The Enneagram in Insight Meditation Practice

On this retreat the relevance of these two ancient paths of sacred knowledge to spiritual unfolding will be explored. The Enneagram is a dynamic description of nine fundamental ways attention and energy are organized. The resulting habitual patterning keeps us caught in repetitive, distorted ways of thinking, feeling and sensing. Each of us falls more heavily into one pattern than another. Knowing our enneagram type is an effective way of freeing attention and energy from our habitual fixated patterns.

For those with a vipassana practice, the Enneagram reveals personality patterning that may not arise so obviously in sitting meditation. Knowing our enneagram type is particularly useful in understanding where our attention and energy habitually go, and hence our relationship dynamics, styles of communication, and our blind spots.

For students of the Enneagram, vipassana practice makes the work of releasing fixated patterns more possible, revealing the mind's essential nature. For each enneagram type, the practices of vipassana and/or the Brahma Viharas offer specific practices as antidotes. These will be part of the content of the retreat.