The Enneagram by Helen Palmer

Author:Helen Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

The Virtue of Equanimity (Balance)

Envy describes a compulsive attraction to the unavailable. Fours can exert a great deal of time and energy trying to obtain something appealing only to find fault when it comes within reach. For severely fixated Fours, the desire to possess and the need to reject can arise almost simultaneously. They report being attracted to unavailable people whom they know immediately will not be good for them or to people unwilling to commit themselves to a relationship. So the dance goes on. “You move backward, I move forward. If you move forward, I dance backward.”

Balance is the resolution of the suffering caused by being pulled to what you cannot have and repelled by what has come to hand. It is the recognition of having enough of what you really need. Like all of the higher impulses Balance is an embodiment, rather than a thought, or an idea about what it would be like to be fully satisfied. It depends upon being able to stabilize attention in the present and feeling the satisfaction of having enough.

Embodying the virtue of equanimity begins with strengthening the capacity for self-observation to the point where one is able to recognize when attention drifts off to the past, the future, the distant, or the hard to get. Fours will experience equanimity when they are able to gently return their awareness to the present and pay attention to the bodily satisfaction that is here.

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