Psychological constellations will present themselves both inside -- as emotional conflicts and physical tension -- and outside -- as difficulties, conflicts, issues, dissatisfactions, and lack of understanding of the environment and the people in it... the psychological constellation, when understood exactly for what it is, will lead spontaneously to a related hole of the personality, which the individual will experience emotionally as a certain lack or deficiency, usually defended against by various antics. Acceptance of this hole leads to experiencing the personality as an emptiness. This emptiness, this void, is like a death for the personality. It is actually a death of the particular sector of the personality but is experienced psychologically as an overall death of the personality. When this "death" is completely understood and accepted, the corresponding aspect of Essence emerges and fills the emptiness left by the personality.

The old idea that the personality must be loosened almost completely before essence is realized has to be modified in light of the latest findings. The old idea is that the personality is the barrier and must be removed before there can be a recognition of our essential beingness. Our findings indicate that essence can be realized in steps or in degrees, simultaneously with work on the personality. Each essential aspect or facet has a psychological constellation associated with it. This association is universal to all people. Understanding and resolving the relevant psychological constellation (which is only a sector of the personality) will allow the associated aspect of essence to emerge in consciousness. It is not necessary to resolve the personality as a whole. That is the subject of Chapters Three and Four of this book, in which we describe methods that enable a person to recognize essence in a much easier and faster way than has been possible with the old methods. Such techniques use essence itself as a help in understanding and resolving the rigidity of the personality. This is a new method, which we call the Diamond Approach. It is the subject of Chapter Four of this book. 

It is so wonderful to see the exquisite intelligence of the functioning of Being. Since what was needed was support—and your fake support is effort, and a mental effort at that—Being manifested in a state of peace and restfulness to eliminate the efforting. More specifically, it manifested in a state of mental peace that eliminated mental effort and activity. This made it possible for you recognize true support and for you to see how it is not an activity, and not an effort. It is presence, which at deeper dimensions of Essence is inseparable from emptiness. It is important for all of us to appreciate here how his work started with a psychological constellation—the relationship with father—and that it unfolded naturally and spontaneously into the realm of Being, into the dimension of Essence. The resolution was essential, spiritual, and it happened after going through the deficient emptiness. The importance of the end result is not just the resolution of the particular issue—that of father’s support—but is primarily the reconnection with our Being and the reowning of the essential and spiritual dimension of our humanity. 

When I refer to the essential aspects—especially when we are in intentional work situations, such as this retreat—I usually refer to them by color. I do this as a kind of shorthand because each essential aspect can be recognized in different ways through its several affects and experiential senses. For instance, the Black aspect could be experienced as peace, as stillness, or as power. So instead of calling it peace, stillness, or power, I simply say “Black.” It is the same with Brilliancy. I call it Brilliancy instead of intelligence because, while it is true that intelligence is an important way that Brilliancy is experienced, there are many other ways in which Brilliancy is experienced and recognized. These include the sense of protection, synthesis, an intelligent kind of will, real responsibility, timelessness, purity, and perfection. In our work, we have seen that the experience of each sense, or quality, tends to raise issues that are associated with it and psychological constellations specific to it. You could have a psychological constellation around intelligence, another one around responsibility, and so on. Each sense touches a separate psychological constellation. 

Whether or not we view the fixation cores as complexes and the Holy Ideas as archetypes, the core of each ennea-type functions as its central psychological constellation, forming the nucleus of the fixation. The various characteristics of each ennea-type are simply the naturally arising manifestations of these core complexes, constituted by various self-images, object relations, ego defenses, psychological patterns, modes of behavior and cognition, and so on. So these cores determine the differentiating characteristics separating each ennea-type qualitatively from the others. More accurately, the characteristics of each ennea-type reflect its inner core, and the different characteristics of the nine types reflect the different complexes of the cores. And since the defining center of each core is a particular delusion that uniquely reflects the loss of the particular Holy Idea, it becomes clear that it is the Holy Ideas that are ultimately responsible for the variations of the ennea-types.