Part 3 of 3 in our Becoming Who We Are Series
The first time I tried my friend’s camera - not a phone, but a real camera with a ring you turn to focus - I experienced the workings of an aperture. Wide open, the whole scene came into view: flowers in the foreground, the tree behind them, the hills beyond. But as I narrowed the focus, the flowers became sharp while everything else dissolved into blur.
We also have an inner aperture, one that expands and narrows according to where our attention goes.
Long before we could name it, our awareness learned to narrow around biological instincts designed to help us survive. These instincts are ancient, necessary, and still serve us well. The problem is that our inner aperture tends to operate automatically, meaning we live on autopilot.
When our ego senses threat, uncertainty, scarcity, or disconnection, our instincts move quickly to protect us. Our attention contracts, and we see less of what is really happening and more of what our ego tells us needs to be defended, protected, or controlled.
And when our awareness narrows, we shrink. The world hasn't become smaller. Our experience of it has.
Sacred living invites us to notice when the aperture is narrowing, become curious about what is driving it, and discover that we are capable of opening again to a wider world.
The Three Instincts or Subtypes
The Enneagram has a language for these three instinctual drives. Beatrice Chestnut, who has done extensive work on the topic, refers to them as the subtypes. They describe three fundamental instinctual orientations that are present from the earliest moments of life and continue to operate throughout our lives.
The self-preservation subtype awakens at birth through our most basic instinct to stay alive - to seek nourishment, warmth, rest, shelter, and whatever else sustains life.
The one-to-one subtype awakens with the first connection with the mother or primary caregiver. It activates our focus on attachment and intimacy, the powerful pull toward another person and the experience of being deeply met.
The social subtype awakens when the baby starts connecting with the larger relational field - family, friends, pets, and eventually to community, groups, and the wider world in which we find our place.
As we become adults, one of these instincts tends to function as our primary orientation, joining with our unique personality to further organize and narrow where our attention goes. It narrows and filters our focus on what we see.
Each instinct is a fundamental way in which our attention and energy organize themselves to navigate daily life. And as I have emphasized in the past two reflections, you don't have to know the Enneagram to recognize these instincts at work. They are woven into our biology and our ordinary human experience.
More On the Three Instincts
The Self-Preservation Instinct
The self-preservation instinct has an essential impulse toward continuity, stability, nourishment, protection, and sustaining the self. It orients us toward the conditions necessary for life: food, shelter, rest, health, finances, physical safety, and the resources we need to keep going.
At its best, it gives us the grounded wisdom to care for ourselves and create stability. But when overactivated, awareness can contract around security. We retreat, conserve our energy, seek comfort and predictability, and avoid whatever might disturb our equilibrium.
The inner aperture narrows around a core question: “Am I safe and sufficiently resourced?”
For example, an intellectual personality (Enneagram Type 5) with a dominant self-preservation instinct might become preoccupied with researching nutrition, health, finances, or ways to create a secure and comfortable home. What begins as reasonable preparation can become an absorbing need for enough knowledge, resources, and control to feel safe.
The instinct isn't the problem. The contraction occurs when security becomes the lens through which too much of life is viewed.
The One-to-One Instinct
The one-to-one instinct narrows differently. Its essential impulse is toward individual relationships, connection, intimacy, intensity, and the desire to experience ourselves fully through an encounter with another. It draws our attention toward what is compelling and personally significant - people, experiences, and possibilities that promise a deeper sense of aliveness and connection.
At its best, it makes deep intimacy and genuine encounter possible. But when constricted, awareness can collapse around a person, relationship, or emotional charge. We may become hyper-attuned to attraction and rejection, closeness and distance, or become dependent on a particular person or experience to feel fully alive.
The aperture closes around a core question: “What - and who - ignites me?”
For example, a relational, heart-based personality (Enneagram Type 2) with a dominant one-to-one instinct might become intensely focused on someone whose attention and affection feel compelling. What begins as genuine connection can narrow into attempts to gain favor by helping, being solicitous, or becoming indispensable to them.
The contraction happens when one relationship, person, or source of intensity begins to occupy too much of the frame.
The Social Instinct
The social instinct has a broader field of attention. It orients us toward the larger relational field - groups, communities, organizations, and the systems in which we participate. Its essential focus is toward visibility, participation, contribution, recognition, and belonging.
At its best, it helps us recognize our interdependence, contribute to something larger than ourselves, and participate in the common good. But when constricted, awareness can turn toward adaptation and performance. We begin monitoring our place, our importance, our image, and whether others are recognizing us.
The aperture narrows around a core question: “Where do I belong, and how do I fit into the larger whole?”
For example, a principled, improvement-oriented personality (Enneagram Type 1) with a dominant social instinct may seek groups where they can contribute, uphold standards, and improve things. What begins as a genuine desire to serve the common good can become a preoccupation with changing groups, over-focusing on keeping others accountable, or grasping after systemic change.
The contraction happens when changing the larger field, or securing our place within it, becomes too important.
Three instincts. Three ways the frame can contract. Three doorways into the smaller self.
A self-preservation focus shrinks the world around security.
A one-to-one focus shrinks the world around intensity and connection.
A social focus shrinks the world around belonging and significance.
The Sacred Living Practice
This is where sacred living becomes a practice.
Sacred living doesn't ask us to disable these instincts - we couldn't if we tried, and we wouldn't want to. They're part of our embodied humanity. The invitation is simply to notice when an instinct has taken over our viewpoint, when the aperture narrows and safety, connection, or belonging becomes the whole landscape.
Rather than getting rid of our instincts, we can become conscious of them, curious rather than critical when we notice our view has gotten too narrow, aware when an instinct has quietly taken the wheel.
Because the good news is this: the wide-open view never actually disappears. The hills are still there. It's presence, not effort, that lets us step back into that expanse.
So when you feel the narrowing, take a relaxed breath and turn the dial toward a wider frame. You'll see more. The smaller self loosens its hold, awareness expands, and what you'd forgotten was there all along becomes visible again.
Points to Ponder
Which instinct tends to narrow your aperture first when you're stressed - self-preservation, one-to-one, or social?
What sensations, thoughts, feelings, impulses, or behaviors might alert you to the narrowing of your perspective?
Where in your life might you be prone to mistake a small part of the landscape for the whole landscape?
What practices might help you widen your aperture and awareness in the midst of your everyday life?