- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Three resources *
- Meeting the world
- Nine strategies *
- Nine types
- Gut types
- EIGHT *
- NINE *
- ONE *
- Gut types review
- Corruption and redemption
- Heart types
- TWO *
- THREE *
- FOUR *
- Heart types review
- Symmetry of the board
- Head types
- FIVE *
- SIX *
- SEVEN *
- Head types review
- All nine sectors
- Discerning home base part 1
- Gifts and temptations
- Developing all three resources
- Taking the advice of the opposites
- The path to redemption part 1
- Celebrating all of who we are
- Neurology
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
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Three Zones and Nine Sectors
Three resources
To follow the head or to follow the heart? So often we find this conflict in our inner life: logic and reason pull one way, emotions and dreams another. So often a decision has to be made: to follow the head or to follow the heart?
There may be time to contemplate the options – or the time for a decision may be now. In the moment of decision, either head or heart may take priority – or both may be eclipsed by another influence – an almost physical response – the one we call instinct or intuition, or the feeling in our gut or in our bones.
These three form the foundation of all that follows: in the inner life, both the ‘head’ for logic and reason, and the ‘heart’ for emotions and visions and dreams; and then the ‘gut,’ as in ‘gut reaction,’ for instinct and intuition, and a more direct and immediate engagement with the world around.
It is in the inner life of the head that we assess and consider the world around. The head is the home of objectivity, logic, analysis, and detailed future plans. In the head we consider questions of meaning – and of how we ought to live. The head is the home of observation and calculation, and of language, rationality, and thought.
It is in the inner life of the heart that we feel emotions – about the world around us, and about our lives in that world. It is from the heart that we reach out to others and long for others to reach out to us. The heart is the home of emotions, memories, images, visions, and dreams. Emotional engagement is the project of the heart.
And then there is this third option: to follow our instinct or intuition, our gut reaction, or the feeling in our bones. The gut – this third ‘center of intelligence’ – operates right in the present moment. It is open and unselfconscious: immediate, practical, and direct.
We all have all three of these ‘resources,’ these three ‘centers of intelligence’ – head and heart and gut. All three have value, all three can have virtue – indeed, all three can be spiritual.
It is the distinctive interaction of these three in each one of us that makes us who we are as we begin to engage with the world.
