attitudes and the spiritual life-035 09-30-07 the enneagram and the ham’s: religious ham...

Attitudes and the Spiritual Life-035

09-30-07

The Enneagram and The HAM’s:

Religious HAM Strategies -

The 8

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The 8-9-1 Strategies• The HAM (Happiness Attainment Motivator)

in the lives of the 8. 9 and 1 is Religion.

• This religion might be a named religious belief system, an alternative to traditional religions, such as Atheism or Philosophy, or something they would never identify as “Religion”, such as Psychology or Science,

• No matter what it is, it is these people, the 8, 9, and 1, who are motivated by their beliefs.


The 8-9-1 Strategies• Center 8-9-1 is referred to as the instinctive or gut

center; they “know”. • The predominant motive in the lives of these

numbers is Religion, and Anger is the primary Emotional Sin.

• The anger is expressed differently in all three cases, but anger it is.

• An angry Eight blocks out thinking, or thinks in caricatures; a compulsive One tends to see black and white only; and Nines tend to get fuzzy or have long rambling introductions to a point easily overlooked.


The 8-9-1 Strategies

• They have a different approach than thinkers, they have an intuitive "gut feeling" way of making their way through life.

• They can have "writer's block", or have trouble expressing themselves verbally.

• Their processing of verbal or written information can be slow, but they also are often highly intuitive - making correct concrete decisions quickly and easily.



• They tend to be preoccupied, positively or negatively with the physical aspects of life.

• Eights, for example, prefer direct, outward solutions to problems.

• Nines tend to express emotions physically.

• They would say "my flesh crawls" instead of "I get uneasy," and their flesh might well goosebump.



• Ones tend to be polarized against their own sensuality, having strong sensual urges, but denying them and getting critical of people or places that encourage sensual expression



• The Eight's Religious attention goes to issues of power and control, to making things happen, to protecting the weak, and to fighting Injustice.

• With an intense, authoritative, and sometimes explosive energy, they are usually ready to face any challenge.

• They “know” what is right and wrong, fair and unfair (Justice).



• The Nine's Religious attention goes to connecting with others, maintaining harmony, peace, and comfort, and avoiding conflict.

• They typically enjoy the feeling of ease, harmony, and peace that they experience in nature.



• The One's Religious attention is Righteousness/Perfection and goes to appreciating the excellence and elegance in anything such as a shape, musical score, a piece of art or a speech; to noticing and correcting errors; to identifying and adhering to standards of perfection in thought, feeling and behavior; to acting according to what is right or wrong; and to judging and criticizing oneself and others.

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The Eight• People of enneatype Eight are essentially unwilling

to be controlled, either by others or by their circumstances; they fully intend to be masters of their fate, to "take charge," to do whatever needs to be done.

• Eights are competitive, strong willed, decisive, expansive, practical, and tough minded.

• They want to be the “hand of God”, or God himself, of their Religious belief system.

• Remember that the 5, 6, 7 group was concerned with Power, so the 8 is the transition from Power to Religion and combines the two.

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Self-Preservation Eights

• Self-Preservation Eights most live out the Eights' need for independence through the accumulation of power, position, and, sometimes, material wealth.

• That is not to say that all Self-Pres Eights are wealthy—most are not—but that this Variant seeks to have and to control whatever resources they can in order to maintain their independence and dominance.

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• Thus, these Eights make shrewd business people and politicians and are extremely practical, approaching life with a tough-minded pragmatism they see as simply being "realistic."

• Often private people, their home is very important to them.

• Whether man or woman, the Self-Pres Eight rules the roost and is likely to control resources within the household.

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• Positively, they are often excellent providers and have a way of landing on their feet no matter what life throws at them.

• Trouble spots include difficulty empathizing with the needs of others, especially if they perceive others as weak or ineffectual.

• Self-Pres Eights most typify the shrewd, pragmatic, wheeler-dealer aspect of this personality type.

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The Sexual (or Relational) Eight

• They Lust for Life

• When we turn to the Sexual subtype, also called the Relational subtype of the Eight, we see that the central concerns of the Eight are focused on one or a few persons.

• Remember, the central preoccupations of the Eight are dominance, power and vengeance.

• The world view is that the universe is hostile, so it's a good thing I'm strong.

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• I better see who is on my side in the battle, I better know who has the power and nobody is going to watch out for me, so I better watch out for myself.

• But the watching out for myself is tricky. • In one sense they watch out for themselves in the

sense of battling anyone who gets in their way. • They will take on any enemy, fight any battle. • In another sense, they don't take care of themselves

at all; they don't nurture the soft side of themselves. • They will feed the poor and hungry and then not take

care of their own health.

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• The reason they do this is that they project their own nurture needs onto other, take care of those others and then don't realize they have unmet nurture needs themselves.

• Given this preoccupation with power, taking care of others, and surviving in a hostile world, what happens when this energy is focused on one person, usually the sexual partner?

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• They are prone to suspicion because the world is not to be trusted in general.

• They often have a need to completely control and almost possess the sexual partner.

• (If you possess them, then you have all the power and that's the way it has to be).

• In order to get past the suspicion, they usually put the partner through a lot of tests.

• Just to see what they will do: how much can I really count on them in the clutch?

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• After the tests are past and passed, the Eight wants utter reliability, a large amount of stability and of course, loyalty (the Social Eights want loyalty to the group, the Sexual Eight wants loyalty to the partnership).

• Sometimes if the testing goes on too long, the relationship can become abrasive and lose the necessary tenderness to allow them to stay together.

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• If the partner can get past the tests, then the allegiance of the Sexual Eight is total, at least for long periods.

• Periodic "check ups" are probably predictable.• The lust for life and the drive for power that are

common to all Eights shows up in a desire for sexual intensity.

• Eights will often pick a fight just to ratchet up the emotional temperature.

• They will lose interest in a dull relationship.

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• Their usual style of direct forceful communication manifests itself in their physical desires also.

• The word for the Eight is lust, but whereas lust in the scholastic tradition of the capital sins was sexual desire, the enneagram tradition means lust for life, a hunger for physical intensity in all areas of life and love.

• The sexual/intimate subtype chooses partners other than sexual and bonds totally with them, too.

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• Sometimes the dominance theme will flip and the Eight will surrender, revealing the soft side of the personality.

• This is especially common among healthier Eights. • It is like powerful dogs who bare their throats when

they have had all the fighting they can take.• Eights, like all the anger types, have trouble thinking

clearly, even when they are highly intelligent.

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• The fighting they initiate is in the service of truth.

• They want to get at your honest feelings, your real posture in life, your values -- what you will and won't stand up for and stand for.

• (A Five will observe someone, a Six will psyche them out but an Eight digs out the innards to see what's really there!)

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• Sexual Eights are charismatic and emotionally intense: they seem to "smolder."

• These Eights seek intensity through relationship, and the ups and downs of their lives are often seen in terms of relationship.

• The Sexual Eight wants to "imprint" their significant other, to leave their mark.

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• Whether they are dealing with love interests or are engaged in other activities, they enjoy the thrill of intense stimulation and can become addicted to adrenaline rushes.

• They often adore the people they are in love with, but they can develop problems from thinking of the other as a child that they want to shape and develop.

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• Much of this comes from wanting the partner to be strong enough so that the Sexual Eight can relax and surrender themselves.

• Thus, they may provoke their loved ones in the effort to test their strength or to build it up.

• Similarly, they like to be challenged by the other, but this can deteriorate into a struggle for dominance in the relationship.

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• They may resort to arguments or verbal sparring as a way of stimulating intensity in the relationship.

• Sexual Eights can also feel as though they "own" their intimate partner—that they have a right to satisfaction whenever they need it.

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• Most of the movie sexual subtype 8’s seem to be women.

• Michelle Pfeiffer plays a good Eight in the Fabulous Baker Boys, Laura San Giacomo plays a strong Sexual subtype Eight as Karen in sex, lies and videotape.

• In The Last Seduction, a Sexual subtype Eight gets away with her style.

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The Social Eight

• No Middle Ground• I think it would help if we'd understand the term

"identify." • We claim certain parts of our personality, we think

"that's the real me." • That's what I identify with. • Other parts of our personality we shunt off to the

edges of our awareness or we exclude them from our conscious consideration entirely.

• Some enneagram numbers identify with one kind of experience, others with another.

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The Social Eight

• Eights have a specific kind of exclusion: they ignore the middle ground.

• You are either for or against.• A fixated Eight is as close to digital thinking as

anybody should get. • When you look at a photograph, you see shades of

gray (in a black and white photo) and you see some things clearly, others you see but not quite as clearly (like skin blemishes or faint lines.

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The Social Eight

• If you're an Eight, the vision is more like a Peanuts cartoon - two or three bold lines gives you all the information you want: you decide right then and there whether or not the person is friend or foe, and (here's the catch), that's all that is really important.

• That's all they consider. • They just need a couple of "clues" to know

whether you're a good guy or bad guy and everything else sort of fades.

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The Social Eight

• Teenagers do this around style of shoes or length of hair, athletes do it with jerseys, and entranced politicians do it by slogans.

• If they are really unhealthy, Eights under-identify with all others.

• They see others as alien to them, others are the enemy -- they are sociopathic.

• They have no feelings for the feelings of others. As they get a little healthier, they identify with a few people (good guys) and misidentify with most others.

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The Social Eight

• Life is conceived as a war and you have to prove you're on our side or you are presumed hostile.

• The subtype of the Social Eight is specially prone to this. Social Eights have a secret wish that all children born into the world would be issued jerseys that would classify them as good or bad, enemies or friends.

• Social Eights are right at home in any athletic contest because they love being with their friends.

• And they love being against their enemies with equal gusto.

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The Social Eight

• Listen to Rush Limbaugh, who suffers from advanced Social Eightness: he wants to know - and wants to tell you - whether a person is liberal or conservative.

• That label must be affixed. And if you are liberal you are all bad, if you are conservative, you are all good.

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The Social Eight

• This polarization is what attracts a large audience: he takes the vague inarticulate anger and gives it sharp focus.

• This is the hallmark of the Social Eight. • They see themselves as champion of the

people, knights in shining armor, leader of the resistance against evil in the world.

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The Social Eight

• Social Eights see themselves as taking care of the underdog.

• (What they're really doing is projecting their own softness onto others and then taking of that in the other. "I am not in touch with my own vulnerability, so I see you as vulnerable.

• Because you are so vulnerable, I have to take care of you.

• Fortunately, I am strength personified without any weak chinks in my armor so I can take of you quite nicely." )

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The Social Eight

• They overidentify with their strength and underidentify with their weaknesses.

• If you've ever been up against the playground bully, you've see this dynamic in action.

• In the recent movie, Ransom, Jimmy the kidnapper is a Social Eight.

• He sees his role as champion of the poor people taking vengeance on rich guys like Mel Gibson.

• He takes care of "his woman," on the other hand. • His world is good guys and bad guys.

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The Social Eight• Sociopaths can't feel remorse for their crimes

because the enemy deserved it. • Soldiers don't come home and regret bombing

villages. • During that time, the world was divided into for and

against and you did what you had to do. • Eights live in that world to some degree all the time. • An Eight friend may want to argue politics - fiercely -

all the time. • It's really important that you see things his way

because if you don't, you will become an enemy and he doesn't want that.

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The Social Eight

• As Eights get healthy they become able to admit they were wrong, which is tantamount to letting complexity and nuance into their world.

• They become more concerned about holding their group together without needing an outside enemy.

• They soften, they assimilate their emotional connection to Two and learn to identify with others.

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The Social Eight

• That's why the proper way to negotiate with tough Eights is always to appeal to their soft side.

• If you attack, you reinforce their conviction that the world is full of enemies and you're another one of them.

• If you refuse to play the enemy, you weaken this distorted world view and lessen the need for military-like emotional defense.

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The Social Eight

• Social Eights like to "live large," and as the name suggests, engage fully in the world.

• Friendship and loyalty are top values for them, and they are willing to make great sacrifices for the people and causes they care about.

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The Social Eight

• At the same time, they expect that others they have bonded with will be similarly loyal to them.

• (In this regard, they can resemble Sixes, although their energy is bigger and more direct than that of Sixes.)

• Often, Social Eights will gather a group of friends around them while unofficially acting as the chairperson of the group—the "king" or "queen."

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The Social Eight

• They enjoy conversation about sports, politics, rock music, or the latest events on their favorite soap opera—any subject in which they can boldly state opinions and get into debates about.

• Social Eights enjoy the banter and energy of a disagreement about such matters, and they are often surprised to learn that others can be hurt or overwhelmed by the force of their opinions.

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The Social Eight

• At such times, they may try to "tone themselves down," but they usually find this an uncomfortable compromise.

• More often, they seek out friends who they perceive as strong and independent, people who can take a bit of roughhousing and who will not be overwhelmed by them.

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The Social Eight

• Less healthy Social Eights have problems with making promises to people that they cannot always fulfill.

• Conning others, and exaggerating situations can become part of the picture.

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