Enneagram

This is the first in the series of articles about the Enneagram.

The Enneagram is a method through which you can understand human personality. There are 9 personality types, which I will describe in later articles.

I have written about Personality - and also about the Ego - before. In the system of Reverse Therapy, your personality/ego is a creation of Headmind, which bears no relation to who you actually are.

A common problem with  Enneagram books is that they try to label people as belonging to a certain 'type'. Nothing could be further from the truth. All that knowing someone's Enneagram type will tell you is how far they have got stuck in Headmind.

You are far more than your personality. Somewhere, deep down, you possess a Personal Genius which holds  the personality you give out to others in contempt, and which seeks to break free of it. Personal Genius, if anything can be, is your real self. But you have no control over it for that was given to you at birth.

Your Enneagram personality, by contrast, is something you need to work on in order to abolish it. Your personality is not you; rather it is your Prison.

The ideal, the goal, is to become ego-less and to cease to possess a personality.

Only then can you become that which you are truly are. Gurdjieff, the originator of the Enneagram taught precisely this.

Before you read the second article in this series you might want to take the Enneagram test and here are two:

Eclectic Energies (This is a free test which is reasonably accurate).

The Riso Hudson test (The Riso-Hudson test is the most thorough test currently available. It costs $10.00).

Comments

[Cindy Anderson]

Oh how depressingly accurate the Enneagram test proved to be: well perhaps not depressing, actually more freeing. Yes that's how I've felt and how I've behaved .. so now I don't have to any more! When growing through my teen years I was struck by my own absence of personality, and worked hard at acquiring one. A likeable one. An acceptable one.
Am tempted now to adopt the persona of a grumpy old crone, just for fun - but think that in reality I will just let it all go again. It will take time to put down the burdens I have worked so assiduously to acquire, but I'm going to enjoy doing it!