Once you have discovered your true Enneagram personality type, it is very tempting to use it as a tool for self-improvement, and for some of us, even more tempting to want to use it to improve others. Please don’t do that. While Don Riso’s Levels of Development were a huge contribution to our understanding of the Enneagram, it should come with the warning; Only use with compassionate understanding, this information contains superego (Inner critic) superfood. With our natural resistance to reality, (the desire for things to be other than they are), the opportunity for the tyranny of shoulds can quickly take over. I should be operating at this level, I should be over this by now, I should be more ... fill in the blank. And then, he should be more, she needs to, and the inner critic becomes the outer critic, and this is the opposite intention of the Enneagram.
Because we’ve all been marinating in a narrative of scarcity – the subconscious sense of I am not enough, it is easy to misuse the Enneagram and the Levels of Development in this way.
When working with the Enneagram we need a complete paradigm shift that not only allows us to see our shadow but to embrace it. “Sacred Wounds” as Richard Rohr calls them because of their transformational value. To ‘catch ourselves in the act” is to catch our personality’s fixated ways of reacting so that eventually we have the freedom to respond in a myriad of ways that are Present and appropriately life-giving. This is a gradual contemplative practice of disidentification with the personality. We are learning to name the personality for what it is instead of the personality naming us. We are loosening the emotional wounds or passions of the personality and learning to wear it more lightly. It is an important reminder to say “I identify with the Type 2 personality” rather than “I am a Type 2”.
This requires a compassionate non-dual perspective, to begin with, or we won’t look at ourselves honestly. Seeing our shadow from a place of insufficiency is enough to make us crawl back under the weighted blanket. So we become okay with our insufficiency; with our humanness and others. When we truly accept our brokenness, our woundedness, they become “sacred wounds”, because grace is alive and well in us.
We all have a personality operating along a continuum of passion and virtue. It is in recognizing the gift of both our passions and our virtues, with honesty and humility, that our virtues are given the freedom of expression.
It is a contemplative practice to recognize the personality’s shadow in action and to befriend it because it is a first step in accepting the present moment. This is no small step. Every time we observe our false selves nonjudgmentally, we are seeing ourselves from a deeper place within us. Eventually, this deeper place of seeing becomes a more permanent perspective. It is from this place, of our soul, our True Self, that our virtues arise gracefully. There we authentically enter into the unitive consciousness, that does not retreat from the world, but seeks to engage it. A way to be in the world but not of the world.
So, what do we do once we know our personality type? We observe it over and over from an ever-deepening more compassionate perspective. The fixated personality is like a block of ice encapsulating our True Selves. As we observe it in action, the light of awareness melts the personality and allows the authentic aliveness of our True Selves to shine forth. Or as Rilke translator Joanna Macy puts it,” There’s a song that wants to sing itself through us, and we’ve just got to be available.”
It is necessary to have a contemplative/prayer practice to effectively use the Enneagram as a resource. This work of seeing ourselves is difficult. The practice of disidentification with the personality is difficult. We need to be able to ground ourselves in our bodies in order to anchor ourselves in Presence. The Welcoming Prayer Practice as developed by Mary Mrozowski is very useful in conjunction with the wisdom of Enneagram and the description is below. Whenever I am teaching the Enneagram, I reiterate Enneagram author and my teacher Russ Hudson’s instructional mantra: “Contemplation first, Enneagram second”.
The method of the Welcoming Prayer includes noticing the feelings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations in your body, welcoming them, and then watching them move on. The purpose of the Welcoming Prayer is to deepen one’s relationship with the sacred by consenting to its healing presence and action in the ordinary activities of daily life.
Instructions
When you have an overly emotional experience in daily life, take a moment to be still and silent and follow these steps.
- Focus, feel, and sink into the feelings, emotions, thoughts, sensations, and commentaries in your body.
- Welcome the Divine in the feelings, emotions, thoughts, or sensations in your body by saying, “Welcome.”
- Let go by repeating the following sentences:
- “I let go of the desire to change this feeling/sensation.”
- “Help me let go of the desire for security, affection, control.”
Resource: Contemplative Outreach www.contemplativeoutreach.com