Expanding on the presentations to the IEA in Madrid in February 2012 “Enneagram: Vitamin of the Soul”, and to the IEA in Santiago de Chile in October 2012, “The richness of personal diversity: Discovering Egos in the Nine Dimensions of the Geometry of my Enneagram identifications”-
Which egos should we work besides the shadows of our own Enneatype?
It is said many times that we are more than our Enneatype. No doubt the entire system is in us. But, how it impacts our performance and how it affects our sense of coherence and integration or our feeling of strangeness and contradiction with our Enneatype, is the goal of the method “The Geometry of my Enneagram Identifications” through the TEGMI 9D Model.
The Enneagram, as a path of self knowledge and self development, aims to reach unity within self and the whole. It starts by immersion in the own Enneatype, and follows by the deep understanding of the dynamics of the system. But the consciousness of self is an incomplete and elusive experience, either because we like to contemplate our lights, either because we only look at the shadows. Or, perhaps, we are blind to our own reflection and continue sleeping. So, although we yearn for unity and simplicity, we are complex beings. Coherence and integration are not so easy and we can be tempted to believe we have reached them quicker than we should. Between the Blindness of Simpleness to the Light of Simplicity thereis a Complex path.
The Enneagram, of itself, invites you to a journey of nuances and that is its strength. The pregnancy of its symbol, as a map, locates and orients, inviting to distribute revealing wisdom to its thinkers and operating as a compass for its seekers. But as the Enneagram is quickly learnt but decants slowly, it has the risk of promoting the illusion of having clear how to begin working our self-development. So after diving in the dominant Type and its dynamics, the way should continue by understanding the presence of the whole system in us, to set clear the path of transformation. The TEGMI 9D is a model which expands the use of the Enneagram Diagram in 9 Dimensions of the personality. Each dimension has levels of development and allows working our ego thoroughly. To the fat brush of understanding the dominant Type it adds the fine stroke of a more complex diagnosis unlocking which hinders our evolution as individuals and as groups. The Geometry of my Enneagram identifications through the TEGMI9D model was developed to understand personal Complexity and to help people make sense of why they do not fully find themselves in the prototypical descriptions of their dominant Type.
What adds the TEGMI 9D model to the Enneagram?
It operates as a magnifying glass that extends our observation in 9 dimensions of the system exponentially expanding the self diagnosis. As it is constructed in 3 levels of development it adds objectivity to our real psychological functioning and fine stroke to our self awareness.
What is its proposal for transformation?
To add to the work on the Enneatype, (plus wings, arrows, instincts, centers) all corresponding to the 1st dimension in the TEGMI model, the balanced integration in the other 8 dimensions.
Dimension 1: Dominant pattern/Dialectical growth (pure identifications) Balancing the Enneatype
Dimension 2: Energies flow/ Diagonal Axis (combined identifications). Balancing energy polarity
Dimension 3: Dynamic levels/Horizontal Axis, (combined identifications) Balancing structural patterns
Dimension 4: Parental Introjections/ Object Relations; (combined identifications) Balancing our infancy
Dimension 5: Symbolic Structure/Affective Style; (combined identifications) Balancing affective responses
Dimension 6: Situational Response/Defensive Style (combined identifications) Balancing coping conflict
Dimension 7: Structural interactional response/Social Style (combined identifications)Balancing coping needs
Dimension 8: Information processing/ Centers of intelligence (combined identifications.) Balancing brain
Dimension 9: Relative incidence of each Enneatype within us (pure identifications) Balancing Identity
The TEGMI9D shows if our personal profile satisfies a prototypical profile or an atypical profile; if we are balanced or not in each dimension and which egos should we work besides the shadows of our own Enneatype.
For those who display prototypical profiles, self-awareness within the Enneatype provides a Sense of Coherence,it shelters and it is a way to explain how a story molds its effects and perpetuates its answers. All explanations fit in the pattern but, the risk is Character Fixation.
For those who display personal profiles, self-awareness within their Complexity allow them to Understand their Contradictions, how identity is nourished from multiple sources: models, partial conclusions and biased experiences, not integrated parties and in conflict tugging in the opposite direction looking for to be satisfied. Although they experiment themselves as more flexible, the risk is the loss of the Sense of Internal Unit.
The Personalities with a Prototype Profile play local in the 9 Dimensions which mean that the dominant factor of the dimension includes the dominant Enneatype. Their path is Unifocal. The hard work is on the pure Enneatype. Although it gives sense of coherence the cost is the lost of plasticity.
The Personalities with a Personal Profile play visitants in some Dimensions which mean that the dominant factor of the dimension does not include the dominant Enneatype. Their path is Multifocal. The hard work is on Complexity also and on the loss of the sense of Internal Unit.
How does the TEGMI9d work for understanding Personal Complexity?
By mapping our identifications through 9 personalized colored Enneagram diagrams.
How would it be if a map returns us, in colors, an x-ray of our identifications? And if, furthermore, we saw, how those colors flow in a channel of varied strokes, alternating subtle stitching up, to a compact enclosing density? Perhaps, its color contrast impact us, perhaps its diverse demarcations astonishes us.
Let’s release our imagination
Playing
I am invited to play and the slogan is to enter a circle that has 9 mirrors built with words and images, and I am given 5 painting tubes and a char. The game consists of painting in colors, in order of priority, the mirrors that reflect me. Brush in hand and a palette, I start coloring that what I recognize as being me, like it or not. If what I find in one of the mirrors is very intense and is full of contrasts, with the char I demarcate the lights with quilted stroke, the light-darks, with segmented stroke and the shadows with dense stroke. Therefore, it falls out of mature that this is my usual pattern of functioning. I dive in a pool of self-discovery with the astonishment of who was caught in its secrets. I stand against that mirror and I look at myself for long time, as a painter in front of his work, adjusting colors and strokes.
But, what if I stand in the middle of the circle and reflect on each of the other 8 mirrors? What if I also find that I have to re-brush intensities and re-trace qualities in a stream of identifications that flow through other channels? I would find that the work on me does not end at a single point. We are complex beings and nobody exhausts the Enneatype in which is mirrored.
Thinking:
The TEGMI9D model is a computerized way of painting and demarcating lights, light-darks and shadows of my identifications in the game of painting mirrors. A personalized geometry displays 9 diagrams of pure and combined identifications expanding, as a magnifying glass, the richness of the system. Its 5 color palette (bordeaux, red, light blue, light green and dark green) allows to recognize (going to extremes) if something is so last point that requires an urgent trimming for its excess. Or, on the other hand, if something is so green that requires forced maturation. At the same time, type of stroke (quilted, segmented or compact) allows to recognize the quality of the dominant performance in each dimension. The Personal profile in these 9Dimensiones design makes the system work for the person instead of just fit the person into the system. The work of transformation is inescapable.
My contribution presented in IEA Conferences and published I n IEA magazines.
The method “The Geometry of My Enneagram Identifications” was presented at IEA Conference, San Francisco 2010. I published in Sintoniza N ° 8 October 2011, and in NINE POINTS October-December 2011 the “poetic response” to the question what is the Enneagram?; theme of the IEA Conference Madrid February 2012. In this present article I focus on the “scientific response”, as I explained in the Madrid Congress, extending the article with the topic of the presentation in IEA Conference Santiago de Chile October 2012 the “richness of diversity, Discovering Egos in the 9 dimensions”. “The geometry of my identifications” through the TEGMI9D model, has been generated precisely regarding the personal diversity I found in people who experienced the Enneagram. So, over 10 years, it was built rhythmically in interaction with clinic patients and participants in workshops. The theme: what makes us different yet sharing the same Enneatype?: whose answer is: “Our combinations”, was the theme presented at IEA Conference Fort Lauderdale 2011 – On that occasion four Enneatypes SEVEN in person, with their TEGMI on the screen, illustrated similarities and differences according to their combinations. The expanded version of the presentation was published in NINE POINTS October December 2011. The TEGMI9Dmodel is not only the result of an experimental research but also of its practical application in my workshops, private consultations and in having trained life coaches and educational coaches in this model.
How does is work for transformation?
It works by setting priorities in the path of transformation.
Based on the principle that you must first meet the urgent and then you have to meet the important, the personal profile shows where to start and how to continue to release the limitations of our core self.
I used a metaphor to name the presentation of Madrid. I called the Enneagram, “Vitamin of the soul” and the TEGMI 9D Model, a generator of psychological antibodies for personal and group development, by operating as a map that shows me where I am standing in 9 dimensions of the system and by operating as a compass that tells me what should I work on me, by excess, defect or quality whose goal is to produce self-consciousness plasticity and balance.
As a method, “The geometry of my identifications” highlights the operability of the symbol. As a model TEGMI 9D, it reproduces the symbol nine times, extending the “inner observer” and working under the paradigm of the “relative impact” of each Enneatype in all the personality and with the concept of “combined identifications“.
As nothing changes in our point of comfort and for wanting to change something we have either to feel uncomfortable, suffer or feel disoriented, but above all, we have to be able TO SEE IT, good questions are: Does my personal profile satisfy a prototypical profile or an atypical profile? Am I balanced in the 9 dimensions or not? Which egos should I work first for my personal growth?
The fine stroke through the TEGMI9D consists precisely to set priorities within the Fat brush of the Enneagram system.
All road starts by having clear, which path to take and what will be the first step.
Photo: flickr/MAClarke21
