Introspective, Expressive, Dramatic, Temperamental, Self-absorbed
Fours are self-aware, emotionally honest and sensitive artists. They are creative, reserved, moody and self-conscious. Fours feel exempt from ordinary ways of living and will withhold themselves from others because they feel vulnerable and defective.
They can be disdainful, self-indulgent, self-pitying melancholics.
At their best: they are inspiring, highly creative types who can renew themselves and transform any experience.
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Four - Click into the Unique Artist
The essence of the 4 is Joy which born into a body runs a basic fear of being without an identity or personal significance.
The essence of joy has been constricted and so the desire to be oneself when depleted turns to self indulgence.
It thus runs on the passion of envy. Envy is based on the lack propensity of something missing. The identified Self sees others as possessing qualities they lack and then long for it. In longing we miss all the blessings in our lives. The chief feature therefore becomes melancholy. The way back to Self through this suffering is through the holy idea of origin via the holy path of equanimity.
Essence: Joy
Holy Idea: Origin
Holy Path: Equanimity
Chief feature: Melancholy
Passion: Envy
Idealisation: I am elite
Talking Style: Lamentation
Trap: Authenticity
Defence Mechanism: Introjection
Avoidance: Feeling lost
Dichotomy: Analytic/Disorientated
Subtypes: Self Preservation – Dauntless
Social: Shame
Sexual: Competition
Romeo and Juliet – Somewhere My True Soul Mate Is Waiting.
Romantic, intense, self-aware, moody, passionate, placing huge emphasis on their relationship, longing for a lover who gets them. Someone they can be deeply and authentically intimate with. An emotional roller coaster when less integrated.
Fours Retreat: using fantasies, imagination, and the emotions attached to them in an attempt to heighten sexual intensity, needing to feel the deep juice of connection, a buzz more important than sex itself. Feeling like outsiders, they live through their idolised fantasy as an eccentric artist.
Wing Three and Five and stretch/release points One and Two can all relate.
Love Type: Maternal Counter type – counter type seeking a partner who will take care of them while they too care for you.
Relationship Belief: "I am unique" - "You won't find anyone like me."
Sexual frustration: "Everyone seems so happy in love, why can't I find the relationship of my dreams?"
By Ann Gadd
Dichotomy is analytical/disorientated.
Divine Path is Holy Union
Otherwise the hopeless romantic.
In childhood the soul was forced to shut down and believe that to be too functional or too happy was not okay. To compensate this, the idealisation then became I am elite.
A reactive type who seeks a rescuer, someone to understand them and support their life dreams. They want to be seen.
They fear being abandoned and that no one will care for them enough to support them in becoming themselves.
They keep others interested by limiting access to them, being hard to get and holding onto supporters.
Lesson 100 of "A Course in Miracles"
"My Part is essential to God's plan for salvation."
Just as God’s Son completes his Father, so your part in it completes your Father’s plan. Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies, which lead separate lives and go their separate ways. One function shared by separate minds unites them in one purpose, for each one of them is equally essential to them all.
God’s Will for you is perfect happiness. Why should you choose to go against His Will? The part that He has saved for you to take in working out His plan is given you that you might be restored to what He wills. This part is as essential to His plan as to your happiness. Your joy must be complete to let His plan be understood by those to whom He sends you. They will see their function in your shining face, and hear God calling to them in your happy laugh.
You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Without your joy, His joy is incomplete. Without your smile, the world cannot be saved. While you are sad, the light that God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and lustreless, and no one laughs because all laughter can but echo yours.
You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God’s plan. God’s messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair. They are the proof that God wills perfect happiness for all who will accept their Father’s gifts as theirs.
We will not let ourselves be sad today. For if we do, we fail to take the part that is essential to God’s plan, as well as to our vision. Sadness is the sign that you would play another part, instead of what has been assigned to you by God. Thus do you fail to show the world how great the happiness He wills for you. And so you do not recognise that it is yours.
Today we will attempt to understand joy is our function here. ²If you are sad, your part is unfulfilled, and all the world is thus deprived of joy, along with you. God asks you to be happy, so the world can see how much He loves His Son, and wills no sorrow rises to abate his joy; no fear besets him to disturb his peace. You are God’s messenger today. You bring His happiness to all you look upon; His peace to everyone who looks on you and sees His message in your happy face.
We will prepare ourselves for this today, in our five-minute practice periods, by feeling happiness arise in us according to our Father’s Will and ours. Begin the exercises with the thought today’s idea contains. Then realise your part is to be happy. Only this is asked of you or anyone who wants to take his place among God’s messengers. Think what this means. You have indeed been wrong in your belief that sacrifice is asked. You but receive according to God’s plan, and never lose or sacrifice or die.
Now let us try to find that joy that proves to us and all the world God’s Will for us. It is your function that you find it here, and that you find it now. For this you came. Let this one be the day that you succeed! Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you.
He will be there. And you can reach Him now. What could you rather look upon in place of Him Who waits that you may look on Him? What little thought has power to hold you back? What foolish goal can keep you from success when He Who calls to you is God Himself?
He will be there. You are essential to His plan. You are His messenger today. And you must find what He would have you give. Do not forget the idea for today between your hourly practice periods. It is your Self Who calls to you today. And it is Him you answer, every time you tell yourself you are essential to God’s plan for the salvation of the world.
AND
Lesson 101 of A Course in Miracles
"God's Will for me is perfect happiness."
Today we will continue with the theme of happiness. This is a key idea in understanding what salvation means. You still believe it asks for suffering as penance for your "sins." This is not so. Yet you must think it so while you believe that sin is real, and that God's Son can sin.
If sin is real, then punishment is just and cannot be escaped. Salvation thus cannot be purchased but through suffering. If sin is real, then happiness must be illusion, for they cannot both be true. The sinful warrant only death and pain, and it is this they ask for. For they know it waits for them, and it will seek them out and find them somewhere, sometime, in some form that evens the account they owe to God. They would escape Him in their fear. And yet He will pursue, and they can not escape.
If sin is real, salvation must be pain. Pain is the cost of sin, and suffering can never be escaped, if sin is real. Salvation must be feared, for it will kill, but slowly, taking everything away before it grants the welcome boon of death to victims who are little more than bones before salvation is appeased. Its wrath is boundless, merciless, but wholly just.
Who would seek out such savage punishment? Who would not flee salvation, and attempt in every way he can to drown the Voice which offers it to him? Why would he try to listen and accept Its offering? If sin is real, its offering is death, and meted out in cruel form to match the vicious wishes in which sin is born. If sin is real, salvation has become your bitter enemy, the curse of God upon you who have crucified His Son.
You need the practice periods today. The exercises teach sin is not real, and all that you believe must come from sin will never happen, for it has no cause. Accept Atonement with an open mind, which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son. There is no sin. We practice with this thought as often as we can today, because it is the basis for today's idea.
God's Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless. Joy is just, and pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. Fear not the Will of God. But turn to it in confidence that it will set you free from all the consequences sin has wrought in feverish imagination. Say:
God's Will for me is perfect happiness.
There is no sin; it has no consequence.
So should you start your practice periods, and then attempt again to find the joy these thoughts will introduce into your mind.
Give these five minutes gladly, to remove the heavy load you lay upon yourself with the insane belief that sin is real. Today escape from madness. You are set on freedom's road, and now today's idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace. There is no sin. Remember this today, and tell yourself as often as you can:
God's Will for me is perfect happiness.
This is the truth, because there is no sin.
AND
Lesson 198 of A Course in Miracles
"Only my condemnation injures me."
Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.
Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.
Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousandfold. But this is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be, and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are One.
Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death. How could there be another way, when this one is the plan of God Himself? And why would you oppose it, quarrel with it, seek to find a thousand ways in which it must be wrong; a thousand other possibilities?
Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the answer to your problems in your hand? Is it not more intelligent to thank the One Who gives salvation, and accept His gift with gratitude? And is it not a kindness to yourself to hear His Voice and learn the simple lessons He would teach, instead of trying to dismiss His words, and substitute your own in place of His?
His words will work. His words will save. His words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them. Those who hear His words have heard the song of Heaven. For these are the words in which all merge as one at last. And as this one will fade away, the Word of God will come to take its place, for it will be remembered then and loved.
This world has many seeming separate haunts where mercy has no meaning, and attack appears as justified. Yet all are one; a place where death is offered to God's Son and to his Father. You may think They have accepted. But if you will look again upon the place where you beheld Their blood, you will perceive a miracle instead. How foolish to believe that They could die! How foolish to believe you can attack! How mad to think that you could be condemned, and that the holy Son of God can die!
The stillness of your Self remains unmoved, untouched by thoughts like these, and unaware of any condemnation which could need forgiveness. Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth. And what but truth could have a Thought which builds a bridge to it that brings illusions to the other side?
Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you. The truth bestows these words upon your mind, that you may find the key to light and let the darkness end:
Only my condemnation injures me.
Only my own forgiveness sets me free.
Do not forget today that there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought. Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.
Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father. Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well. Be kind to Both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought Them guilty of, and see your innocence shining upon you from the face of Christ.
Now is there silence all around the world. Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only that can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind that God forever knows to be His only Son.
There is no condemnation in him. He is perfect in his holiness. He needs no thoughts of mercy. Who could give him gifts when everything is his? And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Son of Sinlessness Itself, so like to Him Whose Son he is, that to behold the Son is to perceive no more, and only know the Father? In this vision of the Son, so brief that not an instant stands between this single sight and timelessness itself, you see the vision of yourself, and then you disappear forever into God.
Today we come still nearer to the end of everything that yet would stand between this vision and our sight. And we are glad that we have come this far, and recognise that He Who brought us here will not forsake us now. For He would give to us the gift that God has given us through Him today. Now is the time for your deliverance. The time has come. The time has come today.
Four - A Deeper Look into the Unique Artist
Type Fours tend to have an attractive quality and style to them. They have a mood about them that reveals that that they are deeply in touch with their feelings. They are good at gauging the moods and feelings of others more than any of the other enneagram types.
The intrinsic nature of the Four is Joy. At the Heart lies the fundamental blueprint of Holy and Sacred Divine Union. However the experience of being a type four human lies a deep sense of something missing in a world that is fraught with hurts, pains and disappointment.
Like Fives, type Fours sit at the bottom of the enneagram. Both are acutely aware of a black hole within. Being an emotional/image point, the lower emotions of despair has them feeling that they are fundamentally flawed. This carries a sense of disorientation, vulnerability and shame. They have a sense of feeling out of place or at odds with the environment which brings about the consistent belief that they are very different from others. They feel that no one is able to understand or love them adequately and that they will never be loved as much as they love others. Nonetheless, the hope and yearning to be loved deeply, always prevails.
The fine-tuned psyche of Type Fours is geared towards protecting themselves from a myriad of intense feelings, which are experienced through envy. In fact, every point of interaction with the world is felt consciously or unconsciously through envy. Within their highly active emotional system they will lament for what was, wasn't, what has or could have been. It prevails where ever there may be any opportunity to engage in a holy union with another. As this exchange is often unmet, a sense of disorientation rises and a melancholy or melodrama pushes them into deep insular seclusion. It is in this space that a unique creative expression is birthed and a reorientation then shifts the envy over to being enviable. This is another feeling that continues to fuel their sense of uniqueness and specialness.
Ever in touch with such deep feelings and emotions, they are constantly churning, digesting and processing pain, loss and grief which can then extend from the emotional system and is thus experienced in the system in the form of pain or sickness. Hospital beds and medical wards are populated by Fours. One may notice that whenever a group adventure or outing occurs, it will always be the Four who will feel sick first or they may fall and hurts their ankle or get stung by an ant, bee or wasp. The other image points also have this tendency but it is most noticeable in the four.
The source of the Real Self is Joy and the expression of Joy. The type Four identification in a body or separate ego self therefore seeks to be recognised for what it is and so the desire to bring joy to a world can only be seen and felt in the other if they are able to highlight or bring brightness and shine to themselves and others. When those they love are down, they are swift to serve with loving gestures to ensure that they feel cared for and that life will not stay down for long. When type Fours feel called to serve their loved ones with this level of care and attention, they are able to gain a stronger sense of themselves including a subtle sense of disorientation.
If they are not able to express themselves in this manner, the disorientation rises and a dark mood festers within. On the other hand, as they reorientate themselves and their unique care and beauty is seen, felt and embraced, a warm luminous glow and synergy emits a certain sparkle into the environment and a sense of deep fulfilment washes over them as they are able to recognise what their purpose is and why they were put on this earth.
This brightness is felt by an envious soul somewhere in the collective to poke at these gorgeous souls as is the nature of the human condition to bring about a wash, rinse, and repeat cycle. And if the envy isn't coming from the outside it will most certainly be felt within all over again, similar to the function of the liver/lung process, as they filter the denser human emotions to brightness once again.
Dynamics of the Relationship with Type Four:
Those who are not aware of their function and have little interest in investing in the cultivation of conscious relationships will consciously or unconsciously take advantage of this tenancy. For example, the nature of a type 6 , being compelled to set limits upon others and themselves. This movement tends to bring about a dynamic where the Four tends to feel taken advantage of resulting in the Four plummeting into the darker depths of their emotional systems.
The only way the Four can manoeuvre themselves is through their unique genius creations of art, beauty and designs to be seen again, rather than stay at the bottom to filter out the negative darker emotions out of their system which sadly, can often come at the cost of the health of type Four.
Metaphorically they are like a fish filter in an aquarium whose function is to bring sparkle and glow to the fish inside. Type Fours have been the cash cows of society, which is a deeper understanding as to why they are referred to as the "Tortured Artist" by Enneagram specialists. They have also been named “The Individualist” and “The Romantic”.
Being highly talented with a rare gift to share, while simultaneously having to navigate the consistency of feeling uniquely flawed or disadvantaged, ignites a focus upon personal differences and deficiencies. They harbour a need to redefine themselves from the harsh experiences of life. The painful history of the Four is often the loss of a strong parent, which they internalise to mean that there is something wrong with them. Marked by this loss as unique abandonment, they tend to develop a sense of elitism where normal rules do not apply and that they can never quite overcome this running feeling.
Healthy Fours are honest, self-reflective types. They own all of their feelings with sincerity by assessing their motives, contradictions, and emotional conflicts without denying or whitewashing them. While they may not necessarily like what they discover, they will not rationalise these states nor try to hide them from themselves or others. A healthy Four is not afraid to see all parts of themselves, “warts and all”, and are therefore willing to reveal highly personal and potentially shameful things about themselves.
Fours tend to be driven to understand the truth of their experience to discover who they are and to come to terms with their emotional history. It is this ability that enables Fours to endure suffering with a quiet strength. It is the familiarity with their own darker nature that makes it easier for them to process painful experiences that might overwhelm other types.
Fours always possess a sense that something is missing in themselves, whether it is will-power, social ease, self-confidence, emotional tranquility or financial security, all of which they see abundantly in others, a sense which is fuelled by the underlying passion of Envy. With sufficient perspective, Fours are able to recognise that they feel unsure about aspects of their self-image or feel uncomfortable about their clear, stable identity. It is this feeling that gives rise to a deep wish to connect with people who understand them. They hold a deep sense of longing for someone who will appreciate the self that they have privately nurtured and hidden from the world. They are therefore considered to be the love addicts or “romantics” of the Enneagram.
They carry a sense of never being able to be filled up due to having suffered so much in life that no one can ever make it up to them. If, over time, this validation remains out of reach, Fours will build an identity around how they are unlike everyone else. They will then find comfort in becoming an insistent individualist where everything must be done on her own, in her own way, on her own terms.
Fours’ mantra becomes “I am myself. Nobody understands me. I am different and special,” while they secretly wish they could enjoy the easiness and confidence that others seem to enjoy.
Fours typically have problems with a negative self-image and chronic low self-esteem. One strategy used to compensate for this is cultivating a fantasy self, an idealised self-image built primarily upon their imagination: Elton John, Prince, Freddie Mercury all exhibit this compensation.
Over the course of a Four's life, they will have had several different identities based on their preferences around quality, attractiveness, style and charisma. Underneath, however, they still feel uncertain about who they really are.
The problem for Fours is, being an internal emotional point, they base their identities primarily upon their feelings and emotions. As these are ever-shifting and changing, their desire to create a stable and reliable identity becomes troublesome. They therefore get caught in cultivating certain feelings while rejecting others by seeing some feelings as “me” and others as “not me”. While Fours accurately perceive dynamics about human nature, they attempt to hold onto specific moods for themselves in an attempt to create a reliable identity and believe that they are being true to themselves.
One of the biggest challenges Fours face is learning to let go of feelings from the past; they tend to nurse wounds and hold onto negative feelings about those who have hurt them. Indeed, Fours can become so attached to longing and disappointment that they are unable to recognise the many treasures in their lives.
Written by Sunaina Watson and some extracts taken from the Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson.
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