The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Suzanne’s friend Rebecca is a nurse who works with children with profound visual impairment. As part of her job, she leads support groups for parents whose kids have just received a diagnosis. These parents, mostly young mothers, are confused, hurt and sometimes angry, and Rebecca provides guidance about navigating challenges they never suspected life would visit on them.
Apart from the practical advice, the most invaluable part of the workshops comes when Rebecca hands the parents eyeglasses that correlate to each child’s specific disability. Almost always, the parents burst into tears. “I had no idea that this is the way my child sees the world,” they tell her. Once they have the experience of observing through their children’s eyes, they never experience the world in quite the same way again. They may still be angry about the diagnosis, but they’re not frustrated with their child, because even a brief exposure to the reality of how hard life is for these kids inspires in their parents only compassion.
This is the gift of the Enneagram. Sometimes people talk about the Enneagram as a tool that reveals the lens through which people see the world. When you realize that your Loyalist Six husband views it as a place filled with danger and uncertainty, and he in turn understands that when you get up in the morning you as a Performer Three feel an urgent need to compete and excel at everything you do, it’s amazing how much more compassion you can have for each other. Everything isn’t so personal anymore. You understand that your loved one’s behavior is born out of a singular biography, a particular wound, a fractured vision of life.
“Compassion is a verb.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Now that you understand the basics of the Enneagram, Suzanne and I hope two things happen for you. The first is simply that it sparks greater compassion for others and for yourself. If we all could have nine pairs of Enneagram glasses and swap them, we could be moved to extend infinitely more grace and understanding to one another. Such compassion is the foundation of relationships. It changes everything.
The Enneagram shows us that we can’t change the way other people see, but we can try to experience the world through their eyes and help them change what they do with what they see. I like the way Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh explains this. “When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change,” he says. “But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.”
Ponder that last line for a moment. It’s when we stop trying to change people and simply love them that they actually have a shot at transformation. The Enneagram is a tool that awakens our compassion for people just as they are, not the people we wish they would become so our lives would become easier.
After reading this book, we hope you feel stirred to widen the circle of compassion to include more and more people around you—even yourself. I said earlier in the book that I long for people to know that God beholds us with the same soft gaze the adoring mother beholds her sleeping infant with. If we could look at ourselves with that same quality of affection, how much healing could take place in our souls?
This idea of self-compassion raises the other issue we want you to take away from this book: every number on the Enneagram teaches us something about the nature and character of the God who made us. Inside each number is a hidden gift that reveals something about God’s heart. So when you are tempted to prosecute yourself for the flaws in your own character, remember that each type is at its core a signpost pointing us to travel toward and embrace an aspect of God’s character that we need.
Ones show us God’s perfection and his desire to restore the world to its original goodness, while Twos witness to God’s unstoppable, selfless giving. Threes remind us about God’s glory, and Fours about the creativity and pathos of God. Fives show God’s omniscience, Sixes God’s steadfast love and loyalty, and Sevens God’s childlike joy and delight in creation. Eights mirror God’s power and intensity, while Nines reflect God’s love of peace and desire for union with his children.
The problems arise when we exaggerate these characteristics, when we grab hold of a single trait and turn it into an ultimate value or an idol. When we privilege one of these nine characteristics above all else, that’s when it becomes grotesque and unrecognizable or—dare I say—sinful.
“For me to be a saint means to be myself.”
Thomas Merton
Ones’ passion to improve the world goes bad when they start to believe that in order to be loved they have to be perfect and not make mistakes. Twos’ self-donating love devolves into an unhealthy codependence. Threes take their love of glory and disfigure it into a narcissistic need for constant praise. Fours descend into self-absorption as they give free rein to their overcharged feelings, while Fives have nearly the opposite problem, withdrawing into their minds and cutting themselves off from the unavoidable risks intrinsic to all human relationships. Sixes are unable to trust in a future in which God is already waiting for them, and Sevens flee the pain that deepens the soul in favor of a party that only distracts it. Eights’ need to be right and to challenge others can deteriorate into intimidating the weak, and Nines’ desire to avoid conflict at all costs means that they are all too willing to accept peace at any price.
Behind each of these distortions is a misguided strategy to grab for happiness and love the way Adam and Eve overreached and grabbed for fruit. We are trying to steal that which can only be received as a gift from God.
Part of the Enneagram’s goal is to help us relax our paralytic grip on that one dimension of God’s character so we can open our hands to receive the other characteristics of God our clenched fists will not allow. A One may never fully stop reaching for perfection, but he can open his hands to receive the gifts other numbers hold. A Six is not going to entirely stop being anxious, but she can begin to perceive and cultivate the gifts that come with a Seven’s joie de vivre or an Eight’s assertiveness, counterbalancing her own anxiety. What we all want to do is seek health within our own number and respect and recognize that we have access to all the gifts of these other numbers. What we’re after is integritas, or wholeness.
In his landmark work New Seeds of Contemplation the Catholic monk Thomas Merton wrote, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”
Though it has taken me twenty years to grasp the meaning of Merton’s insight, I understand it now. We most delight and reflect the glory of God when we discover and reclaim our God-given identity, with which we lost connection shortly after our arrival in this fallen world.
We owe it to the God who created us, to ourselves, to the people we love and to all with whom we share this troubled planet to become “saints.” How else can we run and complete the errand on which God sent us here?
And now allow us the joy of passing on to you John O’Donohue’s Blessing for Solitude, which Br. Dave prayed over me as I embarked on my Enneagram journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge.
May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the façade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening.
May you learn to see your self with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
Amen. Let it be so.