Welcome.

In what we call their true nature or essence, the nine Enneagram personality types are imprinted with one of nine essential qualities. People who relate to the personality type, resonate with, or are wired to a particular essential quality. We come into the world sensitive to this essential quality.

We begin our exploration of each personality type at this high level by looking at the essential quality to which the type is sensitive. This helps us understand the origin of the personality and the spiritual journey of the person.

This list is in the order that we will explore the nine personality types and the nine essential qualities:

Inevitably, when we are born into the world, we lose touch with the essential quality to which we are sensitive. We lose our deep, soul connection that knows the quality as suffusing reality, abiding naturally. This is what we might call “The Fall” into personality, a seemingly necessary process in our ego development that causes us to “go to sleep” to our essential nature as we grow up. We retain our sensitivity to this essential quality, but now we are trying to create it in the world. Our personality structure is organized around this quality, and we see reality through one of the nine lenses- this is the root origin of the nine personality types.

As we go through life, of course we encounter stress, difficulties, and challenges. We rely on our personalities as strategies and coping mechanisms, and under stress our personalities become more constricted. Over time, and even in the course of one day, we tend to move up and down what are called the “levels of health” within our type. At a healthy level, the personality brings gifts and strengths that retain the flavour of the essential quality. We will explore the gifts and strengths of each personality type. When we are less healthy, the personality becomes more tightly held or more constricted, and there is a distortion that happens around the essential quality. Still trying hard to get the quality we long for, but in a more distorted way, our personality shows up in less healthy ways. We will see how this happens for each type.

A word about this idea of healthy and unhealthy personality. It is important to understand that we all have unhealthy and constricted personalities at times. Don Riso and Russ Hudson first wrote about the “levels of health” within the personality and the concept is very illuminating- it explains why people display different behaviours at different times within the same type.

However, it is only human to get hooked into the idea of levels, to want to be healthy, to believe we are not operating at the unhealthy levels and to get sidetracked here. It is good to hold this information loosely as it is part of the human journey and not a contest. We can grow and awaken and find ourselves at a healthier level one day, but truly the dark underbelly is where we grow most and where we need to look. It is most likely where we will find our blind spots and gain a deeper understanding of the way our personality restricts us. So, looking at the challenges and difficulties of each type is where we will be reminded to be gentle and compassionate with ourselves and others.

The awakening journey for each type is to become aware of and disidentify with the personality, relaxing into true nature. This is a return journey to essence.

The Enneagram is an aid to waking up because it shows us our personality patterns, including aspects that are unconscious and out of our usual awareness. It helps us “call into question” our identity as Adyashanti describes:

As I see it, awakening has to do at least initially and for quite a long time with our identity—our true identity. First, know that that’s what it’s about... look at whatever that identity is, and it’s that identity you’re calling into question. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about whether your consciousness expands, how you feel, what you experience, if you see lights or angels or visions. It’s all about moving your base point of identity. - Adyashanti