Type 6 on the Enneagram

I told you earlier the six is by far the biggest type many would say it's actually 50% of the human race now what creates that is that the insecure childhood is it the insecure world that makes people so fear-based that so many people are so filled with fear that's probably a piece it's also the type that we divide into two major types and want to give you that right at the beginning because they will feel very different there is the phobic six now that animal is the mouse or the deer it runs as soon as there's danger and then there's the counter phobic six which would be Adolf Hitler who pretend they're not afraid you can normally see it in their eyes you can see it in Hitler's eyes they're scared to death of reality and so what they decide to do is move totally into it and take absolute control of it but it's all out of fear the counter phobic six is often mistaken for an eight but they're in fact very dangerous people because they they try to disguise their fear with bravado and false self assurance and I know I can do I'm not going to let anybody hurt me alright I'm not going to let anybody get at me there without healing all of us are dangerous people but that's very true of the counter phobic six I would say it's a smaller portion of the sixes but they're the psychopathic sociopathic personality in their worst form that you know these the people who go in post offices and shoot everybody in sight very fear-based people who don't for a minute admit that they're afraid and deny their fear to themselves ah drei Cointreau we said in Latin act against their fear to disguise their fear from themselves and do very very destructive things they're very attracted to the military to guns to militarism these two boys at Columbine I bet you anything they were sixes counter phobic sixes just fasi by any talk of you know Nazism or our skinhead worldviews where they focus the danger in one particular race in one particular gender I mean a lot of these men who kill women women are the source of all evil I've just got to rape and kill as many women as I can and this will get rid of the evil in the world that's what the counter phobic six does he or she is a classic scapegoat er to control their constant anxiety and know that the six does have constant anxiety they will find something to hold that anxiety they are the bad people that race that religion they are evil I am good and now I am doing a good thing for the world by eliminating them or killing them and inside of their mind remember they're on their heads the heart of the headspace there's no correct if possible no way you can get in it's all a self validating system inside of their own brain notice how many of these mass killers are loners who live in little cabin somewhere and just justify their entire worldview so it's the five come to a very sick paranoid level if you want the description of the six psychologically it is the paranoid type who sees danger everywhere now the much more common form thank God is simply the phobic six and I'm sure there's a lot of you in this room there everywhere there are lovely people all right they're naturally humble they're naturally teachable they're naturally loyal God if you're married to a six my sister is she always says I'm so glad I'm married to a six and says you should be I'll be faithful forever I mean sixes are faithful loyal friends and partners once they decide to trust you you got a friend for life and that's what's so beautiful about them I mean who everybody else can turn against you if they've decided you're their friend you'll be their friend and they will stick with you and even when other people might say bad things about you because because that loyalty comes from a deep deep place but to be honest it also comes from a place of fear and this is what's so hard for them to recognize that the world is a scary place and the only way I can overcome that fear is by aligning myself with another person or a strong person or a strong institution or a strong country or a strong military especially religion and military they are attracted to it's no surprise we had all these churches written on the front of the church Pro Dale at patria for God and the fatherland because the two go together in the sixes mind that those are the ultimate security systems my country will always protect me and my God will always protect me not the other people just my religion you know and that's the delusion that his fears are her fear is lead her to they often can avoid their own delinquency their own darkness by seeing it over there and attacking it over there and killing it over there they love to think of themselves as Orthodox and true and conservative in the best sense of the term and it can be the best sense of the term but it can also be the worst sense of the term where my conservativism is nothing except self security protecting myself oh it the country is Germany and when I my book first came out in German before I came out in English not that I wrote it Andreia stood in its final form but I remember the first trip I went over there after the book had come out I said oh my god I don't think these Germans are going to like being called sixes in all my subsequent trip trips I've never had a single German disagree with me they said that is our country and you do not understand the German type unless you understand the predominant all pervasive nature of fear and and aligning yourself with absolute systems it's why you create the German philosophers with with final explanations for everything the final explanation the very phrase that Hitler used is the search in the security seeking mind it can't deal with ambiguity isn't it interesting that we even use the word onst the German word for fear to describe this inner all-pervasive insecurity and I must say in the German it has taken on the the probably stereotype that many of us have had of the German people I'm German by background so I guess I'm free to say this the Achtung you know this is the way it is no more discussion all right you've got to know that's a front that's a cover don't believe it don't believe it at all and I think that's why this book my first one ended up it's now in every fourth house in all of Germany Austria and Switzerland and they just couldn't understand why it sold so bad well I think that's the reason the German people have been trying to find a way out of why did they keep doing this why the first rule or why the Second World War why the skinheads you know why this always dividing the world up into the good guys and the bad guys well the six gave them a way to understand that and I would like to believe gave them a way out of it that that we are fear-based people and that fear leads us to this idealization of militarism and until very recently the idolization of religion but always looking for absolute religion it's no surprise the Reformation in Germany too we've got the answer and Luther did in part but then it becomes another absolutism and pretty soon we've got the same problem all over again that's simply the nature religious reform so it creates dictators it creates a tyrants who expect absolute loyalty who will demand a absolute loyalty Six's don't like in their unhealthy state so look at you eyeball to eyeball because they know you'll see their fear and you will I can see it in George Bush's eyes very easily I'm sure he's a six as his father was it's very interesting both of them are sixes but if you look at George gosh he's trying so hard he wants to speak with authority but the natural authority is not there and I'm not trying to be political I'm just trying to be any agrammatic the natural authority is not there you can hardly believe it that he that he really believes it what you're picking up is the six energy the tremendous self-doubt inside of him and the overcoming of it by bravado I although I basically think he's a phobic six I don't think he's really counter for big although he shows some of that in his readiness to kill the capital punishment in Texas and the wars that gives him the sense of being in control and being absolute they say maybe somewhat unkindly sixes are either at your feet or they're at your throat and I know I'm over the areas because the Catholic Church tends to gather an awful lot of sixes whenever you have a big security system you will gather a higher degree of sixes so because I don't always say things in the way that Catholics are used to over the years I've had a lot of sixes attacked me in the vestibule after mass or after a conference or the hate letters and you can feel that they're at my throat I mean they just want to kill me because talking this way utterly undercut their security system and I don't mean to be attacking sexes especially although my spiritual director who taught me the ante gram way back in the 70s he said Richard you wanted me to tell you why you became a priest I said why aces ones become priests to change the Six's of control who have controlled the priesthood for too long because the the six is all into conformity the laws legalism ritualism you don't break the laws we ones we only believe the law insofar as it works you know when it doesn't work why we're sort of like threes in that regard too then we don't have much use for it which can make us rather righteous what else can I say about the six of some people say to give a childhood explanation that they didn't have reliable authority as a child don't make too much of that but I think we're probably producing more sixes than ever when I see the rise in fundamentalism when you grow up in an insecure world where everything is in flux and everything is changing there is the psychic need for something solid something authoritative something certain something clear so is it any surprise that the religions that are growing are the religions with absolutes the only religious communities growing or not the Dominicans and the Franciscans oh the orders that are growing are these very conservative groups that have an absolute immediate answer for everything and that appeals to the young man under 25 it also appeals to the the six they said to me in Germany last time they said if the Catholic Church keeps going the way it's going the only people left in it 50 years from now will be sixes right it was people with a high need for authority certitude structure and answers for everything not people for a journey widow of especially a journey of faith which demands not knowing not being certain you have to be able to maintain and hold a certain degree of anxiety and ambiguity to be a person of faith as far as I'm concerned and we're not teaching that at all at all and the young man coming to be priests are all boys I understand when they grow up and they need it I had it in 1940 to 1950 Kansas they didn't have it in the 1970s and 1980s so I can't hate them for it but they have this tremendous need for absolutes and there's an extraordinary amount of young sixes who are becoming priests what that means for the church and the rest of our lifetime I don't know but I don't think I'm gonna fit in you know I because I just don't have the need for all that and I don't mean to be arrogant the only reason I don't have the need for all of it is because I had it once do you follow me I had certitude Authority a very reliable authority structure from my mom and my dad it gave me psychic groundedness so when the 60s came fine no problem I Know Who I am most people when they don't know who they are are attracted to the six kind of stuff and I want to say it this way even when they're not sixes okay and maybe that's why people are saying that it appears half the world is sixes because we just have an enormous portion of the human race today in the world in the jewish world and in the christian world who are demanding absolute clarity absolute black-and-whites and this does not bode well for our future politics or worldview but I say it in this context because this is for me well maybe one of the strongest examples of the political implications of this teacher that if we can expose some of these demons if we can expose some of these lies maybe we're actually going to you know unfreeze a lot of frozen people so any questions on the five or six yes animal the rabbit member or the deer or the mouse and the the counter phobic animal is the rhinoceros I don't know rhinoceroses is that it working well but apparently when they're afraid charge into you right so the rhinoceros for the counter phobic the deer and the mouse the conversion experience for the six well it actually there's a number of them it's probably why I didn't get into it first of all that they they have to find an authority they can trust you know I would still say that for all nine types the only way out is an authentic God experience for all nine types that I'm going to say that very strongly for the six if the six meets the God who is their rock their fortress their deliverer and I mean that on the experiential level not just a verse in the Psalms but I know there's someone holding me there someone believing in me there's someone who's created me and who loves me and and who is more me than I am myself that's the way out of all nine types but it's the quickest way out for the six and these become the Oscar Romero is who we present as the the patron saint of the sixes those of you who know the life of the Bishop of El Salvador you read his early letters and writings he was a fragile insecure scared little priest who wanted to follow all the rules and and and he did and that got him promoted as as the primary bishop in El Salvador he wasn't Bishop was it a couple weeks you know one of his major priests was shot and that was a conversion experience for him made him fall into the hands of the Living God he found his center in the last three years of his life his his sermons are some of the most courageous you could possibly imagine it's almost like a man without any fear any fear whatsoever so uh a tragedy like that can do it too that it makes you find your one absolute that you can rely upon so you you will you will stop relying upon outer authorities and begin to trust inner authority that's the big movement has to move from outer authority to inner authority and I know we Catholics especially have been warned against that that's dangerous don't you trust yourselves you just trust the priest and the Pope you know that does not help anything does not help coming with gospel to tell you not to trust yourself at a certain level in your life brothers and sisters that's all you're going to have if you haven't learned how to go to a solid place where you know it's not just you but it's God in you and you in God and I've got to do it now and pay the price for it that'll be when you finally discover the meaning of faith and I don't think we've taught our people in that kind of faith that that it will feel like like I'm breaking the rules at that point you understand like oh my god this is dangerous last week I used the example of the Austrian Franz Jaeger stoner who no bishop supported him in all of Austria in his opposition to him not a single bishop not his parish priest not his wife not his children not his neighborhood not his town we got one of our rooms at Tepeyac our guest house named after him you know this little Austrian layman said I cannot do it it is wrong can you imagine the fear and I was able to meet his wife there years ago and and she knows the Antigo she's he's a six he was a six oh yeah six Franz Jaeger centre found his place of truth in God and even the bishops couldn't convince him he was wrong marvelous stuff and Romero would be the other example yes and I heard you you and to me there's an a need for clarity versus a need for certitude various you're right on them now I'm seeing it also is that I see many of the types such as the eight and one mm-hmm black and white as a six it's very much the nuances it's very much degrees and it may be some of the insecurity that drives them choices but to me I'm not black-and-white as a six no looking for certainty hmm for clarity I think you're just thank you for saying you're coming across as a very healthy six yeah that is a healthy six and I think that's an excellent distinction and I also agree with you the one in the eight are much more inclined to black and white thinking it's just when the six aligns himself or herself with an authority then he or she can get into black and white thinking because they will not allow any self-doubt to enter the picture but the search for clarity I would say also is one of the greatest gifts of the six and the five both of them thank you thank you yes sixes Jews all these phases of their leaders are totally like person involved if you have four week six are at a variety manipulating sixes now my guess would be I didn't remember these are all guesses I think rush limbaugh is an eight I will assume yeah yeah I know I don't remember you see your own fault in other people sixes are not that trusting of other sixes they see through it they know that that person is basically afraid so why Hitler right Edwin Germany sounds a bit like scared Johnny people after the bogey counter phobic six I the answer for that I don't know all the social reasons why he was able to hold a persona together but somehow he did hmm yes loyalty and courage or else he encouraged in other words they they are very loyal to what they believe in to their friends to the groups that they're a part of I would also say sixes and nines are the most humble there's a natural you know the rest of us are so damn sure of ourselves and thank God the sixes have this healthy self doubt well maybe I could be wrong maybe you're not seeing the whole picture you wish other people were that way now I know they take it to a toxic degree and subvert themselves by doubting themselves at every turn but that initial healthy self-doubt I wish all of us had it do you see so loyalty courage the courage of Oscar Romero and the the humility that comes from healthy self doubt was there another hand over there yes that was in the five the five is afraid of commitment yeah not the six the six will be very committed sometimes too committed yes security yeah that's right very good forgive me if I didn't say that I am trying to say too much too quick yes there are several who are most inclined toward addiction the nine because they can't get their energy so they think drugs will do it or alcohol will do it many of the guys at the jail in my years here were nines the two because the two is trying to feed himself or herself from outside by other people's inputs literally their food that they give us or their drink that they give us it feels like love I mean the twos joke about their love of chocolate very often which they usually do love chocolate but food in general becomes a medication for the two and that transfers to all ingested materials and this will fill up my need for love this food this drink these drugs this alcohol and the seven is inclined toward addiction because they overdo everything which we'll get to in a minute the eight I wouldn't say is especially inclined toward more than the other types yes no it's a good question the most common thing I find is the original triangle of three six and nine those types move between one another and then beautifully balanced one another so very often sixes do find themselves attracted to 3s or 9s and that's true of the other two also Three's Mary 9 s 9s Mary threes yeah and please don't take that as absolute you know that's just I yes Bob China in the country you know some people have said three for China - I never been there so I they don't know the exact energy what were you thinking oh well there's a three six nine movement bits um it might be in my be six and moving toward the three toward being very mmm-hmm yeah might be true all right any other questions on those two yes the for being balanced by the five wing and the five being balanced by the four we will get to the wings I hope still this afternoon

Channel: Melissa Major-Smith

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Id: VxFghO0lUFs

Length: 25min 59sec (1559 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2016