Scrambling Centers and the Significance for Trifix Order
by Sofie, Silicon Lifeform, and Alex
This article is marked the beginning of GOD’s center studies, but it is since outdated. For nostalgia we leave it here behind a secret door to revisit as archived.
The Scrambling of Centers (by Sofie)
Let’s take a look at our three centers - the instinctual, the emotional and intellectual ones. At this point you are aware (or get out immediately!) that your core type is rooted in one of these and your two other fixes operate in the style of their respective enneagrammatic number. What’s often overlooked when the trifix theory is implemented into our understanding of the E is the fact that even without considering fixes, our core type operates in all three centers simultaneously. Each Enneagram point scrambles another center with the dominant one and neglects the last center. All centers work together to keep our ego delusion going.
Our ego is a synergy of patterns from all three centers - the three triads represent the three dimensions of our being. According to Gurdjieff, few people have their centers working properly. For instance, we might tend to think with our feelings, to feel with our instincts, and to have little or no communication between our thinking and our instincts. Of course other scrambled combinations are also possible. Understanding how our core type uses a different center to support, but also distort the essential quality of our core, is a crucial part to understanding the depth of the Enneagram. We are not identified with our center, but with the distortion created through feeding it with another center. If we wouldn’t misuse our main center, we would show our true personality, a different one from the habitual patterns we understand as such.
We are not truly in our center. We are not fully feeling, thinking, in our bodies. We are doing something in between, feel-thinking, think-feeling, feel-doing, think-doing, etc. - this is the scrambling of centers, this is why trifix order is structurally predetermined for hexad types and irrelevant for primary types.
Hexad types are identified with the interplay of their first center and its interactions with the second. The third center can be understood as something similar to an instinctual blindspot - virgin territory, an undeveloped part of ourselves.
The primary types (3,6,9) are a special case, so I will address them first. The expression of their core center isn’t distorted like it is for hexad types (those need to work on integrating the neglected third center), but it is segregated or locked in, closed off from interacting with the other two. Primary types do prefer a cocktail of their non dominant centers, they do not fully neglect one of all three like hexads do. They are out of sync with the center they’re rooted in. Specifically, 3s need to learn to get in touch with their feelings, 6es need to learn to trust their own inner guidance and 9s need to learn how to assert themselves without fearing a loss of inner balance. Riso states that primary types can reach higher levels of health way faster than hexad types once they start working on their main center, as their recipe for inner work is confronting a center they already possess access to. Hexad types, however, need to integrate a severe blindspot, so progress for them may be slow and tedious.
So let’s look at the primary types and their disconnect from the center they represent.
Type 3
The emotions of 3s aren’t properly linked with their other two functions. Their center is boxed off and they’re replacing it with a mixup of gut and head. Therefore their personalities are trying to compensate for the loss of Essential Value. 3s are somewhat estranged from their feeling center, trying to regain a sense of value through doing and thinking. 3s either feel or function. This is how type 3 can shower you with the purest beam of undistorted heart energy (if they happen to be in contact with their center), but most of the time they are ‚heartless‘ and in functioning mode, mingling thoughts with actions, the recipe for them being super effective, professional and functional. Sometimes 3s gain access to their heart, which is when they feel deeply and authentically - but they cannot access head/gut in those moments, they cannot function. Functioning with feeling is their most important aim in inner work. Sadly, most 3s are not aware that their key to regaining essential value is to integrate their hearts. When they’re in feeling mode, they get the sense of not having value, so they try to escape their hearts quickly and go into function again.
Type 6
A 6’s main issue is the disconnect from their minds and inner guidance. Similar to how 3s try to find value through the eyes of another instead of themselves, they look outside for support and guidance. They also have two modes of functioning: Duty mode, a combination of feeling and doing, and thinking mode once they access their head’s full power and abilities. When they’re in duty mode, they are driven by feelings and actions justifying each other similar to 1s and 2s - the gut-feel scramble is what makes them superego or compliant types. They are active, service-oriented and responsible to all their shoulds. They have strong emotional reactions that they need to act upon because their thinking is decoupled - they lack discernment, objectivity and guidance to critically question their actions and emotions. When they are in thinking mode, however, they are the crown of the head center: They possess the ability to thoroughly solve puzzles and to entertain a variety of ideas. Since their head is boxed off from doing and feeling, their thinking is ungrounded. This causes them to not trust their brilliant minds, they can’t fully integrate their ideas into their lives and bring them to fulfilment. This is what causes them anxiety - and they outsource their inner guidance to others.
Silicon Lifeform came up with this illustrative metaphor for the issues of type 6:
This is like a commander with two soldiers lost behind enemy lines. The commander who is supposed to be leading the two soldiers back to security in their own base, has been separated from the two soldiers. Without them, there is nobody to act on his commands or anyone to care for so he turns inward ruminating. His thinking becomes disconnected from the squad, ungrounded. He endlessly pours over maps trying to locate them, entertaining endless different tactical approaches, alone and terrified of being captured by the enemy, immobilized.
The two soldiers together become a 'Doer-feeler' team. They don't have the information about how to get back to safety, but they are still soldiers and they are doing their best to act like it. Resembling type 1 or 2s, this pair are active making sure to pull their weight, keep moving, will help any of their comrades they meet, jump on grenades for them, highly responsible. As a doer feeling team, they must do their duty. But they have no perspective from a superior, no objectivity, no discernment, no wisdom. They are warm, devoted, dedicated & committed. But running around all over the place, scrambling, exhausted, desperate for a moments rest from the constant dangers of being behind enemy lines.
The two soldiers look for external sources to be their new commander, however they vet these sources based on their gut intuitive and emotional reaction to the person. They both have to like the person and already be in alignment with them, or they won't make them their commander.
These two soldiers without being reconnected with their commander, can only form irrational devotion to causes or people. Or form irrational emotional prejudices against other groups or individuals.
In unhealth, the two soldiers might find their commander who has gone mad with his theories completely separated from reality, convincing them they need to go further into danger together behind enemy lines. Possibly committing some violent acts based out of paranoia and burning hatred fueled by intense fear - delusional Vietnam drug fever dream holy mission If the commander and soldiers find each other at average levels, than they can successfully navigate back through a valley of anxiety to their base, the 6 finds their own inner guidance and support they were looking for inside themselves.
Type 9
9s have supremacy in intuition - but they’re cut off from it like all primary types. Like 3s and 6es they also have two functioning modes: Instinct mode or daydream mode, as Riso put it, a combination of thinking and feeling.
When they are in touch with their guts, 9s are usually engaged in activities that don’t require participation of their thoughts and emotions - they are on autopilot, following routines that their bodies perform without considering the other centers. This is how they’re disengaged from their true desires and opinions. When they are in daydream mode, they can see all possibilities and perspectives without themselves and the weight of their own autonomous being included. They are extremely creative, thoughtful and wise, but they lack the gut force to actualise their ideas into reality.
They are either comfortable and grounded, but uninterested, or created and insightful, but disengaged.
Silicon Lifeform’s brilliant metaphor for 9s is the following:
9s are like three friends trapped in a house. Two friends are in a room playing with endless unbounded, ungrounded VR fantasy worlds, out of touch with reality. Then there’s a third friend locked in a room going about their routine, doing real things but not anything substantial because he has no feelings or concepts to formulate new actions from - there aren’t decisions happening because there is no thinking and feeling. Just relaxed automation.
The two guys want to keep everything kinda like they are playing some endless world hopping virtual reality game, and so anything content they find disturbing rather than wonderful they would just move off of maybe? They don't want to be pulled out of their game to have to deal with any real shit, like two bff punks playing video games who never have the rent ready to pay on time.
Gut guy doesn’t have access to the thinking and feeling and so doesn’t want to be presented with some unforeseen shit that is impacting him and he has to make a decision about. This relates to 9s stubbornness (because there is no other option for this guy than to just do that). Because he is locked in, he cannot consult the other guys quickly for decision making - its like a prisoner who has to pass notes to the guard to get to the other guys (and them two guys don't see the urgency, because they are just floating in their cool stuff) which could explain why it takes a long time for 9s to make decisions, and why they don't like being rushed.
I think the house keeps getting fucked up with leaks, and mail piling up, and landlord knocking for rent and kitchen a total mess more and more, until the electricity gets cut or something and then the three of them suddenly burst out of their rooms and have a rare house meeting in the kitchen to get a bunch of shit done.
I think external people coming to visit the house can cause everyone to hang out together, the external person is acting as a temporary incomplete link between the three guys. But it doesn’t solve the issue fundamentally because they go back to them rooms when the person leaves.
Now we’ll be looking at hexad or secondary types which have a different problem of misusing their centers by distorting them.
Type 1
1s are drawing from emotions to support their instinctive center, stimulating their actions with feelings. This scrambling of emotional and instinctual energy is what causes them anger - it’s their frustration motivation. They can’t access their guts without bringing emotions into it - leading to them being disconnected from the gut center’s gifts of presence, flow and solidity. 1s cannot act without bringing strong feelings into it and they cannot feel without taking action. As competency types they perceive themselves as rational - the opposite of what they actually are. They are passionate and committed, but they neglect the thinking center’s guidance. Instead, they compensate with becoming their own ultimate guidance, replacing the thinking center by ‘do-feeling.’ Their ideas are often irrational and inflexible. They can deceive themselves by rationalising all of their actions and emotions without ever using thinking to objectively look at their gut impressions.
Like all superego types (including 6, the primary superego core), they are suppressing their head center. Their inner work goal is to work on integrating the essential quality of the neglected head center - the quiet mind. By thinking about their gut impulses with clarity, they can soften up and become more flexible.
Type 2
2s are using actions to support their emotions. However, their true qualities as heart types get distorted by their compulsion to demonstrate their feelings through actions - by doing shit for people, basically. 2s cannot separate feeling and doing, just like 1s and 6es. They try to compensate for their loss of essential value by baring their bountiful tits - they appear as the most feeling type because they constantly need to demonstrate their feelings through actions, wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
They don’t rely on their intellectual gifts as they’re too entangled in doing their feelings, just as 1s are too caught up in feeling their actions. Their inner work goal is to integrate the head center and become more conscious and resourceful about their emotions before spurting them into actions.
Type 4
4s have lost their essential value like all heart types, and by misusing the feeling center in scrambling it with their thoughts, they try to resolve this lack of identity. They think about their feelings and reactions, which causes them to have great awareness about the lack of the integrated gut center. They know what’s missing because they overanalyse their dominant center. 4s have built their identity around their narrow emotional range, so any experienced deficit in emotions is a threat to their whole identities. They compensate by artificially stimulating their emotions with thoughts, inflating them into something larger. 4s feel something and have no choice but to sustain and deepen this mood with thoughts, making it hard for them to let go of any moods, particularly negative ones (as those are more interesting to explore mentally). Like all withdrawn types, the gut has no say in a 4’s world. It is merely being used to support emotional cravings, which is why 4s are so dysfunctional, often self-destructive and likely to abuse substances. Their main goal for inner work is to integrate the lost gut in a healthy way and become self-actualising - when the life force gets added as a crucial catalyst ingredient to the heart-head cocktail.
Type 5
5s are identified with the thinking center, supporting their mind castles with emotions. To maintain the mental intensity needed for them to exist in the world, emotions are brought into the mind. This is how they compensate for the lost essential qualities of the thinking center (inner guidance).
Feelings add an emotional charge to the 5’s thoughts, making them more alive and real. This is how 5s are able to live parallel to reality (similar to 4s and 9s), because once you mix feelings with thoughts and neglect your life force, reality won’t feel real to you. Nothing in the outside compares to the richness of their inner worlds. 5s can develop themselves by learning to discriminate their thoughts from feelings - observing their thoughts rather than being over identified with them. They need to include the missing gut center and become more grounded in reality.
Type 7 (by Silicon Lifeform)
Type 7 is identified with the mental center. Meaning they are 'blocked into it' in their psychological patterns like 5s and 6s. They have a tendency to resist quite thoughtless mindfulness - cerebral silence. To overcompensate for this 7s use their gut center inappropriately to stimulate their thinking. 7s will become uncomfortable if their mental excitement and simulation quiets down and how they respond to this is to do something quickly. A perpetual short term future focus, while engaging in endless activities. Idea's must be actualized or actionable or have a momentum or novelty to them. Fomo soul, because they need to keep feeding their brains by thinking-doing. This ends up distorting their gut center since they are usually not somatically in tune with whatever they are currently doing - they are **instead focused on the thoughts this creates** or anticipation. Since 7s are blind to their heart center, they end up paying less attention to this part of themselves. As much as they don't dwell in their bodies long, they dwell in their heart even less. They end up associating high levels of excitement with emotions, happiness and wellbeing. They avoid negative emotions, especially those that require you to slow down and process by rolling around in the emotional mud - unless they can transmute them into more excitation. They get out of touch with their heart - and because of this can't properly access what they really want and so end up being like a wind up clockwork robot toy that just keeps going and going endlessly searching for the next exciting thing. They end up inappropriately 'doing' their heart center through their doer-thinker center mix: life as an all you can eat buffet; but the restaurant is closing soon so they are anxiously trying all the dishes, and none of them are quite satisfying them. Because they have not taken the time to consider which one they really want.
Type 8
Overidentified with the gut center, 8s are doing first, thinking later. Their tender hearts get no say in it, as they are cut off from the nurturing function and emotional wetness in themselves. 8s constantly strategize their being - like all assertive types (3,7,8) they are heart suppressed, mixing gut and head. Neither their instinctive nor their thinking center is fully free to bring in its pure essence - the thinking is not providing guidance, but rationalising actions after having taken them. The gut center is overdone, making 8s into the most intensely alive types. 8s need to integrate their lost hearts and get in touch with their emotions to develop themselves.
Trifix Order (by Alex)
Obligatory Oh My GoD What In Fuck Do This Mean???
This proposed trifix order theory, therefore, has no typological implications on its own–that is, the order says nothing apart from the foundational scrambled-center nature of each type. A 4 with 5 and 9 fixes being written out as “459” doesn’t mean that the 4 is “more 5ish” or “less 9ish” – because there is no such thing as a 495. There is no head-last, gut-second 4, because it renders the foundational work of the scrambling of the centers (which we deem as not only fundamental to the type, but also incredibly deep and insightful for understanding the Hornevian triad in particular) irrelevant and insubstantial.
Rather, trifix ordering in written/spoken language is for clearer visualization of the structural truths that already exist within the type itself. The fixation in each center specifies what style of fuckery will be used by the dominant type according to that structure. For example, our 4 with 5 and 9 fixes will (mis)use the 5 fixation in the head center to feed its 4ish heart, and will have a blocked/warped relationship with the 9 fixation in the gut.
Think of “trifix order rules” as “grammar rules” (or commandments uttered from a burning bush, if you prefer) for the language that already exists in real, embodied life. They are descriptive rather than prescriptive. All that they “set” is the specific numbers-with-wings FOR that head center, gut center, heart center - NOT the order in which they appear. That part should be knowable before writing it out, solely by identifying the core type.
Obligatory Recap:
Type 3, 6, 9 - the order is irrelevant outside of the core type, so ascending/descending order or impressionistic/aesthetic order or however might be most pleasing to your pretty little eye.
So, a core 9 with 4 and 5 fixes might write out their type as “954.” They might write “945.” Are those different? Currently, I do not think so. It is possible that there is some deeper Enneagram insight which gives prescriptive trifix order for attachment types, and I eagerly await discovering it–but I haven’t found it yet, and am not convinced by “but they SEEM more 4ish / 5ish!”. I personally like envisioning it in my head as some bizarre “9|⅘” to envision 9’s two modes of “doing” vs “thinking/feeling,” but our unfortunate flawed human language necessitates that numbers be written in an order, and for that order to have to “mean” something to our atrocious little goblin brains. It’s descriptive, though, and once that center-scramble clicks real good, it’s something that you can understand despite formatting differences.
Type 1 is structurally head-last. The order will always be gut-heart-head.
e.g. 145, 136, 127
Type 2 is structurally head-last. The order will always be heart-gut-head.
e.g. 286, 295, 217
Type 4 is structurally gut-last. The order will always be heart-head-gut.
e.g. 459, 461, 478
Type 5 is structurally gut-last. The order will always be head-heart-gut.
e.g. 539, 541, 528
Type 7 is structurally heart-last. The order will always be head-gut-heart.
e.g. 792, 783, 714
Type 8 is structurally heart-last. The order will always be gut-head-heart.
e.g. 852, 874, 863
Obligatory “But I am feel uncomfortable!!!11!!!!1!!!” Handholding Session
“But this eliminates valuable tiny details to distinguish between types!”
Yes, it eliminates tiny details. Whether they are valuable or even distinguishing is up for debate. The problem with prescriptive trifix order is it muddies the understanding of a type on its own.
To contrast, think of other aesthetic details like instinct zones and overlay, (which I like), stack ranges and subwings, (which I don’t personally care about, but don’t mind)--all of these have their basis in aesthetic observations, and exist primarily to give nuance to a type–but they don’t compromise the structural integrity of the types and instincts themselves in order to do so. You can “take them or leave them.” They are interior design, detail work, and can be very rich and illuminating–but they aren’t tearing up ancient floorboards, knocking down the bricks of the Enneagram’s symbolic beauty with a battering ram in order to rebuild a block of ugly pastel copy-paste apartments for people to numbly grin within.
However, a prescriptive trifix order, especially on a hexad type, actually disrupts the core type in a way that threatens the entire foundation of type.
“But my 269 mother and my 296 stepmother are OBVIOUSLY DIFFERENT TRIFIX ORDERS!”
Fine. Imagine you type someone 269 (Person A) and another person 296 (Person B). Let’s say your reasoning is: “A feels more reactive, more frenetic energy, more ‘awake.’ They also feel more superego-y than B. B feels quieter, sleepier, and more withdrawn. B is more positive and fantastical than A, and not very reactive.”
Okay. Those are all valid impressions and it’s entirely possible the people are putting off energy that could be described as such. But what is a typing of 269 vs 296 saying about core 2? Core 2, by itself, which is structurally built upon using gut actions as a direct support for the heart, and being blocked from / misusing the head center?
My resolution is this: in hexad types, if our trifix theory states that the second fix is a strong supporting influence that directly feeds into the goals and neuroses of the core type, that fix must be located in the relevant supporting center, according to the core type’s center-scrambled makeup. It does not make sense for a 2 to be “gut-last.” (It certainly does not make sense for a 4 or 5 to NOT be “gut-last.”) It renders structural truths about the type on its own irrelevant–in the case of 2, for example, that makes 2 being a hexad superego type irrelevant. The very definition of superego is a gut/heart scramble and a disconnect, block, or misuse of the head center - because, on the symbol, 1 and 2 have “shot out” away from 6 on their own. 1 and 2 are a heart-fed gut and a gut-fed heart, and the inner work for them is to reconcile with their estranged head center’s quiet mind and inner guidance and then to tackle the gut/heart scramble. 6 alternates specifically between “thinking” and “doing/feeling” modes, and needs to reconnect all three in order to grow. If a “269” trifix order is meant to structurally convey ANYTHING other than vague/loose aesthetics, a head-second 2 simply does not work. (And if all it wants to convey is vague/loose aesthetics, then thanks, but no thanks, for me personally–it can go in my “boring/unnecessary” bin alongside stack ranges and subwings.)
“But what about the aesthetic differences between Person A and Person B?”
I don’t believe that 296 is automatically “more 9ish than 6ish.” I believe that the 9 is being used in a particular supporting way to enhance the 2’s ego agenda, and the 6 is the warped headish fallback. Both the 9 and the 6 are visible and are being misused. A center/fix being “last” doesn’t mean it is less visible, less important, less clearly experienced by the self or others. And I also think that variety exists even in exact type twins, due to upbringing, culture, lived experience, language, mental and physical capabilities or disorders, education, location, religion, how you self-type, whether you like cats or whether you are a dirty sinner, and simply being ~different people~ (People are different?! Oh no! No hexy for you!)
“But I wanted to be a rare heart-second gut type special special boy…”
You are. You are a very, very special boy.
“But 1s are supposed to care about tiny details and dishwashers and perfectly symmetrical rooster-shaped hedge trimmings and……….”
I completely understand the urge to painstakingly differentiate in minute aesthetic detail–in fact the extent to which I understand it makes you a shapeless little blob in comparison–but now that I have seen the risk to the structural integrity of the type, and how much richer and deeper my understanding of both type and trifix have become since diving into this–I regret to announce that we must loosen our deathgrip on prescriptive trifix order.
“But…”
Class dismissed. Goodbye, special boy. GAEB has shown mercy on you… this time.
Obligatory goodbye head center, hello impressionistic bad hexy gut vibes:
I like to imagine the Enneagram as a dark underworld sludge (rather than a blank spacious emptiness as the symbol might at first glance call to mind)--where the lines are not solid paths built in space, but rarther like claustrophobic tunnels forged through solid material. This more clearly expresses the prison of type as well as the habitual patterns we keep retracing again and again. Not only can this metaphor apply to the regular lines along the Enneagram, but we can imagine trifix as necessarily having had to “forge towards” the other two centers when it started its existence in the core type. Like tunneling through grime or heavy snow, it is inevitable that some trails are worn down more easily, and others remain quite the harrowing trek. The primary types might find themselves circling aimlessly around and around, able to visit and figure-eight for while within the two other centers, but unable to carry both back to the core center–nor carry the core center to the other two–like some fucked-up version of the wolf-goat-cabbage problem. The secondary types, on the other hand, will have one very strongly well-worn path at the neglect of others. For 1s and 2s, the gut-heart path (a fiery slope, a mindless parade of pure expressive ideals, elf-warriors moving together in beautiful raiment and holy solemn choir); for 4s and 5s, the heart-head path (the realm of Hades, lightless, limbless, crawling along pondering sliming mushroom-things and mining the deep arkenstones like shivering nematodes); and for 7s and 8s, the head-gut path (a trail through stony hills of a thousand possibilities, where everything can be kicked up or tossed about, canyon-echoed volume, thunderclap footfalls crushing all small soft things). Each hexad pair avoids treading their unwalked paths except to further misuse them, dancing off the trail or wreaking havoc along the way.
