Contributing Factors to Why Natural Number is Not Obvious to All:
Attachment and Fill-In:
The following is recent knowledge of how the brain works and about how our visual ability relates to our ability to perceive what is going on around us accurately impacts our perception:
- Our vision operates much like a movie film, we take visual pictures, it take a certain amount of time for the visual image to reach the necessary part of the brain to interpret the signal – we are always essentially perceiving in the past, our brain “fills in” between the images, and fills in from memory of what was perceived earlier. This means we miss critical information, and construct our own reality/interpretation of what is going on around us. It also means it is difficult for us to perceive new things, we continually try to fill-in or make sense of new perceptions using what we already know.
- “Attachment” – human beings have attachments that cloud perception. Attachments to feelings, to being right, to pre-defined perspectives, to beliefs. When we are faced with an attachment we are easy to deceive and it is easy for us to deceive ourselves.
The combination of “attachment” and “fill-in” creates our concept of personal experience. Our egos are easily attached to “being right” or “finding the answer”, this further allows our perceptions to misread the signals, and misread the energy. On top of these issues are socio-economic norms, cultural influences, physiological and psychological illnesses that all affect how the primary energy manifests.
Belief Systems and Experience
Another level of complication is, because this is not known and recognized, the depth and significance of the differences is not appreciated, and those around us are not able to see and support the great gift of the Natural Number. We develop mental ideas of what we are and what we should be based on what those around us reflect back to us. The result is we rarely have a clear understanding of our innate Natural Number’s gift. This is the primary reason that self-questionnaires, like those used to determine Enneagram type, often yield a different type than the physical process for determining the active region. Also, without training, you don’t know what you are looking for. If you can’t activate the Natural Number in your body, it is hard to feel it in others. Seeing the Natural Numbers takes activation and practice.
Complexity – We Rarely Hang Out with People of Our Own Natural Number
Another contributing factor is that nine is a complex number of variables. Natural Number does not repeat in nuclear families. This means we were not raised with anyone like us at our side. It is rare to be in a group of your own Natural Number. We rarely hang-out with our own kind. The experience of seeing people of the same physiology side by side almost never happens.
To see this reality around us, you need to see people who share Natural Number in large enough quantities to see the similarities. When you do, it can be very powerful, but this does not happen in the world at large. People usually hang out with a diverse group of Natural Numbers, and usually in numbers less than 10, so the probability of another person you are with sharing your Natural Number is actually low.
When people share a Natural Number and have the same racial background, coloring, and age, the resemblance can be striking. Has anyone ever told you that you look just like a friend of theirs? It is likely you share Natural Number with their friend.
Here is an example in the photo of Susan Fisher, Natural Number 6, co-founder of Body of 9 (onthe right), and her friend Lisa Christie, Natural Number 6 (onthe left). They are almost mirror images of each other:
