The Enneads

There You Are

Look at this big, heavy stone.
Can you see what’s inside it?
There is a lion in there.
A stone lion, curled up, fast asleep.

How do you get the lion out?
You do not glue on a tail.
You do not stick on a nose.
You take a little away.
A little, and a little, and a little more.

Say it with me:
Take a little away,
and there you are! Hello, lion.

You have a you inside you too.
A kind you. A gentle you. The real you.

But sometimes things pile on top.
A big grumpy. A loud show-off. A want-want-want.
They sit on the real you like a heavy coat.

You don’t need to add a thing.
You just let a little heavy stuff slide off.
A little, and a little, and a little more.

Take a little away,
and there you are! Hello, you.

You can’t do it all at once. Nobody can.
The lion took a long, long time.
So do you. And that’s okay.

So when the grumpy feels big and loud,
you don’t have to push it down or hide it.
Just take one slow breath.
Let a little of it slide off.
And there you are. Still you. Right here.

A note for the grown-up

For the grown-up reading aloud: this comes from a very old book called the Enneads, by a philosopher named Plotinus, who pictured becoming your best self as a sculptor working on a statue, cutting away and smoothing until the figure shows. The primer keeps the gentle, solid core of that image: we grow by letting go of what isn’t us, not by piling more on, and a little at a time. Two soft spots to know about. Plotinus’s fuller claim, that a perfect, divine part of you sits untouched above the body all along, was rejected even by his own later followers, so we kept only the part a child can safely live by: that the kind, real you is in there and worth uncovering. And the picture is about releasing feelings, not stuffing them down: a slow breath and letting a little slide off, never “don’t feel grumpy.”

Face the Middle

Here is a circle of children.
They are singing a song.
Their teacher stands in the middle.

Everyone looks at the teacher.
Everyone sings together.
The song sounds lovely.

Now one boy sees a bird.
He turns around to watch it.
His song goes wobbly.
He sings too fast. He sings too slow.

Is he out of the circle?
No! He is still right there.
He just turned the other way.

Say it with me:
Turn around, face the middle,
and sing!

He turns back around.
He looks at the teacher.
And his song fits again.

Sometimes you turn away too.
Something shiny. Something loud.
That’s okay. Everybody does.

You are never out of the circle.
You can always turn around.

So when your song feels wobbly,
stop for a moment.
Find the middle again.
Turn around, face the middle,
and sing.

A note for the grown-up

For the grown-up reading aloud: near its end, the Enneads pictures people as a choir standing around a conductor. We are always in place, but we don’t always look; when the singers turn back to the center, the song comes right. For Plotinus the center is the One, the source of everything, and that picture of the universe is a religious and metaphysical claim, not something this primer asks a child to believe. What it keeps is the move that holds up without the metaphysics: turning your attention back to what matters, with the reassurance that looking away never put you outside. The fence is in the beats: the boy isn’t bad or out for turning away, and turning back makes his song fit, not perfect.