DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?
“If you no know yourself, you go lost-oh” (Burna Boy – JA ARA EH)
“We need to find a way to shed our cover, to let go of our ego, to retrieve our original God-gifted selves, to discover the lost treasure of our true persons” (Loretta Brady, Beginning Your Enneagram Journey).
Marilyn Vancil’s book, Self To Lose and Self To Find, examines the Nine Enneagram personality types through the scriptural lens. In her book, Vancil uses a biblical approach to explore what she calls the human dilemma – the tale of our two selves, the best version of us, and the worst version of us. She explains the human dilemma by presenting our “Authentic Self,” which is the way God created us to be, and our “Adapted self,” which is the protective layer or lousy character traits we adopt to help us deal with life and all its chaos. According to Vancil, each enneagram type has a Divine Gift, a Core Need, a Focus of Attention, a Root Sin, an Avoidance, a Primary Fear and a Path to Transformational Growth. When I received her book in the mail, it was all I could do not to ignore everything else she wrote and dive straight into the personality types to see what kind of person I was. Would I recognize my enneagram type when I read it, I had wondered. Yes, I did!
I found that I was a Type Two: A reflection of God’s Love and care.
My Divine Gift is God’s unconditional love and care.
My Core Need is to be needed.
My Focus of Attention is the need of others.
My Root Sin is pride.
Avoidance is of my own needs and desires.
My primary Fear is being useless and my Path to Transformational growth is humility and pure love.
My Authentic self or redeeming qualities are: nurturing, generous, attentive, compassionate, hospitable, sensitive, unselfish, benevolent, affirming, supportive, and openhearted.
My Adapted self or unredeemed characteristics are possessive, intrusive, flatterer, manipulative, effusive, overly accommodating, martyr-like, seeks appreciation, patronizing, and indispensable.
Was she right? – To a very great extent, I see a lot of myself in what she describes as the type-two personality. Too often, I have struggled with the questions of why I feel a certain way about certain things, what emotions drive my actions, and why? Am I more generous than I am kind? Am I selfish in my generosity? Do I only give because of how it makes me feel? And if so, why is that? Why am I so unnecessarily proud? Why so devoid of humility? How do I remedy these issues? It’s an unsatisfying and joyless way to go about life with the proverbial chip on your shoulder. A friend of mine angrily told me once in a heated argument that the world did not revolve around me. It was a humbling moment for me. But these are all questions I have asked myself many times before. When I read Vancil’s book and found out that there might be answers to my seemingly rhetorical questions and even a path to transformational growth, I was hopeful. But I had to stop and make a note of the fact that if I had just made a conscious effort and decision to live life as a true Christian or as a good person, I probably would not need to read about the biblical approach to the nine enneagrams to live life as God intended. That’s what the bible is for, but who reads the bible?
It is important to remember that it is common to find a little of oneself in all nine of the enneagram types with one of them standing out as being closest to yourself – As in my case, the two.
So, do you know who you are? Do you know what emotions drive your actions? Are you like me who let myself get completely lost in my adapted self and now find yourself trying to peel back those layers of falsehoods to get to who you were born to be – your true self? Are you confused like the apostle Paul who lamented in these words in Romans 7:15, 18-19? “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil that I do not want to do – this I keep doing.”
As humans, we all struggle with this predicament. To deal with requires a daily affirmation or effort to strive to be our best selves, the one that we were born to be, at the same time making every effort to shed the negative traits we adapted to deal with the challenges of this world. In my humble opinion, if you struggle with not knowing who you are and are ready to take that journey of self-examination and self-discovery, you could do it in one of two ways; The secular way using the words of Mark Manson in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck” as a guide.
“The best form of relationship advice is self-improvement. Develop the ability to question your own emotions and motivations, to step outside of yourself and look at yourself objectively”.
Or if you are more spiritually inclined, you could use the words of CS Lewis as your guide.
“The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be….It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to his personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own”
I did both. I am still in the process of discovering who I truly am.
What about you? Who are you?
