Holy Ideas
The Enneagram of Personality is a study of who we are NOT. The Enneagram of Holy Ideas is a study of who we ARE. In our next series of nine Enneagram Study Group sessions, we will delve into the Holy Ideas. The Holy Ideas are objective, non-dual qualities of Being. Loss of contact with the Holy Ideas leads to egoic fixations and concomitant suffering.
The Holy Ideas are the permanent unchanging qualities through which Being can be known. The essential nature of everybody and everything is this essence. However, it is often lost. When lost, the person tries to restore this contact through a dualistic egoic perspective where it cannot be found. This gives rise to the egoic fixations.
27 Subtypes
Combining the passion of the type with its expression through one of the natural instinctual drives (self-preservation, social, relational) provides a deeper and more complete understanding of the forces operating at our core, usually unconsciously. Beatrice Chestnut has been instrumental in bringing this aspect of the Enneagram into focus. This 9-week series will explore this important dimension which when not understood is often the source of mistyping and other confusions. During the course, special access is provided to Beatrice’s on-line subtype interviews, and the textbook is her seminal pamphlet: The Enneagram System’s 27 Personality Subtypes.
Illuminations & Liberation
Our experience of the Universe is a reflection of our consciousness. Operating by the Law of Mirroring (Attraction), what we pay attention to becomes manifest in our lives. The Enneagram speaks to our habits of attention and the reasons for them. Thus the Enneagram illuminates the causal layer of our experience and provides us with the most powerful tools to influence our experiences.
In our next series of nine MESG sessions, we would like to use the “experience near” approach which would be based on examples of our own personal struggles, challenges and growing edges. You might be thinking about the following questions:
What inner conflicts do you think get in your way?
And how could the Enneagram and this group help you achieve what you want?
With the support of the group, we each will look at, identify and explore one or more of our growth edges. As each person is an amalgamation of various internal Parts (or sub-personalities), it is the interrelationship of these parts that form the basis of our health or distress. To become whole, we must integrate our known self and our shadow, our accepted and our disowned parts. This work may be somewhat vulnerable and edgy for as C.G. Jung has said:
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
The Enneagram Study Group.