Growth for Type 5: The Observer
Basic Essential Practice: From a grounded, receptive, openhearted, and non-judgmental stance, notice your tendency to detach from feelings and hold yourself back, fueled by a driving energy, an avarice, for that which you just can’t do without: knowledge plus time and space for yourself. This stems from your core belief that to be loved, valued, and secure you must protect yourself from a world you perceive demands too much and gives too little, all of which would drain you of life energy. Can you realize that the flow of life provides ample energy for you to fully engage in your feelings, knowing that you will be nourished and supported — not drained. Notice how you often pull back and contract away from others and from life itself. Breathe down into your body’s gravitational center, down into your belly, and reconnect to your feelings, as small or as large as they may be. Remind yourself to be aware and remember that paradoxically it is your protective retracting that is what’s actually draining your energy, not the claims of others. Remind yourself to notice how you are fulfilled and supported by others in your life, particularly when your heart is open.
Additional Key Themes for Reflection: Simply stop for a minute or so 3-4 times a day to center and reflect on one of the following:
Reflexively retracting. Simply stop and do your best to just come back and open your heart knowing that you will be nurtured, not drained of energy.
Detaching to observe. Simply stop to notice the contraction in your body when withdrawing away from intrusions. Use this as a signal to relax your contraction and move forward into life.
Limiting needs and desires. Simply stop to remind yourself that this protective habit of over restricting needs and desires actually can lead to deprivation and deficiency, not sustenance and nourishment. Then accordingly allow your wants and desires to be express.
Short Reflections for Reclaiming the Essential Quality
With open hearted kindness toward your self simply practice several times a day for a minute or so saying and living one of the following each for a few days at a time. Do these all with the receptive energy encompassed in the “may I.” Recall that the higher quality or virtue for type Five is the openness of non-attachment, meaning allowing one’s self to be in the natural flow of universal life energy.
- May I realize that there is nothing I need to know that will not just arise.
- May I be at peace with not knowing all the while realizing I already have ample knowledge.
- May I practice generosity, knowing life provides an abundance of energy.
- May I feel secure knowing what is needed, and trust that I will receive what I need.
- May I open my heart to engagement fully in life’s energy.
- May I breathe in and out opening to the natural flow of energy.