The Enneagram

I don't think I mentioned this nearly enough times but if you don't know the artist Sleeping At Last, now you do and you should immediately go and listen to all their songs. Honestly, Ryan O'Neal is some kind of alien, if not a genius, and his ethereal melodies and delicately crafted poetry make for some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard in my entire life. I can quite confidently say he is my favourite artist, especially with his most recent collection of songs, titled Enneagram.

Sleeping at Last had come into my radar back in 2017, and you may or may not recall a certain post describing another collection of his songs Atlas: Space, slowly more and more songs started finding a nooks and crannies, burrowing their way into my playlists and my heart. I can't describe how moving and beautiful some of his songs are, leaving you in stunned silence as you watch the night sky. A lot of themes in his songs are about humanity and the core of ourselves, the earth and the universe in its past and present and future. He also has an ongoing series of instrumental music based off major astronomical events, from super moons to the death of telescopes.

The enneagram was a word that entered into my vocabulary in the summer of 2018. Sleeping At Last's Enneagram series had been going on for a while now and I recall listening to those songs as I saw them appear new in my recommended. There was definitely something unique about them, they spoke of pain and hope in such a raw and precise way that I got quite curious if the numbers they were titled by had anything to do with anything. When I looked it up for the first time, the confusing terminology and, I gotta say, pentagram-resembling symbol off-put me enough to stop looking into it after a quick glance. Eventually, during a happenstance conversation with my youth pastor, we ended up approaching this topic of enneagram, and the memory of those songs, about four of which had been released at the time, flooded back to me. I looked into it more, took a couple quizzes, thought the numbers were too confusing, and gave up once again.

But as the songs continued to release in those slow four month intervals, a couple minutes of bliss at those intricate points in time, I started to get a sense of what was really happening here. Nine kinds of people, all dealing with love and hurt in a spectrum of ways that led to a rich story of redemption and revival. Realizing my friends were familiar with it and wishing to join in on the fun, I started doing more research, taking more quizzes. Obsessively I tried to type myself, cross-comparing each and every type in an attempt to categorize myself into words I could understand. I realized I was probably becoming obsessed with this thing, while I knew it couldn't hold all the answers, still I put such blind faith in it because I so desperately wanted to find myself in something. I eventually decided to just pick one, the one that made sense on the most part, the one that while the standard definition didn't quite seem to fit, compared to every other number, seemed to sum up my motivations, fears, the way I behaved. I finally announced to all my friends what I had scored, I encouraged other friends to try it out. I felt like some kind of expert, some enlightened being who finally knew who they were.

It didn't last long.

I'm still not exactly sure what my type is. But if you were curious, I identify myself as a Six. Because I saw a little part of me in all the 9 types, I felt even more confused about who I was the deeper I digged. I felt maybe like I was chopped up into different pieces. But I now understand that we all have a bit of everyone in us. An enneagram number is simply a dominant personality that shows through. But the process of typing myself was honestly so stressful and time-consuming I felt awful when I couldn't get a definite answer in the end. Even more awful was the realization that I could be so self-absorbed as to force this categorization upon other people, and be so caught up in my own thoughts and feelings that I started neglecting that of those around me.

T'was really a wild ride, my experience with the enneagram universe. However, what I'm now trying to do is not so much trying to learn about it in order to find myself, but in order to find other people. I want to understand and encourage and just exist better, and the enneagram, the more I discovered about it, is a useful tool for really, truly understanding people, their motivations, their fears, and seeing how they can be grown and shaped by them. Sleeping At Last's music describes these "9 stories of redemption", writing a song in the perspective of each type, a conversation with oneself from the most broken and lonely places the strongest and hopeful ones. His podcast series, where he goes on to explain these songs more vividly just revealed a explosion of a world in a song that already held so much magic and wonder. Each song features a guest band composed of talented musicians who identify as the type they are featured on, as well as sounds, what Ryan O'Neal calls "sound fingerprints" sent from his friends and family that he sneaks into his music. The sound of the ocean, children laughing, boiling kettles, happy dogs, the sounds of a hundred families woven into the music make for such a beautiful image that I just couldn't believe how much heart and soul went into every piece.

Listening to the podcast, listening to these songs, it really makes me happy. So instead of going through all the nitty gritty of the enneagram and what all the numbers mean and all that, I thought I'd just share with you my favourite lines from each song.

One

But the list goes on forever

Of all the ways I could be better, in my mind

As if I could earn God's favor given time

Or at least "congratulations" ...

Two

Sweetheart, you look a little tired

When did you last eat?

Come in and make yourself right at home

Stay as long as you need

Tell me, is something wrong?

If something's wrong, you can count on me

You know I'll take my heart clean apart, if it helps yours beat

Three

Maybe I've done enough

Finally catching up

For the first time I see an image of my brokenness

Utterly worthy of love

Maybe I've done enough

Four

Maybe I’m hiding behind metaphor

Maybe my heart needs to break to be sure

One day I’ll wear it all on my sleeve

The insignificant with the sacred unique

Five

I want to watch the universe expand. I want to break it into pieces small enough to understand.../

I finally feel the universe expand—it’s hidden in heartbeats, exhales and in the hope of open hands.

Six

With vigilant heart

I’ll push into the dark

But I’ll learn to breathe deep

And make peace with the stars

Is that courage or faith

To show up every day?

To trust that there will be light

Always waiting behind

Even the darkest of nights

Seven

But I want to be here

Truly. Be. Here

To watch the ones that I love bloom

And I want to make room

To love them through and through and through

And through the slow and barren seasons too

Eight

I was just a kid who grew up strong enough

To pick this armor up

And suddenly it fit

Nine

So please show me what to do

To restart this heart of mine

How do I forgive myself

For losing so much time?

Honestly it was hard to choose because the lyrics flow so beautifully together it's kind of weird seeing only a part of them here. That's why the excerpt from Six is like...half the song. The excerpt from Five is the first and last lines, and the other songs its the lyric that made me look up from what I was doing all of a sudden and feel the urge to simultaneously cry and write something down. They're really good songs--trust me. I hope you'll give them a listen if you have time.

Well, we've reached the end of the post. I have 16 hours until my physics exam, time to start studying. I really hope I pass.

I hope you have a good day. Truly. I hope these songs can inspire you like they did me. If anything, the enneagram is really cool way to understand and develop characters. Also identifying the types of the people in your life can give you insight as to how to treat them the way they deserve. Much love and thanks for reading.

Stay saltful,

- r.k.