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THE ENNEAGRAM – A Journey Towards Wholeness

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by Tom Hook
August 11, 2024

            Good morning and thank you for having me again.  This was a short notice situation as your scheduled speaker, Valerie Luna Serrels, had to cancel for this Sunday for personal reasons.  

            I suspect several of you are somewhat familiar with the Enneagram.  I first was exposed to it in 1990 during my Spiritual Direction studies.  Over the years I have become more and more intrigued with this personality typology and how it can (and does) help us to become more self-aware of our actions and hidden motivations.  It also helps to clarify the motivations and actions of those with who we are in relationship. I also covered it briefly in a talk here back in the summer of 2021.

What is the Enneagram?  The word pronounced “any-a-gram” comes from the Greek word enna meaning nine and gramma meaning points/signs/figures. 

            The Enneagram presents nine personality patterns arranged in a diagram as points arranged around a circle, numbered clockwise from 1 to 9.

            Briefly, the Enneagram says that there are nine ways of experiencing the world and reacting to it.

            These personality patterns (or points of energy) are labeled as:

  1. The Reformer – perfectionist – the good person
  2. The Helper – the loving person
  3. The Motivator – performer – the effective person
  4. The Individualist – the romantic – the original person
  5. The Thinker – investigator – the wise person
  6. The Loyalist – fearful – the loyal person
  7. The Enthusiast – spontaneous – the joyful person
  8. The Leader – the challenger – the powerful person
  9. The Peacemaker – laid back, pleasant – the peaceful person

The Enneagram tells us that people with each of these nine personality types live with an unconscious motivation that causes them to respond to life in a way so consistent that it becomes the driving force shaping their lives.  This unconscious motivation gives each type a unique understanding of life, people, and the world.  And, each type has its own unique way of reacting to others, the world, and situations.

            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.

The Enneagram helps us purify our self-perception, to become unsparingly honest toward ourselves, and to realize when we are moving toward integration and growth or back-sliding into stress resulting in negative behaviors.

            A good place to begin to understand the Enneagram is the Three Centers:

THE CENTERS OF THE ENNEAGRAM

  • The Nine Types are divided into three Centers
    • The Heart (2,3,4)    Feeling Center
    • The Head (5,6,7)     Thinking Center
    • The Gut (8,9,1)        Instinctual Center
    • It is often easier to identify your center before determining your Type, narrowing down your possibilities to three

Let’s take a very brief look at these three Center

THE HEART CENTER (2,3,4) – Feeling / Relational Triad

  • Their Connection is relational. Heart people are serious about relationships.
  • They want to know how other people see them. They read people for approval or lack thereof. They have a good sense of the energy of the environment they are in. 
  • So concerned with other’s feelings they do not know their own.
  • They search for love and affirmation outside of themselves. There is a great need for love and approval, and, at the same time, they perceive they are unlovable and not worthy of your approval.
  • Heart people turn other people’s anxiety into their own.
  • Tend to stuff any aggressive feelings/tendencies deep in their psyche and when they arise, Watch Out!
  • To others they look confident and happy.
  • Asking for help is almost an impossibility.
  • The goal in life is to be understood and appreciated by others. If no response, they will pull away emotionally.  It’s Exhausting!

Each type has a significant “Life Trap”.   This is their unconscious motivation to achieve a certain “state of being” in their lives.  Each type also has a passion or sin which consistently gets in the way of our being more whole.  I prefer to describe this as our “Great Fault”.

Type Two – The Helper – The Loving Person

  • The Life Trap is Service and their great Fault is Pride
  • Loving, compassionate, caring, generous
  • Takes pride in doing things for others
  • Generous in complimenting and affirming others
  • Disappointed when not appreciated for what they do for others
  • Can feel overburdened by all one does for others
  • Want to be loved and they need to be needed
  • Difficult to know or acknowledge their own needs/feelings

Type Three – The Motivator – The Achiever – The Effective Person

  • The Life Trap is Success/Efficiency and their great Fault is Vanity/Deceit
  • Striving always for success, they avoid failure at all costs
  • Personal worth tied to success – status seeker
  • Efficient in all they do
  • Ambitious to improve self and become an example for others
  • Appearances are important
  • Well organized and accomplished & great enthusiasm in what they do
  • They have trouble recognizing or dealing with their own feelings

Type Four – The Individualist – The Original Person

  • The Life Trap is Being Unique and their great Fault is Envy
  • Desire to be special and avoid the ordinary
  • Overwhelmed by the tragic in life – melancholy is an artform
  • Creative, inspired, intuitive, romantic, dreamer, visionary
  • Love and crave deep feeling
  • Focus inward on their own feelings
  • Tasteful, elegant, poetic, original
  • Often feel misunderstood by others

THE HEAD CENTER (5,6,7) – Thinking / Fearful Triad

  • Their Connection is Mental.  Intelligence and Understanding are key.
  • Live life by planning and sticking to the plan.
  • Life is to be: Noticed – Evaluated – Addressed
  • Head people are sometimes paralyzed by their fear.
  • Control Tower is in the Head allowing distance from people.
  • Head people have no idea how much others value them.
  • The response to encounter is to step back and watch.
  • Order and Duty are primary for Head people.
  • Very suspicious of other people’s motives.
  • The goal is to gain the objective view of situations and avoid emotional involvement.

Type Five – The Thinker – The Wise Person – The Observer

  • The Life Trap is Knowledge and their great Fault is Greed/Stinginess
  • Observers of life, intellectual, analytic
  • Scientist, scholar, abstract ideas
  • Desires to understand everything from intellectual perspective
  • Stands on the periphery of events – last to speak
  • Silent, very private, stingy of their time
  • Lost in their thoughts, poor sense of the present, dislike small talk
  • Difficult to get in touch with their own feelings

Type Six – The Loyalist – The Loyal Person

  • The Life Trap is Security and their great Fault is Fear
  • Dutiful and obedient to authority.  Careful, loyal, middle-of-the-road
  • Strong sense of duty and responsibility
  • Many fears, insecure.  Fear of the unknown and uncertain future
  • Courageous when certain they are right and have overcome inner doubts
  • Obedient to law, order and authority – need that security
  • Hard workers, cautious and need outside direction
  • Love the tried and tested of the past (good old days)

Type Seven – The Enthusiast – The JoyfulPerson

  • The Life Trap is Pleasure and their great Fault is Gluttony
  • Maximize joy – Minimize pain
  • Fear? Forget it!   Don’t worry – Be happy!
  • Enthusiastic, vivacious, lively, multi-talented
  • Constant movement, fidgety, fun-loving,
  • Avoids anything unpleasant, escapes anxiety
  • Optimistic, pleasure seeking, always cheering others up – humor in every situation
  • Problems with the suffering, preferring celebration.  Avoid the dark side of life

THE GUT CENTER (8,9,1) – Instinctive / Angry  Triad

  • Their Connection is Instinctual Knowing.  Sense and feel the world in the belly.
  • The gut reads harmony, conflict, and hidden agendas.
  • Because taking it in bodily, the response is usually emotional.  Constant “full body blows”
  • Their issues are unique because they are converting various emotions and feelings into anger/rage which may not be pleasant or familiar.  May hold their ground rather than adapt.
  • Your work to control others is like a battleground.
  • Gut people are very concerned with Justice.  They are concerned with proper standards of behavior.
  • Most important is to assign blame on someone or some thing.
  • Watch yourself day after day to see if you are continually assigning blame.  A good indicator that you are in the Gut Center.

Type Eight – The Leader – The Challenger – The Powerful Person

  • The Life Trap is Power and their great Fault is Lust for Control
  • Take-charge, strong willed, self-reliant, externalize their anger
  • Decisive, authoritative, commanding, self-confident & assertive
  • Very aggressive, forceful, confrontational
  • Willing to take on the “powers that be”
  • They do not fear rejection by others and don’t care what others think
  • Justice & Injustice are key issues in life
  • Resourceful self-starter, rugged individualist

Type Nine – The Peacemaker – The Peaceful Person

  • The Life Trap is Conflict and their great Fault is Sloth/Laziness
  • Avoid conflict and tension
  • Easygoing, complacent, passive, receptive, patient, naturally humble
  • Genuinely nice person, emotionally stable
  • Content with familiar and old friends – reluctant to make new friends
  • Present a non-threatening demeanor, good listener
  • Seldom upset, tolerant of others, simple and laid back
  • They naturally repress anger until it blows up

Type One – The Reformer – The Perfectionist – The Good Person

  • The Life Trap is Perfection and their great Fault is Anger or Resentment
  • Wants always to be right
  • Workaholics
  • Meticulous – Perfectionists
  • Hard to relax – dislike small talk
  • Strong sense of fairness and justice
  • Critical of self and others
  • Always trying to improve
  • Neat, orderly, efficient

This is very brief overview of the Enneagram and the Nine Types.

So, how does the Enneagram deliver?

In my experience, it is just one tool of many.  However, it is an unbelievably valuable tool for us to know ourselves (and what motivates us to do what we do) and to self-observe in a NON-JUDGEMENTAL WAY.  It helps us to see others and see them through their unique pair of glasses.

The big question is: Why in our encounter with life do we human beings so often keep running up against ourselves instead of making a breakthrough to The True Self? 

Once we understand “not doing,” we see that the real struggle is to relax into greater awareness so that we can see the manifestations of our personality. By neither acting on our automatic impulses nor suppressing them, we begin to understand what is causing them to arise. (The Wisdom of the Enneagram, 346)

Self-observation (without judgement) is the foundational insight.  This view of ourselves assists us in how we then view others.  As Richard Rohr has said so many times, “How we see ourselves is how we see Everything!”

The real story of the Enneagram is the journey each of us makes by entering, absorbing, and using this amazing tool to enhance our spiritual and psychological lives on our journey towards wholeness.

(Perhaps a future class at HUU to study this in more detail.)