The Enneagram seems like a great system, but it often seems rather proscriptive in its advice. To me, the levels of health of each type seem like a way of influencing people to believe that a certain set of morals or ethics of behavior are the right ones to have. "If you act in this way, you are healthy. Otherwise, you are not, and you need to change your behavior and act how we say you should act." So, I'm always skeptical about stuff I read when it comes to the Enneagram, because I realize there's always a chance that there could just be an author's bias involved.
First off, I want to say that I do agree. However, for myself at least, that seems okay.
To me, the enneagram is a tool for envisioning (and beginning to notice) patterns. As I see it, the assumption is that emotional health/wellness comes about from becoming more emotionally complete, becoming conscious of how patterns of identifying with only part of ourselves (but one way of being ourselves) affect us, not just at a behavioral level but at a spiritual one. With development, we change the way the different pieces--the different ways of being ourselves--connect. We also open ourselves to being part of bigger things, with an effort to allow the interactions to be more fully transparent, to facilitate themselves better.
It seems simple and easy to accept. As if we are learning how to build a deeper kind of momentum, an inner faith, that comes from trusting that we know how to be ourselves most fully, as we trust the process of life and relax into a way of being ourselves that promotes being in deeper, more integrated contact with the pulse of it. This doesn't change our environments and the situations we exist within directly, but it gives us better resources to navigate them--with a more balanced way of imbuing importance into the world we live in and the ways in which we try to meet our needs within it.
And while I can agree that there is a quality of perspective and values assumptions going into that, at some point, rather than critiquing bias potential, it seems more valuable to me to trust that I know through myself what grows life best. Especially if I stay in a state of curiosity towards others, one that motivates me to keep learning of the limitations of what I know (read: assume) now. How that is tested really comes down to a quality of life, a way of being ourselves (and a way of being ourselves with others). While there can be more to it, we can nevertheless make models that are incredibly useful for each other (including a model of value, like the ennegram, that explores intrinsic values for social animals/life). Discussing not simply morality but whatever teachings we have that point us towards emotional completion, seems to me, important and like it should be one of the central ongoing conversations we have. That seems like a necessity for figuring out how to move through life towards a realistic kind of fulfillment.
Morality, by contrast, employs models focused more on discussing behaviors, particularly social acts. This is important too, especially in between legal and spiritual conversations. Discussions on spirituality, on the kinds of deeper guidance that help us evolve our ways of being ourselves, seem so valuable, like real congregation, even if at times we aren't good enough at discussing to actually explore that realm, rather than simply moralizing and judging. While it can be tricky, and we can immediately assume that our interpretation of our needs is accurately representative of our actual needs, getting into spaces where we explore and examine them together, where we contextualize how them and draw connections to see how they truly fit together, seems helpful at getting at the big picture that helps them come into balance.
Feeling out how to objectively show and share the towardsness sense that guides us, not in terms of a single objective outcome but in terms of a quality of symmetry where we are living towards the whole of something too big to grasp, is difficult, for sure, but doesn't go away by ignoring that weird responsibility.
