Enneagrams is a system of personality typing that can function as a valuable tool to understand and improve ourselves if we are willing and able. Jill Willard, intuitive, medium, meditation leader, and author of Intuitive Being, is excited about this instrument of soul searching and helps us break down the understanding.
“Trusting our own self—our gut, our heart, our body, and our mind—can be tough. An Enneagram can help us have a little more faith in who we are or what we choose,” Willard starts. It helps to align us with the best version of ourselves, and loving, feeling, and choosing people and situations in life becomes a lot easier.”
“The Enneagram is a system of analysis that represents personality classification as well as personality types. Maybe think of it as your ‘thinking’ or ‘intellectual’ mind meeting your personal mode of behavior. There are nine different types in the Enneagram spectrum. These types are often divided into three degrees, or variants, of the type.”
“The Fine Nine of the Enneagram are:
Reformer – teacher, organizer
Helper – host, lover
Achiever – focus on success, becoming awake, an awakener
Individualist – the artist, romantic
Investigator – social, expert-driven
Loyalist – trusting, dependable
Enthusiast – fun, loving
Challenger – powerful!
Peacemaker – easy-going (I am often this or very often 2/9 split when I take tests).”
“Like parts of a song, members in a bonded group or family, or with our voices within, it is good to know more about our ‘self’ to determine our role in this life,” Willard says lovingly. The Enneagram process may seem narcissistic to some because it’s a deep dive into the self. However, it can help with relationships and how we act and react to others.
Willard calls it the spiritual, whole, and loving “I.” It’s about becoming the loving, balanced, forgiving, informed, and flexible-to-be-wrong-and-apologize-and-make-amends version of ourselves. It reveals “our whole, authentic self, or unbalanced, unknowing energy we carry,” Willard explains.
When we read our dominant Enneagram number’s description, it’s crucial that we aren’t hard on ourselves. For every single number, there is some light and some dark—that’s the yin and yang of life, and everything exists on this scale. It’s a way to shed light on what we may improve. Self-awareness is the key to love, communication, and self-improvement.
“We have to shed less-informed assumptions of the self in order to know ourselves radiantly.
The present Enneagram of personality types really is a hybrid of many wisdoms based in psychology as we know it today. Giving credit to George Gurdjieff, it was introduced into modern culture as far back as 1915, and like all good things, it is making a resurgence now as we face ourselves and our ways of being. This kind of info can help us be kind, to both others and ourselves, and kindness heals.”
Willard encourages us all to try some soul-diving by taking an enneagram test. Try some free options like this on by Truity, or Cloverleaf, Crystal, and Your Enneagram Coach.
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