We are not fixations on the nine-pointed Enneagram. Each of us is an enneagram.
The nine-pointed enneagram serves as a deep exploration tool into human consciousness. Unlike the common belief, we aren’t just singular points on the nine-pointed enneagram; we represent its full range. This piece highlights the multifaceted aspects of the nine-pointed enneagram, underlining that every person embodies all its dimensions. Engage in this detailed journey of the nine-pointed enneagram and unveil the immense potential and realities it presents.
We are not merely fixations on the nine-pointed Enneagram. Each individual embodies the essence of the nine-pointed Enneagram.
The fixated self, with its conditioned patterning, did not exist at birth. We arrived in this body free from worldly experience’s effects. In our first few years, we became identified with our bodies. Our mind is part of the body, interpreting all experiences (inner and outer) about the body. Thus, everything from mom’s touch to a bump on the head to indigestion is our experience referenced to the body.
It’s been downhill ever since. Perhaps there has been a turn, but it was, or still is, quite the ride with the crash-test dummy behind the wheel. This journey, deeply intertwined with the nine-pointed enneagram, offers insights into our true nature and potential.
Most teachers in the nine-pointed enneagram community advocate for the wing theory in their teachings. So, point eight has wings of influence from point nine and point seven. Thus, each point is a triadic expression of dominant and secondary characteristics and tendencies.
But each point also has a heart point and a stress point. So, eight moves to point two or five under life’s influence. Thus, point eight, “driving under the influence,” of point two or five inherits the secondary influences of those wings. As a result, we all resonate with the characteristics of the nine-pointed Enneagram.
After creating more space for our interdimensional gyroscope to function freely, we’ll discuss some of these implications. Right now, it’s trapped in a dynamic inertia where a lot is happening but little change.
Escaping the Two-dimensional Enneagram
If the heading above or even this sentence were fashioned from letters five feet high and a foot thick on the edge, you would see a straight line when viewed from any point perpendicular to the edge. The length of the line would change depending on the point of observation. You could have all the knowledge and wisdom of reality in one sentence, and all you would see would be a straight line.
This is a simple example of perspective and its impact on observation, experience, knowledge, and understanding.
The traditional two-dimensional representation of the nine-pointed enneagram is a simplified version of a concept that is inherently multi-dimensional.
To allow our interest and attention to be imprisoned in two-dimensional understanding is like living an entire life breathing through a straw.
Relying solely on intellectual labeling restricts a profound understanding of the nine-pointed Enneagram. Access to the multidimensional wisdom of the enneagram requires us to include experiential and conceptual knowledge. To plumb the depths, experiential knowledge must lead the way.
We can read about our ennea-type and its character traits, defenses, behavior patterns, and whatnot. Still, suppose we don’t allow ourselves to explore the feelings, effects, and sensations inherent in our fixation. In that case, we will never move beyond defining a “self” with its life of endless superficial self-improvement activity.
We need to “experience” the fixation, the way the constraints feel, the way it patterns and limits our energies, emotional range, aliveness, curiosity, perception – you name it. We must “experience” the movement from point A to point B. Along with all this “experiencing,” we must pay attention to how it influences our sense of self and the world – the inner landscape of consciousness and worldview.
Floating in the Shallow End of the Enneagram
I beg your indulgence for a brief rant. My Facebook feed is littered with enneagram posts like:
- “I’m a 2w3; who should I marry?”
- “My dog is a type 8. What’s a good ennea choice for a second dog? BTW, my cat’s a 4.”
- I’m a 3w4. Any tips for my kitchen remodel?
In our world of superficiality, sound bites, and FOMO, something with deep significance and value can be reduced to Trivia Pursuit by hucksters in a few short years.
The enneagram and ‘nondual’ are two current examples of this phenomenon.
While I can appreciate any level of interest in the Enneagram that entices one to go deeper into self-exploration, it’s a tragedy to see it relegated to self-centered, mass-market consciousness.
It’s like giving someone a Hocho chef’s knife and watching them dig up dandelions or prying the lid off a paint can.
The enneagram has secrets to unveil, keys to the treasure of you – why limit yourself to putting lipstick on a pig? Delving deeper into the nine-pointed enneagram can unlock transformative insights and a richer understanding of oneself.
The Esoteric Metaphysical Enneagram
The popularity of the enneagram of personality types overshadows the metaphysics of the enneagram. The metaphysics of the enneagram, as taught by Gurdjieff, are elaborate and complex as they address mathematics, vibrational scales, and creation cycles – in short, the laws of cosmology.
Here, we wish to point out something simple.
The enneagram has three components: the circle, the triangle, and the hexagon.
The circle represents the co-emergence of being and non-being, manifestation or creation, and reality’s absolute ground or nature. The circle reflects unity and oneness as well as emptiness or absence. It also represents time and timelessness and is expressed in 10 (1 + 0 = 1).
The triangle represents the trinity or law of three. For this article, we call attention to the trinity as the Absolute (Father), Soul (Son), and Essence (Spirit).
The hexagonal figure represents the law of seven (harmonics) and numerologically, 6 – the realm of humanness, relationships, and personal experience.
So numerologically, one way of viewing the symbology of the enneagram is as 1 – 3 – 6 or (1 + 3 + 6 = 10 = 1).
The Enneagram is an expression of dynamic consciousness – in this world, not of it. It reflects the connection between individual consciousness, essential nature, and the Absolute ground of reality. In short, the enneagram is an astrolabe of consciousness.
Enneagram as Dynamism of Consciousness
Understanding the notion of ‘logos’ can help give us a taste of the enneagram’s dynamism ‘under the hood’.
The logos is often called the Word or the primordial vibration, the dynamism of creation. It also speaks to the patterning of reality and its evolutionary force and unfoldment as the will of God. In this respect, we have unique logos, like fractals within the cosmic logos.
More accurately, since the manifest world is also the logos, for it is the logos’s unfolding particulars, and the world is composed of word-concepts, the logos is composed of word-concepts. It is both speaker and speech. It utters the words and is the totality of all the words. However, the manifest world is one indivisible field of dynamic presence, and not disconnected forms and objects. The presence of the logos is then a unified field of words, spoken all at once, for creation is of the world as a whole, instantaneously and continuously. The logos does not utter the word-concepts in succession, it utters them all at once, simultaneously, as if it is uttering one word. In other words, the logos is a word that contains all words. We can understand here why the logos can be referred to as the Word. It is the word of the divine being through which all comes into being. The logos is the Word of Being, the speech by which Being becomes a speaker, and by which the manifest world comes into being. – A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home, ch. 20
The Enneagram can help us recognize aspects of our patterning and flow. We can use it to reveal how we carry the past in ways that impinge on the unfoldment of our consciousness. Using these insights, we can target these impingements or fixations with attention and curiosity (CURIOSITY: THE HIDDEN GEM IN CONSCIOUSNESS) to liberate the dynamism of our souls (logos) from the past.
Understanding the nature and power of open-ended inquiry (WHY IS CURIOSITY (INQUIRY) IMPORTANT?) and the Theory of Holes is invaluable for spiritual growth (evolution of consciousness).
The Interdimensional Nine-pointed Person
The enneagram of personality types blesses us with many doorways to explore and bring hidden dynamics from the past that limit our current potential and possibilities into consciousness. Doorways left unopened are opportunities lost.
When we accept, without questioning and exploring, we choose suffering over liberation and lightness of being – not to mention the mind-boggling revelations and discoveries of what we really are.
One way to imagine the interdimensional nature of the enneagram is to consider enneagrams other than the enneagram of personality types, like the enneagram of holy ideas or the enneagram of passions and virtues. There are many others, but just these few take us deeper into each point, revealing aspects and connections to our essential nature that may have been lost or forgotten.
Imagine these enneagrams stacked on top of each other with points aligned. One is rotating clockwise, ninety degrees to perpendicular. Another counterclockwise. Another is pulsating into the foreground and fading into the background.
As they move, they move through each other. Imagine it. Imagine feeling just those few forces simultaneously happening throughout you. It is the merest of tastes of what is happening constantly.
My best attempt to articulate a sense of it is chapter 46, Chronosynclastic Infundibulum in More Than Meets the I.
Chronosynclastic Infundibulum: A place, or a moment, where all the different kinds of truths fit together and where there are many different ways to be absolutely right about everything.
It takes some curiosity, some time, and some application of intention to actually experience consciousness as a living substance, as the experiential medium of life and creation. Until then, we consider consciousness a mental process, alertness, or basic awakeness and perception.
It’s all of this but so much more.
The Enneagram is an invitation to a world just beyond the tip of your nose, beyond a fixation, beyond a personality type (with or without wings), and eventually beyond the beyond.
Diamond Approach Enneagram On-demand Courses
In this 11-module course, Sandra Maitri and Russ Hudson will synthesize decades of Enneagram knowledge and teaching experience with a lifetime of Diamond Approach spiritual development and methodology to help us reconnect to our essential being through the Enneagram. Click Here for Access
This course explores how the particular ‘take’ on reality at the core of each of the nine types begins and the resulting belief structures, emotional patterns, and behaviors. Click Here for Access