It is eight weeks since I left Colorado but images of those few days keep popping into my head. The best word to encapsulate the whole experience for me is “community” (something that MJ wrote about in her recent letter but that we came up with independently. I felt a part of a group of people coming together in a way that I hadn’t felt at any of our previous conferences. Since then I have heard from many of you telling me the same thing.

Something has happened and I want to do what I can to keep the momentum going; what are you going to do?

As the editor of Nine Points, one of the co-editors of The Enneagram Journal, and part of the publishing arm of the IEA, I want to continue the process of more communication that I believe will lead to more community.

Nine Points

We received many compliments from members about the new platform for Nine Points and we thank you for all of them; however, I also know that this is just the beginning and that there is still lots that we can do with it.

First, thank you for your indulgence when the little gremlins get into the system, those pesky symbols that appear instead of inverted commas and such. If you don’t know what I am talking about, that’s great; if you do, we are working on this but it seems to be something within the system that I, as a complete technophobe, am unable to sort out.

Second, Nine Points is your/our platform so I really do encourage you to use it to talk about what you want to talk about within the Enneagram world. I heard from many members during the conference who had great stories to tell but who felt that the rest of us wouldn’t be interested in anything that came from someone who isn’t one of the ‘teachers’. With all due respect to the ‘teachers’ (and I have had promises of some very exciting things to come for Nine Points from some of them), we also want to hear about your successes and your questions and your points of view. Nine Points is for all of us.

Third, as someone who has been using the Enneagram in organizations for nearly twenty years, I also want to expand the field. I organized the Integral Cafe for this year’s conference and it was great to see so many people coming to the Enenagram/Integral debate. We didn’t agree all of the time but the debate was so stimulating and I learnt so much. The final panel of Helen Palmer, Leslie Hershberger, Jeff Salzman, Susan Rhodes, and me, was a wonderful example of how we can agree to disagree and also all of us learn, and Helen wants to continue the debate next year for those who are interested.

What would you like to do to contribute to the development of the Enneagram?

Fourth, like you, I could only attend a few sessions, so would love to hear about the others and I need your help to do that. Last year, we had some great accounts of the sessions I couldn’t attend and I’m looking forward to more this year.

The message is: get involved, Nine Points is your platform too.

The Enneagram Journal

We are already getting ready to send out for submissions to the Journal, so please start thinking about what you might like to write about. It is our experience that it sometimes takes 18 months and more to get an article ready for publication. The sooner you get started, the better.

Publications

I had a lot of questions during the conference about the publications process and we’ll be writing about this separately very soon; in the meantime, please know that any member can submit an idea for a book. There is a rigorous process to go through but we will do our best to help you with this, and writing a book was one of the hardest things that I have ever done, but also one of the most rewarding. We are looking for manuscripts that either add to the field or have applied the Enneagram in a practical way.

Have a great summer or winter,

Peter McNab

Editor