Personality, the Enneagram & my story (part 3)

There are several personality typologies – some of the better-known ones are the Myers Briggs Type indicator, the Big Five, the Character Types and the Enneagram.

For me, the Enneagram is the one theory – for lack of a better word – with the deepest and widest possible use. The most important thing though is not to use it as merely a typology but to realize that it is an exceptionally good descriptive tool of our human patterns. Those patterns are not who we ultimately are, but defense mechanisms that we have become accustomed to in order to cope in life. We are all born into certain circumstances, times, countries, cities and families and will do whatever we need to do to get along and survive:

“Personality, in so far as it is a residue of our childhood strategies (to obtain a love that did not reach us naturally in a world of lack), is an important form of conditioning. (...) However, the value of these behaviors for the individual is much less than the value of recognizing their limiting and conditioned nature and how they are part of a parasitic aspect of the personality, which will have less power over one’s life if it is better known.” (Naranjo 1995: 53)

Claudio Naranjo also points out how this is an “error of perspective, how we build our beliefs and our behavioral strategies on an erroneous base: “(...) the way in which each of the characters expresses in its behavior its dominant passion and its explicit error of perspective - which entails a cognitive aspect or an overvalued interpersonal strategy, a mistaken position with respect to the world of others and even with respect to themselves.” (Naranjo 1995: 55)

I would like to point to the perspective of the Three Principles Understanding that I will refer to later in the chapter “Drop thoughts”. In the Three Principles Understanding, a rather new psychological paradigm, going back to the enlightenment experience of Sydney Banks we see our thought system as what makes up our personality, it

becomes the filter through which we interpret life. The thought system behaves like any ecological system, striving to maintain a balance, supporting the status quo. In other words, we look for and see whatever validates our pre-existing view of reality. We innocently forget that we are creating the thoughts and become personally identified with the content of our thinking - our beliefs, values, and ideas. What we are thinking at any given moment, consciously or not, creates our experience of reality. Our interpretation of what our senses are telling us creates an emotional response. Our emotions, then, are not caused by outside events or people; rather, they are a direct result of our perception. For example, people who like skiing are delighted when it snows; others are depressed because they hate any sign of winter. The snow itself doesn’t cause these reactions. (Bailey 1990: p. 17)

What happens now when we are not aware of our thoughts and how they create our reality is that we always respond to situations habitually: “This is the concept of sincere delusion. Our moods are dictated by the day of the week, other people’s moods and behavior, the weather, the stock market, or anything else that we deem important.” (Bailey 1990: 18)

I find it helpful how Richard Rohr is describing it in his talk on the Enneagram. He says that our False Self is also often referred to as our compulsive self, our past self, our psychological self or our acquired self. On the other hand there is our True or Whole Self that includes the good and the bad. This True Self is non-needy and non-compulsive. He emphasizes that we are all somewhere on that continuum between our False Self and our True Self. I would add that position on the continuum might change from one day to another and from one situation to another. [CherryBoyWriter, 2018, add TIME)

The Enneagram was rediscovered and introduced to the West by Gurdjeff. Claudio Naranjo (1995: p. 31) classifies it as “esoteric Christianity with Babyolonian, pre-Christian roots (an influence transmitted through Iranian spirituality) and which he [Gurdjeff] characterized as a “fourth way” among the forms of classical spirituality.” It serves as a mirror through which we can discover our personalities. Eli Jaxon-Bear (2006) calls it “a wisdom mirror for consciousness to recognize how it has become falsely identified with particular forms. In its subtle depth, the Enneagram reveals patterns of subconscious physical, mental, and emotional identification.” (p.10)

Several teachers of the Enneagram emphasizes that we need to feel humiliated by the truth about ourselves, by recognizing our patterns, the fixation of our Ego. They say that one of Gurdjeffs most outstanding gifts was to confront people with “their hard truths. (…) Perhaps the main similarity between the school of Gurdjeff and that of Ichazo (who called himself “master of the sword”) was a day-to-day war against the ego, and the theory of Proto Analysis within the context of his work fed a process of mutual, continuous “ego reduction.” (Naranjo 1995: p. 103) It is important to note that we all have a physical, emotional and mental body and we all manifest most of the patterns of all Enneatypes. It is just that “our core point of view crystallizes in one of those three bodies more than the others. This is the location of our chief feature, the one place where our response to the world is most deeply entrenched.” (Jaxon-Bear: p.42)

As it happens so often, when a theory or modality is introduced to a large amount of people the message often gets watered down and trivialized, one important aspect is to focus on the whole picture, not just the good aspects of any of the Enneatypes. As Claudio Naranjo (1995) illustrates:

Recently, some people say that it is better not to think about the bad aspects of oneself and to concentrate on what is positive. More concretely, they say that too much emphasis has been placed in the presentation of the enneagram of characters on what is negative without paying equal attention to the “positive traits” of human types. Such an attitude can only come from individuals who do not understand the enormous transforming value of this knowledge, which, leaving aside the care that these people take with respect to their image and their self-importance, is used to examine oneself and not merely to increase one’s culture or congratulate oneself. (p. 104)

I can confirm this point of view from my experience, it is only when I saw the whole picture of my fixation without trying to see the good in it or trying to somehow use my positive traits in my life more that I was really able to change. There is that saying that “The truth sets you free, but first it has to make you miserable” which has a profound truth to it. Only when I can let go of any kind of feeling of superiority and arrogance can I be deeply compassionate to other people and ultimately myself. Eli Jaxon-Bear (2006 p. 14) expresses a similar point of view:

Like any powerful medicine, the Enneagram can also very easily be misused. The danger is in recognizing the patterns of identification, and then using this insight to justify their continuation. (…) Rather than a pure, reflective mirror, the sacred Enneagram then becomes just another way to maintain the ego sense rather than facing the ego and seeing through it.” (Jaxon-Bear 2006: p. 14)

Next to the nine enneagram types are the underlying motivations that drive our psychological patterns, namely self-preservation, social and sexual. Eli Jaxon-Bear (2006: p. 45) writes:

These drives run the fixation on a substrate below the level of passion. They fuel the fixation’s passion, and until these drives are addressed, the passions of fixation will continue to run unchecked. It is at the feet of these three drives that the rape and pillage of humankind, the destruction of all the kingdoms of nature, and the very destruction of the balance of life on Earth can be directly placed. These drives are sublimated into the egoic desire for happiness and acted out through the passions of fixation. Each fixation is run by a particular passion. Happiness is sought through acting out the passions in an attempt to fulfill one of the three lower drives. (p.45)

With everything that I have experienced and learned in the last more than twenty years, there is just nothing that I can be sure of any longer.

I can see that things may be my preferences, but not something ‘that just is like it is’, because the same thing could be perceived totally differently by other people. It is always only my perception of things. And still, while that is certainly true, I also feel that there is some kind of universal truth about being human that would make a new kind of humanity possible. Yes, that is the idealistic seven talking here. Maybe that is what we sevens are here for, to dream up new worlds and to inspire other people to strive for what may be possible, while being aware of our highly idealistic nature – so that we don’t overwhelm other people with it. Or only consciously challenge them at times, while being able to take a step back and not impose our worldview on others. To consciously stay in dialogue.

At some point during the process of writing this thesis, I could see the glutton in me very clearly – not being able to stop researching and reading, never feeling full, never satisfied, never stopping to really digest what I was reading. Finally, I felt like dropping everything, not thinking one more thought. I seemed to get completely tangled in my own web of patterns and habits.

To summarize, I think most of us are in some way affected by trauma and any of the various kinds of addictions. We also all have formed a personality early while growing up. This personality makes us prone to see life a certain way and to experience life a certain way.

We use whatever way of behavior and being in the world makes us feel safe. As children that may be the only way we know of how to keep ourselves safe, but as adults these initially adaptive limitations become self-imposed prisons. What in children was adaptive in adults becomes maladaptive.

It is the persistence of survival styles appropriate to the past, continuing beyond when they are needed, that distorts present experience and creates symptoms. Survival styles, after having outlived their usefulness, function to maintain ongoing disconnection.” (Heller et al 2012: p. 34)

All of those survival styles develop to protect us and our most important relationships but come at the cost of “foreclosing core expression, anger, aggression, and, ultimately, authenticity.” (Heller et al 2012: p. 11)

Looking back at the last two years through the lens of the Enneagram is really interesting. From 2019 onwards I have chosen to do a couple of things that have finally brought about a deep and lasting change. First of all, I decided to not travel that summer. I felt like I finally needed to stay where I was and be okay where I was. Traveling has always been my go-to remedy for boredom, my fix for excitement and newness. I really felt I had to travel every couple of weeks if not once a month, if only for a few days. Secondly in 2020 I had a close look at my eating pattern. I did not really have a plan but also can’t say, I decided to make those changes unconsciously. I think those changes were the result of my years of searching and reading and trying different things that sometimes did not work for me and sometimes at least partially worked for me.