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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.
“Identity answers the question ‘Who am I?’, while dignity answers the question, ‘What am I worth?’”1
of dignity, the intrinsic value that is ascribed not earned,
“Every unrealistic expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.”
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.
illustrates the nine ways we get lost, but also the nine ways we can come home to our True Self. Put another way, it exposes nine ways we lie
By revealing our illusions, the Enneagram emphasizes the urgency of inner work—the
we soon realize that most of the inner work is painfully mundane; there’s sort of a bland, everyday, humdrum monotony about it. In fact, much of the inner work can be boiled down to faithful contemplative prayer practice.
Our inner critic is that part of ourselves that we turn into the pet that needs our constant attention and routine feeding.
But it is a peculiar person who integrates the illuminations of the Enneagram in a way that obliges less direct reference to the tool because of her or his own internalized command of its deeper meanings. This becomes obvious when suddenly you see how Enneagram types aren’t just buckets for unique sets of idiosyncrasies but rather offer clues to the essence of each person’s particular purpose.
truth is meant to be lived—in our everyday, embodied lives.
The English word personality is derived from the Latin word for “mask.”
A mark of spiritual growth is when we stop polishing the mask and instead start working on our character.
character comes from the Greek word meaning “engraving into stone.”
Spiritual growth and transformation are the result of exposing the masks or illusions of personality and getting to the core of identity.
Many people who come across the Enneagram get stuck with the overviews and the thick descriptions of their own type; they love to learn more and more about themselves while resisting the implications of the gift of self-knowledge. The Enneagram is not a tool for self-absorption but instead a map for self-liberation.
it’s a compassionate sketch of possibilities and opportunities,
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.
This internalization of pain isn’t a real wound per se but a result of transmitting and absorbing our human inability to love perfectly as well as receive love perfectly.
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.
Is it because someone harmed us or is it because we actually need an obvious limitation as an invitation to give ourselves to our inner work?
the very effects and limitations of our Childhood Wound are invitations to wholeness, not tragic flaws that can’t be overcome.
This theory suggests then that the Childhood Wound doesn’t actually form type in people but is absorbed as a form of confirmation bias, or used to validate the affinity toward a dominant type that is gifted to us at birth.
learning about our type can be painful to our memories and humiliating to our ego. So it’s worse than a “party foul” to type someone; it is an intrusion or an overreach.
As you read through the materials, the type you feel most exposed by or most uncomfortable with is usually the one that ends up being yours.
When we integrate, it should surprise us. It should be an unexpected reward for doing what is nourishing for our soul—and that wonderful shock of observing the gifts of our integration is the validation of the astonishing grace it is.
newer theory that I happen to agree with is that our path of disintegration is that innate self-survival reflex that stops our fall by reaching out to the lower-level manipulation techniques of another type as a way of getting our attention—letting us know we are falling and if we don’t catch ourselves we’ll “break our arm” or worse.
if you believe in the doctrine of original sin, then the Enneagram exposes the shape of your tragic flaw—the aspect of you that is most vulnerable to sin—as it is forced from your soul through the pressure of guilt, shame, stress, anxiety, fear, frustration, or anger.
hear from the voice of Love who resides within.
Many of us don’t know how to hear from God in the present, so we make the mistake of believing God is somehow waiting for us in the future. This
Each of these Intelligence Centers offers us a different way of experiencing the loving presence and voice of God.
they already know how to practice discernment, and it starts with self-awareness.
prefer to introduce the Enneagram through the Intelligence Centers rather than through the types because when we learn to trust our primary center, we learn to discern. Listening to thoughts (head), feelings (heart), or instincts (gut) based on your dominant Intelligence Center is the beginning of learning to hear how God has always been speaking to you.
God has already given us everything we need; it’s just a matter of recognizing the gifts and accessing them. Our Intelligence Center is the innate gift that indicates how God speaks to us—through
helping identify a person’s most accessible emotional response or reaction: anxiety or distress for the Head Center, fear or shame for the Heart Center, and frustration or anger for the Body Center.
Head people believe in competency as the cure for instability. Through mastering their environment, head people think they’re able to secure their own self-preservation.
Head people may be the most afraid of their own pain. They think they are unable to emotionally engage their pain through their feelings, so they minimize it. Fives attempt to reduce it as illogical.
Fundamentally, head people are obsessed with quieting their inner distress in an effort to create external peace and security.
Ironically, they often have a hard time activating the answers they discern for the following reasons: Fives generally are concerned that more information is required before coming to a conclusion;
Those in the Feeling Center teeter between compulsions for connection with others and comparison with others to validate their own sense of worth.
it’s not uncommon for them to be out of touch with their own feelings or emotional needs. Thus they seek out connection with others as a way to experience their own feelings through the mirroring of others’ feelings.
Through affective connections that may seem authentic, heart people externalize their interior fears of not being loved, valued, or seen.
Healthy heart people become a source of love in the world, doing good and bringing balance, but when unhealthy, they lose their sense of self by comparing themselves with others.
heart people may “unceasingly develop activities to secure the devotion or attention of others. Twos pose as loveable and helpful, Threes play whatever role ‘goes over’ best publicly, and Fours put in an appearance as someone special and authentic (to themselves).”2
People in the instinctive center engage the world through activity in an effort to assert and maintain a sense of their control. Gut people are generally more impassioned than emotional, and their great determination is often the source of their pain.
At their best, gut people harness this energy and direct it through their initiating ability to build a better world; at their worst, it seems everything annoys them.
Coping with fear propels gut people into taking charge of their environment as a diversion tactic to maintain an illusion of control over the consequences created by their anger.
“often experience life as too much, somewhat like a full body blow to which they develop a characteristic defense: Eights hit back, Nines back off, and Ones try to fix it.”3
The Threes are the most estranged from their hearts (often manifested in their loneliness),
