This is the stuff of real love, of real kindness, of fundamental and innate sanity and wisdom which each of us has had opportunity to experience within ourselves. And it is the heart and soul of the Enneagram teaching, this learning to allow what is most precious in us, the stuff of our “true self” to arise—and not manufactured by anything we might imagine or try to construct with our mind. It occurs in the most fundamentally correct way, not by attempting to emulate and imitate our teachers, which is the stuff of the fixated personality trying to resurrect a soul, but by utilizing the Enneagram teaching as a meditative tool of compassionate precision and understanding. It is in the right use of this amazing tool that we are able to relax the rigid structures of our learned personality, and to open to the very heart of our Being. It is then that we experience right-sized, connected heart-attunement to those around us, not captured in our imagination and drinking in the stories of our imagined Essence experience, but simply being here in the breath we are taking, grateful for this moment, unadorned by the flattery of ego. 

Our work, inspired by Don and Russ, is to transmit what we’ve been taught and experienced, such that the unnecessary suffering and addictive suffering that so pervasively effects our planet today might greatly soften and lose it’s ability to mechanically generate violence, misery, and misconduct among human beings. It is our belief that each individual seeks peace, clarity, a sense of deep and unshakeable self-worth, the capacity to love at depth, the ability to sense and experience profound beauty, to impact life and the world in a substantial and effective manner, and the impulse to generously share the gifts one has been given. It is also our belief that the Enneagram is a potent tool for activating this deep soul wish within each individual, such that their unique purpose becomes conscious, available and wonderfully expressed.

We, as a civilization, are at a great turning point. The structures that have supported us in the past —health, financial, ecological, social, political—are going through radical transformation. It is in these precious times of transformation that many are called to more precisely know who they are and what they are about. And, it is in the midst of this very real, in-our-face spiritual emergency that the best and finest within us can arise. The Enneagram is a wonderful tool to assist this arising.

So it is with great thanks that we extend our appreciation for the wonderful work of the Enneagram Institute that Don and Russ have inspired, and to them, and to our beloved planet, that we dedicate our service and work.