Most people find the descriptions of the levels of development (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/levels-of-development/) confusing and struggle to find guidance on how to become more integrated, so I've created this to help. It's a combination of what I've learned about the integration path from personal experience and lessons from multiple authors. I hope that noticing it helps you, as it has helped me.
I'm talking about:
https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/levels-of-development/
I know, the book description is quite confusing and you may end up frustrated and with no clue on how to proceed. But believe me, it matters, a lot!
Your personality is basically an unbalanced priority you give to something. At a very early age - babyhood age, you've ended up believing that you would need to do or behave in a certain way to be able to achieve your needs. In a moment in which your perception of doing what you want and what your body forces you to do (needs) are very intertwined. Eventually this becomes your fixation. And the problem is that because this fixation have an existential priority at your life, it basically overrides almost everything else.
And because the priority is unbalanced, you keep focusing on it even when you should be focusing on other things. In unhealthy levels, in order to achieve these fixations you may end up with some psychological deficiency like self-delusion, self-deception, narcisist/sociopathic disorders, addiction, schizophrenia, negation of reality, paranoia, maniac disorders, among others. Something in you made you believe that you wouldn't be able to achieve the fixation and your brain has started to fool itself to negate reality, or has decided to fool others.
At intermediate levels, this fixation becomes an obsession. That it would solve all your problems. If one fixation is achieved, a bigger one is created. Because the fixation is the symptom, not the root cause. Types 3 become obsessed with status/image/achievements (depending on the subtype), fours in being unique, developing their unique talents, 8s in controlling everything and everyone, etc.
If you stay true to yourself instead of trying to hide your uncertainties in noise, drugs, obsessions. If you can face your demons (the more regrets you have the harder will be), focus on self-knowledge (therapy and meditation can help), you end up gradually refining your fixations and if you dig deep enough, you may realize that the biggest fear behind them it's not really true. (Check your enneagram type biggest fear to know which one)
This is when you enter the healthy levels. You start damaging less your health, your relationships and those who you love in favor of that old obsession. You still use the old strategies, but now they're more effective.
Then you start using more strategies from other types, up to a point you may end up changing some old goals and even changing (not giving up) some dreams. You realize they were based on wrong foundations and naturally they lose their strength. You see that they wouldn't bring what you wanted anyway. But curiously, you end achieving what you've wanted with these goals and dreams, even without them. All by looking inside. This sets you free to have more healthy goals, relationships, work-life balance, etc
Finally, on level one, you end up realizing that the 'cake is a lie', that even though your talents and motivations are important, they're way less relevant than you forced yourself to believe they were. And that you need to prioritize them way less than you thought. And surprisingly, you see that your ego is holding your last chain. You've learned to understand how bad these chains are for you, and how meaningless they really are. And if you have enough self knowledge, you'll see that once you let the ego go, the chain goes with it, and you're finally free. This is what literature calls 'ego death', and there is a whole journey after it, but then it's not about enneagram anymore.
I know the answers aren't always clear, but my hope is that knowing that is something important you may insist in pursuing it.