"Enneagram: A Path to Compassion
& Personal Growth"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
September 28, 2003

There are two kinds of people. There are dog people and cat people, Elvis people and Beatles people, Aristotle people and Plato people, morning people and night people, Leno people and Letterman people, Coke people and Pepsi people, etc. etc. Or maybe there are three kinds of people, Aristotle identifies three kinds of persons who attend the Olympic games:  Athletes, who participate, spectators, who watch the athletes, and the hawkers, who sell things to the first two kinds. In popular vernacular, there are three kinds of males, depending on what part of the female anatomy appeals to them the most. Views about the psychology of the three kinds of men often accompany the use of the terms.

Through-out history humans have sought to classify one another and themselves. We have sought understanding by placing ourselves on continuums and hanging labels on our lapels. With the Enneagram I found a system that helps me to see the box I have put myself in and offers me ways to get beyond it.  It lays out the places in my life that I have been contracting, limiting myself, based on past experiences.

The Enneagram is a nine-pointed system for discovering our motivations in life and reducing our suffering by getting out of our own way. It helps us to gather all the energy we put into ineffective ways of being in the world, thus making that energy available for positive growth. It is a system that helps us to see the suffering we cause others and ourselves, which all sounds vague and rather cultist but try to hang in here with me.  Learning about the Enneagram is like jumping in a stream in the middle of the current. It takes a while to get going in the right direction. I find myself sounding like some kind of convert to the latest new age psychobabble, not that new age is necessarily bad it just isn’t usually me.  But like most good tools there is a certain cult-like sound to those who know how to use them. Ever talk to someone who has just figured out how to use a shiny new table saw or sewing machine?  The Enneagram is a tool; I think a good one. 

Most important, let me stop here and say a word about labeling.  I don’t like it.  I resist with great fervor our cultural inclination to label and thus dismiss others. We start by labeling children as hyperactive or passive, underachiever or over, gifted or learning disabled.  Then we progress to labeling each other as I suggested in the first paragraph.  We are liberal or conservative, gay or straight, Islamic or Jew, theist or pagan, pro-choice or pro-life. All these labels serve to do is put people in a box and keep us there.  When I treat people as labels I cease to see them as people and interact with them as a stereotype.  As a staunch pro-choice person, when I encounter a pro-life person I can make assumptions about their religion and political attitudes.  I can dismiss them and never engage, certain that we can’t listen to one another.  Or when I encounter a pro-life person, I can understand that is one part of their life, one perspective they have, and then listen for other ways they define themselves. I can also place myself in a box by calling myself woman, or minister or mom accepting those as the definitive characteristics of my existence.  While each of them is true (I am a woman minister who is a mom) those boxes are not the end all of my existence. If I let them define me I will be limiting my potential. I find labels destructive. 

The Enneagram is not about labels it is instead about perspectives and understanding our own.  It is about learning that each of us only sees about 10% of the information in any given situation.  It is about learning that I allow only certain data into my world, data that confirms my worldview.  That data and limited worldview creates much of the pain in my life.  The Enneagram gives me a way to let more of the world in while releasing more potential for myself.  The Enneagram uses numbers as a short hand for describing the perspective I am prone to but it is not about numbers.

There are many things that help us to transcend the boxes we find ourselves in; education, meditation, religion, spiritual practices, therapy, intimate relationships all help us out of ourselves and into the world.  The Enneagram is one more. 

For me it is a particularly effective tool for two reasons.

First, it does not pursue self-knowledge through overindulgence in one’s own thoughts or feelings.  Rather, it views one’s own thoughts and feelings as indicators of a deeper truth about oneself -- one’s primary motivation.  It is by discovering one’s primary motivation that one truly attains self-knowledge.

Second, according to the Enneagram, self-knowledge is but one requirement for personal transformation: it also requires a movement beyond the self.  When we move beyond ourselves we find greater peace and less suffering.  When we can see and undo old patterns that are no longer useful we open ourselves up to freedom, and love. It is only by self-transcendence, getting beyond our stuff, that a good life is even possible.  I don’t use those words lightly: freedom, love and self-transcendence.  For me the Enneagram has meant more choice and an awareness of my free will, i.e. freedom.  It has improved my relationship with others giving me more support and intimacy, i.e. love.  It has allowed me to get out of my own way now and again so I can see my potential. 

I believe the discovering of our deeper motivations and the skills to get beyond ourselves to be unique components of the Enneagram.  So to give you some idea of the power of the Enneagram, we begin with them.

First, is knowledge of our motivation.

One truism about human beings is that we tend to look subjectively at ourselves but objectively at other people.  That is, when it comes to self-observation we are never short on extenuating circumstances that justify our behavior.  However, when it comes to observing other people, the harsh straight rule of objectivity easily finds fault with them.

Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard, one of the earliest existential thinkers, believed the ethical life required that we reverse this tendency.  Kierkegaard believed we should look objectively at ourselves but subjectively at other people.  That is, when it comes to self-observation we should apply the harsh straight rule of objectivity to critique ourselves.  When it comes to observing others, we should never be short on extenuating circumstances that justify their behavior.

What Kierkegaard is talking about is a mechanism by which we discover what motivates us.  One could say he is talking about the destruction of our Archimedean point.  Archimedes was that ancient Greek fellow who proved the law of the lever entirely by geometry.  Thus, the fable grew that Archimedes once moved the earth by establishing the right geometrical point in relation to the force of a lever pressed against the earth.

I use the metaphor of the Archimedean point to speak about the illusion, or in some cases the arrogance, that convinces each of us that our perspective on the world is the correct perspective to have.  Thus we see ourselves, essentially, to be omniscient. We are convinced that our viewpoint is the absolute viewpoint.  Like Archimedes, we believe that the perspective or place where we stand is the most effective place to stand in relation to all things.

Now, I suspect that as I speak these words most, if not all of you, are saying to yourselves, “That’s not the way I think about myself. I am open minded.” And this is probably true.  You probably don’t think of yourself in this way.  However, while we may not think of ourselves in this way, we in fact often behave in this way.

Let’s admit it.  We behave as though we are omniscient.  We behave as though our viewpoint is most justifiable.  Proof of this is simple.  Merely answer the following question “true” or “false.”  “I often make statements that I believe to be false.”  Of course the answer to this is “false.”  We simply do not go around making statements we believe to be false.  We believe the statements we make to be true, unless we possess some malicious intent, such as lying.  Basically then, for all intents and purposes, we behave as though we are omniscient, as though our viewpoint is the one true viewpoint.  We each possess an Archimedean point within us.

Even further, we protect our Archimedean point by ignoring data that does not confirm our worldview.  That is, we tend to see the world through our own bias, though we are seldom aware of this fact.  Yet, it is this fact that explains how some can continue to adhere to Creationism despite the empirical evidence to the contrary.  It is this fact that explains the left wing fundamentalist’s inability even to countenance the conservative viewpoint.  It is this fact that explains why you never have gotten along with that certain person and why you never will!  You simply refuse to admit any data that might challenge your perspective of him…  Ouch!  You didn’t want to hear THAT this morning, did you?!  Who among us really wants to change or shift our worldview -- because it’s right after all.

Which, of course, is my main point, we all have an Archimedean point within us, a perspective we believe to be the correct perspective to have in relation to all things.  In fact, most of us don’t even know that it is merely a perspective!  Not only is it merely a perspective, it is but one among many!  According to the Enneagram, it is one of nine.  And the Enneagram shows us this by helping us to view ourselves more objectively, as Kierkegaard suggests.

Now, where the Enneagram becomes profoundly transformative is that once you recognize that your perspective is but one among many, that you are but one type of human being among many types, it asks you to discover your motive.  It is your motive that is your essential self, the part of you that creates your perspective and thus causes you to respond to the world the way you do.  And once you discover this, the way you perceive the world and the way the world perceives you becomes clearer.  You begin to understand why you struggle with a certain person or get along so well with another one.  Or why the world perceives you in ways you don’t perceive yourself – something you’ve always sensed but never been able to articulate. It helps us to develop compassion as we see how others are as trapped in their motivations and worldview as we are. In other words, the Enneagram is the tool both to self-understanding and care.

And that has been most profound for me, the second part, getting beyond the stuff. Once I understood that my main motivation is to preserve harmony – to put it simplistically, I understood why, for instance, sometimes I had a hard time making decisions. I could see all sides and didn’t want to create disharmony by picking one.  I understood why I had been perceived as a good listener – I was listening to hear where I could make peace.  I understood why I had avoided conflict.  Now with some awareness, skills and practice I can sometimes get beyond that stuff and use the skills I learned trying to preserve peace to create real harmony not just the absence of conflict. You see, like most things in the world, our motivations have created a place with in us that is both a blessing and a curse, a vice and a virtue. 

So, yes, this morning is a commercial for my class starting on Tuesday night. Give it a chance and you just might learn something new. But even more, this sermon is a wake up call.  Not a one of us has the corner on truth. We know that. We are Unitarian Universalists. We come here, as the bumper sticker says, to have our answers questioned and to hear how others answer the big questions in their lives.  But we forget sometimes.  We forget that there are many paths up the mountain. We forget that even with 20/20 vision and excellent hearing our view of the world is limited at best. We forget that no matter how right we seem, new data could come to light that will prove a better road if we only listen. 

We forget

There are many perspectives in the world… mine is but one.

There are many ways of perceiving the world… mine is but one.

There are many ways of thinking about the world.. mine is but one.

There are many ways of talking about the world… mine is but one.

There are many perspectives in the world… mine is but one.

In this coming week may you find it easier to remember.  Namaste.