The Enneagram Sucks
I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for close to a year now, slowly chewing on something that’s been percolating in my heart and mind for even longer. Over the last several years, I’ve felt a tug on my heart that’s been trying to tell me that something isn’t right in my work and community around the Enneagram. And I’ve finally found the words for this feeling of uneasiness, and the courage to share them: The Enneagram Sucks.
Stay with me here, because, despite the clickbaity title, you’re probably going to enjoy this more than you expect.
The Enneagram is a tool. Like, say, a vacuum cleaner. (Get it?! Because vacuums suck?! I’m hilarious, I know.) A vacuum cleaner is an incredible tool for keeping your home clean and tidy. I imagine nearly everyone reading this has a vacuum cleaner, or some variation, in their home right now. Why? Because they work. Because they are fairly simple and easy to use. And, maybe more importantly, because we all understand the value of keeping our homes clean.
But bringing a vacuum cleaner into your home doesn’t automatically make your house clean, does it? Damn, I wish! Much to our dismay, we actually have to use the vacuum if we want our homes to be cleaner. Now, once we bring it home for the first time, there may be some assembly required, and we may even need to read over the instruction manual briefly to learn some of the ins and outs, and how to keep the vacuum itself clean and maintained so that it continues to work well for longer. But for even the most technophobic among us, a vacuum is still pretty straight forward. Plug it in. Turn it on. Clean the floors. Or the furniture. Or the drapes. Whatever.
Aside from maybe a small burst of excitement when purchasing a new one (yes, I’m old enough to be excited about buying a new vacuum), vacuums are basically never a topic of regular everyday conversation. In fact, I doubt you’ve even thought about your vacuum today until you started reading this. In so many ways the vacuum falls to the back of our minds, until there is a reason to think about it. The kids trailed dirt in on their shoes, the dog is shedding again, company is coming over this weekend, these are vacuum moments. But again, you likely don’t as spend much time thinking about the vacuum as you do using it.
And truly, how much do you need to know about the vacuum? Honestly, not much. We don’t need to know the history of the vacuum cleaner, or the mechanics of a vacuum cleaner to be able to use this tool to effectively clean our homes. A brief overview of the owner’s manual and we’re pretty much ready to go, and plenty of us barely need that. You would look at someone with a more than a little side-eye if they told you they spent their evening diving into vacuum cleaner owner’s manuals instead of the regular light-hearted fiction, or even more interesting non-fiction.
We would be especially wary of someone who spent their time reading about vacuum cleaners when their house was still filthy—because what’s the point?
Now, with the world as big as it is, I’m sure there are folks who really do love vacuums this much, but the metaphor still stands. When we replace “vacuum” with “Enneagram” we get a clearer picture of what the Enneagram is really for.
The Enneagram is a tool, and tools are meant to be used. They’re rarely topics of conversation, and certainly not that exciting or interesting to read about—unless you have a problem the tool can fix. When we find ourselves in the middle of a predicament, the tools we need to get us out of it become very interesting. But what good would it be to read all the latest vacuum cleaner news and technology if you never plugged yours in? What good would it do you to have the best vacuum on the market, if your floors are still dirty? What good is knowing the history of all vacuums and the inner workings of the electronics when you can still feel the grime under your bare feet?
This is what I see happening in the Enneagram community over and over again. People getting excited about it, just like their new vacuum, but instead of taking it home and cleaning, they want to tell everyone about their new purchase. Teachers in the community writing vacuum cleaner histories, drawing out increasingly more precise diagrams of the electronics, espousing the benefits of having a vacuum in your home, and selling you courses on the best possible vacuums and how to get your friends to all buy the same one you have.
I believe what the Enneagram community has lost sight of is what this tool allows us to do. We’ve become so hyper focused on the vacuum we’ve forgotten that the entire purpose of it was to have a cleaner home. We learn about this incredible new tool, and then use the fact that we have it to demand someone else clean their house. Or worse, we use the fact that we own the nicest, best, most powerful vacuum to justify having dirty floors. I think the absurdity of these situations is really hitting home what we’re doing with the Enneagram.
And sadly, it comes from all sides. Yes, it’s folks obsessing over the readings, and youtube videos, and courses, but it’s also all the people who are teaching about the Enneagram. How many more articles do we really need about this triad or that one? How much more do we really need to say about a vacuum cleaner before we start actually doing the cleaning?!
I get it. I’m writing about the vacuum right now. And to a large extent, this problem is a function of our culture that demands we keep producing “content” at an alarming pace until we die. But to all the Enneagram teachers out there reading this: when did we all become vacuum cleaner salesmen? When did we abandon the powerful practices of true education and mentorship, not just about how to use the tools available to us, but to keep our attention and focus on the bigger picture? Why did we stop talking about the joy of having a clean home to focus on a random piece of technology we mostly keep in our closets?
I don’t have the answers to when or why or how, but I do have answer (at least for myself) for maybe the most important question: What now?
The ache in my heart bubbling up over the last several years has been just this: I don’t want to be a vacuum cleaner salesman. I want to inspire, encourage, and support people in cleaning their homes, and keep mine clean as well. (Please understand I’m still speaking metaphorically, my house is often a mess and I’m fine with it.) This ache has been why I have been so quiet on this platform and all my other ones. It came in and completely derailed everything I had been building towards, because I realized the way I was talking about the Enneagram was losing sight of the bigger picture: a truly engaged and meaningful life, not just for me, but for everyone.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with the Enneagram, it’s an incredibly powerful tool that has truly changed my life for the better in so many ways, but the way I and a vast majority of the Enneagram community have talked about it has been slowly slipping away from it’s true purpose. When I first started podcasting, it was simply about how to live a better life. We covered a wide range of topics and I was able to chat with so many amazing people. But slowly, it became clear if I wanted to make a living, I should double down on the Enneagram stuff and really start slinging those vacuum cleaners. As I’ve slowly refined the focus of my work to be solely about the enneagram, I’ve realized that I’ve slowly been losing the soul of my work. That’s when the real ache began.
The more I focused on the enneagram and became embedded in the community, the more I wanted to push back and change things. The more the ache was calling out for something to change. But because the medium always tends to match the message, I tried to change the community and the culture. I remember a podcast interview I did nearly four years ago now where I said, “Stop bedazzling your hammer and build something.” Clearly, this sentiment has been rolling around in my head and heart for quite some time. Even the vacuum cleaner manual I wrote came from this place of: for the love of god, please just use the vacuum already.
And, as you can imagine, this kind of oppositional, contrarian approach to being in community didn’t really work so well for me. But that’s when I realized, I need to clean my own home. I need to change the way I’m doing things if I ever want anything out there to change. So, that’s what I’m doing. Things are going to be changing for all things Conscious Enneagram, and honestly, I think it’s for the better. I’m not sure what it will all look like when the dust settles, but I’m excited to shift my focus away from talking about and selling vacuum cleaners to truly teaching people how to clean their homes, all the while keeping mine clean in the process.
There’s more to a clean home than just a vacuum, and honestly, there are plenty of people who can keep their homes clean without one. I’m looking forward to this shift in perspective and approach, and I hope that you’re excited to follow along with me.
I love this, Abi, and my heart feels it, too! I love the enneagram for how it helps me see the dust bunnies and cobwebs of my own life. Facts about it are fascinating, but the joy of it comes in allowing the symbol to guide me into the work that is mine to do.