The Barrcast

TranscriptHello and welcome to the Barrcast. I’m your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a rainy summer Monday afternoon here in Brooklyn, New York.If you’ve been following along with the Barrcast, you know that we ran a series of posts on Evagrius Ponticus, the Christian desert father, who wrote really influential teachings on the eight evil thoughts, or logismoi. These were later turned into the seven deadly sins, as well as becoming the basis of the Enneagram. But in Evagrius’s telling, these eight thoughts, these logismoi, are like little imperceptible devils sent to the human mind to attack it, to impassion it, to inflame it and turn it further away from God.So we’re now turning to a different religious tradition, that of Tibetan Buddhism. And I have in front of me Jamgön Kongtrül’s compilation on Chöd, or severance. This is a tradition that dates back to the 11th century, when a woman, Machig Labdrön, began teaching a new tradition. It says here that she taught what we’re about to read — this great bundle of precepts — in a single day to a large crowd that included three Indians who arrived instantly in Tibet by means of the practice called Swift Foot, to investigate the authenticity of Machig and her increasingly popular teachings.So she was a bit of a maverick, and as a woman, probably the target of a lot of suspicion. And at the same time, her teaching is very traditional.There are a lot of reasons why I’m excited to read it today, but as we’ll see, one of them is that we’re going to be firmly in the demonology realm — so, continuing Evagrius’s work with demons. And I think it maybe will surprise some that Buddhism is going to be using this word devil. But as we’ll see, the Buddhist conception of the devil is really different than Evagrius’s, even though a lot of the practice instruction is the same.So we’ll read the text — it’s short — and then explore a little bit about what her project is here. There are four devils in her classification. We’re not going to get into the actual practice of Chöd much; this is going to be more of an investigation of the text itself.I’ll just say, by way of preface, that this tradition on severance grew and grew and grew after Machig. There’s a story in the introduction of this compilation that says a monk visited a man who was in a huge room — a four-pillared room — surrounded with books stacked from the floor to the ceiling. He asked him, “What are all the books?” And the man said they’re all about severance, all commentaries on Machig. So this is an original teaching that spawned a lot of additional teachings and practices.So with that out of the way, let’s hear from Machig herself.[Reads the The Great Bundle of Precepts on Severance]Why Devils?I just wanted to talk a little bit about the use of this devil classification system. Why is it that Machig chooses to talk about evil? This is severance of evil objects — devils. It maybe sounds a little un-Buddhist; it maybe sounds a little Christian. And that’s what I was really interested in digging into. If you’ve been following the Barcast, you know we’ve been talking about devils in the tradition of early Christianity, as represented by Evagrius. So we’ll do a little bit of comparison there.Machig is extremely clear up front about what devils are. She writes: the root devilry is one’s own mind. The devil lays hold through clinging and attachment in the cognition of whatever objects appear. Grasping mind as an object is corruption. Extremely clear. That’s really the beginning and the end of the system. So even though we’re going to dive into a fairly elaborate classification, the devil is one’s own mind.And this couldn’t be more different from Evagrius’s framework, where there is an external adversary. Here the adversary is internal. However — there is an adversary. And this is a place where Machig and Evagrius would agree: there is an opponent who seems to actively work against one’s own wishes for enlightenment, awakening, coming to God. The attitude to take up regarding it is not enmity, not hate — although Evagrius will say indignation, thumos, this heart center. In his framework there’s a “no,” a saying no, “get back.” So there is a boundary, a No.And we’ll see whether there’s something similar with Buddhism, or not — because this particular tradition confuses me at times. On the one hand, you’ll hear about Milarepa or some other great master inviting the demons to tea, welcoming them, inviting them in: a sort of boundarylessness, a porousness, a yes. And at other times this is a severance tradition, a cutting tradition, a No tradition. We’ll talk in a minute about the syllable phat — that plosive, to me the act of cutting and casting up into space for feasting. So how can it be both? I actually think there’s an answer, and it’s a classically Buddhist answer. But let’s get into that in a second.Why do we even need to talk about devils at all, if the devil is one’s own mind? Keep in mind Machig is writing in the 11th century, so she has access to all the sutras. We see in the tradition words like obscuration, hindrance, ignorance, confusion — to name a few. These are all traditional ways of describing exactly what Machig is talking about: the process of clinging and attachment, aversion and attraction, passion and aggression, and confusion as the third, right at the beating heart of the samsaric wheel. But never really called devils. Well — okay, there’s Mara. Maybe Mara really is the tradition’s way of talking about the devil.But still: why do we need this word? I think each word, each framework, affords its own understanding. If I think about darkness or ignorance or obscuration — words that indicate a kind of blindness — what that evokes for me is the opportunity for light to instantly resolve it. If I’m in a dark room, hopelessly probing around for the chair, and somebody turns the light on, I’m flooded instantly with understanding. And even if they turn the light off again, I’d probably still find the chair. So obscuration is effective at reinforcing a nondual point of view — by which I mean that light and dark are not two forces opposed to each other; there’s just light, and then the absence or occlusion of light, the sun behind the clouds. That’s helpful in not reifying, not grasping at difficulty. I once was blind and now I see. There’s a hopeful quality to the word obscuration, and I think that’s what’s foregrounded.Then there are words like poisons, hindrances, obstacles. These are more practical ways of talking about things that happen to us on the path — pride, but also ill health, jealousy. And good health can be its own obstacle. Anything can arise as an obstacle. The way forward that this language affords is transmutation, transformation. Transformation is always tricky, because for those of us drawn to the wizard or alchemist archetype, there’s a feeling of “I’m going to change my jealousy into action, my grief into joy.” We can’t really bring that agenda in so successfully. Whenever the tradition talks about transmutation, it’s talking about that as the result of seeing sufficiently into what the grief is made of, what the jealousy is made of. So if obscuration points to light, obstacle points to transformation — going into the thing itself and seeing what it’s made of.And then devil, I think, points to a third approach: instant opposition. Instant No. Instant cutting. It’s not gradual. It’s not really even a practice. It’s victorious. When I hear Machig talk about devils, I picture the haunted place with ghosts all around. It’s that they’re incessant — always arising, always attacking — but defeating them is effortless. Effortless, except for the incessance.When we work with devils, we acknowledge that there certainly seem to be forces working hard against our awakening. If there weren’t, there’d be a lot more peace and contentment in the world. There aren’t just a few hurdles to step over; there seems to be a real adversarial force. And yet we recognize the emptiness of them — that the devil is one’s own mind. So it’s fighting the opponent within a larger understanding of the non-separateness of person and adverse condition. The adverse condition is my mind, and so it’s a constant opportunity for integration, for digestion.So, why devils? Because cutting is only possible through that word. We don’t cut through obscuration; we don’t cut through darkness. We don’t really cut through poison or hindrance either. We cut through illusion. Things come at us and we cut through them. So there is absolutely a sense of warfare here. But the war being fought is, first of all, one-sided — not a fair fight. We have Arthur’s blade, we have the vajra, the indestructible weapon. There’s no enmity, no hostility, and the lack of hostility comes from the awareness that our opponent is our own mind. But there is scheming, complexity. The enemy does seem to have a strategy, a cunning. When we talk about a devil, we’re talking about an agent — to use everyone’s favorite word these days. There’s a perceived agency, which makes sense, because we’re acknowledging the devil is one’s own mind; what it’s made of is mind. So of course it has a certain cunning, a survival skill.And that’s where Evagrius and Machig are on the same page. Even though Evagrius isn’t ultimately saying the devils are one’s own mind, the devils are made of mind. In that Christian tradition, devils, angels, and humans are all cut from the same cloth, which is God. If I tried to pull the two together, I might say in Evagrian language that devils and humans are ultimately both made of God-material — because in Evagrius, as in Origen before him, Satan himself and the devils are nothing but souls that departed from God through drift. So here, when we sit and do this practice — when we say phat — we’re taking on the God-seat. A lot of this practice is done as Great Mother, as Dharmakaya, from basic space. We’re taking up a pretty victorious attitude.The Four Devils as ScaffoldingThe other reason we benefit from the devil framework is that it affords the classification of the four devils: tangible, intangible, the devil of exaltation, and the devil of inflation. For me this feels like a Mahamudra move — creating scaffolding, a ladder, that ultimately gets kicked out. We always remember this is a provisional system that exists only to help practitioners overcome confusion in the short term. That provisional nature is baked in, because each devil belongs to the next class: the tangible devil is an instance of the intangible devil, which is an instance of the devil of exaltation, which is an instance of the devil of inflation. In the end there is just one devil to cut through. Once you see that, you have no use for the classification. But if you’re new to this work — if you haven’t yet spent months in haunted places calling all demons to feast on you — then you might benefit from it. So I’ll go through it quickly. It’s simple and quite traditional, despite some unfamiliar language.The tangible devil is just objects — external objects. Even here Machig says tangible devils are numerous; i.e., objects are everywhere. But the tangible devil is the judging of appearances as desirable or undesirable: objects of negation or affirmation, objects of desire and aggression. Desire and aggression are my preferred words here, and they bring us back to Evagrius: desire, epithumia; aggression, thumos — these primordial human faculties. Evagrius makes a nice move. Desire, epithumia — longing — in its corrupted form is impassioned, inflamed, aggravated longing, and that becomes the basis for lust and avarice. Wanting, needing, not getting, wanting more — all that’s in the belly. But in its pure form, epithumia is a longing to be with God, to know God. It’s one of the Ten Commandments — do not covet your neighbor’s donkey or wife — that’s the same word. But Jesus in Luke also says, “I have longed to eat with you,” speaking to his disciples about Passover — the same word. So longing, appetite, is not something that goes away. It’s something the devils — Evagrius calls them logismoi — attack as thought. There’s a wispy, air-like quality, a prana quality; images appear as fluttering fantasies that try to hook the epithumia, inflame it, and then the devils are off to the races. That’s how the devils win — through hooking. And when we cut, what we cut is that stream, that continuity of illusion and fantasy.Then aggression, which Evagrius calls indignation — same thing, a human faculty that gets corrupted. He’s so precise about this, and I find it to be true: the thumos, the heart center, can even smell the devils coming, so it’s already pissed off when they arrive. If I start to get a longing — I want some nachos with extra cheese — I also get disgust simultaneously at my longing. His point is that’s often exactly what the devils are after. Even when they spike your longing, what they may really be trying to do is turn your indignation into ire, anger, wrath, self-directed. Once the devils have your desire and your aggression talking to each other, you’re really in trouble. You get polarized: I really want this, but shame on me, I shouldn’t, but I deserve it, and why does everyone keep me from getting what I want — okay, now we’re really lost.So that’s the tangible devil: any fixation on an external object, on sense perceptions. And emptiness and impermanence are the classic remedy — Buddhism 101. Machig cites the Heart Sutra here: form is empty of the essence of form; do not attach to form; meditate on it as empty. Very clear instructions, if you’re being attacked by the external devil — that’s your place to work. Evagrius, in his Praktikos, is writing for monks, and what he says again and again is that you’re probably past that point; you’re onto the much more difficult devil.The Intangible Devil: Hope and FearThe intangible devil is mentation — thinking, thoughts and feelings. Machig makes an important technical point: the external devils are just thought-forms that pass through sense consciousness, whereas thoughts and feelings can ultimately go through sense consciousness but are upstream of it, in mental consciousness. So moving on from desire and aggression, we’re now talking about hopes and fears. I like that a lot — these two pairs: desire and aggression, hope and fear. Now we’re arriving at an attitude of hopelessness and fearlessness.Later, Machig brings up the realms, which she connects to the five poisons and the five Buddha families. She has to remove a realm to make the numbers work — I believe she takes away the god realm; there are a lot of ways to make it work, and we don’t need the technicalities. Her treatment runs: afflictive emotions such as the five poisons, fears about invisible demons, hopes regarding unreal gods — all similar hopes and fears about mental objects — arise from inflation. (She says inflation because she’s making her final point, but this is the intangible devil.) Aggression is liberated on its own ground, but it comes from cutting the root of inflation; released from the boiling and burning of the hell devil, mirror-like timeless awareness is obtained. Aggression, desire, stupidity, jealousy, pride — these are the five poisons associated with the realms, combining the titan and god realms to describe pride. They’re like moods, atmospheres.Just as there are many tangible devils, but cutting the tangible devil cuts the one who desires or is aggressive — you cut that clinging — so too with intangible devils: there are many thoughts and feelings, but at the end of the day the intangible devil is hope or fear. What’s the difference between desire/aggression and hope/fear? To me, hope and fear feel more like long-term, ongoing projects, which is why I can think of them as moods or atmospheres. I can be in a mood of hope for a while: if I do this, then something’s going to happen, I really hope I get that job offer, and if I do, all these great things will follow. Or fear: I’m worried I’ll get fired, everyone around me wants to get me in trouble — an air of suspicion, paranoia. So the intangible devil is the realm, the mood, the vibe, the quality of the atmosphere, and how I cut through it, recognizing it as one of the five poisons. Desire and aggression feel very immediate; hope and fear feel more moody.The Devil of ExaltationIf you’re this far along, you’re in great shape — but you’re not done, because you may now be sitting, as she says, in the haunted places. “In haunted places, when demons do not affect you, arrogance arises and becomes the devil of exaltation.” She spends the most time here, and even has a sub-classification: common devils and supreme devils. The common devils are the hindrances — wealth, fame, friends and foes are the devil of delight; gods and demons bestow spiritual powers. Remember these are concentric circles, so exaltation includes the intangible devil. This one feels to me like pride. I’m in conversation with Evagrius throughout. In the Christian tradition I don’t think he gives pride special treatment, but we all know the folk understanding: pride is the original sin, the sin of Satan. It’s pride that caused the cooling — that’s the word Origen and Evagrius use — the cooling of the relationship with God as one drifts and thinks, “I did it, I am the one.” It becomes much more subject than object: not me/mine but I — I did it, I made this. You fall out of awareness, you’re thrown into something unfamiliar, and the I asserts itself.The reason these hindrances come up — wealth, fame, friends (they mention foes, but stick with wealth, fame, friends): who wouldn’t want those? The reason it’s such a disaster from the Buddhist perspective is that, as we get closer to the root of inflation, these are all opportunities to feel exalted, to feel bigger — some way that my external circumstances reflect on me, that I had something to do with it. And the answer Machig gives — she does such a great job clarifying this — is not that I had nothing to do with it. Rather: “as with the objects in dreams, engage without attachment to their nature. Like the beauty produced by a lovely face, self-occurrence adorns itself. There is no cause for arrogance.” You look ridiculous, from Machig’s perspective, if you’re exalted because of these things.Let’s get more out of the common and into the supreme. Beyond ordinary, tangible exaltations — wealth, external things — let’s talk about supreme view. About awakening, realizing emptiness, experiencing grace or divine intervention. There are so many ways our path can be affirmed to us, shown that we’re doing the right thing, on the right way. What’s the right attitude toward that? Everything is an expression of mind — self-liberation, self-occurrence, self-adornment. If you do a deity practice and picture your deity in incredible garments, perfume, jewelry — imagine the attitude that deity has toward its ornaments. There’s a pride, a nobility; the ornaments work as signs of innate, inherent elegance, beauty, nobility, wealth. And there’s absolutely no fixation on them. One’s nobility isn’t reduced by taking off the earrings. If your deity removes any of its garments or jewels, is its nobility reduced at all? No. But if Elon Musk’s wealth goes down, or if I feel on top of my spiritual practice and then have a crisis, it starts to feel like the stock market — ups and downs. That’s all pointing at exaltation.I love how much time Machig spends, in various ways, cautioning against exaltation. I really think her audience, in a way, is practitioners somewhere in the exaltation stage — just based on how much time she gives it. And she uses the word stupidity a lot, which I love. Take this passage: “Non-cognizant stupidity in the realm of phenomena, cognized as objective, is deluded by grasping. Cognition other than that of single inseparability is to cycle in the places of the three realms and be deluded in the places of the six classes. That is inherently deluded cognition.” Then she runs the list of tenet systems — nihilists, eternalists, Shravakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Chittamatrins, Madhyamikas, Father and Mother Tantras, Mahamudra, Great Completion — each of which “cognizes” its own object, all the way up the ladder. Thus, she says, all of these are cognitions that cognize objective reality, which is not the subject itself. Without an object, there is no cognition of mind. Any cognition is bondage by cognition.So this is like the anti-thinkers’ club. Cognition is the devil — asterisk: cognition defined as having an object. And what is an object? An object means there’s fixation. These words carry so much. An object implies fixation; without it you’d say something like appearance — and appearance doesn’t stop. She uses the traditional image of waves in the ocean: from the great expanse of clarity, any thoughts and memories whatsoever may arise, like waves from the unmoving ocean, and a person with realization rests on their own ground without altering it. So thoughts arise, feelings arise, but they’re not objects. Once they become objects, they hook, and lead to more objects. The more time I spend with the severance tradition, the more I come back to the really basic teachings of the Buddha, the Theravada tradition — papañca, proliferation. It’s all being recapitulated here, but worked around this practice of cutting.And anytime Buddhists argue with each other about the supreme view, the better view — all the way up to and including Dzogchen — that’s relevant here. Dzogchen has a tendency to laugh at other views because it’s the supreme view of no view. I won’t do justice to those arguments, but even Dzogchen isn’t safe from this critique: as long as you are cognizing a vehicle as the supreme vehicle, reifying it as some supreme view, that’s a devil of exaltation. And also — who exalts a view they don’t hold? You never hear that. So it really comes back to I, to pride.The Devil of InflationThere is no devil of inflation that goes beyond this, as far as I can tell. The devil of inflation is the superset; it’s the root devil. So I don’t think it has qualities to talk about, really, beyond being the root. Inflation is just a great word. Kenneth Folk used to give me instruction on deflating the air element, and that’s what comes up for me with inflation — it’s about air. You could say prana, if you want that more subtle, energetic system. Anytime we get confused about the air and think it’s something to hold — that’s really what an object is. An object is held. If we talk about perception as having a perceiver, then an object has a holder; it’s not an object if it’s not held. And this is really about not holding. Air moves — can the air move without being held? I think of the devil of inflation as a chronic layer, a comment on air. Just as a balloon is so nothing, but we can inflate it and it becomes an object, so too can we inflate appearances until they become three-dimensional.I wonder if how to work with the devil of inflation is touched on elsewhere — this is a very thick book, so there may be more outside this particular text. But here Machig doesn’t have much to say directly about it, except that when you cut the devil of inflation, there’s nothing else to do. That is the practice. “Therefore this non-cognizant stupidity the victors teach as great timeless awareness. Ignorance is without object, so delusion is clarified. When objective appearance is just mentally abandoned, it is the decisive cutting off of all inflation without exception. Without an object, what would cognition get inflated about?” Such dense, powerful, direct teaching. Machig clearly has a fondness for this idea of great, vast, non-cognizant stupidity. “Ignorance is without object, so delusion is clarified” — what a sentence. In traditional discourse we’d usually talk about ignorance as the adversary, the thing to overcome. Here there’s a kind of ignorance, a deep stupidity, that is actually the resting place of cutting. It’s such an anti-intellectual teaching, in a way.Cutting, and the Haunted PlaceSo I think we can stop there. There’s a lot more to say, and we might do more, but I wanted at least to cover the four devils — and maybe say one last word.She doesn’t talk much here about the syllable phat (P-H-A-T); she doesn’t give much instruction on how we cut. Those instructions are elsewhere. What I’m after is just clarity about the attitude one takes toward the devils — what cutting is. Cutting is severing the chain of thinking: at the level of inflation, severing the chain of I, I, I, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine; at the level of exaltation, severing it more subtly, the getting-swept-up.And at the end she does give a hint about practice, which is: take the hard road. “When severing in haunted places and such — just as one who is burned by fire is tormented again by that fire itself, the instructions for suppression and severing in a place are like cauterizing the wound by fire. Carry the load of appearing conditions. Understand that to carry the load is crucial. If you don’t carry the load of all phenomena, the remedy of peace and happiness can’t liberate you.” In other words: go prove it. Go find training grounds. Go actively seek out adversity. Adverse conditions are the way. It requires this attitude — the victor’s attitude, the bodhisattva attitude, bodhichitta. Maybe the instruction is nothing other than that: by taking up the victor’s attitude and seeking out adverse conditions, it becomes — I love this phrase — a good training exercise. Because what else would you do? Always returning to the root: the devilry is one’s own mind.When you stomp around in haunted places, you’re not going to fight a dragon in Tibet. It sounds exotic, this idea of going to the haunted place, but it isn’t — because the haunted place is one’s own mind. That’s the whole point. If the practice works well, you are always in the haunted place. So this whole practice is a love of haunted places — recognizing that one’s own mind is the haunted place. There’s no out-there, exotic, scary place. Going to a graveyard is an expedient way of training, but you bring it back with you.That’s a really different attitude than Evagrius’s. Although — if you’re a monk in the deserts of Egypt in 350, I’d say you’re also choosing to practice on haunted ground, and in fact a lot of the monks did. They’d go without water, without food, to meditate in the desert — and that’s where Satan attacked Jesus. I think a lot of the desert fathers were very consciously recapitulating Jesus’s own venture into the wild. So it’s not that they don’t share a certain courage to go to the haunted place. But I don’t know if Evagrius has an analog for the kind of nobility, courage, and bodhichitta — awakening mind — that is such a natural conclusion to the realization that one’s own mind is the devil. Therefore, what is there to worry about? There’s a confidence that comes from holding that awareness.Whereas for Evagrius, the home base is prayer. I’m not making subtle distinctions confidently here, and I won’t put them firmly in different camps, but prayer is much more foregrounded in Evagrius’s recipe for working with devils, because it’s grounded in “I am but a humble man.” When I do this exercise as a humble man, I pray for angelic and divine intervention to help me against devils — because devils are ultimately superior beings to humans; devils and angels occupy a higher realm than the human one. Whereas when our starting place is that the devil is our own mind — capital-M Mind, not the small in-my-head mind — when we recognize these apparitions as not other than self, what is there to pray to, other than oneself? One becomes the haunted place. And it’s great to be the haunted place, because you become a feeding ground, a gathering place for all sorts of demons and suffering beings who will experience relief. But that’s for another time.I think we hit enough. If you made it this far — thanks for joining me on this Barrcast, and we’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

TranscriptWelcome to the Barrcast. I’m your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a sunny and cold winter morning here in New York.We are going to start reading the Praktikos today. So this is 100 chapters. It’s not long, but I expect this to take two episodes.Why are we reading the Praktikos? This is a work by Evagrius Ponticus. If you’ve followed previous videos, you know, we’ve been doing a lot of work on the Enneagram and reading through Claudio Naranjo’s contributions. If Naranjo is sort of the father of the Enneagram of personality, then Evagrius is the grandfather. He’s a desert father, a Christian mystic from the three hundreds who lived in Egypt and led a nomadic life.And so we’re going to dive into the Praktikos. And I think the only piece of context that I want to lay out now is I’m just getting started on Evagrius’s work. But what I know about the Praktikos is it’s sort of considered groundwork on his end. So what we’re going to be reading here could be thought of as sort of foundational or training material or groundwork. If you practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, you maybe have heard of the word ngondro. This is kind of like training material. And so it’s written for someone still very much working on the foundations of practice. That doesn’t mean exactly that it’s like junior varsity material. But there’s a kind of a tone and approach to groundwork spiritual training that pervades here. And I think basically we’re going to be talking a lot about fighting demons and resisting demons. And it’s written for a spiritual practitioner who’s at a stage of practice where that’s really central in their practice is this kind of combat with temptation. And let’s get started.I love the way he starts it. So it’s a letter to Anatolius. And he begins, since you recently wrote to me in Scetis from the holy mountain, dear Brother Anatolius, demanding that I explain to you the symbolic habit of the Egyptian monks, for you believe it to be neither accidental nor superfluous that the habit is so different from what other people wear. I will therefore tell you what we have learned concerning this from the Holy Fathers. So he’s going to describe his habit, the clothes he wears.The hood is a symbol of the grace of our Savior and God. It shelters their mind and nurses their childlike relationship with Christ in the face of those who are always attempting to beat and wound it. Anyone who bears this hood on his head is truly chanting the inner meaning of the psalm quote, “Unless the Lord builds the house and guards the city, in vain did the builder and watchman labor.” Recitations like these produce humility and uproot the primordial vice of pride that cast down to the earth Lucifer the dawn rising star.The nakedness of their hands manifests the absence of hypocrisy in their way of life. Vainglory is terribly clever at covering and darkening virtues, always hunting for the esteem that comes from men and chasing faith away. “For how is it possible for you to believe,” it says, “when you receive glory from one another and the glory that comes only from God, you do not seek?” For the good ought to be chosen for no other reason than itself. Apart from this, anything that moves us to do good will appear far more precious than the good itself. And nothing could be more absurd than to consider and assert that something is better than God.And again, the scapular that wraps around the shoulders in the form of a cross is a symbol of the faith in Christ that supports the gentle and always, despite obstacles, permits them to work unimpeded.The belt tied around their loins repels all impurity and declares it is good for a man not to touch a woman. They wear the sheepskin, those always carrying around in their bodies the death of Jesus and muzzling all the body’s irrational passions, cutting back the wickedness of the soul by their communion in the good and loving poverty, but fleeing from avarice as the mother of idolatry.The staff is a tree of life to all who hold it reliable, for those who lean on it, just as they lean on the Lord.The habit, then, is like a symbol that summarizes these things. And these are the words the fathers always say to them. “Faith, oh, my child, is steadied by the fear of God. And this fear in turn is strengthened by continence. The latter virtue is made unshakable by patient endurance and hope. From these is born apatheia, or dispassion, which brings into being love. Love is the door to knowledge of nature, which leads to theology and the supreme blessedness.”So that’s the conclusion of this first part, which is the description of the habit. And I find it very beautiful. I don’t know yet enough about sort of this system that we’re approaching, but you can hear certainly the hood as a symbol of protection from pride. The naked hands as a protection from vanity or vainglory. I think I need to make sure I understand what vainglory exactly means to Evagrius. And check if vainglory is another word for pride or is for vanity. And then other adornments there. And so he mentions apatheia. So, you know, you maybe hear apathy, but it’s dispassion or non attachment. Or you could maybe try equanimity out. This is freedom from the passions. And this is the purpose of the groundwork of the Praktikos is to birth dispassion, birth apatheia. And so these qualities here—continence, endurance, hope, humility—these are the qualities that will birth dispassion, which brings into being, he says, love. Love is the door to knowledge of nature which leads to theology. And so that’s his progression: the Praktikos to the knowledge of nature to theology. And so we’re just focused on the Praktikos for now.He concludes the prologue by saying, and so, concerning the holy habit and the teaching of the elders, these things we have said should suffice for now. But concerning the life of the ascetic and the knower, I now propose to describe in detail not only what we have seen or heard, but also what I’ve been taught by the elders to say to others. I have compactly divided ascetical matters into a hundred chapters and matters of knowledge into 50 plus 600.So we’re going to be reading the hundred chapters on ascetical matters here. And some things I’ve concealed and shadowed over so that we do not throw holy things to the dogs, nor cast pearls before swine. But this will be clear to those who have embarked on the same quest. So I think he’s hinting here that there’s going to be some twilight language, some secret language here, that we can keep our eyes out for as we go without totally rabbit holing on it. So here we are. The treatise on the Praktikos. 100 chapters.And these first chapters are incredibly dense, sort of deceivingly so. So let’s see how we go. Christianity is the teaching of our Savior Christ, consisting of ascetical practice, the contemplation of nature and theology. This is this trifold progression. The kingdom of heaven is apatheia, dispassion of the soul together with true knowledge of beings. The kingdom of God is knowledge of the Holy Trinity, coextensive with the capacity of the nous, mind or intellect, but surpassing it in incorruptibility.So he’s just sort of outlined the whole project here and hinted that the kingdom of heaven is what we can hope to achieve, or become through this practice of dispassion, the ascetic practice. If you want to make a Buddhist connection, you could call this renunciation, that plus true knowledge of beings that will come later in his contemplation of nature. But even then, if you have this sort of practice of equanimity, that is dispassion combined with some sort of seeing into the true nature of things, that is exceeded still by the kingdom of God, which he says is direct knowledge of the Holy Trinity, coextensive with the structure of the nous, structure of the mind, but surpassing it in incorruptibility. We can just leave that aside for now. Just knowing that that’s there. For whatever person ardently loves, he uses eros here. Loves he will want completely and what he wants, he will struggle to acquire.Now, every pleasure is preceded by desire, epithumia. And desire is born of sensation. Thus, that which is not subject to sensation is also free from passion.Against the hermits, the demons engage in naked combat. Against those laboring at virtue in monasteries or communities, they armed the more careless of the brethren. For the second battle is much lighter than the first. Since there cannot be found on earth men more bitter than the demons, or able to undertake all their evil doings at once.So where are we here? He’s making a general statement about what it’s like to be a being. You know, a person on Earth, a human being. For humans, we love things. And what we love we want. And what we want, we struggle to acquire. Again, you know, you could map this into a Buddhist framework pretty easily.So every pleasure that we experience is preceded by desire born of sensation. And so, you know, putting two and two together, I think part of what he’s trying to say here is that pleasure seeking is incompatible with dispassion. Because when we seek and experience pleasure, it’s because we’ve given into desire born of sensation to some extent. And what we’re looking for in dispassion is something that’s not born from sensation. It’s not contingent on sensation.So he continues. There are eight principal kinds of tempting thoughts. So here I think, and I don’t have the Greek available, but it’s on this website. All you have to do is just search Ev Ponticus, Praktikos. So, if you’re a scholar here, you can do more tracing than I can. But I think for the first time he’s introducing this word, logismoi, the singular being, logismos. These are like tempting thoughts.I think they’re tempting thoughts that are born of sensation. So these eight kinds of tempting thoughts, he says, contain within themselves every tempting thought. And this is the origin of the Enneagram. First, that of gluttony. And with that of sexual immorality. Third, that of love of money. Fourth, that of sadness. Fifth, that of anger. Six, that of acedia or sloth or torpor. Seventh, that of vain glory. Eighth, that of pride.I just want to check. Yeah, I guess vanity would be an acceptable translation of vainglory. It’s not the same as pride, although they’re certainly related.He says we cannot control whether these tempting thoughts can agitate the soul or not. But whether they remain in us or not and whether they move the passions or not, that we can control.So the basic framework, as far as I can tell that Evagrius is laying out is this soul or, I think he would use that interchangeably with nous, Mind. This mind of ours is assailed by logismoi, tempting thoughts. And it is outside of our control whether these thoughts agitate us or not. The mind has sort of wounds in it that date back to the fall of man and before that the fall of the angels and Satan. So we are already subject to agitation. We are already subject to passions. So agitation is part of life. Though what we can control is whether they move the passions or not. So the passions you could think of as sort of grooves in the mind that if animated or moved by these tempting thoughts, if captured or captivated, then those actually move the mind. That’s where our responsibility begins.* The tempting thought of gluttony suggests to the monk the sudden rejection of his asceticism. And it’s interesting he starts here. Naranjo also starts with gluttony. He says something interesting about gluttony, that in a way gluttony is the door to all the other passions, in the sense that, you know, here if you give up your asceticism, everything will fall from there. Right? So it’s interesting that Evagrius starts with gluttony. The stomach, liver, spleen and resultant congestive heart failure are depicted along with long sickness, lack of necessities and unavailability of physicians.It often leads him to recall those of the brethren who have suffered these things. Sometimes it even deceives those who have suffered from this kind of thing to go and visit others who are practicing self control to tell them all about their misfortunes and how this resulted from their asceticism.Super interesting depiction of gluttony here, where what’s being presented to the mind, to the nous in this logismos is not a banquet table full of delicious things. It’s actually the possibility of sickness, of destitution. You know, you’ve got no access to health care. We could say as a monk, you think about all of your brethren who died or suffered from ailments. You might even go out and tell people about misfortunes. So it’s basically gluttony is getting people off the ascetic path through fear. Although, you know, fear interestingly, is sort of the great missing element in the these eight evil thoughts. So fear is the, you know, if Enneagram is nine and the eight evil thoughts here are eight, fear is the one that’s missing.So anyway, that maybe contributes to why gluttony goes first.* The demon of sexual immorality, that’s porneia, compels desiring for different bodies. Especially violently does it attack those who practice self control so that they will cease as if achieving nothing, contaminating the soul. It bends it down toward these sorts of deeds. It makes it speak certain words and then hear them as if the thing were actually there to be seen.So these are these sort of temptations off the ascetic path—gluttony on the one hand and immorality on the other.* Love of money. Avarice suggests a long old age, hands powerless to work, hunger and disease yet to come the bitterness of poverty and the disgrace of receiving the necessities of life from others.So again, the presentation of the logismos is not abundance, is not, wouldn’t it be great if I had wealth. It’s the presentation of poverty. So stinginess is my preferred translation of avarice rather than greed. And here again the mind is being presented or assaulted with things that are basically undesirable fears, things that we want to avoid.And if we’re just keeping track of the numbers here, you know, avarice is the five, sexual immorality is the eight, is lust. And gluttony is the seven. So we kind of have, while that’s not a traditional triad of the Enneagram, and it skips over the six, that is a pocket of the Enneagram. And which is interesting to think about. And they are in some ways all in relationship to threat. I think you could safely say, 5 and 7 are in the fear triads, more explicitly avoidant or fearing types. The eight being a neighbor that sort of responds to fear in that kind of aggressive way of lust. Again, we don’t need to map these perfectly onto the Enneagram. That’s not really the point here.He continues. Gloominess sometimes arises from frustrated desires, but sometimes it is the result of anger. When desires are frustrated, it arises thus, certain tempting thoughts first seize the soul and remind it of home and parents and its former course of life. So there’s that nostalgia and the melancholy of the four. When they see the soul following them without resistance and dissipating itself in mental pleasures, they take and dunk, literally baptize it in gloom. Since it is the case that these earlier things are gone and cannot be recovered due to the monk’s present way of life, then the miserable soul, having been dissipated by the first tempting thought, is humiliated all the more by the second.So some subtleties around how gloominess or melancholy can arise. Sometimes it’s frustrated desire, but sometimes it’s anger at the course of life that one has taken.Anger or orge, is the sharpest passion. It is said to be a boiling and movement of indignation thumos against a wrongdoer or person, presumed wrongdoer. So now we’re in the one. It causes the soul to be savage all day long, but especially in prayers. It seizes the nous, reflecting back the face of the distressing person. Then sometimes it is lingering and is changed into rancor, menace or menos. And thus it causes disturbances at night, bodily weakness and pallor, and attacks from poisonous beasts. These four things associated with rancor may be found to have been summoned up by many other tempting thoughts.So you can see how relational and interdependent all these thoughts are here. That anger can arise from other thoughts, gloominess can arise from anger and so on.* The demon of Acedia, which is also called the Noonday demon, is the most burdensome of all the demons. So he’s using demon and logismos or logismoi interchangeably. I don’t know if in Evagrius’s system, all thoughts, all logismoi are demons. I think he’s using them interchangeably now. And that’s how we’ll do it. But certainly not all thoughts have to be demonic, I would think. And we’ll learn more about that I think later in the Praktikos.It, that’s Acedia, besets the monk at about the fourth hour, which is 10am of the morning, encircling his soul until about the eighth hour, 2pm. First it makes the sun appear to slow down or stop, so the day seems to be 50 hours long. Then it forces the monk to keep looking out the window and rush from his cell to observe the sun in order to see how much longer it is to the 9th hour, i.e. 3:00pm. And to look about in every direction, in case any of the brothers are there. Then it assails him with hatred of his place, his way of life and the work of his hands. That love has departed from his brethren and there is no one to console him.If anyone has recently caused the monk grief, the demon adds this as well to amplify his hatred of these things. It makes him desire other places where he can easily find all that he needs and practice an easier and more convenient craft. After all, pleasing the Lord is not dependent on geography. The demon adds, God is to be worshipped everywhere. It combines this with remembrance of his relatives and his former way of life, and depicts to him a long life, placing before his eyes a vision of the burdens of the ascetic life.So it employs, as they say, every possible means to move the monk to leave his cell and flee the race course. No other demon comes immediately after this one. Rather, after the struggle, the soul receives in turn a peaceful state and unspeakable joy.Very interesting. So, he has a lot to say about the nine, sloth, laziness, torpor, acedia. And again, it’s so interesting that, you know, you can really hear the sequencing of demons. So this particular demon is not followed by another demon. Actually after this one, there’s a peaceful state and an unspeakable joy. Evagrius seems to have the deepest relationship with this one. This is quite a long description of how the demon operates. Quite detailed. Yeah, very interesting.Continuing. 13. The tempting thought of vainglory is especially subtle and easily sneaks into those whose lives are going well, wanting to publish their efforts and go hunting for glory among men. And it imagines demons shouting and women being healed and a crowd wanting to touch his clothes. It prophesies his ordination to the priesthood with people seeking him at his door. And even if he resists being carried off to be ordained by force. So really fantasy of fame.And having raised him up with these empty hopes, it suddenly leaps off, leaving and abandoning him to be tempted by the demon of pride or the demon of gloominess. So quickly there, you know, we have the three, which is the temptation of vanity. And then in the departure of the three, one either goes up to pride or down to gloominess, up to the two or down to the four, bringing on tempting thoughts, the opposite of his earlier hopes.Sometimes it also hands him over to the demon of sexual immorality, the man who shortly before was being carried off to be made a holy priest by force.That’s interesting. There’s kind of something a little sexual about that phrase, being carried off to be made a holy priest by force. So there is almost a little bit of that sexual fantasy. No, is that just me picking that up?* The demon of pride conducts the soul to the very worst fall. It urges it, one, not to acknowledge God’s help. Two, to think it is responsible for its own success. Three, to be arrogant towards the brethren as unintelligent because they do not all share the same opinion concerning this. This demon is followed by anger and gloominess and the ultimate evil, complete insanity and madness and visions of throngs of demons in the air.So that’s an introduction to the eight tempting thoughts. I think we’ll pause there, before continuing where he’s going to talk about tactics for resisting these temptations.The order here is roughly. Let’s look carefully. So we went 7, 8, 5, 4, 1, 9, 3, 2. I don’t, that doesn’t speak to me in any profound way, but certainly within these descriptions, he makes some really interesting claims that do, some of them do continue on to the Enneagram today. For instance, the way that the 9 is somehow sort of special and different from the other numbers. And you know, his description of the nine here is one in which it sort of assails him with the other thoughts. Right. I mean, I think that’s part of what he’s talking about in terms of hatred of his place, grief, desire, remembrance of other ways. Right. So there’s sort of this assault that comes from what he says is the most burdensome of all the demons. And conversely, it is never followed by another demon. So there’s a way that the nine kind of exists outside of the cycle that we see in other places. And I would say the modern Enneagram kind of reflects that in some sense.In contrast, when you think about vanity, he’s saying vanity, you know, oftentimes moves him either into pride or gloominess or sometimes sexual immorality. Right. So anyway, we’re not getting stretch and release points. We’re not getting wings exactly. But you can see how that kind of dynamic mapping is so core to Evagrius’s eight tempting thoughts.Okay, we’ll pick up next time. Thanks for watching. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

Hello and welcome to the Barrcast.I'm your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a sunny and breezy, April 1st.April Fool's Day.So, it's been a while since my last chapter, but if you'll remember, we're on the sexual 3, whose keyword is attractiveness.So I actually recorded this one a few weeks ago and didn't feel great about the recording.I rushed my way through it and I realized we're back to, we're at the final number, the three.We started the four, because I'm a four, and it snuck up on me.But, we're back in my neighborhood.And the sexual subtype and the self preservation subtype, these are the subtypes that I find, myself connecting with more deeply.So I realized, gosh, I think I probably breezed through this chapter in a way to avoid my own inner stuff.So I'm gonna do another pass.I'm gonna be a little bit more connected with what's happening inside me.As I read is a super long chapter.So that's.That's part of the problem.And so I'm gonna do my best to navigate this.But let's hear what, Claudio Naranjo has to say about the sexual 3.For the passion of the sexual 3, Ichaso used the words masculinity or femininity, depending on the case.I used to explain it as an excessive attempt to conform to cultural images, perhaps Hollywood style, of what it means to be masculine or feminine nowadays.He says, I believe that the fundamental pathology of these individuals lies in the fact that instead of acting from instinctive freedom, they invest all their passion into the thirst for love and the corresponding seduction, either through compliance or by projecting an image that is meant to be attractive and exciting.The result of this is that a woman being overly focused on pleasing a man, loses her ability to enjoy herself. additionally, this personality type tends to have a certain passion for family, which, while it does not appear as a flaw, represents an exaggerated need to please others, perpetuating self alienation.Among the three subtypes, the sexual three is the most dependent.They do not usually display aggression and cannot tolerate rejection.Their seduction is aimed at being embraced and validated, confusing their self worth with the attractiveness of their body.So that's the introduction, and we have Lorena Garcia de las Bayonas beautiful name with the, transformation in the sexual type 3.So before we dive into it, I really what Naranjo describes as his own evolution. when I think about his starting place for the sexual three.Well, the, the person who comes to my mind is Don Draper from Mad Men.And I'm reading, watching Mad Men now.And so you have this masculine, attractive, mysterious type. he's, he himself has reinvented himself. ?So there's that mask quality that we typically associate with the more available words for the three.The three can be chameleonic, the three can be political.The three can be focused, on success and progress.So all that Don Draper energy is there. and Don Draper certainly conforms to the cultural images of what it means to be masculine.But I how Naranjo gets even more specific, which is that their passion is to be what is desirable from the opposite sex.So to make yourself into something that is pleasurable, pleasing, desirable to the opposite sex is the passion.So it's not just Clint Eastwood, it's Clint Eastwood if and only if that is known to be what women want.And we'll have a woman's perspective for the sexual three.So we'll hear a lot more about that.You can imagine that sexual threes will be different for men and women because men and women want different things.And I just, I guess I'll say a little bit more before we get into the chapter, which is that the core types 3, 6 and 9 are for me the most difficult types to work with.The energies of them.And in part that's because they're more pure energies. we've talked about the six.The six is the, the passion of fear.And who can't relate to fear?Fear is so basic of a human mechanism. nine is trickier in some ways.I think nines are perhaps easier to type.But the nine, passion of sloth or indolence or numbing, self forgetting.Again, we all have profound amounts of self forgetting.Very few of us are really in contact with what we want, what we're about, what we're on earth to do.So self forgetting is this universal, human condition.And then three desirability, mask, falsity, covering up, with deceit, A, profound emptiness.Again, we all have that. we all look in the mirror every morning.Many of us do and dress up according to some idea of what something somebody wants.But I think the three in particular is hard for me as a four.And this is something that is useful to know about Naranjo.I don't think Naranjo really talked about the wings much.Wings have taken off in the popular framing of the Enneagram.But Naranjo really was concerned with the core types and then looked at the other types as stemming from the.So you're basically a three, six, or nine.And so a four is a three, a two is a three. you're just a three.And so the three is continually preoccupied with image.And the two has found a way to have a positive self image, and that comes with their own issues.The four has found a way to have a negative self image, and that comes with their issues.And so that would be a a brief way of Naranjo describing things.So it's interesting.One of the, names I played with when I was thinking about maybe starting, a publication just for this was Four Wing Five.And there are a lot of people who identify as Four Wing Five. and Richard Rohr has talked about that chasm between the four and the five as the hardest to cross.So there's a little bit of mystique around a four wing five. at the at the bottom, the 6:00 of the Enneagram.But if Naranjo were here, he might say, that's not really a thing.Four Wing Five, a four is much closer to three than they are to five.And I think that's interesting to play with for myself and for other fours, potentially, because, nobody wants to be a three, really.Threes get hard.They get put through it a little bit in the.In the Enneagram, again, because they have this fundamental almost universal human thing of having an image.And so it's easier for a four, I think, to take their authenticity and their creativity into the five space of, this genius area.It's in a way easier for us to hang out in that space.I'm not just creative.I'm also a hermit.But.And of course, there can be truth to that.But, I think it's healthy for any four to explore their threeness.And I think it's probably hard for a four to do that.And it might be the same with fives.Fives might, be drawn to the fourness.I'm not just a hermit.I'm also a creative artist.But, for five to actually touch the fear underneath, that feeling of maybe emptiness or solitude.Oh, yeah, there's fear there.That.That's probably juicy terrain for a five.So I'm glad I didn't call this four ring five, because I would have at this point said I've made a terrible mistake.Okay, let's get into the Transformation The Sexual Type 3 by Lorena Garcia de las Bayonas.And we will try to breeze through this while hitting the key points.So she thanks a bunch of individuals. she writes, as sexual three approaches character healing, they become free to be, to feel and to express themselves authentically without being imprisoned by the beautiful physical image, being able even to be ugly and show the ugliness of their life such as pain, anger, sadness, jealousy, envy, resentment, and everything they consider shameful or that makes them lose control.So off the bat we're talking about freedom and spontaneity.And threes are.One of the easier ways to spot a three or differentiate a three from other types is threes are a little, held in.It's a three has to pass through an image filter before doing something.They're the most image conscious.And so freedom, the freedom to be, to feel, to express isn't there for the three.So as this is helpful for me was when I'm doing my self typing, Self Preservation 4 has always been the one that spoke most clearly to me.But a self preservation four has that in common with the three, ?The self preservation four has to be contained and containment, something that three and the four, the sexual three and the self preservation four share here.Now the reasons for containment are different and we'll explore that as we get into it.In this way, they're free to be able to make mistakes without the fear that they will stop being loved.They also leave behind the dependence on approval and love from others, especially from a partner, which results from a lack of self love.What remains is more real sense of self love through which they can feel a greater warmth inside after passing through the hell of breaking through the internal numbness and the inability to love.So for the three, the self abandonment is profound, and prevalent here.The three has made this bargain early on to treat the image of themselves as their real self.And they don't know that they've made that bargain or it's not available to them.So in contrast, the four has this unlovability.The four has the presence of being unlovable.The three has the absence of being lovable.For the sexual three, if my partner isn't validating me, then that's terrifying.And I think it's even more.It's not that I'll feel bad.It's I don't even.I'm without ground.Whereas the four might say, if my partner leaves me, I knew I was bad, I knew all along they would leave me, they don't me, et cetera, et cetera.So it's for the four, the threat of separation is a confirmation of some deeply held negative belief.For the three.Then they touch emptiness.They touch not knowing what I am, who I am, if I am not pleasing to this person, I understand how my ego is destroying me and preventing me from finding love.Now at this stage of my life, love is about all the love I can feel for myself.Truly knowing myself and considering myself.That is where everything begins to be more real.Love is not a goal, nor a task, nor an achievement, nor a conquest.When a sexual three heals, they also appear more relaxed and carefree.They let go of the compulsion to do things, to have everything under control and to be loved.With their gaze turned inward rather than outward, they can see the difference between what they truly feel and need and self deception.In this way, they become stronger and more mature and the sensation of fragility disappears.The kind that makes people say, better not touch them, they might break.They also become more independent, knowing they can survive sometimes even better without a partner, feeling loved and valued for who they are, not for what they do.That might be a way to disambiguate between a sexual three and a self preservation four. the work that I'm doing in this document is.I don't know if my gaze is that turned outward, to some extent.It is, for sure.I would say that, yeah, I think I'm much more inward focused.I certainly do enact and feel and think ways that are according to, masculinity.And when I think about masculinity, what, what does masculinity mean?To me, it's super heterosexually motivated. being a man.Being masculine to my structure is being the things that a woman needs, which is different. an 8.Their masculinity can be about power and autonomy and strength.Same thing with a six.Potentially sexual six.For me, my sense of masculinity is deeply tied in to, meeting the needs of, of the feminine, of the, of the, Of a fe.Of a woman. that said, the conclusion there still feels a lot more a self preservation, for it still feels a lot more containment and self suppression rather than looking, feeling a certain way.But there, opening doors, paying for dinner.There's a whole set of things that I do automatically or did automatically when I was dating.Now I just slammed the door in my wife's face.No, that.Yeah, those were, Those were image conscious.I just don't know if they were.That, I wasn't doing a lot of this outward gaze.I don't think it's interesting to spend more time with that.Healing also involves finding the freedom to enjoy sex without merely being an object for the other's pleasure.Being able to let go of control and be less focused on their image, which does not allow them to feel pleasure and in many cases reach orgasm.Yeah, so a sexual three, I'm going to speak from the man, heterosexual man's point of view. that's about my sense of worth is wrapped up in the woman's pleasure. my potency is the woman's orgasm.In my own sexual experience, it's just not again.Almost nine, ? just forgotten.Remember the nine and the six of the three, that core triad, they have so much in common.I think nine sixes and threes move into each other with a lot more fluidity than the other, connected types.So the three, and being so preoccupied with image, of course forgets themselves.The sexual three woman, in the process of healing, sees her, sees herself learning to live without the need for the gaze and recognition of a man.And of course, for a woman, our culture is so much more conducive to threeness.For a man, she adds, it would similarly involve the need for the gaze of a woman, a childish and narcissistic need for constant applause, which leaves him increasingly empty because his romantic relationships are based on doing things so that the other applauds him.So much of these relational needs end up, becoming transactional.So I need the love of a woman.But in that need for reinforcement and confirmation, we both end up losing our true erotic connection.On my end, I need.I regress into a childish need for applause on her end.She shuts down into, great job, honey, and nobody is actually getting what they want.Many times, she adds, achieving that applause becomes very difficult, leading to great frustration that results in a permanent state of unhappiness in their romantic life.So we're talking about, she says, becoming aware of self deception and falseness in romantic relationships.Self deception and falsity being the core passions and fixations of the three.Unmasking the image of being good and perfect in order to be loved.And realizing their difficulty in truly loving represents one of the greatest shadows for the sexual three, as they have always believed they had a great capacity to love.Yeah, that's painful.That's really, that's really hard.I'm going to skip over some of these quotations from a book she writes about entering the therapeutic process for the sexual three.Remember, a lot of these writers are, psychotherapists.So this is heavy on the therapy side here.So, she talks about why might a three start therapy or a sexual three start therapy. she says if a sexual three looks inward even slightly, then they will realize they feel a sadness that has always been there.Reminds me of the five.If the five looks inward even slightly, they will realize an emptiness that has always been there.And for a three, they'll feel a sadness that has always been there.And for a four in the middle, you'll probably get a mix of sad and empty.So there's that polarization between the three and the five.I think that's another way to disambiguate. the three is a polarization between the two and the four.So the three is bringing in more of that other centricity that a 2 has, that attunement to need.The 4 really is a bit more self, self absorbed.So the four is caught between the inner emptiness and the inner sadness. so what do they do with the sadness?What happens is that by not expressing it and being constantly preoccupied with not showing it, they don't even reveal it to themselves.So why might the three start therapy? someone they admire might.That's snarky.But she says, the motivation that a sexual three finds to begin therapy is initially related to the fact that someone they admire has spoken to them about the benefits of the process and has told them they might need it.A sexual three might also come to realize they had a difficult life.I say realize because perhaps they have been disconnected from their personal tragedy.I think that I can connect to that.There's, threes may not really be in touch with what they didn't get.And then they share something about their life or childhood and someone reflects back to them the tragic nature of their experience. another reason, she says, is the trendiness of the therapeutic world.Rarely.Her point is the motivation comes from a true need for a feeling of true need for transformation that takes time to develop.Because the three, or the sexual three specifically feels this deep disconnection to, their experience. they'd have to let the mask Slip, perhaps they might feel a very fragile and sad person, or they might not show that, or they might embellish it to use it as a seduction tool.Where they may clearly feel the need for introspection is usually after a breakup.In that case, they will connect with a primitive pain related to reliving an abandonment by their father or mother.For sexual three, a breakup is their worst nightmare.Better than die.To separate, they seem to think, or they imagine that is the closest thing to death.I, don't know how common that is, but I certainly relate to that. it took me a while to be able to accept the prospect of the end of a relationship, as a normal thing.For me.It was always existential, always a death and something that I almost couldn't look at. not so much because of fear.Fear, of being abandoned or fear of being alone, but that primal fear of, what am I if not in a relationship?Not even that conscious thought, but just almost, an incapacity.And I certainly have had times in my life where alone, even if my partner is just away for a while, I just fall into this really crude way of being not taking care of myself, things that.And again, I don't know how much of this, maybe that's men, I'm not sure.But here in the sexual three, I think that feels that's part of the energy when facing a breakup.They may even have suicidal thoughts, start using drugs to drown out their suffering.They're terribly afraid of pain.And when they enter it, it feels they will never come out, no matter how many times they've been in and out of it before.That's tricky for the four, because the four is a friend of pain.Although the four has turned pain into a story.And so the four also, their pain, their drama sometimes is their protective device against even deeper pain.It's one of the worst survival strategies in the Enneagram.I think for the four, the four is let me, Let me feel a lot of pain so that I don't actually have to feel the real pain.People quotations, point being life.Life revolving around romantic relationships.A sexual three feels and lives in a permanent prison.The feel suffocated by vanity.And this suffocation leads them to want to remain unnoticed and to be extremely shy, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.They need to free themselves from this is another motivation that might lead them to therapy.So this prison is on the One hand, the need to always be, pleasing to the other. again, not pleasing in the supplement supplicatory way of the two.Not submissive pleasing or sexual pleasing.It's more a full identity complementing. it's a performance.It's a.It's masterful performance of I give you exactly what you need.So there's power there. there's less of an insecurity or at least a conscious insecurity.So that takes a huge amount of energy which is suffocating, which then wants They want to remain unnoticed and be extremely shy.That's interesting.We haven't really heard much about the shyness of the three, but it makes sense.You would want to be almost in a place where you're completely alone, which is maybe familiar to the three.That not being noticed.Essentially.I either I'm either on stage or I'm.Nobody's noticing me.That's an interesting polarity for the three to explore.What is left behind in the process of transformation.Emotional, sexual and physical disconnection is left behind.The fear of real intimacy, the dependency on love.The self deception around love.The thirst for loving and being loved.Superficiality.Compulsion to put all energy into seduction, conquest and pleasing the other.The dependence on recognition and applause in romantic relationship.The fear of confrontation is also left behind as well as the self deception that comes with the stories one tells oneself to avoid confrontation.You can hear the nine in that finally the sexual three dares to experience conflict and sustain it.Something so feared and difficult for them.Therapeutic recommendations.Yeah, just stepping away from seduction, stepping away from image.And the therapist.These are, recommendations to a therapist that she's giving here is the therapist has to be aware of this seductive performance that the three will put on.And with self deception and seduction, there's also the danger that the patient will end up taking control of the therapy and will not surrender to the process.Seeing the same relational patterns, repeating feeling an object only seen for the term see.Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. the three takes control.That's the Mad Men Don Draper assertiveness piece, I think even, the feminine side of that, which may be more, submissive in some ways.There's still a controlling.That's very important for the three.I control the experience.And by controlling the experience, I feel I have power.I feel I have freedom.I feel I know what's really going on.But in fact it's the opposite.There's no freedom.It's, a highly contained, experience.There's no spontaneity.There's not seeing what's really going on because there's disconnection from one's interior, and you're not in contact with the other.So once they get past all this, she writes, the sexual three will connect with the void of not knowing who they are outside of another person.That's huge.Connect with the void of not knowing who you are outside of another person.That's the basic work, I think, for the three Energy, threes, if you work with the three, getting, them to, to write about what they want in a way that's just for them.Not a, Not a blog post, not an announcement.It's very difficult.A lot of things come out of the three, pr.Once they pass through that emptiness, then they can begin to see the self deception they've lived in all their life.So there's seduction and self deception moving through that.Then there's this void of really not knowing what I am and then spending time in that void a, a baby learning to crawl. well, what do I want?What do I care about?What's real to me then?But just by seeing how hard that is for themselves, then they come face to face with their self deception and how, how it's driven their, Their life.And it's so hard for a three because the three is successful.The three is good looking.The three has it all.The three has great relationships.Typically.I'm super generalizing, but contrast that to the four.The neighbor four is come beating down the doors on therapy because they're really having a tough time.So the four comes saying, I want to transform.So interesting.They're very different that way. and they have so much in common.But the four, four are certainly more in contact with that emptiness.But the four is tricky because the four can turn anything into a story really fast, including that emptiness.The three is the same way the three has.The four turns it into a story of art and of drama and of, its aesthetic.Aesthetically beautiful.That's how.That's how the four stays.I'm talking really subtle layers now.But the four, even at the deepest levels of experiment, experience can turn that into art.And it can be wonderful art.But, that instinct oftentimes comes from a still a need to be authentic and need to be special to avoid, let's say, generic feelings of abandonment and hurt.Anything but generic, ?The three.I, think as we'll see maybe later in this chapter, and I think we saw in the previous one, the three will touch that and then turn it into a success story, Turn it into a turnaround, turn it into a hero's journey.Gosh, I hit bottom and then I made it great.So they both have that fast reconstituting, structure, quality.They may realize their entire life has been a great lie they constructed out of hunger for love and admiration. these are hard things to say, but this is from a three, and threes are, I think part of the reason the literature is hard on threes is because threes are hard on threes.That's part of their transformation work, is threes are, brutally honest.At the end.They, they look at themselves in the mirror, but when they do, they can really can be stark.So I take it when she's saying these things, I take it that she's speaking to herself.Realizing that your entire life has been a great lie I constructed out of hunger for love and admiration.You'd love to see someone be a little bit gentler there.But I think for her and for maybe threes, there's actually some healing with that going to the depths of that, pain.Quote.I came to therapy with great internal confusion and physically exhausted.Entangled in an abusive relationship without being able to leave or recognize it.After 15 years, I woke up.The idyllic dream had turned into a nightmare in a prison.I saw that I didn't really my life, and I was enormously tired of sacrificing myself and feeling dead inside.End quote.To begin valuing their essence, the person first needs to know it.And here the therapist has to be patient.The sexual 3 may feel they've got nothing to say.When they look inside, they only see emptiness.That's where the healing begins. there are suggestions around seeing potentially a female, therapist for a woman so that the seduction is less present.Recommended, exercises.We've got the usual suspects here.I'd love to see more differentiation, but I feel these are.You hear them over and over again.Reconnecting with the body theater. that's okay.That's a great one for the three in particular. ?Because of that spontaneity and learning to bypass the.The image manager, as it were. meditation, daring to be authentic, expressing oneself, authenticity, authentically allowing oneself to express what one considers ugly also helps So I can really connect with that. probably one of the scariest ways that I could show myself would be ugly for me.And yet as a four, I dwell in ugliness, so that's what's confusing.Can I solve that puzzle in, In a minute for myself?So for.I'll just say this four deals with profound issues of being bad, ugly, toxic, etc, and deals with that in a bunch of ways. so the, the story there is available to me, but the actual, the actual experience, maybe this is just how things have shifted for me.Maybe it would be a different story 10 years ago, but these days I see through that, story more how arbitrary it is and how, how and when and why I might have made up that story about myself, but still, being vulnerable, being sloppy, those feel ugly to me.So I'm somebody else would be oh, I talk to a lot of people.They have concerns about being too much. if I, If I tell you everything, then that that might overwhelm you.I don't really have that.I just feel that would be ugly.That would be aesthetically unappealing.And so I, Maybe that's just 3 energy there.But it could also be told in a 4 framework, ?Of that will.They'll.Then they'll see the real me, which is ugly, and, and leave me or something that.But, but for.For this four, at least, the, abandonment is less present than rejection.And rejection is not so bad for being alone as for being unseen, unknown, unknown.That feels a little more foreish.You, know, these, These pro.These primal things.Abandonment, rejection, isolation, they're all very, very close to each other.So you have to dig in there to figure out what is it specifically.So rejection, of course is very painful for the four.Not being known is very core for, I think a lot of fours for the three.What is at the core? what's so bad about being rejected?I know that I connect with.With 3 energy.I connect a lot with being discarded.Very painful. the, the feeling of being thrown out, but that feeling is still an object feeling.So that still.That still is the feeling of a three who feels an object.If I take off my mask and express myself as ugly or spontaneous or then what?See, I think the three is.Is it's.It's more connected, I think, to they don't have necessarily another choice. what we're hearing in this chapter is threes have to connect with the emptiness.They have to connect with how little they've developed their real self.She's saying here, first it's necessary to connect with one's own needs in order to identify what one wants and does not want from others.This allows the sexual three to set the necessary boundaries.She's talking about boundaries.So they no longer feel used. yeah, feeling used, that's used up, discarded.So that's that wounding.That's very familiar for the three. what the three doesn't know about is being loved for exactly who you are, just.Just for who you are, what you are. the unconditional love.But the three hasn't had that experience so much in their bodies, at least in their hearts.So I think it's more of an annihilation, emptiness, destruction, void thing that I would say is that's what's so scary.It's not, I'm afraid of being rejected, of course.I'm afraid of being rejected, of course.The feeling of being discarded is unbearable.But I think even that feeling of being discarded is a layer on top of the core void, emptiness.That is terrifying, sure, but is also simply just I don't know what I am.Complete disorientation, complete not knowing, carrying on.Humility is important for the three sense of humor.And I find a lot of threes have this humility and humor about themselves.Self deprecating humor in a way, but not in a.In a really beautiful way.The three is the most honest.The healed three will tell you their journey.And this is where the three stuff gets so tricky because it's threes can also turn that into a great business, And so it's gosh, as a three were, you've got to be so diligent about Am I turning this into marketing?Has my marketing department taken over again?Because threes will tell an amazing story about their transformation.But if they're clowning around a little bit, if there's a sense of humor, that I think that's a really good sign.What a sexual three must come to understand.It is important for a sexual three to understand that nothing bad will happen if they emotionally surrender to another person, if they lose control, if they let go of their mask, and if they show themselves authentically, on the contrary, it can bring immense relief and allow them to build relationships that are deeply fulfilling ones where they can form a true bond with their partner.Letting Go of.The need for power in relationships is key.The need for power and control comes from fear.This is where threes and eights can get a little bit mixed up.And I think it's Naran who says that, one of the easier ways is the eight has that spontaneity.The eight will unleash their power and the three is more contained.But power and controller are of primary concern for both. the sexual three must understand that refusing to commit to one person and constantly seducing others just in case something better comes along only leaves them feeling increasingly alone and empty.Okay, so we've got some, Yeah, we still have a lot to do, so I'm going to try to breeze through some of these testimonies.I love testimonies.But here, here, listen to this self preservation4energy quote.I confused love with the obligation to endure everything.If I love my partner, I endure them.And by enduring, I receive their love.I think from that quote alone, you can't say whether That's a sexual 3 or a self preservation 4.Endurance is key to both.But the 4, the self preservation 4 will be more obviously beleaguered, drained.A lot of fours wear their fourness on their face, I would say.I, I think maybe that's taboo to talk about, faces, but you can definitely get, information.I'm not talking about the.What is it?Phrenology.It's just fours have.Especially self preservation 4 can be eating themselves from the inside.Whereas the 3's endurance, again, think about Don Draper.There's that stoicism, that forbearance there, but he turns it into his mask.Very tricky.I think, for myself at least, I might have to try on sexual three as a, as a structure for a few weeks and see what I learn.I felt such desperation for my husband's sexual and emotional rejection that my conclusion was if he no longer likes my body, it means he no longer likes who I am.I was willing to do anything to win back his love. and in a state of complete disconnection and impulsivity, I went to a plastic surgeon to get breast reconstruction.I was at the peak of my neurosis of the madness of vanity, where being and body are confused, where giving and receiving love is confused with image.I was convinced that I could win back his love by becoming sexy again.When I started my inner journey, I realized it had been an act of self harm and an attack on my own femininity.You can see how different masculinity and femininity show up.So it might be the same structure, but really different ways of being in the world.My confidence has always depended on men.I've never known true confidence in myself, only an illusion where for moments I could feel a superwoman.If a man I was interested in, loved or cared about me, then I was valuable, someone worthy.That way I could take care of myself and believe that I truly mattered.If that person lost interest in me, it was a catastrophe.My false sense of confidence would collapse and I would see the truth that, deep down I felt nothing but hatred and contempt for myself because I wasn't able to win or maintain their love.Terry, my wife is a two and fours.And twos have a lot of material that they collide with each other on.We talked about positive self image, negative self image, and the three is where they meet. ?But the three is also so hard to look cleanly at. so I'm just thinking about my relationship with her, how much my own confidence depends on how she sees me.And again, some of this is normal.I'm not saying healthy, I just mean normal. 3, 6 and 9 being the core triads. probably a lot of people feel that way. their sense of self worth, of course, is deeply wrapped up in how their life partner sees them.But also a lot of people would probably say, if my partner stopped liking me, I'd look for another partner.And then even more deeply than that is, my partner didn't me.Then I would say, sucks for them.I myself.That's where we would to get to.But whether you're two or four or three, it's dependence, it's codependence, it's the codependent triad.Two, three, four, shame, triad, heart. triad, codependent triad.Maybe that's not fair. because eights, nines, sixes, all experience codependency in some way.But it's the home of this heart triad relationship.Now I see the absolute necessity of strengthening what is mine.My home, my work, my way of spending time.That my desires are not just a way to pass the time while I wait for someone to love me for real.I think it's really healthy for a three and for any number but a three to do things for themselves.Cook for yourself, design a space for yourself, not for the other.Many, many of these quotes are from women, which is helpful. but I don't want us to forget how different masculinity and femininity are.Quote.In my life, the gaze I have sought most is that of a man, and has come at the cost of losing myself in the presence of a man.I have never given myself space to know who I am, what I desire, or what I need.I simply merged with him.I have sought out men who, from the beginning, showed signs of emotional absence, which require me to exert even more effort to be noticed, as if I were repeating over and over the endless search for my absent father.I was trapped in the crazy fantasy that if I adjusted enough, the other would stay by my side.So I took on the responsibility of making sure that the presence of the other depended on how well I could be and do things.I sought men whom I idealized for what they represented in the world because through them, I could build a more solid identity for myself.If I'm with someone who's important, maybe that means I am important too.See, I think none of that really applies to the male sexual three, because what she's saying here is the gaze.In order to attract the gaze of a man, I need to lose myself and merge with him and.And reinforce him, applaud him, be by his side, etc.That's.That's the feminine.That.That.That's.That's the feminine idea of the masculine gaze or the male gaze.I think the male idea of the female gaze.There are many. certainly, attractiveness in terms of pure sexual appeal is.Could be one.But, safety. ?Women want to feel safe.So that's where I'll be macho.I won't have needs.I'll.I'm not.I'm going to be contained and I'm going to make her feel safe, make her feel treasured, make her feel a trophy.Make her feel I worship her again.Make her feel Not actually worship her, not actually have her be safe, not actually do these things, but make her feel that way.That's the.The, Same goes to make them feel that way.I think Suzanne Stabile has written, that the three is feeling repressed, but they're also feeling centered, meaning that feelings are really primary for them.And I think they're very conscious of how they want to make people feel, and they act from that place, even if unconsciously.But what do they feel that's not.That's blocked?Reclaiming Authenticity.Quote.Let's talk childhood.I always believed that I had a happy childhood, but later I realized that From a very young age, I was deeply disconnected from myself.Although I perceived myself as a sensitive child, I quickly learned that if I expressed what I felt, I could upset others.Mainly my parents who were always very busy.My mother raising children, my father always tense and working.So I learned not to express my emotions or my needs.And I became very good at controlling myself.I became self sufficient, A prudent, well behaved, responsible child with no major complications, but completely alone when it came to emotions.Sometimes I went unnoticed.Other times I achieved success and recognition at school or was chosen a leader in activities.And I loved that, even though I was somewhat shy.Now looking back, I see that my childhood was filled with difficulties in recognizing what I felt, what I wanted and what my needs were.I struggled to trust my sensations and my intuition because.Because they were always denied.It was as if I had to feel what my parents wanted me to feel.Which is why I grew up feeling immense confusion about what was real for me.I gradually suppressed pleasure and spontaneity.I learned to disconnect from my feelings easily, inappropriately, because I believed that expressing them would complicate things for others and I shouldn't be a bother.I stopped validating when I felt and began hiding everything I consider not good.I struggled to see the shadow side of things, of people, of situations, of myself.I couldn't see the ways in which I was being mistreated.The dark side of life.I didn't even recognize my own fears. and reading that, I hear a lot for myself and self preservation for energy.I also hear a lot there.If I'm trying to disambiguate for a second the self preservation four, there's so much more inner turmoil.I don't think the four loses so much their inner state.They just learn that they have to not be that, that what that is is not okay.But they struggle from that.And so The Self Preservation 4 will explode in anger because this repressed, ignored, frustrated part is still there.Saying somebody look at me and then we'll need that contact.The three, it feels their spiral is toward numbness and emptiness.They just disconnect from their feelings. so I'm feeling a certain way, I'm talking about childhood, as, as referenced in this quote. this doesn't feel I feel I'm being mistreated.But if I were to feel that fully, then it would complicate things for others.I would not.I would no longer be pleasing and I want to be pleasing Again, the nine and the six.I want to keep everybody together.I want to preserve relationships.I want this to be safe.So very pure motivations there. and so I question my own intuitions.I doubt my feelings.And that confusion, it sounds the survival strategy for this person over the years goes from confusion to disconnection. better just to put it aside, put feelings aside.The four doesn't really put feelings aside.The four buries feeling the self preservation.Four, sexual four. out with their feelings.I think drama has to be present for the four.Even if it's internal drama, even if it's private drama, the three doesn't have that drama.The three has to be awoken to the drama.Oh my gosh, I did have a tough childhood.Oh my gosh, I didn't experience unconditional love.I want to wrap.I feel better about.I'm not.I wasn't super vulnerable, but I think I was in contact with some of the core questions I have at least about this.And, yeah, there are a lot of quotes here, but in conclusion, she writes, sexual theories were children who were abandoned, mistreated, used, abused, beaten, or violated.We were taught to be objects and our loved ones used us according to their needs.They did not know how to love us for who we were, but only what we did.We became the caretakers of our parents.We were never taught the difference between good and evil, and we learned to disconnect from painful experiences by beautifying them so as not to betray our abusers.We confused mistreatment with love and learned to take responsibility for their actions, transforming them into good people and idealizing them to preserve their image and by extension, our own.All this left us with very low self esteem and a total lack of love.We believed we deserved everything that happened to us and assumed the guilt.Always keeping a pleasant demeanor, appearing sweet, being compliant, and hiding our strength through perfection, we sought moments when we could feel loved and adored, especially by ourselves.Enamored with the idea of love and with being adored, we have drained our lovers and partners, suffocating them with our narcissistic love, demanding a level of attention that no one could possibly fulfill.We sold perfection in order to be loved and demanded that same perfection return.For much of our lives, we chose partners who despised or mistreated us in order to reinforce the deep sense of worthlessness we carried inside.We endured unbearable situations that would eventually be followed by sweet reconciliations.By tolerating mistreatment again and Again, we were willing to pay any price to relive the phase of conquest where we were again once.Where we once again adored, where we once again became the center of the other's gaze.And for that, it seemed worth it.We continued to protect our original abusers and repeated the same pattern, enduring everything in the name of love.When we began to connect with our inner world, we realized that in our partners, we'd been searching for what we never received as children.And as we failed to find it, our frustration, resentment only grew.Our vanity led us to believe that our false love could transform the monster into a prince.Through our healing process, we came to see our vanity and arrogance.How we tried to place ourselves above those who had hurt us in order to maintain our untouchable image of goodness, generosity, and purity.By doing so, we denied them their responsibility.When we finally handed their responsibility back to them, we experienced it as a liberation.At that moment, we began to distinguish what was ours and what was not.And then we were able to begin feeling our pain and our rage.And that rage, in turn, transformed into strength.A strength that allowed us to know what we want and what we do not want in our lives.And in this way, as we begin to find our own power, we stopped handing it to others.Beautiful ending.And we'll finish this project with the, self Preservation three next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of the Barrcast, we meet the Social Three, a personality structure driven by prestige, the need to shine, and the relentless pursuit of social validation. This subtype, the most chameleonic of the Threes, is deeply tuned in to the gaze of others, shaping their identity around admiration, applause, and external markers of success. Talking Points:🔍 The Inner PR Machine: Performing for ApprovalThe Social Three operates as if it has an internal public relations department, constantly curating an image that garners admiration. This endless pursuit consumes an excessive amount of energy and inhibits genuine spontaneity.💔 Breaking the Illusion: The Pain of Seeing the VoidWhen the Three begins to awaken, a deep existential nausea sets in. They realize that much of their life has been built on vanity—on performing rather than being. This moment of crisis is painful but necessary for true growth.🛑 From Applause to Pause: Learning to Be Instead of DoGrowth for the Three involves stepping out of the performance loop, embracing uncertainty, and relinquishing the constant need for external validation. A crucial shift happens when they transition from seeking admiration to seeking presence—learning to value stillness, self-connection, and relationships beyond transactional gain.🎭 The Jester’s Redemption: Laughing at the False SelfOne of the most powerful tools for the Three is self-awareness with humor. When they can see their own impulse toward falsehood and laugh at it, rather than being trapped by it, they gain true freedom. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of the Barrcast, we encounter the Self-Preservation Two, a personality structure deeply connected to privilege and the power of exhibiting childlike traits. This is a structure that seeks love and validation without the effort of achievement or responsibility. Transformation for this type involves embracing maturity, responsibility, and self-sufficiency, ultimately breaking free from the seductive, childlike persona.Talking Points:🔄 Egocentrism and the Need for LoveThe core desire for this type is to be loved simply for existing. Ichazo’s concept of “me the most important” reveals a neurotic longing for adoration, similar to a child’s instinctive egocentrism.💔 Facing Rejection and the Pain of DependencyThe self-preservation Two’s fear of rejection is profound, often driving them to manipulate relationships to maintain a sense of security. Confronting the possibility of rejection and the lack of control in relationship is key to their transformation.⚖️ Transformation: Growing Beyond the Golden ChildGrowth for the self-preservation Two involves “growing up”—accepting responsibility, breaking free from the compulsion to charm and seduce, and embracing discipline, accountability, and most importantly limits.💡 Practical Tips for Growth* Build routines and practice discipline to ground yourself in adult responsibilities.* Face rejection and discomfort instead of avoiding them.* Seek therapeutic relationships that challenge, rather than indulge, your childlike tendencies.* Accept and nurture relationships as mutual and dynamic rather than controlling or transactional. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of the Barrcast, we get to know the Social Two, a personality structure driven by the need for ambition and recognition in the social sphere. The Social Two’s pride fuels their desire to be "above," leading them to craft an image of importance and seduction to win admiration from groups. The Social Two’s transformation work moves them from leadership to equality, in which they embrace humility, vulnerability, and genuine relational intimacy.Talking Points:🔗 Superiority vs. AmbitionEchoes of the Social One (Superiority/Inadaptability) are here for the Social Two, but the Two’s need to be above is ultimately more about relationship than it is about getting things right – a reflection of the Two’s position in the feeling triad.💰 Confessing criminalityThe journey of the Social Two includes confronting their own "criminality"—the covertly selfish motivations behind their actions—and replacing these with empathy and accountability. The practice of giving and receiving genuine feedback helps dissolve pride and deepen their relational authenticity.🐆 Reconnecting with the mammalian SelfAt the heart of transformation lies the reconnection to one's emotional and relational needs. By emerging from the "reptilian" mindset of conquest and control, the Social Two can embrace the humility and humanity that allow for true intimacy and belonging.🌱 From Leadership to EqualityGrowth for the Social Two involves moving from a position of dominance to one of humility and equality. This transformation entails relinquishing the "golden child" role, acknowledging personal vulnerabilities, and embracing the needs of others without an agenda for self-glorification. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of The Barrcast, we wrap up the One with the Self-Preservation One, whose keyword is concern, a constant worrying. Unlike the other subtypes, the SP One accesses perfectionism through being painfully attuned to their own imperfections. Talking Points:🫵 The Inner CriticUnlike the Social or Sexual Ones, the Self-Preservation One internalizes their imperfections acutely. This fuels an obsessive cycle of self-improvement that masks their anger with benevolence and service, often at great personal cost. 🎭 Acceptance and pleasureThe path to growth includes reconnecting with instinctual life and allowing space for pleasure. This involves letting go of guilt and embracing moments of silence, leisure, and sensory enjoyment—freeing themselves from the grip of self-denial.💡 Perfection as a gift, not an attainmentUltimately, perfection is revealed not as a result of effort but as a gift that arises when one accepts life as it is. In the words of St. John of the Cross, "I no longer tend my flock… my only practice is love." This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of The Barrcast, we learn aboutthe Social One, whose keywords are inadaptability and superiority. Unlike the other subtypes, the Social One asserts their correctness and moral high ground through a subtler, more withdrawn approach. Talking Points:🧍 Sitting at the grownups tableFrom a young age, the Social One often assumes a grown-up role, gravitating toward adults rather than peers. This early sense of responsibility reflects their drive to distinguish themselves and avoid the perceived mess of childhood.🏔️ Moral High Ground as RefugeThe Social One’s need for superiority often manifests as a retreat to their “moral high ground.” Maintaining this ground, and separating it from the rest of the environment, requires constant effort – resulting in rigidity, isolation, and tension in relationships.🔥 Anger Beneath the SurfaceUnlike other subtypes, the Social One rarely displays anger outwardly. Instead, their frustration transforms into a quiet demand for perfection—both from themselves and others. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of The Barrcast we wrap up the Nine with the self-preservation subtype, a character shaped by “appetite.” Unlike the overt hunger of other types, the Nine’s appetite is a more instinctual desire for comfort, stability, and numbing pacification. We discuss how this appetite manifests not just physically but as an unconscious strategy to avoid the deeper question of being. Talking Points:🍽️ I Eat, Therefore I Am The unique Cartesian expression of the self-preservation Nine reflects a substitution of being with physical satiation. We explore how this subtype’s appetite goes beyond food, encompassing a craving for the mundane comforts of everyday life—sleep, routine, and possession—that mask a deeper existential void.📺 Life on Standby: The Remote Control Metaphor Emilia Ligi’s metaphor of living life like a TV on standby mode captures the essence of the self-preservation Nine’s strategy. This subtype often hands over their metaphorical remote control to others, allowing external influences to dictate their experience while they remain passive and disconnected from their true desires.🪞 The Elusiveness of Presence Despite their grounded, physical presence, the self-preservation Nine often lacks a metaphysical depth, presenting as elusive or hard to pin down. We explore how this subtype’s tendency to retreat into comfort leads to a life lived on the surface, with little engagement in the deeper currents of self-awareness or transformation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of the Barrcast, we explore the Sexual Nine, a character defined by their drive for “symbiosis” or deep fusion with others. The Sexual Nine’s yearning for union stems from a profound sense of disconnection within themselves, leading them to seek a complete merging with others as a way to feel whole. Topics include: the difference between true connection and codependent fusion; the neurotic game of symbiosis as a substitute for true selfhood; and the Sexual Nine’s journey toward reclaiming their autonomy and discovering genuine intimacy.Talking points:🕶️ The “Nowhere Man” – how the Sexual Nine’s tendency to fade into the background, becoming invisible in relationships, stems from an unwillingness to occupy their own sense of self.🦁 The “lion’s roar,” in which the nine incorporates their eight wing to pronounce No to some way of life that cannot go on any longer, creating space for the Yes. 🌱 Reclaiming Self in Relationships. The shift from seeking union through others to building self-worth independently, allowing for real partnership and mutual respect. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of the Barrcast, we introduce the Nine, a personality type often described as peaceful and self-forgetting. Positioned at the top of the Enneagram, the Nine is sometimes considered the "baseline" type, able to look down on with unique challenges in self-awareness and motivation.Key Points:* Nines possess a unique ability to empathize and see the perspectives of other Enneagram types but often struggle to assert their own identity.* The nine’s “sloth” is more than lethargy; it represents a resistance to inner change and personal awakening.* By avoiding conflict, nines may ultimately face physical or emotional burnout, especially when life calls for decisive self-awareness.Quotes from the Episode:* “Nine is the least egoic, the least motivated to change. It’s as if the nine is asleep to their own needs.”* “Self-forgetting only works for so long…eventually, life requires us to be an ‘I’ capable of making decisions.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com

In this episode of the Barrcast, we dive into the Sexual Eight, whose core passion is “possessiveness.” Topics include the voraciousness of the Sexual Eight, their intense need for control, power, and autonomy and their tendency toward detachment from intellect. Discussion touches on their amoral perspective – it’s right because I do it – and how their need for power manifests in a vicious cycle of possession and isolation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com