Finding God in All Things

by Bonnie Johnson

Bonnie is a great friend and a great spirit. At the request of her husband, Daniel, I introduced her to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius; she picked up the ball and ran with it, exploring and digging further, following her own inspiration and gifts.

In a phone conversation last week, I mentioned that Roger Corless, in one his last talks (click on Newsletter 2007-04.pdf) spoke of his love for Julian of Norwich, and Bonnie told me that she had been trying to establish a possible link between Ignatius and Julian via an informal association of seekers called “the Friends of God.”

This paper was prepared for her course work at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is dated March 8, 2005.

I have given this paper the same title as William Barry’s book: Finding God In All Things A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius (Barry 1991). I was reading the book when Julian of Norwich was assigned in class. The similarities between Julian’s writings and Ignatius’s were striking to me. Both Julian and Ignatius write of multiple sensory experiences with God occasioned by life-threatening illness. Before I understood that Julian was born 150 years before Ignatius, I considered that her visions, like mine[1], might have been delirious manifestations engendered by Ignatian-style guided meditations. When I realized that she lived long before Ignatius, I abandoned the paper I was writing on the general topic of asceticism to delve deeper into parallels, coincidences, and possible connections between these two late medieval mystics.

The theological proposition of this paper is that the writings of Julian in circa 1400 and the writings of Ignatius circa 1525 are representative of a distinct spirituality: God as Friend. God as Friend is a paradigm shift from the dominant spirituality from the 4^th century: Deity of Christ; it is distinct though related to two paradigms which were soon to emerge in the reformation: Salvation by Faith Alone and Incarnational Participation. At the end of this paper I will argue that the paradigm of God as Friend is finding new relevance in our time, hence bringing a renewed interest in both Julian and Ignatius.

In my search for a “social network” connecting Julian and Ignatius, I learned about an informal group called “Friends of God” from one of the many websites devoted to Julian. The name for this “association of pious persons, both ecclesiastical and lay [also men and women], alludes no doubt to John 15:14-15[2] … Friends of God appears to have had its origin in Basle between the years 1339 and 1343, and to have thence extended down the Rhine even as far as the Netherlands” (Walsh 1909). I am skeptical that Julian herself had any direct connection with the informal network of German mystics, but there is indirect evidence at least that many of them had access to her writing. One version of Julian’s Short Text (the so-called “Amherst Manuscript”) also contains writings of Friends’ mystics Marguerite Poerete, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruusbroec (Holloway 1997). The manuscript had been in the Brigittine Syon Abbey; it was owned by the Lowe family and through them found its way to the Low Countries and Rouen (Holloway 1996). While there is no direct evidence of who might have read it and when, there is enough indirect evidence to conclude that Julian’s ideas were circulating among German mystics following her death circa 1425. The German mystics influenced Ignatius through the Carhusian and former Dominican monk, Ludolf of Saxony (Gieraths 1986). Ignatius is known to have read and re-read a four volume Spanish translation of Ludolf’s Life of Christ and to have been profoundly influenced, even converted, by what he read there (Ignatius 2000, p. xiv; Loyola 2000, p. xiv).

The references to Julian’s writing in this paper come from a “Long Text” version translated from the manuscript found in the British Museum. As I read Revelations of Divine Love (Julian 2002), I noted about sixty passages expressing ideas similar to those found the Spiritual Exercises, far too many passages to discuss here.[3] I am concentrating on five concepts that point parallel notions of God as friend; in particular, I am limiting myself to the best examples that reveal similarities in their views of how people carry on friendship with God various media/modes. I use quotations from the work of each to document my argument that friendship with God is created and maintained through intimate communications which take at least five different forms: imagery, senses, colloquy, consolation/ desolation, and prayer. In the conclusion of the paper, I also point similarities in how they describe the nature of this friendship in their discussions of sin, love, goodness, choice, and the indwelling of God in our nature.

Communication is the sine qua non of any friendship. To have a concept of friendship with God, therefore requires that there be some form of media which constitutes that communication. For both Julian and Ignatius, imagery is the most important media and the Passion is the most important topic of that imagery. In examining Julian and Ignatius’s imagery of Jesus’ Passion, such in the illustrative passages below, it is easy to dismiss their perspective on friendship. After all “Body of Christ” imagery was a common theme of medieval piety yet friendship with God was not. I have little knowledge of other writers in the “Body of Christ” genre, so I cannot say that the friendship imagery of Julian and Ignatius is unique. What I observe in their imagery, however, is its intimacy. Both show intimacy with Jesus’ body; this use of imagery signals closeness, friendship.

… All the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefore, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ as it was shewed (Julian 2002, p.).

… Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus hear me. Within They wounds hid me (Ignatius 2000, p. xlv).

Simply imagining another in a prayerful way can also create a close relationship with the one imagined with the need for conversation as we typically understand that term. A few months ago my husband and I were contacted by a friend to provide direction to on-line medical information for a friend of his with a rare bone marrow disease. We started to email with both Jim and his wife about Jim’s illness and potential resources in Palo Alto. Mostly we prayed intensely for Jim and also for his wife; we never spoke with them even by phone. When Jim died unexpectedly from a heart attack, both Daniel and I were devastated; we still cry at the thought of Jim. We had lost a dear friend, one whom we knew only through imagery, email, and prayer. It was a dramatic Julian-Ignatian lesson for me: I felt so close to this person and that closeness was entirely the product of my imagining his circumstances and my daily prayers for him. Knowing Jim in this way helped me to experience God in a fresh way; I learned how I can know God without human encounters just as I had known Jim without these encounters.

Imagery in Julian and Ignatius is not only visual, it is also multi-sensory.

I HAD, in part, touching, sight, and feeling in three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the Revelation standeth (Julian 2002, p. 197). And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come unto Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it(Julian 2002, p. 90).

The Fifth contemplation will consist in applying the five senses to the matter. … seeing in imagination the persons, in contemplating and mediating in detail the circumstances in which they are… hear what they are saying… smell the infinite fragrance and taste the infinite sweetness of the divinity … touch, for example by embracing and kissing the place where the persons stand (Ignatius 2000, p. 45).

Communicating with ones Godfriend goes beyond merely experiencing God through ones imagination and senses; both Julian and Ignatius converse directly with God. Throughout the Julian text, she is posing questions to God, and God is answering her, for example: “AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well…”(Julian 2002, p. 61); the result of this is conversational. Ignatius uses the term “colloquy” to refer to conversations with God (and also with Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit on occasions): “The colloquy is made by speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another” (Ignatius 2000, p. 24). These two examples exemplify a pattern of “shewing” vs “exercise” that I find over and over as a distinction between these two books: Julian shows her communication with God; Ignatius instructs the maker of the exercises to perform these same kinds of communications. Thus, “revelation” in Julian becomes “exercise” in Ignatius.

God has special kinds of communication with Julian that I would call, following Ignatius, “consolations” and “desolations.” In Ignatian spirituality, consolidations and desolations are the movements of the spirit—“internal movements” by which we can discern God’s will in our lives. Those making the exercises are taught how to listen or feel for these movements and thereby to guide their lives in accord with God’s will. Again, we see that Julian experiences these interior movements but makes no methodical use of them. Ignatius’s biography describes how he initially experienced them much as Julian did and then learned to put them to use in his own communications with God.

AND after this He shewed a sovereign ghostly pleasance in my soul. I was fulfilled with the everlasting sureness, mightily sustained without any painful dread. This feeling was so glad and so ghostly that I was in all peace and in rest, that there was nothing in earth that should have grieved me. … This lasted but a while, and I was turned and left to myself in heaviness, and weariness of my life that scarcely I could have patience to live. This Vision was shewed me, according to mine understanding, sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself (Julian 2002).

God alone can give consolation to the soul without any previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it, to draw it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty (Ignatius 2000, p. 119 section 330). When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. For though God has taken from him the abundance of fervor and overflowing love and the intensity of His favors, nevertheless, he has sufficient grace for eternal salvation (Ignatius 2000, p. 116, section 320).

On the topic of prayer, Julian and Ignatius could not be more similar. Yet, it is not as simple to point to parallel passages as with the preceding topics. For them, prayer is not just a “doing” – not just a message we send to God, in the form of a petition, for example. Rather, prayer is a way of being in which ones very foundation, ones “ground” is God and therefore prayer is fitting ourselves to that Ground of our being. Julian puts it this way:

OUR Lord God willeth that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer. The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springeth. By whom, He sheweth when He saith: I am [the] Ground; and how, by His Goodness: for He saith first: It is my will. The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer; and that is that our will be turned unto the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so meaneth He when He saith: I make thee to will it. The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers: that is, that we be oned and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson shewed. And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He saith Himself; Blessed may He be! For this is our Lord’s will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large. For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self (Julian 2002).

“Grounded in God” has several implications. First, that prayer is about the will of God and our place in that will. From this the next implication, only implicit in the statement above, that God is eternally present and has already “answered” our prayers in our very existence, our salvation, and in all that we enjoy: “The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He hath made beneath us, [He hath made] to serve us, and for our love keepeth it. Then signifieth He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before thy prayers; and now thou art, and prayest me”(Julian 2002). Julian cautions us not to go looking for this or that way that God might have answered our small petitions, but to understand that God is answering even the prayers we have not yet asked. So how then should we pray? We should pray that “our will be turned unto the will of our Lord.” The true end of our petitions is that we become like God, indeed that we are at one with God.

William Barry describes the same understanding in Ignatius in his chapter entitled, “Grounded in God: The Principle and Foundation” (Ignatius 2000, pp. 33ff.). God is up to one action; we can experience the creative action of God which is always at work (Barry 1991, p. 39); Ignatius draws out the implications of our place in God’s one action in the Principle and Foundation: “We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things… Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a short life. … Our one desire and choice should be what is conductive to the end for which we are created (Ignatius 2000, p. 12, section 23). In other words, it is about God’s will; our prayer is our participation in that will. We are engaged in the world of God’s creating and God is already answering the prayers we have not yet made.

We have seen in both of these late medieval mystics a central concern with our relationship with God and how that relationship is continuously created through various media. The relationship is one of love. While both mystics write extensively on sin, theirs is not the sin of the medieval church or of Jonathan Edwards. Indeed, Julian comes as close as one might in her day to saying that her Church is misguided in its notion of sin and salvation (Julian 2002, p. 104). Ignatius’ first week of the Exercises is devoted to examining ones sin, but the point is not to berate or belittle the maker of the Exercises. Rather, the grace of the first week is the experience of love. “Ignatius expects that God will reveal our sins in such a way that we will actually be consoled. We are to have an increase of faith, hope, and love, be moved to tears of sorrow for our sin, but also to tears of love for a God who has been so good to us” (Barry 1991, p. 51). The heart of the message from both Julian and Ignatius is the goodness of God, the love of God, and the freedom which God gives us in the hope that we will choose to put God at the center of our lives, and participate in God’s mission.

Both mystics are saying that we must look in the world and in ourselves to find God. Their piety is finding God in all things, starting with finding ourselves IN God. “For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned” (Julian 2002, p. 133). This is such a contemporary message; it is not surprising that both mystics are being read more in our time than in any time of the past, including their own.

I have argued here that both Julian and Ignatius provide us with kataphatic paths to relationship with God as friend, one in which we are constantly called to God’s mission, but never coerced or threatened. We are called to examine our own sins, not the sins of others; we communicate with God who already God loves us and forgives us already. This is a contemporary theme. These are mystics for our time.

Notes:

1 Since this is not a “personal reflection paper,” I will not discuss further my own experiences. Suffice to say that the parallels I find in Julian’s writings to my own experiences were the motivation for my choosing this topic.

2 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father.”

3 References to “Pages” in Julian are to the original manuscript pages; references to Ignatius are to pages in the Vintage-Random House version with section numbers referring to Ignatius original sections.

References

Barry, W. A. (1991). Finding God In All Things A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius. Notre Dame, IL, Ave Maria Press.

Gieraths, G. M. (1986). "Life in Abundance: Meister Eckhart & the German Dominican Mystics of the 14th Century." Spirituality Today 38(August): Supplementary Book.

Holloway, J. B. (1996) The Westminster Cathedral/Abbey Manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love. http://www.umilta.net/westmins.html.

Holloway, J. B. (1997) Godfriends: The Continental Medieval Mystics. http://www.umilta.net/godfrien.html.

Ignatius (2000). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. New York, Random House.

Julian (2002). Revelations of Divine Love. Grand Rapids, MI, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Walsh, R. (1909). Friends of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online Edition, K. Knight. 6.

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The Enneagram

Muddied Roots, Psychobabble, Inoculation

Berkeley, California 1971-1976

The initial uncritical acceptance and publication of claims from distant “authorized” sources, then the later fighting over their validity, has the feel of sloppy thinking or a nasty rivalry. Is it at least an indication of personal discord or appealing to authority when on shaky ground to prove that one way is "authentic." or “righter.” I want to examine these claims as they appeared in the reports since the Enneagram’s first appearance in 1969 and which have been subsequently repeated, embellished, and distorted.

Most of the early SAT members did not look on Claudio Naranjo as a guru. I was so wary of being branded a Moonie that I only allowed myself to think of him as extraordinary professor—not the Teacher of the Age, not an enlightened being, not an avatar. I was aware that he seemed to have had a profound insight, perhaps even an enlightenment experience, which tied together long years of study and investigation, and I was grateful to be present while he was unpacking that inspiration.

There was some talk about the Enneagram originating hundred of years earlier in a Sufi school, and I for one just nodded my head in agreement with the vague notion that there were, of course, esoteric roots. For me, it made little difference. Like most of Naranjo’s early students, the profound experiences of self recognition proved the power of the teaching.

There were no texts. Enneagram literature did not start flooding the market for another 10 years. It was an oral tradition. Naranjo talked to us, asked questions, responded to our questions, returned over and over to places in ourselves that he thought we ought to investigate. We all promised not to speak about the Enneagram outside the group because it was integral to self discovery. We promised not to use certain ‘teachings’ before a specific time, certainly for any work that we would do with others, and, in some instances, that promise included our private conversations with group members. The intent of those promises was not to protect materials and income, but it did set the stage for later intellectual property lawsuits.

Naranjo’s original presentations were dense and required time to digest and put to use. His directions were also tailored to the individual student as well as the fixation. We all kept our own notes, but there were several meticulous recorders, and we all compared notes. I mention these notes because they were the first leak of this material to the wider New Age audience. Ms. Palmer based her first presentations on these incomplete notes.

One woman whose notes were quite detailed, justified breaking her promise of secrecy citing the principle of entropy: any system inevitably slows down and loses its vitality without an infusion of energy, new minds, fresh input, scientific studies. As enticing as this justification may sound, it appears to be dead wrong with regard to the process of transformation.¹

Hearsay and fact about the Sufi origins of the Enneagon/Enneagram

Most of the written accounts of the first Enneagram teaching in North America repeat the claim that the Enneagram/Enneagon was handed down through the Naqshbandi Sufi School (founded cc1380). The great light of Sufism in the West, Idries Shah, confirmed that the symbol, just the nine pointed figure, was passed down from the Naqshbandi. The figure of the Enneagram is also found in the record of Mr. Gurdjieff’s teaching which of course lends the authority of another respected source.

This only demonstrates the probability that the figure is of Sufi origin or was adopted by the Naqshbandi. It indicates nothing about its use or any four Enneagrams—Fixations, Passions, Virtues, or Holy Ideas—that Ichazo introduced and Naranjo elaborated.

What chance is there that this Enneagram has been passed down from an identifiable school, even as a secret teaching? And how could we find traces of that secret anyway?

Mr. Gurdjieff’s use of the Enneagram

G. I. Gurdjieff wrote: "The knowledge of the enneagram has for a very long time been preserved in secret and if it now is, so to speak, made available to all, it is only in an incomplete and theoretical form of which nobody could make any practical use without instruction from a man who knows."

Claudio Naranjo was conversant with Mr. Gurdjieff’s work, his writing and that of his important disciples. For Naranjo, Gurdjieff was the epitome of teacher as trickster, a role that Naranjo loved. He never claimed, however, that he had been trained or authorized by any of Gurdjieff’s successors.

We know that Mr. Gurdjieff used the Enneagram, that he praised it, that he said that it expressed all the universal laws, that his students had a series of sacred movements that followed the directional lines of the figure. The picture at the top of this essay is that sacred dance. There is, however, no evidence in the primary sources about the Work that he knew the Enneagram/Enneagon of Fixations, Passions, Virtues, or Holy Ideas.

Gurdjieff’s pupil P.D. Ouspensky recorded comments about the Enneagram in his book In Search of The Miraculous (1949), and another famous pupil, John Bennett, applied the Enneagram of Process to systems theory, organizational design, group dynamics, and psychotherapy. Neither of these sources, however, specifically point to protoanalysis or the system either Ichazo or Naranjo describe.

But to my mind, the most interesting possible evidence that Gurdjieff might have used the Enneagram comes from some of the personal accounts of pupils in France and America. In Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil's Journey, C. S. Nott describes Mr.Gurdjieff’s efforts with one student to identify her chief characteristic before she had to return to England. It was the key to her self remembering. Mr.Gurdjieff directed her, but the struggle to identify the lynch pin in her personality was her task, only hers. Perhaps Gurdjieff did use the 27 variations of a nine pointed figure in his exploration, but again we have no evidence. If he did, you might suspect that he passed that knowledge to his chief disciples, but any “evidence” that he did is just a guess and, in any case, bears scant resemblance to either Ichazo’s or Naranjo’s use of the Enneagram.

In Taking with the Left Hand, How the Enneagram Came to Market, (1996), William Patrick Patterson writes a blistering account of current Enneagram enthusiasts’ misappropriation by the Gurdjieff work, all of which I found very persuasive until he tries to locate the Source in ancient Egypt. (To read an excerpt, click here).

If we have to start digging back that far into a mysterious history to support self-analysis, the enterprise is lost and hopeless.

The difference between Ichazo’s Enneagon and the work of Naranjo

If I were to imagine a best case scenario, during that first Arica training, Ichazo might have sensed that Naranjo had an insight that he had had to explore – a vocation in the classical sense of a path that had to follow to the end – and that the work itself would be richer. However, I can find no evidence for my scenario in any of Ichazo’s writings that are available to the public.

Claudio Naranjo referenced Ichazo’s talks on the Enneagon and protoanalysis given at the Instituto de Psicologia Aplicada (Santiago) in 1969, and Ichazo finds no fault in Naranjo’s report.

There is no evidence that Ichazo had any contact with a Forth Way teacher, at least one connected directly with Gurdjieff or any of his disciples. James Moore wrote an article on the dissemination of the Enneagram in South America. (I highly recommend this essay by one of the second generation of Gurdjeiffians in the UK). He concludes, “Analogically Ichazo’s enneagram is to Gurdjieff’s what the New Guinea cargo-cults are to aviation. Ichazo’s 63 ‘domains, energies, divine principles, fixations, virtues, passions, and psychocatalyzers’ seem stuck around the symbol au choix like so many bird-of-paradise feathers.” ²

The Arica Enneagon, both protoanalysis and the way that a student worked with it, was quite different from Claudio Naranjo’s understanding and practice. I knew several Esalen pioneers. They reported that Oscar often typed people by looking at their faces: a slight elevation of an eyebrow or crinkle around the mouth was as clear an indicator as any scientific personality test. Glenn Lewis, for several years my partner in a business venture, had been in Arica with Naranjo. After a lot of discussion and comparison of typing, he concluded that Ichazo was using a different Enneagram, which, for some reason, he called the Enneagon. ³

By Ichazo’s own admission, he had had no dispute with Naranjo, but by the same token, he did not authorize Naranjo’s work. Ichazo’s lawsuit was directed at Palmer’s popularization, not Naranjo’s work from which she derived her materials. (ARICA INSTITUTE, INC. v. Helen PALMER and Harper & Row Publishers is an interesting read ). Naranjo did not significantly alter the derogatory names of the points that Oscar used to identify each fixation, though Palmer created a whole new, “kinder, gentler” lexicon. Was she just changing the names to refine a pedagogical technique or was this an attempt to avoid the intellectual property rights lawsuit that eventually transpired?

Or did she wind up way off base? Here is what Ichazo had to say about Ms. Palmer’s version of the Enneagram (and others who follow the Narrative tradition). “The work of the enneagram authors is plainly unscientific and without rational foundation, because it is based on dogmatic formulations as opposed to the Arica system, which under any measure is logical and scientific and is based on rational metaphysical propositions and ultimate theological truth.” ⁴

From most accounts, Ichazo or his deputies typed the student while Naranjo had a conversation with the person, and then, that only after a rather long period of study. If you thought you demonstrated the characteristics of a particular point, Naranjo might ask you to investigate another possibility. There were times when he just told you where to look. And he didn’t always get it right himself and from time to time revised his analysis (that is true in my own case as you will see below).

Among the current variations of the Enneagram work, only Palmer et al insist, as a “principle of the school,” that the participant determines which point he or she owns. It is often a promise in the “narrative” tradition that you will discover your type after one weekend workshop. Early protoanalysis often seemed purposefully vague—sometimes your type was switched after several months or, as in my case, years of work.

Does it actually really make any difference if you determine your type accurately after your first workshop? It just seems better if you have some understanding of the Enneagram, and some inner experience of self-observation. Then you might have some chance of being honest with yourself and becoming free. I was typed as point 7, Ego Plan, after one year in SAT and called myself a 7 well beyond the group’s dissolution. More than 19 years later Naranjo re-typed me a 9.

Some really far flung theories

I was sitting in the classroom when a respected Jesuit said with a laugh that the Enneagram probably originated in the esoteric school that trained Jesus. This totally outlandish assertion is right up there with the claim that Jesus’s lost years, the time between when he stood up and amazed the synagogue elder’s and his baptism by John, was spent being initiated by an Indian guru. But not one person in the room challenged this Father.

More recently in a pastoral letter warning Catholics about using the Enneagram as a tool for spiritual direction, the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices cite numerological speculations of the Pythagoreans (Ishazo also suggests possible looking for some terms that he can copyright) or the ancient wisdom of the Chaldeans as possible origins of the Enneagram, Oh those Catholics, and apparently Ichazo too, love arguments for authority!

There is also speculation that the true origins were the Jesuits or perhaps Russian Orthodox communities. Oh what might have happened if the bishops had been fed that line. The Jesuits are in hot water anyway as I will talk about in my next Enneagram post.

What can you do with any of this material? What does it have to do with self-discovery?

It is fascinating to hear what comes out of people’s mouths. Most of the speculation about the origins of the Enneagram fall into the “my best guess” category. But it might point to other grey areas in the “transmission,” and I am concerned about Enneagram teachers who don’t do their homework. I hope that their self-centered consideration of its origins is not symptomatic of sloppy thinking in general. I also have no real objection to stealing material—this is the real world. What is more problematic is the misuse of the materials.

So, what are the signs and effects of this sloppy thinking?

Most Americans would prefer to read a 600-word article in Psychology Today for their understanding of the Enneagram. Most people who attend an Enneagram workshop also seem to want to find out their type quickly. What seems to be lacking is an understanding of how to use the Enneagram and what practices support continuing self exploration.

I have a very close friend who did a Masters in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica. While there were many things he appreciated about the program, his exposure to the Enneagram had to be of the 600-word variety. I have no specifics about the training of the person who presented the system in Santa Monica, but this is what he said to me, “Yeah, it is a great system. I once knew what number I am, but I forgot.”

This Enneagram teacher might have inoculated my friend against the power of the Enneagram. Of course not everyone will be attracted to the Enneagram and the self-exploration that it might offer. But it seems to me that this path is not available to my friend now—it is very difficult to get around the part of the mind that tells you: “you don’t need to look there, you already understand that.” Throwing up that barrier has to be credited to the teacher’s account.

Of the more than 100 books about the Enneagram that have appeared in the 1990’s, most seem to be written to support the authors’ teaching credentials. The books also serve as promotional materials for their workshops and, at best, study guides. They are not psychological studies, but rather present basic materials on prototyping with the author’s particular spin. (I did find Janet Levine’s approach rather interesting and the books of Sandra Maitri the most faithful to the work of the original SAT groups.)

Naranjo once said that the power of the Enneagram is such that it remains compelling as a system even if misused, but I don’t know if it can survive mistyping.

Palmer said, “Our research has found that there are far more point 8’s than Naranjo.” ⁵ Naranjo did speculate there were fewer 8’s among people who did the “Work” than in the general population. On the other hand Palmer’s statement could just indicate that the narrative tradition has typed more people as 8’s, and they were mistyped. There are people in the narrative tradition who think that George W. Bush is an 8 on the evidence that, apparently, he took us to war. Ronald Regan was a nine because, apparently, he liked his afternoon nap.

I have a friend who insists that he is a “Palmer-Riso” 8. He would be, however, a classic 9 if Naranjo typed him. Though not easily agitated, there was an edge in his voice when he said: “I’m no ass kisser.” Through most of his remarkable career, he has been of service to others as a peace-maker who resolves very difficult conflicts with grace and ease. Yet, because he finds Sloth so un-masculine and un-American, he undervalues the roles in which he excels and misses the chance of being honest with himself. In my view, this is an example of typing as Ego massage oil. Inept hands have stripped away the power of the Enneagram.

Esoteric schools don’t have secrets because their knowledge bestows power that they don’t want to share. The secrets hide themselves and do not manifest their power until they get inside a person and change who they are being. I think that the closest analogy to the new Enneagram system might be the Tibetan idea of torma, a teaching that remains hidden until it is ripe. (Buddhists had to devise a way of authenticating their teaching innovations and developments in the Mahayana and Vajrayana long after Lord Buddha’s death.)

The people who proclaim the Naqshbandi source of the Enneagram usually haven’t got the slightest idea who or what the Naqshbandi are, their history or their spiritual traditions. Or again what they know is only hearsay knowledge. Ennagram practitioners didn’t go off to get Ph.D’s in Islamic studies—they got MSW’s so that they could take psychological wares to the marketplace.

Yes, Mr. Patterson, you might as well locate the Source in King Tut’s tomb. A mummy can’t stand up and speak unless the teacher can cast a magic spell. People can go to a museum to see a 5,000-year-old sarcophagus embedded with gold and lapis, and remain fairly safe from esoteric tampering, and the secret remains safe.

I have not answered my own questions concerning the value and use of the “new” Enneagram tradition. There is no answer. But I have shown that most speculation about the origins of the Enneagram only supports “my best guess.” I will have more to say about how to look for some inner confirmation in my next post to “Spiritually Incorrect.”

Donovan Bess was at 60+ perhaps SAT’s oldest member. He had been a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle for most of his career. He was always curious, interested in others, vital. He was also a seasoned self-observer. I liked him enormously. He died in Egypt when he was 81. After a day that included riding a camel and exploring the temples in Luxor, he went back to the hotel with his long time companion and died. She reported that he simply smiled and stopped breathing.

I am not seeking to prove that the Enneagram has roots in the cults of Egyptian gods or its authority as a sure predictor of behavior, but I have felt its power in my own life. If I were looking for evidence that the Enneagram is a powerful tool in the disciple of self exploration, Mr. Bess’s death would be enough.

Notes:

¹ The central premise of psychodynamics is based on the first law of thermodynamics, which states that the total amount of matter and energy in any system under study, which undergoes any transformation or process, is conserved. Translating this physical law into a psychological concept, the originators of psychodynamics hypothesized that experiences, especially early childhood experiences, in theory, are conserved in the unconscious. Subsequently, conserved experiences later in life must either remain buried in the mind or find their way to the surface, i.e. the “conscious” level. This, in the former case, results in psychological states as neurosis and psychosis. (for further information, click here) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychodynamics

² “The Enneagram: A Developmental Study.” First published in Religion Today: A Journal of Contemporary Religions (London) V (3), October 1986-January 1987, pp.1-5.

³ In my research I discovered speculation that Ichazo renamed the Enneagram “Enneagon” for copyright purposes. If you look at an enneagon, you have to wonder.

⁴ “Letter to the Transpersonal Community” by Oscar Ichazo

⁵ My own personal notes