Enneagram Growth Practice Type 4

Growth for Type 4: The Romantic

Basic Essential Practice: From a grounded, receptive, openhearted, and non-judgmental stance, notice your deep longing for fulfillment, for the ideal, for what is missing fueled by your driving energy of envy or longing for this fulfillment. This stems from your core belief that to be loved, valued, and secure you must obtain the ideal love and life in which nothing of importance is missing. Can you realize that your intense emotions come from an inner sense of loss, of lacking fulfillment. Notice and bring the energy invested in the intense emotion associated with longing for the ultimate ideal life back down and in by breathing into your belly center. Know that feelings come and go just as the heart naturally opens and closes with each beat. Steady yourself in the present with gratitude for all that is here and now and not what is missing. Remind yourself to remember that you are loved as you are irrespective of any deficiencies. And remind yourself to notice how others respond when you allow yourself to appreciate all that is here now in self, them, and life.

 

David Daniels Free Enneagram Guided Audio Meditation Practice for Type Four (4) Romantic Personality Reflection and Growth

 

 

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:

Longing for what is missing. Simply stop to sense in your body and notice how your attention and energy recurrently go to what you feel is important yet missing. Then come back to what is present and positive as best you can.

Emotional intensity. Stop to observe the bodily intensity of your often fluctuating feelings and allow yourself to come back to a more calm stance.

Idealizing specialness. Simply stop to notice how you often focus on being unique, unusual, different and spurn the ordinary. Allow yourself to make the ordinary extraordinary.

 

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 Four is equanimity, meaning being grateful for all there is in the present moment and that nothing of genuine substance is missing.

  • May I overcome envy and longing by actively cultivating the happiness of self and others.
  • May I delight in the happiness of others from a generous heart.
  • May I appreciate myself just as I am knowing little of importance actually is missing.
  • May I treat all beings with equal positive regard.
  • May I rejoice in and appreciate what is rather than what isn’t.