Name: The Sacred Enneagram
ISBN: 9780310348276

Christopher L. Heuertz

Answering more than "what is the enneagram?" The Sacred Enneagram uncovers how to use one of the most profound personality tools for personal and spiritual growth. Chris Heuertz will help you discover how to awaken your identity, grow with God, and become who you are designed to be.

Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth

The Sacred Enneagram

A must-read for anyone looking to move beyond type as caricature and learn how to work with the Enneagram toward spiritual growth. Over 100,000 copies sold! eBook EXCLUSIVE: 45+ COLOR illustrations to provide greater depth of understanding. Most of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out who we are and how we relate to others and God. The Enneagram is here to help. Far more than a personality test, author Chris Heuertz writes, the Enneagram is a sacred map to the soul. Lies about who we think we are keep us trapped in loops of self-defeat. But the Enneagram reveals both the nine ways we get lost, as well as the nine ways we find our way home to our True Self and to God. Chris Heuertz has taught the Enneagram all over the world, and has trained under some of the great living Enneagram masters including Father Richard Rohr, Russ Hudson, Marion Gilbert, and Helen Palmer. Whether you are an enthusiast or simply Enneagram-curious, this groundbreaking guide to the spiritual depth of the Enneagram will help you: Understand the "why" behind your type, beyond caricatures and stereotypes Identify and find freedom from self-destructive patterns Learn how to work with your type toward spiritual growth Awaken your unique gifts to serve today's broken world Richly insightful and deeply practical, The Sacred Enneagram is your invitation to begin the journey of a life transformed. Also available: The Sacred Enneagram Workbook.

Sarah Schumacher

See my review of his other book. Too much terminology, seemingly modified by him to sound fancier and be more confusing. Create some charts with spiritual sounding headings and personality traits underneath x12 and that’s what this feels like. Didn’t bother finishing and I regret buying this one.

Dave Perkins

Useful after reading ‘the road back to you’ for a bit more of a detailed history and also for more focus on spiritual practices.

Elizabeth Moore

Erm. I think not liking this is my fault for not reading the overview better. If you are new to enneagram, I really don’t know if this is the best book to start with because it makes you feel really shitty about yourself and like all your enneagram tells you is how you are completely broken and living a lie, and it determines really specific ways you can actually be “whole” which will most likely be extremely far away from how you’re currently operating. Also, this is on me because I should have read the back and the cover more literally, but know ahead of reading this that the book is SUPER faith and religion-driven. God and faith and holiness are on almost every single page and I certainly thought this was going to be more generally spiritual and about getting to know your personality, not finding your way back to God. The book was also really confusing in a lot of places and spent a lot of time talking about the technicalities of optimizing your praying, which was a little much for what I thought was my fun weekend read. 

There are definitely some interesting historical explorations of enneagram and cool breakdowns of how it actually works and the types interface, and I can’t say I didn’t feel like I understood my type better when I was done reading. It was just so depressing and bummer inducing.

As an Enneagram 7, now that I’ve finished my Punishment Book I’m going to go feel bad about myself for being a gluttonous, overdoing-it, addiction-driven, pain-avoiding idealist now so I’ll get back to you later once I’ve reached my ideal Virtue of sobriety and not ever wanting to do anything cool or exciting ever because THAT’S RUNNING AWAY FROM MY BEST SELF.

Juliette

Mehhh, it was just okay, I love learning about the Enneagram but even as a Christian religious/spiritual books are always a hit or a miss for me. There were lots of insightful quotes that I highlighted but halfway through I got frustrated because it was taking so long to get through this book I just started skimming. THEN it got to the point where I only read about my type.

Omar

There were a few key messages that stood out to me: 

* The enneagram is a good way to understand yourself better. 

* Enneagram reveals things you may not be comfortable admitting. Unlike other personality tests, it dives deeper into more fundamental fears and hopes that drive your outlook and behavior. 

* Each enneagram type can manifest in healthy, average, or unhealthy ways. That is, a type 1 that has done the work to understand themselves and balance their fears, hopes and needs, will lead a healthier and better life than those who haven't and are in average or unhealthy levels. 

* Finding out your enneagram type is the first step in the journey and may be elucidating in and of itself, however...

* To make the most of this you also need to learn how to evolve/develop yourself so that you move towards, and sustain, healthy behavior that's compatible with your type. 

* The best way to do this is through contemplative prayer*.



The book is filled with helpful details on this and dives into each type's needs, etc. It does have the religious spin to it, so if you don't like reading books that have the words "God" and "prayer" in it, this book may not be for you. However, if you simply substitute "God" with "life" and "prayer" with "mindfulness/meditation", you can easily get all the insights and wisdom out of this book in a completely secular way.

The Sacred Enneagram Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth