From the point of view of the Diamond Approach™, the Enneagram is an efficient tool for connecting with our true nature (Being), for connecting explicitly with our soul and helping it to develop and mature. The word "soul," as used here, includes all of an individuals' experience - the mind, the emotions, the body, the spiritual experience. In fact it can be thought of as the container and the content of our experience.

When a child enters the world, his or her soul is very fluid and is very much connected with the depth of Being, with its true nature. However, the child is not consciously aware of this. It is the development of the personality which makes possible the conscious perception of our true nature, even though the personality also creates rigid structures (habits, beliefs, tensions, identifications, etc.) within the soul and makes conscious contact with our true nature difficult. In the process of developing our personalities we tend to forget that Being exists, or if we do believe that it exists, we believe that we are separate from it. This developed rigidity manifests as the nine types, or fixations, of the Enneagram. (Although the rigidity structures the body and the emotions, it is perhaps most easily seen in the ideas and self-images of the individual.)

The work of individual spiritual development is usually seen to be that of experiencing our true nature, becoming our true nature, and living and acting as our true nature - which may have sense of being boundless presence/absence/goodness, may be manifest or unmanifest, or may be non-conceptual, depending on the particular spiritual path. These states of true nature are very pure and are usually experienced as quite distant, quite different from our ordinary experience.

Most spiritual paths seek to go beyond the rigidity of the personality through concentration, through mindfulness, or through "getting rid of the personality." And indeed, true nature can be experienced through these paths. However, for the soul to be able to experience itself as true nature and act from that place, it needs to know that the capacities needed to function in the ordinary world actually exist within true nature. This is the role of the essential aspects, or "Essence," as it is referred to in A.H. Almaas's book (of the same) name.

These essential aspects are precise differentiations of the boundless qualities of true nature, and include compassion, personal love, strength, will, peace, power and joy, as well as many others. In ordinary life most of us have some connection with these qualities through their action in our lives, although we rarely experience them explicitly.

Let me give an example. The aspect of strength has within it the qualities of expansion, capacity, aliveness, assertiveness and vitality, as well as strength itself. When we experience ourselves in any of these ways we are experiencing strength. When crying in hunger, an infant is acting in response to this quality. If the crying is not responded to there is a frustration of this energy and it begins to turn into anger. This frustration of the assertive nature of strength is what we ordinarily feel as anger, although we may call it irritation, frustration or some other nice name. Thus anger becomes linked with strength, and whatever psychological issues we have about anger must be understood and resolved before we can freely experience the aspect of Essence which we call strength.

Each aspect of essence has its own issues; knowledge of and interest in these issues and how they affect the personality are two of the characteristics of the Diamond Approach. In particular, we see that as our we consciously experience these aspects of essence, our soul relaxes; it feels more itself and is more willing to become the deeper qualities of true nature which contain these aspects implicitly. As this happens the soul naturally lets go of the rigidities of the personality.

So what does this have to do with the Enneagram of Holy Ideas? The Enneagram of Holy Ideas can be seen as a map or understanding of reality when the soul is free of the rigidities of the ego/personality. The characteristics of the types can be seen as the specific way that an individual soul has misunderstood its particular Holy Idea. Thus, exploring the Holy Ideas can help us see the depth of reality and our own particular way of misinterpreting it. From this position we can then examine the issues that are a part of this misinterpretation.

The Holy Ideas are grouped around the corners of the Enneagram in accordance with the basic orientation that underlies them: the Holy Ideas for 8, 9 and 1 have to do with understanding reality as a whole; the Holy Ideas for 2, 3 and 4 have to do with understanding functioning from the perspective of reality; and the Holy Ideas for 5, 6 and 7 have to do with the individual experiencing this reality.

Here, I can only give a brief description of the Holy Ideas and the individual's misinterpretations of them. For further details and more complete understanding of the use of the Holy Ideas in the Diamond Approach see A.H. Almaas's book, Facets of Unity. Much of the material in this article comes from the teaching embodied in that book.*

It is perhaps most efficient to start with Truth, which is the Holy Idea for the Eight. The understanding of Truth here is that all of reality is a unity, a oneness; it is a wholeness. This implies that from the perspective of egolessness that there are not separate objects in the universe, that everything (and everybody) is connected. One way the Eight can distort this is to believe that there is only one truth, his or her own.

Taking this understanding to the personal orientation, we have the Holy Idea of the Five, Transparency. This idea means that the individual is not a separate, isolated entity; he or she is a part of the unity, is not separate from others or the universe. Thus, the observer who sees himself as a separate, isolated, "objective" individual has a very distorted viewpoint when seen from this perspective.

The unity of reality also implies that there is a unity of functioning of reality. This is the basis for Will, which is the Holy Idea for the Two. To see that the unity functions as a whole, that the individual functions within the whole, that the individual need not separate from the functioning of the universe, is quite counter to the general willfulness encountered in the Two.

Returning to understanding the universe as a whole, the Holy Idea for One is that of Perfection. This is idea is simple: the universe is perfect as it is. Obviously the One misinterprets this, believing that perfection requires adherence to and the attempt to reach certain standards that he or she holds.

On the personal level this leads to Work, the Holy Idea for the Seven. Here we see that work, work on becoming one's true nature, takes place in the present (which is of course perfect). This is in strong contrast to the planning, remembering and storytelling that characterizes the Seven.

From the place of functioning on this triangle comes the Holy Idea for the Four, which is Source, or Origin. Here we see that functioning comes because one is connected with the source; the functioning actually comes from the source. The Four tries to create a specialness, a uniqueness which is an attempt to look like the source even though there is a deep feeling of disconnection from any sense of source.

Returning to the universal for the last time, we find Holy Love, the idea for the Nine. Here the idea is that reality, the universe, is good; not only is it good, but it is equally good everywhere at every time. (Type Nine is the central type of the Enneagram, and each of the nine types participates deeply in the misunderstanding of this Holy Idea.) The Nines generally feel "not good enough," and either work to overcome that by doing for others, or give up and are lazy about themselves.

The Six takes the idea about the goodness of the world to a more personal level, in Holy Idea of Faith. Here Faith is the experience of the soul that comes from the direct experience of being supported by the goodness of true nature (Essence); one is faithful to reality because one's soul has been eased by this direct experience of the support of Essence. The reliance on authority or belief (and the doubt and rebellion which result from it) which is so characteristic of a Six is not an issue in this egoless place.

When we look at functioning from the perspective of the goodness of the universe, we see that there is a dynamic, optimizing thrust which is a part of the dynamism of reality itself. The Holy Idea of Hope for the Three is the response (a deep relaxation) of the soul to seeing that the universe operates in dynamic functioning patterns which are reliable, and that there is a deep and pervasive harmony in this dynamism. Lacking the Holy Idea of Hope, the Three tends to try to manufacture hope by being the one who sets up the rules and makes the universe work.

This is just a brief look at the Holy Ideas. They give us a sense of how it might be to live with the issues of the ego/personality resolved, and in seeing them we can get a feel for the particular difficulties in our own personality.

Since Nine is the basic fixation, we can see an orientation to the Holy Idea of Love permeating the Enneagram-related work on the soul. From the perspective of the Diamond Approach, the Holy Idea of Love is an expression of the experience of a particular dimension of true nature called Divine Love. When the soul deeply experiences Divine Love it begins to experience a basic trust in reality. This trust is so basic that it is not actually conceptualized. This can cause a great discomfort for the mind; thus, a role that the nine Holy Ideas can play is to help the mind rest by providing a conceptualization of some of the experiences that help to create basic trust in the soul.

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* It seems clear to me that the Enneagram of the Holy Ideas comes from Oscar Ichazo. I have used his names for the the Holy Ideas with the exception of Transparency rather than Omniscience for the Five. Those who are acquainted with his understanding of the Holy Ideas will see that they speak more of the perspective of the person who is on the path, than the perspective of reality itself. Thus Omniscience becomes the knowingness that one experiences when the sense of Transparency is present. I would like to express my appreciation to Ichazo for his development of this concept and to my teacher, Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) who has brought the perspective of the Diamond Approach to this deep spiritual symbol.

Enneagram of Holy Ideas, and, when applied to points of the enneagram, the following Holy Ideas are service marks of Arica Institute, Inc.: Holy Perfection, Holy Will, Holy Hope, Holy Origin, Holy Faith, Holy Work, Holy Truth, Holy Love.

See also: Almaas:  Specific Delusions, Specific Difficulties, and Specific Reactions