The Paradoxes of "Emotional Sloth"

Recently, my wife and I spent three weeks in Denmark, the country where I was born and raised.

For three lovely weeks, we had "nothing to do," in the sense that the clamor and demands of everyday life were nowhere to be found.

I spent a lot of time "just sitting" and thinking about life and the world and the human condition... against the backdrop of a family summer cottage where I spent many a summer holiday as a kid.

When I am on vacation, I am just not one of "those people" who feels compelled to cram "activities" into my every waking moment... for me, the entire purpose of being on vacation is that it represents an opportunity for me to totally "unplug" without feelings of guilt.

So I do.

I got to reflecting on the reality that my most desired state is "stillness."

When characterizing Nines and their fixations, a word/phrase that is often used is "sloth." Sometimes the more specific classical term "acedia" (Claudio Naranjo is fond of this one) is used-- specifically meaning spiritual or mental sloth. I also see the term "indolence" used, quite a bit.

The interesting (apparent) paradox is that we criticize Nines for being in this "nothing" place... yet society broadly endorses the positive idea of stillness through meditation, and we "value" people who have the ability to stay unflappable and calm.

There's a strange duality there... and I fell into this type of thinking, myself, for many years... with an internal dialogue that went something like:

"So you want me to be calm and peaceful, and you openly declare this a GOOD thing, but because I am calm and peaceful I am in my FIXATION and need to snap out of it???!?!??"

Ultimately, we need to scratch beneath the surface and examine intent.

Meditation and striving to keep oneself in a Zen-like state of calm is an active practice... not a way to zone out and avoid the world, out of a sense of apathy. At a glance, an external observer may see the two as fairly similar... but when you examine the underlying states of consciousness... one is motivated by a true sense of peace, the other is motivated by apathy.

I genuinely like to be peaceful.

I have no fear of "doing" or of "engaging." But when offered the active choice between engaging in a bunch of stuff and sitting still in a state of peace, I am always going to choose peace. There's little to no ongoing "monkey mind/monkey body" within me.

Does that make me emotionally or spiritually slothful, or merely a peaceful sort of person?

Beats me... but I always return to the same basic question: "If someone is functioning and content in their life, WHO decides what 'healthy conduct' looks like?"

I Was a Lazy Kid

For as long as I can remember, I have been a lazy person. I was a lazy kid. I don't say that as some "point of pride," merely as a fact.

In grade school, it seemed like my life revolved around a carefully laid strategy of non-participation. I was always good at "making myself busy" at crucial moments... being in the bathroom when sides were picked for school yard games; "forgetting" something I had to go back for.

It has never been entirely clear to me why I avoided participation. Well... in part because it felt scary to be in the rough of things. Life felt very rough, and I felt ill-equipped to deal with it. Life always felt like it was "screaming" at me, and I wanted no part of it. I also felt somewhat held back by the impending criticism from my parents, should I participate in something and do anything short of "excel." To this day, the words "In OUR family, we _______" followed by some story about how anyone in the family who'd undertaken whatever I'd just been a part of had done to at a world class level.

I was rarely "world class" at anything. Most of the time, I just wanted to remain largely unseen. Unseen was a safe place... and I was all about safety. I "created myself" a solid performer-- someone who was reliably near the "upper third" of things I did. Good enough to not suffer the embarrassment of being "chosen last" for school games, but not so good that anyone would notice me. It meant that when I had to "participate," I could so in a manner so unobtrusive that it still felt like "not being seen."

I also remember the time my mother came in my room and told me (for the 345th time) that I needed to tidy up. And then she asked "I JUST don't understand why you can't keep your room tidy???"

Unlike the typical 9-year old response of "Uhhh... I don't know," I instead chose to reply "Because I am just a LAZY person."

Of course, that just set her off on a tirade about how that was "utter nonsense" and how nobody "in our family" was a lazy person.

When I look at my adult life, I can see all the ways in which I have chosen paths that left me "unnoticed." I have never felt comfortable with being noticed; nor with "taking credit." I think that I used to have fear of being seen-- as an adult in middle age, I just don't care. If you want "acknowledge" something I have done, put some money in my bank account.

I have contemplated those feelings at length. Ultimately, I just don't need my ego stroked... my "psychic rewards" in life have never come from someone putting me on some kind of figurative public pedestal. My reward comes from the internal observation that someone "is better off" as a result of something I did. And maybe that's participant to why I have tended to feel put off by "excelling:" People always want to seem to engage in "deity worship" for those who do good... it becomes all about "recognition." I don't care. If you want to "recognize" me, contribute to my grocery budget.

It ALL feels like "work..."

I recognized-- quite early in life-- that I was fundamentally a lazy person. At age eight-- when I told my mother that the reason I hadn't tidied my room was that I was "too lazy"-- I had no idea there was such a creature as "The Enneagram."

Laziness carries very negative connotations in the western world, especially in the US... a nation driven by a work-work-work ethic.

Claudio Naranjo sometimes uses the word "accidia" to describe the inner states of enneagram Nines. Accidia is derived from Greek, and refers to the original "Deadly Sin" of Sloth... ultimately with a definition that touches primarily on emotional and spiritual apathy.

I have been trying to drill down into how I feel about "laziness," and how I experience it-- and don't experience it.

In my core, I experience pretty much all activity that requires me to "engage" as WORK. Besides this sense that everything feels like "working," I experience a subtler subtext that working places me in a position of "obligation," and I harbor resentments about "feeling obligated."

In simple terms, I live with an inner dynamic in which "doing anything" or "movement" (spiritual, physical, emotional, psychological) never equates with "fun" and always equates with "work."

I think it is human nature-- unless we're truly mentally ill-- dictates that we're drawn towards whatever feels "rewarding" and makes us "feel good." Similarly, we tend to shy away from things that do not "feel good." That has nothing to do with enneagram type, and everything to do with being alive.

So, if your nature is to be a super-active person, being in motion "feels good," so you do it. And "sitting still" probably "feels bad" (or "incomplete") so you avoid it. For me, "sitting still" feels good. Movement, work and "obligations" do not feel good.

There are few things I like more (aka: that "feel good") than sitting down, with the knowledge that "nothing needs to be done." There are few things I like more than completely emptying my head of all activity, to where there is just silence.

Is this laziness?

Rather than make an argument "for" or "against," I'll answer with a question: "By WHOSE yardstick do we determine what constitutes laziness?"

Who-- if ANYbody-- is "right" and "wrong?"

If we throw social norms out the window and momentarily forget that we "live in the US of A, where we work HARD, by golly!" and instead look at activity levels as a spectrum of "preferences," what do we end up with?

Metaphorically speaking, some people like coffee a LOT, and some people don't like coffee, at ALL. Some people are COLD when it is 70 degrees, some people are WARM. Some people like to be very ACTIVE, some do NOT.

For me, one of the downfalls/shortfalls of the "modern" (psycho-spiritual) enneagram is its tendency to focus very heavily on the enneagram types "in their fixations." Aside from the work of Riso & Hudson, remarkably little time is given to describing and characterizing what a healthy ennegram type "looks like." The problem with this approach is that it fails to sort out simple preferences (i.e. "I like coffee"), from the mental/emotional disturbances that are our "fixations" (let's call that "I'm AFRAID of coffee.").

Of course, I'm not blind to the fact that the majority focus of the "modern" enneagram is on "fixing" people through books, self-help seminars and so forth.

I guess the "issue" I have with all this-- and the reason I started writing-- is that this extensive focus on enneagram fixations can easily get to a place where we put a lot of effort into "standardizing" humans... and humans are so NOT "standardizable." We must be discerning. Using blanket statements like "Nines are too lazy" and "Threes are too driven" does nobody any favors because it ignores individual preferences.

Of course, there may be those in the peanut gallery who are thinking "Yeah, that's written like a NINE. Advocating NOT doing anything. Laziness!"

I can only offer my perspective.

My primary enneagram Teacher was an Eight who taught the enneagram from a tradition of nonduality. We spent a lot of time reflecting on-- and learning-- how to "sit in silence." We learned critical self-inquiry, and specifically how to recognize the difference between acting from "presence" and acting from "fear."

I'm a Nine. I'm sitting here in my office. It's fairly tidy and I can find everything I need, in order to run my two businesses from home. My bills and taxes are paid. I'm taking next week off. I have a lot of work to be done in January, and I WILL do that work.

All in all, I'd rather be sitting still, doing nothing. That's my preference. I'm not going to, but it's my preference.
That makes me a Nine.

All in all, you'd rather cancel Christmas and get started on that work... NOW. That's your preference. You're not going to, but it's your preference.
That makes you a Three.

But it makes neither of us wrong.

So here I sit, on Christmas morning, writing. Because everyone else in the house is slothfully sleeping!

That was a joke...

Happy Holidays!