Enneagram Growth Practice Type 2

Growth for Type 2: The Giver

Basic Essential Practice: From a grounded, receptive, openhearted, and non-judgmental stance, notice your urge to help and heal others along with the feeling that you know best what is needed fueled by your driving energy of pride or indispensability. This stems from your core belief that to be loved, valued, and secure you must fulfill the needs and desires of others and repress your own. Pull your active giving energy back inside yourself by taking slow, deep breaths into your abdomen and heart. You can then do the work of inquiry and realize that it’s just as important to receive, as it is to give. And to nurture yourself as well as to nurture others. Experience what your own separate self truly desires. Remind yourself to notice that love and nurturance flow both from and to you and the freedom that goes with this flow. And remind yourself to notice how others respond when you allow yourself to receive as well as give and to take care of yourself.

 

David Daniels Free Enneagram Guided Audio Meditation Practice for Type Two (2) Giver Personality Growth and Reflection

 

 

Additional Key Themes for Reflection: Simply stop for a minute or so 3-4 times a day to center and reflect on one of the following:

Sensing others’ needs and jumping in to fulfill those needs. Simply stop to sense in your body and notice how quickly you move forward with active energy to help others often without reflecting if this is really best or fulfilling for the other.

Indispensability. Simply stop to notice your pride in fulfilling others needs and how this imperative drives your giving.

Own needs and desires. Simply stop to ask yourself, “Have I been tending to my own needs and desires and receiving from others?” If not, work at allowing this precious gift to self and to others into your daily life.

Short Reflections for Reclaiming the Essential Quality

With openhearted kindness toward yourself, simply practice several times a day for a minute or so saying and living one of the following each for a few days at a time. Do these all with the receptive energy encompassed in the “may I.” Recall that the higher quality or virtue for type Two is humility, which simply means being in the natural flow of giving and receiving in the present moment.

  • May I learn to love myself separate from what I give to others.
  • May I adhere to loving-kindness practice that focuses equally on myself as to others.
  • May I realize that love is found in oneself which facilitates love for others.
  • May I receive from others with grace and love knowing that this nurtures them as well as me.
  • May I experience joy in others’ well-being and happiness separate from my giving.