Often Known As: Diplomat, Mediator, Peacemaker (note that names are as limiting as they are revealing.)
Sin/Passion: Sloth
Focus: on harmony
Fear: of rocking the boat and creating conflict
Energy Center: Body (energy is suppressed)
Social Stance: Withdrawing
Key Positive Traits (embodied at their best): Peaceful, Conciliatory, Friendly, Irenic, Serene, Placid, Flexible, Welcoming, Easy-going, Tolerant, Undemanding, Able to hold space for others, Facilitating others’ self-expression, Defusing, Deescalating, Kind, Tactful, Unbothered, Always capable of finding common ground
Key Negative Traits (embodied at their worst): Inert, Self-forgetting, Self-suppressing, Diffuse, Vapid, Platitudinous, Bland, Soporific, Flavorless, Vanilla, Immovable, Complacent, Oversimplifying, Both self-sabotaging and passively sabotaging others, Passive-aggressive, Unable to assert themselves clearly, A secondary character in their own life
Directions of Growth and Stress: to Three and Six respectively

Introduction

Nines are generally easygoing, accepting, positive and agreeable. They are placid, hardy and normally unbothered by the difficulties of life, as though they wore a waterproof jacket. It is often easy for people to open up to them, and Nines usually like creating connections and cultivating harmonious relationships. In fact, harmony is probably the one word that best describes Enneagram Type Nine.

Within a group of friends, Nines are the ones that will always seem happy no matter what the others decide, and others may find that Nines are very easy to get along with, since they rarely pose challenges or raise serious problems, so much so that, on occasion, they may even stop thinking or worrying about them. This often leads to Nines slipping under the radar and not getting the recognition and attention they deserve, which may make them feel overlooked.

Whenever problems do arise, Nines often prioritize harmony and stability, so they will usually seek to solve conflicts as quickly as possible, sometimes by giving in on others’ demands or giving up their own preferences. Even in their own private life, regardless of other people, Nines normally prefer to entertain positive and uplifting thoughts rather than dwell on the negative side of things.

Nines usually give importance to togetherness and unity with others, and often have a marked mystical bent, where they seek to blur the line between themselves and the divine (or nature, if they prefer) just as they often seek to blur the line between themselves and others in a social context. They usually prefer activities that stress and strengthen cohesion and group work.

Deep inside, Nines may struggle to find a definite identity, as they perceive themselves as showcasing the traits of other people (often, their standard reaction to hearing about the Enneagram is that they see a bit of every type in themselves.) This lack of a strong profile contributes to their being taken for granted by others, which in turn feeds their insecurity.

Core Mechanism

Peace is a very important thing for Nines. They value peace with others and peace of mind within themselves. This is obviously not a bad thing. However, the quest for peace can become inauthentic and even dangerous if it stifles conflicts and oversimplifies problems without looking them in the face. This is exactly what average to unhealthy Nines tend to do.

Nines belong to the Body triad of the Enneagram, which means that they are concerned with issues of autonomy and instinctual bodily energy. Nines usually seek to maintain their autonomy not, like Eights, by becoming confrontational toward others, but by going along with them and avoiding rocking the boat. More or less unconsciously, Nines believe that if they cause problems, they will sever their connection to other people, and this could lead to problems snowballing.

To avoid this feared outcome, Nines suppress their bodily energy, their urges, their preferences and their claims to autonomy by becoming accepting of other people’s agendas and aims. Their hope is that this will make them more valuable to others. Unfortunately, this behavior often leads to others actually undervaluing or disregarding Nines, and being disregarded is often a painful feeling for Nines (as it usually is for most people).

When they feel trampled over by people with a more decisive attitude, Nines often retaliate by exerting a kind of peaceful passive resistance, where they do not outright tell people that they feel hurt (or, if they do, they still minimize it) but this of course makes it even harder for others to understand the Nine’s boundaries and preferences.

Passion

Nine’s passion is Sloth. Sloth does *not* mean laziness. Nines may actually lead quite active lives, full of activities and diversions. Sloth must be rather understood as a spiritual ‘falling asleep’ toward oneself and one’s nature.

Note how point Nine is at the top of the Enneagram symbol. This is because, in a way, Enneagram Type Nine represents the blueprint for all other types. Regardless of who we are, the basic premise of the Enneagram is that we have fallen asleep toward the whole of reality, becoming blind to a section of it to emphasize another section (for instance, Ones, the perfectionists, fall asleep to perfection, overemphasizing faults and errors, which they learn to see everywhere.)

Nines fall asleep to reality in a slightly different manner from other types, as they fall asleep to their own falling asleep. This explains why it is not uncommon for Nines to believe they are very advanced spiritual seekers, when in fact they haven’t even started the real work.

Part of our spiritual work consists in reconnecting with the unity of all things. Nines are very good at emphasizing unity and oneness, and often feel fundamentally connected to everyone and everything. But their condition is like that of a seed that hasn’t sprouted yet but believes itself to be the flower.

Nines’ connection to everything is not that of the experienced seeker who finally returns to the great source of everything after experiencing the ups and downs of life: it is the connection of the baby in the mother’s womb before birth.

Duality is an oft-reviled concept in spiritual circles, but in reality duality is just as fundamental to existence as unity itself. In fact, the two terms are coessential: unity cannot express but through duality, and duality cannot do anything except giving voice to unity. Unity without duality is a barren white light without change and without life; duality without unity is an explosion of incoherence without stability. As such, emphasis on one to the exclusion of the other is always a form of delusion.

Nines’ sloth consists in their tendency to run away from all forms of separation, conflict and dualism, retreating into a sort of dreamy oneness, be it with God, their friends, their community, their spouse or their fantasy. Everything that threatens to tear them away from this vapid, hazy unity is ignored or downplayed.

Their slothfulness is their unconscious refusal to go through the pains of being born as separate individuals and experience both sides of life, happiness and sorrow, joy and despair, doubt and certainty, pain and pleasure. Deprived of the journey, the end result that Nines cling to can only engender shallow insights and a kind of cheap mysticism that works more as a psychological crouch than as a stimulus to growth.

Misconceptions

A rather common misconception about Type Nine is that they are the pushovers of the Enneagram. Although unhealthy to average Nines do have a hard time asserting themselves and are often accomodating to a fault, this doesn’t mean that they will just allow anyone to disrupt their flow and sweep them along.

Anyone who tries to force a Nines to do something that they don’t want to do usually experiences that everything suddenly takes five times as much energy to accomplish. Nines are excellent saboteurs of all plans that they don’t want to go along with. And they do it often without so much as lifting a finger. Going to war against a Nine is like going to war against a fog bank: you usually just end up getting lost and giving up.

It is also not true that Nines don’t have their own aims, though they may not voice them (sometimes not even to themselves). If we imagine each person as a different current in the sea, a Nine is the leaf on the surface that rides each current as long as it is needed to get where they want to be (at least, this is ideally how Nines get things done).

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Nines “use” people, at least, not more than anyone else. Nines merely seek to reconcile their own presence in the world with the presence of everyone else, and they often feel that the only way for them to do it is going along with other people as long as they need to, kind of like cosmic itch-hikers: they don’t impose their route to others, they only borrow their momentum.

The problem is that Nines can become resentful of their “drivers” when it becomes clear that they have their own aims and do not show the same tact that the Nine has displayed. Once this resentfulness builds up, Nines start their sabotaging, trying to sweep everything under a blanket of stillness where nothing gets done.

Wings

9w8: Nines with an Eight wing are an interesting combination, as Nines often have a hard time connecting to their bodily energy, while Eights definitely don’t have such issues. This subtype usually has a somewhat more forceful and practical demeanor and a slightly stronger presence. They are often very instinctual and tend to have stronger likes and dislikes. Often they mediate between people and solve conflicts by taking a more active approach, and it is not rare for them to become beacons for the community or for those that know them.

9w1: Nines with a One wing are doubly idealist. To be fair, Nine’s ideal is closer to La La Land than the well-ordered and precisely regulated world Ones aspire toward, but combined, the two tendencies give rise to a person with a strong desire for a peaceful and quiet world. There is a strong tendency to value high ideals, but without being very precise in how they would work in reality. This subtype often yearns for a world of kindness and general ‘nicety’ and they usually have an eye for when people and situations don’t live up to this idea.

(note that wings can have some minor descriptive power in terms of superficial behavior, but they are irrelevant in terms of what motivates the person. Many people have no noticeable wing, while few show signs of both.)

MQS