The Basic Proposition

You lost sight of the fundamental principle that everyone belongs equally in a state of unconditional love and union. You came to believe instead that the world treats people as unimportant for who they are, and you can gain belonging and comfort by attending to and merging with others and by dispersing energy into substitute objects. At the same time, you developed inertia (self-forgetting) about your own priorities and limits. Your attention naturally goes to others and to the environment around you.

The central issue for healing

All of us, not just Mediators, sometimes focus on the environment around us and experience ourselves as reacting primarily to people and events outside ourselves. For Mediators, the central issue is losing touch with their inner separate self in favor of adapting to the environment and merging with others. Mediators struggle fundamentally with gaining or reclaiming a separate self.

Your main task is to become awake and alive to yourself ­– literally to love yourself from a personal reference point that has no substitute. Your path to healing is to establish your own priorities and timelines instead of falling into comfortable secondary pursuits, and to resist becoming overly influenced by others.

Six healing and growth commitments for Type Nines:

• Practice loving yourself as you would others
• Take responsibility for your own well-being and value
• Reclaim a separate self
• Establish and adhere to your own agenda and priorities
• Welcome discomfort and conflict
• Recognize anger in its many forms and see it as a signal that you are feeling violated

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Key themes of all types: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Read more about key themes of the types in The Essential Enneagram by David Daniels, M.D.

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