Paul Marko's Mindful Endeavors

Ego Development & The Enneagram

On July 9, 2006, Terry Saracino, David Daniels and I met with the Association of Enneagram Teachers in The Narrative Tradition at the annual conference held in Silver Spring, Maryland to conduct an experiental workshop. After a brief introductory lecture summarizing some of the fine points of Jane Loevinger's model of Ego development with additional modifications by Susanne Cooke-Greuter at the highest two levels, two questions were posed to the group of one hundred or so members of the association: Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next? and Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?

What follows are the notes taken in response to those questions, by type. Your thoughts and comments on the material are invited and will posted for open discussion.

The Enneagram and the Steps of Human Development

AETNT Conference - July 9, 2006


Type 1: The Perfectionist


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Hitting the skids. Encountering adversity. Painful experiences.
  • Pain was a constant issue, and therefore a motivator for change.
  • Church; evangelical altar calls that he wasn't living up to the standard challenged his righteousness.
  • Conflicts that arose when he realized that what he was doing was not right.
  • Disidentifying with type. Okay to not be right.
  • The process of working in groups. Each person in a group can have an opinion. It was okay to be different. Any idea was right!
  • Embracing the holy idea of perfection that everything is perfect as it is. Letting go of the whole idea of right and wrong.
  • Being put in a position where you cannot be perfect. After being "wrong" constantly, you had to give up trying to be right all the time. Giving up the high expectations, and then enjoying being.
  • Books/reading with examples of people who provided examples of a way out; inspiration for ways out of rigidity.
  • Volunteering to live with a group of people in a different part of the country who were more open-minded; forming new friendships and going on an independent streak.
  • Relationship facilitated development - that what she and her husband were doing wasn't working for him. She would have lost the relationship if she had maintained that original stance.
  • Emptiness allows for self-reflections to occur - there's another way!
  • Working in groups shows there are other ways. Enneagram shows there are other ways.

Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • For a one, there is a thickness/density and we have to keep hearing different points of view. Continue to tell yourself the truth. Having humility.
  • Comedy can ease the inner critic
  • Lack of trust - feeling you cannot rely on other people and have to do it yourself.
  • Inner critic
  • Fixed world view
  • Rigidity
  • I can do it best myself
  • Fears/anxieties around sub-type
  • Compulsive thinking
  • Repetitive thinking
  • Fear of losing comfort/safety
  • Strong moral sense that I have to do what I say
  • Clinging to rules, places and people
  • To improve yourself you have to stop trying to improve yourself (paradox); being more self-accepting is the goal.
  • Need to start loving ourselves rather than hating ourselves

Type 2: The Giver


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Illness - needed and then received help - a mandatory way of getting taken care of
  • Brokenness followed by expansion
  • Life crisis in personal relationships - motherhood - marriage
  • Hitting bottom - what I'm doing doesn't work so now what
  • Suffering enabled us to fully receive the love in/from relationships
  • Receiving love through our crisis
  • Acceptance that life isn't fair
  • Education and experience provided motivation for more fulfilling life
  • Belief systems
  • Other-referencing
  • Self-forgetting
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Me!
  • Other-referencing
  • Fear of breaking connection, fear people won't like me, etc.
  • Tolerating raw emotion - difficult - pride bubble burst
  • Inability to recognize own needs
  • Busyness - energy focused out

Type 3: The Performer


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Stimulus from the environment saying "I don't fit in and must find a way to be okay"
  • Civil Rights movement - fighting/advocating for my own causes
  • Coming to terms with personal "failure." Honest acceptance of my role in "failures" moved me forward
  • Honesty with myself
  • Use of tools for self-discovery and others to work with to support my development
  • Physical breakdown = wakeup calls
  • Getting in touch with my anger and anxiety
  • Trauma - physical assault; I will have a voice
  • Uncovering self-deception about my own inadequacies and discovering I am still loved
  • "Getting" that I don't need to do what is expected of me (or my perception of that) but what I truly want
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Pleasing others and seeking approval
  • Learning how to be interdependent, not co-dependent or non-dependent
  • Unfinished business
  • Equanimity of energy
  • Need to break trance of success/activity seduction

Type 4: The Romantic


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Being comfortable with emotions
  • Four propensity for dissatisfaction compels us to seek self-development
  • Sense of drama which allows us to explore shadows of our souls
  • Overcoming fatal flaw
  • Love and acceptance
  • Trauma and shocks: spurred us onto higher levels.
  • Longing, especially when we internalized it (looking within) instead of projecting it outward (e.g., envy)
  • Work with dreams, other growth techniques
  • Getting to the bottom of things - to the creative core - leads to genuine creative expression, which in turn leads to connection. We connect through our creations.
  • Accepting the worth of the energy we bring to the world - an energy of movement, creative flow, chaos - even when it's not always easier to experience
  • Finding a space or venue that allows creative expression
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Identification with type patterns: drama, uniqueness, etc…
  • Feeling flawed
  • Narcissism
  • Idealizing our longing
  • Projecting our longing outward (envy)
  • Self-judgment is too harsh, feelings of shame and self-consciousness
  • Fear of rejection by others. Often people don't like the energy we bring. Not just the drama queen stuff, but just the intensity and desire for depth.
  • Melodrama and theatricality
  • The way that fear of rejection can make us self-conscious. It can also make us anticipate rejection so that we "scan for rejection." Creates a barrier between the self and others.
  • Trying too hard to prove ourselves and to be accepted - dauntlessness
  • Fear of failure and having trouble making our way in a world that doesn't seem to share our values

Type 5: The Observer


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • People and "teachers" and relationships which validated what was there waiting to be developed.
  • Seeking knowledge to bring together puzzle pieces. There must be a way out of narrowness.
  • Seeking knowledge and education, coursework
  • Being present
  • Meditation retreats
  • Observing other people and reflecting on experiences
  • Being in nature
  • The harshness of the first 25 years - home, school, army. Repressive institutions and wanting to break out - freedom for expression
  • A few out of body experiences, one recurring dream
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • My thoughts. My mind.
  • Fear of unknown, of being overwhelmed. My forgetfulness of my goals
  • What helped me develop in first place - observation, type structure*, also hinders my further development. (*Being naturally aversive kept me away from many things that were powerful distractions.)
  • Not being present to myself
  • Refusal to move forward before having all the information
  • Feelings of stupidity and powerlessness and fear
  • Shopping - the mundane distractions of everyday life

Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Uncomfortable position drove us toward development
  • Comfortable with ambiguity
  • Relationship with father/parent
  • Inner hunger
  • Divine interventions - things were lifted
  • Being in a community where we were accepted and loved
  • Certain partners and friends
  • Desire to improve relationships - self-development
  • Total despair in a crisis - breakdown to break through
  • People who made a difference - if people have confidence in us, then we could be confident
  • Fear - not fitting in - powered to go past comfort zone. Better to do something than stay so afraid
  • Humor helps
  • False evidence appearing real = "FEAR"
  • Challenges motivate change; didn't have a lot of support
  • Courage to change
  • Hold the tension of opposites until Grace comes in
  • We develop our capacity and hold that energy/tension and perhaps have more capacity for this than other types
  • Desire to be happy, peaceful
  • Awareness - not wanting to hurt people with our anxiety, bad energy
  • Love - want behaviors to match our heart/what we want
  • Knowing that we don't know and therefore being open to learning to change
  • Ability to ask questions - being curious
  • Knowing that the answer is not in our heads - look in/trust the inner guidance
  • Body work - somatics such as core energies
  • Check out projections with others
  • Self observation: noting when we say "If you would only…, then I would be safe"
  • Intuition and knowing - bypassing the mental process of type
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Fear - self doubt - procrastination
  • Complacency
  • Inaction
  • Unresolved developmental issues from previous stages.
  • Second-guessing self; worried that that is not the right path - have to be certain; confusion - allow the head stuff to interfere with inner voice/guidance
  • Primal, sheer terror - organic
  • Mistrust of self that we can do it or that the world will support us; believing that we are being smart not to trust - astute.
  • Projection; wanting acknowledgement for injustices, etc.
  • Over-mentalizing - talk therapy keeps us stuck

Type 7: The Epicure


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Existential crisis in adolescence
  • Parent's death
  • Getting married
  • Graduate school - wonder and grow
  • Falling in love
  • Realization of no children - sense of freedom
  • Death of parent - exploration
  • Enneagram - exploration
  • Heart
  • Catastrophes - in comfort don't progress
  • Need a jolt - went to boarding school - protecting parents
  • Sense of something further to be experienced
  • Lots of losses in short period of time
  • Revolted by mother's death - became tolerant of suffering. Can't escape. The thought of no beginning and no ending - expansion of consciousness
  • Life happens - sense of adventure to experience life - to continually improve
  • Newness - opposite of my family stage
  • Sense of fun, adventure
  • Hoped to get older and to realize that just being with a friend can be adventurous
  • Transformational classes - gurus in an expanded state that I came to admire and want to be more like
  • Sense of curiosity - delight in newness
  • Strong pull towards joy and ultimate happiness and absence of all pain which describes the unitive state
  • Wanting to experience it all so I don't miss out (want to experience all stages/states)
  • Moving away from family allowed experience of development
  • Shies away from pain
  • Going to the next thing
  • Don't obsess - move forward
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Not embracing quiet time - got other things to do
  • Not focusing inward
  • My spouse, kids - they take time away - I sacrifice for them
  • Being in my head - can't rationalize it; use words to avoid
  • Seeking proof that it will be of benefit
  • Will I like it?
  • Will it be pleasurable?
  • Being too spiritual will take away my fun. Don't want to look like someone who is not fun (e.g., a mom)
  • Going slow so to be sure it's not going to be painful
  • Want to do too much, but then wind up doing something that I don't really want or enjoy
  • Wait till last minute because more options may come along
  • Overdoing which keeps me from doing the practices that I need to do that will open my mind to go into expanded state
  • A bit of fear about being in that unitive state and then not being able to contribute to the world

Type 8: The Protector


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Parents (1950s) (female and unacceptable) Had to do something to survive. Move to 5 (observation) enabled me to find coping strategies
  • Big brothers and sisters came to squash me for beating up their siblings. Turned to five in adolescence, automatically.
  • Emotionally abusive marriage drove me to 5
  • Jail/consequences - wanted a better way
  • Family/community crisis (age 8); stepfather (9w8) made me tough. I had been soft and open.
  • Got sick of fighting, getting caught, sneaking around
  • Feedback about impact
  • Trip to India, no sleep, had a spiritual experience. Led to opening to intuition and curiosity (internal)
  • Grace/mentors/life crossroads (external): people, authors, ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), workshops, etc.
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Don't know where to go from here. "Not knowing"
  • Hard to open up
  • My own type gets in the way
  • Self-pres subtype makes me keep working instead of going to school
  • Laziness, contentment, self-forgetting (9 wing)
  • Need external inspiration

Type 9: The Mediator


Given your type, what facilitated your development from one level to the next?
  • Opposition
  • Blending in, trying to make sense
  • Mindfulness
  • Conformist stage
  • Carried along by the culture
  • Being gay required exploration, not fitting as motivator
  • The external world by means of comparison or conflict
  • Having an internal push
  • Paternal support, permission
  • Crisis
  • Open to inspiration, invitations
  • Acceptance, encouragement
  • Being in touch with inner discomfort as a motivator for change and taking action on it
  • No longer being able to feel like I blended in
  • Being pushed
  • Being disappointed as a motivator
Given your type, what hinders or blocks your development now?
  • Fear, fear of rejection, self-doubt
  • Thoughts, perception, imagination
  • Lack reliant positive self-image
  • Living in the story
  • Capacity for discomfort
  • Bewilderment around anger that gets constructed
  • Not wanting to shatter our identities
  • Not taking risk is blocked by the perception

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