Category Archives: heart

Four steps for discovering your Enneagram type

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The Enneagram is a system that classifies people by type, like personality typing. It’s kin to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. But it’s about more than personality—it’s based on fixation.

According to Enneagram theory, we are either born with or acquire in the earliest years of life a fixation that deeply influences our identity: who we believe we are and how we view life. The fixation is what keeps you from experiencing your essential (healthy) self. It’s how you get in your own way. It’s a filter that in some ways has worked for you, but it can eventually limit you into a habitual way of living that feels too small. You may suspect there’s more to you than that. You can transcend your fixation to find more essence, more freedom, more joy.

Maybe this is what enlightenment is.

There are nine Enneagram types. Each type has two wings and three subtypes. Furthermore, each type moves toward two different types when you are stressed and when you feel secure. Plus, your development level changes with age, experience, and your desire and ability to grow. So it’s a fairly dynamic model, even though (according to theory) people remain their type their entire lives.

To illustrate, my type is Five. Other names: The Investigator and The Observer. We Fives are classic nerds: bookish, shy, avoiding conflict, private, attracted to minimalism, curious, alert, intense, innovative, insightful, cerebral, having a rich inner life, seeking mastery.

I also have a Four wing. Nickname: The Iconoclast. I am interested in people and healing. The Four wing adds sensitivity.

Would you believe that part of the path to my essential self is exercise? Living in my body connects me to a vitality and presence that I could never experience just living in my head. It took the painful aftermath of a car wreck in my 40s—and the subsequent healing journey—to really understand this.

Daily yoga, the outdoor activities I love like snorkeling and kayaking, dance, meditation, giving and receiving massage, hugs, touch, and sex all help me more fully occupy my body, and be more present in my full vitality, my essential energy that radiates joy, love, peace, and happiness.

So if you knew me as a child, you’d have known a shy, bookish, smart, aloof nerd. If you know me now, you’d see some of those qualities at times, but you’d also see someone who has a lot of vitality, who lives with an open heart (and who still really likes to think).

For me, the journey from being immersed in my type to living more from my essence has been like moving from a black-and-white world into a world full of amazing colors of infinite variety. I can’t say it’s all due to knowing about the Enneagram, but it has helped and provided much insight.

If you are interested in using the Enneagram as a tool for personal growth, and you don’t know your type, here’s how to find out. It’s not always easy (but sometimes it’s very obvious). You can definitely narrow it down to a couple of types, and then you’ll get an aha! (And you may change your mind later on.) Plus, you will easily recognize some people you’ve known.

It’s important to first note that we often do not see ourselves as others see us. Therefore, learning your Enneagram type might make you feel uncomfortable. Prepare yourself. The truth often hurts before it sets us free.

  1. The Enneagram Institute offers free and low-cost online tests. The free, brief QUEST takes 5 minutes.
  2. Watch a brief video of each of the nine types and self-identify your type.
  3. Watch the videos with people you trust with the intent to identify each person’s type with compassion. Others who know us can be honest yet tactful and supportive (as you can be with them—agree on this beforehand and don’t invite anyone who is insensitive).
  4. If you’re still confused about your type, read how types are often misidentified.

To learn more about how it works, read books. I suggest The Wisdom of the Enneagram and The Enneagram for beginners. For more advanced students, I recommend The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram.

Once you are more or less settled on which type most accurately describes you, you can subscribe to a daily “EnneaThought” email for your type that can support your developmental growth.

Here’s my EnneaThought for today:

EnneaThought example

The 12 Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening

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The 12 Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening

Making the rounds on Facebook, worth sharing here.

Color, culture, and language: be warned, this is weird and fascinating!

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The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains (part I) | Empirical Zeal.

The NLPer/cultural anthropology nerd in me was fascinated by this article, which looks at the names for colors among various cultures. In NLP, we say “the map is not the territory,” meaning we live through our maps of the world, not so much through the actual world, and language is a huge part of our maps.

Did you know that some cultures have only two words for colors, words that mean light and dark? All light and warm colors—white, reds, yellows, oranges, pinks—are called by the word meaning light, and all dark, shadowy, cool colors—blues, greens, browns, black—are called by the word meaning dark.

The Japanese language did not distinguish between blue and green until the 20th century, and only did so with American influence. (English recognizes 11 colors. It’s a colorful language.)

In studying words for colors across multiple cultures, researchers came up with algorithms for determining exactly where a color fits in with the shades in a color group. (Remember the 64-crayon box that had yellow-green and green yellow? Barely distinguishable, but one was slightly more yellowish and the other was slightly more greenish.)

The blog, Empirical Zeal, that published this publishes posts from several sources and all posts are written using primary sources. (Unlike my blog, obviously. I’m not a scientist, but I can appreciate science sometimes, and I really just like to share some of the amazing stuff I find out there on the inter webs. I think maybe “humanist” is a good description for my angle.)

The spectrum has no natural boundaries, it would seem, and the perception of color is not universal. Languages also change over time, and many have followed the same route. Since most languages have two to 11 names for colors, scientists have determined that the first two color terms will be light and dark, or white and black. The third will be red, and the next will be either green or yellow. Once both those distinctions come into use, green splits into two, and you now have blue. (The Japanese word for blue green is midori. Author’s note: Thanks to Tim for correcting me on this.)

The research done on native speakers of 110 different languages using 400 color tiles was called the World Color Survey. Further research used algorithms to distinguish color groups. The algorithms were fairly predictive of how actual cultures grouped shades.

The picture that’s emerging is that colors aren’t quite random slices of the visual pie. They’re somewhat basic categories that humans from different cultures gravitate towards, and must have to do with how the biology of how we see the world. In other words, rainbows have seams. We can distill a rainbow into its basic visual ingredients, and a handful of colors come out.

If you get to the end of this, click the link for Part Two, about how naming colors messes with our brains!

The easiest, tastiest summer salad imaginable: insalata caprese

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Last Sunday, it was my turn to cook dinner for my friend. I wanted to serve food that was healthy, seasonal, and delicious, and I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday for inspiration.

Heirloom tomatoes are in season, and they are exceptionally delicious. However, they don’t keep for a long time like the modern tomatoes do. Eat ’em right up is what I say, and never let them see the inside of your refrigerator. Buy organic, please. Support your health and the growers. Or grown your own.

I have been known to get home with an heirloom tomato and eat it immediately, standing over the sink to catch the juice.

In hindsight, I could have invited my friend to do the same—that would have made the dinner memorable, and it would have been a fun surprise—but alas, that didn’t occur to me at the time.

Instead, I served insalata caprese, which Wikipedia tells me means “salad in the style of the island of Capri.” Capri is an island off the coast of southern Italy (the front of the “ankle” of Italy’s boot). That area, Campania (where Naples and Mount Vesuvius are also located), has a rich gastronomic history, being the birthplace of pizza and spaghetti, as well as being one of the first areas of Europe to fall in love with that New World wonder, the tomato.

Insalata caprese sounds fancy, particularly when you say it with an Italian accent (try it: een-suh-LAHH-tuh kuh-PRAY-say), but it is almost as simple as eating over the sink. Here are the ingredients to assemble:

  • one large, ripe Brandywine tomato without soft spots
  • eight or so large fresh basil leaves
  • mozzarella cheese (I used Whole Foods brand without rBGH)
  • organic extra-virgin olive oil
  • balsamic vinegar (if you’re adventurous, try this version over the supermarket stuff—a little goes a very long way and although expensive, it’s not astronomical like some)
  • freshly ground salt (I love Himalayan pink salt)
  • freshly ground pepper
  1. With a serrated knife, slice the stem end off the tomato and cut the remainder into four thick slices. Put slices on plates (one or two per salad plate, or all four on a dinner plate for a full meal for one greedy tomato lover, ahem).
  2. Being careful not to crush them, slice the basil leaves crosswise and evenly distribute on top of the tomatoes.
  3. Slice the mozzarella and distribute evenly over tomatoes.
  4. Drizzle olive oil over each tomato slice.
  5. Drizzle balsamic vinegar over each slice.
  6. Season with freshly ground salt and pepper to taste.

That’s it. You will need a knife and fork. Now indulge in some summer bliss!

(You will want to drink the juices left on the plate and then lick the plate. I won’t tell.)

Ruth Reichl’s delicious deviled eggs recipe

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My favorite food writer is Ruth Reichl, former food critic of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, editor of Gourmet magazine, book author (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, Not Becoming My Mother, and more) and a wonderful tweeter to follow on Twitter.

Her tweets are poetry, jewels of sensual delight. Here’s a recent one:

Late spring. Damp green grass beneath my feet. A flock of tiny yellow birds. Local strawberries, so sweet, drenched in thick Jersey cream.

Doesn’t that make you want to hang out with Ruth, wherever she is? She’s so present, so alive, so appreciative.

She wrote about how to make deviled eggs, and I learned several things:

  • Fresh eggs do not peel well. Get farm or backyard organic eggs from free-range chickens and let them sit in the fridge for a week before hard-boiling.
  • The term “deviled” was used starting in the 18th century to refer to spicy foods, such as deviled eggs and deviled ham. They are also called “stuffed eggs” and “mimosa eggs”.
  • If you want perfectly centered egg yolks, store the eggs on their sides.
  • Bring cold water with eggs in it to a boil, then cover and turn off the heat for exactly 12 minutes.
  • After cooking, immediately chill the eggs in a bowl of ice water to prevent the greenish tinge on the outside of the cooked yolk.

I made deviled eggs yesterday, before I read this article. They are so easy and yummy in summer! I use store-bought mayo (made with olive oil—Ruth provides the recipe for homemade—click the link above) and topped each filled egg with paprika and exactly three capers.

Below, two eggs are store-bought organic, and two are from Hal’s backyard chickens. Guess which is which? Also notice the greenish tinge on one of the yolks. That egg must not have cooled quickly enough!

My granddaughter, who turns 12 today, has a shortcut to get deviled egg flavor without the work: She peels a hard-boiled egg, cuts it in half, and smears a little yellow prepared mustard on it. Pop it in your mouth, and voila! Quick and easy!

Practicing wellness of body, mind, heart, and spirit: James Altucher’s Daily Practice

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One of my favorite discoveries in the blogging world is James Altucher. He’s a good prolific writer, inventive, irreverent, smart, down-to-earth, no-nonsense, and he comes across as a regular person who has learned from his mistakes.

I get the impression that he’s done really, really well in business, lost it all, started over, more than once. HBO, hedge funds, start-ups, investments, Wall Street, whatever. I don’t really know that world, but I imagine his blog reaches a lot of people in the financial world.

He’s also experienced some relationship ups and downs and a marriage that didn’t work out, and now he is married to Claudia Altucher, a yoga teacher. He practices yoga.

What impresses me most in his writing is that he combines his financial background with amazingly sensible wisdom about how to live life well. I follow him on Twitter and Facebook and look forward to reading his blog posts.

You can check out his blog here: The Altucher Confidential: Ideas for a World Out of Balance.

The reason I’m writing about him here on my blog is because he advocates doing something he calls The Daily Practice, which he calls

a simple tool to improve, inspire, and unlock greatness.

It’s pure genius and truly simple. He has three big goals in life:

  • He wants to be happy.
  • He wants to eradicate unhappiness in his life.
  • He wants every day to be as smooth as possible. No hassles.

If you’d like to achieve those goals in your life, read on.

James discovered that every time he hit a low point in life, after a major failure, feeling unhappy and hassled, he did something every day for himself in four areas that helped move him closer to the three big goals. You can do this too:

  1. Do something physical for yourself to get and keep yourself in good shape. He mentions doing yoga every day and exercising vigorously enough to break a sweat for 10 minutes. Being healthy is a prerequisite for being happy, and exercise also helps calm your mind. You get to choose how you want to do this.
  2. Do something emotionally good for yourself. He mentions that if someone is a drag on you, cut them out or minimize your time with them, and if they lift you up, spend more time with them. He mentions being honest without being hurtful and never doing anything you don’t want to do—he doesn’t go to weddings.
  3. Do something to stimulate yourself mentally. He suggests thinking of 10 businesses you can start from home or listing every productive thing you did yesterday. You could learn a foreign language in daily sessions, memorize a song, or do a crossword puzzle, whatever works for you. Altucher carries around waiter pads to write down his ideas.
  4. Practice something spiritual, which can include praying, meditating, being grateful, forgiving, or studying a spiritually uplifting text. I like this suggestion: You can also meditate for 15 seconds by really visualizing what it would be like meditate for 60 minutes. 

Altucher says every time he has hit a low point and then started doing things in these four areas every day, his life would improve. He’d begin to feel lucky. Ideas would flow, he’d start executing them, and people would help him. People would smile at him.

He calls this improving the internal fire. I think that concept is from yoga, but you get the picture. Living fully, in joy, lit from within.

I get that this is a great practice! And I want to think that I already do this, but you know what? I don’t keep track of what I do every day, and I haven’t tied my behavioral choices to three big goals. I have not made a commitment to work on myself daily in specific ways in these four areas.

Well, James has thought of that, and he has set up a website called The Daily Practice where you can set up your own activities in the four categories (plus a new fifth one, Fun) as well as how often you want to do them, and track your actual behavior.

It’s in beta right now, but I’m trying it out, and so far everything seems to work.

Also, your big three goals might be a little different. Who doesn’t want happiness? But I actually don’t mind a few occasional not-too-major hassles because they challenge me to grow, and that gives me something to write about. So my third goal is to spread the wellness and joy to others.

If you’d like to set up physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and fun challenges for yourself and track your activity using The Daily Practice, go to tdp.me and set yourself up! It’s also a Facebook app, but you don’t have to share your postings. In fact, if you’re my friend, please don’t. TMI. Tell me your results, instead.

Today I have done a tarot reading and watched a fun movie (fun), meditated for 15 minutes and forgave someone I had problems with (spiritual), connected with two people who lift me up (emotional), read something stimulating (mental), and did sun salutations and slept well (physical).

Thanks, James!

Repost: Tracking the Hadzabe: One of Africa’s Last Nomadic Bush Tribes

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Tracking the Hadzabe: One of Africa’s Last Nomadic Bush Tribes.

My friend and fellow writer Shelley Seale went to Africa and had one of the most interesting days I can imagine, spending time with the Hadzabe, a small, remote bush tribe who still live by hunting and gathering, speak using clicks, and are uninterested in seeing photographs. Fascinating!

She also camped in the Serengeti and awoke to giraffes grazing right outside her tent!

Lucky gal!

The questions of the heart; seeking the sound of a normal heartbeat

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I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I have a friend who just had a second surgery on his heart in two weeks. His heartbeat has not had a regular rhythm for some time now.

I’m searching the internet for a sound file or an iPhone application that is just simply the sound of a normal heartbeat. The longer the better, and if he can loop it to listen to all night with headphones as he sleeps, fantastic.

At a minimum, it will be soothing, because if you can imagine, heart surgery is a pretty nerve-wracking big deal, especially when the problems aren’t fixed the first time.

At best, listening to the sounds could entrain his heart into a normal rhythm, which he did experience briefly after the first surgery.

If you know of anything, please comment or email me. Thank you.

Meanwhile, remember that besides the brain in your head (headquarters for the nervous system that runs throughout your entire body), you also have two other centers of intelligence: your heart and your gut.

I believe Rilke is onto something about the intelligence of the heart.

I have learned to sit with the questions in my heart and let them transform me, and I am a much better, broader, deeper person for it. I get perspective on my own fear-driven behaviors. I get insight into the behaviors and possible motivations of others.

I don’t know that I have answers. Perhaps the only answer is to be willing to sit with the feelings that are unresolved and allow them to change, not forcing or judging, just allowing and noticing.

It does seem to me that gradually healing occurs. Gradually forgiveness comes. Gradually lightness replaces heaviness. Gradually clarity replaces confusion. Gradually …

This is another rhythm of the heart.

Please say prayers for Marco. Thanks.

Buddha’s Brain supplements: an update

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My October 2010 post about the supplements recommended in the book Buddha’s Brain now has links so you can order these supplements online from Amazon.com (which offers discounts for subscription shipping) if you wish.

Some of these supplements are difficult to find in stores, meaning Whole Foods doesn’t carry them.

Here’s the original post with the new links. None of the data has changed except an error about the recommended dosage of huperzine A. I changed mg to mcg after further research.

Sprouted green lentils in Greek salad

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Every once in a while I crave salad for breakfast, especially in summer, and that is what I had today.

Reminds me of following the candida diet about six years ago: no dairy, grains, fruit, sugar, or lots of other forbidden things. It was very, very strict, and I followed it perfectly for nearly three months—if you mess up, you could feed the candida yeast and have to start over. Man, I had never been on a diet before—this was Marine Corps boot camp!

Nothing I had ever eaten for breakfast was on that diet except eggs! I tell you, eggs over easy without toast to mop up the runny yolks just wasn’t the same! I often ate salads for breakfast then. (I did clear the excess candida, by the way.)

Today I made a Greek-style salad using baby spinach and adding chopped red onion, black kalamata olives, cucumber slices, half an avocado, local Pure Luck goat feta, and sprouted green lentils.

greek salad with sprouted green lentils

After taking the photo, I added Sass Green Gaia Undressing, also a local product that may be distributed widely (if it’s available in your area, you’ll find it in the refrigerated salad dressing case). No oil, no dairy, all plant.

The healthy fat in the avocado staves off hunger pangs until mid-day, when I’ll have a smoothie. The lentils and feta add protein.

Health is grand.