Enneagram Work:

The Enneagram of Personality Types is a doorway into inner work. It examines how and why we often lose the clarity of the present moment and the connection to our ground of being. It looks at how we forget ourselves by reliving memories, anticipating the future, engaging in imaginary conversations and playing out emotional reaction patterns, all of which has very little to do with what is actually going on.

The Enneagram is the study of where our attention tends to go by habit. It helps us see what we believe about ourselves and the world, how we project our beliefs and how that disconnects us from the reality of the moment. Examples are how we can get caught up in ego projects of living up to an idea of who we believe we are supposed to be (someone more helpful, successful, spiritual, perfect...), how we try to find guidance and safety in concepts and how we defend our ego boundaries against intrusion.

These are different traps of ego identification we can fall into. In this way the Enneagram illuminates what is usually invisible to us. Our personalities are structured with the purpose of keeping us distracted and away from pain and fear, hence the Enneagram is of tremendous help if we want to discover what has been hidden.

Every personality type is a stand-in for the Essence qualities of that type that one has lost touch with. It is a substitute and therefore hollow. Hence, when we identify with personality, we feel shame about our deficiencies and sense an inner emptiness. We fear being exposed. We also lose access to our inner knowing which leaves us in fear of the unknown and unsure about decisions. We feel separate, cut off from the ground of being and all alone. We are unaware of the treasures that are always present.

To begin the process of uncovering our ego defenses, we examine how each Enneagram type has a basic fear it is running from and a basic desire it is running toward, a negative self-image it is trying to cover up and an ideal self-image it is trying to uphold. There is a particular cognitive error, a distorted lens the type perceives the world through. This is balanced by a "saving grace", an area of clarity within the personality structure. Furthermore, each type has a "fixation", a mental pattern that is repeated over and over as well as a "passion", an emotional reaction, a particular default reaction to life. When, through thorough self-examination, the lost Essence quality of the type is experienced again, a particular "virtue" develops naturally.

We look at the movement within the Enneagram: along the arrows, towards integration for each type and against the arrows, towards disintegration for each type. We explore what is needed to undo one’s main Enneagram type and what is required to undo the entire ego structure altogether.

We examine the 9 vertical levels of development for each type.

We also explore the three instinctual drives we all share (self-preservation, social and sexual) and how they play out through the passion of each Enneagram type.