Unlocking the 9 Spiritual Gifts of the Enneatypes
As more and more people are discovering, the Enneagram is very helpful in parsing out the basic personality typologies that drive our behavior and our orientation toward the world. But the original purpose of this system arose out of contemplative practice, a way to realize the truth of what we are beyond those structures.
In this 11-module course, Sandra Maitri and Russ Hudson will synthesize decades of Enneagram knowledge and teaching experience with a lifetime of Diamond Approach spiritual development and methodology to help us reconnect to our essential being through the Enneagram.
This groundbreaking program will help you:
- Gain a fresh perspective on the Enneagram to support you both personally and professionally
- Learn leading-edge material from two Enneagram experts
- Engage in experiential practices that will unlock the spiritual gift of your Enneatype
- Find freedom from fixations and the limits of typology
Russ and Sandra will illuminate the approach presented in A.H. Almaas’s newly released book Keys to the Enneagram, in which he presents a radical new take on the Enneagram: that each of the Enneatypes mirrors and emulates a particular quality of presence, and how we can use inquiry and other practices to open up our typologies so that we can more readily access those qualities in our everyday lives.
In this way, we can understand the Enneagram more completely as part of a larger system of inner work and self-realization. This in turn can help us utilize the Enneagram to actualize our realization—that is, by first discovering and experiencing who and what we are, then living that truth in the world.
Please join us on this journey to better knowing yourself and your true nature as a spiritual being.
Who is this course for?
- Anyone who has explored the Enneagram, but feels like they’ve plateaued with what it has to offer
- Those who have a psychological understanding of the Enneagram but need the spiritual, experiential perspective to take them further
- Professionals looking to deepen their knowledge of the Enneagram and enhance their work
- Folks who have studied everything there is to know about the Enneagram and want to add this powerful new perspective to their knowledge base
- Those who understand the system, but still feel stuck in a personal pattern and haven’t quite gotten to the core of what holds them back
“Learn to respond to the world—not from your historic woundings or patterns or defenses, but from a profound, sensitive, compassionate intelligence, which is the root of our humanity."
What You’ll Receive When You Enroll...
11 self-paced, pre-recorded modules with teachings from Russ Hudson and Sandra Maitri on the keys to unlocking each of the Enneatypes
Guided practices and exercises that take the teachings from the intellectual to the experiential
Recorded Q&C sessions with Russ and Sandra so you can explore the material more deeply and hear answers to frequently asked questions
A downloadable version of each chapter of Keys to the Enneagram that will be available in the corresponding module
Hear from Students Who Attended the Opening
“Sandra Maitri and Russ Hudson are spiritual seekers, and both are experienced and talented teachers. They have an inclusive and interactive approach to co-teaching and the information they shared during the first weekend was fascinating. The meditations were illuminating, and the break-out sessions allowed further personal exploration with like-minded people. I hope everyone connected with the Enneagram will join this return to its transformative aspects.”
–Mary Bast, c0-author of Out of the Box: Coaching with the Enneagram
“For those who might have been wondering about the marriage of inner work and the map of the Enneagram, this course offers a deep invitation to journey with teachers, teachings and practices while experiencing the support of community … This course holds so much promise for seeding this sacred knowledge along with inner work practices far and wide. May you know if this is for you.”
-Anne A., Course Student
Here’s What You’ll Explore in the Course
Each session will explore an Enneatype in depth, while also emphasizing that, no matter what our dominant ego style, all the Enneatypes live in us.
Those with no experience of the Enneagram will be able to start from the beginning, from the system’s origins as a spiritual tool for realization. More experienced students of the Enneagram will gain a new perspective and more methodology for deepening and expanding their knowledge.
Opening
To really make use of the teachings explored in the book, they need to be moved out of the conceptual realm and become experiential, rooted in our direct experience. Throughout this course, we’ll learn how to engage our bodies, emotions, and the courage and steadfastness to confront the places of absence in our psyche. This is a process we cannot control, a process that we can’t manipulate or try to make happen. It requires a real surrender to the empty places inside without expectation and a sincere willingness to find out for ourselves what our inner reality is all about. That’s the only way that the keys will indeed become transformative and if you have that kind of sincerity, the keys can truly unlock the treasures of your nature. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p151-156)
Point 8
True Strength
Living Life as a Lionhearted Adventurer
Working on the obstacles to weakness, or to strength, through understanding our early dynamics, gives us more access to true strength, and integrates this state of Being in our present consciousness. True strength can be a heat or fire in the belly or a flow of red-hot strength. We might feel strong with a sense of capacity or wholeness. It is a strength that does not fade or decrease. It can only expand and deepen, and it gives our life great vigor, aliveness, and expansiveness. That expansion can become unstoppable and endless if we continue our spiritual journey. This is the key to unlocking the knot of the Eight’s fixation. But this also gives us a strength that will be useful in our life, in our spiritual practices in general, and in dealing with the core of all types. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p38)
Point 6
Personal Will
Landing in the Grounded Support of Being
If we are a Six (or any type), personal will gives us the key to unraveling our fixation and tackling its core with more capacity. It is the appropriate tool from the invisible world, and it helps us liberate ourselves from all the distorting, crippling, and problematic patterns and traits. At the same time, we are regaining access to an important aspect of our being that will help us in living our life with confidence and steadfastness, just as it can assist us in our practices with true commitment and certainty. We can focus and stay steady in that focus. We can be mindful and not forget the mindfulness thanks to our natural steadfastness and a genuine nonconceptual commitment. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p54)
Point 2
Merging Love
Embodying the Melting Sweetness of Being
Besides unraveling the deeper knots of the type and supporting our inner practice, the experience and integration of this aspect is quite an addition to our life. As an enormous enrichment of our heart the merging love can spill over to our relationships and life in general. Our giving becomes genuine, the heart connectedness is real, and flattery and manipulation are no longer needed. In other words, the integration of the merging gold into one’s soul makes type Two more sincere and truthful, more direct and transparent in their interactions and dealings with the world. But you don’t have to be a Two to have this generous heartfulness or this way of approaching life and relationships. You simply need access to the essential quality. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p66)
Point 1
Brilliancy
Knowing the Luminous Intelligence of True Nature
By integrating brilliancy – the essence of intelligence and the true perfection – we learn about our being in a significant way, and we know presence with more depth. Brilliancy is powerful for gaining synthesizing insights from many dimensions because it brings us the capacity for synthesis that is not available to the ordinary mind. And brilliancy also provides the specific key that can unravel the shell of the One type and help penetrate its deeper core. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p78)
Point 3
Personal Essence
Maturing into Divine Humanness
Looking at our capacity to be personal, our capacity for contact and relating in a real way, and at our functionality, we become open to the arising of the true person that we are. A real person is a human being, free from the mind, the demands of time, and the influence of culture and family – a truly autonomous individual, in the world but not of it. This truth is what feeds the soul as it grows and matures. This maturation becomes an essential individuation, culminating in the station of the pearl beyond price, the royalty of the inner realm. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p92-93)
Point 4
Essential Identity
Knowing You are the Luminous, True Self
The essential identity is a particular sense of presence and nowness. It is both an identity and a timeless sense of being or presence. At the same time, as we realize and integrate this essential identity, we become free from the patterns of the Four type, and we realize the qualities and characteristics behind the idealization. We are authentic, special in an ordinary way that does not require the limelight or applause, deep and profound without having to announce it to others or create dramas around it. We are original by simply being ourselves, and our creativity tends to be naturally and spontaneously original, without us having to seek out originality. We are complete, and our expressions are true and authentic. We live simply in freedom that does not seek recognition. This is the true inner freedom. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p106)
Point 7
Pleasure Vehicle
Revealing the Bliss of Inner Truth
The more we are loyal to the inner truth, regardless of what it is, the closer we are to the Markabah. It is the turn inward, the loyalty to the path of inner truth that can become the shortest route to this multi-faceted vehicle of delight and pleasure. For it is the turning inward toward the truth that reveals itself as the soul’s greatest pleasure – coming home to itself. This discovery can be so deep it can lead to realization and some degree of liberation. This is true for all types, but the vehicle of essential pleasure is particular to the Seven type, and so it is most important for them to examine where their true loyalties and priorities lie. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p121)
Point 9
Boundless Love
Discovering the Goodness, Richness, and Holding of the Spiritual Universe
By experiencing and integrating [Boundless Love] and by recognizing it is a quality of their nature, Nines may see their patterns begin to reveal themselves as historical distortions and impressions. If Nines – or any of us – are lucky or prepared enough to experience divine love itself, then it becomes a nondual awakening to reality, where we experience the unity of being as love and goodness. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p134)
Point 5
Diamond Guidance
Liberating the Soul Through Essential Intellect
Through awakening the essential intellect, Fives are liberated from the limited mental perspective that dominates the shell and this open-mindedness and direct knowing is vital to help penetrate the core of their fixation. But all types will benefit from access to the Diamond Guidance – synthesizing what is known and penetrating what is unknown as it provides understanding and insight for the soul’s journey toward liberation. (Adapted from Keys to the Enneagram, p149)
Closing Session
Finding and integrating the key for one’s particular type opens the door. But passing through it to greater spiritual development and openness requires accessing all nine keys since ego is composed of all the fixations and their delusions, even though one of them predominates. As we continue to delve deeper into ourselves, we encounter the other fixations and their cores and the need for all of the secret keys to liberation.
Meet Your Teachers
Russ Hudson
Over the last three decades, Russ Hudson has established himself as one of the top teachers and developers of the Enneagram personality typology in the world today. He has been writing and teaching full-time since 1991 and has co-authored with Don Richard Riso five best-selling books on the subject, including The Wisdom of the Enneagram and Personality Types. These books are widely considered to be not only groundbreaking contributions in the field of Enneagram studies, but also important contributions to the literature of psychology. He recently released the audiobook The Enneagram: Nine Gateways to Presence and has more books on the way. Actively involved in the Enneagram community, Russ is the co-founder of the Enneagram Institute as well as a Founding Director and former Vice-President of the International Enneagram Association — a global organization advancing knowledge of the subject.
Sandra Maitri
Sandra Maitri is an artist, an author, an enneagram teacher, and a long-time teacher of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization. She was among the first group of students to whom the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo presented the enneagram system in the United States in the early seventies. She has been teaching the enneagram as part of the larger work of spiritual transformation for over four decades. Sandra leads Diamond Approach groups and enneagram workshops for hundreds of students each year in the United States and Europe. She has also studied with various Eastern and Western spiritual and psychological teachers, focusing especially on Insight and Tibetan Buddhist meditation. She is the author of The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul and The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home.
FAQ
What is the Ridhwan School?
“Ridhwan” is a Sufi word. It means “satisfied and satisfying.” Our school, home to more than 4,000 students across the globe, has the potential to both help you to be fulfilled and to help others be fulfilled. Students learn to ground, sensitize, recognize, and trust the inherent guidance of Being.
What is the Diamond Approach?
The Diamond Approach is the core teaching of the Ridhwan School, a spiritual path that approaches our ordinary experiences, emotions, and sensations in a friendly way of understanding. This radical acceptance of our situation allows something to come through that puts us in touch with our spirituality.
In the Diamond Approach, everything we experience is utilized as a doorway to our spiritual nature. Rather than negating or seeking to transcend parts of our humanness that are considered barriers to realization, we learn to approach each aspect of our physical, emotional, and mental experience with acceptance and open curiosity to discover its truth. We do meditation and other exercises, but the main method is Diamond Inquiry™: non-judgment of what we’re experiencing, which brings crisp clarity into one’s own truth.
What’s included in the program?
When you register for the program, you’ll receive access to all 11 modules where you’ll learn from Enneagram thought-leaders Russ Hudson and Sandra Maitri. You’ll have the opportunity to participate in teachings, guided practices, and experiential exercises as well as learning from other participants during the question and comment sessions.
Are the sessions live or pre-recorded?
This is a series of 11 pre-recorded workshops.
Will you be mailing anything to me or is everything digital?
Once payment is received you will receive an email with your login details, then you are officially in! You will receive everything in your email inbox, including instructions on how to access the course.
Do you offer financial assistance such as scholarships for online courses?
Yes! To apply for financial assistance for any of our courses, click here to complete a scholarship application.
What if I have questions?
We’re here to support you on your journey and help with any questions you may have about enrolling and accessing the course. For support please email daosupport@ridhwan.org. Be sure to add this address to your contact list so we don’t end up in your Junk/Spam/Promotions folder. But please check there just in case!
Is there a refund policy?
Yes. If you are dissatisfied with the course —for any reason—simply contact us within 30 days of enrollment.
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