The Enneagram as a Tool for Unlearning
Though often understood as a system for analyzing personality, the Enneagram holds power as a tool for unlearning and spiritual growth. While it offers valuable insight into our ego patterns, its real strength lies in guiding us toward dismantling these ingrained structures and reconnecting with our true essence. Rooted in ancient wisdom and modern psychology, the Enneagram is not merely a tool for self-understanding but a map to help navigate the spiritual journey.
Spiritual practices like Buddhism, the Diamond Approach®, and others remind us that spiritual growth is not about accumulating knowledge but unlearning the conditioned behaviors and perceptions that obscure our essential nature. The Enneagram can be part of this unlearning process, shedding light on where our ego structures have led us astray and illuminating the path back to spiritual freedom.
Podcast Discussion
A Path, Not a Map
While it’s easy to view spiritual practices as tools for self-understanding, the inverse is true. A spiritual path represents the lived experience—the total immersion in reality. The Enneagram, in contrast, is the map that helps us see where we have strayed from the path. While the map gives us landmarks, it walks the terrain of spiritual practice where true transformation occurs.
The temptation to intellectualize the journey through the Enneagram is strong, but the real work is staying present with each step along the spiritual path. Spiritual growth is experiential, rooted in presence, inquiry, and direct experience. The Enneagram provides a framework, but through walking the path—through practices like mindfulness, meditation, and inquiry—we embody the growth the map points toward.
The most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing.
Shunryu Suzuki
Spiritual Potential as a Clear Reflection of Ego Types
Often, we view our Enneagram types as distorted reflections of our spiritual potential. However, the inverse shows that our spiritual essence is always evident. The ego’s patterns form around this clarity but obscure it only in our perception. The Enneagram provides a way to understand these obscurations. Still, spiritual practice is how we return to the pure potential of our essence.
In the Diamond Approach, the ego is seen as a distorted reflection of our essential qualities. Understanding this distortion through the Enneagram is helpful, but through spiritual practices, we can begin to live from that pure essence rather than the distorted ego structure. By seeing the Enneagram types not as barriers but as gateways, we can recognize the undistorted spiritual qualities that each type points toward.
True nature reveals itself when we stop seeking. The more we try to hold onto it, the more elusive it becomes, because the very act of grasping comes from a sense of deficiency.
A. H. Almaas, The Unfolding Now
Essence and Ego: The Inseparable Dance
We often think of the Holy Ideas as pure and the ego as distorting that purity. However, the inverse suggests that the ego is also part of the essence, not some foreign entity. The ego, much like a mirror, reflects the light of essence but in a distorted way. In the Diamond Approach, this understanding translates into a view that the ego is not the enemy but a necessary soul development.
Spiritual practice becomes a process of integrating ego back into essence rather than rejecting it. The Enneagram helps us understand how the ego reflects—and distorts—our essential qualities, but the more profound work is learning to hold both ego and essence in harmony. This is not about bypassing the ego but embracing it as part of the spiritual process, gradually transforming it so that it no longer distorts but reflects the true nature of the self.
The more you chase after it, the more it eludes you. The more you talk of it, the less you understand.
Tao Te Ching
A Fixed System in Flux
While the Enneagram reveals that personality is fixated, it does so dynamically. Our fixation is not a static point but a patterned behavior and reactivity that continually unfolds. We are fixated within this patterned flow, which adjusts and responds to stress, security, and life circumstances. Similarly, spiritual awakening is not a static state to ‘achieve’; it is an ever-evolving process. Just as Enneagram types move fluidly within their patterns, our spiritual journey flows through states of contraction and expansion, always influenced by our inner work and external life experiences.
In this sense, the interplay between personality and essence is not a one-time realization but an ongoing dance of flux and flow. Understanding how your type operates under shifting conditions provides insight into the fluidity of personality and spiritual states. Like the Enneagram, our spiritual journey is never fixed but a constant unfolding of deeper and deeper layers of awareness and presence.
Fixation is a defense system, a posture of resistance to reality. It is always moving, like the layers of an onion. As we peel away each layer, what we find is another layer of our structure, and ultimately, the essence of who we are.
Oscar Ichazo
The Destination Appears as the Map Recedes
We often hear that the Enneagram is just a map, but the inverse suggests that the destination is within it. The journey of spiritual growth isn’t about transcending personality—it’s about diving deeply into it to find the essence at its core. The ego, when fully understood and integrated, becomes a doorway back to the very spiritual truths we seek.
In the Diamond Approach, inquiry into our Enneagram type isn’t a distraction from spiritual practice—it is its very substance. We dissolve our patterns’ experience, revealing their essence. The Enneagram isn’t just a tool for diagnosing our personality but a pathway to understanding the spiritual qualities beneath those patterns.
Integrating Mindfulness, Non-Attachment, and Compassion
When viewed through Buddhist principles, the Enneagram can be a powerful tool for spiritual growth. Integrating mindfulness, non-attachment, and compassion into our Enneagram work deepens our self-awareness and helps us unlearn the conditioned behaviors that keep us bound to our ego.
- Mindfulness: As in Buddhist practice, mindfulness while engaging with the Enneagram allows us to observe our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors without getting caught. By cultivating awareness of our patterns, we create space for more conscious choices, moving beyond automatic reactions and into deeper self-awareness.
- Non-Attachment: Practicing non-attachment with the Enneagram means recognizing that our personality type is not who we are. It is a framework for understanding, not an identity. By loosening our attachment to the fixed categories of the Enneagram, we open ourselves to the dynamic, fluid nature of spiritual growth.
- Compassion: Understanding our Enneagram type allows us to approach ourselves and others compassionately. Recognizing the fears and motivations behind our behaviors creates space for kindness and understanding. Just as Buddhist teachings emphasize compassion for all beings, the Enneagram encourages us to see ourselves and others through a lens of empathy and shared humanity.
True inquiry is not about fixing ourselves, but about understanding ourselves with compassion. When we observe ourselves mindfully, without attachment to how we should be, we allow the deeper truth of who we are to emerge.
A. H. Almaas, The Unfolding Now
The Path as the Embodied Map
Ultimately, the Enneagram, spiritual practices, and the journey of awakening are all interconnected aspects of the same process. The map is not separate from the path—each informs the other. The Enneagram illuminates where we are on our journey, but the real work comes in walking the path. Don’t mistake the exploration of personality patterns for the end goal, but also don’t disregard how deeply integrated these patterns are with your spiritual potential.
By engaging fully with the map and the path, we open to the dynamic, unfolding process of realizing our true nature. The Enneagram is a tool for unlearning and shedding patterns that obscure our essence. Still, the transformation lies in using it as a guide toward deeper self-awareness, presence, and spiritual freedom. The path of spiritual awakening is not about bypassing personality but understanding it so thoroughly that we find the essence within.
The Enneagram is not about putting people in boxes. It’s about showing them the boxes they are already in—and how to get out of them. It is a tool for awareness, and awareness leads to transformation.
Claudio Naranjo
Embracing the Backwards Law
Here, the concept of “the backwards law,” described by philosopher Alan Watts and popularized by Mark Manson, comes into play. The desire for more positive experiences is a negative experience because it reinforces the ego’s belief that something is lacking. In contrast, accepting negative experiences is paradoxically a positive experience, leading to growth and transformation. The fundamental transformation comes not from trying to escape these ego patterns but from facing them with full awareness.
This idea directly relates to the Enneagram’s understanding of ego patterns. The constant striving for a “better self,” or more positive experiences, reflects the ego’s deep insecurity and fixation. Each Enneagram type, in its pursuit of validation, control, security, or love, creates a cycle of dissatisfaction.
When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. That insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.
Alan Watts
Ego Activity as a Gateway to Growth
In the framework of the Enneagram, the ego’s activity—though seemingly negative in its fixation—is not something to be rejected or judged. Instead, it is a necessary part of our journey. Exploring our personality’s difficult and uncomfortable aspects is the most effective way to gain insight and growth. Rather than resisting our habitual patterns, we use the Enneagram as a tool to bring them into full consciousness.
This approach aligns with “the backwards law” because it encourages us to stop chasing the elusive “positive experience” of perfecting our personality. Instead, it invites us to dive deeply into the very experiences we’ve been avoiding—our fears, insecurities, and vulnerabilities—because this exploration makes our essence emerge.
Maturing Beyond Ego
The skills and talents we’ve developed through our Enneagram type don’t disappear as we grow; they mature and ripen. The dramatic change is in identity: we shift from identifying with personality to identifying with essence. This is not a conceptual change but an existential extension of our essence into the human dimension. By accepting the struggles and fixations of our type rather than resisting them, we allow this maturation to occur.
In the same way that accepting negative experiences paradoxically leads to positive outcomes, embracing the problematic aspects of our ego leads to the deepening of our essence. The backward law teaches us that true freedom comes not from striving to be better but from embracing what is. In the journey of spiritual awakening, we do not bypass our personality but understand it so thoroughly that we find the essence within.
The purpose of the Enneagram is not to eliminate your personality but to help you see it in a way that allows you to use it in service of your essence. As we become more conscious of our patterns, they shift from being compulsions to being expressions of deeper capacities.
Russ Hudson
Three Takeaways
- The ego is not an enemy to be destroyed but a part of our essence:
This perspective challenges the common notion that spiritual growth requires eliminating the ego. Instead, it suggests that the ego is a necessary part of our development and reflects our essential nature, albeit distorted. This insight could revolutionize how you approach personal growth, encouraging integration rather than rejection of parts of yourself. - Spiritual awakening is not a fixed state but a dynamic, ever-evolving process:
Many people view spiritual realization as a static achievement or end goal. Like the fluidity of Enneagram types, spiritual awakening is constantly shifting and unfolding. This insight can dramatically change how you perceive and approach your spiritual journey, encouraging a more open and flexible mindset. - The path to spiritual growth lies within your personality patterns, not beyond them:
Rather than transcending personality, spiritual growth involves diving deeply into it to find its essence. This insight flips the script on traditional approaches to spirituality, suggesting that your deepest patterns and behaviors are not obstacles to overcome but gateways to your true nature. This perspective can profoundly shift how you engage with self-improvement and spiritual practices.