The Wisdom of the Enneagram

by Don Richard Riso

They live like “disembodied minds,” preoccupied with their theories and visions. “I don’t need much, but I need my space.”

Fives try to control fear by focusing their thoughts on the frightening thing itself, not on their feelings about it. But they

cannot wholly avoid the emotional impact of these ideas—with the result that they both consciously and unconsciously fill their minds with disturbing images. Over time, their split-off feelings can begin to come back to haunt them in their dreams and fantasies and in other unexpected ways.

Argumentativeness, Nihilism, and Extremism Every type has aggressions. Because their own ideas are virtually the only source of security Fives have, they propound and defend them with passion—even though they may not actually even believe the position they are taking themselves.

Low-average Fives are antagonistic toward anyone or anything that interferes with their inner world and personal vision. They are offended by others’ apparent peace of mind, and they enjoy subverting and undermining people’s beliefs. They may affront, provoke, or shock others with intentionally extreme views.

If Fives are unable to find a niche for themselves, they can quickly fall into a cynical apathy, losing faith in themselves and in the entire human condition. Of all types, Fives are the most prone to feelings of meaninglessness, and many Fives become deeply skeptical about the existence of benevolent forces in the universe.

Fives attempt to cope with stress by becoming increasingly narrow in their focus and by retreating into the sanctuary of their thoughts. When this method of coping fails to allay their anxiety, they may go to Seven, reacting against their isolation by impulsively throwing themselves into activities. They become restless and agitated—their minds speed up and they feel compelled to distract themselves from their growing fears. Further, anxiety about finding a niche may cause them to become scattered in their pursuits. Like average Sevens, they bounce from activity to activity, from idea to idea, but seem unable to find or connect with anything that satisfies them.

Remember that your mind is clearest and most powerful when it is quiet. Take the time to cultivate this quiet in yourself, and do not confuse it with an insistence that your external world be silent. Rather, learn to notice your nonstop internal commentary on all of your experiences. What arises when you simply take in an impression of the moment without connecting it with what you think you already know? Being connected with your physical sensations will greatly help you quiet your mind.

Use your body! Of all of the types, you probably feel you could almost do without your body, and it is easy for you to spend many hours at the computer or reading or listening to music. While there is nothing wrong with any of these activities, your balance requires more physical activity. Try running, yoga, dancing, martial arts, working out, even taking a walk. When your body is awake and your blood is flowing, your mind is much sharper and you have more internal resources.

Think carefully about what areas are most debilitating to your self-confidence. Learning more about world geography will not help you if you feel physically weak, but working out and exercising will. Composing another song will not do much for you if you are really worried about meeting people. You can continue working on whatever projects interest you, but it can be very powerful to explore more directly some of the areas of your life that you have cut off.

As you become more balanced and grounded in your body, let your impressions of others and of the world

around you affect you—let the world in. You will not lose yourself, you will gain the world. This will give you the sense of confidence and well-being that you have been seeking—and it will give you many new insights in the process. Just remember not to get lost in pondering the insights, and to return to planet earth. Remember, this is your life: you are not an abstraction, and your presence here can and does matter.

The Five’s main gifts to the world involve their tremendous insight and understanding, coupled with some area of expertise.

Understanding allows healthy Fives to comprehend many points of view at the same time, to understand both the whole and its component parts. Healthy Fives can entertain many different perspectives without being attached to any of them. They are able to determine which way of looking at a problem will be the most useful in any given set of circumstances.

Fives are extraordinarily observant and perceptive. They are sensitive to their environment and perceive subtle changes or discrepanc...

Fives also seem to have an extraordinary ability to concentrate and to focus their attention, and they can do so for long periods of time. Further, they are extremely patient in the course of exploring whatever has captivated them. Focus and patience give them the ability to stay with projects long enough to mine gold from them.

Fives enjoy sharing their findings with others, and they often serve up their observations of life’s contradictions with a whimsical sense of humor. They are endlessly amused—and horrified—by the unfolding strangeness of life, and they communicate this to others by changing the picture ever so slightly to expose previously invisible absurdities. They enjoy tinkering with things, which can take expression in dark humor, puns, and wordplay. There is a mischievous, sprightly, elfin quality to them. They like to provoke people into thinking more deeply about life and humor often serves as an excellent way of communicating ideas that would otherwise be too threatening.

TRANSFORMING PERSONALITY INTO ESSENCE When we are really present to life, when we are relaxed and engaged in our bodies, we begin to experience an inner knowing or guidance. We are led toward exactly what we need to know and our choices come from this inner wisdom. But when we lose the ground of Presence out of which this Essential guidance emerges, the personality takes over and tries to figure out what to do.

The “wrong turn” that Fives make is to become identified with their observations of their experiences rather than their

experiences themselves. Fives are the kind of people who try to learn how to dance by watching people dancing from the sidelines. (“Let’s see, she made two steps left, then a kick and a kind of twirl. Then he sort of flips her back . . .”) Eventually they might learn...

Naturally, Fives face the same dilemma in their entire lives: they try to figure out how to live life without actually living it. When they are present and grounded, however, Fives are able to know exactly what they need to know, when they need to know it. The answer to a question arises not from a chattering brain but from a clear mind that is attuned to reality. Insight arises spontaneously as it is called forth by individual circumstances. Real inner guidance and support can thus be regained if Fives let go of a particular self-image—that they are separate from the environment, mere fl...

The Fives drive for knowledge and mastery is the personality’s attempt to re-create an Essence quality that we might call clarity or inner knowing. With clarity comes the Essential quality of nonattachment, which is not emotional repression or detachment but the lack of identification with any particular point of view. Fives understand that any position or idea is useful only in a very limited set of circumstances, perhaps only in the unique set of circumstances in which it arose. Inner guidance allows them to flow from one way of seeing things to another without getting fixated on any of them.

Liberated Fives remember the spaciousness and clarity of the Divine Mind, what the Buddhists call “the shining Void,” or Sunyata, the quiet, undisturbed vastness from which everything arises, including all knowledge and creativity. They long to return to an experience of the Void because it was once their home, as it was (from the Buddhist perspective) the origin of everyone and everything in the world. This longing to return to the Void must be understood properly, however, since it is not the emptiness of oblivion, but the “emptiness” of a glass of pure water or of a perfect blue sky: everything else is possible because of their emptiness. In this state, they are liberated from the belief that they are cut off from everyone and everything, and instead, they directly experience their underlying connection

with everything around them. Further, this emptiness and nonattachment does not mean that Fives are removed from their feelings. On the contrary, they can be deeply touched by a sunset or the feeling of a breeze, or by the beauty of a human face. They are free to feel and experience everything while recognizing that everything they behold is temporary—a fleeting gift from a universe of infinite bounty. Seeing more profoundly into the truth of the human condition, they feel great compassion ...

“There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.” —WOODROW WILSON

We have called personality type Nine the Peacemaker because no type is more devoted to the quest for internal and external peace for themselves and others. They are often spiritual seekers who have a great yearning for connection with the cosmos, as well as with other people. They work to maintain their peace of mind just as they work to establish peace and harmony in their world. The issues encountered in the Nine are fundamental to all inner work—being awake versus falling asleep to our true nature; presence versus entrancement, tension versus relaxation, peace versus pain, union versus separation.

Left unchecked, the Nobody Special role can leave Nines with limited energy and little confidence in their ability to cope with life. They become depressed, easily fatigued, and need frequent naps and many hours of sleep. Taking any positive action for themselves becomes more and more difficult.

Sloth and Self-Forgetting Sloth in Nines has to do with not wanting to be internally engaged with what they are doing. They are not necessarily lazy about doing ordinary daily things—on the contrary, they might be extremely busy at work or running a business or a household. Their sloth is internal, a spiritual sloth that makes them not want to be deeply touched or affected by reality. They do not want to show up in their lives in an active, self-initiating way. The result is that even average Nines go on automatic pilot, so that life becomes less immediate and less threatening to them. Life is lived at a safe distance, so to speak.

“It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live.” VICTOR HUGO

Despite the fact that they may be spiritual seekers, Nines often attempt to get the emotional and psychological benefits of inner work by doing the opposite of being present. They go to sleep, numbing themselves to what they really feel and tuning out reality while still expecting to function effortlessly in it. Ironically, Nines want unity between themselves and the world but end up achieving only an ersatz peacefulness, the false peace of numbness and dissociation—such a tenuous “peacefulness” that it is disturbed by everything. Like all ego projects, it is doomed to failure.

Moving into the Inner Sanctum Appearances to the contrary, Nines are actually the most withdrawn of all the types, although because their withdrawal is not physical, this is not as obvious as it is in other types. Nines continue to participate while withdrawing their attention from an active engagement with the world. They seek to create and maintain an Inner Sanctum, a private place in their minds that no one can tamper with. (“In here, I’m safe, and nobody can tell me what to do.”)

Stubbornness and Inner Resistance Nines may well know that their attention and energy are required for their own self-development, for addressing problems, or for meaningfully engaging with others. But they feel an indefinable hesitancy, as if some extraordinary effort were required to participate more fully in their own lives. It all seems like too much trouble. Most of us can recall mornings in which we have been enjoying a pleasant dream but have to get out of bed and face some challenging task in the day ahead. We are often tempted to hit the snooze button to allow ourselves a few more minutes of pleasant

dreaming. We may even hit the snooze button several times—enough to make us late. Average Nines have a similar mechanism in their psyches that causes them to postpone awakening. “I’ll deal with this a little later.”

We often think of anger as something negative. But the less understood positive side of it is its ability to sweep away the blockages that keep us locked in our old patterns. There is a salutary side to anger which might be called holy anger—the ability to put one’s foot down, to draw a boundary, and to defend oneself. Much recovery work for Nines involves getting in touch with how clamped down their energy is and with allowing themselves to feel their anger.

Learn the value of the word no. It is quite natural to not want to disappoint others, but when you are presented with a proposition that you are uncomfortable with, it is better to make your misgivings known at the outset rather than silently acquiescing and regretting it later. Further, others are much more likely to be upset with you if you resist their plans passive-aggressively after you have initially agreed to them. Most people want to know what your real opinion or preference is—even if it seems unimportant to you at the time.

Take a tip from healthy Threes and invest time and energy in developing yourself and your talents. There are many pleasant, perfectly valid ways to spend your time, entertaining yourself or hanging out with friends or loved ones—but make sure you do not shortchange yourself by neglecting your own development. The initial struggles may bring up many of your anxieties about yourself, but the rewards of persisting in your development will be much greater and more deeply satisfying. Further, investing in yourself will not lead you away from your connection with others: everyone will benefit from a stronger, more fully actualized you.

Learn to recognize and process your anger. For most Nines, anger is very threatening. Of all the emotions, it feels like the one that can most easily destroy your inner peace. Yet it is only through anger that you will connect with your own inner power—it is the fuel that will burn away your inertia. This does not mean, of course, that you need to go around yelling at people and being aggressive with strangers. But it does mean that if you feel angry, it is all right to tell others that you are upset with them. Learn to sense your anger in your body. What does it feel like? Where does it register most strongly in your body? Becoming familiar with it as a sensation can help you to be less afraid of it.

Nines become actualized and remain healthy by learning to recognize their own Essential value, like healthy Threes. In effect, they overcome their Social Role, Nobody Special, and recognize that they are worth their own time and energy. They work at developing themselves and their potential and put themselves out in the world, letting others know what they have to offer. The biggest obstacle to their self-actualization is their tendency toward inertia. Integrating Nines will frequently encounter feelings of heaviness or sleepiness whenever they try to do something good for themselves. But as they integrate, they will find their energy increasing, and with it their charisma. After thinking of themselves as invisible for most of their lives, integrating Nines are amazed that others not only listen to them but in fact seek them out. As they recognize their own value, others appreciate them more as well. As they reclaim the vitality of their instinctual nature, they become energizing to others. Thus, as integrating Nines discover their innate value, they find it mirrored by other people, which surprises and delights them.

Ultimately Nines reclaim their Essential nature by confronting their Basic Fear of losing connection and by letting go of the belief that their participation in the world is unimportant—that they do not have to “show up.” They realize that the only way to truly achieve the unity and wholeness they seek is not by “checking out” into the realms of the imagination but by fully engaging themselves in the present moment.

“Unity is not something we are called to create; it’s something we are called to recognize.” WILLIAM SLOAN COFFIN

In order to achieve true connection and wholeness, this realm of mortal experience is what Nines must learn to accept and embrace. While it is true that there are many aspects of reality beyond the manifest world, we do not become realized by negating or denying that world. In other words, we cannot really transcend the human condition: only by embracing it fully do we arrive at the fullness of our true nature.

Liberated Nines are fully present to and conscious of the wholeness and unity of existence while simultaneously retaining a sense of self. Less healthy Nines have a capacity to perceive some of the boundless qualities of reality but tend to get lost in or merge with their surroundings. Liberated Nines do not forget themselves in these states or lose themselves in idealistic fantasies.

Combining knowledge of the Enneagram with spiritual practice consists of: 1. Becoming present and aware as much as possible throughout the day 2. Seeing your personality in action 3. Not acting out your impulses

First, does the practice assist us to become more mindful, awake, and open to our lives—or is it actually supporting our cherished illusions about ourselves, even negative ones? Does it cultivate a sense of Presence and emphasize the importance of being in contact with our life here and now?

Second, does it support us in exploring some of the uncomfortable aspects and limitations of our personality? Many paths offer a kind of “spiritual glamour,” reassuring followers that they are somehow separate from and better than the mass of humanity and that they can soon expect to receive grandiose, cosmic powers. While attaining extraordinary powers is always possible, they are more often a distracting sidetrack than a mark of genuine realization.

Third, does the path encourage us to think for ourselves? Growth comes from the desire to look more deeply into our own natures as well as into the nature of reality. Ready-made answers from gurus or hidebound doctrines of any sort discourage this process. Such “answers” may soothe our personality for a while, covering over our deeper anxieties and wounds, but their limitation is usually exposed when a real crisis comes along.

“Meditation is not a way to enlightenment nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace and blessedness itself.” DOGEN

In fact, life is our greatest teacher. Whatever we are doing can be instructive, whether we are at the office, or talking to our spouse, or driving a car on the freeway. If we are present to our experiences, the impressions of our activities will be fresh and alive, and we will always learn something new from them. But if we are not present, every moment will be like every other, and nothing of the preciousness of life will touch us.

“Inner freedom is not guided by our efforts; it comes from seeing what is true.” BUDDHA

Excuses—and More Excuses A common excuse for people embarking on this journey is that they do not have sufficient energy to run their lives and engage in transformational work at the same time. Actually, we are given more than enough energy to transform ourselves every day, but we waste 98 percent of it on tensions, on emotional reactions unrelated to what is actually occurring, and on daydreaming and mental chatter. The fact is, our energy can go to one of two places: it may be poured into maintaining the structures of our personality, or if we disidentify with those structures, it may be liberated for our development and growth. As we begin to experience the truth of this firsthand, we understand the necessity of building our spiritual bank account, learning to keep some life-force in reserve so that transformation can take place.