The Enneagram

What ran down my spine as I turned the page was a frisson so sharp that even the final boarding call bellowing above my head became background noise.

The next page began: “Fives do not expect anything from others, except to be left alone to pursue their own interests unimpeded by anyone else’s demands or needs, especially their emotional needs...”

How do they know everything about me? My eye reached the end of sentence after sentence, and I turned the page again.

“Sexual Fives are driven to engage intensely with people, although often with anxiety and a tendency to withdraw at a moment’s notice... They can be affable and talkative, but can cause others surprise and consternation when they unexpectedly disappear for periods of time...”

My career at the time was a split affair: for three days a week I was a computer programmer at a nonprofit in downtown San Francisco; the other two days I was a writer, publishing an online magazine about deep politics while simultaneously revising and re-revising a book about my travels in China. I was driven to explore foreign realms -- both physical and mental -- and to write about what I found so that others might benefit from my exploration. I longed to understand abstruse concepts, to get to the bottom of things, to tell the deepest truths I could uncover.

“The Five’s main gifts to the world involve their tremendous insight and understanding coupled with one or two areas of expertise…. They do not lose their childhood curiosity: they keep asking questions, such as “Why is the sky blue?” Fives do not take anything for granted--if they want to know what is under a rock, they get a spade, dig out the rock, and take a good look… Fives enjoy sharing their findings with others, and they often serve up their observations of life’s contradictions with a whimsical sense of humor.

My girlfriend at the time, if I may speak for her in retrospect, was delighted with my nerd-like understanding of computers, politics, and travel, and how we could discuss these things together. She also loved introducing me to her broad panoply of friends, many of whom she described as “also kind of weird.” With me, she became frustrated that after splendid long dates I would drop out of sight for a few days, just writing and reading in solitude. Our relationship became an on-and-off affair as attraction and frustration alternated.

One day she brought home from a bookstore something on the Enneagram. She told me to read the chapter on Type 7, so that I might “understand her better.” She handed me the book.

“Borrow it. And on your way to the airport, you might want to read the chapter on Type 5.”

Ancient Mathematics

All of the basic numbers -- the small integers, or finger digits, so to speak -- render basic numbers when divided into 1. For instance, 2, when divided into 1, is ½, or .5. Three, similarly, is ⅓, written as a repeating 3. All of the remaining numbers from 1-10, when divided into one, also render neat decimal numbers.

All of them, that is, except for the number seven. Seven has some unusual characteristics, it’s weird some would say, or magical, according to others. Rather than a nice neat decimal, when the number 7 is divided into 1, the result is this number: .1̅4̅2̅8̅5̅7.

As you might know, the overline “vincular” indicates a repeating decimal, so this is an infinite decimal: .142857142857142857142...

Why is seven special, and what is this unusual repeating decimal it creates?

It turns out seven -- and its related decimal -- were indeed considered mystical numbers by many past civilizations. This decimal appears in ancient Greek drawings of a shape with nine points. When the numbers 1-9 are placed evenly on a circle, and this strange repeating decimal is traced out, you get the green shape in this image (at right). When an equilateral triangle is added, representing the other mystical number, the Trinity, you have a nine-pointed shape, something the Greeks called the Ennea (“nine”) - Gram (“drawing”).

At this point in this article I have to put an ellipsis. The system is too complex to do justice to in these brief paragraphs. What I will say -- what is perhaps the most important event that has happened in the last 500 years with regard to the Enneagram -- is that it evolved from a purely mystical, mathematical model into a pattern that is studied as a map for all the processes of existence, including a human life.

The Enneagram models two processions. The first model suggests that some processes occur on the triangle -- following a “Law of Three” -- while other processes evolve in the pattern “142857,” following a “Law of Seven.”

Over the last few centuries, mystics and psychologists in different parts of the world have separately evolved the Enneagram into a system for understanding a particular human life as it goes through its evolution (or, for the unfortunate, devolution).

George I. Gurdjieff, a spiritual philosopher of Armenian origin who first brought many Asian spiritual practices to Europe in the early 1900s, discovered in the Enneagram something that became a central part of the “Search for Truth” he taught to his European pupils.

Thereafter, psychologists and spiritual teachers in the Americas -- most prominently Oscar Ichazo in Chile and Claudio Naranjo in California -- discovered nearly-miraculous parallels between the cycles and patterns modeled in the Enneagram with some of the latest discoveries of modern psychology.

What results today is a “modern technology” of spiritual and psychological insight into oneself. The Enneagram maps the path and pattern one’s psyche will take in personal evolution -- the path to embodying one’s essence -- and likewise, the pattern of “devolution” one will undergo after trauma or sudden privation of resources.

Personally, the existence of such a technology seemed incredible at first, but after many discoveries and much further learning, I’ve come to be a believer. Since discovering the Enneagram -- and missing that flight at SFO -- I have used it to tremendous effect and benefit in my spiritual, psychological, romantic and professional life.

If you uncover where your psyche is right now, as mapped out by the Enneagram, you’ll likely discover not just how you defend and cover up your true inner essence, but also how to live your essence more each day.

Quotes come from The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Riso & Hudson
Images are public domain, via Wikipedia