The Trick

Joseph Campbell talked about the relationship of the self to the ego and how the problem is not to get rid of ego - very few, if any of us, manage to do that. The real issue was for the ego to become the servant of the self, not the dictator. He said 'How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick'.

Our ego is a sort of filter through which we view the world. In order, therefore, to really 'see' our ego in operation we have to be able to step back from it. To take off the filter, as it were. This is what the Enneagram helps us do.

It is the same with countries. We don't really 'see' the country we grow up in until we leave it and come back to it and then we see it more clearly, have some perspective and therefore a new understanding of it.

We could say the same about our planet. The view that really affected the astronauts in space was looking back at the Earth. There is a breathtaking shot (taken on one of the Apollo missions) entitled 'Earth Rising'. We need to think about that right now.

*The picture above is not the famous 'Earth Rising' (which is copyrighted). But you get the idea!