The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge

indicates issues and themes from childhood that must be consciously acknowledged and owned so that we can move forward and not be held back by unfinished business from the past.

It’s easier to erase yourself by losing yourself in comfortable activities than to reveal yourself or open yourself up to whatever unpredictable or complex thing might be happening in the outside world.

to begin to think, feel, and act with more choice and awareness.

When they were children, Nines may not have received the attention they needed, and their wishes and preferences typically weren’t listened to and acted upon.

start believing that, somewhere inside, you know what you want, and just take a stab at it. Over time you will develop a clearer channel to that part of you that does know what you want and need.

Routines are comforting, too. For many years I followed the same routine whenever I’d turn on my computer: first check e-mail, then go to a series of five different websites, all in the same order each time, multiple times per day. Often, I’d have many more important things to do, but I needed the comfort fix provided by visiting familiar websites

take a guess or make something up.

Nines “merge” with others, but what does this mean? Merging happens when Nines “take in” the positions, feelings, and desires of another person to the point that they feel like they’re their own. They lose the boundaries between themselves and other people. This is especially easy for Nines because they usually don’t know what they want and can hav

The passion of laziness thus gets expressed through Nines’ strong unconscious need to merge with something or someone else as a way of distracting themselves from their own sense of being—or from the pain of not being connected to their own sense of being.