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What is the
Enneagram?
By Denise L. Dahl, M.A.
The enneagram is
said to be an ancient Sufi symbol.
It is a nine-pointed symbol made up of a circle, a triangle, and
an irregular hexagon. Ennea
is the Greek word for nine and gram comes from the Greek grammos or
gramma meaning something written or drawn. This symbol was brought to the West in the 1920s by
the Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher George I. Gurdjieff. Many of the philosophical ideas
taught by Gurdjieff are used in the modern concept of the enneagram. Some of these ideas include the
three lower centers (instincts/physical movements-energy,
feeling/emotional, and thinking), the higher emotional and intellectual
centers, a person’s chief feature, the concepts of personality and
essence, and the notions of self-observation and self-remembering. However, the two people most
responsible for the psychological and spiritual development of the
Enneagram are Oscar Ichazo (a Bolivian spiritual teacher) and Claudio
Naranjo (a Chilean psychiatrist).
Ichazo
developed the basic principles of the Enneagram by drawing on ancient
spiritual ideas from Greek philosophy, Taoism, Buddhism, mystical Judaism
– the Kabbala, and early Christianity. In 1970 he taught these principles to a group of forty
students. Naranjo was among
these students and he brought the Enneagram ideas back to the United
States and elaborated on some of them
using his background in psychology. He taught the Enneagram to students
in the San Francisco
area.
Ichazo
originally presented 108 enneagrams but only four of these enneagrams are
usually taught in the United
States. They are the Enneagrams of the Holy Ideas, Fixations, Virtues,
and Passions. The most
familiar enneagram is the Enneagram of Fixations which is also known as
the Enneagram of Personality.
The
Enneagram was designed by Ichazo to distinguish the difference between
ego/personality and Essence which is our true nature. The Holy Ideas are an enlightened
way of experiencing life – higher essential qualities of the mind which
we experience when we are in touch with our true nature. Each of the Holy Ideas has
a corresponding Virtue which is an essential quality of the heart that we
experience when we are in touch with our true nature. All of the Holy Ideas and the
Virtues are a part of each of us but there is one Holy Idea and one
Virtue that we resonate with and were attuned to at birth.
We
lose our awareness of our Holy Idea and Virtue when we develop a
personality based on what we believe to be true about our reality. Over time we become identified
with this idea of who we think we are and it forms the outer layer of our
soul (our individual consciousness). The Enneagram can be seen as a map of how the mind
took the Holy Idea and molded it into one of the nine personality
structures – the nine Fixations.
As we lose awareness of our true nature, the loss of the Holy Idea
becomes the ego fixation and the loss of the Virtue becomes the person’s
ego passion. The Fixations
and the Passions represent the way our spiritual qualities become
contracted into the personality structure.
According
to Ichazo, our ego affects our thinking, feeling, and even our physical
movements and energy. These
three areas are represented by three centers – the instinct/physical
movement-energy center, the feeling/emotional center, and the
thinking/intellectual center.
The instinct/physical movement-energy center is in the belly, the
feeling/emotional center is in the heart, and the thinking/intellectual
center is in the head. The
Fixation and the Passion for each type occurs when these three centers
become imbalanced. If they
were balanced, the higher intellectual center (the Holy Ideas) and the
higher emotional center (the Virtues) would not become distorted by the
mental filters of the mind.
The
table below shows the nine Holy Ideas, the Virtue, the Fixation, and the
Passion for each type.
|
Personality
Type
|
Holy
Idea
|
Virtue
|
Fixation
|
Passion
|
|
1
|
Holy Perfection
|
Serenity
|
Resentment
|
Anger
|
|
2
|
Holy Will/Holy Freedom
|
Humility
|
Flattery
|
Pride
|
|
3
|
Holy Law/Holy Harmony/Holy Hope
|
Truthfulness
|
Vanity
|
Deceit
|
|
4
|
Holy Origin
|
Equanimity
|
Melancholy
|
Envy
|
|
5
|
Holy Omniscience/Holy Transparency
|
Nonattachment
|
Stinginess
|
Avarice
|
|
6
|
Holy Faith
|
Courage
|
Cowardice
|
Fear
|
|
7
|
Holy Wisdom/Holy Plan/Holy Work
|
Sobriety
|
Planning
|
Gluttony
|
|
8
|
Holy Truth
|
Innocence
|
Vengeance
|
Lust
|
|
9
|
Holy Love
|
Action
|
Indolence
|
Sloth
|
Although everyone can embody all of the Holy Ideas and
Virtues, one pair of them is central to the identity of the soul. When they are lost, the soul
feels this deeply and the ego becomes preoccupied with recreating its
particular Holy Idea and Virtue.
Point Nine on the Enneagram is a pivotal point for all of the
Enneagram types because it represents the point where there is a falling
asleep to the true nature of each of the types.
Determining
which of the nine Personality types we are can be a challenge. It requires an honest look at the
way we operate out of well-ingrained habits and the use of
self-observation and inquiry to identify the true motivation behind our
actions and behaviors.
Future newsletters will give information that will
help you identify your Enneagram type. Studying the Enneagram and identifying attitudes and
behaviors that are based on conditioning and outgrown beliefs can lead to
personal and spiritual growth and identify innate strengths and talents
that we didn’t realize we possessed. It can also help us see what stands in the way of
remembering who we really are, i.e., an individual spark of the
Divine.
Bibliography
Almaas, A. H. (1998). Facets of Unity:
The Enneagram of Holy Ideas. Boston Shambhala
Publications, Inc.
Lilly, John C. & Hart, Joseph E. (1994). The Arica
Enneagram of the Personality Who am I?: Personality Types for
Self-Discovery. New
York: Jeremy P.Tarcher/Putnam.
Maitri, Sandra (2000). The Spiritual
Dimensions of the Enneagram. New York:
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
Riso, Don Richard & Hudson, Russ (1999). The
Wisdom of the Enneagram. New
York: Bantam Books.
Riso, Don Richard & Hudson, Russ (2000).Understanding
the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types. New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company. (Original
work published 1990)
September
06 Newsletter Article 1 | More
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