Spotlight: The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up: Find Your Path, Face Your Shadow, Discover Your True Self by Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, MA and Uranio Paes, MM
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A fresh approach to the Enneagram that encourages readers to embark on their own hero's journey for transformation.
This is a personal transformation book rooted in the wisdom of the Enneagram system of personality types. It is a book about waking up and growing into the best version of yourself. It is a book that shows you how to discover who you are and what you can be. It is a book about finding your path, facing your shadow, and discovering your true self.
It is a good news-bad news-good news story. The good news: you survived childhood. The bad news: in order to grow, you are going to experience some pain. The really good news: you can use your negative habits as a springboard to move beyond them. With a commitment to self-observation and reflection, you can develop greater self-awareness and open yourself up to a life filled with exciting choices and opportunities.
Each of the nine chapters includes these features:
The problematic perspective, the process of self-discovery, and the path forward for that type
How the main issues for that type get played out in 3 different ways--the 3 distinct sub-types of the main type (necessary for pinpoint accuracy in describing your personality and your path of growth)
Chestnut and Paes, two leading Enneagram teachers, frame this approach to personality types in a way that is accessible, practical, and filled with possibility.
Excerpt
You are not your personality. But who are you?
If you’re like most people, you picked up this book because you want to understand more about why you are the way you are. Why do you do the things you do or react the way you do to certain things? Why, no matter how many times you think you’ve learned something, do you keep making the same mistakes? How you can make your relationships better and what happened in the one that didn’t work out? Why is there one issue in your life that you just can’t get past?
Well, there’s a reason for all of these things. And there’s a reason why you have a difficult time understanding why you do what you do.
Basically—you have become a zombie.
No, we’re not saying you’re literally one of the undead. We’re saying you’re going through life in a zombie-like state—on autopilot, “asleep” to who you really are and what’s really going on inside you. Just like most of us do.
This book can help awaken you from this state by introducing you to the Enneagram, a powerful growth tool based on timeless wisdom that can help you come to know your true self. The Enneagram can free you from defensive self-limiting patterns and help you grow into an expanded version of yourself. It can show you who you really are by showing you who you think you are. Only then can you know who you actually are—and who you are not.
What Is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is a complex and meaningful symbol that relates to many different systems of knowledge, including psychology, cosmology, and mathematics. It forms the basis of a highly accurate typology that describes nine distinct personality types and serves as a sense-making framework for understanding the human ego and mapping out a process of growth. As a psychological and spiritual model that lays out specific paths of self-development, it helps us “wake up” to ourselves by revealing the habitual patterns and blind spots that limit our growth and transformation.
The Enneagram is based on nine personality types grounded in three “centers of intelligence” that determine how we take in and process information from the outside world.
We think and analyze using our head center. Types 5, 6, and 7 are dominated by this center and their experience is shaped by thoughts. They are analytical and imaginative, and know how to plan and make sense of things, but they can be overly logical and detached from feelings and emotions.
We feel emotions and connect with others using our heart center. Types 2, 3, and 4 are dominated by this center and their experience is shaped by feelings. They are usually emotionally intelligent and empathetic, and value connection and relationships, but they can be overly focused on image and fear rejection.
We experience life through our senses using our body center. Types 1, 8, and 9 are dominated by this center and their experience is shaped by sensations. They are usually committed and responsible, and value truth and honor, but they can be judgmental and inflexible.
We get “out of balance” when we use one of these centers more than the other two. The Enneagram helps us become aware of and redress this imbalance.
Each of the nine types on the Enneagram circle can be defined in terms of a central survival strategy comprised of habitual patterns and motivations. We all develop unconscious strategies to avoid pain and discomfort as we move through the world. When we see ourselves as the sum total of these unconscious patterns, we lose sight of who we really are and what’s possible for us. The fact that these strategies are unconscious makes it hard (or impossible) to acknowledge and move beyond them. But we are actually much more than we think we are, and the Enneagram helps us to realize this.
Each of the nine personality types on the Enneagram circle has three distinct “subtypes,” making for a total of twenty-seven types. These subtypes are more nuanced versions of the original nine types and are defined by three instinctual drives: self-preservation, social belonging, and sexual (one-to-one) fusion. Each subtype reveals how these instinctual drives shape behavior and express our core emotional motivations. For each type, the three subtype personalities take slightly different shapes, including one of the three, called a “counter-type,” that goes against the general expression of the type in some ways, because the emotional driver and the instinctual goal go in opposite directions.
To unlock the amazing insights of the Enneagram, you must first identify which of the nine types best matches your personality, then identify the subtype that most accurately describes you. This can be a challenging task, however, because different types look similar on the surface and you may identify with more than one. The fact that the type descriptions refer in part to unconscious habits, or blind spots, makes the task all the more challenging.
At one level, these personality types are based on a very simple thing— where we focus our attention as we move through the world. But what we see also defines what we don’t see—as well as the fact that we don’t see it. These are our blind spots. When we remain unaware of these key aspects of our experience, we stay blind to the impact they have on how we think, feel, and act. And this explains why we can be said to be “asleep”—going through life like zombies.
To “wake up” from this state, we must confront the ego—as well as the Shadow cast by the ego. We need to become aware of the automatic habits that structure our defensive egoic persona, as well as all that remains unconscious in us connected to our ego’s need to protect itself. This self-protective persona keeps us focused on its needs and prevents us from feeling pain—or joy—condemning us to a kind of waking sleep in which we don’t know who we are and what’s possible for us. We suppress these Shadow elements because they create pain or challenge our self-image. By making these elements more conscious, however, we become more self-aware and whole. Without facing them, we can never know ourselves as we actually are. When we don’t see and own the unconscious tendencies connected to the personality we stay focused on (and limited by), we are held hostage to who we think we are, or who we fear we are, or who we would like to be. When we move beyond the ego and actively engage in the process of growth that the Enneagram maps out for us, we begin to awaken to our full potential.
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About the Author
Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, MA, is a licensed psychotherapist, coach, and business consultant based in San Francisco specializing in integrating the Enneagram in supporting personal and professional development. She offers trainings and retreats based on the Enneagram internationally.
Uranio Paes, MM, is internationally recognized as a leading Enneagram facilitator, coach, and organization development consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Mundo Eneagrama/CP Online, a global Enneagram learning community. Together they cofounded the Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy.
