The Enneagram started my journey to befriend my heart. And I had no idea about any of that until I really approached the Enneagram, which I started just like a five, from a very cognitive place, interesting, trying to understand, trying to know. But then this became my journey. Befriending the heart.
Interview with Dr. Khaled ElSherbini
We have interviewed the Egyptian Enneagram teacher Dr. Khaled ElSherbini in the “Enneagram Insights podcast”.
He identifies with type five.
Charlotte Haase asked him, what the Enneagram has taught him about being human.
Dr. Khaled ElSherbini answered:
“That’s a very powerful question.
The Enneagram actually has taught me to be human.
So, and by that I mean, the Enneagram, I would say, has given me a heart.
When I look at my life and how I was before the Enneagram, being a Type 5 on the Enneagram, I was very mental, very cognitive, very rational.
And I would naturally try to avoid connecting to my emotions, seeing them, because to me the emotions are misunderstood.”
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Type Five Enneagram: “I hid my emotions”
“The heart is a mysterious place, but I needed things to be clear”, explains. Dr. Khaled ElSherbini:
I needed things to be understood.
I hid my emotions
Emotions are mysterious, they are irrational, they are not logical, and people who follow them are, again, not rational, not logical.
It’s like, what are they doing?
What does that mean?
It’s so confusing. So naturally I had the tendency to hide my emotions.
It is not that I don’t have emotions.
Everyone has lots of emotions, it is just just what do we do with them.
And for me, it’s like putting them in a black box and hiding them in the ground.
I wanted to have nothing to do with them, I rather just act.
But this turns people into talking brains, into becoming like computers, like robots, robotic humans.”
To be human you need emotions
Dr. Khaled ElScherbini explains in “Enneagram Insights Podcast”:
“What really makes us human is this emotional side that gives us life.
This is what life is about.
It connects us with each other.
It makes us feel each other, understand each other.
It is the source of mercy, compassion and connection.
Relationships come from the heart, they don’t come from anywhere else.
A sense of being me, being alive, having value comes from the heart.”
Article: Why the Enneagram is a great tool for Awakening according to Khaled Elsherbini
Befriending the heart
“The Enneagram started my journey to befriend my heart,” says Dr. Khaled ElSherbini.
“And I had no idea about any of that until I really approached the Enneagram, which I started just like a five, from a very cognitive place, interesting, trying to understand, trying to know.
But then this became my journey.
Befriending the heart.
It was there.
Type five of the Enneagram are very sensitive people.
And by sensitive, we mean that because they don’t know what to do with them, with whatever you don’t know what to do with, controls you.
And until you can be aware of it and befriend and approach it and know it and be with it, then it no longer controls you.
It actually becomes a part of you.
You integrate it into your being.”
Acknowledge the human in you
Dr. Khaled ElSherbini explains in the Enneagram Insights podcast, that by understanding his own enneagram type five something shifted:
“I learned to acknowledge other’s emotional being and to acknowledge my own emotional being:
“So seeing and realizing how my words and my actions can actually hurt the other.
It’s not about being truthful.
It’s not about justice.
It’s not about being right.
There’s this also being compassionate, being merciful, being caring, that there are so many, being kind.
There are so many considerations other than being right.
And by right here, I mean the right information, the right type of wording, the right type of saying, the right type of knowledge.
Well, there’s something much, much more beyond that.
You acknowledge the human in the other and you acknowledge the human in yourself, in these social settings and in the interactions and in relationships.”
The Sexual instinct
“The other thing that has had a huge effect on me also, is what we call in the Enneagram world, the instincts”, says Dr. Khaled ElSherbini.
“So besides being an Enneagram type five, I have a very high sexual instinct and I was always very low on the social instinct, which also added to my alienation from others.
I remember a friend once telling me:
“You act as if you’re not one of us”.
And my answer was, “What is us?”
And I meant it, I wasn’t joking.
It’s like, what is us? Who is us? You should do it this way. Why should I do it that way? I wanna do it this way. I don’t care.
Again, being part, it’s summarized in the word belonging.
It’s not that I had a problem with belonging.
No, I didn’t have a problem. I didn’t know the word belonging.
What is belonging?
It’s like, what do you mean by belonging?
It wasn’t there.
So the sense of being among a group, belonging to a group, respecting the traditions and the values and the cultures of the group, the norms of the group, not because it’s right or wrong.
No, because I’m at this moment part of this group.
So there’s something that connects us together that we have to respect each other.
That we have to see in each other, that we have to allow it to be part of us beyond again, knowledge and right and wrong
and truth.
This is again this human aspect that was lacking from the social domain.”
Its a journey
So getting to know the Enneagram, the type and instincts and to choose to be more present is a journey according to Dr. Khaled ElSherbini:
“We all have our advantages and challenges, our powers and our weaknesses.
And the wisdom is to use your advantages and powers in a good way, and to work on improving your weaknesses step by step.
These Achilles heels, these points of weakness can just get better and better with continuous work, with continuous noticing them and approaching them with intention, with seriousness, with an open heart.
So in summary, that would be what I would say the most that I have taken out of the Enneagram:
It made me human by allowing me to integrate the centers and know the centers and to focus and give them attention.”
Resources:
Khaled Elsherbini is coming to Denmark May of 2023. It is free to attend the workshop:
Enneagram Egypt:
https://enneagramegypt.com/dr-khaled-elsherbini
Enneagram Insights Podcast
https://www.flemmingchristensen.com/podcast
“The Enneagram is a core tool for Awakening” Dr. Khaled ElSherbini
