Enneagram is a method to know yourself.
While other systems are based upon theories and abstract observations, Enneagram goes straight to the heart of our most practical problems.
It shows how our behaviour can be reduced to some "typical" attitudes, which are themselves reconductible to Nine stereotypes (Enneagram uses "types", from One to Nine, ideally placed in a circle so that One and Nine are close to each other).
Obviously such a scheme can puzzle. To tell the truth all our human representations tend to reduce reality: we easily bring the numberless shades of colours back to the main ones, as well as we can define a number of friends as "choleric" even though we know that everybody lives this condition in a different way also because each person is unique and unrepeatable.
Our starting point is called Capital Vice and it consciously or unconsciously influences our behaviour; this doesn’t mean that we are assimilable to our (more or less strong) vice! Actually we have to tend to a perfect condition gathering up, from each human experience, the treasures necessary to our existence.

Some important details about Enneagram:

• No type is better than another one.
  
• Types far from each other share a lot of dynamics, that’s why the correct identification is really difficult and it is possible only by learning to know yourself through a careful reading of books. Tests in fact are usually defective (we think however that the Test we propose – if well interpreted – can lead to a precise acknowledgement).
  
• The type isn’t required to change in order to improve himself but to develop all positive aspects of his personality.
  
• Growth is possible through the "redemption" (this is a technical term not linked to the only true Redemption of Man, the one given by Christ) of each type in the features which distinguish him.
  
• Together with the growth of his own specificity one can improve himself also through the path of "integrations". Life experiences let you pass from a type to another one gathering up all the shades that enrich your spirit. The dynamic I’m living now can be defined "phase" and it can be very quick or it can ask for long periods of meditation.
  
• Ideally settled in a circle form, the various types have two wings (we call wings the types before and after the one considered). One wing is "stronger" and more evident than the other, which is often "hidden" (maybe this is the reason why it must be object of meditation). You have to work also upon wings if you want to improve yourself.
  
• A path of growth is proposed through the acknowledgement of the various dynamics which you generally use to feel safe (dynamics which are peculiar to each type).
  

A last word: we trust that only a faith path helps everybody to be really free. The major risk of Enneagram is a self-made path where each person is the only referee of his own life and destiny. Actually our instrument suggests to you how to arrive at the limit of your humanity and perhaps gives you the necessary push to start your way to Christ, the Saviour.


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