Point and Type Six
Awakening and guidance

POINT SIX ARCHETYPE

Point Six represents the archetype of inner guidance and faith. It is the part of us that strives to recognise, listen to and courageously follow the inner call, our own vocation.

When we experience the high qualities of this point, we feel supported by an inner sense of direction that nourishes us with a solid and persevering trust. We live awake and ready for any experience that arises on our path. We want how we are and act in the world to be inspired by our own orientation.

TYPE SIX OVERVIEW

Point Six is ​​part of the Intelligence Center of the Head and of the intellect. People with this dominant personality type are oriented towards support and direction.

Type Six wants to be committed and honest. His core value is a safe and collaborative world where everyone is loyal to oneself and to others. He is responsible and tenacious for what he deeply believes in. He wants to live his life with courage, trust and perseverance.

At his best he is a very friendly, affectionate, charming and lovable person. He is respectful, reliable, loyal, steadfast and faithful. He inspires sympathy and is capable of arousing strong emotional responses in others, creating bonds of solidarity and building permanent relationships and alliances. He has a strong sense of belonging and manages to stimulate a spirit of cooperation. He is independent and interdependent, cooperates as equals and creates synergies. He has faith in himself and in others, affirms himself and asserts himself. He uses anxiety as a spur to act and challenge what he fears.

When the Six type loses connection with his inner sense of guidance and confidence, he feels the need to find something or someone reliable, solid and secure.
He begins to believe that to feel safe and to be able to trust it is necessary to carefully examine the environment and anticipate problems.
He becomes overly attentive to finding out what can be threatening, dangerous, or negative. He tries to be an honest and solid citizen, responsible, disciplined, meticulous and park. He seeks acceptance from others to create, organise and maintain alliances and structures for the safeguarding and continuity of its security.
Then everything becomes a question of safe direction to follow. He explores and analyse systems, beliefs and traditions. He is forgetful about his own achievements and envious of those of others. He is obsequious to authority and at the same time doubtful and competitive. He is busy and constantly alert, very cautious, evasive and indecisive with the requests of others. He questions the positive, looks for and repairs faults, follows the procedures. He tests the commitment of others by sending ambiguous signals, with ironic humor, passive aggression or insolence. He believes he is able to read other people thoughts and becomes irritable and defensive towards what he is imagining and projecting onto the others. He is often seen by others as pessimistic and negative, although this is not how he perceives himself.

The reactive emotional environment that matures, the passion of this type, is cowardice. Cowardice is paralysis or flight caused by fear of an imaginary danger. It is not taking responsibility for owns life, staying in situations that are considered safe and not risking taking the step towards a new understanding or awareness. It is avoiding right choices and actions and staying in what is known, even if it is unhealthy.
This reactivity leads the type Six to believe that his safety depends on the outside, on the signals of the environment, work, habits, teachers, methods, models, relationships and family. The more he tries to build external security systems to lean on, the more he feels groundless, disoriented and dependent.
He becomes rebellious, sarcastic and causes conflict. He fears authority and becomes authoritarian, he is very suspicious and at the same time conspires, instills fear in others so as not to feel his own. It sabotages the safety of others, leaves them pending, isolates them or blocks them. He divides people into friends and enemies and wants to get rid of the supposed external causes of his anxiety. He is very reactive and defensive, silences, accuses and blames others in a cynical and disdainful way.

Type Six at his worst needs to give in to strong authority to solve its problems, such as family, belief systems or the church. He is increasingly dependent, he rebels as panic increases, seeks reliability while he is unfair and betrays. He feels persecuted, the projections on others increase and with them the hysterical behaviour. He is unstable and nervous, he denigrates and scolds others, he attacks, he becomes violent, exalted and fanatic. He inveighs and acts in an irrational and sadistic way causing the feared loss of support and security.

Point Six of the Enneagram invites us to listen and trust ourselves and life and puts us in contact with the desire to recognise and follow our inner call. To contact this dimension it is necessary to understand that the sense of security does not depend on the outside, to quiet the mind, to let the right information and direction emerge in silence. We are brave when we are true to ourselves while feeling a lot of fear. We feel solid, strong and fearless.

(selected and translated from “Crescere con l’Enneagramma”, Maura Amelia Bonanno, 2018, Armenia Edizioni)