What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is a tool for understanding, development and transformation of the self based on nine distinct personality, or ego, types. We are all caught in our ego but that is not who we really are. To some extent we know this. We feel there is more. But how do we access it when we’re not sure what that ‘more’ is exactly? The Enneagram is a sophisticated map of the various ego structures which reveals our primary fear and therefore our primary desire, our motivations and ‘blind spots’ to bring awareness to unconscious attitudes and behaviours.
Finding out why we behave as we do, where our personality can lead us or block us, can be an enlightening experience. Understanding the Enneagram and where we reside within it directs us towards our gifts and potential, to how those gifts can best be expressed and shared with the world and, therefore, to greater personal fulfilment. When we are doing what we are meant to be doing, being who we truly are, there is grace. And the good that comes from that grace is greater than the sum of its parts - it can change the world. But first we need to discover who we are and who we’re not, so that we might better understand who we can be.
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'We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself'
Carl Jung
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The Ego Self​
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Often the greatest barrier to achieving what we want in life is our idea of ourselves, but what is that idea?
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Our idea of self is the ego. It can, however, be quite difficult to know what that idea - that sense of self - is, not only because it is formed while we are very young but because it acts as a sort of lens through which we see the world. It gives us a particular view of it and of our place within it.
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The ego steps in to compensate for a loss of contact with a part of the essential self and so can be found wherever we try to defend, promote or prove ourselves. The Enneagram reveals which part of the essential self we have lost contact with and how the ego expresses that. It reveals not only how we get caught up in the ego's attempts to plug the hole of that loss but also the path to reconnecting with that lost part of our self because the irony is that we cannot find what we are looking for via the ego. This is because it keeps us separate, locked into a pattern of reactive and defensive behaviours that limit and frustrate us. Until we understand the nature of our ego, however, we cannot begin to transcend it.
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'Awareness is the greatest agent for change'
- Eckhart Tolle
