Some teachers describe the Enneagram in terms of a GPS or rumble strips on the highway - a way to keep us on track and let us know if we are starting to stray off the path.
I like to think of the Enneagram as an old-fashioned map.
My dad was a cartographer - a mapmaker. Specifically, he created topographical maps. He painstakingly recorded the highs and lows, the elevations of the land and the waterways making it easier for his clients to navigate the properties they sought to develop.
The technology changed significantly over the years of his career, but when I was little, he used to let us look through his 3D glasses. One lens was red and the other was blue. When you looked at his drawings with the naked eye, the lines were clear, but they didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. When you put on the 3D glasses and looked through his lenses, those same fine and broad strokes jumped off the page! You could see where the hills grew up and the valleys fell. You could see the winding rivers and the vertical slope of their banks. Around the Great Lakes you could see where the sands were mounded into enormous dunes, where those expansive waters began and where they sunk to the greatest depths.
I like to think of the Enneagram with my dad’s glasses in mind. Through the lens of the Enneagram we can learn to observe the way we behave in times of trouble or challenge, the way we behave when we feel safe and secure, our default behaviors learned from childhood on to protect our purest self. We begin to see our core motivations - why we do, think, and feel the way we do. As we become more aware of all these things, our path becomes clearer. We can begin to identify what no longer serves us as adults, allow it to fall away, reserving energy for things that move us forward to becoming the best version of ourselves.
Enneagram work is a map for our journey, to be sure. Together we are Becoming inspired, aware, encouraged.