In this article I would like to say a few words about a particular way of looking at the Enneagram, one which I have come to call the Three Schools Approach (TSA).  It is a very simple yet useful approach, one that can be applied to other spiritual systems, as we will see below.  As a kind of shorthand, yet with ancient and profound spiritual correspondences, we can speak of the Earth, Lunar and Solar Schools of the Enneagram of Personality. 

     In the Earth School we see people and organizations using the Enneagram primarily for practical, earthly and often rather egocentric or survival-oriented reasons.  The CIA, NSA, FBI and other government agencies have co-opted the Enneagram for precisely such purposes.  However, we can see this phenomenon operating in less secretive fashion in the lives of organizational development consultants, employers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and others desiring to attain worldly gains through the skillful use of psycho-spiritual tools like the Enneagram.  Even individuals who want to function more effectively in their relationships could be said to be operating primarily on this level of consciousness and application.
   
     Then there is the Lunar School, which deals mostly with the psychological level of reality and individual functioning.  Here we find most but not all of the psychotherapists and healers, teachers and students of the Enneagram. Most books and workshops currently in existence concerning the Enneagram are functioning primarily from this level of consciousness and application, and that is why most of the available materials speak about the Point of Integration (Relaxation or Security Point) as lying behind the Enneatype in question, and not ahead, in the direction to which the arrows point so obviously.  If all one is after is psychological healing and integration, then all one needs to do is basic retrieval and recovery work.
   
     Finally, there is the Solar School in which we have reached both the level of Essence and the original transmission of the Enneagram, whether that be Christian, Egyptian, Hermetic, Kabbalistic or Sufi.  At this level of psycho-spiritual functioning, we tend to move with the lines of energy embodied in the sacred diagram, toward the following Arrow Point.  In other words, we go with the flow or Tao, and begin to move gracefully around the Enneagram, rather than identifying and struggling with our own neuroses all of the time.  We progress rather than regress.
   
     The TSA can be applied fruitfully to other psycho-spiritual systems such as the Tarot, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and Jungian Typology.  All of these systems, whether ancient or modern, are tools to assist us in the Great Work of personal, interpersonal and global transformation, and they can all be used on at least three levels of application, as briefly described above.   For example, in addition to being an avid Enneagram practitioner I also used to practice and teach courses in the Wisdom of the Tarot.  In doing so I would often tell my students that they could use the Tarot in many ways.  In terms of the TSA presented in this article, I taught that the Earth School is primarily about the body, and its needs; The Lunar School is primarily about the ego, and its wants; The Solar School is primarily about the Soul or Essential Self, with her meanings, desires and purposes.  All three levels of personal and collective reality must be consciously accepted, worked with, and ultimately transformed.  One must learn to work with and integrate all three schools into her/his spiritual practice in order to become what the Sufis would call a Complete Man or Woman.  Toward that end, I would like to now engage in a very short "intellectual meditation" on the Three Schools Approach to the Enneagram.

     In the Earth School we all live as “evolved primates” on the third planet from the Sun, and thus must maintain our bodies in good health in order to survive and thrive on the physical plane.  It is important here to note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using the Enneagram for practical purposes to improve one’s sojourn here on Earth---as long as one realizes that this is what s/he is doing, and does not manipulate others in the process.  In terms of esoteric cosmology, the Earth School relates to the Physical Plane, and lessons concerning "choice".  In the Earth School of the Enneagram we are learning how to make wise and compassionate choices, and also learning that to not choose is also a choice (Type 9)!  In addition, we are learning how not to deprive others of their right (Type 1) and power (Type 8) to make personal choices. 

     In Fourth Way traditions (and I believe that the Enneagram was and continues to be part of such a tradition), we are not trying to transcend the Earth, but to transform her into a terrestrial version of Paradise.  It has been my repeated observation that many Seekers of Truth in the West are still using spiritual practices to escape from their bodies, feelings, painful mental states, and from the Earth itself with all its myriad problems (cf. psychologist and author John Welwood’s discussion of the phenomenon of “spiritual bypassing” in his insightful book: Towards a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation).  However, as a spiritual teacher once quipped, “the lessons of the physical plane are to be found on the physical plane.”  And these lessons have to do with learning the right use of: 1) The natural world, including the other living beings with whom we share the planet. 2) Our human bodies. 3) The created things of this world, including the latest technological inventions that have the ability to both improve our living conditions, and wreak tremendous environmental, psychological and spiritual havoc. 

     Again, with the Earth School we focus on practical and often survival-oriented applications.  In terms of the Enneagram of Personality, we could say that this means we are primarily, although not exclusively, working with the 27 Subtypes, with their characteristic preoccupations.  For example, as a Self-preservation/Survival Seven, I spend much of my time preoccupied with creating, in various ways, a sense of home/family/place for myself, because that is what I need to feel comfortable in my body, here on Earth.  A Social Four would spend much of her time preoccupied with how to avoid shame in social situations, in order to feel comfortable with other people in the family, workplace and society.   
 
     In the Lunar School we become more concerned with psychological development than with simply making ourselves comfortable on the Physical Plane.  We all have individual psyches that must be “grown” so to speak during our developmental journey through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, so there is nothing wrong with using the Enneagram to purify and illumine one’s psychic structure.  As John Welwood says in his book cited above, we are entering a time in history where it will be important to both wake up and grow up.  Past a certain point though one must be careful not spin around in endless circles, using the psyche to purify and illumine the psyche, to purify and illumine the psyche, and so on.

     Many Enneagram practitioners teach quite rightly that each type will instinctively try to work on its psychic structure using the very Passion, Defense Mechanism and Chief Feature that s/he is trying to transform.  Naturally, this approach is problematic and ultimately unsuccessful.  For example, an Ennea-type Five cannot transform his tendency to over-detach from and over-objectify the world, by standing outside of himself and observing his tendency to over-detach from and over-objectify the world.  An Ennea-type Three cannot transform her patterns of false personality by working on herself in an ever harder and more efficiently Threeish manner.  An Ennea-type Four cannot transform the Passion of Envy, by enviously comparing herself to somebody who doesn’t have her pattern.  An Ennea-type Seven cannot transform his tendency to rationalize by making excuses about why he needs to rationalize.  And so on.  This point has been made many times already by Enneagram theorists, but I believe that it needs mentioning yet again in the context of this article, because truly understanding it enables one to move into the Solar School of the Enneagram. 

     With the Lunar School, we will focus primarily, although not exclusively, on the Passions, Virtues and Defense Mechanisms.  For example, as a Seven, I would be working on transforming my Gluttony into Sobriety, and learning to observe carefully and then move away from my habit of Rationalization.  Yet the paradox of all psycho-spiritual work is that we cannot fix a problem by attacking it on the same level that it exists---one must move to at least the next level above.  Anything else is just a temporary band-aid.  To achieve practical results in the world (Earth School), we ultimately have to change ourselves (Lunar School).  To heal and transform our psychic structure (Lunar School), we ultimately have to discover our Essence, and shift the center of gravity of the individual psyche from the ego to the Soul or Essential Self (Solar School).

     In terms of esoteric cosmology, the Lunar School relates to the Astral Plane, and lessons concerning "interpretation".  In the Lunar School of the Enneagram we are learning how to make wise and compassionate interpretations ("emotional understandings") of our daily experiences.  We are learning that ultimately our outer circumstances are created by how we interpret our inner world of thoughts, feelings and sensations, and their effect on us, as reflected by our current state of mental, emotional and physical health.  On this level we may be involved with dreamwork, Jungian "active imagination", psychotherapy, or a spiritual community.  We may explore our childhood for positive memories, traumas, and hidden gifts and talents.  We may go on sacred pilgrimages, etc.

     In the Solar School we shift our focus away from our psychic structure per se and toward Essence.  We all have a Soul that must be consciously identified with and then actualized, and this process leads eventually to a realization of what the Sufis term the Personal Essence.  The question then becomes how do the nine types realize their Personal Essence?

     The Enneagram teaches that each type emerges out of a unique wound, which later effectively masks an aspect of Essence.  For example, the personality structure of a Three covers up her/his Essence Quality of Love/Hope, just as the personality structure of a Six conceals her/his Essence Quality of Intelligence/Faith, and so on.  It is precisely by reconnecting with this missing aspect of Essence that we begin to identify with and actualize the Personal Essence.  And the only way for each one of us to access the missing Essence Quality unique to our type is through the embodiment and application of Presence (Type 9), Love (Type 3), and Intelligence (Type 6). 

     In the Solar School we focus primarily, although not exclusively, on the Chief Features and the corresponding missing Essence Qualities.  We do this by invoking, accessing and working with the three Divine Qualities of the Soul mentioned above, what the Theosophists term: Atma-Buddhi-Manas.  It is a transitional stage between the psycho-analysis and psycho-therapy at the Lunar level, and the more purely transpersonal and collective work at the fourth and final level of the Cosmic School.  In terms of esoteric cosmology, the Solar School relates to the Causal Plane, and lessons concerning "apprehension".  So in the Solar School of the Enneagram we are learning how to make wise and compassionate apprehensions ("intellectual understandings") about the nature of reality on the three lower planes of reality, and the true causes of events (the karmic seeds) that eventually manifest on the Astral and Physical Planes of consciousness.

    I believe that the original transmission of the Enneagram (which as Gurdieff postulated came perhaps from the Sarmouni/Sarman Brotherhood in ancient Chaldea), was concerned mostly with the Solar and perhaps even Cosmic levels of spiritual development---i.e. the cultivation of Soul contact and expression, and then later conscious reconnection to the Divine Being out of which the Earth School and our Solar System emerged aeons ago.  In fact, my strong intuition is that the Enneagram was not even taught overtly to individuals who were not yet ready to work directly on the cultivation of the Personal Essence, the fabulous “Pearl Beyond Price.”  The ancient Seekers of Truth, those adepts that Gurdieff claimed did the work of preserving and disseminating the teachings of the Enneagram in remote spiritual schools, were no doubt required to first purify and illumine their bodies and egos before being introduced to their Chief Features and corresponding missing Essence Qualities.  But times change, and the world is now in dire need of myriad psycho-spiritual tools in order to effect rapid personal, interpersonal and global transformation.  Thus, esoteric teachings such as Tantra, the Tarot, the Enneagram, Kabbalah, Jungian Psychology, and Alchemy are being popularized and made widely available.  We are now witnessing what the cultural historian William Irwin Thompson calls the “planetization of the archaic” and the “externalization of the esoteric”, and so long as the many powerful tools and techniques currently available are used with both wisdom and compassion, these processes will no doubt yield highly beneficial results for those willing to suffer the work of purification, illumination and mystical union with the Divine. 

Copyright © 2006 Carl Marsak