The Enneagram of Discernment: The Way of Vocation, Wisdom, and Practice

The Heart Center Triad types all suffer from shame—a state of painful negative thoughts about oneself, humiliation or distress caused by the experience of being wrong or foolish.

The enneagram isn’t really about behaviors. The enneagram is about core motivations and fears that drive certain behaviors. This distinguishes it from other typologies.

In this way Ones can, with care, experience the type of rest that the poet David Whyte describes: “Rest is a conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be.”

Notice the perpetual striving required. Notice how identity is defined by external forces. This is the false self.

Enneagram author and teacher Marylin Vancil describes this development in a helpful way. She refers to this as the “adapted self,” the self we believe we must be in order to survive and have our needs met.

To know who we are and then live accordingly is not easy. The path to an authentic identity that makes wise decisions takes time, and we must acknowledge our prior efforts to wear “other people’s faces.”

Purpose, I eventually learned, is a complex thing. Even among the world’s elite athletes, purposes can differ. The “why” behind something has many layers.

An identity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a lived experience in homes, schools, neighborhoods, families, congregations and relationships. This is where purpose resides, in the intention of our identity. Once we discover our authentic self, how do we live from it?

And it’s a uniquely human issue. The poet-philosopher David Whyte reminds us that: “We are the only creation that refuses to be ourselves.”