Enneagram: FIVE
If you are a
FIVE, you are gifted in many ways. In particular, you are:
☺ Observant ☺ Perceptive ☺ Reflective
☺ Self‑Contained ☺ Analytical ☺ Detached
☺ Wise ☺ Objective ☺ Sensitive
However, like
everyone else, you have your flaws. For example, you can be:
S Withdrawn S Cerebral S Stingy
S Arrogant S
S Non‑Assertive S Unfeeling S Uninvolved
As an Observer you strive so hard for
meaningful information that, when you get it, you hoard it rather than part
with it. But you are so oblivious to your avarice
that you deny how controlling and destructive it is.
A. Self‑Preservation: Focus on Home
You are
basically an introvert and see your home as your castle. It may not be
fortified or have a moat, wall, or trees around it, but it really is a
sanctuary for you when you close the front door and shut out the rest of the
world. Dealing with people tends to drain you of energy, so you need this
private familiar space to recuperate, reflect, and think. Generally only close
friends are ever invited in. You dislike intrusions (door‑to‑door
salespeople, phone calls) and noise (traffic or neighbors).
You pare down
your requirements and possessions to the basic minimum. You believe that life
only gets complicated when people have more than they need. What you do have is therefore very important to
you, and needs to be respected. You are stingy with time and money and you're
self‑reliant.
B. Sexual: Focus on Trust / Confidence
You share
confidences and secrets with the people you trust. These confidences are etched
in your memory and savored in solitude. They can become very meaningful to you‑the
more so since such outpourings are so infrequent. Indeed, you positively tingle
with power when you hold on to information and opt riot to tell others what you know. Love and friendship are more
likely to be expressed physically than spoken aloud. For you, touch is a more
intimate symbol of trust than talk.
You protect
your boundaries and maintain your privacy by keeping personal relationships
separate from each other. Your avarice will not let you share openly. Prior
consultation and agreement with you is vital before people dare to share your
secrets with others. Though greedy for meaningful encounters and conversations,
you generally don't initiate either.
You frequently appear
more extroverted than the other Observer subtypes. Grasping the big picture
boosts your confidence, so you seek to understand the underlying models and
symbols in your field of interest. This enables you to access the deeper
meaning and significance of events.
In an
information age, knowledge of the key systems is power. Spreadsheet procedures,
paradigm shifts, analytical surveys, pattern analysis, and information models
of all kinds allow you to be forewarned and so forearmed. This is your way of feeling
safe and protected.
Totems,
emblems, codes, hierarchies, cultural symbols, gurus, and experts are important
because they are able to impart wisdom on how things are organized and hang
together in a coherent whole.
As you grew up you
began to realize that your aloofness and superiority, as well as your generally
cerebral noninvolvement in the sensual burly‑burly of life were a
turn off. After all, most people prefer to deal with flesh‑and
blood characters who are open to the give‑and‑take of life. So you
began to rely on the personality style nearest to you to give your own style
some balance. You may, for example, have spotted that a lack of feeling is among the list of your
characteristic flaws. But feeling is one
of the strengths of your Four Wing. When you learn to incorporate your
wing‑strength into your own personality style, you begin to soar.
Four Wing: When you access the strengths of your Four Wing you have a head/heart
combination. The Four influence allows you to get in touch with your feelings
and emotions and begin to express them openly. You become more empathetic with
people's problems. Additionally, your intellectual reserve is balanced by more
artistic and creative drives. There is a danger, though, that you will become
even more introspective and hypersensitive to the slights you experience.
Six Whig: When you access the strengths of your Six Wing you have a head
combination, and this will help you in a different way. With it you learn to
become more actively involved and dutiful without embarrassment. No longer a
total loner, you experience the joys of belonging and being part of a group.
You will, however, need to be careful not to become more self‑questioning
and lacking in confidence, because the Six energy can heighten your natural
caution with doubts and fears.
Proper balance
is achieved by accessing the strengths of both
your wings and taking care to avoid their characteristic weaknesses. When
you do so, you learn to let go of your arrogant Observer viewpoint and begin to
experience the advantages of other points of view.
The Arrow
Theory of the Enneagram can be very helpful when you are feeling either
stressed or secure.
As an Observer
you are motivated by your need to know and to understand. You are stressed when
required to share your feelings or to get personally involved W the nuts‑and‑bolts
of projects.
Almost as soon
as the pressure begins to build you gradually tend to slide to the lower end of
your own personality style. When this happens your natural tendency is to
retreat to your ivory tower and pull up the ladder. You may grow even more
remote and tend to say and do nothing. To ease the pain you may try to shut
down your feelings, but all you really succeed in doing is becoming lonelier
and more alienated.
As your stress
increases you find yourself all too easily adopting the negative characteristics of your Seven-stress point. However, this
need not be an inevitable progression. You can, instead, get in touch with the positive side.
Seven: (Stress
Point)
-
You become
distracted by all the "head" stuff.
-
You doubly
avoid painful involvement.
-
You
withdraw even further from real life concerns.
-
You lose
focus by daydreaming and fantasizing.
+ You blossom and become less shy and self‑conscious.
+ Yon begin to enjoy new and
adventurous experiences.
When you are
secure you are generally more in touch with the higher side of your personality
style. As a Five this allows you to change your one‑way mirror for a pane
of glass and become more open and trusting. You have a lot to offer others when
you dare to share. You begin to understand the mysterious dynamic of giving and
receiving. When secure you are more willing to trust your instincts and listen
to your heart. You become more involved in social justice issues, and are
prepared to stand up and be counted. You begin to find a direct outlet for your
anger and are even willing to face your fear of looking foolish in public.
All of this
feeds into the positive strengths of
your Eight security point. But, here too there can be some negatives Dealing with the pluses and minuses helps us grow.
Eight: (Security
Point)
+ You get in touch with the body and the
physical.
+ Your "can‑do"
attitude leads to involvement in issues.
+ You feel energized and learn to
trust gut instincts.
+ You speak out and become more
proactive.
- You openly
put people down with well‑chosen words.
- You
insensitively dismiss other people's feelings.
1) What goes around, comes around.
2) The head doesn't have all the answers.
3) Roll up your sleeves and jump right in!
4) I have feelings too.
5) My body is vital to my well‑being.
6) The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (John
1:14)
This portrait
depicts the intimate knowledge born of being wholly and deeply loved by his
Father. By his Incarnation Jesus reveals this interior knowledge to us by
getting our whole heart, soul, mind and strength involved in coming come to
know him and his love for us. This personal experience of the wisdom which
Jesus gives us is clarified and deepened by the more universal experience
provided by the Word of God and the Eucharist. In giving himself to us in all
these ways we see the generosity of Jesus sharing not only all he has but
himself in self‑revelation. By making himself known to us Jesus initiates
a conversation in which he communicates his wisdom to us. He challenges us to
make room in our lives to listen and to respond to his wisdom. He even entrusts
his wisdom to us by sending us, as he was sent, to reveal it to others.
This portrait
focuses on the wisdom figures in our
lives. Their wisdom can range from having an overall vision of life that gives
it meaning and direction to that intimate
knowledge which springs from their capacity to be loved and to love. This
intimate knowledge in which their wisdom ultimately consists may spring from a
love that is personal, pervasive, profound, passionate, permanent or joyful or
from a combination of these.
To avoid our
experience of wisdom becoming too abstract, idealistic or spiritual we need to
think of it in human terms, as coming
to us through our senses, feelings and images as much as through our minds. 1n
other words wisdom comes to us in the ordinary ways through which we know those
people who love us and whom we love. This wisdom, which is primarily the fruit
of our personal experience, is expanded, clarified and deepened if we draw on
the more universal experience that is available to us in traditional wisdom. This wisdom is mediated to us through stories,
poems and proverbs.
The wisdom
figures in our lives generously share
the wisdom they have gleaned from their own experience and which they have
reflected on in the light of traditional wisdom. They communicate their wisdom mainly through conversation in which they
communicate in depth. They communicate
assertively by drawing us out, listening attentively to what we say and
responding honestly and positively to this. To maintain this conversation and
the relationships it establishes they challenge us to make space for reflection
and for sharing its fruits in conversation. Making this space involves freeing
ourselves from being ‑preoccupied with other concerns. Finally, the
wisdom figures in our lives are good at delegating.
They do not want us to be permanently dependent on them for our wisdom but
invite us to become aware of and to trust in our own wisdom.
A) Wisdom can take various
forms, ranging from being knowledgeable to an intimate knowledge of being
loved. The truly wise are more visionaries and contemplatives than thinkers. The depth,
concreteness and extent of wisdom is found in:
B) Holy Wisdom which is an intimate
knowledge of being loved and of responding to that love, especially when
it is expressed
In human terms as when it is allowed
to involve our whole person, senses, heart, soul and mind. The extent and depth
of Holy Wisdom is seen in the light of
Traditional wisdom which provides a rich
context within which we can interpret our personal wisdom.
C) Wisdom's inbuilt desire to communicate itself appears in
its
Generosity which manifests
itself in our desire to devote our time, energy and resources to sharing our
wisdom. To do this our ability to
Communicate is central to a view
of wisdom based on relationship, on receiving and giving love and on the
listening and responding involved in this. The generosity of the truly wise
person in us seeks to
D) Communicate assertively in a way that
challenges ourselves and others to fulfill the conditions required to
communicate our wisdom effectively. We readily
Delegate others to make full use of their own wisdom, encouraging them to be independent of us and trusting them to use their' own wisdom as they think best.