The Enneagram Map to Your Deeper Self: Living Beyond Your Type

by Sandra C. Smith, Sandra Maitri (foreword)

We are much more than our personality type. The Enneagram Map to Your Deeper Self is an invitation to see ourselves as more than we believe we are, to learn and engage practices that liberate us from automatic patterns.
 
The Enneagram Map to Your Deeper Self is an invitation to see yourself as more than your personality type and engage in practices that liberate you from automatic patterns. Certified Narrative Enneagram teacher Sandra Smith, MDiv, has taught the Enneagram internationally as a tool for personal, professional, and spiritual development for over twenty-two years. She shows readers how to deepen their use of the Enneagram in support of their spiritual lives as well as psychological health.
 
With clarity and consistency, this book shows how to understand your Enneagram type without reinforcing the patterns of your type. The gift of the Enneagram is its accuracy to show us the motivations beneath behaviors and egoic patterns that limit us and keep us from growing. The Enneagram Map to Your Deeper Self discusses the makeup of these patterns and gives us a greater capacity to unhook from them. Free from these habits, we are able to live more mindfully and grow into our full dimensionality, becoming more of ourselves.
 
Smith provides a detailed teaching of the components of the Enneagram type structures along with type-specific practices to counter automatic patterns. Also included are contributions from a diverse range of Enneagram practitioners. With their help, Smith dives into the components of the Enneagram types to tease out the patterns and pitfalls preventing us from living our radiance. Prayers, poems, and practices beckon us out of our confining comfort zones and into witnessing and honoring our lives.

Genres: Spirituality, Self Help

276 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Mary Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sandra Smith’s book is multifaceted dive into and then through each of the nine Enneagram types into Presence and who we are beyond the Enneatype we lead with. It is a practical, actionable guide to deep psycho-spiritual insights into the types. She offers penetrating descriptions of each type as well as practices and meditations/prayers facilitating the spiritual work of those leading with that type. Since Sandra Smith is a teacher in the Narrative Tradition of the Enneagram it is not surprising that she includes 2-3 companion writers for each type. These writers describe from the inside out their own experience of their type and how it plays out in their lives.

This is a book that will be picked up and referred to, underlined and noted in the margins. It is illuminating to read not only the chapter for one’s lead type, but the chapters on one’s “wings” as well. And if one is familiar with the types of one’s family and friends, there are suggestions of ways to support them through what she calls “compassionate entry points.”

This is a real gem of a book.

[Jonathan Sackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sandra Smith’s new book on the Enneagram feels like a breath of fresh air. Ms. Smith presents the Enneagram as a dynamic and living system, manifesting uniquely in each of us.

This is so different from my first encounters with writings on the Enneagram, which left me feeling it was an abstract and cerebral typography of the human psyche, somewhere out there. I had a hard time finding my own living self in these typographies, and so they were of quite limited use to me.

Quite different is Sandra Smith’s new book. It has the freshness and immediacy of real experience, to which I connected easily. Most interesting for me is the stories told by the many contributors to this book of their growing beyond the unconsciousness and restrictions of their types to find deeper purpose and new freedom in their lives. This sense of new possibility Sandra and her co-authors express over and over in their own unique voices is deeply moving for me, and I suspect will bring me back to this book many times in my own journey towards living my own authentic and full life.

[Catswright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a certified Enneagram teacher, I own lots of books on this subject. Sandra Smith's new book does an amazing job of going deep while still being clear and accessible. She explains each Type clearly and then makes it come alive with stories. With her extensive training and experience, she also explains how to use the Enneagram as a map for guiding psychological and spiritual development. Regardless of where you are on your Enneagram journey, this one will be a "go-to" as you deepen your understanding of this extraordinary map of human motivation and possibilities.

[Celeste Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sandra conveys her in depth knowledge about the enneagram in a relatable and insightful way. She encourages us to learn and grow by recognizing how we all have each type within ourselves. I especially enjoyed the “compassionate entry points” she offers for strengthening relationships with those who lead with types other than our own. They’ve already been helpful to me!! This book is a resource I’ll continue to use in the years ahead!

[Sandy Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent resource for those new to the Enneagram and those of us who have long acquaintance with it. The information is well organized, easy to understand and yet, challenging.. if you want to understand yourself and others in a comprehensive way, this book is for you. What a wonderful resource!