The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth

by Christopher L. Heuertz

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

The English word personality is derived from the Latin word for “mask.” Simply put, our personality is the mask we wear. Taking off that mask, trying to get behind the mask, is the work of the spiritual journey. A mark of spiritual growth is when we stop polishing the mask and instead start working on our character.

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.

those in the Feeling Center are likely to have an overwhelming social presence and are substantially more emotionally present than the other types. However, this emotional presence is also an unconscious coping technique; though heart people can be highly emotionally intelligent, 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.

When heart people allow comparison to lead to feelings of disconnection, they blame themselves and can be overcome with profound experiences of shame. Shame in turn produces a sense of fear—the fear that they are unworthy to experience their own needs. This fear is followed by a feeling of even more shame that comes from having needs in the first place.

Twos experience deep shame when forced to acknowledge their own needs or ask for their needs to be met. Frequently Twos will take whatever they can get, convincing themselves that even if they’re not being loved the way they want or need, at least they’re receiving something.

Any relationship that resembles the one found in The Giving Tree needs to be thoroughly condemned as disgusting in the ways it fortifies entitlement at the expense of the one who gives. “And the tree was happy” perfectly captures the aching heart of the Two, whose pride in being able to give something covers the lie of how she denied her own needs and allowed herself to be taken from. The flattery of Twos convinces them that diminishing themselves through self-abnegation is a legitimate form of love.

My sense is that the mystery of silence draws us deeper into love, and love is something that we cannot control; love invites us into fresh ways of thinking and unfamiliar ways of being.

I don’t believe God is ever honored by our burnout, even on behalf of the worthiest of efforts.

faith is learning to rest in mystery.

A contemplative approach to the Enneagram invites us to resist the reductionism of inner fragmentation; to realize we aren’t as bad as our worst moments or as good as our greatest successes—but that we are far better than we can imagine and carry the potential to be far worse than we fear.

Consent is saying yes to more of everything that helps facilitate your coming home, your liberation.

in consenting to solitude, Twos learn to rest in the grace that they are loved for who they are, not for what they offer the rest of us.