What happens when you stop trying to type people—and just let them land in your world.
Sometime in the mid-’90s, I found myself cross-legged on a cushion at Esalen, attending one of Helen Palmer’s Enneagram workshops. At the time, I was married to an extraordinary woman—an unmistakable Four.
It was the love affair of my life.
I had never been with anyone who could meet the intensity of an Eight with such radical allowing. Her openness didn’t collapse in the face of my force—it responded with depth, nuance, and unflinching presence. We didn’t cancel each other out; we combusted—sometimes gloriously, sometimes precariously—but never destructively.
And here’s the thing: in sixteen years together, I can only remember one truly intense argument. There was passion, no doubt. Strong feelings on both sides. But it never devolved into hostility. There was too much heart for that. Too much rawness. Too much shared sensitivity to the real. We couldn’t go numb or turn cold—it just wasn’t in the fabric of what we had.
Let’s be honest, though—if you pissed her off, you still wouldn’t want to turn your back on her. And this was coming from someone twice her size. She was tiny compared to me physically, but when that fire lit up behind her eyes, the space shifted. She could radiate a presence that made you stop in your tracks—not because she was threatening, but because she was unmistakably there.
Anyone familiar with Helen Palmer’s work knows she uses panel interviews—gathering individuals of the same Enneagram type and gently coaxing their inner world into the room. You don’t just hear about the types. You feel them—the energy changes. The atmosphere thickens or lifts. The type, as Helen would say, starts to transmit.
One evening, she brought out the panel of Fives.
Now, Eights are connected to Fives on the Enneagram—our line of movement goes there. So I figured I had a decent grasp on what makes a Five tick—detached, mental, private, high IQ. Right?
And then the Fives began to speak.
Within minutes, a strange realization settled over me—not in my head, but in my body. These people are aliens. They were not just wired differently. They were operating from an entirely different frequency of existence. Their responses, their pauses, their relationship to space, to people, to language—it all shimmered with an extraordinary, quiet otherness.
And I loved it.
What struck me most wasn’t their intellect, but the field they created. Spacious, unintrusive, electric with stillness. I wasn’t analyzing them. I wasn’t mentally translating. I was receiving them. And in that openness, something shifted—from concept to contact.
It reminded me of the way we work in the Diamond Approach®. True insight doesn’t come from grasping another person through your filters. It arises from relaxing into not-knowing—resting in presence until a felt understanding reveals itself. Beyond history, beyond thought, beyond comparison.
That night, the Fives weren’t a type on a chart; they were visitors from another star system. And somehow, their presence helped me realize how much I usually expect others to be like me.
The following evening, Helen brought out the panel of Fours. My wife was on it.
It was nearing dusk. The room was filled with dimming light, and as the panel began to speak, the atmosphere grew heavier, more interior. The Fours—tender, vulnerable, emotionally articulate—started to open up, sharing stories of longing, shame, beauty, and grief.
And something subtle began happening in the room. People on their cushions began to scoot back slowly.
Not out of disrespect. Not consciously. But almost as if the field of emotional intensity created by the Fours was physically pushing people back—not with force, but with depth. It was like a black hole had opened in front of us—dense with feeling, impossible to escape, pulling us toward something we weren’t sure we were ready to face. Helen noticed it and named it, and the whole room burst out laughing. It was true. We were backing away from the gravitational pull of the Four field.
Again, I had that unmistakable sense: aliens.
But not cold, distant ones this time. These were beings of aching interiority—sensitive creatures speaking in the language of soul and sorrow, with a fluency that made the rest of us a little breathless.
Two nights. Two panels. Two entirely different dimensions. And something in me changed.
I stopped trying to figure people out using the Enneagram. I stopped trying to fit them into boxes or build bridges out of my assumptions. Instead, I began to assume that the person in front of me was an alien. Their inner world is not mine. Their atmosphere is not my atmosphere. Their emotional gravity is tuned to a different sun.
And if I want to understand them, I have to stop transmitting and start receiving. I have to get quiet enough to let them land.
These days, I find this metaphor far more helpful than typing. When someone’s reaction seems incomprehensible, when their silence or their sensitivity or their need for space feels baffling, I remember: they’re not from here. Not from my internal planet. And my job isn’t to make them familiar.
My job is to become curious. To slow down. To listen. And sometimes, the most intimate thing we can do is admit: “I have no idea how your world works. But I’m here. Let me see. Let me into your world.”
Alien or not, that kind of listening builds bridges. And perhaps that’s the point of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Not abductions, but empathy. Not experiments, but presence.
Not studying the alien, but surrendering to the strangeness—until what once felt foreign becomes familiar. Not because we’ve explained it, but because we’ve entered it.
And in that space between you and me, where understanding can’t be forced and mystery is welcome—
The Enneagram becomes not a system of types…But a galaxy of beings. Each orbiting the Mystery in their own way.
John Harper (8) is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and a student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. He is the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.