Over the years I have developed a suspicious mind towards personality types and more so towards the tools that pertain to organise people in categories according to their preferred beliefs and favourite actions. Like most people I don’t like the idea of being boxed in by a label that defines, once and for all, how I respond to life’s beauty and trials and, subsequently, how I show up. Typologies do not sit well with phenomenology and the subjective experience of observing upsurges of attention, waves of awareness and tides of intention all unfolding organically as they follow vast and intricate cosmic patterns.
In my youth, I admit to being curious about astrology, the only personality type available to me in the 70s and widespread in the French-speaking environment I found myself in. Insights and guidance ranged from the farcical to the pseudoscientific with formidable women on each side of the spectrum. With hindsight, I see that the twelve zodiac signs offered me building blocks to kickstart my own journey of self-discovery. Later, I watched a few colleagues chuck in their safe jobs to become fulltime professional astrologers. I didn’t follow them and don’t know how they faired. By that time I had uncovered the limits of personality-type devices and was exasperated by people giving up on the possibility of change because they conformed to the so-called predictions linked to their astrological profile. “There is nothing I can do. This is how I am made”. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies and the slavery of the conditioned mind!
In the past decade, on the latest, hopefully mature stretch of my journey of self-discovery, new personality typing systems have appeared and caught my attention, amongst them, archetypal psychology, human design and gene keys. Because they reflect dynamic systems and relational patterns, they feel more advanced than the rough magic of the astrology of my younger years. I now observe friends and colleagues getting deeply involved in one or another and using the tenets of relational dynamics to shape their work with clients.
Amongst these systemic tools the Enneagram kept making brief appearances on my inner radar. I eventually completed a survey to identify my primary Enneagram type among the nine personality types. Then I spent hours, on my own, deciphering the abundant information trying to decide which type I am. In the end I settled on Type Four and then promptly dismissed the material and archived it.
Personality-type devices are not necessarily helpful when we want to let go of the egoic structures of the personality, open up to soulful oneness and sincerely engage with spiritual growth. With my background in constructivism and structuralism, I am more drawn to stages and states and have gradually become wary of the use of psychometrics in the attempt to revamp the hermeneutics of phenomena as being scientific approaches. No wonder the word pseudoscience keeps popping up! It makes no sense to divide up into segments and types the holographic perception of the unified system that is consciousness. Attempts to breakdown complexity into manageable, therefore programmable, units is behind the algorithms feeding into AI (artificial intelligence) or, to word it more appropriately, generating automated cognition. But let’s not go down this path yet.
Inspired by archetypal psychology, I, too, have designed surveys to capture the patterns of thoughts drawing on memory and imagination that colour our experience in a given situation. Have I been successful? Who knows. What I have learnt is that personality typing must be seen as an orientation tool, a compass, and not a destination, a place to begin when we want to divest ourselves of outgrown personality structures and embrace the fullness of who we are in wholeness.
In the past month, the Enneagram has made a discrete reappearance via the CAC (Centre for Action and Contemplation) whose daily meditations I enjoy. Nothing pushy, but a gentle nudge sufficiently insistent to reignite my curiosity. It was precisely the emphasis on using the Enneagram as an orientation tool that convinced me to give it another try.
The Enneagram per se only provides superficial information. On its own it has little value. However, its full potential unfolds in relational spaces and its nature is invitational. The practitioners of the CAC use it for framing spiritual direction, a form of accompaniment that consciously forays in the territories of shadowland so as to cast light on the wound getting in the way of spiritual growth. Wound is used here as a substitute for sin and the major vices threaded throughout Christianity. At the same time, I was also rediscovering Tibetan Buddhism finding many parallels between both traditions such as the five wisdoms and five mental poisons bouncing back as the fruits of Spirit (virtues) and the deadly sins (vices). With these assorted gems of wisdom, pertaining to dualistic perception, gracefully falling into place and heralding a new conversation, I was bound to experience a breakthrough.
The introductory material provided by the CAC contains concise profiles summing up the role, the virtue, the vice and the basic desire of each of the nine types. The virtue of the Type 4, the individualist, is equanimity and the vice is envy. The deepest longing, or basic desire, is to know oneself. That’s me in a nutshell: an independent learner, self-sufficient and always desperate to be recognised as such. The sheet of paper with the profiles was casually lying on my worktable. I gave it an oblique glance and experienced a ‘eureka moment’ when I saw what had been staring me in the face forever. I simply saw how envy had dictated much of my life like a thread woven through all the ages and versions of myself. I burst out laughing thinking of all the times when I earnestly declared that I was not an envious nor jealous person. (That in itself was a clue!) I would even coyly add that I had transformed the energies of envy into inspiration. Behind the deep chuckles spontaneously trickling from my throat, there was huge relief in being able to accept that, yes, I am jealous and envious. I always believe that everyone else has it better than me and that is simply not fair! With that, I was able to let go of a good buddle of egoic structures encased in envy and my well-hidden shame of feeling jealous of other peoples’ good fortunes.
As a result, I hope I have not become a blind, fervent adopter of the Enneagram and that I maintain some of my initial suspicion around typologies so as to sharpen my discernment. I know about the drivenness in me when discovering a new sense-making tool and I am also aware that this is part of the initial phase of adoption, assimilation and adaptation wrapped up as one. Surprisingly, this time, I am realising that obsession followed through with sincerity can lead to emancipation and freedom. Another surprising discovery is that according to the Enneagram typology I am probably too much in the heart centre; again I relate to this with an addictive pattern to the pain in the heart and unhealthy grieving coupled with the constant need for affection and esteem. True equanimity comes from balancing three-centre awareness: body, heart and mind. That’s me given my instructions and pointed in a new direction.
If I have ignited your curiosity, I recommend the CAC monthly podcast, Everything Belongs. The current Season 4 is dedicated to the Enneagram. The first two episodes, complete with transcripts, are available and you can sign up to receive updates.