Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 928 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
The Enneagram System - The Centers - Ask Gramps

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Thank you for joining us for our five days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 928 of our trek, and it is time for our Philosophy Friday series.

Each Friday we will ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life and how they impact us in creating our living legacy. As we continue on this trek called life, sometimes we have questions about life, so our Friday trek is a time when we can “Ask Gramps.” Gramps will answer questions that you would like to ask your dad or granddad, but for whatever reason, you are unable to. No matter how old we are, I know that all of us would like the opportunity to ask dad or gramps questions about life in many areas.

A couple of weeks ago, we began a new series delving into what makes each of us respond as we do to life situations. Understanding this and how others may interpret life through their paradigm will allow us to interact with each other with love and compassion.

We began with an overview of the Enneagram specifically from a Biblically-based perspective. Last Friday we looked at how the Enneagram works. This week we will explore a little deeper why the Enneagram is such a powerful tool in understanding yourself and how it can help you to understand others that you interact with and impact. As a review, the tool that we refer to as the Enneagram (Any-a-Gram) is a circle with 9 interconnected points (ennea refers to 9 and gram referring to a drawing). See a representation of it below.

When I discovered the depth of the Enneagram, it opened up a new horizon of understanding of myself and also helped me to understand others better. The Enneagram is the most useful tool of this type I’ve encountered for personal growth. Keep in mind, though, it is still only a tool and cannot replace or usurp the precepts that are found in God’s word.

So the questions for the next several weeks or months will be…

“Hey, Gramps, why do people act and react to situations and circumstances in life differently?  How can I gain wisdom to better understand myself and others so that I can love, serve, and minister to them on a deeper level?”
The Enneagram System – The Centers
The Enneagram is a 3 x 3 arrangement of nine personality types in three Centers. There are three types in the Instinctive Center, three in the Feeling Center, and three in the Thinking Center, as shown below. Each Center consists of three personality types that have common assets and liabilities of that Center. For example, personality type Four has unique strengths and liabilities involving its feelings, which is why it is in the Feeling Center. Likewise, the Eight’s assets and liabilities involve its relationship to its instinctual drives, which is why it is in the Instinctive Center, and so forth for all nine personality types.


The Centers of the Enneagram
The inclusion of each type in its Center is not arbitrary. Each type results from a particular relationship with a cluster of issues that characterize that Center. Most simply, these issues revolve around a powerful, largely unconscious, emotional response to the loss of contact with the core of the self. In the Instinctive Center, the emotion is Anger or Rage. In the Feeling Center, the emotion is Shame, and in the Thinking Center, it is Fear. Of course, all nine types contain all three of these emotions, but in each Center, the personalities of the types are particularly affected by that Center’s emotional theme.


The Dominant Emotion of Each Center
Thus,