it's your intention or not. By working on one, you’ll notice that it has an effect on the other. They’re not separate from each other. It depends on what you mean by spiritual or psychological aspects. The next few sections take a closer look at this topic.
What's psychological about the Enneagram …
The Enneagram provides a description of your inner self. This description of the Enneagram types usually begins with the qualities and limitations of a type, what that type focuses on, and what your regular “thinking, feeling, acting” pattern looks like. This is also called the psychological Enneagram. It's a description of the personality structure. Psychologists (including Freud) call it the ego. In spiritual terms, it’s also called the Lower Self. In the Enneagram, this description of the ego/Lower Self is the type, or the Enneagram of passions and fixations.
The functioning of people at the psychological level is what you perceive when people are captive to their type. This applies to most people. The term captive to your type means that you actually have no freedom of choice — not in what you think, what you feel, and how you act. The lack of freedom of choice is caused by people not knowing themselves well. As a result, they have little awareness of themselves and of their automatic patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. When you’re not consciously aware, you’re on automatic pilot; you don’t want to get angry, for example, but you definitely do get angry. You can't help yourself; it just happens. That is a lack of freedom of choice. You function from your Lower Self; your ego is in charge.
… and what about the spiritual?
The Enneagram offers a method of development; it’s a transformation model. Transformation is a word used in spiritual circles, and it concerns the transformation from the Lower Self to the Higher Self. (In psychological terms, that would mean moving from functioning at the ego level to functioning as a free person. It’s where the ego no longer has control over you.)
But what is spiritual? It’s such a broad concept and also quite personal, with many different views or interpretations. Many see spirituality as equivalent to a religion and believing in a God. For others, including myself, these are matters that are not necessarily connected with each other. One example is Buddhism, where believing in God is not part of the spiritual doctrine. Some nonreligious people lead spiritual lives. Conversely, not everyone who is part of a religious group follows a spiritual way of life.
Spirituality is, in a broad sense, how people experience themselves as part of a greater whole, when they feel a connection and unity with everything or seek to realize it within themselves. I also see it as when people welcome the Higher Self into themselves. This Higher Self may be God or Allah or even the Higher Self that is present within you. This can be the desire to live following your true self, your essence, and it’s based on higher values or virtues. An example of the latter is when people choose to live out of love. Love is the highest value on which they base their lives, and they strive for it above all else. The goal that people pursue — especially the ways in which they articulate that goal — differs from person to person. People who believe in God may formulate their aspirations in this life in order to feel closer to God. People who don't believe in God articulate it as something akin to becoming free. How one pursues this goal may make little difference at its core because if the goal is to feel closer to God, then the question is, “What stands between you and God?” If the goal is to become free as a person, then the question is “What stands between you and being free?” The answer is the same: You alone stand in the way: your ego.
Two sides of the same coin
The psychological and spiritual aspects are two sides of the same coin. In spiritual traditions, the Lower Self, or ego, is always investigated and interrogated, precisely because this is the beginning and therefore the starting point for transforming into higher values. It’s perfectly plausible that the reason a spiritual orientation arose in people is due to the daily observation that people suffer mainly from the ego. Many people want to suffer less, so humans have been searching for the How for thousands of years. What can people do to suffer less? Only the language in which things are expressed is different. In these differences you can see the changes on earth from place to place over the course of time.
With the development of science in recent decades, people’s mental well-being (or lack thereof) has become a specialized field of psychological research. The methods of development in this case are called therapy. It’s not difficult for the spiritual practitioner to recognize in various other therapies the core of what is practiced in one's own spiritual practice. The guru is now called a psychotherapist, one who also focuses on meaning and the pursuit of developing higher values in the client — simply because it makes everyone happier as people!
The psychospiritual Enneagram
It’s not a case of either-or; the Enneagram has both psychological and spiritual elements:
The psychological map charts your inner self — your ego.
The spiritual side maps your Higher Self.
The method provides insight into how to move from one to the other — the path of transformation from the Lower Self to the Higher Self.
Above all, the Enneagram extends the invitation to every person to achieve the Higher Self within themselves by learning to face the Lower Self within themselves. One is not separate from the other!
Being human
The Greek word for “human” or “humanity” is anthrôpos, which, in the ancient Greek sense, stood for “he who looks up” and “he who is destined to the higher.” Being (or becoming) truly human was about opening oneself to the higher, but also to others and caring for the well-being of others. It meant being a good person.
WHATEVER WORKS FOR YOU!
The fact that you picked up this book and are reading it may indicate that you’re also on a quest — a quest for your own development or a quest based on your profession. Maybe you’re looking for a tool that can help you, your customer, or your organization and employees. This quest might have many different reasons or goals, but you’re reading this Enneagrams For Dummies to gain insights quickly as well as an overview of whether the Enneagram might mean something to you — and if so, how.
I tell you in the main text what the Enneagram is and what it has to offer — the model and method side, and the psychology and spiritual side. Those are the perspectives from which I wrote this book.
The Enneagram is nothing more or less than one of the many means of transportation on the journey to development. It’s a tool for self-management. For me personally, this tool has helped me so much that I enjoy helping other people benefit from it as much as I do. Everyone is different, however, and what works for me might not for work for someone else. Perhaps the most important advice is to go discover what works for you!
The path that the Enneagram offers is learning to relax your type and welcoming your true self and the higher virtues you have within. At the end of the path, your ego or your type is no longer in charge. The Enneagram provides a path to life based on awareness. You then have knowledge of yourself and your own limitations and qualities, and with knowledge of others, but also becoming more receptive to what is there and what’s present in you and in your life — a life with more balance, more tranquility, more joy, more wisdom, more
