For the last decade, I’ve been meeting with Father Larry Gillick for spiritual direction. He is one of the most perceptive people I’ve known. He’s a scrappy old Irish-American Jesuit priest, and sometimes as I’m leaving his office on Creighton University’s campus, he’ll affectionately say, “Sometimes you just need a good butt-kicking.”

He once told me the story of a visit he made to a local Catholic elementary school. After sharing with a group of the students, a young girl—probably third or fourth grade—approached him and struck up a conversation. A few moments into their discussion, a look of pure astonishment flashed in the student’s eyes.

Suddenly, she blurted out, “You’re blind!” Which is true. Due to a sickness, he lost his sight when he was just a small child.

With genuine tenderness, Father Gillick responded, “That’s not news to me.”

But before he could say anything else, she quickly moved from shock to sadness, replying, “You don’t know what you look like.”

That profound statement from such a young person caught Father Gillick off guard, and before he could comment she softly said, “You’re beautiful.”

I’m deeply moved every time I think about that little exchange. It’s a very human story in which many of us can find our own story tucked inside. When it comes to recognizing the truth of our own identities, most of us experience a symbolic version of blindness that keeps us from seeing ourselves for who we really are.

We live unawakened lives marked by self-perpetuating lies about who we think we are—or how we wish to be seen. Tragically, we don’t know who we are or what we look like. And often, it takes an unlikely “other” to remind us what’s true—you’re beautiful.

Each and every one of us is beautiful. Each and every one of us is beloved by God.

From this starting point we can begin an honest interrogation of the depths of our identity, of who we really are. When we accept our inherent beauty, we find the courage to examine what makes us beautiful—to honestly encounter both the good and the bad, the shadow and the light.

More than anything I’ve encountered, the Enneagram helps us do just that. It exposes the lies we tell ourselves about our identities. It helps us realize there’s much to learn about who we can become. It illuminates what’s good and true and beautiful about each of us.

Identity and Dignity

More and more I’m convinced that the paramount question plaguing humanity has to do with identity.

Who am I? This is the fundamental question of our human experience, the one that compels us to search for meaning.

Every time I meet someone, I try to listen to the subtext, the meaning behind the words they use to introduce themselves.

Often our first interaction with a new acquaintance exposes our fears or insecurities, demonstrated in how we describe ourselves. Usually we allow carefully curated fragments of our identities to lay claim to the whole.

I’m frequently guilty of beginning my own introductions with references to what I’ve done or do for a living, as if that tells someone who I am. “Hey, I’m Chris. I spent twenty years with an international humanitarian organization fighting human trafficking; I currently run a nonprofit, a center for contemplative activism.” These little bits of my story that I lead with only bolster my over-identification with the lies I’ve come to believe about who I think I am. I constantly have to remind myself that I am more than the good (or the bad) I’ve done in my life, that in fact, I’m much more than what I’ve done, what I have, and what others think about me. These fragments of the whole are only small parts of my identity, not the entirety of who I truly am.

But what do we mean by identity? The missiologist-theologians Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, who have studied identity and dignity, nuance the differences between the two as those of substance and value, suggesting, “Identity answers the question ‘Who am I?’, while dignity answers the question, ‘What am I worth?’”1

Seems so simple.

Makes such sense.

Within our historic Christian faith we affirm that all humanity bears the imprint of the Divine, that we are made in the image of God. This is the starting point for drawing forward our sense of dignity, the intrinsic value that is ascribed not earned, based on our essence in reflecting a good and loving God.

If we can start with the grace of resting in our dignity, then the truth of our identity flows forward. “While identity must not be confused with dignity, dignity in a Christian view assumes identity.”2

Tragically, most of us start with our sense of identity, believing that if we build out the mythology of who we think we are, then the more attractive our identity and the more valuable we become. But when we equate our dignity with the sum value of the fortification of stories we tell about our identity, we create a no-win scenario that will always lead to disillusionment and pain. Over-identifying with our success or failure, allowing the fragments of our identity to lay claim to the whole, and falling into the addictive loop of our mental and emotional preoccupations keep us stuck. This is what entrenches the illusions of our ego’s mythologies.

This is how we get ourselves lost. The challenge is to find our way home.

My own consistent struggle is to recognize my addictive tendency to validate my worth (dignity) by curating an unrealistic and unattainable projection of who I think I need to be (identity). By pandering to thin or worn-out versions of my False Self, I’ve fallen into the trap that Franciscan priest and author Father Richard Rohr (hereafter, Father Richard) often warns about: “Every unrealistic expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.” And as I constantly fail to meet my own standards, the resentment keeps me trapped.

The Three Lies We Let Define Us

When I get stuck trying to untangle the confusion around my notions of self, I frequently return to Father Henri Nouwen’s classic teaching on identity.

Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who had an incredibly accomplished academic career that began with a visiting professorship at the University of Notre Dame. He also was one of the twentieth century’s foremost Christian spirituality writers, authoring thousands of pages of instant and timeless classics.

In the early 1980s he left a teaching position at Yale Divinity School to reassess his own vocation. He felt somehow that God was igniting a repurposing of his life’s work, a calling to serve and live among people in poverty. So he moved to South America where he spent six months learning Spanish in Bolivia before serving as a priest among the oppressed of Peru. But as he discerned what the proper “yes” was to this evolving vocation, he determined it didn’t involve staying in South America.

So Nouwen returned to the United States where he took a teaching job at Harvard Divinity School. It was during this period of his life, while on a silent retreat in Chicago (coincidentally facilitated by my spiritual director, Father Larry Gillick), that he first met community members from L’Arche, an international group of communities for adults with intellectual disabilities.

From those introductions, Nouwen ended up meeting L’Arche’s founder, Jean Vanier. Through their sacred friendship, Nouwen began to find direction for his inner restlessness. Vanier’s example of embodied solidarity and love, rooted in community, provoked a refreshed vocational imagination that captivated him.

Nouwen invited Vanier to visit Harvard to deliver a series of lectures titled “From Brokenness to Community.” Vanier was astounded at how well loved Nouwen was by his students yet how dissatisfied he seemed to be in an academic setting. Shortly after, Vanier invited Nouwen to join L’Arche first in France and then, later on, in Canada.

After finally settling into community outside Toronto, Nouwen hit a psychological wall. Suddenly he was part of a community where the vast majority of its core members would never have passed the admissions process for any of the universities he taught at, let alone be able to pick up and read many of his books. Unlike in years past, Nouwen could no longer hide behind his academic and publishing successes; the core members of his new community weren’t impressed by any of it. In fact, it really didn’t matter if he was their new priest or their new janitor; he was just Henri to them. But who was “Henri” to Henri?

Long before, Nouwen had lost himself by allowing some of his professional successes to claim the whole of his identity. Nouwen didn’t really know who he was apart from those accomplishments. In his new community, the scaffolding of his disordered identity came crashing down all around him.

I first came across Nouwen’s journey of rediscovering the truth of his identity while watching some old VHS tapes in the mid-1990s, recordings of three talks he gave at the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California. The gist was simple: Nouwen suggested we all find ourselves bouncing around three very human lies that we believe about our identity: I am what I have, I am what I do, and I am what other people say or think about me.3

The teaching resonated deeply with me. I was in my early twenties still trying to figure out who I was. I had some early success in my activist career by helping start South Asia’s first pediatric AIDS care home for children either born HIV positive or orphaned because of the disease. Before turning twenty-five I became the executive director of an international humanitarian organization, and I had even spent time with Mother Teresa during the last few years of her life. Back then, I latched onto all these successful pieces of my story.

Furthermore, in lieu of not having earned a graduate degree (something I felt some insecurity about), I parlayed my professional achievements into a sort of vocational credibility.

In a large sense, I believed I was what I had—a beautiful wife and a happy marriage, a stable community, and a fulfilling job.

I believed I was what I did—I fought for the vulnerable; I built communities; and I got to travel all over the world doing what I loved.

I believed I was what other people thought about me—people saw me as compassionate, deeply rooted in my faith, and ambitious.

Though I had a beautiful life, did meaningful work, and enjoyed fairly positive reviews of it all, those things didn’t ultimately define me, nor could they possibly capture the essence of my identity.

Interestingly, as I grew older, my illusions of self were less and less driven by what I had or did or by the good that was said of me. Instead, I gradually became more driven by all that I had failed to do, all that I still wanted, and the negative things people thought and said about me.

Even now, when I’m not centered, I find myself falling to one side or the other of these lies. And I’ll bet if you’re honest with yourself, all three of these lies lay claim to your sense of identity as well. Each touches on a stress fracture in our ego that we’ve learned to work around. But when these lies take hold, they don’t let go. Instead they fortify the mythology of our personality.

Like many people, I find myself constantly having to untangle myself from these three lies. They’re human. They’re consistent. And they’re powerful.

The Three Programs for Happiness

Another driver that contributes to the disconnect with our True Self is the way we pursue happiness.

During the renewal of contemplative spirituality in the 1960s and 1970s, many Western Christians turned to Eastern methods like Zen meditation to nurture their spirituality. This shift grieved Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk from the Cistercian order, who saw curious pilgrims bypass his own Benedictine monastery, oblivious to the fact that the Christian tradition held helpful contemplative practices itself. Consequently, he worked to make Centering Prayer accessible to all, giving a time-honored contemplative practice back to the laity.

In his writings, Father Keating speaks of consistent contemplative practice as a way to rest in the grace of our being. Keating also emphasizes that contemplative practice helps us wake up to the truth of ourselves. His framework for understanding the process of breaking free into our True Self is a psychological developmental overlay of our inner landscape that he calls “programs for happiness.”

Keating explains that as children we all need an appropriate amount of power and control, affection and esteem, and security and survival for healthy psychological grounding. But as we mature, our tendency is to overidentify with one of these programs for happiness, keeping us developmentally and spiritually stuck.

Keating suggests, “Without adequate fulfillment of these biological needs, we probably would not survive infancy. Since the experience of the presence of God is not there at the age we start to develop self-consciousness, these three instinctual needs are all we have with which to build a program for happiness. Without the help of reason to modify them, we build a universe with ourselves at the center, around which all human faculties revolve like planets around the sun.”4

It’s important to remember that power and control, affection and esteem, and security and survival aren’t bad needs in and of themselves. The problem arises when in our adult lives we become addicted to one of these programs to maintain our happiness. The word addiction comes from the Latin addico, which suggests being literally given over to something in devotion. As the term evolved, it took on the legal connotation of enslavement as a form debt. While we need these programs for happiness to foster healthy development, once enslaved to them we are their debtor, paying with our lost identity.

So how have we gotten so far off track? How do we heal ourselves from the false identities we’ve reinforced? Ultimately, how do we find our way home to the God of love and our true identity?

This is where the Enneagram comes in. It reveals our path for recovering our true identity and helps us navigate the journey home to God.

_________

(Endnotes)

1 Chris Sugden, Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus: The Practice and Theology of Christian Social Witness in Indonesia and India 1974–1996 (Oxford: Regnum, 1997), 183.

2 These reflections on Nouwen’s three lies come from a series of messages entitled “Being the Beloved” which he delivered during appearances on Crystal Cathedral Ministries’ Hour of Power television show in 1992.

3 Ibid.

4 Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 9–10.

While living and working all over the world for 20 years with an international humanitarian organization, Chris Heuertz was first introduced to the Enneagram in a slum in Southeast Asia. Since then, he has trained under some of the great living Enneagram masters — including Marion Gilbert, Helen Palmer, Father Richard Rohr, and Russ Hudson.

As an International Enneagram Association Accredited Professional Chris now works as an Enneagram one-on-one coach and consultant, teaches the Enneagram all around the world, hosts the Enneagram Mapmakers podcast, delivered a TEDx talk on the Enneagram, and has published seven books including two bestselling Enneagram books: the award-winning The Sacred Enneagram and The Enneagram of Belonging.Taken from Sacred Enneagram by Chris Heuertz. Copyright © 2017 by Chris Heuertz. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

Excerpt adapted from The Sacred Enneagram: Discovering Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth by Christopher L. Heuertz. © 2017 by Christopher L. Heuertz. Published by Zondervan. Used by permission.

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