Head Centre in the Enneagram — Logic and Imagination
What’s Chinese for “I Don’t Know”?
In 2013, I spent three weeks in China as part of an educational exchange. En route I was looking at an iPad app for learning Chinese. I learned two phrases that caused much hilarity among my Chinese colleagues, possibly because of my accent, or maybe just for the sheer irony of it all. Wǒ bù zhī dào means “I don’t know” and Wǒ tīng bù dǒng means “I don’t understand”. These are obviously useful phrases in a country where you don’t speak the language, although I often said them more as a joke than in a real situation.
It’s not coincidental that these two phrases came so easily. I often feel that there is a lot I don’t know or understand. When entering another world, such as the inner world or the world of spirit, where we are still learning the language, it might simply be the most honest thing to say, “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand”.
As I progress and move a little further into these worlds, I can admit that I might know a bit more than when I started, but I am far from being a native in these lands. And I find it so easy to forget what little I do know – I get out of practice and need to relearn the language all over again. Wǒ bù zhī dào. Wǒ tīng bù dǒng.
Head Centre
The Head wants to Know. On the Enneagram, the Head Centre or Thinking Centre is expressed in spaces Five, Six, and Seven. These spaces can be defined by the following questions:
Five: “How can I meet and know the Other?”
Six: “How can I know the Divine guidance that is always available to me?”
Seven: “How can I be fully present and know whatever is before me in this moment?”
When we act out of the negative side of our Head Centre, it attempts to formulate answers that end up not working very well:
Five: “I can’t know the Other directly. I’ll try to figure it out by learning whatever I can about it and storing up provisions to keep me safe. I’ll keep it all with me in my own little cave.”
Six: “I’m cut off from the Source; I can’t make it on my own. I need to find someone else to keep me safe.”
Seven: “I don’t believe I have what I need right now. I’ll keep looking for the right thing by trying everything and anything; something’s got to work.”
These three responses are expressions of fear. Sevens run, Fives hide, and Sixes dither back and forth.
The Head Brain
The Head centre or Head brain is the seat of reason. Mostly, when we say someone is intelligent, we mean that they have well-developed skills in logic, reasoning, and memory.
In our present society, these skills are deemed to be the preeminent ones in finding truth, the only ones that matter. If something is not verifiable and repeatable in this domain, it is not believed to be true, or at least not knowable as true. Anything in the domain of emotion (Heart) or intuition (Gut) is not considered reliable. Strongly Head-oriented individuals often dismiss these domains as “touchy-feely”. Interestingly, this description is probably fairly accurate – Gut and Heart centres are “touchy” and “feely” – but they are dismissed by the Head centre out of fear. “Touchy” and “feely” are powerful forces, often very insightful, but not easily explained or controlled.
Not to say that there is no place for logical reasoning – there certainly is. Science, technology, and law rely heavily on it and it has materially affected the quality of our lives. But like any of our centres, it is only one of the forces that must be balanced in our wholeness of being. When the other centres are neglected and the Head claims that the visible and measureable is “all there is”, imbalance results, giving rise to stunted growth and perhaps emotional and mental disorders. Paradoxically, the Head centre does have access to the invisible and immeasurable through the faculty of imagination. When we dismiss this realm, we become less than we are meant to be.
The Imaginal World – The Head Without Limits
A purely rational approach to truth-seeking might dismiss the imagination as a fantasy, not connected to reality. And when we are out-of-balance, this can be the case. The Head is without limit in imagining disaster and perpetuating fear. A missed bus connection mentally leads to losing a job, becoming homeless, and dying under a bridge. In this case, the situation really is all in your head, and it shouldn’t be paid much heed.
On the other hand, the Head centre can be the gateway to the imaginal world. This is not a place of fantasy or madness – it’s just not completely explained by the daily experiences we usually describe as “all there is”. As George Bernard Shaw says in Saint Joan:
Joan of Arc: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.
Captain Robert de Baudricourt: They come from your imagination.
Joan of Arc: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.
Sometimes knowledge comes from a realm outside of our daily experience and imprints itself in different places and times, in imagination and in lived experience.
The Fox and I
I had an experience of the imaginal world at a week-long residency during my spiritual director training. It started with me revisiting a path I had walked during the previous residency. During that earlier walk, I had set out, carrying a couple of stones in my pockets that symbolized something I was trying to find an answer to. My walk led me to this little promontory on Echo Lake.
While sitting on a dock and looking out on the lake, I made an Inukshuk (a human-shaped stone cairn) from the stones that I found there. I thought of a song recorded by Steve Bell, “Here by the Water.”
And here by the water
I’ll build an altar to praise Him
Out of the stones that I’ve found here
I’ll set them down here
Rough as they are
Knowing You can make them holy
This was a profound and moving experience that helped me see the necessity of choosing my own path, something that I have difficulty doing as an Enneagram Type Nine.
When I was back for the next residency, I had a secret thought that maybe my Inukshuk had survived the winter and might be waiting there for me. I thought I would retrace my path and see where it led this time.
Nowhere, apparently. The whole area of the lakeshore where I had previously walked had been bought up by a property developer and was blocked off by No Trespassing signs. The message seemed pretty clear: “No. That’s done. You don’t need to revisit this place.”
OK, what then? I decided to take a drive, maybe see if I could go around Echo Lake. I drove for quite a ways along the north shore, past my original point on the lake, through cottage country and Standing Buffalo First Nation. I surmounted a rise and saw a beautiful vista open up before me. And then, just ahead, there was a sign: Road Ends. And to the left: No Turning in Driveway.
Well, that was pretty definite. Hmmph!
Later that day, I met with Jane, my mentor, and described my experience. She led me in a guided imagination that opened the door to a new experience of the imaginal world.
In my imagination, instead of continuing to the end of the road, I stopped the car at the top of the rise where I saw the vista and stepped off the road toward the lake. The hill dropped off steeply (in my imagination; it didn’t match with the actual location). I was half walking, half sliding down the snowy slope, moving pretty fast, but under control. The trees became thicker and obscured the view.
A fox joined me, running down the slope alongside me and playing in the snow. I worried that I would lose my footing and have to grab onto a tree and that in that vulnerable state the fox would bite me. I needed to seek some assurance, so I asked the fox if he was safe. “Oh, yes. I’m safe. But I’m not tame.”
Eventually, we reached a bluff above the lake. It did not immediately seem as though there was a way down to the lake, but after a bit of searching, I found a path off to the side. The fox went on his way, explaining that he had other things to attend to.
I made my way down to the lake, which was frozen. Someone had left me a pair of cross-country skis. There wasn’t a note, but somehow I knew they were left for me. I put on the skis and headed across the lake, exhilarated by the oncoming wind, knowing that I was properly dressed for the adventure. I headed off to the retreat centre, where I dropped off the skis and ended up in my meeting with Jane.
When the whole group met that evening, we broke into triads to talk about how the day had gone. I told my story about the fox to my group and one of them said, “Are you serious?” She then related how she had once been on her own out on the land in connection with an Indigenous ceremony. While walking down a path, a fox appeared in front of her and kept looking back to see if she was following. It led her to the shore of a lake and then left her.
Her fox led her to a lake in the physical world. My fox led me to a lake in the imaginal world. We had not discussed her prior experience. Logically and rationally, it could be explained by coincidence, but it did not seem so. It was, for me, a concrete experience of the reality of the imaginal world, someplace I theoretically believed could exist, but had not experienced before.
This I Know (Knowledge And Belief)
This concrete imaginal experience did not feel spooky or supernatural. It felt very much a part of normal life, guidance that was offered for the journey. It was a watershed for me, however. It moved my sense of the imaginal world from a framework of belief and doubt to one of knowledge. When you know something to be true, belief is beside the point.
There is something personal about these experiences. I have heard similar things from others, but they never have had the same impact on me. I think we need to be open to what someone else’s experience means for them. A profound and moving experience for one person may look very ordinary or coincidental to another, primarily because the experience is so interior. The Spirit whispers in your ear and it may not be audible to your companions, just as you may not hear what is whispered to them.
During a time of reflection at an Easter retreat a month or so before my imaginal experience, I drew the picture below, calling it “A Lamp Unto My Feet“, from Psalm 119:105. I wasn’t sure why I drew it at the time, but I think that the picture was a foreshadowing and assurance of guidance yet to come.
In the imaginal world, I discovered that guidance is available to me, not as a set of specific instructions, but as a general principle of trusting things to unfold and an understanding that the path ahead is not just an extension of the present and past, although informed by it. Help and companionship are available. When I am on the path, I am in no danger, but my companions and experiences are not controllable. The way is shown, resources provided, I am prepared. I can be present to and know the Other. The present moment gives me all I need to know.