Enneagram (page 1 of 4; links to 2, 3 and 4 below)
What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is an ancient spiritual tool of awareness and awakening, offering insights into human nature. It dates back to the ancient Egyptians and courses forward through many religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Sufiism.
According to the Enneagram, human beings react with certain patterns of deeply held "ego" motivations. The 9 Points – or Types – describe how we coped with the demands in our childhoods and then later with the demands in our daily adult lives. What the Enneagram is not is a reductionistic tool for controlling and bypassing our emotions and how we perceive ourselves and how we want others to perceive us.
With deepening awareness of the 9 portals to our deeper Self and our Divine nature, grounded Presence makes a space for Grace and Mercy. This in turn allows compassion and wisdom to bubble up, enabling us to more ably satisfy our needs for love and belonging in this wonder-filled journey called Life.
I practice the Enneagram.
The Enneagram is to be practiced in the here and now. As long as I am breathing, I am going to get triggered and provoked and have emotions come up to feel and process. And feeling and processing my emotions is what makes me ME. All I have is right now, and I want to be as conscious and present as humanly possible in every given moment. The more I am able to deeply embrace and surrender my painful, socially unacceptable stuff, the more change happens in spite of myself. And then the more I am able to deeply embrace not only my Self, but my fellow humans.
And for that, I am deeply grateful.
~ Sue Brooks
And,
Ultimately I am the only one who can identify myself with a certain type of life program of the Enneagram. This process may move very quickly, or it may take a long time. I determine the tempo. Even those who don’t immediately figure out their type can observe their own life story in the mirror of a new type description and thereby make progress.
~ Richard Rohr
The point of it isn’t to just be a type, but to use the awareness of our type as a kind of entry into a more full bodied humanity and a greater and greater capacity to embody and flow with all of the different qualities of our humanness.
~ Russ Hudson
The only thing you need to do is become the person only you can be.
~ Margaret Frings Keyes, Emotions & the Enneagram
Centers
The 3 Centers
The circle represents the One, the Source, the Absolute, the Origin. It’s the unknowable unity of everything.
The triangle represents everything that is manifest. It’s always manifested in relation to something else. … The Enneagram is teaching us on a mystical level and always including the opposites. Being aware of including the shadow is an endless dynamic process. … It’s saying that to see the nature of anything is to see it as the Unity, to see it as a particular relational manifestation in the living moment, and that the living moment keeps changing it and then you’re a little closer to reality. That’s part of the original meaning of the symbol.
God (or Spirit or the Divine) creates by differentiating. … Presence is the way that human beings experience God, which affects us physiologically [body], emotionally [heart] and cognitively [head]. When Presence starts to work us, the body switches on as a felt sense of presence, the mind softens and becomes receptive, and the heart is then able to lead. When I’m triggered and provoked, it’s a signal to come back to my body, to my open heart, and quiet mind. So don’t play favorites with the Centers. We don’t want to be a third of a human being.
Centers — the goal is alignment of all 3 —
The body (and embodiment) — Life Force — is responsible for our ability to manifest the Divine in this world; the body as grounded, practical, realistic and belonging in the world; includes our boundaries and instincts; sensations and kinesthetic awareness; somatic intelligence - "Where do I stand?"
- Concerned with resistance and control of the environment; has issues with aggression and repression; seeks autonomy; underlying feeling of rage.
The heart — Receptivity — ties together the Divine, the Earth, and the human, so we can become whole; the heart of connection, sensitivity, intimacy, compassion, patience and truth; felt sense and emotional intelligence - "Am I accepted?"
- Concerned with love of false self and self-image; has issues with identity and hostility; seeks attention; underlying feeling of shame.
The head — Spaciousness — the true mind, which develops our receptivity, openness, stillness, clarity, creativity, and prayer, opens us to a direct experience of heaven; the mind of receptivity, listening and openness to wisdom; perception and cognitive intelligence - "How do I survive?"
- Concerned with strategies and beliefs; has issues with insecurity and anxiety; seeks security; underlying feeling of fear.
~ adapted from Russ Hudson, Mystical Roots with Mirabai Starr, and The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Riso & Hudson
(Printable handout below.)
The Centers are the Law of Three: Receptivity and Spaciousness reconciled by Life Force.
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“I am my head, but own my body.” Thus, sadly, the body is reduced from self to property. The body becomes an object or a projection, in just the same way the shadow does. …The body is only the most visible and sensible sign. … The body is not a “deeper reality” than the ego, as many somatologists think, but the integration of the body-and-the-ego is indeed a deeper reality than either alone. On a deeper level, we fear to reclaim the body because it houses, in a particularly vivid and living form, strong emotions and feelings which are socially taboo. And ultimately, the body is avoided because it is the abode of death.
The ego is the seat of control, of manipulation, of voluntary and willed activity, and as a rule identifies itself only with voluntary processes. Yet the body is basically a well-organized collection of involuntary processes, of circulation, digestion, growth and differentiation, metabolism, and so on; all the spontaneous and involuntary actions that one feels that are somehow not-self and untrustable. In a sense, the ego feels trapped, a victim of the unruly capriciousness of its own body. It’s easy to see why in the eyes of many, flesh and sin are so terribly synonymous.
The ego feels trapped by the body’s vulnerability to pain. Pain, suffering, the intense sensitivity of living tissue and raw nerves – these understandably terrorize the ego, and it seeks to withdraw from the source of pain, to numb and freeze the body so as to reduce its vulnerability to painful vibrations. It can and does learn to withdraw awareness from the body, to globally deaden and desensitize it. But the body-deadening is accomplished only at a heavy price. For if it is true that the body is the source of pain, it is also true that it is the source of pleasure. No more suffering, and no more joy.
No Boundary, by Ken Wilber (1979) - link to print below