Читать книгу Enneagram For Dummies - Jeanette van Stijn - Страница 97

At the point where you know which type you are, someone always asks: “Is it true that you have only one of these types?” Indeed, some Enneagram movements and trainers believe that each person has several types. They back up this belief with the logic of the quote “[N]othing human can be alien to me,” borrowed from the Roman poet and dramatist Terence (195-159 BC). I'm inclined to share this opinion: Whatever emotion humans can experience internally — fear, anger, love, and joy, for example — are ones that I have also experienced, and you probably have too.

Other Enneagram authors believe that people can have several types because they’re capable of developing the strengths of all types internally. I also share this positive perspective. People can learn about all this and develop it, yet such an expansive view isn’t the essence — the crucial analytical level — of the Enneagram. Humans carry only one personality structure inside them that’s at the level of the type mechanism.

For example, although I have occasionally experienced fear, I’m definitely not someone whose entire personality structure is built on fear and how to handle it. I experience true fear maybe once or twice per year. I remember an incident, some time ago, when someone suddenly stepped on the brakes on the expressway in front of me and I panicked.

For someone whose interior structure is based on fear, the fear and how to deal with it are daily companions. Fear is the essence of that person’s pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. The fact that I too occasionally feel fear is different from having this type structure. For many people, the belief that they simply have to have more than one type stands in the way of their development. My colleague Hannah Nathans responds to this belief this way: “My eyes have only one color and I’m a woman (and not also a man), and if I don’t dye my hair, it has one color for an entire lifetime. The truth is, the way that nature made us consists of limitations.” Personally, I’m glad that I have only one type, because developing myself with the weaknesses of this type is already enough of a challenge. But I think it’s nice that I can very well practice and develop the strengths of the other types.

Keep the following points in mind:

 As you soon realize when you meditate, your attention can always be directed toward only one thing at a time. Humans unconsciously have a dominant preference for certain objects that draw their attention. This is the foundation and essence of the type mechanism.

 The fact that you can develop all strengths inside yourself — that you have a development prospect, in other words — says nothing about your Enneagram type or where you're coming from. All types can certainly learn just about anything, but each type still has different things to learn. So the fact that you can learn something says nothing about the strengths you carry inside based on your type. Learning things doesn’t turn you into another type. You still retain your own type mechanism, but continue to develop and, as a result, you don’t let your type box you in.

 “Nothing human can be alien to me” means that people can experience every human impulse. And it’s true. All Enneagram types can experience anger and become angry, for example. But this isn’t what the type mechanisms or the differences between the individual types are about.

In the end, imagine that the scout group would try to find their way home using only three maps. Would this lower number of maps help them? Would it be quicker? The essence of the Enneagram consists of making the development path more efficient.