Life Alignment and the Enneagram offer both amazing tools for healing and transformation, guiding us to awaken to what we truly are. It’s a precise tool that helps unfolding our true, inherited potential.
In this month’s newsletter I am talking to Renate Stöcker who is a Life Alignment Practitioner and teacher in Germany and leads transformational workshops with the Enneagram.
Maggie: Renate, we had such an informative interview with you 2 years ago about Non-violent communication. This time we are talking about the Enneagram. I believe many people heard of it, but don’t know what it is exactly about. Please tell us more about your passion and approach for the Enneagram.
I learned the Enneagram as a spiritual tool more than 30 years ago when I was a student of the so-called Diamond approach. It is a magnificent way to understand our ego structure, our habitual patterns of thinking and acting, our suffering and limitations but also the great potential that lies in each of us. As a dynamic pattern it shows us how to liberate from our ego structure and be who we truly are. The Enneagram and Life Alignment together provide complementary and miraculous tools to guide us on this journey home to ourselves.
The Enneagram describes nine (=ennea) personality types and ways to perceive the world. It offers a precise map of our ego structure, our inner landscape, which paints a picture of how we connect to ourselves and the world. It depicts our core beliefs, our fears and what motivates our behavior.
In the early years of our development, we gradually lose touch with the beauty of our divine nature. Along the way, each of us develops a personality structure in order to cope with childhood. Each ego type has lost touch with one essential quality, such as strength, love, courage, trust etc. in particular. In order to cover up this painful loss, the ego mimics that particular quality in an artificial way.
Maggie: Does this mean the Enneagram is some kind of personality test?
No, not at all, although it is often misunderstood as such, it was not meant to be one. It is actually a tool to liberate from our ego structure.
What are the main characteristics of the 9 types you are mentioning?
- Type 8 (the Leader) lost touch with strength, probably often left to feel powerless. So, there is a desire to feel the life force by being strong and assertive, while actually protecting against hurt. This becomes the driving force in life.
- Type 9 (the Mediator) lost touch with universal love and unity and tries to substitute that loss by creating comfort and harmony in life. They often are good mediators, being able to see all perspectives; they are however often unaware of their own needs, thinking they don’t matter that much. They tend to avoid conflict as they probably learnt that conflict would disturb the feeling of harmony and oneness.
- Type 1 (the Reformer) lost touch with the sense that our true nature is perfect as it is. They learnt that they need to be perfect in every way to be accepted and loved. As they also expect others to be the same, they can be quite judgmental. They have a very harsh inner critic, which they identify with, also judging others but mostly themselves.
- Type 2 (the Helper) lost connection with feeling part of universal love and the flow of life. They show up as being very generous persons, helping and supporting others, which also serves to prove that they are valuable and deserve love. They are very empathetic to the needs of others, while at the same time not being aware of and often actually denying their own needs. There is a belief that having own needs will diminish their goodness.
- Type 3 (the Achiever) is trying to get recognition by initiating and achieving great projects, also happily supporting others to achieve their goals. Striving to get things done is driving them to overcome an inner emptiness, while quite often not listening to their own heart and essential needs.
- Type 4 (the Individualist) lost touch with the ground of being, feeling lost, different from others and often not part, trying to make up for the loss by being and creating something special and original, which has depth and beauty, thus searching for their own identity and an authentic expression of themselves.
- Type 5 (the Researcher) appreciates knowledge and understanding, often takes the position of an observer, needs time and space for himself to sort things out, in order not to feel overwhelmed. Like Type 8 they are creating a strong protection against hurt.
- Type 6 (the Loyalist) is often in touch with fear and doubt. They are looking for a solid ground and what they can trust and when they found something that feels right, they are loyal in supporting that. As fear is a predominant emotion, they learnt to be vigilant and mentally alert, thinking of all that could happen and be prepared.
- Type 7 (The Adventurer) tries to avoid feelings of pain and emptiness, striving to feel free and have possibilities and choices. Keeps busy planning a next adventure and opportunity, not to miss anything.
Types 8.9 and 1 are described as body types – Types 2, 3 and 4, are seen as heart types, seeking recognition and value from the outside world, types 5,6 and 7 are described as head types, thinking up life predominantly in their heads.
In line with our Ennea-Type we have also created an ego-ideal of who we would like to be and how we want to be seen by others. If we don’t follow this ideal – our inner critic jumps in, attacking and leaving us with feelings of guilt and shame. Then we either blame ourselves or others.
Maggie: Are there better and worse types?
No, they are all structures of our ego personality, none is better or worse. Each of us developed one structure in particular but we all have energies of the other 8 types as well – although our ego-ideal might not like to see that. Depending on the development of each person, there are different levels for each type – healthy, average, unhealthy and in rare cases awakened – but I think, this would take us too far at this point. Each Enneagram type has unique gifts which are crucial for the world, and it is in our interest to get access to those talents. This is exactly where Life Alignment comes in: Accessing the true potential and bringing awareness into the blind spots of each type. Furthermore, when relating to other people we notice that we have one particular view to the world and experience that there are 8 other views as well. We become aware, where we start our inner journey of unfoldment and where it can lead us to.
Maggie: This indeed sounds like the approach of the Enneagram aligns very well to the modality of Life Alignment. How do you use the Enneagram in your work with Life Alignment?
First of all, it is good to know ourselves. Most importantly we learn that we all have an ego, but we are not that ego structure, we are all beings with a vast potential. Life Alignment doesn’t identify personality types, but in its essence works exactly on that – breaking through the limitations of our ego structure and expanding to a place beyond mind.
The Enneagram helps us to identify our ego structures, and our distorted views of reality. With Life Alignment we can work on a deep level to liberate from our conditioning, from feeling a separate ego self to feeling part of the whole, being connected to our higher will and true power.
Maggie: Could you give an example?
Yes, sure, a client comes to mind with a type 2 personality structure.
My client came for a session, feeling very angry and frustrated about her boss and the situation at work. She was about to quit her job.
She tells me that she works longer hours than most of her colleagues, taking care of many things, nobody else does, often anticipating what is needed and providing for it. I realized that she is not setting any boundaries, almost pretending she had no personal needs herself.
Despite all her efforts and contributions for many years, she didn’t get the acknowledgement and appreciation she was longing for. On the contrary, someone else got promoted to a position she would have loved herself.
We tackled the situation with a Life Alignment Balance: Feeling into the situation, first a huge anger and then a tremendous sadness came up, as she was realizing that this was the story of her life.
Her higher self then guided us to go back in time when she was 4 years old and feel what it is like to be in her family. Her parents are both busy coping with life and themselves, her much elder brother doesn’t take much notice of her. She feels very lonely and shut out from life.
This is a pivotal moment in a balance to allow and stay with these feeling of deep pain, as they become a doorway for magic to happen – divine qualities are coming through. For her it was a huge wave of love and compassion followed by deep joy, filling the painful hole, that was buried underneath her personality structure. It felt as if they were dissolving her personality structure.
She realized that she had developed this core pattern to be in contact, hoping to get the love, she was desperately longing for as a child. It made so much sense at that time but she wants to change this pattern now.
When we work with the core pattern of the personality structure, it can bring about an amazing transformation and change, as many issues fall into place at the same time.
The change in a Life Alignment balance happens, when we are connecting to divine energies, our essential qualities of presence, like true will, love, compassion, courage, true power etc. They help us to reconnect to what we truly are, we don’t feel any separation anymore but feel one with the whole of being again. Ego patterns of fear, stress, worry and tension can be released and new decisions for life made.
Maggie: That’s a beautiful example. How does Life Alignment make sure that the individual aspects of a rather generic personality type are considered.
Well, we are not working with a pattern, but with a unique individual being and her personal story. Although each person shares a core pattern with others of this type, they will lead their life in a personal way. The Enneagram is the map, and the person is the territory we work with. We follow the wisdom of her higher self, which will guide us to what the person is ready to shift.
When we are aware of our own personality structure and know that is not who we truly are, we can become aware, when familiar patterns are showing up; we can just witness them without acting them out. We can take time to sense into what is true for us at the very moment and become response-able, instead of reacting from an automatic pattern. This requires cultivating being present, which is muscle to grow for all of us.
For me it has been an amazing journey with the Enneagram and Life Alignment from been caught up in all sorts of patterns to feel more liberated and be present here and now. For me this combination is gold. It is my deep desire to share the wisdom of the Enneagram together with the powerful healing work of Life Alignment.
Maggie Thank you, Renate! I am also an integrative Enneagram Coach and can copy your point of view. Working with Life Alignment and using the Enneagram map as a base, is so much fun, insightful and can shift deep layers of our soul while behavioural and rather practical aspects at the same time. I look forward to your workshop on this, please share it on our website!
Vortex Cards of the month
The Activator Card Set
The Activator Set is made up of three large Vortex cards each made up of 12 individual cards, designed to create a powerful energy field that either releases trauma or invokes universal energy to activate our true essence.
It is furthermore very useful for group work such as meditation, Yoga, business meetings etc. The participants reported a profound experience of presence, centring and stilling of the mind.
External use: The Activator Set can be used to energise homes, land, and/or on the body.
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