Grace to you
Over the next couple of Wednesday evenings we are going to explore the Enneagram. The Enneagram is an ancient tool used to discern different character or personality types. When used as it was intended, we are taken much deeper than mere behaviour traits to the profound pulls and pushes of the deep patterns of our living.
The Enneagram has an ancient history of many origins, spanning different religions, spiritual practices and philosophies – in other words it is radically inclusive in design and use.
The reason for our Enneagram study is to deepen our self-knowledge and at the same time our understanding of our neighbour. As we grow in knowing we will be invited to grow in loving. We will learn of the gifts of our “type” and the liabilities that come with it. We will search for a truthful way of living life, accepting that for each of us the way will differ in slight or even vast ways. And we will also hopefully discern what specific exercises are necessary for each of us to more fully honour the deepest truths of our humanity.
Teresa of Avila, the great Christian mystic, writes in her masterpiece The Interior Castle:
“Not a little misery and confusion arise from the fact that through our own guilt we do not understand ourselves and do not know who we are. Would it not seem a terrible ignorance if one had no answer to give to the question, who one was, who (their) parents were, and from what country (they) came? If this were a sign of bestial incomprehension, an incomparably worse stupidity would prevail in us, if we did not take care to learn what we are, but contented ourselves with these bodies, and consequently know only superficially, from hearsay, because faith teaches us, that we had a soul. But what treasures this soul may harbour within it, who dwells in it, and what great value it has, these are things we seldom consider, and hence people are so little concerned with preserving their beauty with all care.”
What an incredible concluding sentence! “…and hence people are so little concerned with preserving their beauty with all care.” So herein lies our task: to preserve our beauty with all care. And surely not only our beauty but the beauty of all with all our care. In this act of careful preservation of human beauty we honour and praise the Original Artist of our collective beauty.
Grace,
Alan
