Enneagram Holy Ideas and Virtues…say what?
Knowledge of the Enneagram Holy Ideas can transmute the pains of daily living, and settle an individual into a state of grace, harmony and love. That’s right! The Enneagram Holy Ideas transmute life experiences with the application of the Enneagram Virtues.
Obviously, some definitions are in order here. First, let’s look at transmute. According to Miriam-Webster, transmute means: “to change or alter in form, appearance or nature and especially to a higher form.” A transmutation means: “change into another nature, substance, form or condition,” according to Dictionary.com. Therefore, to transmute something, is to make a change; or to take something from what it was, and turn it into something else. This happens all the time in biology and chemistry. It also happens all the time with us humans: emotionally, cognitively and spiritually.
Think about it! Then consider how re-framing and positive thinking is a lot like an alchemical transmutation of “bad to the good.” Embrace the alchemy of life using the Enneagram Holy Ideas and positive thinking. This video from Deborah Anderson on YouTube, can help you get the ball rolling in your own life:
Embrace the alchemy of life with Enneagram Holy Ideas
This is where knowledge of the Enneagram is like a graduate-level course in how to direct a life, well-lived, in this moment, and then again in that moment. Each Enneatype develops and retains an Ego Fixation to use at will in the management of daily life. In the case of the Heart Type Enneagram Performer (3), for example, Image is the gross fixation, which then further drills down into Identity and Belonging.
Every other type on the Enneagram also creates a strategy for dealing with their Ego Fixation. These strategies are the dummy lights on the dashboard as to where your life force energetics are getting stuck or trapped in an automatic programming. One name the Enneagram theory has for this automatic programming is the Passion of the Enneatype.
Built in Antidote to Passions: the Enneagram Virtues
Never fear; there is a way out of the stuckness the Enneagram Passions create! The way out lives and breathes in the knowledge of, and discipline with, an Enneatype’s particular Antidote, a.k.a, the Virtue. Once the Passion and the Virtue are understood, the practice becomes recognizing when the Passion is in play, followed by quickly accessing and applying the Virtue. When the Virtue can be accessed at will (as Antidote), then the doorway to the Holy Idea of each Enneatype unveils itself.
And life as an individual Enneatype knows it, shifts to more of an awakened existence. The article “Heart Types yellow brick road of shame” expresses this notion poetically: “And life is much better without all those pretty lies.” How does a person’s life shift? Being stuck in automatic happens less frequently, and lingers in shorter durations. Bliss may not be regularly attained, but moments are experienced. This is how the Enneagram can change people’s lives.
The Holy Ideas of the Enneagram exist in nine flavors—one for each Enneatype. (See the “Enneagram Holy Ideas” chart below.) In the big picture, could these nine Holy Idea flavors, be fragments or fractals of what Eckhart Tolle has called Essence Identity? Perennial Wisdom suggests that We are All One. The same wisdom also suggests that the Universe subdivided into individuation in order that The Universe could experience itself. Might these nine flavors of the Holy Ideas, these nine paths for individual growth, point to an experience of non-duality? Might these nine archetypes, in their highest from of Holy Idea, re-combine into The One, back to the All That Is? Well, we may never know for sure, but it is a very interesting construct.
Grounding into situational context provides vantage point
These are ambitious, broad topics and constructs. Sometimes it can be easier to place these type of ideas into the container of a personal life. Even an imagined life or imagined life situation can help to ground these smokey and foggy constructs. Context can be so very important to understanding! A many-to-many relationship in a data set will paint a much clearer, consistent and accurate pictures.
In our case, the many-to-many relationship data set will include the following:
- The details of the imagined life (or a real one!)
- Pre-determined predilections for judgement and acceptance held within ourselves
- Our own ability to hold and tolerate dissonance
- The individual’s capacity to open their heart to another with compassion
- Our own reactions to the details of the imagined life (or a real one!)
- Space to hold the other’s reaction to themselves, and to us as well as our own reactions
Narrative Enneagram meets people where they are
That’s a lot to hold! In order to meet someone where they are, this is frequently required. And it explains, sort of, why the Enneagram makes so much sense. It’s too much to hold, all that; so people develop strategies. People aren’t always healthy or balanced; therefore, neither are their strategies. That tracks. Fortunately, as a whole, humans usually share a preference for safety and efficiency. This leads to many of us humans naturally evolving along this Enneagram Holy Idea continuum.
Obviously mileage varies; but wouldn’t it be great to have a map, before you had to get old? Sure it would. The Enneagram journey is that map! Continuing with our earlier example, the Enneagram Performer (3) uses the strategy of work and success to build an Image that protects them from their gnawing internal sense of disconnection and their inability to freely experience their own emotions.
Further Enneagram Holy Ideas study
What follows is The Enneagram Chart of Holy Ideas with all nine Enneatypes. To continue your Enneagram study, here are nuanced examples of the three Heart Types’ path from Ego Fixation with the Passions, applying the Virtues as Antidote and unveiling the Holy Idea:
- The Enneagram Performer aims for transformation living
- How the Enneagram Helper allows Holy Freedom
- How the Enneagram Tragic Romantic finds Original Source
Hope you are enjoying the Grounded Relating Monday Music Challenge; tune in again next week!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Other than layout, this chart is not original to Grounded Relating. Rather, it is created from memory or notes recall from lectures, conferences, and presentations attended, as well as multiple books read over the decades. Additionally, an internet search will also reveal a similar list of words, although certain Enneagram schools and traditions may have minor, or major, differences in the words used to represent an Enneagram Holy Ideas word list.
Enneagram Holy Ideas
