TWO: The Domain of Life and Security
Taking Care of Life
At the Enneagram Two space, we enter the Domain of Life and Security. Life must be received. It comes into the world in a very vulnerable state. It must be looked after, cared for, gently led onward. Life begins in a highly dependent state – partially sensate, irrational, and hungry. We must nurture it into an independent state, where it has command of its senses, acts with reason, and can attend to its own desires.
The Two space is about taking care of ourselves and others and about the need to process our own feelings. At One, we must allow ourselves to feel the external influences of the world. At Two, we allow these feelings to expand within us and nurture them to a greater maturity.
Every person needs honour, dignity, and a sense of being valued; it is important that everyone lives with the sense that they are alive and important. Everybody matters. How can we be sure that everyone is being taken care of? How do we allow for the individual and the group?
Securing a Full Life for Everyone
At Two, the alarm bell goes off around safety and security issues. Where can we find the security of knowing we are worthy of love? At Two we attempt to secure everyone’s potential for a full life. Jesus, in the parable of the Good Shepherd, says, “I have come that they may have life and that they may live it to the full”. Living to the full means experiencing all of life, not just the parts we like or call “good”. Living fully means being present to the joys and sorrows of life, living in the reality of what is.
Polarities
Several pairs of words or phrases that express the polarities of the Two space are:
| Independence | Dependence |
| Organized | Disorganized |
| Giving | Receiving |
| Nurturing | Need |
| Individual | Group |
| Take care of my own needs | Ask for help |
| My will | Divine will |
“Strength” and “Weakness”
Some of these pairs (Dependent/Independent, Receiving/Giving, and Need/Nurturing) can come from a stance of power disguised as caring. The “strong” reaches out to the “weak” and provides for the needs of the “weak” as the “strong” one sees it. The “weak” are not always consulted about this.
Our society glorifies this approach, describing it as selflessness and living for others. However, it does not recognize that both polarities live in everyone and must be honoured. Sometimes you need; sometimes you nurture. If one of those never happens, there is an imbalance.
This imbalance is all tied up with Pride. Feeling impacts us at One. It swells and expands in us at Two. When this goes too far, “expansion” becomes “puffed up”. We appear to ourselves to be bigger than we really are. When I try to help while imposing my own agenda, I am actually falling into Pride. On the other hand, if I hear you state your need and truly receive it, I can deliver what you need from me. I can take into account an accurate and clear-eyed assessment of my own abilities and limitations. This is Humility, the virtue of the Two space.
The Exchange of Giving and Receiving
Some of my friends have told me that, as kids, they used to dry and save old tea bags to send to missionaries. I had another friend who grew up in a missionary family who didn’t really appreciate the “charity”.
My wife taught English to middle-school immigrant and refugee students for most of her teaching career. People would leave bags of used, sometimes useless, clothing to give to “those poor refugee kids”. Often. there wasn’t any idea that there was something you could receive from newcomers to our country, as well as something you could give.
In both these cases, the “givers” lost the idea of exchange. The phrases “Ask for help/Take care of my own needs” remind us that we all have needs. It is important to state them and have them received by someone else. Only then is it possible to receive what you need from someone else. Only then are you equipped with the empathy you require to really be of help to someone else.
Spirit of Peace
When the polarities of Two are held in contemplative practice, the Spirit of Peace is able to enter and rule this domain. This is not the false peace of “no conflict”, but rather the peace that holds everything without judgement and works with it. Fullness, or abundance, of life calls for everything to be included, even those things that we would rather not have and that we want to fix.
Two is a heart space. The movement of the heart is desire and our desire is made manifest by an act of will. The work at Two is to try to bring my personal will into alignment with the Divine will. As my teacher, David, used to say, “At its deepest level, your will and God’s will are the same.” Surface will doesn’t last; it expresses the likes and dislikes of the moment. It doesn’t have much persistence and, in the end, not much importance. Today I want jelly, tomorrow jam. Deep will that lasts and informs our life’s choices is not so easily available; we must seek it and deliberately cultivate it through self-observation and prayer.
Inhabitants: The Fears
When we cling to one of the poles at Two, the Inhabitants that show up are The Fears. These are not the same as at Six, which is about fear of the unknown. The Fears at Two express our fear that we won’t get what we need, not just to survive, but to thrive. Everybody has these fears. The Fears are based on the mentality of scarcity, rather than abundance.
Scarcity and Abundance
The Two’s defense mechanism is Repression, which is the attempt to move unwanted thoughts, feelings, or desires out of our conscious experience in order to avoid feeling anxious. If we get hung up on our vulnerability and dependence, we fear that our needs won’t be met. At the pole of independence, we repress this fear by pretending to ourselves that we have everything we need. Claudio Naranjo calls this “false abundance”. At this pole, we act out by working to fulfill our idea of someone else’s need and neglecting our own.
This mistaken idea of false abundance contradicts the parable of the Good Shepherd, which promises a life of true abundance. Events that knock us off our feet – job loss, divorce, mental and physical illness, flunking out of college, death of a loved one – do not feel like “care”. And they’re not; they are not inflicted upon us “for our own good” or “to teach us a lesson”. They just happen, not “for a reason”, but because we are human. But in these events, we can receive care.
We are Cared for in Our Suffering
The Good Shepherd cares for the sheep, even when they are lost or suffer, even when they get caught in the brambles. He seeks after them and rescues them. He cares for us in our suffering in ways that we do not always know, even if we cannot receive it at that time. Although such events feel disastrous when they happen, they deflate our perception of false abundance; they can lead us to recognize our dependence on one another and to embrace life as it is in all its true abundance.
Totems
Totems for Two are family (our first experience of being taken care of), banks (security), restaurants (where we are served), counseling and pastoral care, nursing, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army.
Ideally, when they serve and protect, the police service is a totem of the Two space. When the police move from Two (service) to the low side of Eight (bullying), their strength is no longer in the service of society, but degenerates into brutality.