Beneath every personality pattern is a wound of separation—and the simple, indestructible power to be.
Every Enneagram type hides, beneath its personality patterns, a deeply human wound — the experience of rejection. Before there were types, there was contact. Before ego, there was Being. And when that contact was disrupted — when the infant’s tender presence met a field of indifference, judgment, or hostility — something essential split. The fullness of Being is divided into good and bad, self and other, power and helplessness. This split became the blueprint for the personality we now refer to as “type.”
The Birth of the Rejecting Object Relation
At the heart of every Enneagram pattern lies a version of the rejecting object relation — a psychological structure composed of a weak, innocent self and a powerful, rejecting other. The self is “good” but powerless; the object is “bad” but powerful. Rejection becomes the air the psyche breathes, the lens through which the world is seen.
The infant, unable to reconcile love and frustration, splits experience into opposites: “I am small and good; you are big and bad.” The cost of this maneuver is immense. The child loses its power — the black, still immensity of Being itself — and projects that power onto the other. The world becomes intimidating, and the self feels perpetually one step away from annihilation.
The rejecting object relation fixes you in a place of feeling afraid in the world.
A. H. Almaas
Power and Its Distortions
In essence, Power is not dominance or control. It is the silent, annihilating presence of Being — the Black Essence. It doesn’t conquer falseness; it dissolves it. But when we are cut off from this still Power, we experience its echo as hatred, superiority, and control.
Hatred is the ego’s imitation of the Black. It tries to obliterate what frustrates it, but it cannot dissolve falseness because it is falseness. And when hatred is too raw to be owned, it transmutes into superiority — the ego’s counterfeit immensity. Superiority is how we inflate over the pain of rejection. “If I can’t bear feeling small, I’ll make myself big, above, or special.” Each Enneagram type does this in its own way.
Superiority and the Types
- Type One: Moral superiority — “I am right.” Rejects imperfection to avoid feeling bad or rejected.
- Type Two: Superiority through indispensability — “You need me.” Two gives to secure belonging, masking fear of being unwanted.
- Type Three: Achievement superiority — “I succeed where others fail.” Turns performance into armor against inner emptiness.
- Type Four: Emotional superiority — “I am deeper, more sensitive.” Transforms helpless longing and rejection into a sense of uniqueness and specialness.
- Type Five: Intellectual superiority — “I know what others don’t.” Withholds engagement, turning knowledge into safety.
- Type Six: Strategic superiority — “I see every threat.” Distrust turns into vigilance, creating a false sense of control.
- Type Seven: Freedom superiority — “I’m above limits.” Avoids pain by embracing boundless possibilities.
- Type Eight: Strength superiority — “I can’t be controlled.” Becomes the rejecting object itself to escape vulnerability.
- Type Nine: Humble superiority — “I’m above conflict.” Rejects their own significance to preserve comfort and peace.
Superiority gives each type its particular flavor of pseudo-power. But it’s an inflation built on fear. The moment we let ourselves feel the smallness it defends against — the helplessness, the grief, the longing — the mask cracks, and true Power begins to emerge.
Rejection and the Collapse of Space
Rejection doesn’t just divide the self from others; it collapses space. The field of openness — the inner atmosphere of Being — contracts into tight walls of “me versus you,” “good versus bad.” In this collapse, nothing can breathe. The soul becomes trapped between fear and defense, unable to move.
Superiority attempts to compensate for this lost spaciousness through inflation. It creates the illusion of expansion, but without true openness. In reality, superiority deepens the split — I become “above you,” which is simply another form of rejection.
True Space is not inflation but emptiness — the receptive openness that holds everything. It is Nonbeing in perfect intimacy with Being. When we reconnect to this Space, the terror of annihilation softens. We realize that the void isn’t death — it’s the womb of Presence.
The Black Essence and the Return of Power
When space opens, the soul can finally approach what it once feared most: the still, annihilating immensity of the Black Essence. What once felt like rejection is revealed as liberation. The Power that seemed to destroy the ego was never personal; it was the Power to be.
In the language of transformation:
- Hatred dissolves into true Power.
- Rejection relaxes into acceptance of what is.
- Ego agitation quiets into still Presence.
And this unfolding happens within the boundless openness of Space.
The Deeper Integration
The Enneagram, at its core, maps the ways we lose contact with Being — and how we unconsciously try to replace it. Each type’s defense, fixation, and passion are ways of compensating for the lost union of Space and Being.
When we reenter that unity, our patterns don’t disappear; they become transparent. The perfection of the One, the love of the Two, the achievement of the Three — all express themselves without distortion. What was rejection becomes intimacy. What was superiority becomes dignity. What was fear becomes the power to simply be.
The Power to Be
Ultimately, Power isn’t something we gain; it’s something we remember. It isn’t the force that dominates, but the stillness that is. It doesn’t rise above others but dissolves the very notion of higher and lower.
This is the power of Being. Powerful, simply because it is our nature, it is True Nature, it is the depth of True Nature. It is the glimmering gem of Being and it shows us that our True Power is really the power to be. – A. H. Almaas
Every type carries, within its wound of rejection, the same hidden truth: that no one can take away the power to be. When that is seen, the false power of superiority collapses, the rejecting stance softens, and the heart discovers it was never separate from Being at all.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. His newest book, Nurturing Essence: A Compass for Essential Parenting, invites parents to discover the role essence plays in child development. He is also 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.