Enneagram Types 1, 2, 3, & 4 - Richard Rohr

I'll continue the rest of the circle and then dive into the one. But just giving you the names so you have some sense of closure on this. The four, as I mentioned, the sin being envy, the virtue being equanimity, even soulness. Then we move into the headspace. The sin of the five is correlating it to the classic capital sins. It's called avarice. Now, it's not avarice in just the Uncle Scrooge sense. It's basically an avarice for knowledge, for information, for data, for details, for for, uh, I know. So, it's it's the Faustian temptation to to knowledge for its own sake. And so they love to read books and so forth. Their their virtue is just the opposite of avarice, which is a taking in energy, and it's detachment. The the, uh, the disconnection from all of this. You see that very often in their very lifestyle. It'll be almost very little furniture in their their house. I don't need so much. Why though? Because they get all their juice from information, not from things. Huh. So, it's a virtue, but it's a sin. Zen Buddhism all comes out of this space. The five spaces tend to be very attracted to Buddhism in general, and Zen Buddhism in particular. We can correlate all of this to the great religious traditions. So, avarice and detachment.

The sixth, I mentioned, is fear. The other unnamed capital sin. Isn't that interesting that fear was never called a capital sin, and now we're convinced it's 50% of the human race, the biggest one of all. Ironically, their virtue is its exact flip. When when the six faces his or her fear, they become the most courageous and the most loyal of all people, who because they've moved into it, they've moved through it, and they don't let it seduce them anymore. So, we'll just put courage up here, and I'll give you examples of that later.

The seven, the sin is gluttony. What are they gluttonous for? Fun. They just, their whole life is a search for adventures, a whole life is a search for new trips to exciting places. They're always on an airplane today and just flying around the world to new places, or travels, or visits. But their gift is joy. That, in fact, they are naturally positive, happy, upbeat people. Don't take that away from them. They they just see it intuitively. We, uh, and fours, both of us, we tend to see the the cup half empty. The eight does it another way. The seven always sees the cup seven-eighths full. You know, almost to the point that it doesn't see that it's got any problem, which becomes their problem.

The eight, the sin is lust, in terms of the classic capital sins. And the German word "Lust" is much closer here. Uh, the English word "lust" simply connotes sexuality. It's not the old English meaning or the German meaning. Lust is a passion for life. It's big energy people, 100% people. Lusty people are people who do it with total abandon, total freedom, devil-may-care attitude. And that really is the older meaning of lust. So, don't tie it up or connect it exclusively with sex. Uh, therefore, you see it in their gift side, which is passion. They just tend to do things. They talk, they gesture with a kind of, uh, total, uh, presence, a kind of total, not necessarily conscious presence, but but body presence. And you'll, you almost feel that when an eight enters the room. "I'm here," and their body says it, and you notice it. Which is going to teach you, you're going to find after you learn this today, and you will know it by the time you end today, you're you're going to see that you really respond to energy in other people much more than what they do literally or what they say literally. It's the entire body energy. And I'm convinced the old aura or halo that we Christians painted around the saints was trying to say just that. So, when the New Agers come along and the right-wingers get all upset about energy language, I mean, we were masters of energy knowledge at one point, and we knew that saints put out positive, positive energy, so much so we had to paint it around their bodies or their heads, you know, and we call it a halo. Right on. That's very true. But, but we don't, you know, see that anymore. So, maybe we don't paint that anymore. I don't know.

Finally, we come to the nine. Maybe it's not accidental that they're last, because, uh, the nine, unfortunately, is the most forgettable. That's terrible to say. But the reason they're the most forgettable in any crowd is because they don't make themselves noticeable. They they almost think of themselves as the invisible child, as the useless, harmless, nobody person. And they let you not notice them. And we take them up on it. All right. It's amazing. Both my younger brother and sister, both nines, when we have family gatherings, they'll joke about it now, of course, they know the Enneagram. "Well, here you are, not noticing us again." And they're just so nice. My younger brother, "This is so easy to be with. Make the best of everything. Roll with the punches." You know, but me and my sister, take over. My older sister, take over the event. We're both ones, you know, defining reality, reforming reality. And my poor little younger brother and sister, just, "Oh, you know," they're sort of lost in the wind of it all. And, uh, if you're not aware of that, of course, you don't know how to love a nine and make space for a nine. Now, the word for that, forgive the long explanation, but it needs to explain the word is sloth or laziness. But do you see, it's not describing traits or action. Nines can be very hard workers. Don't be fooled by that word. It's on the level of energy. They're lazy and slothful. They don't put out any energy that gives you a handle on them. You'll get to feel this. There's no handle. I don't know how to, you know, they don't say anything. They don't define themselves. They're just, just sort of nice. And, you know, you know you can use them, and they often are. And they'll finally punch back when they move into their eight wing. You'll finally take advantage of them because they don't demand attention. So, it's a slothful, lazy energy that, um, that finally, when they recognize that they're doing that to themselves, that they're subverting themselves, constantly flips into its opposite. And it's opposite is, believe it or not, decisive action. Is they know, "I got to do six things today." They'll wake up, and they'll actually can be more methodical, more clear-headed, and clean-headed in getting it done than some of the rest of us. But they need almost to make a list and check it twice, and and then they'll do it. They will do it, and many times better than the rest of us. To it, it looks the opposite of laziness in certain occasions. But you'll still see that the underlying energy is relaxed, laid-back. They don't move quick, necessarily. You know, the lumbering elephant is one of their their animal symbols. Just sort of walk, you know, easily. And even the way they walk, you're not sure that they have a goal. You know, you're not sure they want to get to that door because they'll sort of walk over here. They have a hard time leaving a gathering. In fact, you find, "Okay, honey, we're going. We're going, right?" "Look, oh, okay, okay." And they'll go with it. You know, nines are very likable people, but you do take advantage of them. And we put them at the top deliberately because, in a sense, they are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Many teachers make the point, and I think it's in great part true, that the nine is who we all were if you could go back in history far enough. And I find it to be true. I'll go to little villages in Africa, and it feels like everybody's a nine. It's what makes so many poor people in the third world so attractive to us. They're so unsullied and just sort of roll with the punches, you know. "Oh, okay." Little islands in the Philippines, you'd swear everybody on the island is a nine, you know. Now, we from the overdeveloped world, they look lazy. Do you understand? We don't realize we're all, all these other eight types are are running around with various forms of survival skills and domination skills and controlling skills. Adam and Eve in the Garden aren't playing any of those. I'm just naked here with the animals, and here, you understand. And if you have a nine friend, you know what I mean? They're just so easy to be around. They they they will make the best of whatever you put in front of them. So, that's why they're at the top, at least in my opinion.

Okay, now we will begin for the rest of the day, hopefully leaving time for the afternoon a question and answer. To try to describe these numbers in detail, I will do it to you through traits, but even while I'm teaching the traits, I'm trying to really teach you the energies. That you'll put all these together and you'll start getting a feel because, you know, ones in your life. "Oh, yeah." But do know these first days, these first weeks, uh, you're going to make a lot of wrong judgments, and you're going to go home and try to type your children and your mother-in-law and every, you'll be wrong most of the time because it takes a while to learn the energies and to move beyond beyond the external traits. I said somewhat in bragging style that you would know by the time you leave here, but that is in general true because this is an oral tradition. It's meant to be taught. When most people pick up the book, I would say 8 out of 10 people, not just mine, any of them, will put it down and they're bored to death by it. But if you've heard one person who knows the energies teach it, and you heard it in your ears, right? You you get the energy. I don't know why that's true, and then you'll understand the book from the first page. It's really uncanny. And many teachers capitalize on that. They will not put it in book form, as I was originally told not to. It should only be taught by the mouth, through the energy, two ears, in a place where they can ask questions. If by the end of the day, you don't know what your energy is, I'm just going to throw this out at this point. You are almost certainly a six or a nine, right? Almost, almost. Without the rest of you, are all going to know. Some of you are going to want to run out in shame. "Oh my god, they got me." All right. When you suffer the humiliation, you will have the right number, right? If you don't suffer the humiliation, you either don't have the right number, or you don't know how stupid it is to be a four or a five or whatever else you are. If you get the stupidity of it all, and the silliness of it all, and the partiality of it all, you will suffer that ego humiliation. The sixes, in many cases, because they've been trained in fear not to trust themselves, do you see? And so they will invariably, I know you won't do it now because I'm saying it, but usually when I give a long conference, the six settle their way up to me, and they have to get reassurance that they indeed are a six from an authority figure, you see, because they've been trained over trust authority. "I can't trust myself. Only the expert would know." They've given far, far, far too much of their power to authorities. And so they'll need that reassurance, or they'll write me long letters afterwards about, "Well, it could be this, and I could be that. But what do you think I am, Richard?" You know, and they mean so well. Those sixes are very humble people in general, not always, but in general, as are the nines.

Okay, I'm going to start with the one, not because it's the first number, but because it's who I am. And if you'll allow me then to mock Richard and make fun of myself, then, uh, you'll hopefully allow me to do it with you and you won't take offense. The need, the underlying need, and I have this in the first book, and I don't think I'll change it up, is is a compulsive need to feel that I am right. It is so constant. Now, remember, you all have it. We just made an art form out of it. All right. We we somehow got the message that if we were right, we would be on top of the situation. We would be in control. We would make this this uncontrollable world just a little bit controllable. So, we are driven toward moralisms, toward righteousness, toward arrogance, toward absoluteness. "I am right" is what we're always saying. And and we worked so hard to be right. We tried as little boys, as I did, you know, uh, to please my very demanding mother. And I'm not blaming her for it. I was her favorite, but still, she was a very demanding eight, and I knew the only way I'd keep her love was being a good little right boy and never making any mistakes, you know. Well, it worked. You know, that's why I became her favorite. I'm sure the others caused trouble, but I didn't, you know. Uh, I I'm not saying in each case that's going to apply that you got it from your parents, but say it was a piece of it. I think for me, not just "I am right," but "I am good." It it it takes such a moral tone. That's why it's crucially important that somewhere in the middle of life's journey, a ones see that they're not good. We almost have to sin. We just have. And sin boldly. You know, it's no surprise that that came from Martin Luther, because Martin Luther was a one, a classic one, a very former. We're always trying to reform everything, starting with ourselves. We're picking on ourselves constantly. Our animal symbol is the barking dog, you know. We're just barking at ourselves. "Richard, you should work harder. Richard, you should do it better." Now, it has some gift form to it. We almost always are good teachers because we're searching for the right word to communicate the right idea, which we of course have. You see. Oh, it's such circular logic. We all operate inside of it. We're perfectionists, but really, and I want to tell you this in all truth, it's only by our own stupid definition of perfection. I mean, it's so egocentric. I'm very sloppy about some things, you know, but I'll have two or three areas where I want it the way I want it. I don't know where it comes from, but it gives me untold happiness when it's that way. I don't know why. It's just when my wastebaskets are emptied. I was emptying them at the resource center yesterday. I'm just, it's a better world, you know. It is so silly, and I know it's silly, you know, and and yet, it's just, it's I I can go to bed easier that night. [Laughter] I I'm only real when I'm making effort. Yeah. When I'm giving at a, yeah. We're hard workers. We are workaholics, really. Ones and threes are both workaholics. We've got a heroic self-image, a muscular self-image. I'm not muscular physically, you know, but we'll try to find other ways to be muscular. I'm a muscular teacher. So, you've got to be some way to be strong and heroic and significant. Uh, we don't trust any voices that feel soft and sloppy, and, you know, they've got to be self-sacrificial voices. Well, we become little cadets, you know, little, uh, seminarians, like I did. Um, the the self-image is, "I am a good boy. I am a good girl. Look at me, how good I am." And that's what's, you see why I said at the beginning of the day, you're destroyed by your gift. Imagine if you really keep trying to maintain that into your 40s, 50s, and 60s, how unreal you're going to become, how rigid you're going to become, how anal-retentive you're going to become. Huh. The one left to himself or herself is anal-retentive, huh? They're they're the old school marm who's just looking around for things to clean up and correct, you know, things to make better and make right. We're always polishing up the world. Uh, John the Baptist was probably a one. Uh, and and, you know, I want to say this at the beginning, you tend, although we've made John the Baptist the patron of our center, the prophet in the desert, but you tend not, I mean, I can see right through John the Baptist. Yeah. You'll see that in my new book, "Soul Brothers," where my chapter on John the Baptist says, "Oh, come on, John, get off it." You know, you will not tend to like your own number in general because you see it. You see it for what it's worth, you know, the game she's playing, you know, the game he's playing because you've been playing it all your life. Threes don't like another three on the staff normally because they start competing with one another for the same successes, do you see? And they know she's being half deceitful right now because that's the way I used to deceive and get away with it. And now she's not getting, I'm going to make sure she doesn't get away with it. Do you see? So, we're high-minded. We tend to have bright, animated faces. I hope I do. I don't know if I do. Ordered in tidy spaces, you know. Abe Lincoln was the one. Ralph Nader, here he is, going off again, you know, "Save the world." Doesn't matter that it destroyed it last time, for in some people's judgment, you know. You just see one all over Ralph Nader's face, huh? They're often angular faces, like like John, I mean, Abe Lincoln, too. But you see a high moral achievement in someone like Abe Lincoln, and on some levels in Ralph Nader, I guess too, at least for the environment. But we can be very linear, uh, if if we have our righteous explanation. So, a lot of ones are attracted to fundamentalism. We're often correcting ourselves inside. I know. I have no doubt what I'll be doing tonight. What will be going through my mind tonight is how I didn't say it right today. I gave you the wrong impression on that. Yeah. I'll just be ripping it apart. And I don't know how not to do that. After the fact, we're just critics, critics, critics, critics, critics. Self-criticism, uh, and other criticism. And and we're as hard on you as we first are on ourselves. So, how do we unmask it? We've got to stop doing it to ourselves. Now, I'm getting much better at that as I get get older. You should listen to my early tapes. I don't know why anybody bought them, you know. I'm just terribly barking at the world, you know, which is what we're good at. Barking dogs. My friend calls me hornets. He says, "You just go after." We're very focused, and and anything that keeps us from our focus, uh, we tend to resent. So, it's it's very hard to stop us when we're on a flow. Therefore, what we've got to stop doing is being on a flow so we can be interrupted and we can be stopped. It's very hard for ones to, uh, multitask like women and mothers do so well. Very hard. Just if my mind's going this direction, don't pull me over there, or you'll see a bit of flash in my eyes. I mean, I've learned how to stop really saying something unkind to you, but it's immediate instinct inside of me. "Why are you interrupting me? Don't you know I'm going on this flow?" You see. So, if you know that about a one, it'll help you. We're just terrible, really. We're impatient. We're worn out by the end of the day. By nine, I just start fading normally because we remember the whole day has been full body perceptions of reality, non-stop, and it's too much. I don't know how to react to it. I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to change it. I don't know how to make it right. And so, ones, in a once in a while, we'll lash out with a strong overstatement, which I do on tape too. We tend to be into meritocracy about, "I deserve, you deserve." If you listen to my tapes, I'm always preaching against that. Why? Because that's the way I am. All my sermons are to myself, you know. It's so, I'm I'm begging, like Saint Paul was, who was another one, maybe an eight, I'm not sure, but begging for unconditional love, begging for justification by faith, because that's the one thing on the gut level we cannot believe. That you get anything for nothing, right? I only get it, I only deserve it if I work hard, if I work damn hard. And then we deeply resent people who want a free lunch. God, I sound like a Republican. You know, "What makes you think you deserve that?" My gut wants to say, "You know, you didn't pay your dues yet. You didn't work yet. You didn't try harder." We try harder, and you should try harder, if the truth be told. We don't respect people who don't try hard. We don't. We have to work at it, right? People who don't give a hundred percent, we don't respect because we think we give a hundred percent. In fact, we only give 100% in one or two areas where we've decided to be heroic. And that's where I got to be honest. And and those are humiliations that you learn as life goes on. Shoulds and oughts control our whole life. Grace. When we fall into grace, it's no surprise. Grace is the title on the title of three of my books because our entire life is a search for grace. And when we get it, we really get it. I think some of my stuff, I've explained grace very well because when it overwhelms me, I I could just weep. I could just, ah, the world is finally reconfigured into a beautiful world, and I can finally be happy. You see, I'm not happy. The one space, I I'm not happy in. And yet, I maintain it for some reason. Do you understand? This meritocracy, tit for tat, quid pro quo, you only deserve something if you work hard, is not a happy world. You never live up to your own expectations, and no one else is ever allowed to to live up to your expectations. Uh, we're forever fighting the cosmic war against crud. You know, Ralph Nader, there he is. I think that's what led me to to involvement with peace and justice people because here were the people who seem to be having my values of trying. We have a great love for justice and peace and truth in the world because that's right, that's good, that's what it should be. But just more often than not, when I got close to them, I was not impressed. Again, the energy was not right. The traits were correct. See, it it was the Enneagram that taught me this. The traits were correct. They're out there on the picket line, but you go home and do a planning meeting with, they're as violent as anybody else. They have to have their way. They have to hear it their way. And I saw that in myself. A lot of peace and justice people are ones who, uh, who want the world the way they want the world. So, it gave me at the same time an immense sympathy for them and an immense impatience with them. You see. And by by reason of my Franciscan vocation and having a chance for an interior life, and Jesus showing himself to me as a young man already, I don't mean visually, but really, um, I I think I experienced the serenity already as a boy. I'm sure it's the reason I became a priest. That there were moments that were so wonderful, so serene, so beautiful, so so whole, so everything, with no need to eliminate anything. That's why I wrote the book, "Everything Belongs." I'm sure that already as a four-year-old boy, I experienced that just ecstasy. I can still feel myself. I must have been three or four, looking at the Christmas tree in Kansas, and I thought I was going to float through the ceiling. It was just, I don't know why it was the Christmas tree, but it was a beautiful world, and God was in it, and I was in it, and and it all made sense. And that's what you see. It's the positive soul experience that you're trying to recreate. My soul experience is, there is such a thing as a perfect world. I know because I tasted it for 30 seconds when I was three years old, you understand. So, I can't forget it. I know there could be a world where everybody loves everybody, and I was in the middle of a very loving home, both mom and dad, and even my older sister when she wasn't picking on me. It was the same. It was a safe world. So, I I'm going to be emphasizing that all that the wound doesn't come first. And here, I think Matthew Fox was absolutely brilliant in re-emphasizing original blessing as preceding original sin. In the book here, I call it toward the beginning, the soul child. That that, and my soul child would be the seven. As a little boy, I was just always happy. Mother said, "You were so excited all the time. You would just squeal with delight. You're always squealing with so." And she says, "Then you dance, and you'd sing." And one time she says, "I told you, go out on the back porch and scream if you want to scream." Because it wasn't an angry scream. It was always a happy scream, you know. Of course, those little shock waves of reality were coming toward me, and they were for the most part wonderful. It's just a wonderful world, and I'm a part of it. And I was a happy little seven boy. And then the wound came. I don't know when. Was it after the Christmas tree? But somewhere, damn it, it is in a perfect world. And so, what I move into is, I'm going to find a way to make it perfect, right? I'm going to find a make it the way I want it. And that becomes the one. That's my fallenness. And now I cannot not be a one. It's my strategy. It's my life script. It's my way of surviving. It's been my way getting energy and perceiving the world for so long. I cannot change it entirely. All I can do is move it toward redemption, transformation, the true self. And what will happen is, ever so often, I'll taste that happy little boy again. And oh, it's just, it's it's it's enough to live for, you know. It's it's it's enough to know that perfection is possible, and that it's possible enough that I can let go of the imperfection, and I don't need to change everybody like I used to, and fix everybody, and fix the church. I know it still sounds like I'm trying to, but I really don't need to the way I need it to as a young man. It just is, is a different space inside. So, that's just a very quick example. Another thing that you tend to let go of, this is true of the one and the two, and I I have a lot of two-wing in me too, uh, is in this quid pro quo thinking of the one. We tend to be making lists and keeping accounts of how much we've given. The two does this in an emotional way. We do it in a heady way of how much I've given and how much you owe me, right? That's why it's been a grace to be a Franciscan on many levels, to not to have to work for a salary or money, because that isn't even an issue. It's never the money thing is eliminated. But because most of you don't have that luxury, to you know, we're almost trained in keeping lists. Do you understand? I wonder if that wasn't the real meaning of the vow of poverty, that didn't have to worry about earning money or or making a list. I think we've abused it a lot too. But but the underlying thing of breaking down meritocracy, breaking down worthiness systems, breaking down "I deserve, you deserve." Oh, and I offer that, brothers and sisters, to all of you, because it's not just the one and the two. We all do it. Again, we've just made an art form out of it. The country is, uh, the one that I used in the first book, I think I would still use, is Switzerland. If you've ever been to Switzerland, uh, you won't see any trash on the streets, right? In fact, I don't think there's any trash in the whole country. I I never, it doesn't exist. That they they build these little, these real pretty little boxes that you put all the trash in, and then it's all covered up, and you never see it. Uh, the concern about time. Who is it that makes watches? Swiss. Yeah. Art form. You gotta be on time. Uber punk, they call it, over punctual, huh? Yeah. You know, to be to come in late, like a few of you did, I should have pointed you out, right? Is it, uh, it's just unacceptable in Switzerland, unacceptable. All right. You, if it says 10 o'clock, you're there at 10 o'clock. The Mexicans could not survive, I don't think, could not survive in Switzerland. Um, and banks. I mean, is it any surprise at all, is you know, keeping accounts and keeping them very accurately? You're going to see how countries take these compulsions to an art form. And it's great to begin with Switzerland because they have taken one-ishness to an art form. The story I remember telling on the first tapes 20 years ago, but I'll tell it again. The first time I taught in Zurich, in fact, I think I was teaching the Enneagram. This is years ago, but it was a Sunday morning, and we had a break, and the streets were deserted, and I I walked across the middle of the street. We'd call it jaywalking, you know, but it's really no problem on Sunday, you know. Now, on the ends of each block in Switzerland, there's very clear markers where you are to walk. You want to talk about anal-retentiveness, right? A man shouted at me from his window, "999!" and he and he pointed over, you know, "You walk in the appropriate place." [Laughter] This is unbelievable. You know, the church is filled with these people, you know, or at least it was. The old Catholic Church very much appealed to that kind of energy. And these were our novice masters and teachers in religious life. They were all ones who thought there was something meritorious and salvific about walking inside the lines, you know, that this pleased God. And we took we took culture and made it into salvation, which is horrible, you know, but almost every culture has done it. So, the country Switzerland, barking dog, ant, a little ant, work, work, work. You never see an ant still do you? They just keep moving. We're ants, and we're hornets. We go right towards toward the task, but we're mostly barking dogs. Okay, that's the one.

I'm going to go right into the two. And notice we're moving from the gut space. My responses are from my gut, you know. The only reason I can stand up here and talk so much because I'm not thinking about him. I'm not thinking at all while I'm talking to you. You had people wonder how I do this, you know, because I'm not thinking. It's coming straight from my belly to my mouth, which sometimes serves me very well, and sometimes I just give terrible talks. When I'm if I'm angry, if I'm judgmental, if I'm not in love with the crowd in front of me, I I don't say nice things sometimes. And it's, but that's the price you pay for being a gut person, you see. It's either your best self or it's your worst self. Now, we're going to go into the heart space, and that's going to be their best self, and it's going to be their damn worst self, too. Okay. If my need is the need to be perfect, their need is the need to be needed. It drives their entire life. The creating and the manufacturing of neediness on your side. All right. I will make you need me. I will ingratiate myself to you by loving service, so you cannot live without me, right? And never entering my mind that I'm being anything but a martyr, servant, slave, you know. Uh, that's the pride. You've got it in one word. Need is the key word to understand a two. Remember, I said all of the hard people are very needy. They're very needy emotionally, and they don't recognize what immense emotional responsiveness they constantly need to tell themselves that they are important, special, or whatever. So, what they do is they repress their consciousness of their needs. "I'll follow this. It's subtle." And pretend that I don't have any needs at all. My only need is to meet your need, my dear husband, right? Or my dear wife. It can go both ways, of course. Then, just let me warn you, every, I don't know whether it be four days or four weeks, hell hath no fury, right? You will pay. You let a two give to you, you will always pay. Always. Because finally, after this self-sacrificial, martyred giving of themselves, finally one day they wake up on the wrong side of the bed, as we say, and they realize, "Damn it, no one's given back to me." And they get into the blame game, and they're really terrible at that point. They're not nice people. They can really, it's almost the flip of who they they want themselves to be. And they usually leave the room in tears because they know what has happened to me. I've I've become a dragon, a demon. I just said cruel things. I've heard words come out of a two's mouth that are crueler even than eights, you know, when when they suddenly retake their boundaries. And I want to say, along with need, the other important word in the two is boundary. Their entire life is negotiating boundaries, and they're never real good at it. They give away their boundaries too easily. They sell their soul for a sardine, as Teresa of Avila says, to get you to respond to them or like them or love them or think of them as special or thank them or kiss them or hold them or anything. And then what happens is they retake their boundaries now and then, and that's when you'll see their worst self. Uh, when they almost look like an eight for a moment. It's really a great surprise to them. That's when they run out of the room crying. If they allow grace, they will cry for three days and they'll return a transformed person, a very loving person. They really are. And I want to say this because I've been so hard on them the last few minutes. I want to say twos really do know how to love. They're good lovers. They're sweet, they're gentle, they're caring, they're tender. They pick up, you know, they are good nurses. They know what you need. They're in bed before you even do, which sometimes makes you unhappy. "How do you know it already? And I don't." But you're right, that's what I need. But the price they've paid for that, do you see? Here's their virtue become sin, become virtue. Is they don't know their own needs. They often don't have a clue what their own feelings are, what their own needs are. And and and then when they find them for a minute and recognize that no one is meeting them, and of course, what we all do, brothers and sisters, is I mean, you you can pick up it too quickly, you know. He doesn't have a clue what his real needs are. So, you know what you can do? You can manipulate him. They're very manipulatable people. All I have to do is put the word "need" in the sentence, right? And he or she will run off and do it. "Yes, Father. Yes, sure. Happy to meet your needs, Father." Right? But, uh, that that recognition now and then, "Damn it, I'm letting everybody manipulate me. I'm doing everybody else's work. I don't know my own." Huh? That's what returns then with the almost reaction formation and the exact opposite response. So, what you have to do, obviously, to help the two, is to really feel their own feelings. And I want to say, please don't hear me that I'm saying all women are twos. I am not saying that. You women know this better than I that women culturally are told they should be twos. So, so almost every woman fights with this, even if she's not a two. Culturally, you were trained in patriarchal culture to be our servants, our helpers. Once the children come along, what else can you be? You've got to, on some level, be a two to be a mother. I think you you've got to to read that little baby's needs and to learn how to respond to it. So, you all become experts at it. You you they wake you up several times during the night, apparently, when they're first born. You've got to die to your own needs. Forget, "I got to take care of this baby." So, women very often are trained in twoness, right? Those of you who really are twos have a double compulsion. Women who are twos tend to have therefore a double component, especially if you were a mother. It's it's, uh, it's all summed up in this word, codependent. Remember, was it 15 years ago, and that was the buzzword? Everybody was discovering the degrees. We were codependent. Well, the word was created for the two. They do raise it to an art form. They don't know what their feeling is or their need is. They have these magnificent antennae. They really are magnificent, that just can pick up from the twitch of your eyebrow what you need. All right. It's beautiful, and they run to get it. Now, the trouble is, when they haven't created the third eye and learned to observe their own neediness, sometimes they're dead wrong, too, right? Sometimes they're meeting your needs that are not your needs, and that's when you feel the intrusiveness, the invasiveness, and the manipulation. So, I'm going to speak out of the other side. Not only are twos manipulatable, they are manipulators. I know that's hard for you to hear if you're a two, but they use very seductive, charming, Christian, contemplative language. The more holy it is, the more seductive it is. The more guilt they they're prone to guilt, and they know how to give you good guilt, you know. And so they'll love to use language of of holiness and church and, "You owe it to Jesus," or whatever. "Jesus would want this from you," or stuff like that. Be careful of religious language from a two, right? Well, be careful of it from a one, for you know, you probably shouldn't listen to me at all. But I think in some ways, it's seeing myself play these games that has made my mind so critical about religion. So, just see how we do this all the time, serving our own need. So, if the two does not get in touch with what their need is in this relationship, their observation of you will probably be doubly wrong. And that's why you often, a lot of people don't like twos because they constantly feel this, "I'm being shoved around. I'm being manipulated. I'm being, she needs me to need her more than I need her to need me." All right. I I I don't want this. I don't like this. I I'm feeling controlled minute by minute by minute. What else can I say? They actually feel shame, the emotion of shame, for having any needs. I've seen them tear up in spiritual direction when I say, "What do you, you really need?" And they'll never speak immediately. There's always the choking up of the throat, the the almost not knowing what to say. You really do? You just want to take them in your arms and hug them. They're so sweet and so dear because you really, the the choking up at the throat is almost what they've done. All I don't know what I need. And and they will invariably start crying. They cry a lot. Twos too, or people with two wings too, uh, that just, I I don't have a clue. I am seven steps removed, really, from my true instinctual self to know what I I really need. And a lot of people have to go through years to to really know how to get the texture of that and the shape of that. Uh, what else can I say about the country? Are there any Italians here? Have you ever been to Italy? No. It's a trip. I mean, they're always feeding you food. They're always apparently visually loving and helpful, right? But why is it you don't really feel helped? I I think of, I compare it often to, you go to England or Scotland, you know, and if you're lost, you ask any little shopkeeper, and the English will come right out and they'll walk with you half the way to help you find so you won't get lost. The Italians just want to get you out of the way. "Down there, over there." It's it's that is the two. That there were not really helpful. Just think of us Italians as warm, loving, heartfelt family people. And I learned this from Italians. You say, "There's nothing worse than being in an Italian family with with absolute expectations of hugs and kisses and visits to Mama and what you owe Mama." And it controls your whole life till the day you're dead. It's it's a classic dysfunctional family. Now, every race has these. I'm really, but I just got to pick on somebody. All right. So, it's and yet, I would say I've also seen this humble, loving servant in in Italian people. Just the opposite. The redeemed two. I see both of them there. The utter manipulative user, uh, that that makes the show of love but is not loving. And the person who really does know how to love. Both are there in the culture. So, the two animal is the licking puppy. When you're when you start feeling licked, you know you've got a two in sight. All right. Uh, it's it's always a little more than you want. And so that's why the two has to work at boundaries, uh, like saying, "Would this be helpful to you? Or could you use that? Now, I don't want to get in the way." Or almost phrases like that. I have to practice them for a while, you know, to find out if I'm really helping you or if I'm really helping me under the guise of helping you. Do you see? And that's that's a long training to see the difference. Do you see, brothers and sisters, what a good discernment of spirits this is? Again, for all of us, because all of us do this at different times. There's not one of us in this room who hasn't played the two game with the appropriate person, maybe your first partner, girlfriend, or lover, or whatever, or someone whose attention you need it to a great degree. What else? The virtue, humility. And and it only comes by being humbled. You've go, the only way you become humble is by going through humiliating situations. There's no way you can do it any other way. That's true of all the virtues. And some have described the Enneagram as a training in virtue, in the real character of a free virtue instead of always the virtue with a hook. And probably, if there was a visual symbol, I know that Pueblo Indians have it with the the ogre lady. If you look at the Kachina of the old ogre lady, I learned all these when I started at Acoma years ago. The ogre lady, she has a hook, right? She's holding a hook. It's there's a when a two loves you, they've always got a hook. They want something back, right? And they don't know that. You know, you learn it very quickly. There's always a price, right? So, you start wanting to keep twos at a distance because you know, "I'll pay tomorrow if I let him serve me today." But until they recognize that hook and weep over it, uh, they aren't free. The ogre lady, if you look at the Kachina, she also has a big tongue sticking out of her mouth, huh? I must say, I think we're all sinners in this regard, but the two is highly prone to gossip, to to processing. See, she has everybody's feelings but her own. He has everybody's feelings but his own. And so he needs help. She needs help, frankly, to process this plethora of feelings. And so they're highly prone to talking, gossiping, they really are trying to process it. What you have to help them to do as a spiritual director is find a safe, responsible, you know, healthy spiritual person. Probably that's why we created therapists. Okay, here it's okay to gossip if you will. Here it can be contained. But twos can wreck great havoc in a group, a community, because everything is for public consumption and public interpretation. And it's no good. It's no good. I see that as the tongue of the ogre lady. Anyway, what you'll be seeing in the days ahead are various images for all of these things. And in many ways, until you get an image, an icon, a picture, a saint, a biography, you don't get it. They say that we're transformed in the presence of images. And I think that's Jung said that, and I think it's true. You almost need an image. Catholicism understood that.

Much better than Protestantism, which is why we read the lives of the saints. And so you get the image and the energy, and then you can sometimes experience the transformation. But it'll take a while to perfect those images. Uh, any questions about the one or the two?

Yes, for two, you know, some people use the little flower, but I think she's more a four. And there's that connection between the two and the four, you know. Uh, I had some written down here. They're in my book. I can't remember what I wrote in my book. Who were the other saints we had as twos? Vincent de Paul, for sure. Well, you know, I said Mother Teresa in my first book, in this blue one, but we changed it in the new one. I think she's an eight. And, and the eight in redeemed form looks like a two. See, and once I was over there in Calcutta and heard all the stories from her community, she's an eight. All right. Yeah. But isn't that beautiful that the whole world saw her as the consummate two? She could almost be used as the poster girl for a redeemed eight. She's a tiger mother. A tiger mother. My mother was too, which I see in my brothers and sisters. We all tend to be rather secure because we had this mother who just feverishly took care of us, you know, just from the moment we were born, we knew she would always be there for us in every form. So it was the good side of the two, of the eight. Do you understand? When you've got a good eight for a mother, you feel secure. I mean, she'll swim oceans to take care of her kids, you know, and it's, you feel that way much of the rest of your life. Uh, so who else? Vincent de Paul. Oh, John the 23rd. Well, now, Andreas insists he's a nine. Uh, you know, all of these are guesses, by the way. But I can see why you'd say, you know, the Franciscans told me when he was Pope, and the first day it was on the feast of Francis, all the Franciscans were invited to the Vatican, and he was up on his throne, and all the cardinals were in rows, each side, and it was a formal receiving line. The door swung open, and all the little brown robes came in to greet the Pope, and he, they said he came running down from his throne and just threw his arms around all of them, just hugging them and kissing them. So it does feel too. But might be Italian also. Italians look like twos. They're trained to look like they are very loving. They really do know how to read you. There's an empathy and a sympathy in the two that is extraordinary. And that is a virtue. I am all day going to be emphasizing the negative, but if I don't say enough of the positive, keep asking that question because the, the point is to subvert your addiction to it. So I have to make fun of each one, right? But you still need to hear the positive gift. Positive gift: empathy, sympathy, true servants, true lovers. They are natural helpers. Boy, I mean, you give it to a job, who's healthy too, you know, it's going to get done. And that's a great, that's a great feeling. And if he or she has to work till 10 o'clock at night, of course, if it's going to help you. It's always tied to relationship, which is its gift and its curse. You follow me? You disconnect a two from all relationships, which is why the hermitage is good for them too. But, uh, they, they will feel a sudden major loss of energy because they, their, their giving is always associated with relating or someone liking them. I can see why in 1400 there were 1400 Franciscan hermitages in Europe. That recognition that all of us, for different reasons, need to break the codependent world of, of community and a family. That even though a community and family are a wonderful gift, they also, for many of us, keep us at a very codependent and immature level.

Yes, is resentment spread across all the types, or is it confined to set up particular types of expectations? Well, certainly, we once make an art form of resentment. Um, the two would also participate in it a lot, but it's also always tied with, "You didn't give me back in kind what I thought I had a right to expect," or "what I think I deserve." I would say you'd see the subtlety of the, the concept of resentment most in the one or two. But you're still absolutely right. All of us play our resentment games. Sure. Anybody else on the one or the two?

Yes, a saint. Oh, a saint. Um, I, I mentioned Saint Paul and I mentioned Martin Luther. Although Catholics were trained not to call him a saint. I guess I think actually a high degree of people we canonized were ones. Gandhi would probably also be a one. But I almost hesitate to point out these saints who are very perfectionistic, who we idealize because they never did anything wrong. You really wonder what some of them were like to live with, because, because I would know how much anal retentiveness it takes to be always perfect, and to be always right, and to be always good. But you read the old lives of the saints. That was almost the, there's probably a good place to say that the only people who got canonized were a combination of one and two, righteous like a one, and self-effacing servants like a two. They became our idealized Christian notion. And I think one of the great wisdoms of the Enneagram is that's done a lot of damage because the saint has at least seven other faces, seven other ways. By the way, we call this, maybe it's a good way to end this morning session. We call this, this whole diagram, the face of God. And that each of us looks out at reality with our little one set of blinders, with our limited perception, which is limited. And if we could perchance, by God's grace, look out at reality from nine pairs of eyes, if you could stand in the eyes of a seven for a minute and enjoy the way they do, do you see? If you could stand in the eyes of a five and have that calm detachment that the five had, and honor all of them, while knowing one of them is your preferred stance, you would look at reality with the eyes of God. Isn't that lovely? So that's one reason I like to keep using the diagram itself. You know, it must reveal our deep, deep desire to understand this mystery of human nature because we know we are such a mystery to ourselves, even though we've been with ourselves so many years. And I, I think it does reveal our desire to, to improve our relationships with other people. So as I keep saying, however, that's a corollary. Primarily, it's a tool for your own conversion and transformation, for your own enlightenment. So you can almost, as we say, catch your sin out of the corner of your eye. You can't catch it directly because you're in your direct patterns already, and they're all defined and justified and legitimated and emotionally familiar. So you've got to catch it on the run. You've got to see, "Oh God, there I did it again." When you really, when you really first learned it, really, the humiliation continues for some days and weeks and months because I remember having a feeling I was being a one every three minutes. And then there I am, "You're doing it again." That's why you do that. That's why you do that. And, and it's just so, so exposing of, of the false self because it never is a pure energy. It's always filtered through self-interest and self-protection. And when you see how much self-interest and self-protection is going on inside of you, it, uh, it helps me understand what the saints meant by weeping over their sins because there's no point in hating it. Do you feel the weeping mode is different than the fixing mode? The weeping mode is different than, "I got to change it." And to repeat one more time, lest you missed it, if I would go out to change myself, I would do it in a one way, you see, which would only make me more of a one. Now, that's exactly what the saints meant, in my opinion, by saying, "You can't convert yourself. You are converted in spite of yourself. Only God can do it. And all you can do is get out of the way." But what you can do is see it, so you'll stop your addiction to it, and your attachment to it, and your justification of it, and even calling it virtue when, in fact, in many ways, it's your worst vice. And with that, we move into the three.

All right. So the three is a center space, a central stress point for the three. Now, let me describe that real succinctly. They both prefer the heart, and yet they repress the heart. Can you see the, the conflict that's there inside of them? Uh, they want to be relational, loving, caring people, and they are. But they also want to do something with it. Huh? They're, they're dynamic in the true meaning of a dynamo. They're dynamic people who want to move life toward action. I always say they grease the wheels of life. If you want to get things done, if you want to get the show on the road, you better get a three at your side. I mean, they're masters at it. They're naturals at it. They immediately, intuitively see, uh, how to organize something for the greatest sense of efficiency. Their, their, their self-esteem comes from competence in the outer world. Competence in the outer world. And I want to tell you a secret about a three. It'll help you love them. They often, they come to tears when they recognize this. There's this terrible, deep fear in a three that he or she would not be lovable if they, uh, weren't producing. "That you'll forget about me? You won't like me? Well, why would you like me?" You know, it's that whole thing we all faced. "No one would like me. The only thing you could like is my product." So I'll keep giving you a product, and they become masters at the production of product, whatever it might be. And that will keep you loving them. That will keep your heart oriented toward them. And they are very heartfelt people. But because of that inner conflict, they, they also are out of touch with their heart in a certain way, huh? To be honest, threes can be, and we see it in the, you know, stereotypical American businessman, can be very superficial because that heart is so conflicted, is so torn. They're needy little boys and girls of, "I want to please you. I want to make you happy. I want to give you what you want." There was a Franciscan who worked with me in Cincinnati in the early years who was a great three. Now works in Europe as the head of Franciscans International. He can whip anything into shape. But we got to be very close, and he would share his soul with me and vice versa. And, you know, for John to enter a room, he looks like the essence of self-confidence. And everybody would assume he doesn't have an ounce of self-doubt. Which is normally what you project onto a three. They look so competent that you think there's not an ounce of self-doubt. And he says, "The moment I enter a room," he says, "on an unconscious level, I'm assessing it to see how I can impress them." It isn't even conscious. It's, it's, it's in the emotional inner world. But how can I succeed here? How can I get this show on the road? How can I make it happen? Uh, so everything is to make it happen, which they do. And it comes with great ease to them. You can see now why, uh, the world calls America the three country because what it sells out to is what we call Yankee pragmatism. You know, for the American, if it works, it's true. We're not interested in philosophical truth. We're not interested in theological. If, if the war appears to be working, America is all for the war. As soon as the war appears to be failing, we're all against the war. You know, it says, "Well, is there any theological, philosophical reason why you're either for or against?" Or, "No, you know, it's just, if it works, it's true." Now, that's the worst state of the three. Workability. We call it pragmatism. A kind of need to be on the correct team, to be affiliated with something that's going somewhere. I don't even need to know the rules of the game. I just need to know that my game is working, right? They, they, um, they're naturals at political savvy. They read the political thing in terms of who's got the power and what's going to finally come through. Uh, it's second nature to them, whereas the rest of us maybe could be very naive about where's the power in this room? Where's, and I don't mean power in the sense of domination, that's going to come more with the eight. With the three, it's just power as shareability and, and, uh, how can we organize it so this group of people can work together? Do you see? And in that sense, they can be very, very effective community builders because they know how, "What you need, what you need, what you want, what you came here for." Okay, how can we put this together?

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Um, it's pretty amazing. I, I don't have a natural eye for that at all, and I've invariably had a three, uh, helping me to put this show on the road. I mean, this whole new resource guide, you see somewhere here, you know, I can't believe all the stuff I've taped. It's embarrassing to see all my books and tapes. It takes a three. I won't mention any names here, but it's a man in this room who, who says, "Okay, how can we put all that together and make it available for people?" Huh? And, and make it work. I don't know how to make Richard sellable or workable. We ones aren't really ambitious, we're righteous. I'm sure you can hear it, every other word, we're righteous and arrogant. Ones are ambitious. Now, let me describe that ambition, and that's what can make them deceitful. It's probably what got Martha Stewart into trouble, since we talk about, I mean, the classic, classic three off the wall, who has to turn everything into marketability and sellability and attractiveness. And, and she does. I mean, God, she's good. I mean, threes are good at what they do. They don't, they don't sell it unless it's attractive. And, and she's a master at it. But it leads them into this kind of, um, sometimes, you know, playing with the edges of things. I don't know if she did it or didn't do it, and don't even care. But the, the ill will I see toward poor Martha, I'm sure in part because she's a woman, and you all women know that is, well, men don't like strong women who get such things done. But I want to add in this context, it's partially because she's a three. A lot of people don't like threes because they, they run circles around us. They just, they get too much done, and they're always good-looking besides. I, this tells me there's some connection with body shape and body self-image. You know, I'm sure little kids who are really cute probably get noticed a lot more, unfortunately. We fawn over, "Isn't she adorable?" And that little boy or little girl, "Oh, I'm adorable. You know, people like me." You know, well, I'd start doing my dance, wouldn't you? I mean, you start doing your little dance, "Hey, what pleases people?" All right, this pleases people. This pleases mama. This pleases daddy. In a sense, the three is even more a pleaser than the two. They're both pleasers, but the two pleases individuals. The three pleases systems. You understand? They, they are actually more impressive in a group than they are one-on-one. It's very interesting. I'm told this, I don't want to offend anybody's Catholicism, but bishops who have had one-on-ones with the Pope, who I'm convinced is a three, they say as a one-on-one, he's, he's not nearly as impressive. He can, for whatever reasons, I don't want to reveal some of the individual stories that we're told, but, but we've all seen him on the stage, you know? I mean, the youth of Europe just in awe at this. The three knows how to play the crowd, the group. They know how to lead a group, and, and a group gives them the authority. They're natural leaders. I would say half of the American presidents of this, of the last century were threes. John Kennedy, clearly a three. They, they almost relate to you to the camera better, to the stage better, to the public forum better than they do the individual. It's really, really amazing. Very often, when you're with them privately, they have to struggle for the right word to describe their inner feelings, but they'll stand up and they'll just, you know, uh, sort of, uh, stellar performance. Stellar performances. Very, very interesting. But it is this heart conflict, which, which is a suffering for them because they want to be personal, and they are personal, and they are hard people. But they, on a certain level, and this is humiliating for them to admit, if they had to choose between person and product, they'll choose product over person. Yeah, the, the, the sellability of the product, you see. And that's another piece that sometimes makes people dislike or mistrust threes because we're afraid, "I'll be swept up in that, and maybe he'll use me." And that's probably the worst thing a three could do, but sometimes does, is use people for the sake of the product. And they're so glib, they're so good-looking, they're so efficient, they're so attractive that you tend to let them do it. And, and then when you're halfway down the line, you start resisting it. "Why did I let her, him talk me into that?" You know, they're very hard to resist. Threes are very hard to resist. They're always selling themselves to the group. But again, I want to say out of the other side of my mouth, they're good at it in terms of leading the group, organizing the group, recognizing the gifts that are there. That's one of their great, both the three and the four are potentiators in seeing talented people. The person just walks in the door, and I've seen our executive director do that too, and, and he'll come to me, you know, "I think she could do that." Oh, and I said, "I never would have thought of that." "Yeah, I bet she could." You know, they just see it. It's really an extraordinary gift. All of these gifts which you've developed for 30 years are second nature to you. So I do want to keep emphasizing that they are gifts. But it's fast food. It's, it's the two glib, the two quick solution. Do you see? It's, uh, it, there isn't always long-term food from the three. They're natural competitors. They're natural winners. Um, they know how to tell a lie and make it not sound like a lie. The used car salesman, I guess. Dale Carnegie, how to tell a lie and be sincere about it, you know? And is it any surprise that the Dale Carnegie course went on for years in America? That appeals to us. It's just, it's our way of thinking. The, the need is the need to be successful. Success becomes an idol in their life. And that's why failure is a necessity. They must, for the sake of their soul, fail. Right there, usually has to be one major. Poor Martha's in the middle of it right now, you know? And you just hope she has the spirituality to learn from it and to say, "Okay, Martha, this had to happen." All right, in terms of the soul, you have to suffer one great defeat by your misreading of a situation. The three has to eat their failure. What they'll normally do, and they're masters at it, is to turn their failure into a success. God, they're good at it. You know, they'll rearrange it in their own mind and in your mind. That's why I think most threes need to be married to have a healthy life because a healthy marriage, as you well know, many of you, what it does for you is one person who is your truth speaker, who doesn't let you off the hook. And there's one person the three can go home to and be naked with. And I mean that in every sense, be naked with. "I am who I am." And cry with that person, and fail with that person. You understand? "You know me for who I really am." And finally, there's one place where I don't have to be stellar. I don't have to shine. I don't have to succeed with you. And I mean, they just, I remember this nun in Cincinnati who just broke down in tears. I was able, she worked with me for many years as a three. I was able, by the grace of God, to really love her and accept her as a person. When that broke through one day, that I did not love her because she was my right-hand woman, but because she was Pat. Uh, she, you know, the tears could not stop. So they need one person like that where they can finally be loved for who they are. Now, don't we all want that? Of course. I mean, every one of you in this room wants that. I do too. Will someone love me for who I am, not just because people think I'm important or whatever? And that's what the, the three thinks that the only reason you like me is because I'm important and successful. So many of them go toward roles and titles and totally immersed themselves. There are a lot of bishops who are threes, I'm afraid. A lot of heads of everything who are threes because role and title and costume and hat, special hat or special anything, just reassures the three that "I am, I have a role and am significant." They're far too tied to roles. And so to help them spiritually, you have to help them detach. And can you just be Bill today, and not Bill, the Vice President of the Corporation? That's what hopefully they can be with their wife, their husband, with their spiritual director, their father confessor. We're one place. We, we all have to be where we can be naked and loved apart from our roles, apart from any title. Image is very important to a three. And that's why very often God has to take it away from them so they can fall back into who they were before image, before self-image. Um, we've made a whole art form out of this. We call it Madison Avenue, the selling of image, the manufacturing of image, the communicating of image as if it's substantial reality. When Madison Avenue is nothing more than images, and yet it makes billionaires out of people. The selling of images. Is it any surprise that the, the movie theater, or the motion picture, has become the American art form? We're masters at it. We really are. I mean, when American movies are good, they're really good because we really know how to communicate the image. So the four wing is already coming in this artistic creativity of the four, but the putting it on film and transporting it to the whole world. Can you see that's the, the, so Hollywood is like a combination of three and four, creativity with product. Bill Clinton was undoubtedly a three. I think Ronald Reagan was probably a three. It's just, we will keep electing threes, uh, president. I think Bush is a six. Kerry might be a three. Could well be another three. But we'll probably keep electing threes because they mirror the level of consciousness of this country. All right. It's what we admire. It's what we like. Winners who look like winners. And all you have to do is have a winner's face and talk like a winner, and that's our president. All right, he's going to be our leader because he reflects who we are. Uh, does it work? Is the first question in a three's mouth. Will it work? Can you do anything with it? Will it go anywhere? They, they're, they're good at it. But what, what dawns on them somewhere in the middle of life is that in a certain sense, their life is borrowed. It's not their own, you see. And that's the liminal space, the conversion moment. "I don't want to live someone else's emotions, someone else's success, someone else's agenda. I, I've got to say, who am I apart from success, apart from public image, apart from persona?" Again, usually some need to, to move apart from the crowd, to move apart from the world of, of appearance and attractiveness and good looks and, and all the rest. And money. Many of our people have translated this all into money. That the making of money proves I am a success. It's, of course, a lie. And the soul knows it. It doesn't say you're a success on that finally meaningful level. But their self-confidence comes precisely from workability, from, from the flow happening. And when they get caught up in that flow, it is so exciting to them. They can probably work 20-hour days. It, it is amazing the amount of energy a three will have and not tire, not tire because the dynamism itself is their food. The, the, the creating of workability, the, the creating of of success in other people's eyes. But then they have to eventually pull it back. What is really success in my eyes? How can I be happy with myself? And like the two, I mean, they almost want to cry. "I don't know, damn it, I don't even know what my agenda is or what would be happiness for me. I've spent all my life trying to make you all happy and trying to make you all successful and trying to make you succeed." They often tend to be very stereotypical feminine and very stereotypical masculine without working at it. I think that's part of their attractiveness. You know, a woman who's a three is feminine and sexy, and, and she's on the make too, with the crowd. They love clever little phrases, clever little one-liners, you know, uh, that, that in two words can pull together the whole conversation. Stephen Covey, you know, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I mean, there is a philosophy for threes. Or the One Minute Manager. I mean, it's good stuff. Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with any of it. Now, and so they have this ability to make it concise and clear, why it's more sellable, right? And it's more manageable. That's one of the reasons for American success in all the world. I mean, let's say some good things about our country. I go to so many countries where I just want to say, "Get to the point." Around it and around it and around it they talk. And we Americans just say it, you know, just get right to it. And, and even the way I talk when I go to Europe, they love it. But I can see their little, "Gosh, he talks like an American. He just," I said, "Oh God, am I one too?" You know, because we just, we cut through all of the extraneous stuff that's going to get in the way and that isn't the point. Threes love, "What's the point here?" And I bet if you've been in a conversation with a three, they'll find you. "What's the point? What did you come here to talk to me about?" After they've gone on babbling for 20 minutes and you don't know what it is or where it is they're going. Uh, they have no patience with that. Now, that impatience will make you upset. You'll feel, "Oh, he's not listening to me," which he probably isn't. But, but on another level, he is listening to you and saying, "I want to do something with your message, but give me a chance to do it." You understand? And, and give it to me clean. So they like clean phrases and quick summary kind of phrases. They're into charts and organizational manuals and all the rest of that, huh? They always look like they're being looked at, you know, glamorous models. They, they don't dress down without trying. They, they put on nice clothes, present their their best self, and present it to you. In a certain sense, they look at themselves from outside, and they know how they look. I'm not guessing that's not completely wrong, as long as you'll stay out there forever. And that's their problem. Get inside. What's going on in here? If they don't do that, the three becomes very, very superficial. And that's the international image of the Americans. They get a lot done, but don't expect much once you scratch the surface. There's nothing underneath except clichés and clever phrases about making the world safe for democracy and all these things. But the rest of the world feels, "We can't carry on in-depth conversations philosophically or theologically or psychologically. It's just these clever one-liners that the three settles for." And a three culture, I think, settles for. So the animal is the racehorse. They're natural racehorses. They can't help it. And they almost always win the race. Or the show horse, not just winning the race, but looking good while I'm winning the race. It's a great skill, huh? The, the peacock is also used. Now, I know different animals have been used by different people. But the peacock puts up its beautiful tail and says, "Look at me. Look at me. You look at me, and what you see is beautiful." And it is attractive. I know I said this, but I will say it again because it makes the point. And the way I was first taught it, he said, "Now, Richard, when you're spiritually directing a three, remind them that when you cut off the tail of a peacock, they're just an ugly chicken like everybody else. Tell them to put their big tail down once in a while and just be a human being. Just be one of the crowd." And honestly, I can tell you this from the three design, they want to be that, but they are convinced that you'll be disappointed if they're ordinary. Understand? That you won't like them anymore. You won't invite them to your parties anymore. You won't care about them anymore if you don't. Because the only possible reason you would like me, do you see how self-hatred is at all of our hearts? Is because I'm, I'm manufacturing success for you. But when the day I'm not manufacturing success, you're going to drop me like a hot potato. That's what they fear. And very often, to be honest, not again to tie this up with parents, that our parents made us do it, but very often pairs, threes did have one parent whose love was very conditional. One, almost without exception, one parent who they learned very early, "The only way I'm gonna get Dad's love or Mom's love is I gotta perform for Dad. I gotta perform for Mom." And so that is so deep inside of them that it doesn't change easily. Threes have a hard conversion and a long conversion because they'll keep going back to where they're fed. Not that we all don't, but they do in an especially strong way. And that's, I, I went out of my way to describe it so you'd get the sense of the double compulsion of the center point. Right? That that person is doubly trapped. Even his two, his heart, his two wing, I haven't taught you the wings yet, but hold on to it, and his four wing, his heart. So his heart, heart, heart. She's heart, heart, heart. You know, he has to work. She has to work to get some head. That doesn't mean they're not smart. It has nothing to do with smarts, but to be more rational, logical. So threes get jerked around by their feelings. And, and they think because a person likes them or there's warm simpatico between them and a person, that that person will also be effective and a hard worker and productive and efficient. That's all projection from their side. And so they go through life being disappointed a lot. "Gosh, she was so good-looking, and she, she hugged me, so I thought she could be president of the corporation." You know? No, that's where their heart totally gives them the wrong signals. They, they project onto people who respond very positively to them personally. Follow me? They resp, they project on them all kind of other qualities that really, then they find out after the fact are not there. And that's why threes do need good counselors, therapists, spiritual directors, wives, husbands, someone to help them clarify their heart world. You got their heart world. Their emotional world is so confusing. You know, I should have mentioned my, my first book, the blue one, "Discovering the Enneagram." And Andreas, my German friend, he took it, and then together we wrote it. But he's a two. And probably in both books, the two is maybe the strongest chapter because he put so much time into it. Two with a strong three wing, which is why he got on my books printed in Germany, you know, because he's so efficient and effective. But he told me last trip to Germany, says, "Richard, I'm at the point where I don't ever believe my first feeling. It's always off." Right? Now, he said, "And here you think of these as the feeling people." So unless the two and the three and the four, in another sense, can pull back from that first feeling, which is this dance of "Who loves me and how much do they love me and are they responding to me personally?" Get out of that dance. All right? You're never going to find objective truth there, and you're going to get hurt again and again and again, on either the personal level or the public level. Okay. The three. Did I tell you the, the virtue is sin is is integrity, and the sin is, uh, is deceit. This deceit being the, uh, not telling open lies, but presenting an attractive self, a self that is other than the whole truth. All right. With that, we'll dive into the four. The last heart space.

Yes. Oh, yes. And Israel. Uh, if it'll help you understand why this Jewish-American thing can't be broken, because we're the same, right? Israel is a three country, and America is a three country. We've both made an art form of it. And they cannot see our dark side in a certain sense, but we certainly can't see theirs because we're the same. No, not Germany. Wait for Germany. Four. We're still in the heart space. It's the conflicted heart. They have all these. Does that mean she's gonna pay them? Not only do they feel all these emotions, but they found a creative way to try to distill them and get in touch with them. And it's through the word, or the symbol, or the metaphor, or the color, or the art form. It works for them. It, it pulls together their complex, subtle, and emotional life in a way that literally they can get a handle on it. That's why they just, I mean, you've seen fours in art museums, they're just breathy with excitement. It's just, "Ah," you know? I mean, a beauty for a four is like a religious experience. The rest of us think they're sort of off, you know, or eccentric or something. But, but the world will be saved by beauty. Who said that? Was that Dostoevsky? You know, the four believes that in their gut. Now, the exact flip of that, however, is also true. Fours are maudlin. Fours are dark. Now, that's a form of beauty for them, though. Hold on to that, huh? Fours are moody. Fours are suicidal in the worst sense. Fours love to talk about death and darkness. Film noir in France. My God, can France make a happy movie? I've never seen it. If there is one, you know, it's always, always just the, they are, they are attracted by the dark side. They really are. So much so that even when something good happens to them, they'll turn it into a tragedy. They love the tragic, while saying they don't, right? They love to have had a tragic childhood, and they'll make it four times more tragic than it was, you know? They, the, the tragic gives them energy. Let me repeat it. The tragic gives them energy. Uh, and so they naturally wrap themselves around it. And it's true. There was a guy in the seminary with me, a classic four. And in those days, of course, we were really into conformity. We all had to be at everything. And he would disappear for a few days. And in his room, all holed up, and the, you know, uh, formation directors would knock on his door, and he'd say he was sick or something. And then he'd appear after three days, and he, he'd written an overture each time, or something, or a whole sheaf of poems, or whatever. Immense creativity. But basically, he was depressed for three days. Deep depression, you know, dark depression. Oh, they just love to be depressed. Now, the rest of us say, "God, why would anybody love?" And they would swear they don't love to be depressed, but they do. They need it. This is what I mean by beating yourself on the head and calling it happiness. Why do you do this to yourself? Well, it gets me my energy. In whatever way gets you your energy. They know their best creativity comes out of suffering. It's why so many artists live in the poor part of town, live in a little apartment, you know, the rest of us would go crazy. "Oh, I'm a suffering artist. No cavity, even afford my mortgage payments or whatever it might be." And they probably can't, but they love it, you know? They'll tell that story. They'll milk it for all it's worth, their life, how poor they were, you know, and how much they suffered. They do know how to suffer, but they know how to milk the suffering and make it into art, make it into beauty. They will often destroy relationships. And this is why fours can be very difficult people to be married to or to be with. I'm told this by marriage partners of fours. And when one of your children is a four, they're not easy to raise, I'm told either, because everything's histrionic, everything is tragedy, everything is prima donna performance. This is the center of the world. Why isn't the whole world appreciating me? So the need, as you can hear it, is the need to be special. Now, the amazing thing is, they are rather creative, special people, but they're attached to it. They're addicted to it. They're advertising it too much. They're trying too hard. And so a lot of people don't like fours either. All the heart space people make a lot of enemies for different, for three different reasons: the hysteria of the two and reaction of the, the manipulativeness of the three while trying to organize you, you know, and the, uh, eccentricity and tragedy of the four. Just you want to stay away from them for a while. I want to make sure I don't humiliate anybody in particular, but they love black. And I do see a few people here in black, but it doesn't mean because you're in black. Black is the tragic color, but it's also the color of dignity. And if at all possible, they will wear a mauve scarf over the black. I taught this once, and a woman stood up and said, "Ta-da!" And she was a four, and she was totally in black with a mauve scarf. But I, I hadn't even seen her. But mauve, whatever that exact color is, I'm sure the fours could tell me, is is a very special color. I don't know why they're attracted to it, but it's really sort of eccentric when you go toward the purple in any way. Not people normally don't dress in purple and red. They do, you know, they're in some ways fours are easy to spot, you know, because they, they refuse to be one of the hoi polloi. They refuse to be one of the crowd. Very often, when you're sitting at a table, I don't again want to point anybody out, they will try to sit not at a table. They will try to sit apart and separate. They will literally pull their chair back from, so I'm not a part of the group. They almost feel they lose their energy if they're like everybody else. And, and be sympathetic to them and understanding. It, I can't just, it's like death to just sit here and be dressed in just a white t-shirt, you know, and, and be sitting like everybody else. They have to make their statement in the way they sit, in what they're wearing. And it's second nature to them. They cannot not do it. So you might as well learn to love them for it, because a lot of the times they're real good at it. I mean, that is rather clever, the way you're sitting, or whatever it might be. They'll, they'll naturally see the, uh, the different way to do everything. Which is why their art never ceases. They just, they, they will not follow, fall into the, uh, any kind of conformity. They refuse to, to be conformists. It reached an eccentric explosion in the hippie movement when I was growing up, huh? It just took over America. The four energy, maybe you'd say at a superficial level, but it was counter-cultural. They're often counter-cultural in one sense or another. Often, since we're debating so much about the homosexual issues these days, normally the four has no trouble understanding homosexuality. They're naturally androgynous, even if they're totally heterosexual themselves. Yeah, I can understand why someone would enjoy men and enjoy women because the, the, uh, four person is androgynous. They just seem to get it. It's their natural space. They move in, which might not be acted out in a genital way, but in their mind and in their heart, it's not inconceivable to them. And you need to know that because that's the nature of their soul. It's, they're male-female. They really are. I'm not saying they're gay, although they can be gay, but many people confuse gay people with fours, and they're not the same. But it's that same integration of male and female that the gay person has, which is also held by the four person. So they're two different things, but they overlap. And sometimes you will call fours gay, and they're not at all. Do you understand? There, there, there may be artistic, creative, androgynous, and so forth. Okay. Uh, they, they like a kind of smooth rigidity. They don't want to admit that there is a rigidity in themselves. And the rigidity is this: they're perfectionists, just like we ones are, believe it or not. That's why we ones and fours can tend to understand one another, because we're both perfectionists. We take ours in a moralistic direction. The four takes it in an aesthetic direction. But once it feels right to them, you better not change it, right? You better not tamper with it. You know, if he picked out green, and you just quickly just missed the green, you know, be ready for a serious conversation, right? He or she was attached to that green for some reason. That's what I mean by they're this strange combination of can be very rigid people aesthetically. The feeling of a room is important, and you better not go in and move that sofa, all right? Another hour conversation if you move that sofa without asking me or respecting me enough. They, they, they understand feng shui naturally, all right? The energy in a room, and how that looks, right? And that looks right over there. And, and they're usually right. But do you hear that word "right"? That becomes their rigidity. And they can be rather, uh, demanding about it, even though they'll say it in a much smoother way than we ones will. They're natural snobs, just like the five. Fours and fives, both snobs. They work for a studied casualness. They've worked all morning to try to look like they just threw this on. All right? "Oh, I just threw these rags on. They were the first thing in the closet." No, they weren't. I, you thought about it for an hour probably before, "Does this go with this?" And so forth. So, but what they put together will usually look pretty good. They do have elite standards. The ordinary is what they avoid. That's it, in a word. The ordinary is boring to them. They, they can't find any energy there. Why would one, someone want to be like everybody else? So their conversion comes precisely when they can eat the ordinary, right? When they can sit in the circle like everybody else and wear a white t-shirt that isn't especially shocking or showy, and not say something that'll make everybody notice them. When fours can start doing that, you know, they've broken through. They'll still be creative people, but they're not forcing it on you, do you see? And they're not forcing you to notice them all the time by their prima donna status. So you see this in its art form in Japan. Japan is really an extraordinary culture. They work so hard at studied casualness. Their yards, their houses, all of it is worked at. I remember walking in on the edge of Tokyo somewhere where they had rock gardens, rock stores. It didn't mean what we mean here where they actually sell rocks in all kinds of shapes. And you'd see the Japanese on Sunday afternoon walking around the rocks, you know, and finding the meaning to the perfect rock. And then that

would be hall to sit in exactly the right place in their front yard, you know. And it's minimalism, you know. There's as little as possible so that one rock sticks out. And then bonsai, you know, arranging the tree. It takes great work and many years to get the tree to look natural. [Laughter] But it's totally artificial. I'm just, that's the four, you see, working at looking natural by being artificial. But they do it, and they hate artificiality. They hate it in themselves. They despise it in themselves. You could say a four's whole life is a search for authenticity. The very word thrills them. "I want to be authentic. I want to be authentic." And they do. It's their three-wing moving into the four. And so that, that desperate search for authenticity can make them go very deep, looking for the right word, the right symbol, the right emotion. Thomas Merton, I mean, Thomas Merton is the quintessential redeemed four for that. I mean, and the monks told me that he was definitely a four. He had to live in his hermitage by himself. And, uh, but I mean, here it is, 30 years since he's been dead, and you pick up a Thomas Merton book, and it's so right on. It's like he wrote it yesterday. How can a man's perception be that accurate? William Shakespeare, a redeemed four. And in fact, I'm going to read for you. Knowing the fours will only fully listen to me if I quote some poetry. Sonnet 29 of Shakespeare. All right, Sonnet 29 of Shakespeare is almost a quintessential study of a four. And he was a four, which is why Shakespeare can describe any human relationship and and feeling just almost to perfection. "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." It's called sometimes "fortune in men's eyes." It's when people aren't liking me. "I all alone beweep my outcast state." They love to be outcasts. If you don't cast them out, they'll cast themselves out. [Laughter] So this whole thing is a study in envy. It's a study in self-pity. It's a study in chosen sadness. It's a study in the classic psychological type of the four, which is manic depression. And he loves it, right? All of it. "I beweep my outcast state, and trouble heaven with my bootless cries." And I look upon myself and I curse my fate. "Wished me like to one more rich in hope, featured like him, like him." See the envy. "If only I were like him, with friends possessed." Of course, he's lost all of his friends. "I'm desiring this man's art and that man's scope." "With what I most enjoy I'm content at least." Yet in these thoughts myself almost despairing, and despising. "Happily I think on thee." Now he'll move all this suffering to this beautiful love statement, huh? So he's lost, he's nothing but disgrace in fortune in men's eyes, you know, the whole world hates me. But thank God there's one person who appreciates my gift, right? "Happily I think on thee." And then my state, like to the lark at break of day, arising from sullen earth, here's the depressive going toward the manic, sings hymns at heaven's gate. "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, that then I scorn to change my state with kings." I would not exchange my life for a king because I've been able to suffer today, and I've been able to have ecstasy today. That's all a four needs. You've got to know. All right, just give them some suffering and give them a little moment of breakthrough. Uh, sort of, um, their their ecstasy has to have a bit of the, uh, breaking some rules, going outside the line, you know, an illegitimate love affair, a, uh, a, uh, something that others will dismiss or look down upon. That actually makes it more exciting, which is probably why they can understand homosexuality. That that is not demeaning. It's actually more attractive because it's breaking the rules. You don't understand the four until you understand that energy. The countries have already mentioned France in the West, Japan in the East. Uh, it's written all through their culture in every way. If you haven't eaten in France, you haven't eaten. I mean, it's just, how can people produce such delicious food, you know? Just at corner restaurants. You can't be a short order cook in in France without, I was told, one to three years of training in making sauces and soufflés. And I mean, that's why McDonald's just doesn't go over. Food has got to be whole cuisine, whole culture, everything whole, classy, better than usual, because to be ordinary would be like, be like the English. I mean, that's what they, so who wants to be like the English? That I'm speaking as if I'm a French person. I love the English, but that's what they would clearly feel. French people only tend to vacation in former French colonies. Did you know that? The rest of us are so plebeian. You know, why would anybody want to, you know, come to the United States where everything's so ordinary? Go to some place that knows how to do things with class. So that's their snobbishness, even though the rest of the world admires it, because it, their snobbishness is is half true.

Questions on the three or the four? Oh, I'm sorry. The animal is the basset hound, you know, that walks around looking so sad all the time. Their sadness makes them special. You've got to know that. And the mourning dove, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, the cooing and lamenting about how tragic their life is and how sad their day has been thus far. Yes, Dennis, is the ability to understand anybody's feelings related? Well, you could go down that road. I think you could make a lot of that point. Whenever you put the male and the female together in a person, you'll see this in the healthy gay person too. This this ability to read meanings and events that appears to be better than most other people. So I think that is true of the four, the healthy four. Now, remember again, the unhealthy four is an eccentric, neurotic narcissist. In fact, the four is inclined toward narcissism, uh, very self-centered because everything has to meet my criteria of specialness or tragedy. But if you take that, that inner rich, inner life which they do have, a rich fantasy world which they do have, take that and connect it outward to the the three wing, which is what Merton did, getting all of his books written and everything, then you've got a productive four who's not just special, but doing something with his specialness. The most trapped one, all from the four with the five wing, because he or she does not know how to get out of himself. And so they become very often very narcissistic people who just sit at home and paint and stick the paintings in the back room. Do you understand? It's for no social purpose or no no advantage to the rest of civilization. It's just for my private feeling special. That's not so good.

Anybody else? Yes, John Carter. Of course, I have my own bias there. But I do believe that a certain degree of solitude, you see it in all the great world religions at the higher levels, that you not only become more capable of solitude, but you have a greater need for it. Now, the five can hide there, as we're going to see in a minute. But I would say a certain degree of chosen, healthy solitude, not anti-social solitude because you hate people, that's not God-led solitude, but where you really know that you have to live out of a larger truth than everybody else's voices and and the need to talk. I think to a certain degree that's necessary for all of us, especially in the second half of life. You normally can't handle it much in the first half of life. Yes, it sounds like a character craze. Well, I never watched that a lot, but I'll take your word for it. Yeah, really. Frazier? Okay. Yeah. Any other questions, observations? If you want to offer names like that, that's an excellent idea because again, if you get a picture, it'll help you understand it. Yes, David Paul. David in the scriptures, I would think he's a three, at least the way he's presented in the scriptures. You don't become the whole man, you know, the king, the king archetype is the one who can hold all the parts together. And remember, threes are masters. They're like, uh, you know, three-ring circus, and they hold it together. And that's sort of the way that, uh, David is presented. You know, he's a warrior, he's a magician, he's a lover, and he's a king. And anybody who can hold that much together is either a one or a three. Normally, the one does it in their head, the three does it organizationally. Yes, the seven and the three. Seven and three find it hardest to be alone. And if the truth would be told, the two does too. And the two, well, they all three need it immensely. The two needs it to break their codependency patterns, you see. And the three needs it to find out who they really are. And the seven needs it to to stop being an airhead. And well, we'll get [Laughter] shouldn't make fun of them ahead of time. Yes, and I'm wondering, do they deceive themselves about having any needs? I mean, yes, they would. And in that, they'd be similar to the, the two. That's why they can be such workaholics, deny their own needs. When in fact, remember, all three of the heart people are very needy emotionally. Two, three, and four are the neediest of all types for emotional response.

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Yes, that would be their, that's what will be the tragic flaw of a three, the denying of their own failure, the denying of their own weaknesses. That's why it's crucial that a three has one truth speaker in his or her life. It says, "Tell me the truth. Tell me, I gotta hear it because I'll fool myself." Yes, just fangirl. What the classics for? That's right. That's right. Survive in this world. That's right. Bob, yeah. Van Gogh would almost be an idyllic poster child four, cutting off his ear. You know, oh, that's tragic, huh? Any other suggestions like that? Yeah, of course. Poe, the dark side. There you go. Who? Michael? You know, it's funny, I would have said that, and some of the other teachers told me they think he's an eight. And it's his passion in his art that comes through and still attracts us so much. Uh, so I don't know for sure, but I could see why you'd say four. But others say no, he's an eight. And it's his passion with his artistic skill that, that combination, you just can't resist looking at a Michelangelo sculpture. But if you look at it, what it does for you is it gives you you passion too. So the very fact that his Sistine Chapel and his sculptures can make you so passionate will probably tell you that's his energy. It's a good way to work back to finding the energy, I would think. I would think a lot of musicians would have to be four. You're, you to to have any sensitivity. Now, Mozart's a seven, and you can feel it in his music. It's just, it's too much, it's all over the place, you know. But Beethoven and Bach, you know, that has to be four sensitivity, my guess. Yes, oh, Goethe, of course. I was gonna quote Faust a little more, but, uh, he would be the German for Goethe, which is hard for us to pronounce. Leonardo da Vinci, I would think four. I would think, yeah. I just, I'm off the top of my head, you know, but this is the only way we can get it is to say names like this. I'm sorry I didn't let you do it more earlier. All right, I think we're, uh, time for a five-minute break. We'll come back and do five and six.

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