Join me in welcoming back the Enneagram & Prayer series! Thanks for your grace as I’ve taken a needed break. Type Five will be posted next Wednesday, July 2. Today, enjoy reflections on Type Fours and Prayer.
Type Four
The Sensitive, Introspective Type:
Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temeperamental
Type Four in Brief
Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity. At their Best: inspired and highly creative, they are able to renew themselves and transform their experiences.
- Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance
- Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)
- Enneagram Four with a Three-Wing: “The Aristocrat”
- Enneagram Four with a Five-Wing: “The Bohemian”
Key Motivations: Want to express themselves and their individuality, to create and surround themselves with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a “rescuer.”
The Meaning of the Arrows (in brief)
When moving in their Direction of Disintegration (stress), aloof Fours suddenly become over-involved and clinging at Two. However, when moving in their Direction of Integration (growth), envious, emotionally turbulent Fours become more objective and principled, like healthy Ones.
Source: The Enneagram Institute: Type Four
Type Four: The Individualist
Part of the reason the series has been suspended has been life circumstances—but part of the reason is that the hardest type to examine, pull apart and evaluate honestly is your own. As a Type Four, I’ve had to do my work to ensure that these resources, prayers and information aren’t coming out of places of disintegration and scrambling for me, especially as I’ve encountered my own blocks to prayer and relationship with God.
Type Fours are the final of the heart-centered triad. Of all the types, they are the most connected to and aware of their own feelings—often to their detriment. Fours can be so attached to their feelings that they live in them, rather than in reality. Alternately, they seek situations, relationships and circumstances that heighten their connection to their emotional world, they gravitate toward what other types would call “drama.”
Type Fours are often called the “artists” of the Enneagram, which can surprise some Fours who don’t have any connection to the more traditional art worlds. Although many Fours have found some type of artistic expression, Fours are called “artists” because they shape, script and form all of life. The active inner world of the Four projects outward on their expectations and hopes of others. Unlike Ones who have a concrete Ideal in mind, Fours usually have some sense of the way the world, and relationships in particular, “should” go and are often disappointed when their more romantic projection of things isn’t realized. In general, Fours have a tendency to invite people into “their world” (beautiful and carefully constructed, of course) rather than moving out to encounter others on their own terms.
Type Fours are highly sensitive and deeply aware of the beauty around them. At their best, they have an uncanny ability to sense and accurately discern the feelings of others, as well as the “sense” of spaces and groups. Fours relish the symbolic, and see layers of meaning in even the most mundane of experiences. Dreams and artistic visions are important to Fours, and they often dress iconoclastically in order to express the beauty and uniqueness they themselves desire to communicate to the world. Fours are able to perceive multiple layers to reality and as a result they often live in a longing for deeper beauty, deeper meaning, deeper experience.
As do Twos and Threes, Fours can struggle with feelings of shame and of inadequacy. Because Fours perceive keenly the beauty and life around them, they tend to experience the present moment as continually disappointing—and often blame this on either themselves for not having the ability to express what is within them or they blame it on others for being unable to match the extraordinary script that the Four has unknowingly written for them. Because they are so attuned to their inner lives, they often express their disappointments as aggression toward themselves. The besetting sin of a Four is envy, a deep desire to have what others seem to possess. Unlike greed, however, this envy is actually an envy of the seeming contentment, uniqueness or beauty of others. In a word, Type Fours are envious of the seeming happiness of others, something that their inherent sensitivity for melancholy seems to prevent them from experiencing. Type Fours are often discontent in the present moment, believing that the key to the happiness they seek is either in the past or the future.
The glory of the Type Four is their ability to both feel and express the depth of emotion—both positive and negative—around them. A healthy Four has the ability to hold together light and dark, happiness and sadness, the gifts of the present and the desire for more. Type Fours can express symbolically and emotionally the deep currents flowing through all of us, and are often those who call us toward more beauty and life. In healthy places, Fours can express themselves authentically without artifice or drama, and don’t need to experience extreme highs or lows in order to feel alive.
Type Four & Prayer
Type Fours gravitate quite easily to spiritual direction and the examination of the interior life. While unbalanced Fours are so externally oriented that they have difficulty identifying their emotions as their own and not projecting them on others (like an average Type Two), an average Four has the kind of self-awareness that naturally leads to self-reflection. Fours revel in silence and solitude as natural prayers, even if they are more extroverted, and can often be found in roles or volunteer positions that help others identify what’s going on deep inside. Type Fours often seek spiritual direction when their emotional lives become overwhelming and they need support in discerning what emotions are grounded in reality and relationship—the Spirit of God moving in and through them—and what emotions are the result of their false self needing to stir up deeper longing in their quest for perfection. In some Enneagram rubrics, Fours are called Perfectionists, not because they need everything to be neat and tidy, but because they are so dedicated to the Good, the Ultimate Perfect, that they fail to see the “enough” that is before them. Prayer types that are most helpful for Type Fours are:
- Prayers of Gratitude
- Prayer of Surrender
- Jesus Prayer
- Prayers of Expression (Journaling, Painting, Dance)
- Prayer of Examen
- Prayer of the Ordinary
- The Merton Prayer
Prayers of Gratitude
Type Fours can, in general, have a tendency to focus on the melancholy side of their spirituality—to be acutely aware of how they feel they fall short (or how they believe they fall short in the eyes of others, if they have internalized a particularly stringent religious system), to the brokenness of this world, and to the ways in which they are different or misunderstood by others and even God.
Those experiences are not illegitimate; however, Type Fours tend to find a deeper sense of interior peace and balance (their cardinal virtue) when they practice regular prayers of gratitude. It is important that these prayers aren’t simply reflexive lists of what Type Fours “should” be thankful for—lists of 5 things every day or reminders that there are people starving in other countries so they should be grateful for what they have—this will make a Four even more melancholy and interior.
Instead, Fours benefit from spending some time meditating each day on the joys that they naturally enjoyed. Ice cream, the way butter melts in a pan, the feel of hot water in the shower, the way the blue of a friend’s eyes shone or the warmth of a dog beside them: these moments of simple gratitude that rise from the heart can be pondered and given thanks for. As soon as the list gets abstract (a roof over my head, enough money in the bank), it’s time to put down the exercise in prayer for another day. Sometimes these moments of genuine, heart-felt gratitude stretch for a long time, and others they are over in a few minutes, but this type of attention-giving to what has been beautiful or joy-filled in a day helps the Type Four stay grounded in the gifts of the moment.
Prayers of Surrender
Type Fours can be so attached to the vision of how things would work out most beautifully and well in their imagination that reality simply never measures up. Fours benefit from prayers of surrender as a way of releasing their own version of events to God and embracing what comes before them with whole-hearted trust. The first line of Psalm 23 (indeed, all of the psalm) is helpful for Fours: “The LORD is my shepherd, I will experience nothing as missing.”
This kind of surrender into God’s care and provision helps Fours release and relax into the now, allowing them to experience God’s goodness in and through the moment they are in. This type of prayer can be a meditative repetition of Psalm 23, or a simple prayer of “What is, is enough”, or a detailed surrendering to God of the Four’s plans and expectations. Most Fours will know which is most appropriate at which moment.
The Jesus Prayer
A simple but ancient prayer (Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner), this breath prayer is helpful for Type Fours because of its ease of repetition and the humble heart posture it requires. The most common way to pray this prayer is quietly, meditatively and repetitively over a fixed period of time, noticing how the interior reactions to the words shift within us over time. For Fours in particular, the Jesus Prayer is helpful in its simplicity and focus on Christ and His action in our lives.
Prayers of Expression (Journaling, Painting, Dancing)
As naturally expressive and artistic types, Fours benefit from harnessing this mode of being in their relationship with God. Journalling as a type of prayer helps a Four to be in dialogue with God and with themselves—articulating their emotions and experiences in a more concrete form. This putting things to paper helps get sometimes dreamy Fours out of the abstract and into a place of conscious reflection that gives them a sense of who they are and who God is for them at the moment, which can lead to the kind of definitive transformation that happens when Fours lean into their growing edge and become more like Ones.
Expressive prayer for Fours doesn’t have to be in words. In fact, when Fours feel overwhelmed or disconnected, sometimes the best forms of prayer are both expressive and wordless: painting, taking photographs, dancing or exercising. Those activities are not necessarily prayer in and of themselves, but they can become avenues of connecting with God in prayer when they are undertaken consciously and meditatively. When Fours can let go of the need to make something “beautiful” (Ira Glass’s reminder on the trap of having “good taste” is helpful for a Four here) and simply express themselves in paint, movement or song to God, deep interior freedom and intimacy opens up for them in ways they often don’t expect. When they let their current expressions be enough, the presence of God can be felt in the moment and Fours are moved to awe and praise.
The Prayer of Examen
An ancient prayer form, the Prayer of Examen can be used at the end of the day, end of a week, a month, a season or a year. The Daily Examen is attributed to St. Ignatius and is a kind of review of the day that helps the individual grow in sensitivity to the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives and in the world. The Daily Examen in its various forms is particularly helpful for Type Fours because it grounds them in the details of their lives and helps them to see specifically where God is moving in their lives. Fours may resist the Examen at first because it feels too structured or imposed (a helpful movement toward an integrated Type One, nonetheless), but after some time of relaxing into the rhythms of the prayers and finding there a deeper intimacy with God, Fours find the Examen particularly rewarding. There are a few different forms of the Examen prayer that I find helpful. You can find them here, here, and here.
Prayer of the Ordinary
Because Type Fours have such a gift for what is beautiful and good, they often feel disappointed with their daily lives, feeling that relationships are not going well, or that their lives are not what they should be. This is why “prayers of the ordinary” can be so helpful for a Type Four. Prayers of the Ordinary (something that is sometimes called practicing the presence of God, after the book by Brother Lawrence) are a type of prayer that focuses on being aware of the gift of the ordinary moment and the presence of God within it. Prayers of the Ordinary notice and acknowledge the beauty and gift of the way soap suds feel when you are doing the dishes, or the weight of wet laundry in your hands reminding you that this practical task is a way of loving and caring for those around you. Prayers of the Ordinary refuse to look for some “transcendent moment” that is elsewhere, on some mountaintop with God, but instead focus on the way that God is present in the dirty carpet or the screaming children or the act of getting groceries. These prayers don’t have to be prayers of gratitude necessarily (although they often lead that direction) but are instead physical and spiritual noticings of the gift of being alive and the constant, caring presence of God with us all.
The Merton Prayer
Thomas Merton is a famous and well-read Type Four. Deeply connected to God and to the interior life, Merton nonetheless struggled to stay present to the immediate in his various settings. This prayer of trust and surrender expresses many of the conflicts and questions natural to a Type Four, and can be very useful for Fours seeking a deeper life of abandonment to God:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. –Thomas Merton
Another Note On Prayer:
Type Fours can be very hard on themselves—harder, in fact, than anything they express consciously or unconsciously out toward others. Therefore it is very important for Type Fours to marinate in the love of God for and with them, no matter how they feel about themselves. Accepting God’s kindness and care, seeing themselves as chosen and delighted in particularly by the Creator of the Universe is a place of prayer and love that Fours benefit from returning to again and again. I know that my spiritual director repeatedly reminds me to “be kind to Tara,” a reminder that all Fours will find helpful. Grounding that kindness in the self-sacrificing love of God helps Fours stay away from being self-absorbed and instead frees them to express their gifts, perceptions and love on behalf of a broken and hurting world.
Type Four Playlist
(developed by Jennifer Brukiewa of Attending Grace Ministries)
Now it’s your turn.
Are you a Four?
What prayer forms have proven most helpful for you?
What ways do you struggle with prayer and your relationship with God?
Share with us in the comments.
Sources: The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert, The Enneagram and Spiritual Direction: Nine Paths to Spiritual Guidance by James Empereur, The Enneagram Made Easy: Discover the 9 Types of People by Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele, and Using the Enneagram in Prayer by Suzanne Zuercher. 
PS If you haven’t joined us already, please consider signing up for Anam Cara’s newest eCourse, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, which starts on July 7.
