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February 22 - February 24, 2021
Type Four To be themselves
But our Basic Desire, a good and holy drive in and of itself, too often becomes warped by our insecurities and doubts that we can ever find our way home.
Those in each Enneagram type have an underlying dread that their Basic Desire is unrealistic or can’t be met.
each type’s Basic Fear is that they are stuck in their flawed human experience, trapped in the consequences of their Childhood Wounds. It’s the fear that reconnecting with the essence of the True Self is impossible.
To deal with this fear and the consequences of the attack on our essence, we appeal to our coping addictions: (1) Passions—how each type manages its loss of presence, or how the heart suffers its disconnect from its True Self, and (2) Fixations—the mental tactics used to convince an uncentered mind that its Passion is legitimate.
Fours are a natural source of significance.
But of all the types, Fours may be the most misunderstood, as evidenced in the way they are frequently depicted in much of the Enneagram literature. The irony is that Fours feel more misunderstood and less significant than all the other types, even though they are generally considered to be the most uniquely interesting Enneagram type.
Fours know they are different. And because they feel exceptional, they believe most of the rules don’t apply to them; they can see an exception in nearly every scenario where a precedent has been set.
Their wound and the subsequent ways it caused them to turn in on themselves are the reason behind the Four’s feelings of abandonment. This sense of wounding only reinforces their Basic Fear: that they have no personal importance or somehow are less significant than others.
Fours fuel their own idealism, which causes a deep frustration that they can never truly find themselves apart from others. Accordingly, it’s frequently suggested that Fours are constantly looking to be rescued by someone who can see them for who they truly are.
Fours ache to be understood. They deeply desire to be known. They are perpetually in search of their own significance, which is why they have such a highly developed ability to see beauty in all things. The very thing they are looking for within, they can easily see everywhere else.
Thus their intuitive ability to see beauty is tragically wasted on themselves because they tend to overidentify with their flaws and believe that’s why they don’t belong or fit in.
their envy is in their longing for the substance that they think lies behind others’ meaningful experiences in their most intimate relationships, or in their perception of others’ satisfaction in life’s deepest experiences.
Fours chase after what they perceive others have, and when they finally arrive at these idealized destinations, they are left empty because no experience for Fours can ever be more than a hollow shell of the unrealistic expectation they set it up to be.
Longing and fantasizing create a painful loop of constant dissatisfaction and frustration, which is why Fours often feel trapped in darkness while...
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Personally expressive, emotionally sensitive, and keenly self-conscious, Fours with a Three wing allow their pain to drive them into particularly creative vocations where su...
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Reaching toward type One, Fours have a deep knowing that their messy exaggerations of their longings need boundaries to be healthy, and that structure can be a container of self-discovery just as ambiguity is.
In disintegration Fours give themselves away like an unhealthy Two, appealing to toxic emotional fusion in an attempt to draw the attention they desire.
Awakened Fours bring forward the traditional Virtue of equanimity, or balance—not allowing themselves to be swept up by their strong feelings and deep pains, but resting in eve...
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If we think of the Harmony Triads as three distinct teams, each of these teams is whole because it is made up equally of head, heart, and body, getting us out of the silo that is often limited by our dominant Intelligence Center.
The Harmony Triads are made up of three equilateral triangles connecting types Two, Five, and Eight (the Relationists); Three, Six, and Nine (the Pragmatists); and One, Four, and Seven (the Idealists).1
Dr. Daniels developed these categorizations as ways the Harmony Triads relate to the world, in contrast to the Intelligence Centers as ways of perceiving the world.
Intelligence Center - perceiving
Harmony Triads - relate to the world
combinations. These combinations further express what is exclusive to each type and also reveal the role of contemplative practice for each type.
We use our Intelligence Center to observe our connections (how we perceive the world), while we operate out of our Harmony Triad to connect with our observations (how we relate to the world through our connections).
the Idealists (Ones, Fours, and Sevens) “each hold a vision of the way the world could be in order for life and spirit to thrive.
Fours seek the ultimate ideal world in which nothing of importance or substance is missing and are frustrated and disappointed that this rarely happens.
But what may be even more interesting is that each of these Harmony Triads is driven by the energy of its Heart Center type: Relationists are led by Two, Pragmatists by Three, and Idealists by Four. There’s something crucial about human nature and the function of the heart.
Huh.
Idealists relate to the world through their dreams for a better world. And there’s no greater dreamer in the Enneagram than the Four.
“In the great wisdom traditions of the West (Christian, Jewish, Islamic), the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception.”5 This is what the Harmony Triads are trying to express.
If the heart types of the Enneagram are anchored in their feelings and emotions, the “heart” that the Harmony Triads are exposing is the perfected “organ of spiritual perception” that is activated to relate to the world so that we can engage the world when it is brought into balance with the mind and the body.
To open the “heart” of every type is an invitation to live life to the fullest. To live in a world that needs to be engaged through harmonious love.
If the Harmony Triads help us understand how we relate to the world as either Relationists, Pragmatists, or Idealists, the Dominant Affect Groups offer the clarifying layer of how each of the triads is informed by a person’s early defining relationships and how this, in turn, forms each type’s psychosocial development.
So if the Harmony Triads tell us about how we relate to the world, the Dominant Affect Groups go a step further by telling us how we relate to the world specifically as a result of our defining family relationships—what drives the Harmony Triads or the why behind the Harmony Triads.
Type Four Is frustrated the nurturing and protective caregivers didn’t offer enough, so compensates by assuming self-protection and self-nurture.
One, Four, and Seven (the Frustration Group).6
The Frustration Group (the Harmony Triads’ Idealists), made up of Ones, Fours, and Sevens, experience constant angst about what could be. As little children they were frustrated they weren’t given enough of what they sensed they needed to self-realize.
“Frustration relates to our feelings that our comfort and needs are not being sufficiently attended to.… None of these types ever seems to be able to find what it is looking for.”11
intense introspection in their quest for authenticity in themselves and the world (Fours),
The Frustration Group scaffolds their inner insecurities in relationship to their needs for autonomy (Ones), validation and recognition (Fours), or access to opportunity (Sevens), and fastens their feelings, instincts, or thoughts to these.
They just wanted more than they seemed to be receiving and that frustration never left.
The Four’s insatiable need for affectionate attention from their nurturing and protective caregivers fueled their turning inward for self-nurture and self-protection.
Fundamentally these three types are constantly frustrated by their own idealism. Growing in awareness helps them recognize their desperate need to rest in God, discovering wholeness through prayer.
In silence, we experience the gentleness of love despite all our attempts to resist it.
As an attempt to offer some guidance to this approach, let me suggest that the Enneagram offers practical and specific paths to spiritual formation that are unique to each type.
Solitude, silence, and stillness are the quintessential qualities of contemplative prayer and practice.
Solitude, silence, and stillness are the corrections to the compulsions that come out of our Intelligence Centers, our head, heart, and gut. Together they make us whole. They bring us home.
Solitude, intentional withdrawal, teaches us to be present—present to ourselves, present to God, and present with others.
In silence we hear the truth that God is not as hard on us as we are on ourselves.
Stillness teaches us restraint, and in restraint we are able to discern what appropriate engagement looks like.
What we experience is our desperate search for happiness where it cannot be found… [the key] was not lost outside ourselves. It was lost inside ourselves. This is where we need to look for it.7
