Right Action As An Enneagram 9: The Importance of Tapping Into Your Intuition
By: Antonia Wadley
Tags: Artists Way, Eisenhower Matrix, Intuition, Personal Growth, Enneagram 9

The virtue (or spiritual path) of the Enneagram 9 is right action. Being a type 9 myself, in this article I discuss how staying in touch with your intuition can help you see right action in your life. Then, I provide two practical techniques to help you do this.

Weirdly, a type 9’s sloth can show up as busyness

Although 9s’ virtue is right action, our passion (and not in a good way, that’s enneagram speak for our pitfall) is sloth. It’s important to remember though that sloth in this context doesn’t mean laziness.

Oh no. We 9s can be busy. Ever so busy.

But as Beatrice Chestnut and Iranio Paes so beautifully put it, ‘9s are often doing every action but the right action’.

Busyness with the urgent, blindness to the important

The Eisenhower Matrix (Diagram by Antonia Wadley)

If we think about the Eisenhower decision matrix for a minute, it’s like 9s have a particular blindspot for the important, non-urgent. The key things to drive one’s life forward somehow just don’t sit in our field of vision. What the key important tasks are can be all fuzzy in our minds.

My theory on Enneagram 9s’ field of vision and blindspot in relation to the Eisenhower matrix (Diagram by Antonia Wadley)

I think our intuition is a key piece that drives this ‘important blindness’. When we’re not in touch with our intuition we’re just driven to get the screaming urgent done and then wonder why we feel restless and unsatisfied. Over the long term, I think ‘important blindness’ can lead to burnout and crises of meaning.

When we’re in touch with our intuition, however, we hear the whispers of what we need and want, both in that very moment and over the longer term. The exercise that we need to do today, that conversation we need to have with our spouse, that creative project, the change of course in our career.

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

Using intuition to ‘see’ the important

I have discovered two ways recently that we Type 9s can tap into our intuition.

Practical Technique 1: Stream of Consciousness Writing

The first was through a practice from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. After the 5th person recommended the book to me last year, I bought it. One of the core practices is writing ‘morning pages’, which entails 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing, first thing in the morning.

It can go something like this:

“Mustn’t forget to book in for the dentist. Slept quite well but back’s aching. Gone blank. Nothing to say. Birds singing. Fan whirring. Interesting dream last night, reminds me of when…”.

Tedious, mundane. As Julia Cameron points out it can even be whiny and self-pitying. But then there are the patterns, the ideas, the dot joining.

What’s interesting is that in writing down, you get to see what you’re thinking. Any other kind of journaling practice may be a reflection on something in particular — a lovely event or a troubling one — or provide time to contemplate a bigger question.

Journaling is fantastic. Stream of consciousness writing is also fantastic but quite different. It’s like using Google Translate. You write all these thoughts down, and then you look and see words, phrases and ideas pop out at you.

Your intuition is always there. The morning pages just helps you sieve or filter out the rest of the noise.

The magic of the neutral-gear headspace

I’ve been writing morning pages for about 6 months now and there’s been an interesting evolution. As I began, my inner critic had a whole heap to say, but now it’s relatively quiet. It’s like I don’t think so actively anymore. My active, thinking mind now goes into a neutral gear, and that’s where magic seems to happen. The incredibly creative ideas. The actually-important to-dos. The things that are bothering me in life and require action.

I can catch those not quite fully formed ideas, the whispers of intuition.

And I’ve become proficient at dropping into that neutral-gear headspace at other times too. I choose it when creating art. Some of the best results and spontaneous additions come from there. I go to neutral-gear and blog posts materialize. And rich ideas for where to go next on this life journey. It’s like a deep well of ideas.

Practical Technique 2: Using nature to hear your intuition

My second intuition-tapping idea was taught to me by the phenomenal integral coach, Molly Kain. And it’s so simple. She taught me that getting into nature is a great way to hear your intuition. Sit under a tree or by a river, go for a walk and you’ll hear it.

I hadn’t thought of it as intuition before but that totally resonated.

I’d always noticed that I’m awash with life direction and creative ideas when I’m in the mountains or hiking somewhere remote. My career-shifting decision and clarity came on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. The idea for this blog came when camping on a remote piece of coastline.

Contemplative coastline, northern KwaZuluNatal, South Africa (Photo credit: Antonia Wadley)

Overcoming ‘important blindness’ is important for our growth. So, what do you think about trying out the morning pages or getting into nature to tap into your intuition? Whether you need to make a big decision or want a regular intuition-maintenance practice, I’d love to hear how you get on.