06/13/2022
In Enneagram work we typically move from Unawareness➡️Awareness with Judgment➡️Awareness without Judgement, and this is where the radical change occurs.
Many of us get stuck in the With Judgment stage. We think if we can just judge ourselves hard enough and with enough consistency, we will change. Healing and change do not happen under the iron fist of the self critic.
Others of us try to ignore or hide the parts of ourselves that are in need of healing. If we can just manage ourselves well enough, maybe others won’t see our flaws, and we can pretend they don’t exist.
David Benner puts the path forward beautifully in his book, Gift of Being Yourself—
“Genuine transformational knowing of self always involves encountering and embracing previously unwelcome parts of self….we pretend they do not exist and hope they will go away…. When we do so, however, these unwanted parts of self do not go away. They simply go into hiding….
Christian spirituality involves acknowledging all our part-selves, exposing them to God’s love and letting him weave them into the new person he is making. To do this, we must be willing to welcome these ignored parts as full members of the family of self, giving them space at the family table and slowly allowing them to be softened and healed by love and integrated into the whole person we are becoming.”
💛 What parts of yourself are in need of being welcomed and brought before God’s healing love?
