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Enneagram Type 2 – The Helper

Discussion with Paul Burrows, Gill Harris and Renate McNay. Moderated by Iain McNay

Iain:  Hello and welcome again to Conscious TV.  I am Iain McNay and today we have another programme in our Enneagram Series.  In fact, it’s the final one in the enneagram series; we have covered all nine types.  Today I have in the studio with me, Renate, Paul and Gill who are all type 2’s, so welcome.  Just to give you an idea - for those who are not familiar with the enneagram - to give an idea of how it works, Paul is going to give us a short introduction.

Paul:  OK, the enneagram is an ancient symbol, many thousands of years old possibly, and it has nine points on it and what we are doing here is talking about it in relation to human psychology and the transformation of the person.  Basically, the theory is, that there are nine personality types and each personality type develops as a response to loosing connection with deeper truths about ourselves when we are very young.  So by enquiring into our personality type we can find the ways which we have lost connection with deeper truths about ourselves and find a way back to wholeness through this ancient symbol.  It’s kind of a map, or a system of psychology and spiritual understanding, which allows us to learn more about ourselves for transformation and liberation.  It’s interesting [nodding].

Iain:  So it’s giving us clues to find out who we are and who we’re not, so to speak.

Paul:  Yes, it’s helping us to get clear about how we are in relationship to deeper levels of our being and how the personality relates to deeper levels of our being.

Iain:  And how did you feel when you first found out you were a type 2?

Paul:  Well, I remember that I did a long questionnaire as well as reading books to try and understand what type I was and there were maybe three types that came up strongly but, then I began to realise that the 2 ish pattern in me is kind of another order of magnitude, stronger than the other ones that I could see and I was really curious. I was like, “Oh wow”, I didn’t feel like I particularly wanted to be one type over another type, I just felt like, well this is going to be interesting.  What does this mean about me and the way that I am in the world?  So, curiosity was the main response, I think.

Iain:  OK, so Gill why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself?  What defines you as a type 2, what are the characteristics of you that are prevalent and that mean you are a [type] 2?

Gill:  Well, I think I am a type 2 because I’m probably obsessive about supporting people, helping people, doing good things and generally putting other people first before myself.  That’s what I would say are my views about why I am a type 2 and I do it in all walks of life and have done it as long as I can remember, pretty much.

Iain:  So what are some examples of how you put people first before yourself?

Gill:  Well, all my friends, at any point that any of them have a problem, I step in and try and fix it, even if they don’t want me to fix it [laughing].  But it’s this sort of ability to really try and make a difference for somebody who might be stuck.  In my profession, I have had to deal with lots of people in a bad news situation and I always take the view that there must be something that I can do to make even, what might be an awful situation, better.  For example, I might… a friend of mine’s son died and I travelled to Singapore to open a garden in remembrance of the child, in a weekend and that would be, what I call, my typical behavior.  Something like that.

Iain:  But you are also saying that you would help out even when the person didn’t want you to help out?

Gill:  Well sometimes I think what happens as a 2 is that you think everybody needs help, or needs some help and for example, if somebody is looking for work, I might try calling all the people I know of, but they might not actually want me to do that, but I’ll do that.  So I think sometimes one can over step the brief sort of thing, but it’s a compunction.  It’s not something that you actually think about.  As soon as somebody is in trouble, certainly from my point of view, I think, OK, what can I do and then I go into who do I know, do they need money or whatever it is [they need] that’s what I do.
Iain:  So you feel like you have no alternative really?

Gill:  No, because I couldn’t possibly see these people who were, I think struggling, and not come up with something.  And actually I have a belief that if you think you can come up with something; you can come up with something.  So you nearly always improve [the situation] however dire it is, I think.

Renate:  Can I step in now?  I think, and this pattern sounds very familiar [looking towards Gill in agreement] to try to help people or to try to make people happy and what drives us to do this, is we want to feel loved.

Gill:  Yes, I am sure that is right, I am sure we do want to feel loved.

Renate:  And to feel loved, we just would do anything and completely step beyond our self.

Gill:  I think you’re right.  You are right.  I think beneath it, one does want to be loved but I think a 2, puts the other person’s needs first and then maybe it brings this: people love you.  But sometimes people don’t love you when you are supporting them, especially if they are in a beat up mode themselves.  It’s quite difficult to be a 2 because you can help and people don’t value it.  People don’t give you enough acknowledgements for being a 2.  You know, for trying to do what you think is a really good thing and some people will take it completely for granted.  So it’s quite difficult, I think, being a 2, because you sort of expect some acknowledgement, if you do something, I’m talking about something perhaps a bit outside of the norm here.

Iain:  So you are a bit disappointed, sometimes you are doing something you feel is very helpful to somebody and they are not necessarily saying thank you, or acknowledging the fact that you have given them help?

Gill:  Yes, because if somebody did that for me, if somebody puts themselves out for me, then generally, it’s my belief a 2 will over thank and perhaps buy them something because they did something for you.

Renate:  [Laughs] we even try to pay them!

Gill:  You expect something back, I think, because you would give, so you expect.  That’s the way I see it as a [type] 2.

Iain:  Paul, what’s the male kind of interpretation of this?

Paul:  Well, that’s interesting.  I can see myself, if I am being quite 2 ish say in a community context or in a group, I go into kind of a helping mode to be a sweet and empathic and helping type person just so that I can be included.  So it’s like, it’s my way of coming into the group so I can feel connected, so I can feel like I belong.  Because I am really looking for other people for a sense of connection and wanting to feel belonging and connection, like I’m part of it.  So in terms of a group thing, then I can see very clearly that I’m trying sort of… to get my needs for connection met.  I am being a sweet and nice helpful person so that I have got a role, I have got a place.  And then, in a one to one way, I would tend to kind of, yeah, take a very empathetic character so that I can have a connection, so that people would want to connect with me and somehow I can merge and be in a bubble with another person and get something juicy from being in a bubble with another person.  Something that feels supportive, somehow.

Iain:  Do you feel somehow, it’s easier for you to give than to receive? 

Paul:  It can be very hard to receive, for example some of the work I do is donation based work and people give me money and they choose to give me money, however much they want to give and it can be really touching and somehow really painful when you see someone actually choose to give you some money when they didn’t have to give me any money but they chose to.  It can feel kind of, challenging.  Also, the giving, when I am giving, there are kind of expectations there as well.  So it’s easy to give but maybe it’s not necessarily a straightforward giving, I am kind of asking for something as I am giving as well.  I notice that sometimes.

Iain:  Do you guys feel lonely inside?  What’s happening inside of you as you do these various things?

Renate:  Well, I remember if I didn’t feel merged with somebody, I felt incredibly lonely and empty.  Like it was such a longing to merge with somebody who was around… and what that also brought with it, was that I completely understood and knew the person I was with much better than myself.  I sometimes was surprised if their attention shifted to me and somebody said, “Well how are you?”  It was like a shock, it was like, almost I felt paralysed.  I hadn’t a clue how I was.  I was so melted with my environment…

Iain:  So your empathy went out to the other and in that you forgot yourself, somehow, or forgot to check-in with how you were feeling?

Renate:  Yes, well it is a typically number 2 pattern to completely forget yourself.  You don’t exist for yourself and that has a reason you know.  I understand today, why I became a number 2.  I had a mother who needed a lot of attention because she was a number 2 who gave a lot of attention in the same way.  You know if my mother would go shopping she would come home sometimes with 5 refugees and she would cook for them and they would spend the night also and we didn’t have much money, but she couldn’t help herself.  So I had to work really hard to get her attention and her love.  So that is when I started to leave myself.  I am much, much better now and I learned to come back to myself.  One thing that helped me a lot is, I remember a few years ago, Sandra Maitri, my teacher said, “Renate, a number 2 can only heal when they are alone”.

Paul:  Mmm, that’s interesting.

Renate:  That’s when I learned to be alone.  Which actually almost never happened [laughing], but sometimes, I shut myself away on a meditation retreat at the Gaia House, or wherever… and then she also said, “Then you need to learn to be alone with others”, which means you are with others, but you are completely with yourself at the same time.

Paul:  Yes, I can relate really strongly to that.  I feel like it’s difficult, I notice I can be a very different person with different groups like family, friends and spiritual groups and sometimes I wonder underneath it, who I actually am.  It’s foggy and fuzzy and it’s so much how I see myself, like OK, how should I see myself now to connect?  What would be the best person to be in order to connect, so that this person will approve and be loving, be open and want to connect somehow.  I don’t know if you feel that, do you feel that? [Looking towards Gill]

Gill:  I don’t have either of those experiences [waving finger between Renate and Paul].  I am not good alone at all.  I don’t feel comfortable in that situation at all and I think that is very much why I go seeking others and others that are in a weaker state, in certain aspects and I never choose to be alone.  Ever!

Renate:  Well you just said something important.  You like to be with others who are in need of you.

Gill:  Yes [nodding].

Renate:  It is also very typical, we like to be needed [Gill and Paul agree] and the more we feel needed the more, you know, we feel loved.  I actually remember saying to Iain… this is a typical hand movement [Renate is sitting next to Iain and places her hand on Iain’s arm] we touch people sitting next to us.  It was very much in the beginning of our relationship [with Iain] and I remember I so much wanted to feel loved by Iain and I said one time to him, “If you could just tell me sometimes that you need me” and he looked at me and said, “I don’t need you, I like to be with you, but I don’t need you” and that was incredibly devastating and it meant for me, that he doesn’t really love me.  I mean, it took me years to really in a way transform that…

Iain:  Is this wanting to find that somebody loves you, seems to be one of the underlying themes here and you interpret how that would happen in a practical way from the actions and words and things of the other person.  You are nodding Paul is that something that you…

Paul:  I have often found myself in a situation where I have found myself romantically obsessed and infatuated with a woman and it seems like it’s the be all and end all, it’s the source of everything I need.  In terms of support and guidance and holding and connection, it can be a really big thing and yeah very painful, very painful and it’s like I am much more.  My experience of myself is in the image of another person, like I often have an image of a woman right in the centre of me that I want to merge with somehow and it becomes a big… you look like you can relate [speaking to Gill, who does not agree] to a significant other; a special other person becomes the most important thing and other things like friends and work become neglected.

Gill:  Yes, that [final part of the above paragraph] I can totally relate to.  I think because if your instinct, as a number 2, is to try and get, I’ll even say, attention or love; when you actually get it and it’s what you want coming back, it is sort of an unusual situation.  So then, other people almost get dropped because it’s almost an obsession that you for once are getting something back, that you want back.  But I think that happens in a romantic situation and all sense goes out of the window, actually [group laughs].

Iain:  [Laughing]  It does with most people.

Gill:  Yes and even more so with a 2, because it’s what you want the most and all of a sudden the person that you want, is giving it to you but, doesn’t happen very often.

Iain:  I have got a list of things that normally help people decide whether they are a type 2 or not and one thing here is, “I don’t want my dependence to show”. 

Gill:  Yes, I absolutely one hundred percent for me, because I genuinely do not feel like I want to have a dependence on anybody

Paul:  I don’t want to feel like a needy child, it’s really hard to feel like that.

Iain:   [reads from list] “…and I often figure out what others would like in a person, then act in that way”.  So for approval you are trying to find out…

Gill:  Yes, yes I do that too.

Paul:  Like changing accents, depending on the accent of the person I am speaking to.

Iain:  Really, really you actually change the way you speak?

Paul:  Yes, sometimes I can notice myself trying to sound less posh or something.

Iain:  [reads from the list] “I’m attracted to being with powerful or important people”.  Does that sort of align with what you feel you do?

Gill:  It can, I don’t know that it’s necessarily a trait that goes particularly with a 2, but again I think important people usually are charismatic and there is something about their personality that maybe you might hope that you mirror slightly and therefore I think the attraction to that type goes for me, I don’t know about all 2’s but that does go for me.

Paul:  And then I drew up a list out of three different books of people they would say are examples of type 2’s.  So let’s see how this gets past this important test: Mother Teresa.

Gill:  Yes, yes.

Paul:  I did meet Mother Teresa with my friend Goatie who was raised by her.  I was 18 so we went back after school to Calcutta and I met her very briefly…

Renate:  Sorry what do you mean he was raised by her?

Paul:  He was born in Calcutta to Indian parents and had polio and his parents left him at the orphanage; they couldn’t raise him and she raised him, her and her sisters raised him.  Yeah that was an interesting trip.

Iain:  And do you feel she is, probably a type 2 in terms of what you know?

Paul:  I have no idea, but in terms of being a very sort of loving servant, possibly.

Iain:  OK, then we have… they are mainly Americans as they are out of American books, Barbara Bush.

Gill:  I don’t know, I don’t know enough about her, I mean she does have a foundation, doesn’t she, she has a very big foundation.

Iain:  And that would be a clue for you for possibly a type 2, help and philanthropic…

Gill:  Yes it would, philanthropic. A very, very charitable nature because I think if you are in a powerful position and you are wealthy it’s fairly easy to be charitable, but I think when either some of the money goes, or some of the fame goes or the power goes, if you continue it’s because is who you are, and I believe she still runs her foundation or the foundation is still going.

Iain:  OK, Florence Nightingale.

Paul:  Iconic.

Iain:  OK, John Denver.

Gill:  Yeah, I don’t know about John Denver.  I have no idea.  Sorry.

Iain:  And then there is, I’ll just read them out you don’t have to comment, Meg Ryan, Shirley McLain, Elizabeth Taylor and then Jesus.

Paul:  Jesus [smiles].

Iain:  He is in great company here [laughs].

Renate:  I would agree he is a number 2, but a completely transformed number 2.

Iain:  So what do you mean Renate by transformed number 2?

Renate:  Well here comes in [the idea of] the ‘Holy Ideas’ of the enneagram which is kind of the enneagram on a Non-Dual level, or not on a personal level any more, and we have here ‘Holy Will’ belonging to the type 2 and ‘Holy Freedom’.  Holy Freedom is grounded in Holy Will, which means - and I am trying to exercise that a lot - to surrender to the will of the universe or God or Being.  Aligning your will with the Universal Will. That is the ultimate transformation of the number 2. That, “Thy Will, will be done”, we know these words from Jesus.  Not my will, Thy will.

Paul:  I remember when I was on an enneagram course the questions we were studying for a type 2 was, “How do you manipulate?” and coming along with that enquiry into how we manipulate, was the quality of surrender and [the need of] coming out of manipulating and into surrendering, somehow...that’s what came to my mind when you were saying that [gestures towards Renate].  Surrendering to how it is, rather than make it more healthy, more enlightened, more developed into how it is.

Renate:  Yes, the number 2 tries to live up to a very angelic self-image.  I even remember my mother used to, you know… she would dress me in angel dresses.

Iain:  You still look like an angel.

Renate:  Well that is what I hear a lot, it is a very high self-image that you try to live up to, you know and that is why you try to help and that’s why you try to please and make other people happy but - as Sandra Maitri actually talks about our soul child - the number 2 soul child actually doesn’t want to have anything to do with helping people.  So we have to decide in us; so that means all this helping is a very egotistic, self-gratifying thing.

Iain:  It’s a way of trying to get what you need, but somehow it doesn’t satisfy the depth, does it?

Renate:  No, because our [type 2] depth is not the merging with the environment and the helping, it’s a longing for our soul to merge with our Being.  That’s where the merging needs to happen, not on the outside.

Paul:  Not through personality strategy from another person or group.

Renate:  The merging with ourselves - at least in my experience - I mostly experience when I am alone.  Then somehow everything collapses inside and I enter this stillness and Beingness, which I still find I am working on integrating in my daily life.  That is what is meant by, “You need to be or feel alone with other people” you don’t leave this [still, inner] space.

Paul:  Can you feel like that a bit now?  Feeling alone, even though you are with us here [laughs].

Renate:  Yes, I am actually quite here.  Inside.

Iain:  It’s an inclusive place, rather than an exclusive place, isn’t it?

Renate:  Of course, yes.

Paul:  I find that a really interesting point - being able to be alone - but be with other people and quite difficult.  Like, if I am feeling irritable, angry or moody and I don’t want to lose connection with you guys or people I am with, it’s like what do I do with this [feelings/emotions surfacing at the time]?  I have some need there for that to be attended to and somehow acknowledged and it’s telling me that I need something like, whatever it might be.  But for it to be there in an inclusive way, where I could be myself, still feel connected and still have my own self being here which might be grumpy or pissed off or something…

Renate:  Well it sounds like a major achievement Paul, if you can be with other people and still feel what is going on inside you.

Paul:  Yeah, what it takes to get to that place is actually talking about it.  So doing an inquiry with somebody, or a one to one session with a therapist or something where I can literally describe that I am feeling in a bad mood to the other person and they are helping me stay connected and yet I am describing that I feel yucky one way or another inside.  Something that is not normally allowed is there in the space, then there is a simultaneous kind of sense of the connection and a more full inclusivity of my emotional life is… they kind of co-exist.

Gill:  I think I might have an experience where I can relate to what you are saying.  When part of my job has been to make people redundant, I am a Human Resources consultant, and you have to have that empathetic, supportive [approach], whatever you can do to help this person, but inside yourself of course you are feeling absolutely horrendous that you are giving bad news and you know that this person may not be able to pay their mortgage.  So you have to protect yourself and so you might go into this meeting with this I am here to help [approach] but inside you are actually, maybe alone is the right word because, there is nobody who can help you, while you are trying to help this person.  And when the meeting is over, it is not finished, they leave and it is still with you [pointing inside of self] and you have to learn to try and not get over whelmed by it.  You know, when you do a lot of these things… and I think a number 2 takes it very personally, that process.  Whereas in many, many companies you will find Human Resources who don’t.  They will [at the meeting] give the information, [say] this is your book, this is this, call this company and then they leave the room and that’s it.  Whereas I myself will stay in touch with everybody, say until they get work, it could take years.  My best friend is somebody I worked with who I had to let go.  Most of my friends are people I have let go.  So I think a number 2 has that in them; to hold on to what is an uncomfortable position because more importantly [for type 2] you are helping them, than how you feel about yourself.

Paul:  Do you get what you need out of that?  At the end of the day when you have had all these feelings inside and having to reject people and loose and sack people.

Gill:  Well I think, you know, it’s an uncomfortable thing you have to do anyway and nine times out of ten it is not your choice or your decision, but to actually have somebody say, “Well that was a horrible experience but you did make it about as good as it could get” yes, that works for me [pointing inside of self].

Paul:  And how about you at the end of the day?

Gill:  Well everyone says that, who looks after you? But going back to that statement about the independent, so I will say I don’t need any help and mostly, you know with most of these trainings [self-developmental] I don’t need any help, but there is a certain level of denial, I think.  You are just human at the end of the day.  You can’t cope with all traumas, all dramatic things.  I have had employees who have attempted suicide.  It’s not just that they haven’t got a job, it goes way, way further than that.

Iain:  I just thought there was a bit of a bridge here in terms of what Renate was saying and what you came back to Gill and I just made some notes from some of the enneagram books and you may or may not agree with this but it is something worth putting out there for feedback.  [reading from notes] The key is about developing humility, settling into yourself, turning attention inwards and giving yourself the attention that you crave from others and that slows down the frenzied activity and you get in touch more, with your actual experience.  And that tends to be the thing with type 2’s, that they’re - as we found out earlier from all of you - not always in touch with their own feelings and it also involves distancing yourself from the super ego, the part of the mind that is judgmental of yourself, telling you, you are not doing the right thing, or done it wrong…

Paul:  Being selfish…

Iain:  Being selfish, yes.  [continues reading]  The more you open to the inner reality the more you see your own humanness and the value of your self, as who you really are, not what you are trying to be.  I don’t know if that is helpful at all in bridging this gap that is opening up a little bit.

Paul:  Yes definitely for me [Gill is shaking her head and group laughs] not for Gill.

Gill:  No, no to be honest, I don’t completely understand what you are saying, so that’s why.

Iain:  OK, do you have any feedback Renate?

Renate:  [pause]  Well, that’s a big one, to be true to our own feelings and our own needs.  That’s a huge step.  And be able to actually admit that, I do sometimes need help too and [ask] can I please have help?

Iain:  To ask for that is big.

Renate:  To ask for that it’s very big

Iain:  Because you are so used to being available for everyone else.

Renate:  Yes and when I learned that… and that actually touches me.  What happened to me was, I started to feel so much love for myself [smiling] and in this moment the picture turned and I stopped seeking love from the outside because there was something in me which felt, in that moment, whole and round and all of a sudden I could say, “I really love myself, I love the way I am” and yeah, that was a big step [laughs] and that meant actually - the love I felt for myself - I would translate that into: Being recognised itself.  My Being recognised itself in that moment and in that moment [there was] completeness there.

Paul:  It was interesting that you used the word humility there Iain, and I was wondering what humility has got to do with it.  But I know one of the things I can find going on, is feeling that I’m trying to be special for other people. I am trying to be - especially in a certain way - especially empathetic, loving, wise, deep, mature, all these kind of things that I’m trying to be… in a special way and the humility somehow is coming out of that pride about being more special than other people and connecting with just the true specialness that, like you were saying Renate, when I spend time with myself and then come back to the fact of this living being, which is kind of miraculously happening by itself… it’s kind of a special thing even if it’s confused and feels lost a lot of the time, there is still a specialness there that doesn’t depend on you needing to think I’m special, or me needing to show off in a certain way, or needing to have a certain special role.  It’s just like, yeah, I’m special just as I am [pointing to self, hand on chest] and tasting that.  It’s like, yeah I’m loveable as I am, with all the messiness and the complications of the human heart and being as I am.  But like you were saying, I find it really important to be on my own, to connect with that and it’s quite hard to take time for myself sometimes, so maybe, you know, I wouldn’t look after that piece.  So I am not aware of how much I need to take myself and be on my own and connect, feel that self-love rather than needing to posture in a certain way to get that kind of love from other people.

Gill:  See, I haven’t reached that point of yours [Renate] or yours [Paul] and I think there must be a maturity to a 2 and I think to get to the point where, as you say, either, you really love yourself - which I wouldn’t profess to myself  - or to take a step back and separate the conscious, or the 2 that you want everybody to see and the real person inside and I can’t separate for whatever reason; so I see everything I do as exactly how I am and I know it can’t be that way.  So I think this maturity comes, probably from exploring yourself and doing the sort of things that you guys do, but for me, I am more trapped [leaning back as though held in a position] for me, I like being a 2.  Out of the 9 [types] I am the only one to be a 2 because yes, I think the best thing is to help people.  I have been successful in business, but to me that doesn’t count for a single thing.

Iain:  But does it sometimes catch up with you in terms of, it gets too much?

Gill:  Actually for me, I don’t know that it does.

Iain:  Well that’s very, very interesting.  So in a way maybe you are an example of a type 2 who actually quite thrives on being a type 2 and doesn’t necessarily have the incentive to move forward and away from the essential fixation.  Maybe that’s true.

Gill:  Yes, maybe it is and I think, you know, one goes back to the psychology of it all and why: the why I may be stuck as a 2, if I put it that way.  I think it’s much healthier to be where Renate is, where you don’t have this dependence on everyone else’s acceptance and thinks you are all these things. It’s much better if you can be both.  Be that and also be happy in your own skin and love yourself for it, but I don’t know how to be like that unfortunately.

Renate:  But you see Gill, you are right, it is a process of maturation, but what was my teacher in this process, was life experiences of suffering, where I felt completely alone on my own and where I experienced - if I surrender to whatever I was feeling - grief, suffering or whatever was there and I went deep inside myself and stayed with this feeling… it took me to the light.  It took me to this place of love that was not: I love.  The feeling was: I am love, everything is love.  Yes, it was life experience.

Gill:  I think your training and your exploration probably moved you that way and the world that you are in is very different.  I am in more the business world and practicalities and don’t spend a lot of time, if any, on self-development, for the want of a better word.  I mean, I am interested in all sorts of psychological things and counselling and all that, but I don’t actually work on it.  Like you said, you went through various emotions, through difficult experiences and let them go, by the sound of it.

Renate:  Yes, that brings up the question in me.  Are you happy, in your life?

Gill:  I am.

Renate:  You are.

Gill:  Yes I am, I mean we are human beings [Gill and Renate laughing] I am not ecstatic about everything, but yes, I am.  I am most happy helping people and I am not happy if I am not and if I am not wanted, I am not happy.  So they do go together, being wanted…

Iain:  How would you feel with that Paul?  Interesting statement, sorry to interrupt, you are not happy if you are not wanted.  Would you say that is true for you?

Paul:  That I am not happy if I am not wanted, is that the question?  It’s not totally true but, there is some truth in it, definitely.  I feel, particularly if there is somebody I really want to like me; if they are being really approving and I am making them laugh and they are wanting to be close and connect and merge and be playful then, I can be just in heaven.  I can be really in this kind of heavenly state.  So in that way, getting some loving and mirroring back from particular others can make me really happy.  But, then sometimes I do touch on what Renate is touching on, where I am happy as I am and less dependent on another person being a certain way, or me being a certain way for another person, so there’s both.

Iain:  So we have about 5 or 6 minutes left let’s really look what you all feel the potential is of the type 2 to grow. You mentioned [looking to Renate] that it is Holy Will.

Renate:  And Holy Freedom, yes.  Holy Freedom comes in the moment you accept that this is the way it is and you surrender your own will -, you know to try to change [what is] - in this moment or that moment.  It is incredibly liberating and that is the freedom.  If I feel Being in an Absolute state or, if I feel angry and it doesn’t matter and you are aware, and you can accept it, that is freedom.  So, to surrender to the movement of the universe,[to] the way it is without trying to change it and I am meaning also whatever is happening inside us… to allow all that without manipulating, without interfering, that is the transformation into [Holy] Freedom.

Paul:  There is one thing for me that I feel is really important for the integration and healing for a 2, is that, if I feel completely lost and like the world has left me behind, at the side of the road and, I am not where I am meant to be, usually I can get very busy and try and force things and manipulate the world so that I get to a successful set of conditions.  But, I am also really interested in spending time with that feeling and opening to that feeling of feeling lost and feeling like the world has left me behind and I am not where I need to be and that other things come through that.  That feels like a really healing place to go to.  Rather than getting busy and willful about trying to sort it out but, OK [closes eyes] “I feel lost, I feel left behind” and spending time with that.

Iain:  So it’s that slowing down that is the key and it takes the courage to stay with the effects, the repercussions of the slowing down.

Paul:  Slowing down, coming back, turning inwards a little bit and being with the effect of it, the mood and direct experience of the state of feeling lost and connecting with that.

Gill:  [Laughs]  Er, I don’t want to put myself into that place.  If I am abandoned, I’ll use the word abandoned as abandoned for me is a very clear graphic word and I understand what it means.  If I feel abandoned I am not comfortable to try and stay with it.  Again, I am sure it would help in the long run but, at the moment I still run to where I am not abandoned, to the somebody who will pull me back in and the way I do it - which I guess is slightly manipulative - is [ask the person] what can I do to help you, so I am not going to put myself through things.  It’s a pattern that I think the older you get, the more difficult it is to break it.  You know, if you have been playing that game for 40 years, it’s quite difficult really to sit there and put yourself through a certain level of suffering, because I think that is what you were saying [Paul] holding on to that feeling and probably that it depends on the level of real suffering one has had along the road and I don’t choose to go back to some of those particularly difficult periods of my life.

Iain:  OK we have got 2 minutes left…

Renate:  Well, [turning to Iain] how is it to live with a number 2?  [group laughs]

Iain:  To live with a number 2, well it’s more about you guys than me, but to live with a number 2 can be beautiful and also can be challenging at times…

Renate:  Yes, because what a number 2 always does and I think it is the most difficult for you [turns to Iain] is we don’t have boundaries, we invade other people’s space.

Paul:  Yes, It’s true it can be invasive helping, can’t it?

Iain:  It’s true, organising all of your clothes, your life, your possessions… oh he doesn’t need that anymore, get rid of that.  So there are challenges to live with a number 2, but there is a challenge to live with a type 6, which I am, as well.  True of all the Enneagram types. 

So we are pretty much there on time and I would like to thank you three in particular for coming along to our historical last programme on the enneagram, Renate, Paul and Gill and I would like to thank you for watching.  I would also like to suggest, now that the series is complete - all nine programmes - if you have been interested in the Enneagram and you really want to know about maybe what type you are, get some more clues, find out more about each type… if you have got the time, over a period of time, obviously, do watch all nine programmes.  Not only do you get a lot of clues, but you see how each type is in action.  That is why we did these, quite lengthy programmes rather than a list of how each type would be.  We actually wanted to make the programmes so people could see how each enneagram type acted. 

I have also got some books I am going to show which have been helpful.  There is The Enneagram Made Easy’ by Baron & Wagele [shows book to viewers] which is the most simple book, but it is actually very good, it’s a good starting place.  Then we have, The Wisdom of the Enneagram: Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types’ by Don Riso & Russ Hudson [shows book to viewers]. This is a little more specialized, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram by Sandra Maitri [shows book to viewers] and we also have two programmes on conscious.tv where she talks about the Enneagram and then Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas by A H Almaas [shows book to viewers, I would say that is more advanced but if you are really getting into the enneagram, this is invaluable.  So there we go, there are more books out there this is just some that Renate and I have found particularly helpful.  So, thanks again for watching this programme.  Do watch the others and also thank you to Eleonora Gilbert who put this whole series together for us, for conscious.tv.  Goodbye.

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