Spirit of the Enneagram Week Two Materials
Please know, these weekly materials are not assignments or homework. They are resources to use along your journey of personal growth. We do encourage you to utilize the forum pages to build a community within your enneastyle.
Week Two
Challenge:
Look at the PDF of the Idealizations & Avoidances in the Enneagram (click here). In what ways do these idealizations and avoidances challenge you? How do they show up as blind spots in your life? How do both the idealizations and avoidances influence your motivations? Share your insights on the forum page. (The information is also available in the Enneagram Styles and Characteristics Chart).
Exploring the Resources:
This week focus on the defense mechanisms within the Enneagram-
Website Resources:
1) The Enneagram at Work: The Enneagram Defense System -Access Points for Self-Awareness & Growth
2) IEA Nine Points: Defense Mechanisms to the Rescue: What Would I do Without You?
3) The Narrative Enneagram: Tour the Nine Types
Books:
Enneagram Transformations is a groundbreaking contribution to the self-help field. Riso offers readers the opportunity to take a psychological inventory of inner strengths that can be invaluable for self-development and all forms of recovery.
The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home by Sandra Maitri
The popular author of The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram elucidates the most intractable pitfalls of our psyches and shows how our understanding of them can lead us to our highest virtues.
The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues illuminates human experience beyond the functions of personality. Using the spiritual psychology of the enneagram, Sandra Maitri highlights two core aspects of human consciousness: the passions and the virtues. The passions are the ego-driven emotional states that come to dominate our lives, such as anger, pride, and fear. Discovering and understanding the passions in an experiential way can lead us to what lies beyond the personality itself. As we do, the virtues-which include serenity, humility, and courage-naturally arise to support our unfoldment. This giving way from the passions to the virtues is one of the hallmarks of inner development.
Video:
Poem:
I Know My Soul
Claude McKay – 1889-1948
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
Quote:
“A mark of spiritual growth is when we stop polishing the mask and instead start working on our character.”
― Christopher L. Heuertz, The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth