#almaas

8: truth, or the reality of the undying organism and its indominable nature (but refusal of the dying/vulnerable self) 5: transparency, or the omniscience (and redundancy) of the self as a pattern within patterns (and the isolation created from boundaries) 2: will, or the innate and sincere desire to make an effort (and control the narrative)

1: perfection, or the ideal that the organism can compose and complete change (but refusal of the uninhibited/chaotic self) 4: origin, or the focal point/singularity of self-consciousness (and simultaneous inferiority/superiority complexity) 7: wisdom, or the perception of the present moment and the world as whole and pre-perfect (and the fear of missing out on some part of it)

You can think of each point on the enneagram as the unique dynamic formed by the points it's connected to. This makes the triangle at the center and the people that embody it rather unique, since the sources of their worldviews directly overlap each other’s, forming a sort of Mexican standoff of motion and priorities. They are placed with less of a grasp on their own inner directive and approach each moment in a more generalized way.

With the intersection of the psychology of object relations with the enneagram, there is a new meta told by what Riso and Hudson call the dominant affect triads (attachment: 3-6-9, frustration: 1-4-7, and rejection: 2-5-8)¹. Only one of these groupings does not contain a connection point to the others, and it's again the triangle at the enneagram's center. It's because of this odd triad out that wings are not only an essential facet of the fully-expressed enneagram, but the very thing that ties it all together. The more time you spend with the types outside of this triangle, the more you may observe that their proximity to another triad (and the possibility of a wing in that adjacent triad) is not arbitrary, but a feature.

2 and 7, for instance, are closer to the gut triad because they are each the ‘guttier’ type in their respective triads. In other words, they’re closer than their heart and head cousins to knowing what they want -- even if they struggle with how -- and going after it. They both experience more immediate access to the gut triad, and each have a wing to the other’s gut line -- for 7w8s and 2w1s, the conflicting gut energies that result can be quite revealing, and a particularly apt example of how the enneagram captures the contradictory nature of people. Down at the enneagram’s nadir, on the other side, we see that 5 and 4 share a wing to each other, each being the most avaricious and self-distancing version of their triads.

In the cosmology told by the more spiritual enneagrammists such as AH Almaas² and Sandra Maitri³, 9 is more or less where it all begins. It's the center of the body or the gut triad, and each type in this center -- 8, 9, and 1 -- is the respective centerpiece of its dominant affect triad. We see that 9 immediately splits into its heart and head constituents (3 and 6), while its wings, 8 and 1, immediately split into 2 and 5, 4 and 7 respectively.

Oscar Ichazo originally coined the term 'trifix' to denote that one has a predominant fixation in each of the centers⁴. One can end up embodying a 1-2-7 or a 4-7-8 or even a 3-6-9 trifix as one’s motivations as a person and ego develop, cascade, and crystallize into adulthood. The most controversial aspect of trifix that I usually see discussed is that it’s too complicated or contradictory, lessening the meaning of what each type means. But people are messy and contradictory, and only when you embrace this does the enneagram become a lot more dynamic and free to more accurately describe that messiness and contradiction.

The foundational premise of the enneagram is, after all, the circle it’s contained within, which signifies that we already contain all 9 of these ways of being on some level. The whole thing is already there inside the collective unconscious. What we call someone’s 'type,' then, is the natural consequence of developing fixations, as an animal, that become recognizable and consistent enough to be worked with. It’s because we’re animals that we don’t really have a say in this matter, it just happens to us. It’s a language, and a powerful one, that we can use to communicate the different and common responses that we have to our existential predicament.

References:

Don Riso and Russ Hudson, Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types (2000)

AH Almaas, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas (1998)

Sandra Maitri, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul (2000)