Ennea-gelicals

The Enneagram – a tool for Practicing the Presence of God

The Enneagram of Personality is a tool that can expand the practice the Presence of God in our lives. Once we identify our dominant enneatype, with all of its "default" coping mechanisms, we start to recognize the ways we lose Presence. Losing Presence means we are not tuned into the spiritual reality, God's reality, which is the only reality. Enneagram work helps us "catch ourselves in the act" of leaving that awareness of what God is doing in the now. The veils of our conditioned, habitual, entranced states of mind start to lift more frequently, and we are able to live more grounded in the Holy Spirit. And that is the way Jesus instructed us to live.

Not surprisingly, the Enneagram has roots in early Jewish (the Kaballah) and early Christian traditions. Today, the Enneagram of Personality is a synthesis of many of the insights of modern psychology and the things genuine seekers have known to be true for thousands of years. The Enneagram maps the path that the big questions in life seem to take all of us on at some point: "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" It is one of God's many intriguing metaphors helping humans find the meaning of existence. Just like Christ's assumption-challenging parables emerging from childbirth and nature, mathematics, as Pythagoras and others discovered, offers its own version of the spiritual wake-up call – the Enneagram.

For more information on the Christian perspective on the Enneagram, see our Publications page.

I-SEAC ("I Seek!"), the Institute for the Study of the Enneagram and Authentic Christianity

Authentic spiritual practice must accompany any work with the Enneagram of Personality; it's the nature of this powerful tool that it goes hand in hand with the practice of God's Presence. The early church has more to teach us about the true essence of those spiritual disciplines in action in our lives. Stay tuned to this webpage for exciting new 2008 courses in science and spirituality that will be offered in partnership with the Ante-Nicene Archive for Early Christian Studies in San Jose, CA.