- 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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Heart types – review
There is a saying common in Christian circles – in the form of a piece of advice – that ‘you must learn to love yourself.’
For the practical gut types, and the logical head types, this is a strange saying: it comes close to being logically meaningless, unless translated into practical concepts like attention and care; and then it sounds a little too much like permission to be selfish. It is, in any case, a rather strained derivation from the saying of Jesus which is generally quoted as the relevant source: ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ does not command that attention and care be given to the self, but assumes it to be so; the actual command is not to love the self, but to respect others as equals and give attention and care to them.
But for heart types, this popular saying is actually good advice. Reaching out to others – loving others – comes naturally to heart types. Giving a little attention and care to the self does not, and that is exactly what the heart types need to do. And the self for which the heart types must learn to care is not the carefully constructed actor they present to the world. The heart types have to find the authentic self, the self they can properly present to God in prayer: God who sees everything and still has compassion, God who will not be won over by a show – God who loves anyway, and needs no winning over. Finding that stable place – where the real self meets with God and flourishes – will enrich, and make authentic, all of the heart types’ carefully planned interactions between the self and the world around. Heart types need to find that loveable self, and nurture it, strengthen it, cherish it a little – prayerfully, in the presence of God.
As we have considered each of the three heart types in turn, we have seen them reaching out to the world in three distinct ways – deriving as ever from the mix of influences from head and heart and gut. Heart type TWOs – reaching out to the world – use their secondary gut influence to engage with people directly, one-to-one. Heart type THREEs work well with group dynamics, and use that as their primary engagement with the world. The natural home of heart type FOURs – with the added head influence – is the inner life, and FOURs reach out from there to the whole world at once. This creates a pattern, down the right hand side of the board, of relating to the world in different sized ‘batches’: TWOs reach out to other individuals one by one; THREEs relate best to groups; and FOURs reach out from the self within to the whole of the world outside.
More generally, THREE – in the middle of the zone – is ‘all heart,’ with the gifts of gentleness and hope. For heart type TWO, it is the added gut influence which first detects needs – by intuition – and then cannot help but rush in to assist: a gut reaction in the service of the heart. And it is the head influence in heart type FOUR which works hard on carefully planned communication and self-presentation: head work in the service of the heart.
Fundamental to all three heart types is the longing to reach out to others – to be emotionally close to the strangers in the room, right away and for ever. Corrupted heart types may have no healthy ‘self’ to offer for that meeting of hearts, and so have to meet on the other person’s territory – have to impose. Healthy heart types can offer their own healthy heart’s hospitality – they can say ‘your place or mine’ for that meeting of hearts. With a secure and genuine and stable heart of their own, heart types have the opportunity to enter into supportive equal relationships, heart to heart with others – in the service of the heart, in the service of love.
