Enneagram FOUR Spiritual Practices

Develop and enhance your natural gifts: creativity, sensitivity, naturalness

Work on your main problem area: making negative comparisons

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • be aware of self-absorption;

  • stay away from melodrama; what role does it play in your relationships?

  • pay attention to your fantasies and daydreams: what are they reinforcing? What purpose do they serve?

  • when you dwell on how different you are, pay attention to what it costs you in terms of your connection with others

  • focus on what is here – not what is missing;

  • what is it about the qualities you don’t have but wish you did that attracts you?

  • Can you recognize the qualities you do have?

  • befriend yourself;

  • be proactive in suffering;

  • be reluctant to compare;

  • stop fantasizing about the ideal;

  • don’t hold on to feelings.

  • Spiritual practice:

    • Follow Jesus as dramatic and unique

    • To gain love we must become unique and deeply authentic. Matt 6:25-30 breaks the envy of the FOUR because here with God loving us, we have all we need right now.
    • Gospel contemplation: the woman with the vial of nard

    • watch Jesus be just who he is and not wish he were someone else

    • Meditate on the Commandment “Thou shalt not covet.” What does that suggest to you?

    • Practise finding God’s Presence in the beauty of your surroundings

    • Look at your life as a work of art, expressing some aspect of God; how would God invite you to complete that work of art?

    • Rehearse the breath mantra “Present moment, perfect moment.”

  • watch out for warning signs that you are too stressed as a FOUR:

    • you experience yourself as extremely volatile and touchy

    • you find that you depend on very few people and have unstable relations with them

    • you have outbursts of rage, hostility and hatred

    • you have long bouts of depression and hopelessness

    • you find yourself self-sabotaging and rejecting positive influences

Examples to emulate: Martha Graham, Jeremy Irons, Sarah McLaughlan, Bob Dylan, Ingmar Bergman,