Enneagram

[Echoes]

Hey,

are there some people here who have done research and have experience with the Enneagram? I never really resonated much with these personality type indicators, because it is only able to describe the ego, and I thought it was a waste of time since the goal is to become free of it. But the Enneagram describes the human personality in 9 different forms of pathological fixation, basically 9 ways to cope with the basic underlying terror every human is facing: Fear of death and fear of helplessness/powerlessness. There seem to be 9 strategies of defense, subdivided into the 3 categories Thinking, Feeling, Instinctive.  And I was very surprised at how accurate the type which seems to be mine (Type 5) was describing me. The idea is to identify your type so that you become aware of your specific defense dynamic/patterns of unconscious and destructive behavior, and then to transcend the dimension of personality and to realize infinity.

My question to people who have some experience with this system:

Has it really helped you to become more aware of your habitual patterns and first and foremost to change them? Or was it a dead end? 

 

Edited March 14, 2018 by Echoes

[Leo Gura]

It can be helpful in about the same way that Myers-Briggs can be helpful. It's a tool. I wouldn't make it your only tool. It's certainly not the deepest tool available.

[Girzo]

It hasn't helped me much, but it was fun to explain it to my friends. We were traveling by train for few hours, during that time we talked, did some tests, read a little and ended up figuring our Enneagrams. Descriptions were so accurate it was scary. 

But what do you do after you figure out your personality type? How to apply it? Maybe you can use this knowledge to choose a suitable career, partner or place to live. I haven't done any of that yet, so maybe that's why it's useless for me. Does anyone know any other uses of Enneagram and other personality types?

[Echoes]

@Leo Gura Also thought this...it's just a tool, the trap would be to overly attach to the number. Altough so far I found the Enneagram to be more helpful and accurate then MBTI. 

@Girzo It's useful to make us see that what we believed to be personal aspects of ourselves are really just impersonal habitual tendencies. Even the most intimate thoughts/feelings/habits/preferences of behavior are not really personal. This makes it more easy to become aware of them and to disidentify. I think this was the original idea of the Enneagram, and in that sense I believe it can be of good assistance to meditative and yogic practices

Edited March 15, 2018 by Echoes

[Sunchild]

Personality typologies can be useful, but you can never be sure whether there truly are say exactly 9 types, or 16, or whatever-as in whether any vital dimensions have been left unexplored and thus undocumented and unmeasured by the typology in question.

I will say that the Enneagram is more useful than many others because (at least as promulgated by Don Richard Riso) it often encompasses the third (vertical) dimension of growth (or decay).