Enneagram TWO Spiritual Practices

Develop and enhance your natural gifts: care, compassion, solidarity

Work on your main problem area: giving your value away to others

 

 

 

 

 

  • speak directly about your needs;

  • keep a list of things you need to do for yourself, and stick with it;

  • catch yourself flattering others for approval;

  • catch yourself feeling the need to get more intimate with someone;

  • learn to pay attention to your body; watch for burn-out, which leads to resentment;

  • practice saying no;

  • avoid falling in love with “fixer-uppers”; (“if only I love him/her enough, s/he will turn around…”);

  • resist the urge to rescue;

  • perform anonymous acts of service;

  • when answering an urge to help someone, ask them first what they need, and what they don’t need, from you;

  • when answering an urge to help someone, ask yourself what you need at this time;

  • accept you are neither the best nor the worst but somewhere in the middle;

  • use resentment and anger to identify your needs;

  • note whose love you are looking for;

  • reflect on how you would know you are loved;

  • develop self-care.

  • Spiritual practices:

    • Follow Jesus as healer

    • TWOs need to stand on their relationship with God recognizing their neediness as opposed to “I don’t need anything”. In Gospel contemplation, look at Luke 14:12-15: the poor are invited to the feast, yet they have not done anything to prompt others to love them back.

    • Gospel contemplation: be with Martha, as she gets everything ready

    • imagine yourself sitting with Jesus in a safe place, and Jesus saying “I really love you” to you

    • Gospel contemplation with Jesus and the blind man, as Jesus says to him “What do you need?”

    • In the safety of your relationship with God, share with God what your real needs are

    • do an Awareness Examen every evening to identify where you have felt loved by God and by others

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

    • you have extreme tendencies to deceive yourself

    • you act with a sense of delusional entitlement

    • you find yourself manipulating or coercing others

    • you experience episodes of obsessive love out of keeping with your age and status

    • you find evidence in yourself of repressed aggression

Examples to emulate: Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Florence Nightingale, Albert Schweitzer, Luciano Pavarotti