Becoming Who We Already Are

				Opening Minds, Opening Hearts Podcast Season 4 Episode 2 with Reverend Nhien Vuong

Title: Becoming Who We Already Are

Welcome to Opening Minds Opening Hearts, a podcast about the transformative practice of Centering Prayer. In each episode, we will talk to friends of Contemplative Outreach about their personal practice. Listen in as our guests share insights about the teachings of Father Thomas Keating, how the practice impacts their work in the world, and their thoughts about how Centering Prayer connects to the living traditions of contemplation and meditation.

We are your hosts, Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser, Centering Prayer practitioners and contemplative life seekers who love to talk a little too much about how the practice of contemplative prayer transforms our inner and outer worlds. Our hope is to open the door for you to explore more deeply this powerful practice of Centering Prayer.


Mark: Welcome to season four of the Contemplative Outreach podcast, Opening Minds, Opening Hearts. I'm Mark Dannenfelser. 

Colleen: And I'm Colleen Thomas. 

Mark: Well, hello, Colleen. 

Colleen: Hi, Mark Dannenfelser. We're trucking along here, diving into the deep waters of healing and shadow side of the false self, and we're experimenting, too, this season.

We might have some new listeners because we put some ads, marketing ads, actually, in the Sojourners magazine, and the tagline says, "The divine therapy, the divine therapist, the divine remedy." 

Mark: A lot of divine there. 

Colleen: A lot of divine. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Colleen: But kinda hits all these elements of the therapy, the therapist, the remedy, and everybody's looking for a remedy.

Everybody's trying to heal. 

Mark: It was great, too, that the advertising is expanding out a little bit because this season, especially, our guest list is really also expanding how we talk about Centering Prayer and how we reflect on what's really happening in Centering Prayer. And I think we have a fairly diverse list of guests who are coming at that from different disciplines and different directions. 

Colleen: And it's important, I think, to have the variety of people that we have on this season because, in some ways, there's still this sense that meditation, for all intents and purposes, is, like, this pause, take bliss, and relax. And I think our guests this season reminding us that, no, actually, healing is a process, and there's work involved, and it isn't this fast track to bliss.

A lot of stuff is coming up when you have a contemplative prayer practice, and we need support in processing what comes up and support in also understanding what's happening or what's supposed to happen in this healing process. And I think that's why I'm excited to talk to our guest today about the Enneagram and how it supports this process, Thomas Keating calls the divine therapy, and how it helps to give us some understanding about all of these terms that Father Thomas uses about shadow and false self that has to be dismantled or that is being dismantled in this process.

So, yeah. 

Mark: And I can't think of a better guest to talk about the Enneagram. So I'm delighted today to introduce our listeners to the Reverend Nhien Vuong, who's a contemplative teacher, ordained minister, and a founder of the Evolving Enneagram, an interspiritual community that's devoted to awakening through presence and radical inner and outer hospitality.

Nhien is a longtime practitioner of Centering Prayer and a certified somatic Enneagram practitioner. She teaches the Enneagram as a mandala of our innate wholeness and oneness, and as a sacred map for embodying our true divine nature beyond personality patterns. As an interspiritual guide, she mentors individuals from diverse backgrounds and leads contemplative Enneagram retreats internationally.

She's the author of "The Enneagram of the Soul: A 40-Day Spiritual Companion for the Nine Types." A hearty welcome to you, Nhien.

Nhien: Yeah. Thanks so much, Mark and Colleen. So great to be here with you both.

Colleen: Welcome. We're so excited to talk to you. I'm excited to talk to you because I've been in spaces with you. We were saying just before we started recording here that we're part of this Centering Prayer Summit family, which is now, this was the fifth year 2026, of the summit. And so, although I've been in your sphere, we've never had a one-on-one or two-on-one conversation with each other, so I'm just really grateful to be in this setting with you. And learning more about you from hearing your bio than I think I knew, particularly the leaving a law career to pursue a calling.

So I'm really curious about that, and was there a connection to that shift for you from your career in law to what is the question we always ask all of our guests as we settle in, to how you came to the practice of Centering Prayer? Oftentimes leaving a place or a thing is a beginning of a spiritual journey.

But ultimately, we wanna know how you first came to Centering Prayer.

Nhien: Mm. Actually, I think it's the reverse, that Centering Prayer and what was happening within me resulted in a transformation that caused me to say, "I can no longer do this thing that I practice of law." So I came upon Centering Prayer in approximately, like I'm really bad with dates, approximately 2005.

And it was actually a Unity metaphysics book where Unity, the tradition I come from, is steeped in the notion of silence as a core practice, like silence with a capital S. And Centering Prayer was listed as one of the recommended practices. So I took it on then, and then, as many do when they first come upon meditative practices, only turned to it when I was in great need and despair.

You know, like in the very beginning, it was just like, "I'm in pain, so, so here, God. Here I am," you know? Right. The divine. And then as it started to move within me, it's actually, I write about it in my book, that I started to come into a felt knowing of wholeness, and that was the thing that was like, "Oh my goodness, this thing that I've been seeking my whole life, this is what I want to give to people. This is what I want to share."

And so that inspired a whole turnaround in terms of my calling and leaving my law career to support people in having an experience of that, both wholeness and eventually a greater sense of oneness and unity as well from inside of me. Not from a book, which I love books, but so that's where I used to seek it. So yeah.

Mark: Yeah. When I started practicing Centering Prayer, I was just dealing with it as a practice. I didn't realize that it led to this, what you said, wholeness, and that it's really the beginning of a journey, maybe a journey we've been on but maybe didn't even recognize. And Keating kept reminding us of that. That this is a spiritual journey. He used that language. This is a quote of his, "The spiritual journey is not about becoming something else, but about becoming who we already are in God." We've kinda been on the path the whole time. 

Nhien: Yeah. 

Mark: So I'm curious how you even envision the whole, what Keating would call the spiritual journey, that whole process.

Nhien: Yes. Yes. I love that notion of becoming who we already are. So much of why I'm drawn to this path is the belief, and we teach this in Unity, which is we do have a belief not in original sin, but in original blessing. This fundamental notion that we are actually whole and perfect in our authentic being.

And so the work, if you will, is the work of releasing all that is not that. And I would even say a step further, which is not even releasing that, but releasing our identification with all that is not that.

That we have a case of mistaken identity, you know? That I believe I am this, and you mentioned the Enneagram in the opening.

What the Enneagram helps me to do, whether it's for me personally, for those whom I companion, it's this notion of the Enneagram helps us to identify the egoic or personality structure with which we have become identified as our whole self.

And the idea that so long as I believe I am but this, this ego, connected to a certain list of traits and idealized notions of myself, that when I can realize that, I can realize, oh, that's not my whole self.

It's not wrong. It's not bad. It gets to belong and be included. So in the practice of Centering Prayer, what I teach people is that, that motion of dying to who we think we are allows for the spirit to inform us from within so that we know in a lived and felt way what we actually are. The spirit or the wholeness that we actually are.

Yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. This season is interesting because we're throwing around this word healing that has become a very popular term in cult culture, which is wonderful, but we've also been talking a bit about what we understand healing to be. And so, how do you understand healing, especially in light of what you've just shared?

Nhien: Yeah. Yeah, so I hold healing really as healing the false belief that we are separate from God. 

Colleen: Mm. Very Keating. 

Nhien: Yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Nhien: Yes. Yes, Cynthia Bourgeault's work as well. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Nhien: Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening was one of the early books that I suggested my Enneagram community read.

Mm. So, yeah, yeah, it's really core. Yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, well, interesting, when I'm reading Keating, I hear and see a lot of your work. For example, the way he talks about the divine therapy, he says, this is from the spiritual journey teaching series, and he says, "Take the divine therapy if you want to be free."

He says, "The whole purpose of this therapy is to enable us to become who we really are. I don't know what else you think you can be but we're scared of being who we really are." And he says, "The false self has no future."

Which sounds so sad, but- [Laughter]

But I'm curious if you can talk with us a little bit more about this idea of becoming who we really are, and how the Enneagram can support this becoming.

Nhien: Yes, absolutely. So if you've ever seen the image of the Enneagram, it is a circle with nine points around it. And for me, this is sacred geometry. There's a reason for it being just like that. And one thing I don't see people doing a lot is actually first meditating on the circle image itself, and I really like to focus on the circle because a lot of times when people come to the Enneagram, they're like, "Oh, here's another personality typing system, and let's put me in a box."

And I'm like, "Oh, no." The idea is that there are nine dots around the circumference of this circle. And so the idea is that we're over-identified with one of those dots, right? One of those points on the circumference of our being.

And so if we lean to this idea, the idea of freedom is breaking free from the shell of that point, and opening into then being released into the wholeness of the circle so that I know that I am all of this, with all capacities, not just something like, for instance, if someone identifies as a Type 8 on the Enneagram, the Type 8 has an idealized self that is equated with, "I will make it in this world by being strong."

It's a dog-eat-dog world, is the inner paradigm, right? And so my being strong, not vulnerable, is the way that I will make it. So what if within our wholeness, this tenderness of heart is very much included in this person's whole being? The personality type actually shields, defends against an experience of that aspect of your being, your vulnerability, your tenderness, your wholeness.

So the idea is when we do the practice of Centering Prayer, we're actually dying to that belief that, that's what I must be.

And we open to this wholeness. And I think originally when this idea of false self came out, we were all apt to bring our old theology to bear on it, right?

And if the old theology is very dualistic, then we're gonna be like, "Oh my gosh, false self bad, true self good." And the way I see it is that if I look at it more like a false identification, like this is not all of me, but it is some of me.

Right? Even within my Enneagram type and personality type, there are sacred gifts, what I would call some of our core spiritual gifts. But the idea is that it's just not all of me.

That the false self is a limited self, not a bad self. And so within that, there's this opening to more of who I really am, and those other aspects also provide this healing, right? Because that softness of heart is a healing salve for the hardness and the callousness that can be reinforced within the Type 8 structure.

And so it becomes a salve in that regard. Other parts of my wholeness come together and integrate in a way that is truly me. And then the last thing I'll say about that is also this notion, I think, again, originally, a lot of people were talking about it more like, where's the true self Keating's talking about?

We're looking for this object almost that is the self. And I definitely see self as it's almost like a continually emergent thing. That it's not like something we find, but in a moment of full presence, the dynamism of being expresses uniquely and authentically at the point of us in a certain way.

Knowing your Enneagram type structure helps me to support you in knowing what are the things that you become over-identified with as yourself, who you think you are that limits your embodied knowing of who you actually are. 

Mark: It's helpful for me to hear you putting that emphasis on wholeness. And then pointing to the physical representation of that in the circle. 'Cause it's easy to think of the spiritual journey as moving from point A to point B in this linear way. (Yes.) And the whole idea is to get up the mountain or go to the light or something. And to hear that it's really about integration, and also there's something about some of those parts that aren't contributing to that integration, and that's the part to deal with, it sounds like.

Keating said that too, that he envisioned the spiritual journey as a journey of surrender. So there's a lot of that, "Okay, what's not necessary here?" 

Nhien: Yeah. 

Mark: Or is being expressed in terms of my type in a way that's lopsided or not whole. It's not including the whole. It's taking over the space in a way.

Nhien: Yes. 

Mark: And I also loved how you're not excluding the, what we would call the false self. 

Nhien: Mm-hmm. 

Mark: Because I struggle with that too, that dualism. There's a true self and a false self, and true is good and false is bad, and so your whole thing is about cut that part off that's bad and elevate the part that's good.

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: Right. 

Colleen: Yeah. I love Mary Mrozowski, who's one of the founders of Contemplative Outreach, used to say that we should be gentle with our false selves. For most of us, it's the only self we know. And, I really get that sense from your book, which I actually went through devotionally for a season. I think I probably have a chunk of the dailies left, but I was in it for a good month, and that's what I felt.

Nhien wrote The Enneagram of the Soul: A 40-Day Spiritual Companion for the Nine Types. And the invitations to sit with our type are so gentle.

And I think that's why even when I said Keating's quote about the false self has no future, there's kind of a sadness in that in some way because this is the part of me, the only part of me that I've known.

Something that struck me from one of your presentations, Nhien, was your sharing about not growing up with particular faith tradition, and you described yourself as a meaning-seeker your whole life, and- Did the Enneagram, your work with the Enneagram support your own tending to this being gentle with your own false self? Could you maybe share some reflection with us from your own journey? 

Nhien: Yeah, I'd love to. So yes, I grew up in an immigrant family. I'm a refugee from Vietnam. I grew up in Southern California. I grew up very different from most of my family. So definitely the black sheep in my family, and then not fitting in at school. I mean, the Vietnam War was not a popular war, let's just say.

So there was also that piece of like, "Oh, my gosh." And the way I handled that is I turned that inward. "What's wrong with me?" was the question I spent most of my life asking. So I read voraciously as a little girl. I went to the public library.

We didn't have a lot of money, so I'd just get stacks of books and try to figure out, "Do I even belong here in this world? Why do I even exist? It doesn't seem like I fit in," again, with my family or anywhere. And I was really terribly lonely as a child. Thank God for books because but for having books, I wouldn't have had this notion that some people have ideas like me, too. That I'm not so dreadfully alone.

And so if books were my friends, then I thought maybe I could find some answers in books. And I kept seeking and seeking, and then did not, right? What I didn't realize is that the answer I was seeking was not merely an intellectual answer but a lived answer.

You talk about meaning. I was looking for the meaning of life and my role in it. Like, maybe if someone told me this, then I would feel like, okay, if I fit into some model, it would mean that my existence had meaning and was purposeful. So I remember when I first learned the Enneagram. This was a couple years before Centering Prayer.

I learned that, oh, first of all, maybe the problem wasn't that I wasn't whole. It was my idea that I wasn't whole.

It was the first thing that helped me to see that. Anais Nin said, "We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are." 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: The idea that we're not seeing things accurately. I'm like, "I'm smart." , "I have a lot of validation for this," but I'm like, "What?" So that first piece. And I think Gurdjieff, who brought the Enneagram to the modern world, is famous for saying it sort of like, "In order to wake up, we have to first realize we're asleep." 

Right? It's like that notion of I don't see reality, that we each walk into the room and filter what's actually here based on our preconceptions, which are rooted in personality structure, which is described by the Enneagram.

I'm like, "Woo." 

So that's the beginning. When you talk about surrender, Mark, to surrender my worldview, to surrender the framework. And so that question, what's wrong with me, I was like, "You're asking the wrong question." If you start from that question, you will never end with an answer, 'cause if there's nothing wrong with you, you'll never find the answer to that.

So backing it up and going, what if I assumed I'm already whole? What if I assumed that? What if that basic framework is not accurate, right? Even though it feels accurate because I kinda mess up with my family and all these things. I mess up my relationships, and so it felt accurate. Something's wrong with me.

And it's like, what if I just assume something else? That's what the Enneagram helps us to do. Nine fundamentally different worldviews, which I like to call, in spiritual community, I'm like, "Your worldview is your God view."

If you're talking about God as all that is, how we see our place in things and our position in the whole. Is the nature of existence love? Or like the eight's personality, is it a battlefield?

What is the nature of the world around us? So the beginning is first realizing that even as we approach the Divine, we approach it through a lens, and it's that very lens that has to crack open and be surrendered for a deeper knowing to happen.

Mark: It makes so much sense that you go looking for that in a book, like information, more information will help me, and it does. It is helpful. But you're speaking about a direct experience when you come to that realization.

And I'm wondering, too, how contemplative practices like Centering Prayer can help that process of experientially getting to that place or embodying that awareness, that understanding.

Nhien: Yeah. So Centering Prayer is my primary spiritual practice. It has been since 2005, and it's the primary one that I teach in the evolving Enneagram community. Nothing is mandatory. We're very non-dogmatic. So it's like sit in whatever way you're called, but the invitation is to Centering Prayer.

And so I would say that when I first met the Enneagram, I came to understand that my original paradigm might be wrong. It came into question. This new framework, though, was still only more intellectual or psychological.

So before I came into Centering Prayer, there was a newfound hope. I was wrong, great, and yet I was still seeking or even using the intellectual salve of, yes, I am whole, as an idea more.

And it was really the practice of silence that helped me to come into that wholeness, and I can actually describe how for me, first of all, how scary it was to sit in the silence.

In the beginning, when part of my journey involved 12-step community, within it there were meditation groups, so we would sit in the silence.

And I remember at first, of course, I, you know, like opened my eyes and peek at everyone. Is everyone really sitting? Like you know? 

And then I had to ask someone, I was like, "Imagine if you have believed all your life that there's something fundamentally wrong with you." And I imagine people who grow up in traditional Christian backgrounds have been indoctrinated with this, right?

I'm like, "I don't wanna go inside. I'm afraid of what I'll find." 

And then, so I sit, and the first times I sit, all I'm doing is crying. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so angry and resentful and sad. I'm like, no wonder people don't wanna go inside. And I also, thankfully, I had other people just a little further along on the journey where I got to ask my really big question, which is, what if I don't like what I find?

Mark: Hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: Everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, your true self is like..." But you don't know me. So- 

Mark: Yeah. I don't wanna know my true self. 

Nhien: I was like I'm not sure about this. (Yeah.) And people just trust the process. I'm like, because again, in the beginning, I could feel all the things that I thought were part of what made me a bad person, my anger my frustration, my negative feelings. But I stayed. I just kept going. And again, in the beginning, often just because my life on the outside was just breaking down, I'm like, "Okay, I'm desperate here, so I'm willing to sit." And then one day, I have a visceral memory of sitting on my back deck in Marin County, California, and it's not like I didn't cry during that sit.

But during that sit, at one point I touched light. 

Colleen: Mm. 

Nhien: Light came from inside of me. I go like, "Oh my God, this is it. This is what people are talking about. You are the light of the world."

And it was not something someone told me. It wasn't from outside of me. That experience changed me. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: That experience. Yeah. Yeah. 

Colleen: Thank you so much for that, because as we're talking, this question, this intellectual question comes up in my head, like what is it about Centering Prayer that supports this dismantling of the false self? And as I'm listening to you, it's not the method, although it is, and it's not that the method supports the dismantling, it's that Centering Prayer allows me to touch the light, the love that makes me safe enough to release this false self that is the only self I've ever known. 

Nhien: Mm. 

Colleen: Something has to compel me to give it over. And that increasingly with practice becomes love, because I did, I grew up in the fear-based, shame-based Christian tradition. Fear and shame don't compel me to give it over.

Nhien: Mm. Yeah. That's so interesting. I remember a sermon I gave once while I was still a church minister. I was like, "Faith may move mountains, but it's love that makes us want to." That love is motivating. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: What else might we want short of that? And then even related to this notion of love, I know miracles can be woo-woo for some, but I wanna say that I see it as a wisdom tradition, and it's like part of the journey, I remember saying something along the lines of, "You think we ask you to sacrifice, but the ask is to sacrifice nothing for everything."

Colleen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: That notion of what am I giving up? 

And I was like, what little I have, what little I think I have in this preservation of myself as it is. Not knowing that the letting go allows me to fall into this love. 

Colleen: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Mark: There's an invitation there. Without love, I wouldn't do it. Really. 'Cause we talk about the shadow side, this hidden part of the psyche that is protecting and doesn't want that stuff to come out. And I've even heard the Shao referr to as the hidden room, which is interesting 'cause Keating says, "Go to your inner room." That's part of the instruction on the practice.

It's like you can go there. It's okay because there's love there. 

So go to those places that maybe are not supporting you right now or are not really who you are. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Mark: But I didn't always know that. That that was a safe place to go to even though it was scary at times to look at those parts of me, the shame part of me or the fear part of me or whatever.

Nhien: Yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: Beautiful. 

Colleen: Yeah, that was the breakthrough- a breakthrough moment for me in my spiritual journey was the understanding that God exists in light and dark. 

Nhien: Mm. Yeah. 

Colleen: Because then I could say yes to invitations into those dark corners, because God was there too. And I didn't grow up with that understanding. Darkness meant the absence of God. 

Nhien: Mm-hmm. Yes. 

Colleen: So you don't go anywhere God's not. Well, lo and behold, there is nowhere God's not. So then I can go, I can go. 

Nhien: Uh-huh. Oh, amazing. So precious. Yeah, that notion that it's not that God is absent, it's that we are. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: And so in those dark places, God is waiting. I mean, of course, I think we're agreeing on a non-personified notion. 

Colleen: Yes. Yes. 

Nhien: But it's sometimes easier to talk about in that noun way of that which love is present already. 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: And maybe not my acceptance, but the divine love is already present in that dark space. And maybe it's only dark, it's because I cast it to the closet.

And so that's where the Enneagram comes in, of the idealized self according to your personality type, and everything that's not that. And I wanna say that in the darkness also, I don't know if you've heard that term golden shadow. 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: But depending on your Enneagram type, certain types, like the Type 4, tend to have a more negative personality identity.

I'm like, more identified with my suffering, so my joy can be in the dark. Mm. Yeah. 

Mark: It's good to hear as a four. 

Nhien: Oh. 

Mark: I'm a four, so. 

Colleen: Oh my gosh. So that's good to hear for me. I need a one-on-one session with you, Nhien. I'm not, I'm not a four, but I am aware that some of the hidden things for me are more of those things like joy and pleasure. Yeah. Anyway, we're all, you know, works in progress here. 

Nhien: Yeah.

 

In the Christian tradition, contemplative prayer is the opening of your mind and heart to God who is beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Centering Prayer is a method designed to facilitate contemplation. The method suggests four guidelines. One, choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God's presence and action within you.

Two, sit comfortably and relatively still, close your eyes or leave them slightly open and silently introduce your sacred word. Three, when you notice you have become engaged with a thought, simply return ever so gently to your sacred word. And four, at the end of the 20 minute prayer period, let go of the sacred word and remain in silence for a couple of minutes.

The additional time invites you to bring the atmosphere of silence into everyday life.

 

Colleen: I do wanna talk a little bit about the shadow, because we're throwing this word around, and it is our framing teaching for this season, where Father Thomas says that we're gonna experience the fruits of contemplative prayer only in as much as we're willing to work on the shadow.

And one, I would need to understand, what are we talking about when we say the shadow? Especially in context with the false self. Is it the same thing? Are the shadow and the false self the same thing? What does it mean when we hear working with our shadow selves? Can you give us a little bit of insight into the shadow, and the false self, and the Enneagram?

Nhien: All right. So my disclaimer, of course, as a former lawyer is that this is only my perspective and my definition of the shadow in the way that I use it. So for me, the idea is that your personality type is actually your idealized self. This is the self that you believe that you are, and everything else that doesn't fit into that ideal self, like for the one, "I am good.

I am responsible. Therefore, I'm not lazy or messy, or," any of these other things. 

Colleen: I'm nine. I'm a nine. 

Nhien: Ooh. Okay, for the nine then, if you are properly a nine, then you're, "I'm peaceful, I'm accommodating, I'm fine." Like is a sort of the story. But beneath that is often anger. So a lot of repressed anger, no permission to have that feeling, and then even self-assertion can be part of the shadow, so this idea that you personally can shine, like, your personal opinions matter.

So nineness can very much be positively reinforced by traditional Christian culture of women staying in the background, going with the flow, letting others step in, just all the accommodating things. But within the nine is a force field of power this robust power that is actually pushed down because it feels like, oh, if I assert an independent opinion that's maybe not in line with either my community, whatever, that feels so forbidden or uncomfortable  or- 

Colleen: It's like death, yeah.

Nhien: Yes, like death. That's a good way to describe it. Oh, also, it's the very death that we're invited to in Centering Prayer, right? 

Colleen: Right. 

Nhien: The whole idea. So we face the thing we fear the most in a way, right? What Carl Jung, his famous quote about, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek."

So for the nine, it's individuality actually, which sounds egotistical, but it's like "I". Even some nines I know accidentally go to some royal we. I'm like, "Who's this we we're talking about?" Be a separate self. So the paradox is I see the awakened self moving from identification with personality to what I call individuality, and the individuality is this expression of self that knows it is one with the divine, but also has its unique human expression.

And so it's almost like the nine was like, "Oh, let's just be the one with everything," and doesn't take that embodied step of that unique human expression, believing that somehow that's too egotistical, or that conflict would break the connection I feel I need with loved ones. Yeah, yeah. So that's the paradox, and that's why the understanding of all the yucky feelings and things that can come up.

But imagine this: If anger is in the shadow for the nine, what happens? So either nines just completely fall asleep and numb out because they're working so hard all the time to push away the legitimate anger that is there. 

Or the anger expresses unskillfully at inopportune times in ways that surprise the nine and the people around them because it's not consciously held. It's repressed and unconscious, put into the shadow. And so let's go back to your first question of what is the shadow in my view. The shadow for me is all the things that we repress and then put into that unconscious territory because it doesn't feel like it fits with the notion of who we need to be to survive in the world.

Colleen: Right. 

Nhien: For the nine, that's accommodating and pleasant and nice. All those things that are like anger and conflict, no. 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: And the paradox is then, in a way, nines end up living unskillfully angry lives. Whether it's through passive aggression or, again, some volcanic episodes sometimes. But if we embrace the anger, then the anger becomes fuel for speaking your truth into a world that needs your unique expression of truth. 

And so you can see how by owning that, it's not like I'm saying own it and go yell at people. 

Colleen: Right. 

Nhien: Right? It's the conscious owning of it and the integration of it which can happen in that Centering Prayer practice of I'm willing, I'm willing, I'm surrendered. I'm surrendering my idea that I'm just nice so that I can be open to all else. And then that else integrates with the rest. It's not like it stands alone and goes does its own thing there, and yells at people. But it integrates in a way that creates a force in the world. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: Yeah. To know for a nine that your unique presence matters- 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... 

Nhien: that your voice matters is one of the healing paths, Enneagram-informed. 

Colleen: Mm-hmm Yeah, that's what your book actually helped me with so much. 

Nhien: Oh. 

Colleen: It did, especially to be able to see the activations for all the other types, and then just see the uniqueness of mine in every one. I was like, "Oh, yeah." And that thing about my voice mattering, it's a struggle for me as a contemplative. I am encouraged because look at me on the podcast. I'm using my voice, and I feel okay, but there's this very contemplative, at least this idea I have of being a contemplative, where I don't want to be on stage.

I don't want to take up too much attention. So it's really helpful that the awareness and the invitations to embrace the... would we call them healthier aspects of our type? 

Nhien: Yeah. Yeah, and I like to focus- Mark latched onto that earlier- I like to focus on the word wholeness, because what I've found is in our self-help culture, we take the word healthy, and then we make it a goal. It's something to strive for rather than something to allow a becoming in, because we're like, "Oh, now I know all the things that healthy things of this type. Now I'm going to strive for that," which is very different from that path of surrender that we've been talking about. So it's so subtle sometimes.

That's why, again, Enneagram-informed practice can actually help us remember some of these things, how actually the personality can take hold of the journey, and then wanna make it go a certain way. But you are spot on that nines, first of all, have this capacity for seeing all the sides, all the viewpoints within things, but sometimes not your own.

There's that piece. 

Colleen: Yeah. It's true. Yeah, yeah. 

Nhien: You know? 

And there is a huge judgment around something that's on your line of development, which is actually the three, which is the shiny one. 

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: So there's a piece there, and actually our groups in the spring, we have these 12-week contemplative practices in the Enneagram groups.

The connecting lines is what we'll be exploring this spring in our groups, and it's for this reason. It's like the recognition of you know that if you identify, there's a little bit of superiority in this, of like, "I'm not like that." 

"I don't take all that space." 

Mark: Mm, mm. 

Nhien: That's ego to me. (Yeah.) This idea that I'm not like that. Unless I surrender everything I think I am. That authenticity of trusting, that requires such profound faith that you actually are fundamentally good. If I can't trust that, then I have to manufacture this goodness. And depending on my type, as a nine, it's niceness. It's giving others space and not being too brash, too loud, too angry, not taking up too much space. Being very irritated when others do take up a disproportionate amount, probably because I haven't taken my fair share. 

Those are pieces of how the nine can show up in these spaces. And the problem is in, again, more traditional spaces, but I would say just in the world in general, we're like, oh, we reinforce the nineness.

"Oh, you're so nice," in a way where others can reinforce that this is the great spiritual way to be, so peaceful. Yeah, yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. You're reading me, Nhien. Okay. Let, let's talk about Mark now. Okay. 

Mark: No, no, we don't have time for that. It's no wonder the Enneagram has been around for such a long time, and is still relevant today. As a tool, well, maybe that's limiting it to even just call it a tool, but as a way of seeing things, and even seeing ourselves. I have on my desk, I keep this kind of plaque here of a Carl Jung quote, "Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." The looking inside part is the, really the hard part.

So having these practices and these approaches- 

Nhien: Yeah ... 

Mark: to navigating ourselves and the spiritual life and our relationship to something much bigger than us- 

Nhien: Yeah ... 

Mark: is so important. Enneagram being, uh, I've come to really appreciate it as a significant practice to help us with that. 

I'm wondering too about that relationship between- 'cause we're looking at a lot of these different kind of what we're calling practices from other disciplines, you know, Enneagram or other approaches.

But how does that dovetail with or support Centering Prayer itself as a practice that doesn't have all the language that Enneagram has? How do you see Centering Prayer maybe supporting that whole process of looking in and coming to greater awareness? 

Colleen: Yeah, and why do you encourage folks who are in your evolving Enneagram community to the practice of Centering Prayer?

Nhien: Mm-hmm. So one thing to know about type 3s is we really value effectiveness. Okay. 

Mark: Number one. 

Nhien: Because it works. It works. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Nhien: It works if you work it. It's just that simple. (Yeah.) I've never seen it not work if someone actually practices it. It's just that simple. 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: And to get deeper about why do I think it works, I think it only works because we are fundamentally whole and good.

I actually talked to a pastor who comes from a more traditional religious background. This was, like, 15 years ago or something. I was like, "Why don't you teach meditation?" Well, he was starting to move away from it into a more mystical path, but he's like, "Well, I mean, if you're fundamentally bad inside, why go inside?"

Mark: Yeah. 

Nhien: I'm like- 

Colleen: Yeah

Nhien: "Duh." 

Colleen: That makes sense. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Nhien: Right? Go outside, go to the textbook, go to an external source. You can never be the source of good. 

Mark: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, that makes so much..." So Centering Prayer for me is rooted in this fundamental belief here, in love as the foundation, love as being the fabric of my existence, of your existence.

And for many of us, even for me in the beginning, it's a leap of faith. It's not something we know until we practice. It's like we're taking it- I'm going off Father Thomas Keating's word that behind what we fear is more darkness, and sin, if you will, is actually this inner light, this inner goodness. But that helps me when people are tentative around it, because even if you don't come from that background, it's permeated our culture, this idea that we need to whip ourselves and that we can't trust ourselves. And I would say that that's also the issue that the Enneagram can name, whereas you can't trust that first layer of self is not the totality.

But if you stay, if you're willing to stay. And when I talk about Centering Prayer, especially to newer folks who may not have been practicing silence at all, I was like, "I get it. This, every time you go to sit, is itself a leap of faith, because your ego is saying, 'Thinking about this and figuring this out is much more important than sitting here in nothingness.'"

Colleen: Yeah. 

Nhien: Whether it's figuring this thing out or doing this thing, all of that is more important. The mind's gonna be like, "What are you doing wasting your time?" There's nothing here. So trusting the darkness, which is the mystery of the Divine, is the thing we do every time we go into Centering Prayer.

'Cause if you think you have some idea already what's in there, then filling up the emptiness with our ideas. 

So there's something about surrendering to mystery that has this power to dismantle what we call the false self or the personality structure. 'Cause we're saying, "What I think is me right at this moment, even if, oh, I'm so evolved from last week," you know, "what I think I am this moment," I let that go. And for me, Centering Prayer is the practice of that muscle, and I will sometimes teach people, I was like, "Make a fist," right? Make a fist. This is, like, striving spirituality, right? This is, like, adding on, and then that hand movement, I'm letting go with my hand, I realize that we may not have video here. 

That release of the tight palm, is the movement, and then that's the movement of open-handedness, right, open hearts, open minds- 

Colleen: Mm-hmm ... 

Nhien: that allows for a consciousness more vast and more loving than my own to school me, to inform who and what, ultimately, when I say what, I mean I am spirit more than I am just this person that's Nhien, to inform what I am.

So that's why Centering Prayer for me is so key. And even in my book, I was like, "Oh, I have to choose. I have to," I organized my own book, but- 

Colleen: Yeah. ... 

Nhien: there's nine practices, and Centering Prayer is the very first one I list. And I'll add to that, I had this insight as I was writing about it, how egalitarian Centering Prayer is, because it is.

It's something I can do alone. It's very personal. It's like anyone can do it. There's a simplicity to the practice. Right? You don't go through someone else. you don't need a guided teacher. I mean, it's helpful, but it's not necessary. 

Colleen: That's so true. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah, that simplicity. There's just four guidelines, and you need a chair.

You can just sit. There's not a specific posture you have to be taught. Yeah, it is very egalitarian. And it's always just so encouraging for me to be reminded of how rich the gifts that Father Thomas left us with his teaching and this very simple practice. And then that even he did not position himself as the teacher.

It's like we have these people. You can go and do an introductory workshop. You can learn. It's a lay people's practice. 

Hmm. 

Colleen: And it's available for everybody. And yet, at the same time, there's so many people who just don't know about Thomas Keating at all and don't know about Centering Prayer.

And one of the things we try to also touch on in our episodes and conversations is what is the place that Centering Prayer occupies in the landscape, in this season of the healing arts and modalities? How can deeper awareness of Thomas Keating's teachings contribute to these ongoing conversations about healing and trauma and recovery?

Any thoughts about what you're seeing out there doing the work? 

Nhien: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'll go back again to the notion that there's a reason it's the first practice in my book, and the hope was that people who love the Enneagram but aren't aware of this way of approaching and opening up to our authentic nature is available to offer that.

And what I believe the role this practice has or this, it's almost like a practice melded with a certain attitude is that many of the other new things we learn, I mean, healing modalities are constantly happening, that they are helpful, and they're often about adding on. 

And there's something to offset a culture that is constantly about more.

Mark: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: And then more to gain in the outer. There's a consumption model even within spirituality and healing, and there is a deep healing salve in the models like, ah, what is the practice that allows me to release and to remember what is already here? So there's something so profoundly affirming about that being positioned within, yes, and of course, there are other frameworks, even like the Enneagram.

I'll tell you that I tell people repeatedly. I mean, my work is called Evolving Enneagram, and I was like, "I would rather you practice contemplation than know the Enneagram." So if you had to choose, but I also see that contemplation without the Enneagram can result in a lot of spiritual bypassing.

Mark: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: So that understanding of the psychological framework is important. So Centering Prayer within an Enneagram framework helps us to remember la via negativa, the apophatic aspect of the journey because we've been talking about as soon as you learn the Enneagram, oh, there's a pathway, and let me strive now to become that healthy three, that healthy four, that healthy nine, and then the ego takes charge and decides, "I need to do this more."

And it can actually move us psychically further from the awareness that we are already home in God. Centering Prayer helps to offset that tendency in its orientation toward subtraction. 

Mark: And, Nhien, it's quite obvious to me anyway that that's the work that you're doing, and you've said it so many times, that word integration, talking about the practice itself, but also talking about how we approach this.

And then in many ways, that is the theme for us this season, is looking at other practices or other disciplines, and it works in both directions. Like you include Centering Prayer as a practice to go along with your teaching about the Enneagram and working with the Enneagram. And then there's also people who are practicing Centering Prayer who maybe could see some of these other disciplines as supporting that.

In addition to my work in Centering Prayer, I work in the mindfulness-based stress reduction field, and what you're saying about that just wanting more stuff, commoditizing is what Kabat-Zinn calls McMindfulness. There is the danger of that. But when some of these other disciplines can support us in our Centering Prayer practice, I think sometimes there's a challenge there. You mentioned that, the kind of spiritual bypassing or people feel like it's not integrated, it's something else. Or if I look at the Enneagram, then that's not part of my Christian Centering Prayer practice. I'm just curious if you've run into that or what are the challenges for Centering Prayer to continue having this conversation or interaction with other traditions?

'Cause clearly Keating was doing that and getting into depth psychology and developmental psych, and he was using all that. 

Nhien: Mm, mm-hmm. Yes. If divine therapy, and this is simply how I hold it, is about, in a way, healing our consciousness, then having a map of our consciousness seems very helpful, and the Enneagram is both a mirror and a map of consciousness.

So it can help to describe and, in cases, normalize a journey that's already happening for people who are going through this excavation process and scared and wondering what is going on with them. They seem to be losing their mind or their sense of self, and the Enneagram can help to normalize that journey by offering some pictures of what it can look like depending on your Enneagram type.

And I also wanna say that as you were talking, I was reminded of how... So the Enneagram comes in, it's a very depthful system. It's not just the personality. There's an Enneagram of holy ideas. There's the Enneagram of the virtues. There are different overlays that maybe in a future conversation we can get in.

But one of the things I use the Enneagram for is actually to support people in knowing why they won't sit down and do their Centering Prayer practice. 

It's the obstacles to the practice too, based on the storylines that the type says, "No, this other thing is more important." So that's actually a piece of how do I even engage my practice, or what is keeping me from it, or what has stalled me if I've been going for a while?

So that's where understanding this inner framework helps me to really be with people as they discern that. And then on the other side, on the more positive side, if we will, there's a recognition that when people continue in this journey, they express gifts that are unique to their Enneagram type. I do talk about that in my book, which is like the spiritual gifts of your type, that it wasn't a mistake simply to have a certain personality.

That embedded within your habit of type is also giftedness, and part of the gifts that your authentic self can bring to the world as well. So a unique connection to either maybe wisdom and clarity, or a certain connection to heart for the two. And then I will say, it sounds like what you're actually doing here, bringing in an interdisciplinary look, is I think supporting that bridge that maybe people haven't been able to make for themselves around why that if I already have this? So the Enneagram definitely map and mirror, and for some people, depending on your season of life, I teach the Enneagram explicitly, and I offer it implicitly. So there are people who never wanna learn. They don't need to learn. But if I spiritually companion them knowing the Enneagram, I have the framework within me.

I don't have to make it explicit. You don't have to, in the season of your life, in retirement, learn a whole new intellectual thing. And so that's where we can also soften that for people to say, "Hey, you may just find an Enneagram-informed spiritual director. You may not need to go study a whole system now because it's not in alignment with where you are.

If you're moving more toward heart, you don't need to study more head here." 

Colleen: Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: So just pathways for integrating this, yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. I'm so glad that you brought us back to this place, in a way, of closing, which I'm gonna attempt to do in connecting the Enneagram, which you emphasize in your approach not as a personality map but as a map of consciousness.

Because for Father Thomas and those of us who practice Centering Prayer and consider ourselves students of Thomas Keating's teachings, there's familiarity with that language because we know his work unpacking the human condition and the levels of consciousness. He says actually that in this teaching on the human condition, we're basically asking ourselves, who are you and where are you?

And it sounds like the Enneagram supports this absolutely. Thank you so much. I want to give you an opportunity to share with those who are listening a little bit about your community, Evolving Enneagram. If it's a community others can get involved with or join, and anything else you want us to be aware of that you might have coming up.

Nhien: Yeah. Thank you for this opportunity. It's been such an honor and joy to speak with you on this topic that I'm clearly very passionate about. Right. Yeah. So Evolving Enneagram as a community, I'm actually just making a shift now to call it a school. It's full-fledged now. So I'm just ... I'm kinda sweating thinking about it, but it's really- 

Colleen: Congrats.

Nhien: Yeah. People have told me- 

Mark: Wonderful 

Nhien: ... it's like, "It's already a school. You're just now owning that it is." 

Mark: Very nice. 

Nhien: But really, a contemplative Enneagram formation school. 

And, so people can come at it through even individual work. I have faculty that work with me who are contemplative Enneagram practitioners.

Mm-hmm. 

Nhien: So for some people who just want a little private extra dose of mentoring, there's space for that. But the larger body of work we do is that we have weekly groups that do 20 minutes of Centering Prayer within a 90-minute session, and then the rest of the time is sharing from an Enneagram-informed place sharing from the heart with this invitation to come as you are. And I wanna go back to your statement earlier, Colleen, about the importance of love. Compassion is infused as a deep value within our community, the idea that compassion can heal 'cause it will allow you to bring forth the things that you're most ashamed of.

And people have shared within our groups things that they've never shared with anyone else. That's the container. And for it to have the divine therapy practice so that I'm reminding people, even though we're doing this Enneagram thing deliberately, I've been doing YouTube Sunday talks so that people listen to the information outside, because when teaching happens in the space, it changes the tenor of the space into a more heady space, and we really want to have sharing from the heart.

So these are weekly groups. There are three 12-week sessions per year. The next one starts in spring and is related to shadow work, interestingly enough. So that's the core. And then I have a contemplative Enneagram practitioner training. This is this big new thing where I'm at a stage in my life now, as I'm getting older, so I'm training other practitioners now.

And so we're in our very first year. We have about 25 people in this first year's cohort who are applying the Enneagram in therapy, as spiritual directors, as ministers as lay persons who really just want a deeper year-long experience of understanding how these type biases affects our relationship with ourselves and with the Divine.

So that ongoing community and then the formation practice are, like, the two core things right now on my heart. 

Mark: It's wonderful. 

Colleen: Mm. Wonderful. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Colleen: Yeah. I think that's such a rich addition for our Centering Prayer community to know that they can join the evolving Enneagram community and deepen this work, this healing work, so.

Nhien: Yeah. 

Colleen: What a gift, Nhien. 

Nhien: I'm so grateful to be here with you both, and finally get to talk to you. 

Colleen: I know. I know. And now I'm like, "Let's talk more, please." Yeah, yeah. 

Mark: So wonderful to have you here, and so rich, this conversation, and what you bring to it in terms of the contemplative life. Thank you so much.

Nhien: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

 

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