So far we have talked a great deal about each Enneagram number’s pattern and about the Holy Idea. Now I want to return to the larger question underneath all of that: what exactly does “spirituality” mean in the Spiritual Enneagram? When this theme came up in real conversations at the cafe, spirituality often showed itself less as a distant concept and more through the image I am trapped inside right now and what I fail to notice. This article begins from that felt reality and tries to unfold spirituality as the consciousness that notices experience.
Rupert Spira’s View: “The Consciousness That Knows Experience”
Rupert Spira does not define spirituality in a complicated way. He keeps returning to something like this:
- Thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, relationships, and events in the world are all “experiences that come and go.”
- Yet every one of those experiences passes before “something that is aware.”
- The heart of spirituality is not fixing those experiences, but turning attention toward the consciousness that knows experience is happening.
Put more simply, it looks like this.
- When anger rises, we usually get absorbed in “I am angry.”
- Spira’s view invites us to turn instead toward “the place that knows anger is happening.”
In that sense, spirituality is not a special mystical event or a superpower. It is closer to stepping back from experience as content and noticing the consciousness that knows that experience.
Ken Wilber’s View: The Witness and a Wider Field of Vision
Ken Wilber explains spirituality not merely as a story of “going upward,” but as an expansion of the field of view that includes life as a whole.
- My body, emotions, thoughts, roles, and social identity are all things I “have.”
- But the place that sees all of them is a consciousness not completely bound to any one of them.
He also emphasizes not a private enlightenment but an integral vision that includes individual psychology, relationship, culture, and social structure together. In our terms, spirituality changes not only how I see myself but also how I see others and the world at the same time.
So What Is “Spirituality” for Us?
If we gather those two perspectives and restate what our blog means by “spirituality,” it comes down to the meeting point between the conscious seat that notices experience and a wider field of vision that sees self, others, and the world together.
This definition became clear to me only when I looked back on a season in which chasing the image of a “spiritual person” had actually made me smaller. The more I tried to fit the image of being gentle, soft, and enlightened, the more rigid my expression and voice became, and the smaller my confidence grew. At some point I finally saw that clinging to that image was not spirituality at all. Spirituality was not an ideal answer imported from outside, but something closer to discovering what was already happening within me.
From then on my view changed a little. The moments of ease and naturalness came not because I had done something better, but because the posture that had been straining so hard to maintain an image began to loosen. Through that shift I came to understand spirituality not as “becoming a person who looks better,” but as noticing present experience more honestly.
Personality and Spirituality: The Difference Between Fixing and Illuminating
This is where the Enneagram enters.
- The Riso-Hudson system explains each number’s personality pattern, healthy/average/unhealthy levels, and directions of integration/disintegration in a very detailed way.
- A. H. Almaas, through the Holy Ideas, unfolds what the original qualities of reality were for each number.
What our blog calls the “Spiritual Enneagram” is the work of holding those two together from the seat of spirituality.
- The fixing gaze says: “This personality is bad, so it must be thrown away.”
- The illuminating gaze says: “Right now I am protecting myself in this particular way.”
Spirituality belongs far more to the second gaze. Rather than seeing personality patterns as enemies that must disappear, it slowly places them under the light of awareness. At that moment the Enneagram serves as a map that helps us see the pattern more precisely, recognize where fixation formed, and notice which Holy Idea feels lost.
What It Means to “Be Conscious of Self, Others, and the World Together”
The core of the phrase “being conscious of self, others, and the world together” is, in the end, whole consciousness. We usually think in ways such as, “I am living in the world,” “I must do this,” or “This is right.” In that frame, the “I” feels like an individual separated from the world, and ego keeps reacting in order to cover over that sense of separation.
The fixations spoken of in the Spiritual Enneagram arise here as well. Because it feels as though connection with the world has been lost, one number clings to being right, another to being loved, another to safety or peace. Outwardly they look like different obsessions, yet beneath them all lies the movement of trying to compensate for the feeling of separation.
But from the spiritual seat, we were never separated from the world in the first place. Consciousness is not something outside me looking in. It is the whole that already includes me. I may fail to see it, but consciousness has always included me, others, and the world together. So the phrase “being conscious of self, others, and the world together” does not mean paying attention to three separate things. It means that vision shifts toward seeing the whole field that had always been one.
This may sound overly conceptual, but for me it later arrived through the word density. I do not mean that I physically sensed some kind of material density. If I try to borrow bodily language, it was the closest way to say that I was not standing outside the world and looking at it, but was already included within it. Just as one cannot be separate from the water while in the water, consciousness and life had always included me. I was simply the one who had overlooked that fact.
Small Practices for Daily Life
Let me bring this spiritual perspective down into more practical exercises. What helped me most was not an impressive meditation technique but learning to distinguish whether the one who is “looking” is striving, or whether things are already being seen.
- Recall the scene that triggered the strongest reaction today
- Before asking what happened, look at what mark that scene left on your body and expression.
- As you follow the reaction that is already occurring, you begin to realize that many things were already being seen before “I” tried to see them.
- Do not try to erase emotion. Feel the place that is aware of it.
- When anger, shame, or anxiety rises, do not rush to organize or correct it.
- If you ask, “What is it that knows this feeling right now?” and pause for a second, a small space opens between the feeling and the self.
- Write down what shows up like a mirror inside relationship
- If there is something in another person that especially irritates you, write down what fear or image inside you it touches.
- This question helps widen your field of view without turning the other person into the villain.
Reflection question. In the moment I reacted most quickly today, what was I trying to control, and what was already being shown?
Spirituality Is Not “Becoming Another Person” but “Seeing from Another Place”
The spirituality spoken of by the Spiritual Enneagram is not a demand to tear down the present self and be reborn as somebody else. We are already always inside the consciousness that knows thought, feeling, and body. What matters is not stopping at theoretical understanding, but beginning to feel that fact little by little inside actual scenes of life.
So the direction of the Spiritual Enneagram is not “erasing personality,” but rather:
- seeing the personality pattern moving inside me right now,
- from the place that is conscious of self, others, and the world together,
- in a slightly more honest and warmer way.
The more familiar that seat becomes, the less urgent the fixations and defenses of each number grow, and the more they begin to settle into a different place inside life.