In November, 1990, I
was giving feedback to the head of a nonprofit agency in Cincinnati (let's call him
"Brad"). The short version: "According to your staff and members of the
board, you're highly entrepreneurial, with a strong drive, and you're a masterful networker, building support for your organization's goals with the board and with
influential members of the community. But your focus is perhaps too much on being 'Mr.
Outside.' Your staff says you're not involved enough in the day-to-day, nuts and bolts
aspects of running the organization, and they have a strong desire to build more teamwork.
While 'consensus' is a stated organizational value, they describe you as persuading people
to do things your way in what is only apparently a consensus-building process."
"Why, that's
exactly my profile on the Enneagram!" he replied. "I'm a
Three." I was
blown away by this serendipitous response, because only the day before I'd received Helen
Palmer's The Enneagram in the mail, mistakenly ordered instead of the book on genograms
I was researching. Had Brad not made this connection I would have sent the book back to
the publisher. Instead, I decided to read about the
Enneagram in
order to speak a language familiar to him.
That Saturday
morning I sat in bed and opened Palmer's book. I found her description of the
Three so
insightful about Brad's dynamics that I decided to read more, starting with the
One, and to figure out my own Enneagram style. All had some characteristics I could
relate to, and I was beginning to give up on identifying myself. Finally I
began to read about the
Nine.
I felt myself
falling into a state when my intuition tells me, You're on to something big!
It feels a bit like infatuation, with every molecule of my body tingling.
I've since learned to know it as consolation, a feeling
of loving and being loved, of being fully alive (and I sometimes wonder if other
Enneagram styles might feel this way most of the time...). I truly felt as if the veils were
parting, a sense that something I'd needed to know had been standing right beside
me but slightly behind, where I couldn't really see it. And here it was!!!
I'm a
NINE, I thought as I read about the
Nine's role as mediator.
My whole consulting career has succeeded because of my skill in resolving
other people's conflicts. I've used my gift in a positive
way, but it's been reinforced so much, I've failed to look
at my personal avoidance of conflict. I've been too busy
trying to help other people not make waves! As I read on about the Nine's distractibility I
got more and more excited. This is so important to me. I'm going to go make
a pot of coffee and spend the entire day reading about this
wonderful system.
I wandered toward
the kitchen, but on the way noticed a pile of dirty clothes I'd set out to wash, so I
made a trip to the laundry room. When I got back I realized I hadn't started the coffee,
but on my way to the kitchen I saw the telephone and remembered I hadn't called my
Mom in a week, so while the coffee was brewing I called her and we talked for almost an
hour. The veil had snapped shut! As I sipped my third or fourth cup of coffee I
walked
around my condo, trying to decide what to do with the rest of the day. First,
I'll get dressed.
As I headed back
into my bedroom I saw Palmer's book lying on my bed where I had left it more
than an hour earlier, and again the veils parted… I still cannot think about that moment without a
profound sense of gratitude for the gracious destiny unfolding before me. Not only had I
been given a vision of the Nine's gifts, I had experienced a prime example
of the very ego-trap that held me captive – distracting myself from the most important of
my own agendas; to see myself as I really am.
When I next met
with Brad I discovered he'd been a member of the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati
many years before and had learned the Enneagram from
Richard Rohr. So my client
became my first coach in this amazing system, lending me Rohr's audio tapes and books,
and describing other members of his staff in terms of their Enneagram
personality styles.
Rohr gave a talk in
Cincinnati a few years later, and as I listened to him I gratefully re-lived this cycle in my path
of self-discovery. Though his topic was not the Enneagram, he spoke to
me personally when he said, "Life is about change, not about absolutes, and
we're ready for a great transformation. We need to be able to relish complexity, to
experience 'the paradox of mutual indwelling' where God is in us and we are in God. Each
of us needs to let go and accept that 'Somehow, God will use me.'"
