Type Three: The Need to Succeed 
Thursday, March 5, 2020 

Holy Idea: Holy Harmony, Holy Law, Holy Hope

Virtue: Truthfulness, Authenticity

Passion: Deceit [1]

The Three is the central type of the heart group, but this does not mean that Threes manage their emotional world very well. On the contrary, Threes have the greatest difficulties of all the Enneagram types in perceiving their own feelings; at the same time, they are really good at detecting the feelings of other people.

Russ Hudson and Don Richard Riso write:

As children, Threes were not valued for themselves—as very few of us were. Instead, they were valued for being and doing certain things extremely well. They learned to get validation of their worth through achievement and performance. But it never really satisfied them because it was a validation not of them but of something they had done or something they tried to become. [2]

Threes draw their life energy from their successes. Threes are show-people, achievers, careerists, and status-seekers. They are more comfortable in their roles than they are with their True Self, which they scarcely know. They can slip into almost any mask and act the part to perfection because the roles they play protect and motivate them. For Threes, life is a competitive struggle and they want to be winners. Most Threes seem optimistic, youthful, intelligent, dynamic, and productive.

A good friend of mine who is a Three has the nickname Mr. Perfect. Everything he touches seems to succeed. This friend says, “When I walk into a room where there are lots of people, I know in fractions of a second how I have to behave, how I have to appear, how I have to talk to be accepted by everybody present. If I leave the room and go one door down, then I can play the same game and be a completely different person.”

The pressure to succeed that Threes are under leads to their root sin, which is untruth or deceit. In order to win, Threes tend to deal generously with the truth. They seldom tell bald-faced lies; rather, they use subtle nuancing, airbrushing out the problematic side of a project or exaggerating its advantages.

Immature or unhealthy Threes first and foremost deceive themselves. As Riso and Hudson explain:

In the headlong rush to achieve whatever they think will make them more valuable, Threes can become so alienated from themselves that they no longer know what they truly want or what their real feelings or interests are. [3]

At their healthiest, Threes let go of the belief that their value is dependent on the positive regard of others, thus freeing them to discover their true identity and their own heart’s desire. . . . They become self-accepting, genuine, [authentic], and benevolent. . . . When Threes are able to perceive their Essential value directly, they become freed from the ego’s relentless pursuit of self-esteem through achievement. This affords them the time and space to live with a greatness of spirit, a life of love, richness, and wonder. [4]

Enneagram Part Two:
Heart Center

Type Two: The Need to Be Needed
Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Holy Idea: Holy Will, Holy Freedom 

Virtue: Humility 

Passion: Pride [1] 

The heart types—Two, Three, and Four—are “other-directed” people whose emotional well-being depends on how their environment reacts to them. The secret goal of their continuous activities is to be acknowledged and affirmed from the outside.  

Twos employ their many gifts to meet the needs of others, caring for others’ health, nourishment, education, and welfare. They impart a measure of acceptance and appreciation that can help people believe in their own value. Twos can share generously and will even give their “last shirt” for others. They stand by friends and family when they have to endure suffering, pain, or conflict.  

Some Twos recall that early on they had the feeling of having to support the emotional needs of other family members. They felt they had to make themselves useful in order to be noticed and loved.  

There may have been a role reversal between parent(s) and child. The child had to “mother” the adults and deny some of their own legitimate needs. The child got the message: “I am loved when I am tender, understanding, ready to be helpful, and defer my own needs.” But in this way the child feels powerful, while grown-ups look weak and needy. This provides fertile soil for the sort of false pride that is the root sin of Twos. They secretly look down on those whom they “serve.” 

Like all of us, Twos want to be liked, but they also have an exaggerated desire for external validation. Twos happily spoil and look after other people, even when unasked, but if their “care” becomes burdensome or confining and others distance themselves instead of returning this “love,” the Two feels betrayed and exploited. 

The constant and great temptation of Twos is to help others, and in this way they evade themselves and their own needs. When immature Twos are hurt, they can suddenly stop being sweet and pliant and lash out. At such moments they are capable of doing frightful injury to the very person they supposedly love above all. This is the shadow side of the Two’s love that may not be recognized at first glance. 

Twos are healed and redeemed the more they experience God as the Real Lover and realize that true, selfless love only comes by sharing in God’s love. This insight leads through a moment of deep shame to genuine humility.  

Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson describe what it’s like for Twos to return to their Essence: 

On a very deep level, Twos remember the Essential quality of unconditional love and the omnipresence of love. When they remember their Essential nature and the Divine state that it mirrors, healthy Twos are aware of the presence of love all around them, so there is quite literally nothing they need to get from anyone—and nothing they can give. . . . This love is balanced, pure, and nourishing—it allows the soul to relax on a profound level. [2]  

The Heart Center
Tuesday, March 3, 2020 

Russ Hudson and I have taught on the Enneagram together on several occasions. As a type Five, his primary Intelligence Center is in his Head, but there is no one whom I trust more than Russ to describe what it means to be in the Heart Center.

What does the heart bring us if we actually do abide in the heart, if we just let ourselves be still, be here? . . . We feel this exquisite sensitivity and delicacy. It’s like the Body establishes “I am. I am here. I exist.” It brings me to . . . the sacred now moment. The Heart then tastes . . . what’s actually here, with exquisite awareness. The Heart knows. . . the taste, the fabric, the texture of this moment.

The heart is the knower of truth. . . . When there is a true moment, when someone’s being authentic and real with you, you know it here in your heart. . . . So being in touch with the heart tells us the quality of our existence, tells us how we recognize the truth. . . .

The heart also is the place where we know who we really are. And knowing who we really are is something wordless. There’s no concept for it. But there is a sense that if you’re actually present with your heart, the magnificent mystery of who you are is just right here. And you know it’s real because it’s true of the other person, too. You are more aware of who you’re with. If I were going to put it in traditional religious language: Anytime I’m here in my heart with another human being, . . . “there I will be also.” It’s true. We can know that directly. . . . [See Matthew 18:20.]

What Twos, Threes and Fours are looking for is attention. If the Body Center is “I don’t want to be messed with,” the Heart Center is “See me the way I want to be seen. See me as I need to see myself.” Psychologically speaking, Two, Three, and Four are looking for mirroring, recognition, validation: “See me and confirm who I want to believe I am.”

When we don’t get the attention and validation, or we get the wrong kind, we have a different emotional reaction. It’s not anger. I’d say . . . it’s shame and hurt.

That deep sense of shame, inadequacy, deficiency, emptiness—like I’m not good enough and I never will be—eats at every ego. The more bravado I see in a person, the more I know that they’re running from this feeling.

How do we cope with that? Well you get three menu choices [the Two, the Three, and the Four]. Three ways to deal with that sense of shame, inadequacy, and hurt inside.

We need to be really kind when we’re looking at this part of ourselves. It takes a lot of patience and gentleness.

Type One: The Need to Be Perfect​
Friday, February 28, 2020

Holy Idea: Holy Perfection 

Virtue: Serenity 

Passion: Anger [1] 

This is my own type, so it’s easy for me to talk about it. I just hope I’ve done enough inner work to be able to present a balanced picture!  

Ones are idealists, motivated and driven on by longing for a true, just, and moral world. They are honest and fair and can spur others to work and mature and grow. They are often gifted teachers, but they have a hard time accepting imperfections—other people’s and, above all, their own.  

Starting back in their early years they internalized the voices that demand: “Be good! Behave yourself! Try hard! Don’t be childish! Do it better!” It is as if they had decided, even then, to earn the love of everyone around them by meeting such expectations and “being good.” Those demanding voices within them never fall silent.  

Type One children have renounced the development of their True Selves to please others (in my case, my mother) and earn the love of people who have sent them the signal “You’re okay only when you’re perfect.” Ones have the childhood driven out of them; too soon they have to act like adults.  

The search for perfection is the specific temptation of Ones, and it rules their lives. Ones are always frustrated because life and people are not what they should be. Ones are conscious of duty and responsibility and are often compulsively punctual. They are serious people and seldom tell jokes. They allow themselves relaxation and recreation only when they have thoroughly and completely finished their tasks. But that seldom happens because there’s always something or other that could be improved. Above all, Ones are disappointed by their own imperfection. 

Because the world is so imperfect, Ones can be resentful. At the same time, they avoid acknowledging the anger that often motivates them. They simply see it as another form of imperfection. They can barely perceive their own resentments (suppressed anger), but others generally recognize their sin much more readily than they do. That’s one reason why they need to be in fellowship with other people.  

The special virtue, or fruit of the spirit, that marks mature persons of any type is always the reverse of the root sin or passion. The fruit of the spirit of the One is cheerful tranquility or serenity. I hope I live there now much of the time. 

Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson describe the emergence of Essence in Ones: 

Deep down, Ones remember the essential quality of perfection. They know that, at a profound level, the universe is unfolding exactly as it must. (As in Julian of Norwich’s famous dictum, “All will be well. Every manner of thing will be well.”) . . .  

Staying with awareness releases a profoundly wise and discerning intelligence that illuminates all that [they] attend to. When Ones, through patient self-acceptance and open-mindedness, are able to relax enough to recognize that this quality is, and always has been, available to them, they become the true instruments of the Divine will that they have longed to be. [2]  

Type Nine: The Need for Peace
Thursday, February 27, 2020

Holy Idea: Holy Love

Virtue: Action

Passion: Sloth [1]

Unlike the strong and often belligerent Eights with whom they share an Intelligence Center, Nines are natural peacemakers. Their gift of accepting others without prejudice makes people feel understood and accepted. Nines can be unbiased arbitrators because they can see and appreciate the positive aspects of all sides. They have an ability to express harsh truths so calmly and matter-of-factly that it’s much easier for others to hear and accept them. We know they mean us no harm.

The temptation of Nines is to downplay their strengths and even belittle themselves. Because they don’t consider themselves important enough to display their talents in front of other people, they tend to stay in the background and cultivate the self-image of not being anything special. They can enter a room and then leave it without anyone taking notice of them.

In distressing situations, Nines often withdraw. The task of Nines consists in discovering and developing feelings of self-worth and their own inner drive.

The gift of the Nine is, surprisingly, decisive action. At first Nines may hesitate and waver, but when they reach a decision, it happens in a moment of utter clarity. Without further considerations, without revision or the least doubt, they know what they want to do, and no one will be able to stop them.

Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson explain how Nines reconnect with their Essential nature or True Self:

Ultimately Nines reclaim their Essential nature by confronting their Basic Fear of losing connection and by letting go of the belief that their participation in the world is unimportant—that they do not have to “show up.” They realize that the only way to truly achieve the unity and wholeness they seek is not by “checking out” into the realms of the imagination but by fully engaging themselves in the present moment. Doing so requires that they reconnect with their instinctual nature and with their physicality in an immediate way. Often this requires confronting repressed feelings of anger and rage that can be extremely threatening to their ordinary sense of self. But when Nines stay with themselves and are able to integrate their anger, they begin to feel the stability and steadiness that they have been seeking. . . .

Another Essential quality of the Nine is what Oscar Ichazo called “Holy Love.” . . . The Essential love to which we are referring is a dynamic quality of Being that flows, transforms, and breaks down all barriers before it. It overcomes feelings of separateness and isolation within ego boundaries, issues that plague the Instinctive Triad. This is why real love is frightening—it entails the dissolution of boundaries and the death of the ego. Yet as we learn to surrender to the action of Holy Love, we reconnect with the ocean of Being and realize that at our core, we are this Love. We are this endless, dynamic, transforming Presence of loving awareness, and it has always been so. [2]

Type Eight: The Need to Be Against
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
(Ash Wednesday)

Holy Idea: Holy Truth 

Virtue: Innocence 

Passion: Lust [1] 

My friend Chris Heuertz has a type Eight personality. Here’s how he describes Eights in his book, The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth: 

Eights are a source of strength and determination, an initiating and intimidating force of vitality in the world. . . .  

You’ll observe Eights being rude or offensive, trying to get a reaction out of people to see what they’re made of. This behavior is partly due to their Childhood Wound, an acceleration of maturity as a result of conflict or harsh environments where they felt they needed to be strong in order to survive.  

The self-survival instinct of Eights informs their Basic Fear of being destroyed—though I think more accurately it is the fear of not being in control. . . .   

Eights are intense. Eights hate bullies but are the biggest bullies. Though Eights use their force of personality to try to convince people of their strongly held opinions, they are not so much emotional as they are impassioned. Passionate and forceful, Eights are extremists in the positions they hold, the vocations they’re called to, and the causes they champion.  

The traditional passion of the Eight is lust, not necessarily sexual lust but more like a lust for intensity, which is aimed toward everything. . . . Because Eights fear that they will be destroyed, they overdo everything to make themselves feel alive—even overdoing things that are harmful to themselves. This often leads to tremendous pain for themselves and those they love.  

Traditionally, the Fixation of the Eight is vengeance, which is first aimed at themselves. No one can be harder on Eights than themselves, and in turn Eights can be extremely hard on others—demanding more than is fair or realistic and making people pay for the ways Eights feel betrayed by them.  

They are intimidating and they know it, but it surprises even them because inside they know they are using their strength to protect the vulnerable child within them who never seemed safe enough to grow up. [2] 

Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson describe the emergence of Essence in the Eight: 

When Eights give up their own willfulness, they discover the Divine Will. Instead of trying to have power through the assertion of their egos, they align themselves with Divine Power. . . .  

Eights also remember the omnipotence and strength that comes from being a part of the Divine reality. The Divine will is not the same as willfulness. As Eights understand this, they end their war with the world and discover that the solidity, power, and independence that they have been seeking are already here. [3] 

Richard again: Because of their passion for justice and truth, healthy Eights often take the side of the weak and defenseless. For the sake of justice, Eights are willing to fight the powers that be with every available weapon, and our world is a better place for it.

The Belly Center
Tuesday, February 25, 2020

My friend Russ Hudson of the Enneagram Institute has spent his life studying and teaching the Enneagram. I will be sharing many of his insights over the next three weeks, because he has such compassion for each Enneagram type, and he helps us have compassion for both ourselves and others. He has a gift for teaching the Enneagram as a tool to help us live in the Presence of God. Today Russ introduces the Body or Gut Center—what he calls Belly—which is home to types Eight, Nine, and One.

The body plays a crucial role in all forms of genuine spiritual work, because bringing awareness back to the body anchors the quality of Presence. The reason is fairly obvious: while our minds and feelings can wander to the past or the future, our body can only exist here and now, in the present moment. This is one of the fundamental reasons why virtually all meaningful spiritual work leads back to the body and becoming more grounded in it. [1]

Being in the Belly has to do with first of all the direct experience of our existence; in spiritual traditions and philosophical traditions [this] is often called “being.” The ability to be. This being is not dull. It’s the sense of being alive, of being connected, of being at one with things. If you’re actually fully here in your body, the spiritual rumors that we’re all one cease being rumors. It’s a little counter-intuitive. We think that if we get inside our body we’re going to be stuck inside this sack of skin. We’ll be cut off from everything. The opposite is true because your body is already connected with the whole sacred reality that God’s expressing right now. . . .

So this whole [Body or Gut] part is teaching us what it means to actually live in the here and now, to feel our existence, and to operate from that, which gives us a sense of confidence, fullness, aliveness, being. In religious language, it’s like you feel held in the Presence of God. And it’s like feeling the solidity of spirit, the fullness, the gutsy vibrancy of presence, spirit, life, right now. To whatever degree we’re not present, we lose that sense. We lose the confidence, we lose the fullness, we lose the sense of existing. [2]

When we lose contact with our Essence, the personality attempts to “fill in” by providing a false sense of autonomy. [3]

Once we’ve got our egos up and running and we have this sense of intactness . . . , we don’t want anyone messing with it. We call the Eight, Nine, and One the “I-don’t-want-to-be-messed-with” types. Show me an ego, and I’ll show you a structure that does not want to be interfered with. [4]

Wisdom Is Loving 
Friday, February 21, 2020

The first principle of great spiritual teachers is rather constant: only Love can be entrusted with Wisdom or Big Truth. All other attitudes will murder, mangle, and manipulate truth for their own ego purposes. Humans must first find the unified field of love and then start their thinking and perceiving from that point. This is the challenging insight of mature religion.  

All prayer disciplines are somehow trying to get mind, heart, and body to work as one, which entirely changes one’s consciousness. “The concentration of attention in the heart—this is the starting point of  all true prayer,” wrote St. Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894), a Russian monk, bishop, and mystic. [1] Apart from Love, any other “handler” of your experience, including the rational mind or merely intellectual theology, eventually distorts and destroys the beauty and healing power of Wisdom. 

The second principle is that truth is on some level always beautiful—and healing—to those who honestly want it. Big Truth cannot be angry, antagonistic, or forced on anyone, or it will inherently distort the message (as the common belief in a punitive God has done for centuries). The good, the true, and the beautiful are their own best argument for themselves, by themselves, and in themselves. Such deep inner knowing evokes the soul and pulls the soul into All Oneness. Incarnation is beauty, and beauty needs to be incarnate—that is specific, concrete, particular. We need to experience very particular, soul-evoking goodness in order to be shaken into what many call “realization.” It is often a momentary shock where we know we have been moved to a different plane of awareness. 

This is precisely how transformation differs from simply acquiring facts and information. Whereas information will often inflate the ego, transformation utterly humbles us. In that moment, we know how much we have not known up to now, and still surely do not know! Such humility is a good and probably necessary starting place and, I would say, the very seat of Wisdom.  

Love is luring us forward, because love is what we already are at our core, and we are naturally drawn to the fullness of our own being. Like knows like; to paraphrase Meister Eckhart, “God’s own whole being is poured out into identity. It is God’s pleasure and rapture to place God’s whole nature in this true place—because it is God’s own identity too.” [2] Like an electromagnetic force, Infinite Love is drawing the world into the one fullness of love. When we are comfortable in our true identity, we will finally be unable to resist such overwhelming love. (Some saints said even the devil would be unable to resist it in the end.) So don’t fight it, resist it, or deny it now. Love will always win. 

Stuck in the Body 
Thursday, February 20, 2020

In the West, we rely predominately on “head” knowledge, but our hearts offer us plenty of information as well through powerful experience of awe and empathy, joy and heartbreak (even if we choose to dismiss it most of the time). But it seems to me that we have lost or ignored the wisdom of the body almost completely. I have often taught that if we are not transformed by our pain, we will almost certainly transmit it to those around us, and I am learning that we pass it on to future generations as well. Author and therapist Resmaa Menakem speaks directly about “bodily knowing” and the transmission of trauma from a historical and corporate perspective. 

Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous. . . . 

The body is where we live. It’s where we fear, hope, and react. It’s where we constrict and relax. And what the body most cares about are safety and survival. When something happens to the body that is too much, too fast, or too soon, it overwhelms the body and can create trauma. . . .  

Trauma is not primarily an emotional response. [It] always happens in the body. . . . Trauma is the body’s protective response to an event—or a series of events—that [the body] perceives as potentially dangerous. This perception may be accurate, inaccurate, or entirely imaginary. . . .  

An embedded trauma response can manifest as fight, flee, or freeze—or as some combination of constriction, pain, fear, . . . reactive behaviors, or other sensations and experiences. This trauma then gets stuck in the body—and stays stuck there until it is addressed.  

Menakem explains how layers of trauma have built up in the United States: 

America is tearing itself apart. On the surface, this war looks like the natural outcome of many recent social and political clashes. But it’s not. These conflicts are anything but recent. One hundred and fifty-six years ago, they spawned the American Civil War. But even in the 1860s, these conflicts were already centuries old. They began in Europe during the Middle Ages, where they tore apart close to two million white bodies. The resulting tension came to America embedded in the bodies of Europeans, and it has remained in the bodies of many of their descendants. Over the past three centuries, that tension has been both soothed and deepened by the invention of whiteness and the resulting racialization of American culture.  

At first glance, today’s manifestation of this conflict appears to be a struggle for political and social power. . . . While we see anger and violence in the streets of our country, the real battlefield is inside our bodies. If we are to survive as a country it is inside our bodies where this conflict will need to be resolved. . . . If we are to upend the status quo of white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies.  

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

We may think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words. But this is only one expression. . . . Prayer is the opening of mind and heart—our whole being—to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Through grace we open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing—closer than consciousness itself. —Thomas Keating [1] 

Although Wisdom “work” and contemplative practice are not synonymous, I hope you can sense the resonance between the two paths. Each has the potential to open us up to greater love, compassion, and action through a conscious surrendering to greater knowing and the Great Knower. Whenever heart, mind, and body are all present and accounted for at the same time, when they are all “online” in the language of Wisdom, we can experience pure presence, a moment of deep inner connection with the pure, gratuitous Being of anything and everything. It may be experienced as a quiet leap of joy in the heart, absolute clarity in the mind, or a deep centeredness in the body. 

Contemplation, like the Wisdom path, is an exercise in openness, in keeping all three spaces open long enough for us to notice other hidden material. When we can do that, we are content with the present moment and can then wait upon futures we know will be given by grace. This is “full-access knowing”—not irrational, but intuitive, both rational and trans-rational at the same time. 

The supreme work of spirituality, which makes presence possible, is keeping the heart space open (the result of conscious love), keeping a “right mind” (the work of contemplation or meditation), and keeping the body alive with contentment or, as Cynthia would say, sensation, without attachment to its past woundings (often the work of healing). In that state, we are neither resisting nor clinging, and we can experience something genuinely new. 

Those who can keep all three spaces open at the same time will know The Presence that connects everything to everything. Surely this us what Jesus is talking about in his several parables that warn us to stay awake! (See Mark 13:34-37; Matthew 24:40-44 and 25:1-13) Being awake is a prerequisite for true prayer. This way of knowing has little to do with belonging to any particular denomination or religion; it is found at the headwaters of all the world’s major religions. Each has its own piece of Wisdom, its own techniques and teachings that urge us to bring our whole selves to the job of growing and “wising” up.  

Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.