Complete Enneagram 27 paths to greater self-knowledge - Discussion
Complete Enneagram 27 paths to greater self-knowledge – Beatrice Chestnut, PhD
This book contains a lot so this is more a cursory summary of the different types and how to develop them. I added some Enneagram institute advice as well.
9 Archetype:
Type 9 represents the archetype of the person who seeks to harmonize with the external environment as a way of staying comfortable and peaceful, even though this means a loss of contact with their internal environment. The weakness is that they over-adjust to others and then have a hard time registering their own desires and asserting their own agendas. This entails an identification with a diminished self.
Superpower: Providing steadfast support to others in a way that makes everyone around them feel honored and included.
Passion: Sloth
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Laziness leading to avoidance.
Social: Prioritizing the needs of the group above him/herself.
Sexual: Trying to blend with another to absorb their passion instead of developing their own.
What to do:
- Be mindful enough to not forget yourself. Ask for what you want and even fake a want if you don’t know your wants. Usually this guess is pretty accurate.
- Learn to enjoy expressing what you think and learn that conflict is sometimes a good thing. Being direct at the beginning can help a lot more than going along and then changing your mind in the last minute.
- Staying comfortable leads to discomfort. Not choosing is actually a choice. Look at the consequences of inaction.
The growth arrow moves towards 3 who are “do-ers”.
- Do more to further your own goals.
- The antidote to laziness is right action. Stay conscious of the laziness when it arises and move the intention towards right action towards your goals.
- One can use the stress arrow to 6 and allow the fear of consequences to stimulate action.
Self-preservation: Tap into anger more and use it for pushing for your self-interest.
Social: Tap into the sadness that comes from giving to the group too much and use the motivation to pursue your self-interest.
Sexual: Spend more time on your own and create separation to decondition being as only being through others. Create healthy boundaries.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeNine.asp#.U-f5qfldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/9growth.asp#.U-f1D_ldVZQ
8 Archetype:
Type 8 represents the archetype of the person who denies weakness and vulnerability by taking refuge in fearlessness, power, strength, domination and intensity. This entails an identification with a glorified self.
Superpower: Good big picture thinkers, hard workers, and passionate advocates for the people and causes they care about.
Passion: Lust
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Directly pursue satisfaction.
Social: Express lust and aggression in the service of life and other people. Has outrage towards injustice.
Sexual: Very rebellious and wants to be seen as bad and go against convention.
What to do:
- See how rebellion against limits may lead to self-limitation.
- Understand the aggression as overcompensation.
- Recognize how you deny the existence of vulnerable feelings and dependence on others.
The growth arrow moves towards 2 who foster empathy.
- Practicing giving to get.
- Cultivate innocence as an antidote to lust by making choices that are guilt free. Relax the push and pull of the ego and be more with reality.
- One can use the stress arrow to 5 and withdraw oneself instead of using power as a solution.
Self-preservation: Allow a wider range of emotions and avoid being overly autonomous and a workaholic to achieve “the good life”. Delegate what you can to others.
Social: Tune in to the love and support you need and allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Sexual: Teach yourself that you are good enough as you are. You don’t need to be provocative, superior, or extraordinary in order to be worthy of other people’s devotion.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeEight.asp#.U-f5ifldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/8growth.asp#.U-f08_ldVZQ
7 Archetype:
Type 7 represents the archetype of the person who seeks pleasure in different forms as a distraction from discomfort, darkness, and the downside of life. The drive is to defend against the experience of pain using intelligence, imagination, charm, and enthusiasm, and to avoid fear through an optimistic outlook.
Superpower: The power of positive thinking - the ability to see interesting ideas and positive possibilities almost anywhere.
Passion: Gluttony
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Develop cronyism to get their needs met.
Social: Rebel against gluttony towards purity. In extremes they can be too ascetic because they are doing this for greed of acknowledgement.
Sexual: They embellish everything to avoid ordinary reality. They see things as better than it actually is. The gluttony is the need for idealization.
What to do:
- Move towards what you avoid instead of escaping into pleasure.
- Learn the difference between love and pleasure and think of the needs of others to avoid only looking at your needs. Stress is often a sign of freedom.
- Recognize future thinking as a way to escape the “now”.
The growth arrow moves towards 5 which is more internal.
- Develop more sobriety
- Cultivate sobriety as an antidote to gluttony by renouncing and enjoying the relief from insatiability.
- One can use the stress arrow to 1 and improve standards and precision instead of being in a fantasy.
Self-preservation: Allow anxiety in (partly to reduce anxiety over anxiety) and to have a greater realm of experience that may include deep motives being ignored.
Social: Watch the need to be recognized as a motive for the self-sacrifice. Allow some of your own personal needs as valid.
Sexual: Notice reality vs. ideals. Don’t get caught in rationalizations that support fantasies. Investigate what is in reality that you don’t want to see.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeSeven.asp#.U-f5ePldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/7growth.asp#.U-f04fldVZQ
6 Archetype:
Type 6 represents the archetype of the person who, given the fear of impending threat, seeks to find safety through the protection of others or by taking refuge in their own strength. The drive is to scan for danger and move into a fight or flight response to manage the fear.
Superpower: Seeing through false pretenses and detecting ulterior motives and hidden agendas.
Passion: Fear
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Perceiving the world as more dangerous than it is. They look for protection in alliances.
Social: They focus on duty, authority, rules, and rational thinking to cope with anxiety.
Sexual: When you are afraid then be more offensive, intimidating and strong.
What to do:
- Accept uncertainty as a part of life. Looking for danger may make you find it.
- Watch how you project fear and power onto authorities.
- Recognize the fight, flight or freeze attitudes and learn to let go of them.
The growth arrow moves towards 9 which is about safety and harmony.
- Relax in the security of supportive relationships to balance out scanning for danger.
- Cultivate courage as an antidote to fear by recognizing your responsibility for your life.
- One can use the stress arrow to 3 and focus on positivity of goals and the benefits of impressing others.
Self-preservation: Say things directly, make decisions, and developing fortitude to take care of your own needs instead of looking for others for support and protection.
Social: Develop your own authority so you don’t have to be chasing other authorities to guide your life.
Sexual: Allow yourself to be vulnerable and add intuition to expand how you relate to others.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeSix.asp#.U-f5WPldVZR
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/6growth.asp#.U-f0zvldVZQ
5 Archetype:
Type 5 represents the archetype of the person who withdraws into thinking and detaches from feeling as a way of taking refuge in the inner world. This functions as a way of finding privacy and freedom in a world that seems intrusive or neglectful or overwhelming.
Superpower: They are highly skilled at performing rational, objective analyses of issues or situations and helps them be calm in a crisis.
Passion: Avarice
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Express avarice through their passion for hiddenness or for having a sanctuary. They build walls to protect themselves from the world
Social: They displace people and emotional sustenance with a thirst for knowledge.
Sexual: Look for a special person they can connect with deeply, sometimes a person they cannot find or have yet to find.
What to do:
- Connect more with other people actually increases the resources you have available to you because it expands your sources of support. Reminding yourself to have faith in abundance initiates a positive cycle of access to more and more of what you (falsely) think you don’t have very much of.
- Connect more with your feelings and empathize more with others by noticing when you detach from your emotions or otherwise stop yourself from feeling.
- Notice how good you are at avoiding people who are needy and overemotional; how you excel at maintaining boundaries; and how you control life so you can avoid feeling fear. Face the fear by first staying put and then moving forward towards what causes the fear.
The growth arrow moves towards 8 which is about asserting oneself.
- Assert yourself more and enforce boundaries when necessary.
- Cultivate nonattachment as an antidote to avarice by renouncing and letting go more often.
- One can use the stress arrow to 7 and expand their ability to share more of themselves with humor, playfulness, and intellectual curiosity.
Self-preservation: Relax boundaries and barriers to connection by sharing feelings with people more often.
Social: Develop more emotional engagement with real people instead of knowledge and information.
Sexual: Let go of holding other people to high standards as a way to avoid intimacy.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeFive.asp#.U-f5P_ldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/5growth.asp#.U-f0tfldVZQ
4 Archetype:
Type 4 represents the archetype of the person who experiences an inner sense of lack and craving for that which is missing, and yet can’t allow for the attainment of what might provide satisfaction.
Superpower: Naturally emotionally intuitive.
Passion: Envy
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Express envy by hiding it and suffer with it stoically.
Social: They are emotionally sensitive, feel things deeply, and suffer more than most people. There is a desire to be witnessed in their suffering.
Sexual: They compete to win to mute the pain associated with envy.
What to do:
- Realize it’s a false belief that you are inferior and believe in “good-enoughness”.
- Moderate expectations. Idealizing what’s missing will make you perpetually unsatisfied.
- Actively see what’s positive.
The growth arrow moves towards 1 which is about self-evaluation, self-discipline, and structure.
- Take action to manifest ideals. Being more perfectionistic – not by controlling or stifling emotions, but by actively improving yourself or your environment.
- Development more equanimity to counter the vice of envy.
- One can use the stress arrow to 2 and develop a sensitivity to the needs and preferences of others, a positive view of what’s possible in a relationship, and the conscious management of feelings and needs in light of the feelings and needs of others.
Self-preservation: Develop equanimity by relaxing into feelings and sharing them with others.
Social: Let go of inferiority complex, own your positive qualities, and enhance self-confidence. Let go of comparisons and self-judgments.
Sexual: Strengthen the ability to be with suffering without projecting it on others. View all your emotions as valuable and important.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeFour.asp#.U-f5LPldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/4growth.asp#.U-f0nPldVZQ
3 Archetype:
Type 3 represents the archetype of the person seeks to create an image of value and success, and to gain the admiration of others, through active efforts in both work and appearance.
Superpower: The ability to make things happen by finding the most direct path to their goal, removing obstacles that might get in the way and looking good the whole time.
Passion: Vanity
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: They work hard to achieve a sense of security both in terms of material and financial resources and knowing how to do things effectively. They express a concern with security in that they have a need to feel autonomous and self-sufficient – to know how to take care of themselves and others.
Social: They have a desire to be seen and to have influence with people. They act out vanity through the desire to shine before the whole world and enjoy being on the stage. They like to be chameleons.
Sexual: The victory or goal is sex appeal and beauty rather than money or prestige.
What to do:
- Allow yourself to question your assumptions about what constitutes success. Open up to the idea that you can and should be loved for who you really are, not just for what you accomplish or for the outward, material signs of your success.
- Be aware of when you do things for image reasons. It’s okay do things because you want to instead of analyzing how it will enhance your image.
- Take the risk of asking support from others who may not be able to see what you need because your image hides the fact that you’re in trouble.
The growth arrow moves towards 6 which is about getting in touch with fears and thinking them through to improve their plans.
- Realize that reality “does itself” independent of our imaginary autonomy.
- Develop hope to counter the vice of vanity.
- One can use the stress arrow to 9 as a path of growth by learning to be more in your body, to include different points of view when completing a task, and to slow down and broaden your focus of attention.
Self-preservation: Allow yourself to find security through deep connections with other people, not just relying on yourself and working hard. You don’t have to be responsible for everything.
Social: When you can relax you efforts to get recognition and learn to trust that people will see and appreciate your value if you just allow yourself to embrace more of who you are, you can release the need to control what happens and enter into an experience guided by hope.
Sexual: Learn to live for yourself and not for a real or imagined partner. Support yourself the way you support others.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeThree.asp#.U-f5EvldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/3growth.asp#.U-f0dvldVZQ
2 Archetype:
Type 2 represents the archetype of the person who seeks to please others as a way to evoke affection.
Superpower: They can be excellent friends and will often go to great lengths to take care of and support loved ones. They can be energetic, extremely competent people who get a lot of things done and strive to do things well, especially as a way to impress others.
Passion: Pride
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: The unconscious strategy is to seduce like a child in the presence of grown-ups. This represents both an unconscious need to be taken care of and a sense that children are naturally lovable, inherently deserving of affection, and usually more readily liked than adults.
Social: Have a passion for power, and their pride is expressed through having influence and advantages and cultivating an image of being an influential person.
Sexual: Classical seduction is the main approach, and they express a driving need to seduce other people as a way of getting their needs met.
What to do:
- Start getting in touch with your needs and feelings through an intentional process; you will need to tolerate not knowing as a first step to developing an ongoing awareness of your needs and emotions.
- Notice when you’re merged with someone or compulsively trying to achieve a connection, and consciously shift your attention two feet behind you so that you can energetically disconnect and locate your separate sense of “self” again. Recognize that merging disguises a fear of intimacy.
- Recognize that boundaries actually make us freer to express ourselves safely in relationships and allow for better and closer connections with others. Make a conscious effort to learn how to make and maintain good boundaries. Remember that “no” is a very good answer.
The growth arrow moves towards 4 which is that feelings are important and valuable expressions of your authentic self.
- Establish a healthy balance between focusing on the self and focusing on others; between expressing sadness and hurt and a cultivating a sense of lightness; and between meeting others’ needs and asking for what you need.
- Try to be more humble (which counters pride) by letting go of the attachment to being better than you actually are so you can recognize that you have value.
- One can use the stress arrow to 8 as a path of growth by learning to take the risk of leading and acting proactively rather than always reacting. Learn to be more direct and assertive as opposed to using indirect means to get needs met and sugarcoating messages to make them go down easier.
Self-preservation: Notice how pride and mistrust keep defenses up and prevent real engagement. Appreciate your own true worth without manipulation or unconscious dependence. You can support yourself from the inside rather than relying on others, you have the ability to both receive love from others and weather the occasional pain of rejection.
Social: Learn to ask for as much as you give. Relax the manic over-work to appear more competent than others.
Sexual: Let go of presenting yourself as an ideal love object. Puffing up your self-image isn’t necessary to be loved or desired.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeTwo.asp#.U-f4_fldVZQ
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/2growth.asp#.U-f0VvldVZQ
1 Archetype:
Type 1 represents the archetype of the person who seeks to be good and to do the “right thing” to satisfy an urgent need to be virtuous and responsible and to avoid fault and blame.
Superpower: High integrity and the passion and dedication they bring to the fulfillment of their ideals and the pursuit of high standards.
Passion: Anger
Subtypes:
Self-preservation: Anger is masked and channeled into perfectionism, heroic efforts, and obedience to rules.
Social: Focuses more on being the perfect example for others of the right way to be.
Sexual: They have a need to improve others, but don’t focus on being perfect themselves.
What to do:
- Be less hard on yourself. Being overly self-judgmental prevents real growth.
- Recognize that there are many “right” ways of doing things.
- Allow for more pleasure, play, humor, and value your positive attributes.
The growth arrow moves towards 7 which involves a relief from too much discipline.
- Balance discipline with relaxation.
- Counter the vice of anger with serenity. Let go of the attachment to specific ways of doing things and let go of specific standards of how life is supposed to be.
- One can use the stress arrow to 4 as a path of growth by a greater range and depth of feeling, and greater creativity and self-expression (instead of just following the rules).
Self-preservation: Unearth all beliefs in your “badness” or imperfection and challenge them.
Social: Focus more on doing things right to share with other people as opposed to proving your worth by being “right”.
Sexual: Your value to us is not that you help us learn how to reform and improve ourselves but because you value the higher goal of creating a better world.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeOne.asp#.U-f42PldVZS
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/1growth.asp#.U-fz-_ldVZQ
The difficulty is that it can be overwhelming if you look at all of it. 
Like with any self-help book it's easy to read and put it away and not do anything about it.
I personally just look at the list and the growth factors and try to ignore the rest. I start with 4w5 SP for myself and look at 1 as a growth factor and just focus on that in the beginning. If you're following the growth advice it's similar to what you read on Myers Briggs. Myers Briggs looks at "magician" or the summit of development as someone who can develop their weaker functions to work in conjunction with the stronger functions so a person is more balanced in habits.
In the Enneagram the hindrances (or sins) are targeted and you find which ones you have the most problem with and aim to better yourself and move around the circle if you get stuck on something else. I just concentrate my brain to let go of the current conditioning and push intention towards the other skills. I fall off the wagon and then get back on again.
I do like to look at the other types because I have to work with 3s and 6s and 8s and they are a handful.
Like with any self-help book it's easy to read and put it away and not do anything about it.I personally just look at the list and the growth factors and try to ignore the rest. I start with 4w5 SP for myself and look at 1 as a growth factor and just focus on that in the beginning. If you're following the growth advice it's similar to what you read on Myers Briggs. Myers Briggs looks at "magician" or the summit of development as someone who can develop their weaker functions to work in conjunction with the stronger functions so a person is more balanced in habits.
In the Enneagram the hindrances (or sins) are targeted and you find which ones you have the most problem with and aim to better yourself and move around the circle if you get stuck on something else. I just concentrate my brain to let go of the current conditioning and push intention towards the other skills. I fall off the wagon and then get back on again.
I do like to look at the other types because I have to work with 3s and 6s and 8s and they are a handful.
