For more spiritual practices coordinated to specific Enneagram types, see Contemplating The Enneagram. available May, 2020.
Background: An interesting game to play is “What if there were only type ___ in the world?” Twos love to help others. They have a great deal of trouble accepting help0 from others. If there were only twos in the world, I imagine them running around trying to help and support each other. And none of them getting to do it. Because all of them would refuse the help of others.
Like nearly any comment you can make about personality types, this is of course a generalization and an over simplification. But it gets at a fundamental reality for two’s: it is easier to give help than recieve it.
As the above thought-experiment demonstrates, giving and recieiving help are both vitally important. We couldn’t have one with out the other. This first practice equates this interdependence to the parts of the breath. Just as we could not have an inhale without an exhale, so too we could not have helpers with out those they are helping.
Somewhere, deep down, we might have this tendency to think, “Well, I can help other people… because they have an easy time recieiving help. I don’t need to be the person who takes help, there’s plenty of other people out there.”
This is an adventure in missing the point. Much of the spiritual work that needs to be done by twos is allowing themselves to be helped.
The Exercise.
- Place your feet flat on the floor.
- Inhale.
- Exhale.
- With the next inhale, think “I can recieve help.”
- With the next exhale, think, “I can give help.”
- For most of the time that you have devoted to this practice, repeat steps 5 and 6.
- When you are ready, release these words. Sit in a time of wordlessness.
The Faith-ing Project 