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Summary

In today's episode, Hunter is going to give a presentation on the passions and virtues, covering each Enneagram type's passion and virtue, what they are, and their spiritual roots. If you enjoy this presentation, you can buy Hunter's latest book called, "Letting Go, Finding You - Uncover your truest self through the enneagram and contemplation."

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📑 FREE PDF Download: Spiritual Growth Series Podcast Notes
Get the bullet-point notes for all 6 episodes—key insights, no fluff, easy to revisit.

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Spiritual Growth Series

🎙️ Episodes in the Spiritual Growth Series

• Spiritual Identity, Idealized Self, and Avoidance Patterns | Lisa Vischer (Ep. 7)
• Spiritual Practices for Each Enneagram Type | Pastor A.J. Sherrill (Ep. 8)
• How Each Enneagram Type Relates to God | Lindsey Lewis (Ep. 9)
• Image of God in Each Enneagram Type | Marilyn Vancil (Ep. 10)
• What Every Type Wants & What They Settle For | Jesse Eubanks (Ep. 11)
• Enneagram Vices and Virtues | Hunter Mobley (Ep. 12)

The Guest

👉🏼 Follow Hunter Mobley

https://www.huntermobley.com/ 

40-Day Enneagram Devotional

📚 Get a personalized devotional for your Enneagram type:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VGPJTX6

Read The Transcript

Tyler Zach (00:20)

Welcome to Typish, an Enneagram podcast where we explore how your personality shows up in all of life. I'm your host Tyler Zach, and in each episode I connect you with leading experts on how your personality impacts your relationships, mental health, spirituality, and everything in between.

The Typish summits I host include speakers and attendees from all kinds of faith traditions and backgrounds. But because I started my Enneagram journey as a pastor and wrote a 40-day devotional for every Enneagram type, I have a large Christian audience — and the topic of spiritual growth is the number one request I get. So I decided to open up the vault and share six conversations from my Gospel for Enneagram summits back in 2023 as a special six-week podcast series.

If you'd like the bullet point notes for all six episodes, you can grab them right now by clicking on the link in the show notes and downloading the PDF as a free gift.

Today my guest is Hunter Mobley, an Enneagram teacher and faculty member at the Micah Center with the one and only Suzanne Stabile. Hunter has served as an executive pastor and is currently an estate planning lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find his work at EnneagramHunter.com or visit LifeInTheTrinityMinistry.com to learn more about his Enneagram teaching cohorts with Suzanne Stabile.

In today's episode, Hunter is going to give a presentation on the passions and virtues — covering each Enneagram type's passion and virtue, what they are, and their spiritual roots. If you enjoy this presentation, you can buy Hunter's latest book, Letting Go, Finding You: Uncover Your Truest Self Through the Enneagram and Contemplation. Now without further ado, let's jump in.

Hunter Mobley (02:14)

This is one of my favorite topics to discuss, Tyler, because if anybody has been to an Enneagram "Know Your Numbers" seminar, read an Enneagram book, or however you first encountered the nine types, I'm sure you probably encountered the nine passions. The nine passions are often talked about in Enneagram introductions. And in a way, the passion for each of the nine numbers is one of the principal seeds planted in the ground that the whole personality emerges from.

When we talk about the Enneagram origin stories — which, as everyone knows, is a bit mysterious and is something people either love or don't love about the Enneagram — it wasn't invented in a clinical, psychological, or sociological study. It was kind of given to us, like so many other spiritual wisdom tools over time, and lots of people got to put their hands into the mixture. That's part of the beautiful gift of the Enneagram, and why so many of us who teach and explore it are still finding new ways to describe and discover some of the wisdom from the nine types.

When we talk about the early origins of the Enneagram, many times we talk about Evagrius Ponticus, living way back in the fourth and fifth century. He really begins to do work around the idea that there are nine ruling forces that guide us — and one of those, for each of us, is most particular. When we hear the nine passions, we all resonate to some degree with each of them, but there's one for each of us that just comes up more often than the others. And that passion is the seed and one of the foundation stones that the whole personality blooms and blossoms from.

When the Enneagram came to America in the 1970s, it first really came through the Jesuit community in California. And when the Jesuits got their hands around the nine passions — us who are spiritual people, priests, teachers, and pastors, we like to talk about sin — they began using the word "sins" as a substitute for "passions," though they meant the same thing. So if you've encountered this teaching in a community that talked about the nine sins, we're talking about the same discipline. I'm going to use the language of passions because that's the traditional language Enneagram teachers have used.

So those passions are: for Ones, it's anger. For Twos, it's pride — careful, I'm a Two, so I don't love talking about that too much. For Threes, it's deceit. For Fours, it's envy. For Fives, it's greed. Sixes, fear. Sevens, gluttony. Eights, lust. And Nines, sloth.

These nine passions are something you've likely encountered. But what is less typical is for people to have encountered the nine virtues. And that's what I'm really passionate about — connecting these two disciplines in one conversation, because they are not distinct topics. They are one topic, one discipline. I'm now sort of an evangelist, Tyler, for the idea that we should never talk about the passions and virtues separately. You'll never hear me talk about the passions without also describing the virtues, because it's one theme, one topic. That's what we're going to be exploring today.

So let's quickly look at those nine passions as a pathway to then talk about the virtues, and then I'm going to close by talking about why this is one topic and why it matters that we connect these two conversations together.

Type One — Passion: Anger. Ones are part of a grouping of numbers — Eights, Nines, and Ones — that all have anger as a core emotion. But Ones are kind of the double anger number, because anger is both the core emotion and the passion. Ones don't always love to hear that, because sometimes they say, "Well, I'm never angry." And then we think, well, I'm not so sure about that.

For Ones, the anger articulated in their passion is principally self-directed. It shows up in personal self-criticism, sometimes in an exaggerated way when we're in the most unhealthy space. It can show up in self-loathing, in very negative self-talk. Ones have a very high standard for themselves, for others, and for the world, because they're trying to be as perfect as possible. And none of us really have the tools to meet that standard, especially Ones. Because the standard is so high, anger is something they're very acquainted with — anger at not being able to perfect things, anger at not being able to shape their world the way they want to, anger at themselves for not performing and producing at the level they feel is required and necessary.

And sometimes that anger spills out beyond the self. When the people around them can't meet the mark either, it can come out toward others. I tell a story sometimes about my mother, who's a One. We were having a family dinner at her house — all the kids had come home. She had cooked and prepared a wonderful meal, and if you're having dinner at my mother's house, you're not eating off anything that can go into a dishwasher. So at the end of this long dinner, there was this pile of dishes.

It was late, we'd had great conversation, and I was ready to go home. My sister was ready to go home, and my brother — who had been living out of town at the time — was spending the night. He said, "Mom, thank you for this meal. What a great time we've had. This has been so wonderful. Let's go to bed — we're all tired. In the morning, I'll get up and do all these dishes before I leave." My mother said, "Oh, Holden, that's so kind of you. No, no, you go on to bed. I'm going to do these dishes before I go upstairs." They had a little back-and-forth about it, and finally my mother cut it off and said, "Holden, I could die in the night. And if I did, first thing tomorrow morning, all these people would be coming up in this house, and they would see this pile of dirty dishes in the sink. And what they would say is — she never could keep house."

Now, what you've got to know is my mother lives in a house that could qualify as a museum. You could eat off her floor. The last thing anybody who knows her would ever say is that she never could keep house. But that shows you the level of self-critique and negative self-talk — that angry self-talk that Ones speak to themselves when they feel like their behavior never meets the mark.

Type Two — Passion: Pride. And it's not pride in the way we might typically think of it — "let me tell you about all my accomplishments, let me show you all I've accumulated." The pride for Twos is this: "The good news for the day is that I'm doing great. I'm fine. I don't have any needs. I don't have any problems. I can tell that you're not doing so great — and the great news is, because I'm fine, I've got all of my resources to direct toward you, to help you be better and to address whatever's going wrong in your life." So there's this pride where Twos put themselves on a pedestal: we're not the ones who need help. We're not the ones who need to be saved or fixed or rescued. Everyone else is. And we're here to play that role in other people's lives.

Type Three — Passion: Deceit. Threes hate it when I say this, because it sounds like we're saying they're trying to deceive us — and they're not. Threes are principally deceiving themselves, because they've lost touch with a sense of personal identity. They've lost touch with the fundamentals of who they really are, what they really want to be about, the fundamentals of their vocational calling and longings. They've lost touch with that a little because they've been so successful at contextualizing — at adapting to whatever the context required. They morphed and adapted and flexed to meet those context requirements, and they've done it really well. And they've done it so well, and for so long, and for so many different contexts, that it's as if they fooled themselves a little into thinking: well, this is who I am. This is what I love. This is my fundamental calling or vocation. But there's been some self-deceit, because they've lost touch with what is truly core and truest for them.

Type Four — Passion: Envy. And envy, we have to remember, is not jealousy. Jealousy is: I'd like to have your car, your house, your job, all your things. Envy is a little bit deeper and more core — it's almost like: I wish I could be like you in some way. I wish I could have your whole comprehensive way of being in the world. Fours look at the rest of us and think that we have an easier time being in the world. The world has always been tough for them. They've always felt a little offbeat, misunderstood, like there wasn't quite space held for them. And so they feel like they wish they could be kind of normal and regular like the rest of us — but they can't. They're envious of what seems to them to be the ease the rest of us have. It feels like to Fours that the rest of us get to be a little lighter, a little freer, with a little more ease. And they're envious of that freedom and lightness.

Type Five — Passion: Greed. And greed can take lots of forms — it doesn't very often take the form of monetary or financial greed for Fives. It's greed for their time, greed for their energy, greed for their attention, greed for their information and knowledge, greed for their affection. They withhold these things because they're just not sure that if they give them away, there will be more where that came from. Fives live more in a scarcity mentality than an abundance reality. They feel like there won't be enough, so they better hold back what they have.

Type Six — Passion: Fear. And I actually like the word "anxiety" better than "fear" for Sixes, because fear sounds paralyzing — and Sixes are not paralyzed. Anxiety is more like mood music that just accompanies them through life, like elevator music, always playing. And anxiety actually helps them in some ways — it helps them be ready and prepared. Fear as the passion for Sixes just describes the reality that they are accounting for everything that could go wrong. They are aware of all the potential dangers, potential pitfalls, things they need to plan for. They know that Plan A doesn't always work out, so they've got Plan B and Plan C and Plan D.

Type Seven — Passion: Gluttony. And gluttony, again, doesn't have to be about food. It's more of a gluttony for experience — a gluttony for new, for being filled up with exciting adventures, experiences, new things to taste and try and do. Sevens have this bucket with a hole in the bottom. It's always leaking out, and they're filling it up with adventures and experiences and excitement and joy and fun. But that bucket never gets filled. It always needs more added to it. Enough is never enough. One thing is not enough when you could have two. There's just not enough to fill the bucket for Sevens.

Type Eight — Passion: Lust. Eights think, well, if you've got to have a passion, might as well be lust, right? But for Eights, it's not principally a sexual lust. In Enneagram speak and the passions discipline, lust for Eights really means there's this pull for intensity. When I do couples work with an Eight and their partner, one of the things we have to address is that for an Eight, if it's not intense, it didn't feel intense. There's got to be this intensity, this deep passion, this lustiness for energy and passion for something to feel important and feel intimate.

Type Nine — Passion: Sloth. Nines hate that passion because they feel like the rest of us are calling them lazy. And we're not — because Nines are sometimes the busiest number on the Enneagram. They can be the most active, have the most things on their list. The question, however, is: are they so busy doing other things that they can give themselves permission to not do the things they know they really need to get to — but that may cause conflict, or may require them to give up their internal or external peace? So when we talk about sloth for Nines, we mean they are sometimes slothful at getting to the things that are truly theirs to do, because they're afraid that getting to those things may cause conflict or cost them their peace. And Nines desperately want to be at peace and not have conflict with themselves or with anyone else.

So those are the nine Enneagram passions — the foundation stones, the beginning seeds for the whole personality that blooms and blossoms from that passion, just like childhood wounding messages and fixations. These are the initial entry points to the whole personality.

But when you look at the Enneagram virtues — and by the way, Oscar Ichazo is who delivers to us this dual discipline of the passions and virtues — when you look at the virtues, you'll notice that each virtue is the opposite of the passion.

Type One — Virtue: Serenity. Serenity is this calmness, this ability to be at peace and be present to all that is — to release anger, release control, release restriction and requirement.

Type Two — Virtue: Humility. That's the opposite of the passion of pride. Humility for Twos is the ability to say: hey, maybe it's me standing in need of prayer today, standing in need of being helped, being attended to, being noticed. The humility for Twos is to say: I'm just like you. I don't have it more together than you. Maybe today I've got something I can give you, but maybe tomorrow you've got something I need from you.

Type Three — Virtue: Truthfulness. A truthfulness at the core of the core to say: I am who I am. I'm going to be true to what I know are the fundamental truths for me. I'm going to be consistent to those. I'm going to follow after those and be who I am no matter what.

Type Four — Virtue: Equanimity. Fours are a special number, so they get a special word. Equanimity is the ability to hold in tension and balance all things. Remember when the passion of envy was: something's wrong with me, and I wish I could have the ease that you have. Equanimity is the ability to say: no, there's nothing wrong with me. I've got everything that I need. Everything is balanced and in order in some way, and I'm at peace with that.

Type Five — Virtue: Non-Attachment. And non-attachment doesn't look like pushing away — it's an opening up. Greed looks like holding tightly, but non-attachment says: I can have energy and resources and time and affection, but if you need some of it, you can have some. I'll trust that what I need will come back to me and that I will have enough. I can hold on loosely — I can be non-attached.

Type Six — Virtue: Courage. I actually like to use the word "faith" because courage feels like something you have to muster up, and faith feels like a gift to be received. And I don't think these virtues are things we're supposed to muster up — they're already inside of us, waiting to be unearthed and recovered and received. So I like to use faith for Sixes, because faith is what Frederick Buechner described: here is the world, beautiful and terrible things will happen, there is danger everywhere, but take heart. There is something we can cling to. Don't be afraid. As Jesus said in John 16:33 — in this world you're going to have trouble. Sixes, you're right — danger, trouble, problems, they're coming. But take heart, for we can tether ourselves to a greater story, a greater reality that will hold us together even in the worst of it. That's faith — and it's already inside every Six, waiting to be recovered.

Type Seven — Virtue: Sobriety. It's just the ability to experience sober joy versus gluttonous joy. The ability to be satisfied with a little — to find joy in what is, to find hope and excitement and gladness in the ordinary. That's sober joy. That's sobriety for Sevens.

Type Eight — Virtue: Innocence. Eights lost their innocence earlier than the rest of us. Not because they started doing bad things before the rest of us — but Eights learned earlier than most that not everybody means you good, that not everybody is safe, that people will let you down. Eights picked up those messages early. And so their virtue, the gold for them, is reclaiming some of that childlike innocence — the opposite of the passion of lust.

Type Nine — Virtue: Action. Right action. Not just being busy, not just doing something for the sake of doing it — but doing the thing that only you can and will and must do. Taking that action, no matter the cost, no matter what may happen, no matter what people may think, no matter what conflict it may bring internally or externally.

So if you follow the virtue and the passion for each number, you notice they are opposites. What do we make of that? The beautiful thing is that when we teach the Enneagram, we say the virtue is an articulation of your true self, and the passion is an articulation of your false self. The virtue is connected to soul, essence, the Christ in you and in me. The passion is connected to false self, to personality, to the Enneagram number.

Well, if the virtues and the passions are opposite of one another, then what that means is: how you've come to be known through your personality and your Enneagram number — how you've come to know yourself, how other people have come to know you — is the opposite of who you truly are. This is truly the good news, or the gospel, if you will, of the Enneagram.

It says: if I'm a Two, I actually have greater capacity for humility than for anything else, because humility is attached to my essence, to my core, to the Christ in me, to the eternal true self in me. The virtue was so precious in us — and so precious in all of us — that we began to hide it behind a mask to protect it, to not lay our vulnerable selves bare to the trouble of the world. And what we protected it with was a mask that portrayed its opposite.

This is the good news of the Enneagram: you are the opposite of how you've come to be known through your Enneagram type. And the goal is recovery of the virtue — which means we're not locked in our Enneagram numbers, not locked in our type, because what we have the capacity to express is fundamentally the opposite of what our number tells us we would project and act like.

So our lifetime of work is letting go of the passion and reclaiming the virtue. Which means that if you're a One, you're going to ultimately express serenity. If you're a Two, it's going to be humility. Three, truthfulness. Four, equanimity. Five, non-attachment. Six, faith. Seven, sobriety. Eight, innocence. And Nine, action.

As we get on this wisdom journey, we will actually start to look like the opposite of our Enneagram type and number. So when people say, "This is just putting us in a box and I don't want to get obsessed with personality" — through the passions and virtues work, we're reminded that all this Enneagram work is actually dismantling personality in many ways. And personality is not bad — it helps us. We're not trying to lose it completely. We're trying to dismantle its hold on us, to hold personality loosely rather than tightly, and to express the opposite of personality, which is virtue.

That's why these disciplines cannot be separated. They must be described together. Why would we just talk about passion? Why would we just tell the bad news and not tell the good news with the virtue as well? You are fundamentally, at your core, the opposite of what your Enneagram type says you are and that you project. That's why we use the language of true self, false self. And our journey through life is recovering and reclaiming that precious virtue that's inside all of us, and letting go, in many ways, of personality and of passion. That's what I'm so passionate about talking about, Tyler — and that's why I'm now on a mission to connect these disciplines for people and never speak about them separately.

Tyler Zach (30:12)

One of the things that really stuck out to me was the deceit passion for the Three and how that's played out for me. On a basic level, Threes can bend the truth quite often — to make sure they continue to look good and be impressive to others. So we need to make sure we don't bend the truth to avoid looking bad. But at a deeper sense, I think where we're self-deceived — I look back at my past and I can see patterns now that I've lived enough life.

When I was in my SIGEP fraternity, I was Mr. SIGEP. I had SIGEP on my license plate, wore the fraternity shirts, was president. I was known as Mr. SIGEP. When I was in campus ministry, I was the poster boy for the campus ministry. As a church planter, I wanted to fulfill that role as fully as I possibly could. And I've been going in and out of these roles now — I just turned 40 — and the pattern I see is: I've been in these roles, but now I'm asking, were those my values?

That's where the deceit comes in. I can deceive myself into thinking I am this Mr. SIGEP, that this is what I believe, this is my worldview. And then as a pastor in a certain denomination, yes, this is who I am and what I believe. But then when I get out of that role, I have a little bit of a crisis — I don't always follow what I used to, because I didn't really believe it. I wasn't really that passionate about it. So now I'm left wondering, as a Three. Ian Cron always talks about Threes as being the lost girls or lost boys — we're lost. We have to find out: who am I really? What do I actually stand for? What do I really believe? What do I really want to do — not because it's impressive to the world, but because I'm actually wired and built to do it?

Hunter Mobley (32:33)

Absolutely. That's so beautifully said, Tyler. And I think all of us, part of our journey with the Enneagram is moving beyond the caricatures. All of us who aren't Threes need to hear that and really internalize it: no Three wakes up one day and thinks, "I'm reinventing myself today. Yesterday I was all about Mr. SIGEP, but today I'm going to be all about Mr. Campus Minister." It's so intuitive. Threes, when they find themselves in these contexts, just naturally pick up the markers and indicators of what it would look like to really embody that context in the most accomplished and successful way. So we do have to move beyond the caricatures and into empathetic understanding — it's the Three who has in some ways deceived themselves, rather than ventured on some journey to trick the rest of us. That's not what's going on with deceit. Threes aren't trying to fool anybody.

My friend Laura, who's a Three, moved to Asheville from Dallas a few years ago for her husband's job. She was looking for work and couldn't find anything, so she finally just took a job to get a job — as an administrative assistant at a women's counseling facility in Asheville, not really in her wheelhouse. Well, after six months of working there, she came home one night for dinner and told her husband Tate: "I've decided I want to go back to school and get my master's in counseling."

They had a conversation about it over dinner. By the end of dinner, Laura discovered — actually, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go back to school. This isn't even the field or job I wanted to be in. I'm still trying to find my way back to my original career. But see, Laura had been in that context long enough, and she had done so well there, that she was in a way already thinking about the next step of moving up in authority and responsibility — and she knew that would take a master's in counseling. That's just a way of showing what that self-deceit journey can look like when we're sitting inside the passion for Threes.

Tyler Zach (35:00)

I love that. Hunter, how does the vice and virtue of pride and humility work itself out in your own life?

Hunter Mobley (35:10)

Oh my gosh. Well, hopefully it's working itself out — it's going to take my whole lifetime. I hope that, like the proverb says, the path of the righteous is like the rising sun, shining ever brighter to the light of the full day. I hope we're just making little incremental improvements. Some days I'm not so sure. But for Twos, the trouble with pride is this: I want you to say, Tyler, "I've got all these friends and a great community and I know so many good people — but gosh, then there's Hunter. I mean, he's just in a class of his own. I couldn't do life without him." That's kind of how Twos feel. We want that place in your life.

And what happens is we sabotage ourselves. We don't actually get that place in your life, because what we don't realize as Twos is that we've made the relationship non-mutual. We've taken on the role of sage, the one who gives advice, the one you come to. But you don't actually know all that much about us. And other people are smart — they realize: I love Hunter and I depend on Hunter and I think Hunter's wonderful. But I don't know that I feel that deeply connected to Hunter. And so the pride actually sabotages us from getting what we really want, which is deep, intense connection.

I go to so many lunches or dinners, and this is when I know I'm not doing well: the person I've gone to lunch or dinner with says at the end, "Gosh, this has been so wonderful, but all we've done is talk about me — Hunter, next time I want to learn what's going on in your life." That non-mutuality is actually a barrier to the relationship and the love I want.

Humility is when I can say: this relationship is fully mutual. I want you to know just as much about me as I want to know about you. And I want to know a lot about you — which means I've got to let you know a lot about me. I've got to honestly disclose my fears and my vulnerabilities and my griefs and my pain and my struggles and my longings. Only if I do that in a humble way will we actually have mutual, reciprocal friendship. Only then will I actually be able to have what I want — which is actual belonging and connection with you.

And that's where, if Twos don't do this work, we spend a lifetime sabotaging ourselves and feeling like we're always on the outs. We've got a lot of relationships and a lot of people who like us and call on us and are connected to us — but we feel like none of those people are really deeply, deeply connected to us. And that's why we've got to walk toward humility, which means vulnerability, mutuality, and self-disclosure. That's humility for Twos.

Tyler Zach (38:42)

If this episode encouraged you, be sure to follow the show, leave a five-star rating, and write a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast.

Now before you go, take a moment to pause and reflect on this: What aspect of your type's passion do you still need to shed? And what aspect of your type's virtue would you like to spend more time cultivating this week?

Remember — we are all in the same boat together. You don't need to beat yourself up over the struggle with your passion. Rather, use this helpful path from vice to virtue as a kind invitation to be transformed today, from one degree of glory to the next.