The Three Centers of Intelligence

Intelligence is not just about mental acuteness. The Enneagram recognizes three Centers of Intelligence – Thinking, Feeling and Doing, or Head, Heart and Body. We each have all three centers, and need to learn to use all three to become alive and healthy. Typically, though, each personality type or Number will prefer one Center as a way of responding to the world, with a second as back-up. The third Center will generally be repressed until it is awakened and strengthened.

I don’t read a lot of poetry, but in the early 80s I discovered Theodore Roethke’s poems. I was a stay-at-home mom who worried that I was not doing anything important, and found comfort in the last line of his poem The Abyss:

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

Roethke’s words served to validate me in my mind. I read them as a subtle rebuke to the world where everyone else was busy, busy, busy all day long doing doing, doing, important things. I, special Four that I was, would seek fulfillment in everyday life. I didn’t have to do; I could just be. So I ran carpool and volunteered and did my best to be like everyone else in my little world. 

I misunderstood the poem at that time; Being was not my first joy. I was not even close to Being. I was stuck in my Feeling Center, where I thought I could hide because Doing was so hard. I also liked being in my Thinking Center, where I tried to figure it all out. The Feeling Center is oriented to the past, while Thinking turns toward the future. I preferred either to the present.

Slowly, slowly, I have awakened to the healthy aspects of Feeling, trading my stories and self-image for truthfulness and authenticity. In my Thinking Center, doubt relinquishes its hold as clarity grows. Waking up my Doing Center is a challenge. Kathleen Hurley calls it the “home of play and fun,” and it dawns on me that I have not played enough in this life.

I hope that as I continue my Enneagram study and am better able to integrate these Centers of Intelligence in healthy ways, I’ll learn to live more and more in the present. That’s where Being resides, here and now.