Levels of

Alignment
YOU R G U I D E FOR L EV EL 5
Levels of Alignment
The Levels of Alignment (Aligned,
Misaligned, and Out of Alignment) will help
you determine how your heart is doing at
any given moment of the day.
Here is an example of each Type to help
you imagine a life perfectly aligned with
God in the Garden.
Type 1 - Surrounded by God’s goodness and
truth, you are free from the responsibility of
making things right. You participle with God
in stewarding His perfect Creation.
Type 2 - Filled by God’s overflowing love,
you are free to care for yourself and others
without strings attached. You participate
with God to nurture and tend to His
Creation.
Type 3 - Surrounded by God’s love and
great achievements, you are free to be your
authentic self. You participate with God to
reveal the glory of His Creation.
Type 4 - Seeing your significance through
the eyes of your Creator, your feelings are
grounded and balanced. You participate
with God to bring creativity and beauty
to His Creation.
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Type 5 - Surrounded by God’s wisdom,
resources, and generosity, you are free to
engage in life, not just observe it. You
participate with God to bring great insight
and knowledge to His Creation.
Type 6 - Resting in God’s guidance and
protection, you feel inner calm and
self-confidence. You participate with
God to foster loyalty and courage in His
Creation.
Type 7 - Filled with the satisfaction
that comes from God’s presence, you
experience groundedness and gratitude in
each moment. You participate with God to
bring joy to His Creation.
Type 8 - Resting in God’s protection,
you are free to be vulnerable and
openhearted. You participate with God to
bring compassion and confidence to His
Creation.
Type 9 - Seeing that your presence
matters to God, you live out your calling
and engage with life fully. You participate
with God to bring peace and unity to His
Creation.
To be misaligned is to believe that you must
take some control of your life and live in your
own strength. This is your auto-pilot response
and how you behave when you operate from an
average level of health.
Type 1
When you are misaligned with the truth of the
Gospel, you struggle to trust in the Lord’s timing
and become more judgmental, reactive, opinionat-
ed, irritated, and resentful. You are rigid in proce-
dures to ensure accuracy or perfection to appease
your Inner Critic, who is never satisfied. You will
convey this through both your body language and
words.
Type 2
When you are misaligned with the truth of the
Gospel, you need to be highly involved with
others. You begin to read people, searching for
those who are in need. You start to communicate
through flattery, giving, and being affectionate so
that others will provide you with praise, affirma-
tion, and gratitude. If you do not get the apprecia-
tion you seek, you can become aggressive, hover,
and intrude on other people’s lives with unsolicited
help.
Type 3
When you are misaligned with the Gospel, you
become highly concerned with your image and
performance. You do your job well and continually
drive yourself to achieve goals as if your self-worth
depends on it. You are terrified of failure and
compare yourself with others as you search for
status and recognition. You shape-shift to the ex-
pectations of others and know what is required to
be and appear successful. You are pragmatic and
efficient but have lost touch with your feelings.
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And then there are times when you completely
forget that you are God’s beloved child. In this
unhealthy state of mind, you are out of align-
ment with the truth and believe you are alone
and an orphan who has to do it all on your own.
When you are out of alignment with the
Gospel, you allow your Inner Critic to control
you. You become intolerant, explosive, sharp,
critical, punishing, judgmental, nit-picky, and
inflexible, all in hopes of making things “right.”
Mistakes and imperfections are glaring at you,
and the Inner Critic is excruciatingly loud.
When out of alignment, you control others by
manipulating, shaming, and being a martyr/
victim to get what you want. You are blind to
your unhealthy strategies, believing that you
are helpful, selfless, and a giving person. This
inhibits you from listening to how you have
hurt or intruded on others and further isolates
you from the relationships and affirmation
you desperately seek.
When you are out of alignment, your fear of
failure and humiliation leads you to become
exploitative and opportunistic. You are jeal-
ous of the success of others and are willing to
do whatever it takes to preserve the illusion
of your superiority. To avoid being exposed
for wrongdoing or mistakes, you become
devious and deceptive. You are now untrust-
worthy, malicious, delusional, and sabotage
people to triumph over them.
Type 4
When you are misaligned with the Gospel, you
start to believe your passionate feelings and
imagination is reality. You desire to stay in touch
with your emotions, so you internalize everything
and take things very personally. This leads you
to be self-absorbed, moody, hypersensitive, shy,
and self-conscious. You withdraw to protect your
self-image and sort out your feelings. You believe
you are different from others and exempt from
living as everyone else does. Self-pity and envy of
others lead you to self-indulgence. You become
increasingly impractical and unproductive.
Type 5
When you are misaligned with the Gospel, you are
remote, quiet, and withdrawn. You live mainly in
your head and observe the world from a cerebral,
outsider stance. You are objective, calm, and ana-
lyze the facts. You do not like surprises, intrusions,
and too many emotions. You will detach from your
feelings and others if you are uncomfortable or
overwhelmed. You minimize your needs and guard
your inner resources by withdrawing and needing
a lot of privacy.
Type 6
When you are misaligned with the
Gospel, you become overly busy, thinking that you
must always be responsible, which can cause you
to be reactive and short-tempered. You are highly
perceptive and think through the many possible
outcomes. This can lead you to worry and have
self-doubt and insecurity. You can become suspi-
cious and anxious about other people’s motives,
fearing harm or abandonment. You can also be-
come wary of authority and
vacillate between trusting and not trusting
authority figures.
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When you are out of alignment, you start
to see that your dreams are failing, so you
become self-inhibiting, angry at yourself, and
depressed. You alienate yourself and feel
emotionally paralyzed. This leads to personal
shame, fatigue, and an inability to function.
Tormented by your delusional self-contempt,
guilt, self-hatred, and morbid thoughts,
everything becomes a source of torment to
you. You blame others and drive away anyone
who tries to help.
When out of alignment, you become fright-
ened that your inner resources will deplete to
the point of annihilation. You withdraw and
become isolated and hostile towards others
who invade your rigid boundaries. You may
even become suspicious of others and begin
plotting ways to harm them. You can become
secretive, explosive, and relationally awk-
ward. You have a hard time accessing emo-
tions when your mind is overactive and out of
control.
When you’re out of alignment, you become
extremely anxious, and your mind is always
spinning with worst-case scenarios about
being hurt or in danger. You project negative
motivations on others, which causes distance
and feelings of abandonment, which only
exacerbates your fears. You become para-
noid, panicky, and judgmental of others based
on your thinking, leading you to reject even
the best advice. Suspicious of everyone, you
isolate more, which keeps you in an unhealthy
pattern of relating to the world.
Type 7
When you are misaligned with the Gospel, you
avoid any pain, sadness, or disappointment. You
create new and exciting experiences to avoid
feelings of discomfort. You are a master at refram-
ing anything negative, and you convince yourself
and others of silver linings. This strategy keeps you
from living in the present reality and dealing with
the situation at hand. You find it difficult to focus
on projects, commit to relationships, and finish
tasks. When others address these struggles, you
tend to escape into more exciting and fun experi-
ences to avoid feeling trapped in emotional pain
or negativity, which only feeds and intensifies the
problem.
Type 8
When you are misaligned with the Gospel, you try
to manage your anger and frustration but can end
up being controlling, authoritarian, and aggressive.
You expect immediate responses from others and
quick action. You can be highly impatient with
others who are slower than you. You have strong
opinions and will share them without being asked.
Type 9
When you are misaligned with the Gospel, you
strongly need and desire peace and harmony in all
your relationships, so you begin to accommodate
and people-please, disregarding yourself in the
process. You become anxious if a conflict is direct-
ed toward you and withdraw completely. You can
lose focus and live life as if you are in a thick fog.
You don’t know what you want or how to ask for
it, so you go along to get along.
© 2021 Your Enneagram Coach
When you are out of alignment, your entire
focus is on avoiding anything that causes
you pain or boredom. You cannot tolerate
restrictions or limitations placed on you, so
you find ways to escape them. You might take
more risks, become reckless, or develop an
addiction. You also feel that others are inhib-
iting you from a life of joy and happiness. You
fail to see that your discontentment stems
from your insatiable appetite that cannot be
quenched with earthly pleasures.
When you are out of alignment, you become
direct in a very hurtful and cruel way. You
do not hold back your anger and engage in
punishing destructive behaviors. You be-
lieve you must attack those who you believe
harmed you. You will not open up and reveal
any vulnerability or weakness. You become
explosive with your anger and dominate your
relationships.
When you are out of alignment, you forget
yourself completely and only focus on others’
agendas and desires. You trick yourself into
believing everything is okay when it isn’t. You
become physically lazy and unmotivated. You
can be passive-aggressive and, on rare occa-
sions, burst into a fury of anger that has been
buried and building for a long time.
 We all experience living misaligned or out of alignment with
God’s truth and suffer the unfortunate consequences that come
from it. But we always remain God’s beloved children.

By allowing time in your day for rest and reflection, you can get
back on the right path and align yourself with God’s truth. Here
is how your Type interacts with a fallen world when aligned with
the truth of the Gospel:

Type 1
When you are aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you under-
stand that your Inner Critic doesn’t have power over you. You
put your trust in God’s truth instead. You believe that there is no
more condemnation and that you have been set free in Christ.
This allows you to be more accepting, noble, and respectful.
Trusting that God has everything in control, you can be patient
for Him to make things right, which frees you from feeling you
have to police and judge everything. You trust that God is sover-
eign and is working all things for His good and glory. You get to
participate but are not solely responsible for perfecting things.
God is in control.

Type 2
When you are aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you can
recognize your feelings and needs and communicate them di-
rectly to others without shame or fear of rejection. This allows
you to practice and enjoy self-care and healthy boundaries. You
give love, support, and care to others without having strings
attached. You participate with God to care for others because of
the overflow of love you receive from Him.

Type 3
When you are aligned with the truth of the gospel, you can be
your authentic self without fear. You are loved because of who
you are in Christ, and His achievement is now your achievement.
Because you no longer need to perform to earn love and admi-
ration, you are more self-accepting, gentle, authentic, and allow
your emotions to emerge. By knowing your value in Christ, you
can have healthy self-esteem and participate with God to im-
prove yourself, others, and the world.

© 2021 Your Enneagram Coach

 Type 4
When you are aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you are
profoundly creative, expressing yourself with balanced emotions.
You become deeply inspired and self-renewing. Your feelings
are grounded, enabling you to transform all your experiences
into something beautiful and valuable. You see your significance
through the eyes of your Creator, which renews your soul, allow-
ing you to be true to yourself, self-revealing, emotionally honest,
and humane. You participate with God to bring vulnerability and
beauty to the world.

Type 5
When you are aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you can
experience and express your feelings in the moment. You are ac-
tively engaging with life rather than merely observing it. You be-
come more spontaneous, imaginative, and joyful. You go beyond
the cerebral to engage with the fullness of life with enthusiasm
for experiences, ideas, and emotions. You participate with God
to share wisdom and insights that bless others.

Type 6
When you’re aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you can rest
in the fact that you are safe, secure, and guided by Christ. You
begin to recognize when you are directed by the Holy Spirit and
move forward more courageously and confidently. You no longer
need or look for the same level of guidance and support from
others. You have more of an inner calm, which in turn allows you
to connect more deeply with others and not be as suspicious.
You participate with God to bring courage and resilience to the
world.

© 2021 Your Enneagram Coach

 Type 7
When you are aligned with the Gospel, you know the joy and
satisfaction you long for will not come from exciting experiences
and constant stimulation. It comes from being in the presence of
God, who fills you up with real, radiant joy. You delight in simple
wonders and savor your blessings. When you are resting in this
deeply gratifying place, you can address the painful realities that
come with living on earth because you know that the story ends
in triumph. You participate with God to bring playfulness, fun,
and creativity to the world.

Type 8
When you are aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you trust
that God will not betray you and will always protect you. This
allows you to be more vulnerable and openhearted. You are still
direct and honest but from a softer stance. You’re more encour-
aging and open to others’ opinions. You are compassionate,
protective, warm, and confident in your abilities. You participate
with God to plow a path for others.

Type 9
When you are aligned with the truth of the Gospel, you know
and feel that your presence matters to God. You wake up and
live out your full calling with confidence and strength. You re-
alize that healthy conflict can be an effective way to grow and
enhance relationships. You become involved, engaged, and alert,
but with a peaceful and serene presence. You participate with
God to bring the world deeper grace and peace.

Remember, Christ has already secured for you a place with

Him, and you no longer need to fear or strive for love and
acceptance. You are loved and accepted based solely on the
finished work of Christ on your behalf. All you ever needed
and longed for is yours right now.

© 2021 Your Enneagram Coach

Reflection Questions
Video 1
Think about your day, or if you’re completing this early in the morning, think about yesterday. How did you feel
when you woke up? Did that feeling change? What circumstances led to this change? (Sometimes the circum-
stance is a significant life event, and other times, it’s something small like your morning coffee.)

Think back to your childhood. What were you passionate about? What activities did you enjoy? How does this
reveal your Type and the unique gifts God has given you? In what ways are you using those gifts today?

As you go through the week, write down the times you feel most fulfilled and inspired and when you are most
frustrated or exhausted.

Video 2
Now that you know your Type’s misaligned and out-of-alignment tendencies write down the behaviors that ring
most true for you. What circumstances cause you to react in this way? Perhaps it’s a difficult relationship, a pet-
peeve, or a false belief about yourself or God.

Did hearing your Type’s misaligned and out of alignment behaviors make you feel exposed and vulnerable? Did
you feel shame? Or perhaps you felt seen, and you’re hopeful and ready to discover a way back into alignment
with God’s truth. There are no right answers here.

This week, continue to be curious about yourself. When you’re feeling off or discouraged, note how your feelings
and actions relate to your Type’s Levels of Alignment. Are you noticing more patterns? Are you living aligned or
misaligned with God’s truth?

© 2021 Your Enneagram Coach

Video 3
What activities or locations help you rest and reflect? Is there a particular time of day when you are less distracted?

Can you think of a specific time or event when you knew, believed, and trusted in your full identity in Christ, and
responded to life’s circumstances from a healthy perspective, blessing yourself, others, or your calling?

Do you have a trusted person who can help point out the areas where you are misaligned or out of alignment
with God’s truth?

Video 4
Now that you know the three levels of alignment for your Type—Aligned, Misaligned, and Out of Alignment—are
you more aware of the tension of living in a world that is redeemed by Christ but not fully restored? Where do
you feel that tension most?

In Level 5, did you discover something about your heart’s condition that was surprising? How can you use this
new knowledge to help you through a current, difficult situation?

Knowing that you are already safe and secure in your identity and relationship with Jesus, does this change how
you speak to yourself and others? This week, pick someone in your life and be intentionally curious about them.
What were the results? Did your feelings toward them change at all?

Congratulations on completing Level 5!

We’re so excited you’re on this journey. Each month we’ll add new layers to your Enneagram knowledge, and in Level
6, we’ll introduce a BRAND NEW Enneagram concept we’ve developed called the Enneagram Internal Profile (EIP).
© 2021 Your Enneagram Coach