The Enneagram Quotes

“Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“Being informed is different from being formed, and the first is a common substitute for the second.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“Genuine humility is based on a realistic self-appraisal and a healthy feeling of self-worth.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“It seems that human beings cannot see what they are not readied to see. We cannot hear what we have not been prepared to hear. The “obvious” seems to have little correlation with our acceptance of it. We all have an amazing capacity for missing the point.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“All the Christian churches are being forced to an inevitable, honest, and somewhat humiliating conclusion. The vast majority of Christian ministry has been concerned with “churching” people into symbolic, restful, and usually ethnic belonging systems rather than any real spiritual transformation into the mystery of God.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“The vast majority of Christian ministry has been concerned with “churching” people into symbolic, restful, and usually ethnic belonging systems rather than any real spiritual transformation into the mystery of God.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“Our seeing and our hearing need to include, forgive, and reconcile what the rest of the world rejects, dismisses, and punishes. Now that is new! And that is also the ancient Enneagram. The New Zealand bishops call it moving “from retributive justice to restorative justice” in their 1996 pastoral letter. Such new thinking could rearrange our entire penal system, which is their reason for writing this letter, but it could also rearrange our pattern of human relationships. It was all contained in the biblical pattern of transformation, but up to now most of us just could not hear it, could not see it. God saves humanity not by punishing it but by restoring it! We overcome our evil not by a frontal and heroic attack, but by a humble letting go that always first feels like losing. Christianity is probably the only religion in the world that teaches us, from the very cross, how to win by losing. It is always a hard sell. Especially for folks who are into strength, domination, winning, and enforcing conclusions. God’s restorative justice is much more patient, and finally much more transformative, than mere coercive obedience.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“When the first disciples of Jesus wanted to make the whole process into right rituals and right roles, and by implication right belief systems (common to all religion), Jesus told them, “You do not know what you are asking. Until you drink of the cup that I must drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I will be immersed in” (Mark 10:38), you basically do not know what I am talking about. You have nothing to say. It is not that we have a message and then suffer for it. It is much more the opposite: We suffer, come through it transformed, and then we have a message! This is the clear Jesus pattern and why he trained his disciples in the necessary path of suffering. There is something, it seems, that we can know in no other way. We hope to bypass such suffering by being moral, by being orthodox, by being ritualistic, but his words remain the same to us: “The cup that I must drink, you must also drink” (Mark 10:39). Enlightenment, conversion, seeing the truth is a journey of transformation, not membership in the right group or reciting the correct formulas or even practicing the right morality. As Paul made so clear both in his letters to the Romans and to the Galatians, law can give you correct information, but only God’s Spirit of love can transform you. It must have been a pretty important point to spend two letters of the New Testament in making it. He knew religion’s constant temptation to moralism, and he was one of those geniuses who had the bigger, but, oh, so subtle, truth.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“Eric Hoffer, the street philosopher, put it this way: “In times of great change [which is always], learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“The path to Christian perfection always runs across the collapse of our own moral efforts and self-established ideals.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“So long as we all cling to our prejudices and identify with our preconceived views and feelings, genuine human community is impossible. You have to get to the point where you can break free from your feelings. Otherwise in the end you won’t have any feelings; they’ll have you.”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective

“But at some point in our thirties, or at the latest at forty, this game gets increasingly dull. Up till now everything has worked so well; we can give people the impression that we are “cool” or “witty” or “the serious, reflective student.” Up till now we have fixated on this self-image and led others to fixate on it. It was a help in demarcating our own ego from the environment. But the more such ego boundaries harden and the more anyone identifies with this sort of self-image and tries to maintain it at any price, the more clearly we also see the other side of the coin. If someone has kept busy up to the age of forty cultivating this image, it will be very difficult to change. At the same time it becomes increasingly clearer that the whole thing no longer adds up. What was pleasure becomes a burden. That is why this moment in the middle of life harbors the great opportunity—as difficult as it is—to reflect critically on what has previously been achieved, to change, to become more mature, wiser, and more integrated. Now the following words of Jesus take on a here-and-now flavor: “But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).”
― Richard Rohr, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective