Helen Palmer Russ Hudson Jessica Dibb – Spiritual Evolution Through the Enneagram

The nine types are doorways to deeper aspects of the self. While many systems provide instruction for the inner journey, the specificity of the insights provided by the Enneagram allow you to customize a program of inner work.

The three essential aspects of this inner work using the Enneagram are cultivation of presence, cultivation of inner guidance, and cultivation of consistent experiential practices.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The original sense and meaning of the Enneagram work
• The fundamentals of basic presence — what it is and is not
• The relationship between deeper presence and your egoic patterns
• The necessity of observing your type pattern in real time
• Recognizing inner guidance — what it is and is not
• Core practices for spiritual growth and your daily life
• Beliefs and assumptions you may have about “inner work”

One of the primary reasons we can have personal realizations or spiritual experiences that then don’t seem to integrate into life is because we have many patterns of contracting against life force and leaving presence.

If we’re not present, everything is a mirage, a pseudo-experience, or even a delusion. Supposed breakthroughs are actually unembodied trances. The Enneagram describes brilliantly the precise qualities of presence for each type, helping us recognize the ways we’ve contracted from the life force.

Each Enneagram type is primarily associated with one of the 3 Centers (body, heart and head). When we have a felt sense of being here, we contact somatic intelligence. When we sense that it’s okay for us to feel what we feel, and let our hearts experience what they experience, we contact emotional intelligence.

And when we experience cognitive intelligence and awareness through our “true mind,” it enhances our inner guidance and our sense of new possibilities.

And when all 3 Centers are awake and working coherently, we are at our most whole. Alone, each of the 3 Centers can give us access to wisdom, love and presence. In balance and combined, the 3 Centers create an unshakable presence.

In this module, you’ll explore how:

• The body center (somatic intelligence) is comprised of millions of sensations, which light up our neural pathways — informing, energizing and nourishing our perceptions of reality and our capacities
• The heart center (emotional intelligence) connects us with a greater intimacy with life and others and a field of relatedness to all things
• The head center (cognitive awareness) is our capacity to see, perceive and recognize reality clearly, rather than through delusion — opening to our “true mind” and inner guidance
• How you can awaken, build and express your gifts by doing inner work with the instinctual drives
• The awakened self-preservation instinct — the path from the drive to survive to the commitments to self-care and caring for the planet
• Blind spots and inertia of the self-preservation instinct
• The awakened sexual instinct — the path from the drive to merge and assimilate to developing unimpeded attunement and dedication to what really matters and what generates emergence
• Blind spots and resistance of the sexual instinct
• The awakened social instinct — the path from the drive to be protected and belong to the developing stewardship and responsiveness to ALL
• Blind spots and distortions of the social instinct

In its original presentation, the Enneagram was not primarily a system of type — more precisely, it did not say that type was a person’s identity. Rather, the type aspect of the Enneagram teachings came from the Desert Fathers of Egypt — the first Christian contemplatives — as a means to look at the forms of suffering that distracted monks from their prayer and meditation.

These teachings were a study of how we lose sight of the Divine. Yet, they also look at how human suffering is transformed by presence and grace into what came to be called the Virtues — the qualities of the awakened heart.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The specific relationship between the heart’s suffering and qualities of presence and grace
• How working with each Enneagram point is a study of a particular state of “heart presence”
• The alchemy of restored presence as the process that begins to turn the heart towards its true source — its “Beloved”
• Each of the 9 points’ specific journey of the heart
• The “alchemical gold” of inner work — the results of cultivating our true inner life
• How the Virtues reflect the qualities of a real teacher — the signs of someone who has actually been on the authentic journey of awakening
• The 9 Virtues as doorways to another kind of human community — the alternative to fear as an organizing principle

You are more than your patterns. When you learn to be present with your head center, a peaceful spaciousness opens up, giving you more freedom from which you can actually shift more behaviors. The inner chatter boxes and dull states of consciousness can awaken the bright, beautiful qualities of direct knowing.

These qualities are referred to as the Holy Ideas, nine perspectives or vantage points of nondual awareness or of the Higher Intellectual Center, George Gurdjieff’s term for the Illumined Mind. The Holy Ideas aren’t to be strived for; nor is their a finish line in this process.

Yet, as you bring more presence to the habitual patterns of your thoughts and perceptions, alternative views of reality can empower you to open to a much broader range of understanding and response, softening rigid ego patterns, without rejecting them.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The Holy Ideas — what they are and what they are not
• How these deeper states of consciousness or nondual awareness relate to your usual mind and mental patterns, described in Enneagram teachings as the Fixation
• Insights and practices to help you transform chatter and dullness, to an ability to truly think, be internally quiet and know directly and spontaneously
• The Holy Idea of each of the 9 points
• The Law of Three which you discern ordinary knowing from growing awareness of the deeper qualities of Mind

Making Changes That Last: Part 1

A whole person is one who has walked with God and wrestled with the devil. — Jung

Many seekers, therapists and spiritual teachers acknowledge frustration about having realizations, followed by seemingly uncontrollable unconscious ego fixations and patterns co-opting the breakthroughs.

Additionally, many people feel unable to sustain true presence and deep, relaxed creative flow in very difficult life situations or when relating or working with others. Every type has different patterns for avoiding presence, withdrawing from full embodiment, and even coopting our gifts and breakthroughs to fuel our defensive behaviors and compensation strategies.

These challenges can be transformed by using the Enneagram to create multidimensional depth practices that help you awaken, heal and transform.

Experiential processes support your capacity for sustained presence and innovative collaboration. When you only understand something conceptually, it doesn’t transform the heart of your existence.

In this module and later, and later in the eighth module, you’ll build upon recognitions that come from the Enneagram and turn them into embodied truth, love and grace in your life.

For this to occur, specific experiential practices will bring your attention to all three major centers — body, heart and head — and to all nine types with their corresponding contractions and gifts.

Through inner inquiry, breath practices, meditations, shadow work, movement, writing, self-expression, poetry, journaling, dream work and more, you’ll use the Enneagram as a tool for addressing and transcending the central challenges on your path of personal growth and spiritual evolution.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• How to catalyze cognitive, emotional and physiological shifts to ensure that moments of expanded awareness and transformation lead to lasting change
• The dynamism of each point’s contractions and evolution (the arrows on the Enneagram diagram)
• Ways to unmask shadows with compassion and precision
• Nuances of seemingly intractable patterns
• The full spectrum of qualities associated with being “awake”
• How each type interrupts habitual and unconscious patterns that inhibit knowing their fully awakened gifts
• New, dynamic practices for embodying and sharing your gifts

It may seem natural to recognize the patterns of your mind and to hear the self-reports of people who see the world differently. Yet, the simple turn of attention that self-reflection requires marks a new stage in your evolving consciousness.

In the language of tradition, self-reflection joins two different levels of consciousness: the subjective level of the brain’s conditioned neural pathways, and the “pure consciousness” of an inner witness.

From the viewpoint of awakening, you can learn to observe your own type structure, recognizing your reactions as they arise and before they fully engage. These capacities of the mind initiate the next stages of development. This process highlights the process of engagement between the biased knowing of our cognitive/emotional/sensate structure… and the intuitive wisdom of an inner witness that reflects reality as it actually is.

During this in-depth session, you’ll discover:

• How to relax inner passions that drive outer behavior — and witness somatic contractions that signal type distress
• An understanding of cognitive “neuro markers” — such as doubt (type 6), judgement (type 1) and flattery (type 2)
• That only YOU can transform your automatic patterns

In order for our lives to have meaning and to matter we need to be able to discern what the Buddhists call our Dharma. What is the path for each individual’s soul, and how can we be awake to what our soul is being called to do?

Everyone wants to have a life of love, meaning and of purpose, so inner guidance and intuition is the inherent capacity to follow the unfolding of the true life force and its desirable manifestations in each moment. We also need to develop this capacity in order to support the collective — its potential as the human species and its capacity to evolve spiritually.

In this module you’ll explore:

• Why 3-centered guidance is critical, and how to develop it
• The way each type skews intuition
• The gift of intuition of each type

Making Changes That Last: Part 2

A whole person is one who has walked with God and wrestled with the devil. — Jung

A conceptual understanding of the type structures doesn’t transform the heart of your existence. In this module, Part 2 of “Making Changes That Last,” you’ll continue learning experiential practices to focus your attention on the 3 Centers of body, heart and head — and on all nine types’ corresponding contractions and gifts.

You’ll learn to listen to, understand and work with all points of view from a place of compassion, presence and curiosity. This will not only lead to greater personal wholeness; it will expand your skills as a healer or leader of positive change.

In this module, you’ll experience:

• Way to catalyze cognitive, emotional and physiological shifts to ensure that moments of expanded awareness and personal transformation lead to lasting change
• The dynamism of each point’s contractions and evolution (the arrows on the Enneagram diagram)
• Ununmasking shadows with compassion and precision
• The nuances of seemingly intractable patterns
• Opening to the full spectrum of qualities associated with being “awake”
• How each type interrupts habitual and unconscious patterns that keep us from knowing the fully awakened gift that each of us has to contribute
• New and dynamic experiential practices for embodying and sharing your gifts

By the final module, you’ll be deeply and consistently engaged in three-centered awareness and practices that unmask your blind spots, open up multidimensional awareness and differentiations and nuances of growth, and support your transformation and awakening.

You have started to create internal structures and terrain that make you more available to embodying love, wisdom and presence in every moment. Living with the implications of this is a journey of profound change.

All three teachers come together in this culminating module to open you more fully to integration, and engage in a lively Q&A session with you and other participants.

We’ll explore, practice and dialogue together about:

• Themes of integration
• Challenges of integration
• Ongoing practices
• Personal stories of change and challenges