Power Is: Landmark—Enneagram Point 8

This article is part of a series called The Illuminating Enneagram.

The choice between being the active creator of our world, versus the passive recipient of circumstances, presents itself at every juncture of life. By default our mental hardware has us see ourselves as the one being bombarded by the many waves of life’s ocean: life is happening “to” us. In this paradigm, of course, there’s a good amount of misfortune. Some of those waves are going to be tempestuous and “pack a punch” — it’s unavoidable. And yet, while it’s not always possible to change the waves themselves, it’s always possible to change how we relate to the waves. “At all times and under all circumstances, we have the power to transform the quality of our lives.”

That quote belongs to Werner Erhard, the man who became famous in the 1970’s as the leader of the EST program that changed thousands of peoples lives. (EST is an acronym for Erhard Seminars Training and a conjugation of the Latin word for “be.”) The original trainings were succeeded by the courses of another company, Landmark, which carries forward the heart of Erhard’s teachings while inventing their own curriculum. Since Landmark is alive and thriving — and impacting people’s lives as we speak — it’s Landmark’s teachings that I’ll be covering in this article.

So what does Landmark have to do with the Enneagram? Initially Landmark may not seem like it fits in this article series, The Enneagram of Paths, since all the other teachings I’ll be overviewing are proper spiritual teachings, whereas Landmark is a personal development company. However, that fact alone already starts to reveal Landmark’s energetic home-base on the Enneagram: Point 8. If Point 8 had a slogan to summarize its energy, it might be: “get down to business.” Point 8, home of “The Challenger,” is an energy that favors boldness, action, going for it, and can easily be entrepreneurial. But 8’s also get down to business in the sense that they are advocates for powerfully engaging and participating in the world — fully showing up. The 8 person can find the overly passive, detached, or overly tolerant energies in some spiritual teachings to be lacking the vital and dynamic aspect of Spirit. Point 8 represents the part of Spirit that’s powerful, impactful, vividly alive and deeply engaged; it’s the point on the Enneagram at which our inner fire reaches its highest peak.

The question that Enneagram Point 8 asks us is: what do you stand for? Type 8’s want to know where you stand and what you stand for. Landmark as an organization makes a powerful stand for people’s transformation and a world in which, in their language, “everyone wins.” A world that works for everyone. Landmark sees this as being accomplishable only by putting the power back in people’s hands: by giving them the tools—distinctions—to distinguish ‘self from mind,’ and ‘self from stories.’ This gives people an opportunity to have a say in the way their lives go; otherwise we tend to succumb to “business as usual.” Without any fresh and alive new possibility on the horizon, we sleepwalk and wait on the world to change (like the John Mayer song), assuming someone else will take responsibility and handle the global issues we face, or that “someday” things will magically improve, without any inconvenient imposition being made on us to do something. Real 8 energy — Landmark’s energy — is an interruption of all that. It’s a wake up call! It’s a facing up to our collective challenges and the human condition that gives rise to catastrophe and calamity. Hence, Landmark aims to transform the being of human beings that underlies all personal and collective issues — to deal with, as Werner famously called it, “the heart of the matter.”

One of the very first distinctions that is put forward in Landmark’s curricula is the difference between being “in the stands” and “on the court.” This foundational piece supports many of the distinctions that come after, and suggests the general way life is related to when employing Landmark’s technology. It’s all about getting into action. To be in the stands relegates one to the position of the spectator or commentator — merely the observer of life. To be on the court, on the other hand, points to actively participating in (or playing) the game of life by either being in action or giving one’s word (i.e., declaring the action one will take). The aliveness of this mode of being bubbles up in connection with the gut center; taking action brings us more deeply into our bodies. Along with power, aliveness is one of the hallmarks of 8 energy.

Honoring one’s word constitutes a fundamental element of Landmark’s teachings. In The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Riso and Hudson write, “Honor is also important to healthy Eights: their word is their bond. When they say, ‘You have my word on this,’ they mean it.” In Landmark, the guiding principle of being one’s word is very present, however the philosophy surrounding ‘the word’ extends further and connects to other ‘8’ themes of empowerment, integrity, and workability. Things tend to run smoothly if people keep their word. It simply works if people do what they say they’re going to do. Being in integrity is defined relative to one’s word: honoring it is the mark of integrity, whereas failing to keep it or communicate about one’s inability to carry it out throws mud on the pristine state of one’s word. A person can, of course, pull back from giving any word at all, but this is an act of playing small. And Landmark calls on human beings to be big: to say we’re going to accomplish something bigger than we ever have before, and to leave no stone unturned to ensure that reality matches what we powerfully declare.

The core philosophy in Landmark says that reality is created through language and, thus, brought into being through our word. To master our word is to master reality. It’s critical to get that human beings use their word without awareness, disempower and make themselves small by telling stories about events, collapsing the “what’s so” with a fabricated story about what’s so. The divine aspect of strength, associated with Point 8, isn’t explicit in Landmark’s teachings but present as an undercurrent energy each time a distinction is made. Distinctions are the primary tool of this technology — in the stands versus on the court, story versus what happened, etc. — and they are used to create a sharp, strong demarcation between one thing and another. Distinctions are the tools of empowerment.

Ultimately, all of Landmark’s work is geared towards being a creator of reality, in congruence with the 8’s basic desire “to be in control of their own life and destiny” (The Enneagram Institute). Once someone has cleared out of the way their disempowering stories, in that open clearing a new possibility can be created — from “nothing,” as it’s called, or the space where there is no story and nothing yet created. Here, the Type 8 gift for seeing possibilities is harnessed to identify what’s been missing in a situation where an issue or challenge has been. (“Eights are able to see possibilities in people and in situations; they look at a garage full of junk and see a potential business. They look at a troubled youth and see leadership potential.” (Wisdom, page 309).) The question “what’s been missing all this time?” is designed to uncover a way of being that’s been absent. The power in who we are being is inestimable: just as planets orbit the sun, life orbits around who we are being. The fact that being itself is a cornerstone of Landmark’s work reminds us that we are well within the domain of the body/gut center. In the ancient Hindu formulation of reality’s triune nature, sat-chit-ananda, chit refers to consciousness and the head center; ananda to bliss and the heart center; sat refers to being and the temple of the body.

I said in the first article in this series that while each teaching emphasizes the energy of one point on the Enneagram, like people, each teaching also contains elements of the other centers of intelligence and other points on the symbol. While gut center energy dominates, Landmark’s commitment to leaving people “free to be and free to act” (a slogan) reflects Point 7’s value of freedom. Seven energy also makes up part of the atmosphere at Landmark’s courses in the sense that, along with the palpable presence of 8’s expansiveness in the direction of accomplishment, a steady optimism and feeling that “anything is possible” fills the air. Moving down to Point 5, the 5’s aspiration of clarity pervades the realm of distinctions and the philosophical groundwork that underpins them. This makes perfect sense as Werner Erhard is a longtime student of philosophy — his influences range from Heidegger to Zen Buddhism. Probably the greatest “aha!” moment (what 5’s love) in Landmark comes at the end of their flagship course, the Forum: the “Life is empty and meaningless” distinction brings a quality of sweeping illumination. And so, while Landmark manifests as a powerhouse organization steeped in forward-moving, gut energy, the lights of the head center are on as well.

Turning to the heart, we’re reminded that people have different ways of expressing love. While heart people are generally drawn to more emotional or intimate forms of connection, head and gut people may be more drawn to translate their caring into other languages. Someone may hear stories from the EST training of participants being called “assholes” and think — where’s the love in that? But one of the highest forms of love is to enhance someone’s capabilities such that they’re no longer dependent on you. Keeping someone dependent on you isn’t love, it’s manipulation. Landmark is in the business of ruthless compassion: a kind of love that serves the other person’s empowerment, no holds barred, even if that expresses as being very direct, harsh, or blunt. And since we’re dealing with 8 energy, it makes perfect sense that it expresses that way (at least part of the time).

In the same way that individuals who go through Landmark’s courses see a new possibility for their lives that “touches, moves, or inspires” them, Landmark the organization was born out of seeing a possibility for humanity — a vision that gives direction to the company’s efforts. We can get a sense of what that vision is by looking at what Landmark is up to in the world. Giving people back their power. A world that works for everyone can’t be created if people are disempowered and lacking the awareness to have solid, clean relationships with each other. But if the 8 energy reminds us of anything, it reminds us that we can do it. It’s just a matter of getting out of fantasy and into reality, and having the audacity to bring forth the possibilities we see would make a difference.