If you’re ready to deepen your work with the enneagram and/or with the idea of forgiveness, keep reading!
The lens of the enneagram is a powerful tool to support us in forgiving ourselves. Why do we want to do this? Because, as Louise Hay reminds us, we forgive and we set ourselves free.
If you’re not familiar with the Enneagram, it is a comprehensive system to help identify your personality and default responses to life. There a 9 different personality types or world views, numbered 1-9.
When we’re in alignment with the truth of who we are, we’re able to access all 9 points of the enneagram, using various responses to stimuli, as appropriate. However, all of us have a default number, a fallback position if you like, that’s activated when we experience fear.
This default setting (number) is your typical way of operating in the world or the set of behaviors you took on when you were young as a response to the messages you received from family, society and culture. In other words, how you needed to act to get your needs met.
I find the Enneagram incredibly helpful in understanding myself, and discerning when I’m showing up aligned with truth and my divine self, or out of duty, obligation, shoulds, or feeling small and insecure.
Learn more about the Enneagram here.
Once you know your Enneagram number, use the information below to hone in on your core self-forgiveness challenge. This information is based on work by Dr Robert Holden.
Enneagram & Self Forgiveness
Point 1: Forgive yourself for the thought that you have done something wrong or are wrong. For in the mind of the Divine, you are made perfectly.
Point 2: Forgive yourself for believing that you are separate from God and from all of consciousness. Whenever you feel alone, forgive yourself for experiencing separation.
Point 3: Forgive yourself for believing that you are unworthy, (unworthy of love, acceptance, success, healing…).
Point 4: Forgive yourself for believing the story of abandonment; that you have been displaced, are in exile, or cast out.
Point 5: Forgive yourself for being blind to the truth of who you are and what the world is. Forgive yourself for believing your illusions and misperceptions of yourself, of God and of others.
Point 6: Forgive yourself for detouring into fear where perception gets distorted.
Point 7: Forgive yourself for thinking you have to take a journey to find what you are looking for: happiness, love, belonging, etc.
Point 8: Forgive yourself for any way you experience yourself as being weak or having weaknesses.
Point 9: Forgive yourself for forgetting who you are: the holy child of the Divine.
If you know your loved ones Enneagram numbers, you can support them in this healing work, too.
Have fun with this!
Use it as an inquiry to dive into ways you have blocked yourself from deeper healing and from receiving more love, connection, peace and joy.