanding of the Enneagram on its head by showing that the personality does not exist in parallel with our instinctual drives, but in reaction to them. In other words, instinct comes first — and one’s Enneagram type is nothing more or less than a strategy to fulfill instinctual needs.

This clarified orientation has important implications for our spiritual development, self-remembrance, and the transformation of our personhood into a conduit of Essence.

Human beings have three primary instinctual drives: the drive for physical well-being (Self-Preservation), the drive to sexually attract (Sexual), and the drive to create and maintain relationships (Social). They are three distinct but complementary motivational drives to meet specific biological and emotional needs. The Instinctual Drives are the basis of the ego, and it’s our identification with them that divert our attention from Type’s Essence quality into investing our sense of “I” in the personality, leading to “ego”, taking the personality to be “me”. As a consequence, the relationship we have to our instinctual drives and the way it “entangles” our psychology is our greatest source of suffering and personal dissatisfaction.

Identifying with the instinctual drives distorts them. Instead of having a healthy, balanced relationship wherein each instinct is expressed and responding to our experience as needed, we unconsciously come to believe that one of these three drives is more intrinsic to both our physical survival but also our psychological survival. The instinctual drives become “stacked” in an order of psychological priority, wherein the needs related to one instinct are unconsciously seen as more urgent for our well-being. This is called the dominant instinct, because it most defines our personality and is the focal point of our neuroses. Another instinct, the “middle” or “secondary instinct” is left largely in support of the aims and goals of the dominant instinct. Finally, a third instinct is neglected, which is referred to as the “blindspot” instinct because we really fail to see, understand, and know how to access it within ourselves. There are six instinctual stackings for each of the nine Enneagram types.

Here is a sample:

Chapter Two: Instinct

“Man was composed of two natures, the animal or lower self and the spiritual or higher self, and this because the former is necessary to the development of the latter.” - The Zohar

What is Instinct?

Instinct is the most basic arrangement of awareness in organisms. Life responds to stimuli, seeks substances for energy, develops, and reproduces, and these actions are all supported by instinct, acting as basic vehicles of awareness. Instinct is the foundation from which every other capacity of an organism emerges. Human beings live in animal bodies that require regulation: the needs and drives of the body are powerful and intense, rooted in our personal survival and the survival of our species. They express our vital energy, our “life force,” equipped with millions of years of somatic intelligence to support and make possible our survival and thriving. Because of this, our Instinctual Drives exert a tremendous influence on our psychology and, therefore, on our spiritual development. With the right cultivation, they are able to support us in expanding the horizons of how we experience ourselves, how we relate to our own life force, and how we create conditions for fostering greater depths of presence.

Instinct is easily trivialized and dismissed as simply the primitive forces and behaviors that keep us from dying, but in fact they serve a much greater role. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (2003) explains, our biological systems are forces that strive for life’s thriving:

the innate equipment of life regulation does not aim for a neither-here-nor-there neutral state midway between life and death. Rather, the goal of the homeostasis endeavor is to provide a better than neutral life state, what we as thinking and affluent creatures identify as wellness and well-being (p. 35).

They provide a foundation for life to flourish, to be enjoyed, and for finding personal meaning and fulfillment. The instincts carry deep biological wisdom of what our needs are and how to skillfully fulfill them while remaining adaptive and resilient. Our living is an expression of our instinctual capacities, and much of the joy of living is thanks to life actualizing itself through the Instincts. They are the cornerstone for our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being. “Instinct,” however, is a slippery word that can mean many different things to many different people. What is commonly referred to as “instinct” runs the gamut of the most basic autonomic functions of the nervous system that sustain life on a biological level, to the entire organization of our psyche and social systems, depending on the field of study and the source in question. In common vernacular, instinct generally refers to autonomic functions and simple reflexes, such as the glances and smiles exchanged when we're attracted to someone, and even our capacity to read, take note of, and recall the faces of other people. Other times, instinct is meant to capture our desire or knee-jerk reactions.

In the context of the Enneagram, we are concerned with how the body and psychology impact consciousness, and therefore, how consciousness becomes identified with instinctual agendas. We don’t become identified with pure physical appetites like hunger or lust, but we can with the motivational drive to care for our physical well-being, with the drive to elicit the sexual choice of a potential partner, and with the drive to create relationships and increase our sense of belonging.

Neuroscientist Donald Pfaff (1999) describes drives as having two main elements. First, a generalized arousal system in the brain produces the energy and motivation to satisfy biological needs. Secondly, a specific constellation of brain systems produces the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors associated with each particular biological need. As we will see, this is exactly what the Instincts of the Enneagram are: biological drives with specific neural networks, neurochemicals, and motivations to address specific needs.

Instead of focusing exclusively on descriptions of behaviors and personality traits, as is often the case with works on the Enneagram of Personality, this book will help you to also understand the Instinctual Drives in terms of aims and energies. “Aims” refers to the goal of Instinctual Drives, which is to fulfill specific biological needs. They are motivational drives with a definite function and purpose rather than vague catch-all terms. “Energies” refers to the specific qualities of excitation, attention, and psychological boundaries that the energy of the Instinctual Drive is expressed as, which we’ll be calling “Instinctual Approaches” in Chapter Five. They support the pursuit of instinctual needs and deeply influence the texture, shape, and boundaries of attention. Understanding instinct on these terms can help us be less “in our heads” about trying to match our usually-faulty self-perception with a written description and orient us to observe the forces of instinct in real-time.

The needs and approaches help us to see what is motivating us, what needs are not being adequately addressed, and how we unconsciously prefer and apply certain instinctual strategies while ignoring others. This creates an imbalanced “mismatch” of intentions and behaviors. These distinctions can also reveal how we misread our own biological and emotional signals in a way that reinforces a negative psychological status quo. When we view the instincts this way, we understand them and recognize them in ourselves with greater nuance and specificity.

Instinctual Needs

Each Instinctual Drive exists to address specific needs grounded in biology. These needs are more than just basic survival maintenance; they speak to a quality of physical, emotional, and psychological well-being that is necessary for a satisfying and well-rounded life.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow is probably best known for his creation of a hierarchical map of human needs, from basic survival and maintenance of our organism to satisfying conditions that support the actualization of an individual's potential. The map of needs he created was a pyramidal diagram that ranged from basic physiological needs, such as the need for water or to expel bodily waste, to needs for actualization and increased consciousness.

While some dispute how accurate and scientific this model is, it nonetheless has value. Maslow’s model went against American cultural narratives, which are generally disdainful of need and the expression of need, as well as the state of psychology at a time when the emphasis was on psychological dysfunction. Maslow’s real contribution was recognizing and articulating that there is no clear universal baseline of what basic needs are—needs are varied, dynamic, and dependent upon where we are developmentally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Additionally, Maslow was able to intelligently articulate how basic needs manifest at different levels of development, and that even at high levels of development, basic needs are still present. How needs are managed at one level differs greatly from how they are addressed at more basic levels. What we can draw from Maslow is the understanding of how central a solid foundation in the well-regulated body, instincts, and personality is for the development of true consciousness.

The instinctual needs are the primary motivations for our behavior and the major force behind our personality. Since our habitual state of awareness is quite limited, most of the time we have incorrect assumptions about what’s motivating us. The instinctual needs, then, help provide a first step in penetrating a layer of our psychological onion by getting underneath our beliefs about what’s driving us, which is vital for awakening from our automatic state. Having an objective view of our real physiological and emotional needs also helps us to take better care of ourselves. It is crucial to understand that a great deal of the human struggle to meet basic needs and much of the suffering that results is due to environmental factors, like political, economic, and social climates, abusive relationships, degrading work, or dangerous living situations. This should not be overlooked or ignored, though it is beyond the scope of this book.

Each Instinctual Drive as a motivation to fulfill three basic biological and emotional needs, making for a total of nine needs. It is coincidental that the number matches with the points on the Enneagram, although there seems to be nothing random about the triadic pattern that emerges from everything based in the Enneagram.

The Needs of the Instinctual Drives are:

Self-Preservation Needs:
- Physical Well-Being: The need to care for the body. This includes attending to matters of health, safety, and comfort as well as developing the physical capacities of the body.
- Sustainability/Resiliency: The need to preserve and aid in the development of oneself and life’s essentials; to self-regulate in the short and long term. This is the need to strike a "dynamic equilibrium," to find a balance between activity and rest, adaptability and resilience, and to feel our own autonomy and competence.
- Resources and Foundations: The need to have resources and assets available for our physical well-being. Our foundations, such as home, work, and family, are resources and provide a basic sense of orientation. Foundations serve as touchstones around which our lives are organized, usually as an expression of our values. Included here is our lifestyle, the sensibility informing the rhythms of our daily living.
Sexual Needs:
- Sex: The need to elicit the sexual choice of potential mates and the need for sexual contact and release.
- Chemistry: The need to seek and find complementary energies, including a need to feel “chosen.” Chemistry is the means by which we sense a creative possibility and enlivening influences.
- “Loss of Self”: The need to get beyond ourselves and our usual psychological boundaries, a temporary dissolution of the habitual experiences of selfhood as a kind of self-renewal.
Social Needs:
- Relatedness The need to be in a relationship and maintain close emotional contact with others, whether friends, partners, or family. This is our need for emotional intimacy and for giving and receiving attention and care.
- Belonging: The need to feel belonging with someone or something, to feel we matter and are a part of something greater than ourselves. Another way of expressing this need is as a need for community, collaboration, and for a sense of place and support.
- Context/Vocation: The need to interpret the boundaries, expectations, and structures of interpersonal dynamics. This recognition further motivates us to participate in the lives of others beyond self-interested pursuits and to understand one’s part in a greater whole. This may manifest as the need to give to or serve others, to create meaning for oneself and others, and to share one’s gifts and vocation.

The impact that having our needs met has on our felt sense of well-being and wholeness is hard to measure or capture in a description, but the experience of relief and pleasure is clear. When a need is met, whether physical or emotional, a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters are released to regulate and restore our nervous system. As physical and psychological health and well-being improves, we relax, happiness increases, compulsions decrease, distress lessens, and we can step outside of the egoic mental and emotional patterns that are reactions to an unregulated body. An inability to meet one’s basic needs, on the other hand, leads to intense distress and psychological imbalance.

Recognizing what needs require attending to, versus what needs our ego wants to overindulge or ignore, begins with presence in the body. Taking real care of our needs lessens the “volume” of unconscious associations and reactions of anxiety and distress. Thus, personality, including fears and narcissism, can be rendered more transparent, flexible, and strong instead of fragile and rigid. We can have more inner resources and energy for dealing with life and for relating with others, and more importantly, we have more energy and more force behind our attention for our presence and inner work.

These drives are our life force, and allowed to operate unobstructed from the interference of outdated psychological content, they seek and foster conditions that literally make us more alive. If we are truly following the energy of the instincts, they imbue us with nourishment and meaning, and when our instincts are in a natural alignment of service to our welfare, our health, vitality, and psychological well-being flourish.

The core of the personality is the struggle of how we meet our basic needs. This has a variety of implications that underscore the value and centrality of instincts in Inner Work, some of which are immediately useful and some of which we’ll return to later on. First is that this structure, the personality, that we invest so much pride and energy in is merely a psychological tool for meeting our needs—it is not a viable source of identity. While we may not always be thinking about or taking direct action to meet our appetites and desires, all of the products of our personality that we’re typically quite proud of—including our deep thoughts, our emotions, our creativity, our talents—are features we have adapted that directly or indirectly support meeting one or more of the above needs, as will hopefully become clearer later on. This realization should bring us the humility and curiosity to reconsider where our attachments lie. Secondly, this also means there is a relationship between our capacity to self-regulate and our quality of consciousness. One characteristic of the ego is ignorance about what the body needs due to its state of general physical dissociation. The ego understands what is required to reinforce identification with itself, but this means that our mental and emotional cravings are often out of sync with our body’s real needs.

There is often a great disparity between the body’s needs and what the ego craves or thinks it needs. For example, our body may need a certain amount of exercise and a certain nutritional balance, but for the ego, being comfortable all the time and eating the comfort food mom used to make may feel like well being on an emotional level while being physically and psychologically unhealthy. It’s almost a guarantee that we related to all nine instinctual needs more from the emotional and mental associations attached to them instead of the body’s own sensation-based feedback and intelligence.

When the ego’s desires override the body’s well-being, this creates problems for us physically and psychologically. It means our nervous system stays chronically dysregulated and our bodies become locked into patterns of stress and tension that feel “normal.” One reason that stillness is such an important factor in spiritual practices, for example, is because it is very difficult to refine the sensitivity and clarity of consciousness when our nervous system is bound up in tension, emotional reaction, and chronic thoughts from its distress. So our Inner Work begins when we learn, through physical sensation, to be sensitive to our actual, present state instead of our ego’s ideas, concepts, and stories about what we need. We start to bridge this disparity by learning to consciously self-regulate.

Third, as needy humans, we are dependent on forces outside ourselves. Even if we grow our own food, for example, we are still dependent on the conditions that make growing and preparing food possible. When we are born, we’re entirely reliant on our parents, and gradually, nature and our parents direct us to being able to meet our own needs with greater skillfulness and efficiency as we grow. However, this dependency on external resources is the source of a great deal of vulnerability and fear that are bound within the Instincts and are at the core of the personality. Will the things we need always be there? Will people still want to give me their care and attention?

Most human activity is based on doing things that we think will keep instinctual resources—the objects, circumstances, and people we depend on to regulate us and meet our physical and emotional needs—accessible to us. On the other hand, it is important for people to feel they are autonomous and can meet their own needs. Therefore, the central conflict of the personality is between one’s desire to feel autonomous and one’s dependency on externals for necessities, which will be explored in detail in Chapter Three.

The fourth implication brings the Enneagram into the mix. That is, because we mistakenly take our identity to be rooted in the personality, we end up projecting the qualities of Essence at the core of our Enneagram Type onto instinctual resources. It is like we hold a dim memory of Essence, but instead of seeking it directly, it is as if we are trying to evoke the feeling of Essence through instinctual needs. Most human obsession with attention, sex, and wealth boils down to unconsciously viewing instinctual resources as the keys to actualizing the Essential self. The ego believes it will self-actualize by obtaining a desired lifestyle, sexual partners, and esteem or status. When instinct and Enneagram Type are taken together, we gain a clear picture of the crux of our personal and specific pattern of how Essence is forgotten and consciousness is enmeshed in instinct. This will be unpacked in Chapters Three and Six. With this in mind, we can take a closer look at the role these drives play in maintaining our bodies and in our psychological make up.

You’ll notice that the following section on the Self-Preservation Instinct is shorter than the other two drives. This is not to shortchange or undervalue Self-Preservation, but generally speaking, the Self-Preservation Instinct is relatively straightforward to understand. While not to be taken for granted, there is far less cultural baggage to unpack for Self-Preservation than there is for Sexual and Social.

Self-Preservation Instinct

Simply put, the Self-Preservation Instinct is the drive for well-being. It is the drive to survive and to work in support of what makes one thrive in both the short- and long-term. As our basic drive of survival, it supplies energy to endure in the face of existential challenges. It is the most compelling and powerful drive, shared by all forms of life, from which the other drives, functions, and capacities of our organism flower.

If we think of life and survival in terms of strict categories of "alive" or "dead," "surviving" or "dying," then we fail to really understand something fundamental to life; namely, that life is better understood as a range of energy and vitality rather than as a static state in opposition to death. To be connected with the Self-Preservation Instinct means we directly sense and experience that we are living and growing, that we are constantly in development or decline. The Self-Preservation Instinct is aliveness itself, and therefore our relationship to this instinct reflects our feelings about being alive. How closely one keeps to the visceral, moment-by-moment sense of the energies of the body, especially sensation, is a measure of how present and willing we are to make intentional use of our limited time on Earth. The Self-Preservation Instinct maintains a healthy awareness of death, a source of strength that urges us to use our time wisely and fully, to be intentional with how we live and where we invest energy. What might it mean about the value we place in our life if our breath is routinely poor and shallow? What does it reveal if our bodies are often numb or simply being used like an object to get us from point A to point B?

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Sexual Instinct

This instinct is the drive to put ourselves ahead of sexual competition. The striving of life to reconstitute itself into ever more diverse and creative forms subjects each organism to intense pressure to prove its genetic merit, and to that end, nature has devised a vast range of displays and ornamentations to advertise sexual congruity. Organisms invest an enormous proportion of activity and energy in eliciting the attention and attraction of a potential mate. All the bright feathers, deafening calls, frenetic dances, and other impractical investments of energy seen in animals are for a sexual goal. This instinct discerns who or what we’re attracted to and provides the motivation to pursue it, to enhance and display characteristics that make us more enticing. This instinct is how we signal our sexuality.

Just as Self-Preservation is not the appetite of hunger, but a drive to ensure appetites can be met, this drive is not sexual lust or genital arousal. The Sexual Instinct’s aim is not in acquiring a large number of sexual partners or having the most sex, but cultivating fascination and attraction to hook interested and willing sexual partners. This understanding of the Sexual Instinct challenges some of our cultural narratives around human courtship and mating strategies because it reveals the role and function of sexuality in human beings apart from procreation or bonding. Having evolved in conditions prior to modern cultural and economic forces, the way this drive functions sometimes runs up against strategies modern people employ to garner attraction, such as high status, wealth, or modern notions of romance.

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Social Instinct

If the Self-Preservation Instinct constitutes our fundamental aliveness and the Sexual Instinct unveils new dynamics and creative expressions of that aliveness, the Social Drive opens us to a new order of what living means, one in which our experience is embedded within a vast ecosystem of interrelated living things. The Social Instinct is our relational drive. It motivates us to create relationships and care for the well-being of others. It is our desire to bond, to belong, and to positively enhance the lives of those we care for.

The Social Drive is ongoingly impacted, shaped, and finds orientation through a wide tapestry of impressions that provide a window into other people’s intentions, feelings, and identity for a complex, multifaceted view of the human mosaic. It not only drives us to be proactive in forming and preserving relationships, but it instills a strong need for meaning that stems from finding a sense of purpose, vocation, or service in relation to others. The Social Instinct invites us to consider who and what we really care about, and what gives us purpose beyond self-interest.

The need for purpose is one of the central longings for a fulfilling human life. Something special happens when our personal experience is entwined with and of benefit to others in service of an authentic aim that extends beyond personal concerns. This speaks to something intrinsic yet often-overlooked in our view of human nature: our interdependence, biologically, psychologically, and spiritually. When we fail to live into this truth, we suffer greatly and diminish our sense of what life can mean….

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A Real Human Being

Instinct has an automatic character. We don’t make any choices in terms of what the body’s basic needs are, we don’t have a say in who we’re attracted to, nor do we have a choice in our need for other people; yet, we unconsciously base our sense of self and self-worth on this automatic functioning.

Any one of the basic instinctual needs described here evokes a wide network of emotional and mental associations that are useful in knowing how to meet our needs. When a stranger strikes up a conversation with us, we are rapidly able to deduce a number of things about who they may be in relation to us—if they are friendly or a threat, or some sense of their social role. These automatic associations are useful and necessary, but when we become identified with the Instinctual Drives, our consciousness becomes run by this automatic character and our emotions become automatic, our thoughts become automatic, and we lose touch with our physical sensation unless something provokes us enough to give it attention.

Without work on oneself, one’s attention must be provoked. It is passively evoked by external events or automatic inner associations which pull on it and compete for prominence. In this state, attention is not free nor present. When the compulsions of our Instinctual Drives have hijacked our attention, our Being lacks initiative apart from the automatic patterns of personality. We, therefore, are not masters of ourselves, but slaves, not even to instinctual agendas, but to the unconscious and delusional emotional and mental associations bound to them.

When awareness is run by automatic energies, we cannot be present. We become enslaved to our associations and asleep to our Essence. Characteristic of this automaticity is the belief that one’s consciousness is not on automatic. Ego takes the effort to Self-Remember for granted.

Understanding the Instinctual Drives helps us become aware of how we waste and siphon away the energy of our consciousness in excessive preoccupation with instincts. We “leak” the energy that ought to naturally be reserved for consciousness through the instincts and instinct-based reactions. Understanding the instincts can also help us to see what’s possible beyond an automatic quality of consciousness.

Almost everything we do without presence constitutes a way we leak energy through the Instinctual Drives. We react to all three instincts: through the Emotional Center with complaints, in the Intellectual Center with fantasy, and in the Body Center by directing aggression toward others who have subverted or impinged on our attempts to meet our instinctual needs and goals.

Some of the typical ways that we leak energy through the three Instinctual Drives include excessive eating, excessive worry about safety or comfort, and fretting about resources in the Self-Preservation Instinct. Vanity, excessive sexual activity, and obsessiveness or recklessness in displaying one’s “flavor” are just a few ways we leak energy through the Sexual Instinct. Excessive reactions to other people’s behaviors or perceptions, excessive talking, and over-adapting oneself to others’ expectations are examples of leaks based in the Social Instinct.

Energy leaks aren’t in behaviors and habits alone. To be identified with instinct is to give oneself wholly over to automatic associations, most of which never reach the level of our cognition; therefore, we spend most of our lives lost in a sea of unconscious reactions. This is why the work to be present is so important. Unless we are present, we’re living from these recycled impressions, which degenerate into delusions over time.

Presence is a continuum. Although it doesn’t have distinct levels, there are certain “stations” of presence that are recognizably qualitatively different from one another. They are like different “worlds” awareness can inhabit, where we’re grounded in the same reality, but our outlook, experience of ourselves, and our sense of connectedness to the phenomenon of our experience radically changes such that it feels like experiencing reality from a new dimension. At each level, the sense of what within us has attention and what attention is profoundly changes. This is a long-standing insight of a great many spiritual traditions, which spoke explicitly about “Worlds” or “Spheres,” but coded these distinctions in metaphorical language. A point of commonality shared by the traditions that employ a schema of worlds is in recognizing that reality is subject to entropy, including our own consciousness. Therefore, consciousness must be vivified and renewed through ongoing Inner Work if anything in us can ascend from the automatic world.

The next “world” up from automaticity is characterized by Sensitivity. Sensitive Consciousness is different from being emotionally sensitive or easily overwhelmed. It is an active quality where the veil of memories, associations, reactions, and habits that usually separate and alienate us from our direct experience are rendered transparent and something of our authentic nature is able to directly touch and be touched by our experience. A barrier is lifted.

Unlike the automatic state, Sensitivity requires ongoing intention and renewal of inner efforts to maintain—this is why our strivings are called Inner Work. It cannot be automatic or habitual. Sensitive Energy is a prerequisite for Conscious Energy, the extrapersonal medium of real Consciousness, the real “I”, to come into our experience. Conscious Energy is beyond the scope of this book, but cultivating Sensitivity through Inner Work allows awareness to be free from automatic energies and come into its own natural state. In so doing, Sensitivity prepares a sanctuary within us where Consciousness can enter within us through grace.

Presence in the body helps the body be sensitive to sensation. Presence in the heart attunes us to feeling and, more significantly, makes the heart sensitive to being touched and therefore transformed by our experience. Presence in the mind makes it open, clear, and receptive to fresh impressions. It begins to notice things in a way that is unbound to prior associations, which opens the mind to a quality of spontaneous knowing, a sort of simple, direct wisdom. These are not states that we arrive at, as if they were goals to be achieved, but ways that these Centers become gateways to ever-deepening potentials of Sensitivity, which in turn, becomes the doorway to true Consciousness and Self-Remembering.

Instinct is always obedient to something. They are energies that support the life of the body or the life of the ego. The Instincts can also work in the service of our Essential nature, but it’s crucial to be mindful that the ego is prone to co-opt our will for Inner Work if we mistakenly believe that spiritual growth is measured by improvements in the functionality of the Instincts and the personality. To make instinct obedient to Essence doesn’t mean eating organic food, only having tantric sex, and only having spiritual conversations with the right people. While these may be beneficial, they don’t constitute Inner Work.

Presence with instinct establishes a connection between it and Essence. This way of relating to instinct could mean almost no adjustment to our outward instinctual behavior. We don’t need to put on a posture of specialized eating or a special sexual technique or a spiritual social persona. Instead, we must let presence experience eating and ordinary sex. Allow presence to bullshit with friends instead of our automaticity and habit.

The real transformation is to Self-Remember with instinct instead of trying to make instinct “better.” At the same time, being present with the Instincts makes it much more difficult to behave in a way that is out of accord with our Essential nature, so often, instinctual behavior improves, becoming more cohesive and attuned as a by-product of inner transformation. Seeing and accepting our instinctual expression from a place of Self-Remembering will gradually produce a change in identity, slowly shifting our center of gravity from the psychological reactions to instinct into something more real.

Ego can’t change the ego. A new “master,” the real “I,” has to wake up in us, and the instincts will only obey an inner master. In the tension between our Essential and our instinctual nature, a new possibility emerges that is more intelligent and inclusive than the perspective that produced the sense of polarity in the first place. The animal and the angel can find their right relationship. An inner life can cooperate with an outer life, and we can become a human being without quotation marks, to quote Mr. Gurdjieff.

In the following chapters, we’ll take these instinctual categories and, using the Enneagram, show how the problems we face with the relationship between instinct and Essence are more than an issue of improper self-regulation or psychology alone. They stem from a spiritual confusion, an inability for consciousness to remember its nature. This will be followed by a look at how this is played out as personality types as well as the practice and orientation necessary for uncovering the experience of “I” that stands apart from type.