Did you know that you are not your personality? Beneath your outer layers of self is an authentic, beautiful being exactly as it came from heaven. Discover this wonderful, real you and draw from its miraculous power in Becoming Conscious. Learn from clinical psychologist and spiritual teacher Dr. Joseph Howell how to:

Find the root causes of your suffering and unhappiness.
Free yourself of the traps that seduce your ego.
Be renewed with a sense of inner knowing, childlike joy, and wonder.
Stop being driven by what others expect of you.
Increase your tolerance and understanding of friends, spouse, children, and coworkers.
Relate to others on deep, meaningful levels.
Grow in consciousness of your specific divine purpose and your connection to the planet.
Understand your repeated, selfdefeating patterns and learn clear ways to stop them.
Become consciously present.

Reach your full potential as Dr. Howell explains the powerful and deeply spiritual Enneagram and relates it to your life. Whatever your beliefs may be, Becoming Conscious is a lifechanging journey.

Becoming Conscious

The Enneagram's Forgotten PassagewayBy Joseph Benton Howell

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Joseph Benton Howell, Ph.D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5715-1

Contents

Preface..............................................................................................ixIntroduction.........................................................................................xviiChapter One The Enneagram of Personality – A Passageway to Consciousness......................1Chapter Two The Types...............................................................................14Chapter Three Self Assessment.......................................................................33Chapter Four The Ego, Its Fixations and Suffering...................................................60Chapter Five The Three Levels of Functioning and Consciousness within Each Type.....................83Chapter Six The Secret Passageways of the Arrows....................................................98Chapter Seven The Wings of Each Enneagram Type......................................................117Chapter Eight The Instinctual Subtypes of the Enneagram.............................................122Chapter Nine The Ennea-Types in Cinema..............................................................148Chapter Ten The Emergence of Consciousness..........................................................163Chapter Eleven Christ, Children and Consciousness...................................................170Chapter Twelve The Soul Child.......................................................................178Chapter Thirteen The Enneagram of Holy Ideas........................................................197Chapter Fourteen Prayers of Spiritual Transformation for Each Enneagram Type........................224Chapter Fifteen The Return to Essence...............................................................245Chapter Sixteen The New Eyes and Ears of the Kingdom of God.........................................260Chapter Seventeen The Beatitudes of Jesus and the Enneagram.........................................269Chapter Eighteen The Flowering of Consciousness.....................................................281Appendix.............................................................................................299Spiritual Positioning System.........................................................................299Enneagram Worksheet..................................................................................301List of Figures......................................................................................304Notes................................................................................................305

Chapter One

The Enneagram of Personality – A Passageway to Consciousness

A passageway to becoming conscious is nearer than we can imagine. We can follow this passageway only by knowing the deeper aspects of ourselves as revealed by powerful spiritual truths. A profound reflection of these truths, the Enneagram, reveals to us our true self which miraculously opens the passageway to the land of conscious being.

In opening the gate of this transformational passageway we become familiar with our personality type as depicted on the Enneagram. By seeing far more deeply into our own being, we discover on the Enneagram of Personality the particular obstacles that block our type's ability to become conscious. These obstacles can be removed only through faith and spiritual transformation. Like lightening and thunder awakening us to a greater alertness, the Enneagram's wisdom sheds light upon what a dark night would have hidden. Revealed in a flash are our personality, its inherent imprisonments, and amazingly we also see our pathways to freedom! Let us now discuss this phenomenonal process.

In our new awakening, we discover that our personality includes "traps" of compulsive thoughts and behaviors, which repeatedly delude us into making the same mistakes which bring on much suffering. This unconscious repetition of the same thoughts and actions seemed to bring hope and satisfaction. Now, however, it is evident to the greatly suffering person, that these patterns bring overwhelming pain, instead of fulfillment. John Sanford spoke to this when he said "... the outer shells of the personalities of many people conceal a hollowness, an emptiness longing to be filled, with an accompanying agony of the soul". The personality driven by the ego can not be healed by ego alone. The Enneagram points out that we have identified with the ego who has fixated upon certain behaviors and thoughts that dominate and trap the person in unconsciousness. To turn and enter consciousness, the ego fixation must be replaced by something more powerful.

The Enneagram's wisdom blows away the shrouding smoke of unconsciousness by revealing the startling truth that our personality is not really our truest self! Personality is but a mask, a "social vehicle" in which we move among other masked personages. It and its ego can even mask one's true nature from oneself. Just imagine, the suffering we have born simply because we have lived as a personality that is not who we actually are! When this false self is unmasked, we are free to reclaim something that is holy, beautiful, and powerful: our deepest nature, our soul's essence. Living out of this real self, the suffering caused by unconscious living vanishes. Ego suffering is irrelevant now, because the world is seen through new eyes and heard with new ears of consciousness. Jesus spoke to the eyes and ears of spirit as they are used in perceiving reality. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear (Mark 4:9) and "the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. (Matthew 6:22). These new senses of consciousness enable the person to perceive life not as a self among a conglomeration of separate selves, but as a living pulsating part of a greater unity of humans who all have this true deeper nature. To live as one's true nature (or essence), instead of as a personality of ego, completely reframes the reason for living and puts suffering in a new light.

When living unconsciously, life is seen primarily through the lens of ego. This lens views the world as a subsidiary of self. People are seen as extensions of self or as oppositions to self. Examples of the unconscious self include viewing oneself as a role, status, material worth, external appearance, and as a self-created story. In short, when living unconsciously, the self is seen as separate from the whole, and as the product of its' own story. This perception of life ultimately leads to great suffering in that the self, the extensions of self and the story of self, could never really heal loss, illusion, and the suffering they bring.

From Self to Consciousness

Knowing one's personality type can light the way out of this needless suffering. How is this possible? By way of answering this question, let us presume that the false personality is like a piece of masking tape. This sticky tape covers a luminous crystal which symbolizes consciousness. If one can unmask (untape) the crystal, the brilliant clarity of consciousness will shine.

We can begin the unmasking process by peeling back one small corner of the tape. In scraping our fingernail across an edge of the tape, a tiny corner is loosened and is now free; we can feel it between our fingers. Pulling this tab of tape away from the crystal, begins the removal of the rest of the tape in...