Now, what do I mean by these three elements? Each center contributes to the process of understanding. If the head center is functioning correctly, it means that space or emptiness is allowed. What is the significance of space and emptiness? Space and emptiness make possible the quality of allowing. When there is space in the mind, there is no self-image. You’re not trying to stick to something in particular. You’re not trying to go somewhere. The mind is allowing whatever is there to be there. So the head center’s participation or contribution is space, which is an allowing, a welcoming in a sense—space for things to happen without rejection, without trying to hold on. You become complete allowing.

The third major capacity for subtle perception is that of seeing, connected with the head center in the forehead. This capacity provides information about color and shape, so necessary for understanding essence, for discriminating the various aspects, and for the aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of essence. The popular expression "I see," meaning "I understand," is probably rooted in the fact of this capacity for perception. Here seeing is tantamount to understanding. The capacity for subtle seeing can be developed to the point of being freed from limitations of space and time. One can see inside the body, can see the anatomical parts of the body, even the cells and the molecules; one can see the emotions, the subtle energies, the essence. One can see things at a distance or in other times.

What does this mean - allowing your heart to be open? It is connected with hurt, as I said, because compassion means to feel something about someone’s hurt or difficulty. On the most superficial level of compassion, when you see somebody hurt, you have compassion. If somebody is having difficulty, or in pain, or is scared, you have compassion for them. That’s why hurt was mentioned in connection with trust. The basic thing about knowing someone is not going to hurt you is knowing that he has compassion. When you allow yourself compassion in the heart, the head center automatically opens. They become one center, and there is rest in the mind. No questioning or doubt. When fear is gone from the situation, the solar plexus is more open and the will is there, giving support and confidence.

When we experience the absolute through the mind modality, it attains the greatest subtlety. It is total absence, with the slightest hint of presence. The presence is like a subtle glimmer to the absence, giving it a slight sense of presence that easily melts into nonbeing. The lightness is greatest here, so much freedom, so much space, so much openness. We are so free we are almost not here; it is like we have overcome gravity and feel no more heaviness of any kind. Even the slight, almost absent, sense of presence can attain a crystalline quality that gives it precision and brilliance. We feel so free and so awake, so clear and so bright; yet there is nothing there: total selflessness.

Because the Holy Ideas are differentiated ways of viewing what is, they are conceptual and so are related to the higher intellectual center. To understand them on an experiential level is to open the head center. The perspective of the Holy Ideas that we are going to be working with is the view of reality that arises when the head center is open, active, and functioning. When this center is closed, one’s perspective on reality is filtered through the nine delusions of the fixations. Getting a taste of how reality objectively looks confronts the delusions in a systematic way. Each delusion is a very specific and deep belief about oneself and reality, crystallized into a conviction, which is incorrect in a specific way. So our work with the ennea-types is not a matter of going into the details of how each one operates, but rather of seeing how their cores are the result of basic delusions about reality, which can be corrected through truly understanding and perceiving the corresponding Holy Idea.

Here we will discuss each Holy Idea briefly, focusing particularly on its relationship to basic trust. We will explore each in depth in Part Three. We will begin with the Holy Idea for Point Eight, Holy Truth. When basic trust is dominant, the head center opens and we perceive the fact of reality. We see that the universe in its totality—all levels, including the physical—exists in a fundamental way and that that existence is the true reality. We see that all of existence is the manifestation of God, the Divine Being, True Nature—whatever name you wish to give it. So Holy Truth is the perception that God exists as the totality of existence—that He is what exists and the existence of what exists—and God is not something separate from the universe. When basic trust is deeply integrated, we see that everything is pervaded by the living presence or consciousness that we call Living Daylight or Loving Light. It could also be called God, love, consciousness, presence, or Being. This perception of existence is the perspective of Holy Truth.