Over the years I have often been quoted and paraphrased for a line I came up with back around 1993:
"The Enneagram doesn't put you in a box. It shows you the box you are already in without realizing it, and the way out of it."
Yet, so much of the popular Enneagram does much to describe the box without much in the way of indicating how to get out of it. And at some point if we are sincerely studying this, we become more interested in methods for real change—the inner work behind the descriptions. We start to understand that learning more and more details about our personality is not going to lead to the inner freedom and transformation we seek. In this session, Russ will look at the centrality of inner work as it pertains to understanding the Enneagram, helping us to see why such work is necessary to even apply the Enneagram in any meaningful way. He will explain that the experiential nature of such work frees us from dependence on particular jargon which can be off-putting in some settings. And he will explain how the inner lines of the symbol provide clues about directions for our work, as well as evidence that some authentic change and development has occurred in our psyches.
Russ Hudson is the author of Sounds True Audiobook The Enneagram: Nine Gateways to Presence and the co-author with Don Richard Riso of five major books on the subject, including The Wisdom of the Enneagram and Personality Types. He has been teaching this work around the world for over 30 years and is a founder of the IEA. IEA Accredited with Honor