Arizona Enneagram Association

The objectives of the Basic Classes are to provide students with an understanding of their own personality type as well as the Enneagram system as a whole, and to support students in developing healthy personal egos and fulfilling relationships.

Tour of the Types

This introductory overview to the Enneagram system includes descriptions of the nine patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior in relationships that define the Types. It is typically offered as a 2½-hour class.

Foundations of the Enneagram

This class provides a thorough foundation for understanding and working with the Enneagram system. It describes the nine personality types, the habits of emotion and thinking, and the avoidances, defense mechanisms and habits of attention that hold each type in place. Methods include teaching, exercises and brief panel interviews with class participants. The Enneagram Discovery Inventory developed by Dr. David Daniels MD is used to assist participants to identify their own Enneagram personality type.

This basic course is highly recommended as preparation for all of the continuing Enneagram programs. It is typically offered as a 6-hour class.

Exploring the Enneagram Types

An exploration and deepening of the understanding of each of the Enneagram Types. Each type is explored as a tool for self-discovery and self-healing by observing exemplars for each type and working with dyads and audience participation. The spiritual practices of meditation and self-observation are used to help students gain an objective view of the personality structures that serve us so well and, conversely, have also become our greatest obstacle.

This class is designed especially for those who have begun their study by taking the Foundations of the Enneagram, but advanced students are welcome, as well or anyone who would like to deepen their awareness of the types. It is typically offered in three 3-hour sessions and occasionally in nine 2-hour sessions.

The Barriers to Spiritual Freedom Series of classes introduces students to the practice of inquiry as an essential tool for inner development and moving beyond the habitual identification and patterns of personality type. These classes offer students the opportunity to work in a small group environment to deepen their self-understanding, strengthen their inner observer, and move toward spiritual freedom. Foundations of the Enneagram is a strongly recommended preparation for all of the classes at this level.

Foundations for Spirituality: an Introduction to Inner Work

This short class provides a bridge from personality work into inner work by tracing the developmental path that leads to a sense of individual consciousness. It examines the relationship between the personality self and the core self with its permanent qualities of the life force (the Virtues) and of being itself (the Holy Ideas.) It also provides an overview of the paths and practices that lead toward integration.

Type and False Identity

Personality is “who I think I am.” It is a self-concept that builds in childhood and, once formed, is so much “who we are” that we do not recognize it as a highly sophisticated construct built from imagination, imitation, and a need to be appreciated. Our identifications protect us from feelings of anxiety, discomfort and uncertainty about facing the unknown, yet limit our freedom to experience and act from a truer, inner self.

The objectives of this course are to clarify and deepen our understanding that personality is a structure which is formed and held in place by habits of attention, and to develop and strengthen one’s awareness and experience of their inner observer. The format is highly interactive and includes exercises, practices, and dialogue on the habits of attention, idealization, identification, secondary gain, stress and security points that reinforce the structure of type.

This is the first class in a series on reducing the barriers to spiritual freedom. Students need to be familiar with the Enneagram system by taking a basic level class or other preparation. It is presented in six 2½- hour sessions, or a shorter format on a Friday evening/Saturday.

This basic course is highly recommended as preparation for all of the continuing Enneagram programs. It is typically offered as a 6 day class.

Projection & Defense

The defense mechanism is an unconscious habit of mind that serves to protect our view of ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us. Defense mechanisms serve to hold projections, the misreading of reality that is rooted in type, in place. The awareness and loosening of these defensive barriers lead to greater spiritual, psychological and emotional freedom.

The objectives of this course are to deepen our understanding of each type’s defenses, lessen the need for the defense mechanisms, and open the door to greater spiritual freedom. Class format is highly interactive and includes exercises, practices, and dialogue that awaken the intuitive knowing of the Inner Observer and qualities of Presence. Topics include the passion, virtue, defense mechanism, projection and avoidance of each of the Enneagram types.

This is the 2nd class in a series on reducing the barriers to spiritual freedom. Students need to be familiar with the Enneagram system by taking a basic level class or other preparation but do not need to have taken the first class in this series (Type and False Identity). It is presented in six 2½-hour sessions, or in a shorter format on a Friday evening/Saturday.

Presence & Self-forgetting

Each Enneagram type is characterized by a placement of attention that acts as a barrier to Presence. Our attentional bias affects behavior in the arenas of relationship to oneself, to another individual and to social groups. The Enneagram subtypes (Self-Preservation, Social, and One-to-One) are expressions in these arenas of relationship of our inborn instinctual energies.

Exercises, practices and dialogue will help participants to identify and deepen their understanding of their subtypes and how their subtype placement of attention affects their behavior and relationships. The intent of the work is to help participants relax the barriers that result from one’s attentional bias, and to experience and respond to Presence.

Students need to be familiar with the Enneagram system by taking a basic level class or other preparation, but do not have to have taken the other classes in this series. This class is presented in six 2½-hour sessions, or in a shorter format on a Friday evening/Saturday.

Enneagram Conversations

This class provides an opportunity for students to deepen their skills in inquiry and capacity for inner observation, while exploring various topics at the discretion of the teacher.

Students need to be familiar with the Enneagram system by taking a basic level class or other preparation, but do not have to have taken the other classes in this series. It is typically offered in four 2-hour sessions.

The classes in the Experiencing Spiritual Freedom Series give students the opportunity to continue their work in a small group environment. Having already developed skills in inner observation, students are led into the direct experience of the Virtues and Holy Ideas that can lead to deep transformation of their patterns of thinking, feeling and acting.

Working with the Virtues

The Virtues described by the Enneagram are qualities of the life force and are experienced in everyday life when our life force is well-balanced. The Virtues are always present even though we may not have direct experience of them, particularly when we are in the reactivity of our passion.

This class works with identifying the experience of the passion, and with relaxing into the contraction that holds it in place, instead of fighting it or fleeing from it. You will accomplish a deep personal examination of your own emotional pattern and its conversion to the corresponding virtue through exercises, meditation practices, and dialogue.

Participation in this class requires that students are familiar with the Enneagram system and have developed a capacity for inner observation. Ideal preparation includes the classes in the Basic level and the Barriers to Spiritual Freedom Series. It is presented in six 2½ hour sessions, or in a shorter format on a Friday evening/Saturday.

Working with the Holy Ideas

The Holy Ideas are qualities of Being itself, and can be recognized and experienced in spiritual experience. Using images of the Holy Ideas and the symbolic meanings they evoke, we will explore the Holy Idea of our own Type and invoke its presence in everyday life. We will also explore our experience from the perspective of Holy Love, Holy Faith, and Holy Hope, and their effect on our worldview.

This class enters into an examination of the reality and validity of intuitive knowing. Methods will include meditation, guided imagery, inquiry exercises, dialogue and journaling.

Participation in this class requires that students be familiar with the Enneagram system and have developed a capacity for inner observation. Ideal preparation includes the classes in the Basic level and the Barriers to Spiritual Freedom Series. It is presented in six 2½-hour sessions, or in a shorter format on a Friday evening/Saturday.

Spiritual Practices for the Types

This class offers the opportunity to work with spiritual practices that help one to move past the habits of attention, emotion and reactivity associated with one’s Enneagram type, and toward a clearer realization of one’s truer Self. Practices work specifically with the three centers of intelligence: the mind, heart and body.

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AEA Curriculum