Enneagram
“In the study of personality, the Enneagram is designed for self-inquiry. By discovering one’s Enneagram type, one comes to know the many layers of self in a personal and particular way. The Enneagram shows how a person’s strengths can become more stable and dynamic, and how weaknesses can be brought to consciousness and even healed.”—Joseph Howell in Becoming Conscious: The Enneagram’s Forgotten Passageway (Balboa Press, 2012).
We once spent a weekend at an Enneagram conference led by Dr. Howell at Kanuga. This ancient nine-point study of personality can help us learn about ourselves, our strengths, and the healing of wounds that led to the formation of certain personality traits. Understanding the Enneagram can also help us become more compassionate toward ourselves and others of different personality types.
On the Enneagram, I am a two, the helper, with a strong three wing, the achiever. Another wing, the four, the creative type, can lead me to the source of my fundamental essence or to God within. That may explain why I write this daily message about spiritual direction and practices.
At the conference, there were nine tables where people could talk with others who shared one of the nine personality types. I immediately identified with the twos’ table. I heard the music in my mind and body, “Going Home,” the theme from Dvorak’s Largo in his New World Symphony. I was with a group of people who knew me, and I knew them. I could see their woundedness and easily recognize their souls, the God in them.
When someone with some experience of the Enneagram comes to spiritual direction, I try to use this tool to help that person see God and the soul within—for this is what the ancient practice is about.
Enneagram Types
Rebecca Spooner led an Enneagram Retreat at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Little Rock on February 29, 2020, and it was so helpful. It was one of the last things we did before the pandemic changed our lives. It seems so long ago. Today, I will review what Rebecca taught us to remember about the outside world and how it affected our inner world.
Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/