Hey there! Buddy, speaking! Yessir, your ego! Your pleasure-seeking pain-avoiding wired-for-business hyper viper! Yes, it’s me! Me as you! The voice in your head that never shuts up! That likes and dislikes, desires and fears, judges and labels, worries and wonders, remembers and imagines, plans and organizes, reacts and repeats?! So times a-wastin’, dude! Pitter patter, let’s get at ‘er!
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” After that episode on a horse, Paul had come to this: I am not a person. And neither are you.
The personality is a braid of conditioned behaviours and memories. It’s why we think, speak and act the same way every day. We assume this triple-named bit of binding is who we are.
Enneagram teaching posits nine passions (from passio, meaning ‘to suffer’). These are anger, pride, deceit, envy, greed, fear, gluttony, lust and, taking up the rear, sloth. Most men assume their dominant passion is lust. Most men are wrong. Fear-based men vastly outnumber men who love to fight. We dance with each other. Lust leads. Fear follows.
The personality is built on whatever we identify with. One man is a sports fan; another, a Scientologist. A third man watches pornography; a fourth hyper-cleans his car. Whatever we think or do habitually is the personality. Donald Winnicott called it the false self.
Men's Work 