fragments of the whole

Going down the rabbit hole that is the Enneagram over the past several months has taught me so much about myself. It has opened up a door to my heart that I at first wanted to slam shut. And so I did for a while. But once I decided to take my growth to another level, I had to open myself to the light and the dark parts of myself. I had to get real. It’s been frightening, terrifying, exciting and one of the absolutely best things I’ve done for myself. I will go into what the Enneagram is and how we can use it in our lives for growth and transformation, but for now I want to share one of the big things that became glaringly obvious to me as I learned about this powerful tool.

We can only see pieces of one another. Jagged fragments. Cracked shreds.

We don’t see the whole person. The essence. The truth of who someone is.

We are comfortable with casting assumptions, judgements and creating false stories about one another because of the very limited lenses through which we view another. We will make up a story in 1.5 seconds about someone based on something they said. Based on something we heard about them. Sometimes just by looking at them.

It is so easy for us to judge another person, but not as easy to understand them when we truly have just a tiny fraction of the big picture, a shred, which says so little about someone but still is enough for us to believe we have the right to fill in the blanks with our own crap, projections and judgement. Bless our hearts.

When we do this, we lie to ourselves. Why? Because those missing parts of the big picture do not tell us the true story. What we have is fiction. And let me tell you, we are good at creating fiction. We’re good at making up stories to fit our narrative.

A narrative that isn’t even true most of the time.

Through our own traumas, hurts, and limited views we can incorrectly and unfairly (and a lot of the time, unintentionally) damage ourselves and those we come in contact with. We are such multifaceted humans. We have hearts that are tender, sacred and beautiful. We all have so many layers to us. The Enneagram has helped me be more compassionate to those layers. To your layers. To my layers. I mean, I knew some of this before, but I can say with 100% certainty that the Enneagram has cracked me open in a way that helps me look at people in a completely different light. To extend more empathy. To be more curious. To be more forgiving and less resentful. To judge less. To give the benefit of the doubt.

My work is to not take the fragments as absolutes. I ask that you join me in doing that. If not, you can miss something beautiful. You can toss aside too early. You can miss an opportunity. That fragment is part of a whole. A whole soul. A whole beautiful soul. Take a deeper look.

Tosha xx