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Hari Prasada: Or our Enneagram podcast series looking at the Type Nine, so you have a bunch of nines in your life. I have a bunch of nines in my life and this is a type that is quite distinct. It really so helpful to understand what is in their hearts and, and how do we empathize with them.

And serve them and try to bring out the best in them. So let us begin with the essence qualities, as always,

Rasanath: The Type Nine is called the peace seeker, sometimes also called the peacemaker, but we thought peace seeker is probably a more accurate depiction of the inner world of the nine because they're looking.

For a sense of peace, an internal sense of peace and calm. And in the process they may also create it externally. And the essence qualities of benign are wholeness, unity, and flow. And the idea wholeness is feeling a sense of being complete. And our teacher, Russ paints this very vivid portrayal of the experience of wholeness.

So for the type ninex, the wholeness, the way it looks like is you are, you know, it's Saturday evening, it's a little chilly outside. It's 8:00 PM You have had an early dinner. You're sitting on the couch in front of TV watching your favorite show. You have a nice blanket on top of you, a nice cup of tea by your side.

Tomorrow's a day off so that you can sleep in. There is just a sense of like comfort. Everything is where it needs to be. I can just relax and unity. Is the capacity to really look at all viewpoints available in a particular situation and they can really see, oh, you are right here and you are also probably right here.

Let's find a way to bring this together. That's the sense of unity and flow. They are very kinesthetically aware. The nines. There is a way in which they're very aware of their physical body, but there is also a way in which they move through life with a certain ease. And the picture that we give to understand this more is, uh, is a stream.

Uh, when you look at a stream, flowing of the stream is flowing over the rocks, under the rocks around the rock, but it just continues to flow very

Hari Prasada: smoothly forward. Thank you. As you were painting the picture of the nine, I was thinking, my God, I need so much more nine energy in my own life. I need, I have nines in my life, but I don't have the nine energy enough within me to really bring out that sense of calm that is so valuable.

They really show what the potential is when they're healthy for. Just being at ease and flowing with life no matter what it throws at you. So what's the basic fear?

Rasanath: The basic fear for the type ninex, um, as the name suggests, uh, the peace seeker. I'm scared of losing my world of internal peace, and that essentially can manifest in two ways.

I'm afraid of chaos, I'm afraid of conflict, and for the nines, and this is very important to understand things, register very loud. So something that is not in, its something is out of order. There is noise outside. There is noise in the building, someone is playing something. It just gets amplified internally.

And so the loss of peace is very vividly, very easily, and very vividly felt. And so

Hari Prasada: then flipping it around, what becomes the basic desire for the nine?

Rasanath: So the basic desire is to feel harmonious, is to feel one. Everything to feel that I'm at peace with everything within me and outside of me.

Hari Prasada: So take us through the creative consciousness as we get into the trajectory of consciousness.

How is it for the healthy nine

Rasanath: at their healthiest? Uh, the creative nines are. Easy going and synthesizing and nines give off this sense that they can go along with anything and everything, and we'll see how it plays out at as we go down the levels of consciousness. But at the higher levels of consciousness, the easygoing spirit is not just going along.

The easygoing spirit, as we discussed earlier, is a sense of calm. Even when things are not going the way I want for it to go, there is a sense of patience and being with what is coming. That just puts everyone around them at ease. We see many times that when situations are difficult, what makes those situations even more difficult is when people around start complaining and, oh my God, this is just so difficult and this is just so hard, and that just makes the situ the difficult situation even more difficult.

And we see in a healthy nine there is a way in which they can accept a difficult situation. They're not complaining, they are patient. There is this very silent strength, is the best way I can describe it, to walk through whatever life is putting in front of me, and the synthesizing life is complex. There are so many nuances to every single situation and the nine at the creative levels.

It is so contradictory because easygoing can sometimes mean, oh, everything is very straightforward. But, uh, the other element, the other spirit that they bring there is the synthesizing. They're actually able to see all the multiple layers of complexity, all the nuances, the subtlety in a given situation, and they can bring it together in a way that's very compelling and simple and straightforward without losing.

This is so critical and important without losing the nuances, the complexity of any given situation. So at their healthiest, they are also very willing to walk through conflict it. That doesn't mean that conflict or chaos doesn't bring up fear. In fact, they are very uncomfortable in those situations. And as with any creative levels of consciousness for all the types, this is a situation.

The creative levels of consciousness is not the absence of the fear, but there is this determination to walk through the difficulty. And in this particular case, with the nines, there is this strong, resilient determination to walk through the conflict one step

Hari Prasada: at a time. Also highly engaged. Nines will see as we go down the levels of consciousness, they tend to disengage.

And again, we'll see what that looks like. But at the creative consciousness, highly engaged really with people and really taking initiative. There's an eagerness and there's a power to the way they act in the world. There's not a passivity about them. There's a peacefulness, but there's also, you can feel an energy that they're harnessing, which is so different from how it is as they go down the levels of consciousness.

The other thing that's worth noting is so many types are conflict avoidant. So many types would say, my biggest fear is conflict. But for different reasons. For the nine, it's really straight on it's conflict. Makes me not peaceful, I can't do it. And oftentimes they're not even so aware of how they're avoiding conflict.

They're just doing it. Whereas other types might be more aware that they're avoiding conflict. But for the nines, it is so hardwired. It is so central to them because I can't be disturbed from my peace, so I'm not gonna go near it. I won't put myself in any situation where there's conflict unless I have some responsibility where I have to, and you know, if I'm healthy, I will take that on very happily.

If I'm not healthy, I will do everything I can to shove it under the rug.

Rasanath: So, uh, just to distinguish the conflict, avoidant nature, some types avoid conflict because they want to be, they want to be liked all the time. But where they feel like they're not very afraid of not being liked, they don't avoid the conflict.

They might actually step into the conflict and just, yes, I don't want this relationship and I'm done with the lions experience this very, very differently. They experience a sense of conflict at every moment.

Hari Prasada: Just as, uh, an evidence of this conflict is terrifying for me because I'm very sensitive and very soft in many ways.

I have a vulnerability about me. My, my heart feels things intensely and conflict is, is terrifying in that way, but I'm not a nine, right? So different types have their relationships with that. So we want to pay close attention. So what happens at the controlling consciousness for the nine?

Rasanath: Just to, just to step back into the creative before we go into the controlling at the creative levels of consciousness, because my sense of connection with my internal piece, it runs so deep, I can actually bring that to my external environment, and this is what leads one to the controlling levels of consciousness when my own sense of internal peace is disturbed.

The nines feel like, yes, I don't have the, the stability and the wherewithal to maintain my sense of internal peace. Consequently, how do I then maintain external peace? So, uh, because I'm so deeply attached to the identity of being the peace seeker, the slip into the controlling levels happens when the fear that I can no longer maintain my internal peace arises and takes very strong hold.

So now. I have to maintain my internal peace. It's still not at all costs, but I, I'm now starting to get a little desperate. And so, uh, I don't want to disturb my external environment. So if I am having a conversation with somebody and the conflict, I can feel that this person has not liked my choices, that this person is actually in a conflict with me.

I don't want to necessarily bring that up very directly. I still try to make sure that the person is okay while just silently starting to withdraw myself from the conversation. So at the controlling levels of consciousness, nines start to disengage. And this goes back to your earlier point when you said that at the creative levels, they're very fully engaged at the controlling levels.

Disengaged and the disengagement is very silent. I'm still physically in the same place, but emotionally I withdraw and I escape into an environment where I feel I can be peaceful again and in a relationship. And we give this example that husband comes home early, the nine husband comes home early from work.

There's nobody at home hoping that, okay, it's a little peaceful. I can just catch up on my reading. And in the evening the kids come and the wife comes back and the wife is talking about the challenges at work, and the husband is nodding his head and saying, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. While still reading the newspaper.

And then suddenly the wife asks a question and the husband says, mm-hmm. And then there is this awkward silence. And then suddenly both of them realize that. You know, the husband was not necessarily fully listening to what was being said. And of course, this can seem to be a very stereotypical male female, you know, gender-based dynamic.

But the nine very specifically at this level of consciousness will, you'll, you'll directly experience how the nines can nod their heads to things, especially in overwhelming situations. The lines can keep nodding their heads, but they're not necessarily listening fully with their hearts. 'cause they have left the scene.

It's too overwhelming, it's too chaotic. And again, it's so important to keep in mind what the suffering internally is. Uh, while we can laugh at this behavior or sometimes become frustrated by this behavior, the reason why they why they have to do that is because they're feeling absolutely overwhelmed.

Our teacher, Russ, gives a very vivid example of how, you know, talking about this picture where a nine child is carrying this crystal ball. The child slips and falls and the, the ball just falls to the floor and shatters into millions of pieces. And this child is just standing there looking at the shattered pieces, wondering, how am I going to put this back together?

Where do I even start? It's very overwhelming. And the nines deep down, they feel that the world is a broken place and to put the world back together. To put it together, to go back to the essence, qualities like the wholeness is an impossible task, and it's very, very overwhelming. So the best way to deal with that overwhelm, unfortunately, in the controlling levels of consciousness is by disengaging.

And that way at least I can maintain my own internal sense of. The other thing that arises at this level of consciousness is procrastinating tasks. Even small tasks sometimes can feel so overwhelming and chaos creating that. I just put them away and choices become harder. So the easygoing nature now becomes more about just going along with people, even when.

It's not really my desire to do it. So, as an example, where do you want to go out for dinner? Um, whatever you want. Well, first of all, do you want to go out for dinner? Maybe not. I just wanna sit at home and, and read a book. But the calculation internally is, well, if I say I wanna sit in at home and read a book, I will probably be in a conflict with my partner.

So I'm just not, I'm just gonna go along with it. Right? So the ninth, this level of consciousness, they're losing their voice. They're actually starting to disappear. And this is so important for those of us who are not nines to understand. The nines are actually starting to disappear because they're feeling too overwhelmed, uh, and feeling like the chaos of the world is just going to take over.

And by going along by silently disengaging and putting things away, they're desperately trying to control their sense of internal peace.

Hari Prasada: Yeah. And the, the metaphor is such a powerful one. It's such a vivid image that Don and Russ give of that crystal ball or that ball that shatters and my sense of overwhelm with how to put it all back together.

I've also seen nines dig their heels more into the ground. So some of them go along, and in some cases they'll go along because that's the easiest thing to do. But in many other cases it's like, no, this is gonna disturb my piece too much. And nines can be very fixed and set in their ways, routines give me comfort, and anything that slightly disrupts the sense of routine and flow.

I just get really backed up against a wall and I can become angry. I really don't like it, and I'm just, I'm not budging. I'm not budging. Deal with it, and it can become very irrational. I'm not dealing with reality. I'm so overwhelmed and clinging to my little place of peace that it's like you deal with it, you deal with it, you deal with it.

I'm over here, I'm doing my thing. It's all your fault.

Rasanath: And, uh, there is also a strong philosophizing around that, which is, it's almost like you're not like, learn how to be peaceful. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Right. The undertone to that is, Hey, do not disturb me. Like when you bring up problems that exist to me, I am feeling overwhelmed and my sense of internal peace is being disturbed, but the way it comes out is, oh, you're just making a big deal out of it.

Right. So minimizing problems, a certain sense of stubbornness, as you said, like I won't move, I'm not gonna be direct about it many times because if I am direct about it, I'll be in conflict. I'm just not gonna do it. So this is another way in which procrastination exhibits itself. Okay. So when will the decision be made?

Well, I'll, I'll do it by tomorrow will be the response, and then tomorrow comes. It's not done. You don't even hear back from the person you try to call. Nobody's picking up, and it is very, it can be very frustrating for people outside to experience that kind of stubborn, passive aggressive behavior that begins, that starts to develop at the controlling

Hari Prasada: levels of consciousness.

And and we can see I've observed very much a moodiness where you just don't know what's actually going on in the nine because they're not gonna be upfront and tell you. They're usually not even able to introspect and see it in themselves 'cause it's too threatening. It disturbs my piece to see what's really going on.

I would rather just flow and get into a book, or get into a movie, or get into a conversation that's comfortable. I don't wanna see all of the. Craziness that's happening inside me. Even just like the day-to-day craziness is too much, what to speak of bigger things which are there and which accumulate. So I just become very moody and people don't know why or what's going on.

I don't acknowledge it myself. I don't know why. And that increases more and more as we go in the controlling consciousness. And the nines do feel as you said, like this is the best way. I just disengage. I retreat. I do things my way. In my little peaceful world. That creates a lot of conflict for other people, but it's not the best way.

And we have a choice. Otherwise we will wind up in the destructive consciousness.

Rasanath: This portrait brings out the choice that they make at this time. I'm just gonna sleep through life. I'm just gonna go to sleep because that's the best way to not experience the chaos around me.

Hari Prasada: But it's not a conscious choice oftentimes, but it's not a conscious choice.

As you talked about, the philosophy is to be awake and to be present and to be mindful. But I'm not aware of what I'm doing

Rasanath: right now. It's, it's coping. It's a very silent coping mechanism. I just sleep. I just want to go to sleep. And in this case we, you know, uh, all the types go to sleep in a certain way.

They become unaware of their own suffering for the nines, it's literally going to sleep.

Hari Prasada: I don't want to be bothered. So if I do that and I suppress so much, I'm gonna wind up in the destructive consciousness. Briefly take us there

Rasanath: and the destructive levels of consciousness. Nines are, we've already discussed the passive aggressiveness.

They're passive aggressive and listless and the anger of the nine. This is very important to understand. Nines actually, when you talk about anger, they're like, anger, who me? I don't have any anger. And, uh, nines are masters at suppressing their anger, so much so that they are not even aware. They are doing this.

Anger is a word that terrifies them, but deep down they have suppressed so much anger that eventually it comes out and it comes out through the wing. So if you're nine with an eight wing, it might come out through the eight energy. If you're a nine with a one wing, it might come out through the one energy, but the anger does come out.

And many times people, uh, it comes out at a time when. It. It becomes like a disproportionate reaction to something that happened. It can be just like let loose and suddenly then it goes back and becomes peaceful again and people are like, oh my God, what just happened? Right? It's that suppressed anger and when we don't learn how to deal with that, sometimes when we release it, it can take things down.

It exhibits itself so disproportionately that it can destroy relationships. Nines at this level of consciousness are also listless catatonic. Essentially, they can just, you know, go to sleep watching TV 24 hours a day, and even if you wave a hand in front of their eyes, there is just no one to respond.

Hari Prasada: Yeah. That's at the deepest, darkest levels of consciousness that we remove ourselves so thoroughly. The nines remove themselves so thoroughly. That there's nobody home anymore, or sometimes the anger is so intense, such a buildup that it comes out in violent ways. So before we close, we need the practice to take us out of the lower levels of consciousness and really to where we can thrive.

Rasanath: So the practice for the nine. Is to become extremely aware of how you are retreating into your shell and nines. This happens very quickly and very unconsciously. It's a reaction to the external environment that can be so chaotic. So please pay very close attention to how you might be doing this, and each time catch yourself as you're doing it.

Bring yourself to the present to learn how to stay in the conflict. And yes, it is not an easy thing. It brings up fears of what we spoke about, that the world is such a broken place and it is incredibly overwhelming, but the only way to achieving Everlasting piece is by repeatedly learning how to walk through a conflict.

Hari Prasada: Peace is so needed for all of us, regardless of the nine or other type. But for the nine, it's something that is craved so deeply and. We think that we can do the simple, easy coping mechanism to reproduce some semblance of peace by avoidance. But it doesn't work. It actually doesn't work It, it takes growth.

It takes consciousness. It takes dealing with the things that disturb our peace to become really unshakeable no matter what is happening, and to become truly peaceful in ourselves. Thank you so much, Rasanath. Thank you to everyone listening. Thank you. See you soon.