What the Enneagram, the Nervous System, and Direct Experience Reveal About Lasting Change If insight created transformation, most of us would already be transformed, enlightened, and free of our Enneagram type. We live in a culture saturated with information. We have access to books, podcasts, videos, workshops, therapy, spiritual teachings, and an endless stream of … Read more
An Inquiry into the Enneagram of Universal Process (See Author’s Note at Bottom of Page) In my book The Enneagram & the Arc of Transformation, I explored the possibility that the Diamond Approach and Gurdjieff’s understanding of the Enneagram might be describing aspects of the same transformational territory. The goal was not to prove that … Read more
How the Enneagram Reveals the Mechanics of Transformation What Was the Enneagram Originally Designed to Describe? Ask someone about the Enneagram today, and they will almost certainly describe a system of nine personality types. They may tell you about motivations, wings, instincts, growth paths, blind spots, and relationship dynamics. All of that is valuable. The … Read more
Participation, Identity, and the Recovery of Being in the Arc of Transformation Following my recent lecture on The Arc of Transformation, the second shock point generated the most questions. Most attendees intuitively grasped the first shock. The idea that presence enters the process between Points Three and Four is relatively accessible. Most people have experienced … Read more
What If the Enneagram Was Never Primarily About Personality? Most modern Enneagram teaching focuses on personality types, traits, motivations, defenses, wings, arrows, and behavioral patterns. For many students, coaches, and therapists, the Enneagram has become a system of psychological classification primarily. But that was not how G.I. Gurdjieff originally introduced the symbol. In its earliest … Read more
Reading the Symbol Through Almaas and the Inner Architecture Trilogy The Enneagram reveals its deepest logic when read alchemically. The inner triangle functions as Mercury, the hexadic movement as Sulfur, and the enclosing circle as Salt. This is not an imposed metaphor. It is a recognition of how the symbol already operates as a transformational … Read more
Why Personality Insight Alone Eventually Stops Working Seeing More Without Being More The Enneagram of Personality Types is remarkably effective at revealing patterns. It points to how identity forms, how defenses organize, and how suffering is maintained. For many, this brings real relief and real change. But for those who stay with the work, a … Read more
Why the Enneagram Still Imagines a Little Self Running the Show Much of modern Enneagram teaching still assumes there is a little manager inside each type—a miniature operator who decides how to grow, integrate, shift patterns, and “do the work.” It’s an invisible assumption, rarely named, but woven into nearly every instruction: your Type must … Read more
FORCE, DYNAMISM, AND THE BREATH OF BEING Most contemporary interpretations of the inner Enneagram triangle imagine it as a circuit—subtle energy moving along the lines, tracing a path from Nine to Three to Six and looping endlessly, like a mystical electrical grid. This has become the default picture: a flow, a current, a rotation. But … Read more
New methods in neuroscience are uncovering what the Enneagram has been pointing to all along. I was reading this article in Neuroscience News about the Big Five personality traits being re-examined through a new data-driven method, and it got me wondering about the connection to the Enneagram. The Big Five (also called the Five-Factor Model … Read more