The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul

I had to spend a long time with this book. I found each chapter required time to get inside and I found it hugely helpful in my understanding. What is the deeper meaning of an enneatype? Why would I care? Why is the Enneagram not just a yet-another-psychological/behavioral mapping system? What does it have to do with inner life or a spiritual path? I had been having difficulty as well with the real meaning of some enneatypes as most of the books I had read up until this one kept focusing on behaviors/experiences/patterns/beliefs even while saying that wasn't the core meaning, and I found some types hard to understand; especially when mental type authors are describing feeling/image types or body types. Perhaps one of the best and also deepest books on the enneagram I have read! I recommend this to anyone interested in gaining dept and insight into the enneagram as a spiritual journey. To me, that is what is should be as opposed to what it is sometimes presented as.

Having read 7-8 books on the E already, I have been sort of tired of it for a while. Some of the criticisms of this book scared me off at first. After some time I became interested in the E again, trying to see the types as more like archetypes of the different sides to a person, than types. I found more of that here than other E books. Although each chapter deals with a Type. The chapters were sort of boring at times. But there were several things I enjoyed. She spoke more about the implicit phenomenological experience of each type than any other E book. Others tend to focus on behaviors much more. I loved the description of the inner triangle. And took away many insights about the nature of the Human Condition. And in a more dyanmic, three dimensional way than any other spiritual philosophy I have seen. East or West. I also loved the descriptions of the idealized aspect at the end of book. I've been looking for a way of making more sense of the essential aspects. I like Almaas' works, but his 5ness tends to show, and the essential aspects are all over the place. With this book, I was able to draw out my own E of the essential aspects. Finally, I thought the soulchild thing sounded cheezy. But when reading about it, it made perfect sense. So, to sum up, from originally rejecting this book, I found it to be one of the top E books I've come across.

When we are fully awake and alive to the present moment, we don't need a personality. Sandra documents the fall into uncounsciousness most of us took between the ages of 3 and 6 where we built a personality. A personality is our way to fake it when we are not fully connected. She documents a way to see the personality as having 9 types. Each of these types hides an aspect of truth that we fail to experience. Each type is a way to fake being connected. Each Enneatype is therefore a way to spin reality, to make it look like we are not broken and lost. This work is so powerful it might cause you to break down and cry, because it will nail your way to avoid life. After you cry you will feel 'born again' with a fresh new look on life. I have read this book three times and sent 4 copies to my friends. Our local UU church here in Alabama has a 17 member study group meeting once a week, working through this wonderful book. The release of this book will be marked in history as a major event leading the Western Culture to the exploration of Enlightenment and the end of all sorrow. May you find Enlightenment as a personal experience.. Bill Savoie Update: 1/26/14 This book can be read more than three times. Yes, it is not an easy read, but the subject information is hard, so keep at it. Reread, like I do, a paragraph several times. The earth will shift in this way. The efforts you place in this book will not be wasted. At some point, it all makes so much sense, you just swim in an ongoing non-conceptual bliss. You can really let go of your personality and even better, not need to fix anyone who chooses to keep theirs. The value of that is priceless.

I was familiar with the Enneagram as a personality typing system, but this book cracked things WIDE open for me. Before, I saw personality types as just one more way to understand yourself and your quirks. Basically, personality was YOU. This book makes it clear that your personality is just a construct -- not actually you. Early on in this book, the author makes a great point about how sure: you can study your prison walls carefully and understand the materials thoroughly, but wouldn't it just be better to NOT BE IN A PRISON CELL? Your personality is that prison cell, and this book wants to help you see outside it. The theory is that if you understand the spiritual challenges that caused your personality/ego structures to build up in the particular ways they did, you have valuable information about how to work to dismantle those ego structures to better access your more authentic self -- the you behind the you you THINK is you. This book is filled with profound wisdom, and is hugely useful for both understanding yourself as well as the people around you. I found that it provided remarkable insights into why some kinds of folks just seem so bothersome! That said, I deeply appreciated the author's encouragement not to weaponize the book's information -- you could use these insights as a way to harshly attack people. For me, I found that once I understood the spiritual reasons behind certain personality quirks, I was then able to feel a lot more compassion for people. Things that used to seem sort of irritating about other folks, now strike me as both relatable and sad, now that I understand better what can cause the issues. This book is tremendous, and gives you SO MUCH food for thought. I am sure I will refer to it many times... that said, I'm knocking a star off for a couple reasons: 1. The writing style is unnecessarily complex at times. I realize that the author is trying to convey a huge amount of information, but there were certain parts of the book (especially the introduction!) that felt almost intentionally complex. The more spiritual reading I do, the more I have come to appreciate writers who do NOT try to hide their concepts behind big words or complex sentence structures. (And I say that as a writer myself who loves big words!) It feels like the author really wants to make you work for your insights, which is fine I suppose... but it makes it hard to recommend the book to people who aren't as deep into personal development or psychology reading as I am. I'd like everyone to read this, but I know the writing style will turn people off! 2. The repeated opaque references to The Diamond Method felt out of context and confusing. One minute we're talking about nine personality types, and then all of a sudden we're talking about pearls and yellow and what? If I wanted to read about The Diamond Method, I wouldn't have sought it out. 3. I read the entire book (not just my type), and it started to feel like the spiritual guidance for the personality types was quite similar. It felt a little redundant at times. (Emptiness becomes spaciousness, etc.) 4. Ug, Freudianism. I would love to read an updated edition... the book is almost 20 years old, and contains a lot of outdated cultural references. It's easy to just read around them, but the information contained in the book is SO POWERFUL that I'd love it to be updated and relevant to younger, more current readers. Anyway, I don't want my quibbles to be taken as disliking the book. I LOVED IT and it was one of the most powerful books I've read this year. For those who are willing to dig deep and look unflinchingly at their spiritual wounds in the hopes of attending to them and growing forward into a less ego-driven version of themselves, I HIGHLY recommend it!

Maitri was one of the first group of students to whom the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo presented the enneagram system in the United States. If you are already familiar with the nine personality types of the enneagram, this book will deepen your understanding. It is fun and fascinating to note how human beings fall into nine ways of relating to reality. It can also be useful in our encounters with ourselves and others to realize that we are not all motivated in the same ways. Maitri illuminates these aspects of personality and then goes on to show how each of us can move beyond an intellectual understanding of personality and beyond identification with our personality to a seeing of what our personality blinds us to, an ability to be onto oneself. A beginning point for everyone is bringing awareness to the body. Maitri says: "By bringing consciousness to our bodies, experiencing and fully allowing whatever sensations, emotions, and thoughts that arise within our consciousness, we move deeper into ourselves and start feeling more in contact with ourselves. This shift of focus from outer directedness to inner exploration in and of itself begins to take some of the wind out of the personality's sails. As we begin exploring the terrain within us, one of the first things that we typically encounter is our inner `shoulds' that come from our internal critic, the superego. This voice inside of us, which is the internalization of composite authority figures from childhood, was the final layer of the personality to develop, and so it is the first that we encounter. . . . One of the first orders of business on our inner journey, then, is learning to defend against the superego." Maitri continues to describe the process which leads to a shift in identity from our personality to our essential nature. This very interesting and wise book is worth many readings.

I found this book to be an excellent addition to the literature on Enneagram. The author goes into considerable depth on the overall psychological principles from which the enneagram could then be said to have a legitimate scientific basis. There is a considerable amount of “spirituality” reference in the book, but as a pretty tough customer of new age hooey, I appreciated that the author made great effort to legitimate her claims with intelligent and well selected references to Freud and other scientifically valid psychology. Made for a very insightful reading experience. She’s a good writer and this is a good book.

There are a lot on Enneagram books on the market, but this one is the only one I've felt really attuned to. I saw my"self" quite clearly in its descriptions, but without needing to further justify, defend, hate or identify with the ego structures I observed. That's saying rather a lot. This is not just a parlor book of personality types. Rather, it goes into some real depths...even beyond the ego structures that have usurped people's sense of self. It's not an airy-fairy book (no holds barred when it comes to pointing out the powerfully obstructive nature of our identities), but it also presents real hope for returning to the soul level of self...and eventually to true nature. As Patanjali might have said, where there appears to be distortion, there is that which was never distorted--that which is just waiting to be rediscovered in its purity.

Highly recommended for anyone wanting to venture beyond personality, beyond the surface.