The Only 3 Things You Can Control About Your Transformation

And the one thing you can't

One of my favorite stories about seeking inner transformation is from the Buddhist tradition:

A young monk had joined the monastery and was eager to reach Enlightenment. He went to the Buddhist master and said, “I am committed to diligently carrying out my duties, obeying whatever my superiors say, studying the sutras and religious texts, and meditating for four hours every day. How long will it take me to reach enlightenment?”

The master thought for a second and then answered, “If you do all of that, it should take you 10 years to reach enlightenment.”

The student paused, looking a bit disheartened. Then he said, “Okay, what if I practice perfect diligence, obedience, and study—but instead meditate for eight hours every day?”

“Oh!” said the master. “In that case, it will take you 20 years.”

What You Can’t Control: Transformation Is Given

I love that story because it’s so honest. We all desire to control our journeys, but most of the great spiritual traditions—sometimes collectively called the ‘perennial tradition’—attest that the more you try to cling, the less you have. The more you grasp, the less you hold.

And the Enneagram also shows us this irony of seeking and only finding once we’ve let go. The more the Type Two energy seeks to manipulate people for intimacy, the less intimate people feel toward the Two. The more the Type Four seeks to understand, cultivate, and showcase authenticity, the less able to be authentic they are. The more the Type Six spends energy seeking to perfectly ward off all possible sources of insecurity, the more they foster a looming sense of anxiety.

James Finley, the psychotherapist and Christian mystic, says the call in each of our lives is to “let go of the control you think you have over the life you think you’re living.” We’re to let go of the Illusion of Control.

Finley says, “If you look real close, there’s not much control.” And most of us know that, even having common sense wisdom sayings about, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” or “You couldn’t have planned your journey if you tried.”

And so the young Buddhist monk is seeking a goal—but also is attaching to it, clinging to it. The ego always wants or needs something. It can’t just be.

There is nothing wrong with goals or wanting enlightenment—freedom or liberation, however you might define it. It is the inability to accept how the journey could go that makes the young monk’s journey longer and harder. Nothing about increased meditation is prohibitive for transformation; it’s his need for control that creates the barrier.

So is it hopeless?

Not at all. But part of the journey with your Enneagram Type, with your self, with your own experiences and ego and calling, is to be very attentive to the journey but to not attach to a particular, idealized outcome. In religion, “magical thinking” is rampant—even among Christians and Westerners. We all can fall into the trap of thinking ‘if I do X, then I’ll get Y result,’ a cosmic vending machine for our needs and desires.

But transformation doesn’t work that way.

In fact, getting attached to ‘Y result’ is sometimes the problem. None of us can control the when, why, how, who, or what of a moment of transformation for ourselves. Let alone a lifetime of such moments. J.R.R. Tolkien likens God’s presence to a divine fire coming down on an alter: you can maintain the alter all you want, but the fire comes when it comes, and don’t ever presume you have the power to call it down yourself.

The Good News About What You *Can* Control

So where does that leave us? Just in a place of “letting go” and hoping for the best?

Not quite. Importantly, I’m convinced that the longer one does this work of insights, practices, and experiences, the more ultimate benefit they have in a qualitatively different experience of their own life. That alone is worth pursuing, I think. And why so many people who might not even identify as religious or spiritual still seek out therapy, yoga, meditation, retreats, and self-help resources of all kinds.

You cannot control when a moment of transformation comes. But in all that I’ve learned and observed working with the Enneagram, spiritual direction, and the spiritual transformation space, I’m convinced that there actually are three things you can control about your transformation.

1. Being Open When It Comes

You can control your response when a moment of transformation comes.

In other words, when you hear a “knock” on the door, you can choose to open the door. This is true whether you’ve been waiting for such a moment or whether you find yourself filled with fear and dread. I promise you: Both types of people are capable of opening the door. If afraid, do it afraid. The benefit is not in how you were before such a moment but how you might be after having consented to such an invitation.

A moment of transformation might look like a difficult conversation. It might look like an idea you encounter that you just can’t shake and that seems to be full of meaning. It might be a strong physical sensation—or even a mystical experience—that you can’t quite define or explain. But whatever form it takes, you can choose to be open to it. Mostly that doesn’t look like having one right response; it just looks like not running away—with your attention, with your presence, with your emotions, with your effort. You don’t always have to do the formal thing; it’s often enough to just stop running away.

(And as a comfort: if you find that you did run away, you can always work with a helping professional like a spiritual director in a “redo” of your response. There’s power in that, too.)

2. Seeking Out the Uncomfortable

You can actively seek out scenarios conducive to fostering transformation.

In other words, you can actively seek to make yourself uncomfortable in ways you sense will be hard but helpful. This is why religious communities (monks and nuns) exist. You can sign up for the ‘right kind’ of discomfort and deprivation for the season that you’re in. You could do this as a one-time commitment, like attending a retreat or scheduling a hard conversation with someone, or you could do this with an ongoing commitment. This could look like joining a spiritual community, regularly volunteering with an organization, going to therapy, working through a book, committing to a specific practice for a year, and so on.

I’d make a distinction here that not everything you do to grow or foster transformation would fit here. This is specifically a category of noticing the uncomfortable tension point for you—and then intentionally choosing something to amplify that discomfort.

In spiritual direction, it’s very common for someone to talk nearly the whole hour about various things—and then bring up the big thing in the final couple of minutes! Most of us have a sense of where we don’t want to go if we would get quiet enough to discern it. Often that’s what most craves our attention. And where the transformation is likely to come.

The benefit of “leaning in” here is that you don’t have to wait and hope transformation shows up and that you’re ready when it does. While your efforts might not ultimately create a “breakthrough” for you in any area, discomfort is where much of the transforming work happens. And if you place yourself there more often, your chances of a significant movement happening go up exponentially.

3. Making Many Small 1% Choices

You can create an ‘ecosystem’ that is conducive to supporting transformation.

By this, I mean there are much less difficult things, small things, that you can build into your life to help support the work of transformation. Like an athlete, there’s training for the actual event, and then there’s everything else that might support that: eating right, getting good sleep, positive social connections, resting muscles so you’re not overtaxed, and on and on.

In the spiritual formation space, this would include a lot of “healthy” living, too, like sleep, diet and exercise, spending time outside, regular interactions with others, strong social support networks, etc. But it would also include regular practices, habits, learnings, and tools that help you. Podcasts, therapy, spiritual direction, books, rituals, services, spiritual practices, engaging the Enneagram, even (*ahem*) newsletters. The “form” matters little, but the substance of self-reflection, stillness, solitude, radical honesty, nonjudgment—this matters a great deal.

Rather than trying to have one, giant support beam holding up the structure of your journey of transformation, we want to have many smaller supports working together. Not only will it make it more likely that you are open to transformation when it comes, but in difficult times when some supports inevitably fall away, you’ll still have others if you’ve created an “ecosystem” of interactive elements fostering this work.

The Bad News About What You *Can* Control

Put simply: It’s really hard.

The three things above are hard in their own ways. The first of just “being open” when an invitation comes is easy in that you don’t have to work to build anything at all beforehand. But it’s incredibly hard in that you have to roll the dice and hope you are ready and aware when the moment comes.

The second of “leaning in,” I think, is likely the hardest because actively going into the things you have spent your entire life most avoiding and not seeing is no small thing. It takes a lot to even see what those things we’re actively avoiding are, let alone to find the motivation to go against the grain and dive into them.

And the third of “building an ecosystem” is easy in that no one piece is too difficult. Listen to a podcast today or not, think about self-observation with your Enneagram Type today or not—it’s a small effect. But it’s also much, much harder to build and maintain an entire ecosystem in supporting transformation than to make one right decision. It takes less strenuous effort, but more constant effort. And like any healthy habit, it’s hard to build and easy to break.

And yet…

You can. And if you’re reading this, you already are.

It’s true that most people don’t sign up for this work and don’t take the invitation when it comes. It’s rarer to be the type of person who actively does Inner Work.

And it’s also true that no human escapes life without learning lessons, gaining some awareness, going through some transformation. It’s what we’re hardwired for and made for. And what life continually tries to confront us with no matter what. And the hope is, if you could have more of what you really want—to be more open, more honest, more loving, more awake, more real—then why wait?

Optional Practice:

Look at this list of the 3 things you can control about transformation. Which of the 3 is hardest for you? Which is easiest?

Now choose 1 area you want to bring more attention to. Notice what you’ve already done on your journey in that area. What has helped you make an effort or be open there, if anything? What is something you’re sensing is needed in this area? What’s one small thing that would help your journey that you could do, you would do, if you were able? How could you try to integrate this small thing today?

---

Samuel Ogles is the owner of ‘Formation Circle,’ a practice offering spiritual direction, Enneagram teaching, and media to empower others in personal transformation. You can support this work by subscribing to this newsletter (Free and Paid versions available), and you can connect with Sam or another spiritual director at FormationCircle.com.