target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_47241d36-6162-571c-8848-a4c571f6762b.png" alt="Schematic illustration of the rule of threes."/>
FIGURE 3-2: The rule of threes.
For St. Paul, the virtues of faith, hope, and love stand for something greater than these three words usually do in everyday language. The higher virtue of love is the greatest of all virtues: It comes first for Type 9, where the circle begins and ends. The Enneagram instructor and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr considers the holy virtues as an invitation from God, an offer of the unifying power of love, an offer to become receptive to faith, and an offer to hope actively and positively.
On the Path to Inner Freedom
The goal of working with the Enneagram is to discover your internal autopilot. When we know your personality structure, it’s easier for you to consider this autopilot from the perspective of your internal observer. You can discover your personality structure on your own, but when you use the nine designs of the Enneagram, you can save some effort and get to know yourself much faster and more thoroughly. Your next step is to learn the basics of self-reflection — that internal dialogue with yourself that you use to interpret what has taken place inside of you. Then comes the challenge of being able to let go of your type as soon as it switches to autopilot. The path of inner freedom leads to personal mastery. For you, personal mastery means being alert, present, conscious, and in control of what is inside yourself.
Chapter 4
Discovering Your Type
IN THIS CHAPTER
This chapter spells out an aspect of the Enneagram that will undoubtedly stimulate your imagination: getting to ask the question “Which type do I have?” Yes, the typology of the Enneagram does stimulate the imagination, but the goal here isn’t just to find your type. Rather, it’s to become more self-aware. Determining your type on your own is the way to go. The moment you recognize yourself in a type, you have already gained self-awareness. You can use some additional methods, such as various questionnaires, to help in this search as you determine your own type. In this chapter, you can find out everything you need to know in order to discover your own type, including information about type interviews and other aids for self-exploration.
Why Type Yourself?
Imagine a youth scouting group performing an outdoor exercise. The group has been dropped off in a wildlife area and have to find their way home. They have various aids for this purpose, including nine maps of various regions, and they first have to find out which map represents the surrounding area. The scouts initially study Map 1 for certain landmarks and then try to find them nearby. Map 1, however, is a nautical chart, so it isn’t the one they need. Maps 2 and 3 depict cities, and the scouts are in the woods. After completing this initial process of elimination, four maps remain, all of which represent rural regions. Eliminating the first five maps in this example is the easy part; now the second (and more difficult) round begins. The scouts now have to examine the nature areas on the maps and compare them with what they see nearby. In the end, they determine that one map fits their surroundings exactly. Using that map, they can quickly find their way home.
When you’re looking at the right map, you can find your way much more quickly and easily. With the Enneagram, you distinguish nine different personality structures, each with its own development path. A characteristic that one type should deal with — a habit that should be acquired or discarded, for example — doesn’t necessarily fit with another type. When you find your type, you also gain a valuable guide to what you personally should focus on.
Working with Types
At the point where you know which type you are, someone always asks: “Is it true that you have only one of these types?” Indeed, some Enneagram movements and trainers believe that each person has several types. They back up this belief with the logic of the quote “[N]othing human can be alien to me,” borrowed from the Roman poet and dramatist Terence (195-159 BC). I'm inclined to share this opinion: Whatever emotion humans can experience internally — fear, anger, love, and joy, for example — are ones that I have also experienced, and you probably have too.
Other Enneagram authors believe that people can have several types because they’re capable of developing the strengths of all types internally. I also share this positive perspective. People can learn about all this and develop it, yet such an expansive view isn’t the essence — the crucial analytical level — of the Enneagram. Humans carry only one personality structure inside them that’s at the level of the type mechanism.
For example, although I have occasionally experienced fear, I’m definitely not someone whose entire personality structure is built on fear and how to handle it. I experience true fear maybe once or twice per year. I remember an incident, some time ago, when someone suddenly stepped on the brakes on the expressway in front of me and I panicked.
For someone whose interior structure is based on fear, the fear and how to deal with it are daily companions. Fear is the essence of that person’s pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. The fact that I too occasionally feel fear is different from having this type structure. For many people, the belief that they simply have to have more than one type stands in the way of their development. My colleague Hannah Nathans responds to this belief this way: “My eyes have only one color and I’m a woman (and not also a man), and if I don’t dye my hair, it has one color for an entire lifetime. The truth is, the way that nature made us consists of limitations.” Personally, I’m glad that I have only one type, because developing myself with the weaknesses of this type is already enough of a challenge. But I think it’s nice that I can very well practice and develop the strengths of the other types.
As you soon realize when you meditate, your attention can always be directed toward only one thing at a time. Humans unconsciously have a dominant preference for certain objects that draw their attention. This is the foundation and essence of the type mechanism.
The fact that you can develop all strengths inside yourself — that you have a development prospect, in other words — says nothing about your Enneagram type or where you're coming from. All types can certainly learn just about anything, but each type still has different things to learn. So the fact that you can learn something says nothing about the strengths you carry inside based on your type. Learning things doesn’t turn you into another type. You still retain your own type mechanism, but continue to develop and, as a result, you don’t let your type box you in.
“Nothing human can be alien to me” means that people can experience every human impulse. And it’s true. All Enneagram types can experience anger and become angry, for example. But this isn’t what the type mechanisms or the differences between the individual types are about.
In the end, imagine that the scout group would try to find their way home using only three maps. Would this lower number of maps help them? Would it be quicker?