Reports

Attending the enneagram workshops with Lissa has been a very transformative process for me. The process of identifying my fixation was synonymous with pulling back the curtain on my beliefs about myself. It was shocking at first and required a willingness to work through some difficult stuff, but ultimately a very positive, freeing experience --and a very necessary and valuable tool on this journey. In addition, the atmosphere of Lissa's workshops are comfortable and provide a supportive environment to work through the material. I would recommend these workshops to anyone who is interested in 'waking up'!
Jennifer Davis

Before I participated in the Enneagram workshops I had many encounters and experiences with various spiritual groups and traditions. All of these experiences were a call to awaken, and each time there would be prolonged insights into the truth of my inner nature. There would be a lot of bliss, joy, peace, and awareness. But it would not last throughout the more mundane experiences of my life, such as going to my job, attending classes, and doing chores around the house. It seemed to me at the time that "truth" was something that occurred in isolated "spiritual" contexts, and could be achieved alone, with some effort, perhaps in meditation or in doing practices such as yoga. But there was always a frustration that this truth, or peace, was something that needed to be obtained, and through a specific practice or medium.

The Enneagram did not interest me that much when I was introduced to it. It didn't seem exciting, particularly after the ups and downs, the highs and lows that I was so addicted to in these other spiritual contexts. But when I began to see my patterned fixations, I could no longer deny the causes of my suffering. It began to make more sense to me why I could reach states of bliss in weekends of retreat or moments in meditation, and then crash into depression, misery, or boredom. Because the character fixation that I was so identified with was never addressed by any other spiritual practice. I had never learned how to see through these patterns and work with them in my day to day life. One of my friends has stated that the Enneagram is such a powerful tool, and it works, because it shows you what you are not. Then one can begin to unravel these patterns to become illumined to the truth of what is real, who one really is.

I have to add that working with the same people over an extended period of time (more than one year) was very beneficial in not only seeing my own pattern more clearly, but other patterns as well. The most valuable gift I recieved from the Enneagram work is the ability to see people for who they really are, rather than identifying them with what they do, what their habits are, or who they think they are. Layer by layer, the ego identification has fallen away within myself and so many other people who I interact with doing this work, until there is nothing but the bliss and peace I was actively seeking before. And I began to realize that there is no specific way to attain this state, that it is always present both within and without oneself.

I always knew that the 'ego was false' and I shouldn't believe it. Of course I had no idea how many things comprised it! Learning about the enneagram, or more specifically the "four fixation", at first helped me realize how many things I thought and felt were really just due to my wiring. This relieved me because it made it easier to recognize why a thought/emotion like shame (my subtype) would pop up on what seemed like random and frequent occasion. Once I began to see that it was really just my fixation, or angle, I could stop feeding into it and yet not resist it; basically realize that it is not such a big deal. This is just one small example of how the enneagram work helped reallign my perspective. It is a tool!

Discovering my character fixation on the enneagram system was an early awakening for me. I have the six fixation on this system, also known as the “doubting loyalist”. All fixations on the enneagram describe a particular relationship with an emotion such as fear, anger or sadness. I have spent most of this lifetime in relationship to fear. The tricky thing about the six’s relationship to fear is that it manifests as a fear of fear, and for most sixes (including myself) the terror of feeling fear is totally unconscious. Therefore, even though my personal character has been governed by fear, the very presence of that fear was totally unknown, or rather denied prior to my exposure to the enneagram. At first I was skeptical about any system that appears to place people into boxes, and now I know “without a doubt” (a big statement for a person with a six fixation) that I was already living in a box. It was as if the first enneagram workshop I attended striped the first layer of this box, allowing enough light from the outside for me to see through. For instance, in the avoidance of fear, my fixation constructed illusory means of making me “believe” I was in fact a strong-minded and bodied for that matter, independent, reliable, and intuitive person. This surface identity was maintained through a constant internal and external dialogue which would often express such statements as “I can do it myself,” “I don’t need anyone,” “don’t mess with me, I’m a lot stronger than you think” and so on. So these stories helped to perpetuate a surface level identity that appeared very solid and secure to myself. But when Lissa Friedman scratched the surface via the enneagram, I was confronted with a more powerful level of identification. This level also came with a set of stories which included, “I am weak,” “I can’t take care of myself,” “ I am all alone and always have been,” “I can’t trust anyone, not even myself” and so on. This is where the enneagram workshops helped to guide me through what felt like an ocean of fear with no end. Unlike traditional psychology, which can tend to indulge the stories that we attach to certain “negative” feelings, the enneagram system focuses on the release of all stories so that one can fully face what our stories have helped us numb. This may sound excruciating, and it is! But I learned through my own process that when I have allowed myself to fully experience what I spent my life’s energy avoiding, I discovered myself instantly on the other side, no longer terrified of fear and no longer desperate to find something to trust. These enneagram workshops have helped me to see the structures of a constricted box in which I was imprisoned by. So while I have continued to carry it around, I am now aware of both an inside spaciousness untouched by the box and an outside spaciousness also untouched by this box. The walls of this box are no different from the mental stories I was unconsciously telling myself about myself, and now those walls are like transparent papers, slowly but surely blowing away.

I've always had an affection for personality tests, so widely accepted ones such as the MBTI and the Enneagram are easily adapted into my personality. When I first took an Enneagram test a few years ago, I read a little bit on the Five, and knew I was one by the descriptions. The things I related to were the standard understandings of Five, that they were somewhat withdrawn from the world, lived in their minds, needed a lot of space, that sort of stuff, but I didn't give it much thought otherwise. I guess it wasn't so much at the workshops as at a retreat that I realized the extent of what it meant to be a Five, but you were talking about the Enneagram at the retreat, so I suppose it all goes in the same category, right? He he. But the benefit of really discovering what it meant to be a Five has really been thought provoking, and at times thought revoking. Fives do a lot of stuff to withdraw from the world, I know I always have, but I didn't ever give any thought on why. The core belief, as you've put it, when explained to me, was shockingly accurate. I guess I could have just said, ‘yeah whatever,' but once I really stepped back and looked at my life as a whole, the phrase "I withdraw from the world because it is too big, and it will consume and destroy me," or however you put it, painted an unnervingly accurate term for my life style. Being a Five has really handicapped me in the way of hindering my willingness (and ability indirectly) to move out of my home, find work, and really to even be able to move forward in many ways. Since having it all pointed out to me though, I am now more aware of when I'm indulging in behavior that I really have little control over when I'm not paying attention. I can go ahead and just deal with the fear instead of letting it drive me away from what I need to do. I didn't even realize how horrified I was, and still am, of getting a job, but now I have the power of being able to say, "it's alright to be afraid, but we're doing this, because this fear is irrational." I wouldn't have had the power to say anything like that before I really started looking at what I did as a Five, and how it reached down into almost every aspect of my life. It helped me in a number of ways, such as allowing me to also slow down my compulsive analyzing of everything, allowing me to not just react with whatever comes into my head which was frequently harmful to others and myself, and to better understand where ego drives were coming from and what their main missions were. The Enneagram workshops did a lot to help me understand other people as well. Instead of going with the immediate response of ‘I wanna kick that person,' I have the ability to sortof...look over their main personality traits, and figure out what they were really meaning to do. I think understanding where other people are really coming from, as far as how their egos are constructed, really allows me to calm down my own mental agitation concerning other people, and let go. On a whole it's been an extremely helpful device in breaking compulsive cycles and helping me to relax. I frequently recommend it to other people, although to most of them it probably just looks like a personality indicator like it did to me at first. That's alright though. He he.

I have had the opportunity to take the Level 1 and Level 3 Enneagram Workshops with Lissa. Previous to beginning the work with Lissa I had done some study on my own, however it was Lissa's wonderful explanation of the system and its background and history that made the Enneagram come alive for me. Lissa has an incredible way of connecting with each participant in the workshop and supporting us in learning about ourselves and how we relate to others. This work has impacted every aspect of my life and I am truly grateful to Lissa.