The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth

by Christopher L. Heuertz

When it comes to recognizing the truth of our own identities, most of us experience a symbolic version of blindness that keeps us from seeing ourselves for who we really are.

We live unawakened lives marked by self-perpetuating lies about who we think we are—or how we wish to be seen. Tragically, we don’t know who we are or what we look like. And often, it takes an unlikely “other” to remind us what’s true—you’re beautiful.

The missiologist-theologians Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, who have studied identity and dignity, nuance the differences between the two as those of substance and value, suggesting, “Identity answers the question ‘Who am I?’, while dignity answers the question, ‘What am I worth?’”1

If we can start with the grace of resting in our dignity, then the truth of our identity flows forward. “While identity must not be confused with dignity, dignity in a Christian view assumes identity.”2

My own consistent struggle is to recognize my addictive tendency to validate my worth (dignity) by curating an unrealistic and unattainable projection of who I think I need to be (identity).

Nouwen suggested we all find ourselves bouncing around three very human lies that we believe about our identity: I am what I have, I am what I do, and I am what other people say or think about me.*

Keating explains that as children we all need an appropriate amount of power and control, affection and esteem, and security and survival for healthy psychological grounding. But as we mature, our tendency is to overidentify with one of these programs for happiness, keeping us developmentally and spiritually stuck.

Since the experience of the presence of God is not there at the age we start to develop self-consciousness, these three instinctual needs are all we have with which to build a program for happiness. Without the help of reason to modify them, we build a universe with ourselves at the center, around which all human faculties revolve like planets around the sun.”3

It’s important to remember that power and control, affection and esteem, and security and survival aren’t bad needs in and of themselves. The problem arises when in our adult lives we become addicted to one of these programs to maintain our happiness. The

the Enneagram offers a sacred map for our souls; a map that, when understood, leads us home to our true identity and to God.

Our inner critic is that part of ourselves that we turn into the pet that needs our constant attention and routine feeding.

The English word personality is derived from the Latin word for “mask.” Simply put, our personality is the mask we wear.

The English word character comes from the Greek word meaning “engraving into stone.” And that’s what we’re trying to do here with the help of the Enneagram—to chip away at our being, like the most talented of sculptors, and reveal our soul’s essence in its purest form.

The Enneagram is not a tool for self-absorption but instead a map for self-liberation.

In his renderings of the Enneagram, Óscar Ichazo (the man who interpreted and brought forward the Enneagram in its modern form) proposed an Enneagram of Holy Ideas and an Enneagram of Virtues. Simply put, the Holy Idea of each type is the mental clarity of the True Self that emerges when the mind is at rest, while the Virtue of each type is the emotional objectivity of the True Self that comes forward in a heart at peace. Much like the nine Beatitudes from Matthew 5:1–12 or the nine fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22–23, the evidence of wholeness is manifested through our peace of mind and heart revealed in our Holy Idea and Virtue. Together, our Holy Idea and Virtue express who we were always created to be.

If we understand these experiences as our caregivers’ inability to love perfectly and the ways we absorbed that, we are more capable of viewing these pains as invitations for inner growth and healing. I’m reminded of the story in John 9:1–3: As Jesus walked along, he saw someone who had been blind from birth. The disciples asked Jesus, “Rabbi, was it this individual’s sin that caused the blindness, or that of the parents?” “Neither,” answered Jesus. “It wasn’t because of anyone’s sin—not this person’s, nor the parents’. Rather, it was to let God’s works shine forth in this person.”

The symbols here are loaded with significance. Jesus heals the person’s blindness by rubbing mud (the raw material of our humanity, getting back to where we came from and where we’re ultimately headed) in his eyes sockets and then instructing him to go wash in the water.

Washing the mud out of our eyes is a subtle metaphor for baptism, a second form of birth that cleanses the harm from our childhood while also inviting us to return to what wounded us as children so that our eyes may be opened to the gift of who we are and who we can become.

Father Richard, has suggested that Enneagram type is one-third nature, one-third nurture, and one-third the decision we make as children to fill a role needed to survive or thrive in our families and environments.

Enneagram as a character-structure construct: it offers both a portrait of health and a portrait of unhealth for each type, and prompts us to identify honestly where we are functioning on that spectrum.

In the structure of each Enneagram type, the shadow of the Holy Idea is the type’s traditional Fixation—how the mind copes with the True Self’s loss of perfection and presence. The shadow of the Virtue is the type’s Passion—how the heart aches and longs to reconnect with the Virtue of the True Self.

Technically the word passion comes from the Latin word passionem which means “suffering” or “enduring.”

Elbert Hubbard was suggesting when he wrote, “We are punished by our sins not for them.”1

Regardless of whether the Passions of the Enneagram are more pathologies than sins or tragic flaws, “The King’s Diamond,” a traditional Jewish parable,* helps us make sense of what is exposed through our understanding of our type. Long ago lived a wealthy king whose fortune was unrivaled. He possessed valuable treasures from all known lands including paintings and sculptures from the world’s greatest artists. The legend of his prosperity was punctuated by his most prized possession, a precious diamond bigger than any that had ever been seen before. In fact, it was larger than the king’s own hand and nearly flawless in its color and clarity. When the king wasn’t admiring it himself, the diamond was put on display for all his loyal subjects to admire—protected by armed guards, of course. Visitors from far and wide came to gaze upon its mythical beauty. As the king’s fame grew and his kingdom flourished, he credited this very special diamond as the source of his prosperity. One afternoon as the king gazed upon the diamond, holding the precious stone up to the sunlight, to his horror he noticed a deep and long crack from the top of the stone to the very bottom. “How could this have happened?” he exclaimed, heartbroken with the devastating knowledge that it would be impossible to fix this terrible flaw. His court gathered around him with his most esteemed advisors attempting to appease his fears. The best jewelers throughout his kingdom visited his throne room to examine the fl...

But God is here now, closer than our very breath, and can be found in our Intelligence Centers—the Enneagram’s way of helping us recognize our primary mode of perceiving the world through either our head, heart, or body.

Each of these Intelligence Centers offers us a different way of experiencing the loving presence and voice of God.

Our Intelligence Centers help us hear and invite us to greater discernment.

And when we learn to tune into the ways God is speaking in us and to us, we are guided into wise living.

Traditional Jungian dream analysis teaches that every person or character who shows up in our dreams can be interpreted as a disconnected fragment of our personal unconscious (actually a part of ourselves) trying to get our attention. Essentially, the characters in our dreams represent our inner wisdom trying to sort things out. As a thought experiment, then, what if we applied a Jungian approach to analyzing Dorothy’s dream?

The first mistake we make is misinterpreting these voices in our heads and hearts as the voice of God (though God is never as hard on us as we are on ourselves).

Our second mistake is giving away our power to the toxic and destructive control that the pains of our past hold over us.

And the last mistake we make is allowing those we’ve hurt or let down to fasten these masks to us in ways that make us feel w...

With a Four wing, Threes become uniquely specialized in their vocational commitments, giving themselves to hard work in yet another attempt to be recognized and validated.

Our specific prayer intention—the inner disposition we bring to support our contemplative prayer posture—helps us wake up from the slumber of illusions around our identity and relationships. Waking up is the first step in the spiritual journey, a courageous alternative to the fantasies we fashion to keep us asleep.

In other words, silence is usually a huge workout for my soul. But with practice come moments of breaking through the internal chaos.

Pastor Drew Jackson, spent the last days of his mother’s life accompanying her through her death, a painful and heart-wrenching journey for them both. Not long after, we spent a weekend together on a retreat hosted by my nonprofit. There Drew shared one of the most profound thoughts on the contemplative journey I’ve ever heard. Life best lived is lived as a series of losses, a series of deaths. Death is not meant to be a one-time event at the end of life but, rather, a daily experience by which we learn to continually embrace the unknown, step into mystery, and release the need to control. . . . The contemplative way is a practice in “death.” If you have ever witnessed the moment of death, you know that death is ultimately silent, still, and alone. The practices of contemplative spirituality prepare us for this. The contemplative way thrusts us into the beautiful struggle of embracing the unknown and losing the need to control.2

Solitude, silence, and stillness are the quintessential qualities of contemplative prayer and practice.

Silence actually teaches us to listen. It helps us learn how to listen to the voice of God, a voice we maybe have not been able to recognize. It helps us listen to the people in our lives who speak loving, truthful words of correction or affirmation to us. In silence we hear the truth that God is not as hard on us as we are on ourselves.

Contemplative spirituality holds us accountable by awakening us to the subconscious and unconscious motivations for what we are attempting to do in the context of our beliefs. It allows us to stay in the pain of our human condition yet not be overcome by it, keeping that pain from pushing us over the edge and instead allowing it to transform us.

Ultimately the goal of our journey with the Enneagram is to move from type to identity, to become rooted in dignity and reflect our essential True Self.

Father Richard once told me, “To cast great light in the world also requires a long shadow.” Both belong.

The desert is clearly a symbol of retreat or withdrawal, an intentional moving into solitude, silence, and stillness to be tested—but what was actually being tested?

When we face the lie that we are what we have and in silence learn to listen, God says, “My pleasure over you is all you need.”

When we stop our frenetic activity and face the lie that we are what we do, God says, “You are my beloved.”

When we withdraw into our own interior solitude to face the lie that we are what others think, God says, “My child, rest in the grace...

Jesus had to face these temptations to claim his identity as the Christ. And to loosen the grasp of the lies, he had to recover the loss of these affirmations in our shared human condition by illuminating the truth. How did Jesus do this? In self-deprivation he gave himself to the prayer practice of fasting in solitude, silence, and stillness, confronting any claims these lies or programs for happiness may have on the rest of us. In other words, Jesus does not ask us to do through contemplative practice what he has not done himself.

When Threes engage solitude, they access a part of their heart that seems to have been lost. Threes need to engage solitude as a gift, not detaching from relationships to fuel the addiction of self-nurturing. Threes who are able to face themselves alone, being in the present moment, dismantle their Fixation of vanity.

For many heart types, solitude is a trigger to deeper experiences of loneliness, but in solitude the fears associated with being alone can be faced without distractions. In this way, solitude heals even the most tender cracks in the hearts of the Feeling Center types.