The Marriage of 'Gift' and 'Curse'
Thank you to all for your patience here; my wife went into labor unexpectedly early and with some complications. But after a brief, somewhat scary period, we have a healthy baby boy(!), and mom is doing great. I’ve appreciated the time off to be with my family, and I’m excited to publish again as planned. Peace,
Sam
I heard the most amazing story earlier this year that instantly felt like a perfect illustration of the value, the utility, the path, the transformational power of the Enneagram.
But here it is in a nutshell: ‘Your gift is your curse; your curse is your gift.’
In January, I was at a conference, and one of the speakers was the curator for the largest, private religious art collection in the country. She was highlighting the work of an artist named Hendrick Goltzius.
Goltzius was a Dutch artist in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and he was internationally renowned in his day. Like most artists, he pursued different artistic media—but unlike many other artists, he’s considered a master in one art form: Engraving. (You can scroll through the gallery below.)
If you’re like me, you never really learned what engraving was, but engraving in Goltzius’ day involved using a tool called a burin, which is a sort of thin metal spike that you drag across a metal plate to create tiny lines and grooves that are then filled with ink. These small divots with ink are used to print on a paper in what a lot of us probably recognize. (I always thought these images were computer-generated, for some reason.)
Goltzius also had a peculiar formative story: When he was a small child, he accidentally fell into a fire and severely burned his hand. His right hand—the dominant hand. In fact, it never fully healed and instead took on this malformed shape. He once engraved an image of it (below), and it’s somehow beautiful and haunting.
While losing the full function of one’s right-hand in early modern Europe may have spelled doom for a lot of people, it didn’t for Goltzius. It turns out that whether through chance or fate, his malformed hand was the perfect shape for holding a burin in the art of Engraving. This malformation he was able to turn into a strength. It was the thing that he learned how to master and use in the world, to great effect. It could produce something beautiful when he used it to create. And, it was still a malformation.
The Malformation in Us
The Enneagram is sometimes called a personality system or even a “personality test.” But it’s really not a test; there’s no trademark on it, and you can’t have “done” the Enneagram like you can Meyers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, Culture Index, etc. Other tests and personality systems can be very insightful, but they often produce a static result. That is, they too often don’t call forth anything that needs to change. In fact, they often affirm you, exactly how you are today. There’s a place for that, a healthy place for affirmation, of course. But it’s a little scary that one could conclude whatever your personality, whatever your preferences, whatever your learned behavior and patterns, you should embrace and celebrate it.
“How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher god could smash your small cosmos.”
—G.K. Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton says, “How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher god could smash your small cosmos.” We all need some good affirmation about who and how we are. Doing so can build necessary self-confidence, create freedom, and also be an exercise in compassion for ourselves. And one of the strengths of engaging the Enneagram is that if you seek to understand others’ stories and motivations on their own terms, you can’t help but feel compassion for others, too.
When I teach the Enneagram to groups, I really don’t spend a lot of time praising the Types, per se. So many people have found the Enneagram to be transformational because it is the hammer that can smash your small world and open you to a larger, truer one. Suzanne Stabile says, “The Enneagram does not put you into a box; it shows you the box you’re already in.” Richard Rohr likens the Enneagram to seeing how a magic trick is done; once you do, you can never go back to un-seeing what’s really happening.
The Enneagram is a powerful tool that can articulate the way in which you, like Goltzius, have become a master in your own medium. You took a malformed developmental part of yourself—which we all have via learned patterns and compulsions—and you made an art-form out of it. You needed to find a way to move and be and survive in the world, and your Enneagram Type was a big part of that. And thank God it was! Thank God you found a way to be secure or special or know your way through life. But we also want to move beyond that. That type of growth is our destiny.
Being More and Yet Less
Goltzius was a master engraver, but he was also a draftsman and painter, a leader, a husband. If he only ever engraved all day, every day, if he only ever stuck with the thing he could most easily do and that got him the most praise, what a small existence that would have been. The same is true of your Enneagram type.
St. Augustine once noted that humans marvel at the heavens and mountains and oceans and the world around them—only to pass by themselves without ever stopping to wonder. There is certainly a place for being cautious about becoming self-obsessed with the Enneagram and the Inner Work, but the truth is most people don’t run that risk; most people run the risk of having too little self-reflection. Trust me, most of the people in your life wish that you would spend more time reflecting on your habits, patterns, and personality compulsions. Most people in your life wish that you would do some more Inner Work. (I know my family wishes that for me.)
But even though we can’t ever break completely and permanently free from our habits, from our Enneagram Type, why should we not try? In the Catholic tradition, the Beatific Vision is when we see God in heaven face-to-face, and the belief is that that we have to go through a purgation to be holy enough to withstand the dazzling intensity of God’s face. Whether you believe that theologically, it certainly seems to be the case that our meaningful, rich lives are ones of some progression toward greater health, love, and wholeness. We could wait until the afterlife to make the real strides then, but why would we? Why not start now, today? Why not have a freer experience, a broader range of possibilities, a more dynamic presence moment-by-moment?
The Enneagram is one way to start—and a powerful short-hand many have found opens them up and helps them on this journey toward being more whole, being more human. The goal is never to kill certain parts of yourself, including Enneagram Type. (You couldn’t if you tried.) But, like Goltzius, we can find ways that our malformations make us more sensitive, creative, and effective.
We can let our Type be more in ways with unique contributions to give—and also less in ways, by having it be but a part of who we are and what we have to offer. Gift and Curse go hand-in-hand. The more awareness we have along the way, the more we can ask an important question in any given moment: Which one am I living into right now?
Samuel Ogles is the owner of ‘Formation Circle,’ a practice offering spiritual direction, Enneagram teaching, and media to empower others in personal transformation. You can support this work by subscribing to this newsletter (Free and Paid versions available), and you can connect with Sam or another spiritual director at FormationCircle.com.