Who Do You Think You Are? Part 1
September 9, 2025
Who Do You Think You Are? Part 1
Welcome to this series of Daily Reflections on the question, “Who do you think you are?”
As a child, there were times when, like most kids, I was “too big for my britches.” Mama quickly corrected me by saying, “Just who do you think you are?” Her scolding usually brought me down to size. But the question, “Who do you think you are?” is not necessarily for scolding. It is an essential question that we face on the conscious or subconscious levels of our being. The question can be a sincere inquiry from another person about who we are. Or on a more profound level, we can ask ourselves by way of self-inquiry.
Do you ever ask yourself, “Who am I?” Most of us are curious about ourselves and want to know who we are, where we came from, and why we were born. Many people’s curiosity about themselves is beyond their likes and dislikes or even their biological ancestry. They genuinely search for their deeper selves. But for some, it becomes narcissistic self-absorption. They cannot get enough information about what they like, what they look best in, what they know, what they like to do, how to get what they want, who they are attracted to and repelled by. They may even explore themselves deeply in therapy or analysis. However, their search is often confined to their own history and story.
They collect data about themselves, but regardless of how much they know about their psychological make-up or history, many never dive deeper into the more profound question underneath the question of “Who am I?” And that more profound question is: “What is the meaning of my life?” Another way of putting it is, “Who is my soul and what am I here to do?”
The Enneagram is a rich resource about us and the world. And its discoverers, who brought it to the west, George Gurdjieff and Oscar Ichazo, taught it from its spiritual significance. According to both of these spiritual teachers, the Enneagram is a presentation and description of the nine fundamental energies underlying the cosmos. It shows the pathways of all things’ integration and disintegration, their consolation and desolation; it is a spiritual map.
For both Gurdjieff and Ichazo, the truths illustrated by the Enneagram tell us about Being, which is the true nature of everything in all its manifestations. Being is the intelligence operating beneath and within the cosmos and everything in it. It is therefore Divine. So, the link is clear: we are personalities, but even more fundamentally, we are expressions of the Divine. Therefore, our use of the Enneagram to know more only about our personalities and the personalities of others, pales in comparison to using it to lead us to our spiritual nature and to help us understand who we are at our depths.
Spiritual practice: Write freely from your flow of thought: simply journal all the answers that come to you about who you are. How deep did you go? What did you discover?
Self-inquiry: Why would you want to know your deepest self?
Prayer: Dear God, Take me down to the deep of my life and tell me my nature and my name. Give me freedom to grow so that I may become my true self, the fulfillment of the seed which you planted in me at my making. Amen
(This prayer comes from The Gathering Prayer, by George Appleton).
