- 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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FIVE
At FIVE we are once again down at the foot of the diagram – a long way from the gut zone and its direct engagement with the outside world. As a head-heart combination, FIVE is very conscious of the inner life of head and heart, and that inner life – rather than the outside world – is FIVE’s natural home. The story of FIVE meeting the world is the story of FIVE’s inner life seeking to engage with the outside world from which it feels distant and separate. So far, so similar to FOUR – but with FIVE, on the left hand side of the board, it is the head which takes the lead in the inner life of head and heart.
As a head type, FIVE likes to collect all the relevant data, and then apply logic and reason in planning how best to engage with the world. Of all the head types, FIVE is most conscious of this process, being the most conscious of the inner life, the most distant from the gut zone. FIVE is consciously observing the world from a distance, and analyzing, and seeking to understand, before deciding whether and how to engage. The added heart influence in FIVE has its own very specific effect: it adds a genuine concern about the many consequences of any decision to act. Head type FIVE resolves to approach the world with this main strategy: ‘think it through first’. FIVE becomes a thinker and an observer, standing back, taking it all in, thinking it through, giving little away – self-consciously holding back from any over-hasty engagement with the world.
The challenge for FIVEs is to use what they have learned. Wanting to work it all out before acting, before engaging, is fine – but even FIVE will never know everything, and the time will come when it is right nevertheless to act, to engage, or at the very least speak out. That is the challenge, and the risk, which FIVE must dare to take.
Failing to rise to the challenge, FIVE can end up completely disconnected from the world. FIVE corrupted can be aloof, withdrawn, and superior. At the extreme, all ability to act or engage with the world is gone: the door to the room in the ivory tower is locked and sealed. The temptation of FIVE is actually greed – not as excessive consumption but as hoarding and stinginess, ‘taking it all in and giving nothing away’, born out of fear of the complex and ambiguous world outside.
When FIVE does rise to the challenge, the gift FIVE brings to the world is wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge distilled from all that has been collected, processed into applicable principles, and made available to all. With FIVE’s gift of wisdom comes FIVE’s gift of discernment, as FIVE understands systems and connections from a uniquely objective standpoint, making redeemed FIVE a unique resource of applicable wise counsel in complex human situations. FIVE has a unique objectivity, a wider perspective. Silent and therefore forgotten in the heated or meandering discussion, objective FIVE may quietly speak up at the end with the perfect solution that nobody else could see on account of their personal investment or involvement.
The cartoon animal for FIVE is the wise owl – looking down from some corner high above, all seeing, but unseen – or the fox, which knows the territory well, but disappears as soon as it is spotted – or the magpie, collecting interesting pieces and storing them away to ponder alone and at leisure.
FIVEs who use what they collect can be inventors, discoverers, and philosophers. They can be provocative, unorthodox, surprising, and profound. They are often unexpectedly humorous: observational humor is characteristically FIVE.
The national stereotype for FIVE is the British stiff upper lip – the middle-ranking officer or the Victorian father figure. This unfashionable past ideal can be a benevolent, dependable, stabilizing presence – keeping a place of calm and security and retreat, a place of safety and simple virtue in a hostile or complex world. The challenge to this icon is not to remain a mere silent presence when the challenge comes to engage: at that moment, redeemed FIVE will not withdraw and disappear, but calmly produce exactly the resources required, from all that has been stored away.
In the Bible, the Wisdom writers are often FIVE. Psalm 73 is a classic work of FIVE: it observes and describes with complete objectivity; then it ponders what it all might mean, seeking understanding; and then it rises to the occasion with a conclusion and a declaration.
For FIVEs, the path from corruption to redemption – from pointless withdrawal to valued source of wisdom – involves learning to engage with ordinary non-FIVE people and the wider world – even though it may still be ambiguous and uncertain, not yet fully observed and understood. This means stilling, or rising above, the endlessly churning mind, learning to see the wisdom in the ordinary, and even learning the art of small talk – demeaning and unworthy though it may at first appear. The wise owl discovers that even the simplest creature in the forest has its own form of wisdom: the deep insight is a bonus, not the essence; real wisdom may be more readily gained through engagement with the world than through ever more distant isolation. To support all of this, FIVEs, who are furthest of all from the gut zone, do need to remember three incarnational basics: to take some exercise, get some fresh air, and eat the right food.