Riso and Hudson Kinouchi Interview
(Tokyo,November, 2000)
A recent interview for the Enneagram Associates of Tokyo in cooperation with The Enneagram Institute. Kinouchi-san and Masumi-san are Riso-Hudson students who have started their own association and journal. Their discussion touched on many wide-ranging topics of interest to students of the Enneagram worldwide.
Interviewer: At the beginning of a recent two-day workshop in Tokyo, Don mentioned that the Enneagram is about insight into human nature. In Japan, the Enneagram ends up being used to type people, almost as a form of entertainment. With this in mind, we hope to deepen our understanding of its use for personal transformation. Do you have any suggestions about how to use the Enneagram this way?
Don Riso: Well, the Enneagram is not just about insight into human nature, although, of course, it does provide that, too. The Enneagram helps us understand many different observations we already have about human nature by providing a meaningful framework for them. It helps us to make sense of many different things by seeing how different observations and theories converge with each other. But the Enneagram is not just an interesting collection of insights; it is a penetrating and, ultimately, a liberating way of understanding human nature at a more profound depth.
And yes, to use the Enneagram only as a way of typing yourself or others is to only use a fraction of its potential. Obviously, we have to begin there and we really can't use the Enneagram in our lives unless we have typed ourselves accurately. But that's just the beginning point, not the finish of our self-exploration. Discovering our type is actually only the initial stage of our journey. Beyond that, the Enneagram helps us see the different personality structures that are interfering with our ability to be present, to be in the moment. Once we find our type, we have a map that helps us see what is standing in the way being more fully awake and to being truly alive in the present moment.
And, as we continue the process of being present, our consciousness begins to clarify and we discover that we are not just our personality. We see that there are dimensions to ourselves and to other people that we had only perhaps heard about in mystical literature but never really experienced ourselves. To put this in another way, as our consciousness becomes clearer, our awareness shifts and we begin to see ourselves and others in a completely different way. This is the process that is called "self-realization"—the process of realizing who you really are. Of course, for most people, this is a long journey. But it starts with a right understanding of your type.
Russ Hudson: I would add that the Enneagram is a powerful tool, but it is not an end in itself. My own understanding, as Don was just saying, is that it's a tool to help us wake up—a tool to help us be more present and to recognize the deeper dimensions of our experiences and of who we really are. Of course, there are many people who learn the Enneagram, or even teach the Enneagram, without having this orientation to it. But my experience is that, without this kind of deeper orientation, the very thing that we're studying tends to hijack the system. In another words, the personality begins to take the information for what the personality does—for defensive purposes, to manipulate itself and others, for narcissistic supplies, and to keep itself alive.
And you know, to some degree, this kind of thing is inevitable, particularly in the beginning. We all go through a kind of "Enneagram adolescence," and while we are learning the Enneagram, we play with it like a new toy. But, hopefully, our reasons for being involved with it eventually begin to come into a deeper alignment with the idea of transformation. We come to a place where we see that the Enneagram's purpose is not just to give us information, powerful though it is. Rather, we start to use the information as a guide to self-observation so that we can see what is happening in ourselves from moment to moment. It is a guide to help me see how I'm manifesting, and to recognize that what's here as "me" as my personality is only part of the picture.
This is when things start to get really interesting—and this is the part that Don and I have been most motivated by. Certainly, that's my own reason for doing this work. I feel that it's fine if someone wants to find their type and have more insight into themselves, but helping people do this is not my main interest in the system. I want to help people to discover their true nature—to find out who they really are—and this way to have real, unshakable peace and joy in their lives. Learning about your type is just the first step in this process.
Don: Yes, learning about the psychology and "mechanics" of your type is important because this is the main source of our suffering and the main source of our flight from our true nature. Because we are suffering, even unconsciously, we do not know how to stay with ourselves, to relax and to accept whatever is happening in the moment. As a result, we are in flight from ourselves, blocked and tense, distracted and acting out in all sorts of ways, with most of those ways hidden to us. So, the Enneagram is a great way to break out of this situation and to stop the personality from running away with us.
I suppose that when all is said and done, my own motivation is the same as is found in Buddhism—the desire to help alleviate human suffering. I know that both in my own life, and as I observe people, I find that most of our unhappiness comes from the habits, fears, defensive patterns, and the self-defeating reactions that our personality backs us into. While we seek what we think will be good, we stumble into more and more self-defeating activities until our suffering is intolerable. Then, we need extraordinary help to reverse what has happened. All of this can change to the extent that we can find a way to loosen up the personality—to the extent that we can find a way to have another relationship with our personality. When this happens, we have much more inner freedom—and that is the positive side of what I'm interested in—helping people to have more inner freedom.
Russ: To be in a different relationship with our personality requires that we begin to see that we are not our personality. This is a huge thing because it is so unlike the way we are in our ordinary consciousness. This kind of Inner Work helps me recognize that this pattern going on in my consciousness is not me. It's how my consciousness has been conditioned and it is obscuring what is more real in me. It's what keeps magnetizing my awareness and taking me out of the moment.
Don: Over time, our personality structures can go from being heavy, "wrought-iron" structures to something more light and flexible. The personality will still be there (at least in some of its manifestations), but it is no longer constricting or causing so much suffering.
Interviewer: Would you say there are some effective ways to avoid being stuck in typing people?
Don: Yes. Understand the real purpose of the Enneagram. The most important thing is to communicate that the Enneagram is not just about typing people.
Russ: It's about seeing what we need to let go of in order to be more present. The capacity to be present will support us in whatever kind of spiritual path we have chosen to be on. The Enneagram is not a religion in itself. Nonetheless, the very practice of being present will support us in our transformation and with whatever tools we choose to use. The sense of deep joy and satisfaction that comes from presence is ultimately a lot more compelling for people than learning to type people—going around saying "Ah! You are a Six!"
Interviewer: In my own teaching experience, I've found that most people come to workshops just because they want to know their type. The problem we're facing in Japan is that, once they think they "know" their type, or just before they've reached their "real" type, they just stop coming any more. As a facilitator, I'm concerned about how I should motivate such people to keep on coming to the workshops and to study the Enneagram further. Could you give us any advice?
Russ: When we introduce the Enneagram to people, we let them know at the beginning what it is really all about. Say something like, "This isn't just about learning your type—that's a good thing—but it is really about a much deeper fulfillment. It is about learning how to deepen your life and your relationships by finding for yourself the things that spirituality talks about." It is helpful to let new students know what is possible, while also letting them know that it's going to get harder before it gets easier. We always tell people, "If you choose to do this work, it will not be easy. You are going to feel things that are painful, things have been hidden for many years. The good news is none of these feelings are new: you are not going to get new hurts. You will just feel the hurts you're already walking around with. But by doing this, you will gradually clear them out, and with that new clarity and inner space will come inner freedom and joy." Let beginning students know that studying the Enneagram is a serious and challenging journey. It takes strength, perseverance, and the ability to love yourself and others—or at least, the willingness to learn these things. Most people understand this, and this kind of message awakens something in people. It invites them to take the journey
Don: I agree, it's really up to the facilitator, to not just say once, but many, many times what the real purpose of the Enneagram is. Because the ego has its own agendas and its own expectations, it takes a lot to overcome resistance to this message. People will hear things the way they want to hear them for about the first ten times. But perhaps around the eleventh or twelfth time you remind them of the real purpose of the Enneagram, they will finally hear what you are saying.
Russ: (Laughs.)
Don: However, there is something that is more important. It is that you have to embody it yourself. This part is trickier. The teacher has the obligation of embodying the teaching, or else how can a student really learn? Students, can of course, learn from what you are telling them, and the Enneagram is powerful and interesting enough as a pure body of knowledge to have at least some impact on students by teachers who do not really embody the teaching. Even if you are neurotic and acting in a self-inflating or authoritarian way, some of the teaching somehow miraculously gets through. But your personality issues do come across to people and they also get in the way of the teaching.
But if you are able, through your own Inner Work, even to a small degree, to embody the inner freedom, the joy, and the simplicity that we are speaking of, then your teaching will be much more effective because people want these things for themselves. If they are able to see joy and love and serenity in the teacher, it will awaken their own desire for life and for truth. Everyone wants Being, to know that they are living a miraculous life. Students will come back if they find this in you. They will come back because they want to be fully alive—not because they want to be typed.
Russ: I was anxious the first time I was going to teach with Don. As a type Five, I did not feel ready, so I went to our teacher in the Gurdjieff Work to ask for advice. He said something that I never forgot and I always try to live by.
He told us both, "Teach from your experience. Don't try to be more than you really are. Speak from what you actually know from your experience and that will communicate more than you trying to go beyond what you know. Even if it seems humble and incomplete to you, your sincerity and your sharing of what you actually have experienced will be inviting and transformational to people." I have found this always to be true.
Interviewer: I feel that there's an increasing interest in spirituality worldwide right now. However, in Japanese society overall, there's a tendency to ignore spiritual interests. What do you think about modern Japanese culture and what shall we do about it? Russ-san, you have a background in Japanese studies. What do you think?
Russ: Someone recently said to our main teacher, A.H. Almaas, that he must feel good because there are so many more people getting into spirituality in the world. But he surprised everyone by saying, "Oh, really? Where? I don't see it!" He made a joke about it, but he was also quite serious. He went on to say that there are always going to be a certain number of people who want to use spirituality for a social connection. They use it as a way to feel better about themselves by feeling that they have a special mission, or that they are mystical, or something like that. He observed that there are far fewer people who are willing to go through difficult Inner Work that we've been talking about to really embody compassion, wisdom, and clarity—among other qualities—that are the real qualities of the spirit.
This is not just a problem in Japan. A lack of understanding of what spirituality is really about is a problem everywhere, although each culture has its own barriers. Certainly in the United States, the big barrier to spirituality is narcissistic inflation. Everyone thinks they're already enlightened, or that if they simply go to a few workshops or read a few books, they will be able to attain enlightenment pretty quickly. They've been to a few workshops and they are ready to become Rinpoches! In Japan, the problem is different.
In our estimation, Japan is a very "type Six" culture. So what is the Six's main barrier? Sixes are so anxious about security issues that they feel like they can't take any time for anything else. Sixes feel that all of this talk about spirituality is okay, but that they have more immediate things to worry about. It's the feeling that I can't take my attention away from other more immediate and pressing problems. So in a Six culture, we see a lot of anxiety and the feeling that I have to carry my weight to help my family and my company before I would ever feel secure enough to do anything "impractical" such as a spiritual path. "I'd love to take time to study the Enneagram or meditate, but there's so much demand at work..." Japanese people feel pulled from many different directions to fulfill their social obligations and to keep their country afloat.
Don: Yes, even more deeply, we teach that the basic problem for Sixes is a lack of faith in their ability to know the truth for themselves. Sixes feel that they cannot rely on themselves and that they have to go through an "authority" who will tell them what they need to know. In our experience in Japan, there are not as many narcissistic problems as there are problems with repression, guilt, and people having a lack of trust in themselves that would enable them to think for themselves and to act outside of traditional, approved ways.
Russ: Also, I think that Sixes have trouble believing that the wonderful things we are talking about here could really be true for them. They doubt that something higher is possible for them and they doubt their own reliable, inner wisdom. "Maybe spirituality is for someone else, but not me." So I think it helps to talk openly about this—to address the self-doubt and the feeling of pressure and anxiety. It's also important as teachers to say to our students, "Yes. You too. You are also part of the Divine reality." The problem here in Japan is much more about repression and self-doubt.
I think it's also very important to emphasize to people that spirituality—at least the kind we're talking about here—is about real life. It is not an attempt to go someplace else, to escape from wherever I am, but to go more deeply into exactly where I am, in the present moment. It's not an island vacation in Hawaii. It's part of our everyday existence. It makes our life at work and our relationships easier. It gives us more grace and ease as we deal with all of the demands that the world places on us. This Work is not airy-fairy new age stories. This Work has to impact the way that we live our lives. If it doesn't improve the way we at the office, the way we are with our family and friends, then what is the use of it? As people better understand that spirituality is not a retreat from reality, but rather is a support for dealing with reality, they will be more attracted to it.
Don: On another note, I also believe that people around the world are interested in spirituality because they rightly understand that a lot of older ways of being in the world have not worked very well. The rampant individualism and "me first" attitude and interest in material success has not brought the happiness people are seeking. The search for what is "really real" in life and for what life is really all about are the universal questions that people have asked for thousands of years. But for the first time, many millions of people have had the opportunity to realize that they have had all of the material advantages that human beings could possibly have—and they are still not happy. For the first time in human history, people have access to many different spiritual teachings, and they are in a position to seek answers to the fundamental questions. People may still be unsatisfied, but at least now, they have the tools to really do something to address their dissatisfaction.
Russ: So this is of course true in Japan, too. But there is another layer to this, which is a more sensitive topic. I don't know if you want to include this, but I am talking about the traumas of Japan's wartime experiences. I feel that when you have a group of people who've been through some collective trauma, it has an influence on their ability to approach the process of Inner Work. I've been very interested recently in how these traumas are passed trans-generationally. I've been reading studies that have been done on the children or even grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust in Germany, and seeing how they show signs of that trauma even though they did not experience it directly. So I think that the trauma of the war and related issues still affect this culture, like a subconscious layer.
There's a lot of unresolved pain here. There are a lot of feelings of shame. And as an outsider, I see a lot of rejection of very valuable things in Japanese culture. I see beautiful, wonderful, rich spiritual and artistic traditions in this culture that could very much feed spiritual growth here. But I also think that many Japanese people subconsciously reject these spiritual traditions because they feel that "our traditions let us down. Our spiritual traditions led to a very terrible, painful place." So on some level, I think that that modern Japanese is kind of throwing a baby out of with the bath water. Some of the older institutions probably were flawed or harmful, but not all of them. Anyway, I think this has caused many people here to have aversions to anything other than modern, economic matters. When we are working on ourselves, we run into our individual issues, but also these larger cultural issues.
Don: Yes. Japanese society's complex relationship to authority is one of the big barriers to the growth of the Enneagram here. It would be a huge mistake for any group that teaches the Enneagram to erect itself as "the authority" on the Enneagram. That's precisely the problem in Japan—it is the belief in authority that creates deeper problems if and when the authority lets people down. It creates the tendency to become cynical, bitter, disappointed, and...
Interviewer: To feel betrayed?
Don: Yes. To feel betrayed. Exactly. But the fundamental issue is the belief in authority, and the tendency to look to the authority to save us.
Interviewer: I'd like to ask you both about your Enneagram background. I understand that your work originated in Ichazo's ideas, but that you also brought your experience with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. What do you think about the works of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky? Also, what do you think about the work by other researchers in the field, such as Maurice Nicoll?
Don: Well, we both have a background in the Gurdjieff Work; in fact we're the only major teachers who have ever actually been in the Gurdjieff Work.
Russ: Some of the other Enneagram teachers talk about the Gurdjieff Work, but we were the only ones who were actually in it. We are in a direct lineage from Gurdjieff himself. One of my teachers was Mme de Salzmann who was Gurdjieff's personal assistant from 1902 to his death in1947 when she took over The Gurdjieff Foundation worldwide. He asked two women to take over The Work when he was dying and they were Mme de Hartmann and Mme de Salzmann. Mme de Hartmann was the teacher of our more immediate teacher who I will not name to protect his confidentiality.
I actually knew Mme de Salzmann and worked under her direction in a large group. Basically, though, most of our understanding and writing has come more from our experience of The Work and less from the books, as rich as the books are. I was launched in my journey toward the Enneagram by reading Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous many years ago. It's a wonderful book. The Fourth Way ideas taught by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were critical in my own personal journey. But I believe that our understanding of the Enneagram has more to do with our direct experience of being in the Work, and less with a theoretical framework of it. There are many ideas from the Gurdjieff Work that I find very powerful, but it was in the Diamond Heart Work of A. H. Almass (that we've been doing for the last seven years) that we have found a way to connect the Enneagram with these other systems of thought and experience.
Don: Yes, the central idea that Gurdjieff had was that "man is asleep." Gurdjieff relentlessly tried to demonstrate the truth of this to people—to shake them out of their complacency so that they can awaken to who they really are. The notion of the personality as a mechanism that puts us to sleep and keeps us asleep to our True Nature had a major influence on us, particularly in our deepening understanding of the Levels of Development and what they really are all about. Another influential Gurdjieffian idea was seeing the Enneagram as a process model, as a symbol that can be used to understand many different phenomena. We do not see the types as static categories, but as fluid and dynamic, and the Enneagram as a whole as a flow, a dance, as a movement or energy...
Russ: We learned the Enneagram in the Gurdjieff Work, through the sacred dances. We were also influenced in the Gurdjieff Work by its emphasis on group "work." We literally did physically work after which we would come back to our group and report to our teacher about what our experiences were. He would comment on them and interpret them. Our instruction came from the experience of struggling to be present while we were doing "work tasks." We would observe ourselves and come back to our group and talk about our experience. In our workshops and Training, we also do a great deal of teaching to our students after they have done an exercise based on one of the Enneagram types or on themes we find in the Enneagram as a whole.
Don: We do experiential work with a lot of personal instruction, and less theoretical material than some might expect. Even though our books are intellectually rigorous, and we try to be clear and precise in our teaching, the most important thing is not to be "academic" but to transmit the living reality of what the Enneagram is all about. We have trusted our own experience and the guidance we are continually getting in both our teaching and our writing. Even when I was writing the first edition of Personality Types, I did not use many of the Gurdjieff-based books or even Nicoll's books. I referred to them now and then to see what they said about a particular point, but I always came back to my own experience and to what I observed of people around me.
Russ: Yes, the Gurdjieff and Nicoll books are not in the foreground, although we have developed certain idea such as the Centers which have also been used by Ichazo, just as he developed the idea of the three Instincts (self-preservation, sexual, and social) which are also Gurdjieffian ideas.
But as with the Enneagram, you have to understand that not all Gurdjieff groups are the same. There are a lot of pseudo-Gurdjieff groups around now that have not grown out of the kind of living tradition of the Work that Gurdjieff taught. They base themselves more on the theoretical frameworks of the books, particularly Ouspensky's or Nicoll's books. They can be useful, but they aren't necessarily tapping into the core of Gurdjieff's teaching that was very much more of a gutsy, Type Eight approach. In the Gurdjieff Work you are given challenges, difficult things to do, and you see what happens inside you. You don't just sit back and have an intellectual discussion. In fact, in the Gurdjieff Work, being intellectual about the Work is frowned upon.
Don: In the Gurdjieff Work, we had very few lectures or intellectual discussions. What we'd get is work tasks. "Go into that field and dig a ditch. Try to stay present and see what comes up."
Russ: "And then cover it back up after you dug it."
Don:And then see all your personality reactions about getting dirty, getting sweaty, wondering what the task was for, and so forth. That's what we talked about. So many people sit around and talk about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in a very abstract, intellectual way, but that's not the real approach to it.
Russ:Even the theories about the Enneagram as presented in a lot of books are quite distinct from...how should I say...the privately transmitted teachings about the Enneagram in the living Gurdjieff Work. (By the way, they have nothing to do with panels or types!) For instance, I know that some more orthodox Gurdjieffians did not give a lot of credence to J.G. Bennett's work on the Enneagram. Bennett's work on the Enneagram as a process model is not really seen as a part of Gurdjieff's teachings. They have even stronger negative reactions to the work of Rodney Collins. Rodney Collins wrote a book called Theory of Celestial Influences that became popular in certain Enneagram groups. But the people who actually worked with Gurdjieff see it as a strange aberration, and they have also felt that way about Ichazo's Enneagram of personality, so there you go! (laughs)
Recently, some of the more traditional Gurdjieffians have been giving the Enneagram of types a chance. Of course, there are some hard-liners who still say, "Oh, you know, this stuff isn't the pure Gurdjieff Work; we don't want to get involved with it." But others who are more open-minded say, "Isn't this new Enneagram material about working on ourselves, to show us how we blindly follow old programs?" They see the Enneagram as a very useful support to Inner Work, which, of course, it is.
The main thing to remember is that there are lots of mistaken ideas floating around the Enneagram. A lot of people seem to be under the mistaken idea that Ichazo's Enneagram of types developed directly from Gurdjieff, but, in fact, the idea of the nine types was not a part of the Gurdjieff Work. This was really Ichazo's contribution.
Don: Yes, Gurdjieff was responsible for bringing the symbol to the West, and secondly, Gurdjieff was not responsible for introducing any so-called "Sufi teachings" of the Enneagram. The teachings about the nine personality types did not originate in any kind of Sufi teachings. The modern Enneagram was a synthesis first made by Ichazo, and later developed by Claudio Naranjo, and beginning in 1975, full time by me. Many people still think that the descriptions in our books of the types and many of the teachings (such as the Harmonics, the Hornevians, the Levels of Development, and so forth) came either from Ichazo or the Sufis or some other ancient origin. But this is not at all the case. Next to Ichazo and Naranjo, we have done more to develop the modern Enneagram into its present form than anyone else now writing and teaching today.
Russ: If you look carefully at Gurdjieff's teachings, it's clear that he certainly was influenced by the Sufis. But his primary framework comes from Greek philosophy—from the Stoics and Neo-Platonists. The Enneagram is a much more Western, pre-Islamic view of things that he reconstructed. Gurdjieff himself was a Christian, and his motivating question was "How is it possible to be a Christian? No one actually lives according to the teachings of Jesus. In fact, very few people are actually able to follow the teachings of Buddha. How do you do it?" His conviction was that there was an ancient method for human transformation that had been lost. If he could rediscover it and introduce it to the modern world, it would be possible to transform human consciousness and make the true understanding of Christianity really possible.
Interviewer: You've always been developing new ideas and concepts such as the nine Levels of Development. What is your most recent interest? Also, how do you come up with such innovative, new ideas?
Don: How do we keep developing it? (laughing) We keep developing the Enneagram by first realizing that we don't have all the answers and that the full implications of the system have not been worked out yet. I have heard some Enneagram teachers say that all of the descriptions of the personality types have been worked out and that the descriptions by different authors are more or less the same. This is a huge mistake and is very misleading. We have to remember that the Enneagram is about the depths of human nature, which is really an inexhaustible thing, as we said at the beginning of this interview. The Enneagram is only an intellectual construct that we use to talk about something much vaster, the human spirit. So there's always something more to discover.
We are also always reading and listening to what's going on in many intellectual and cultural areas around the world. My conviction is that, whatever is real and whatever is true, is connected. I mean the truth is one and reality is one. And if you discover something true about human nature in anthropology or physics, for example, then it's going to impact your understanding of the Enneagram. The point is that reality keeps inexhaustibly revealing itself, and so we don't have to go around and try to generate new ideas: the mysteries keep unveiling themselves. As we continue to do our own Inner Work and we learn to listen to the voice of wisdom (that is available to everyone all of the time), our minds quiet down and new insights simply occur to us.
Russ: I think the reason they do is that we keep on working on ourselves. Don and I continue to be a part of the Diamond Heart Work that has a rich understanding of the human spirit. We are part of an on-going group in which we can work with realized, subtle teachers. We don't think that anyone can teach without having that kind of support. Of course, the process helps deepen our own understanding, and as Don said, there's no end to this. In the same way, The Work doesn't have an end. I think we've both successfully given up the concept that at some point you get enlightenment, and then the Inner Work is over, as if there were some sort of "finish line."
Don: (Laughing) Well, I'm still waiting! But also, because we're a team, Russ and I share and test what we discover with each other. We question each other's ideas rigorously—even mercilessly. No new idea gets by us unless it not only makes sense but is also useful. For example, there are a number of insights that we have had that we have never taught or published because they are mainly theoretical—and they won't help people in their day-to-day lives. But if we find a new idea that truly illuminates some aspect of human nature and Inner Work, and we feel that it also is of practical value to people, we start teaching it and eventually we write it down. This is how much of The Wisdom of the Enneagram was written. It just kept evolving as we were discovering new things.
Russ: As for what are our new interests, for me, there are three areas I have been working on. I've been very interested in the three Instincts and in seeing more clearly how important they are. I am developing a clearer articulation of the differences between them and how they play out in the nine types. I think a lot of people are interested in them in the States but some of the teachers have major distortions regarding them and this has led to a lot of misunderstandings.
Another interesting development is our work on the Harmonic Groups and how important they are for relationships. Last, but not least, I find myself coming back to a deeper and more precise understanding of the role of three Centers. I am continuing to work on seeing how they come together to support our capacity to be present, and how the different qualities of Essence are experienced through them.
Don: Another area that is new for us is business applications. It's worth giving time to this because I am interested in finding ways to communicate the Enneagram more simply to more people. I think this is important to keep the Enneagram from becoming an elitist thing. If the Enneagram is going to help people live more consciously and to change society, it's got to get out to millions of people. So popularizing the Enneagram, while also maintaining its inner spirit, is important and an interesting challenge. It may also be that, ironically, the Enneagram may become better known though the business world rather than through the human potential movement which has had the Enneagram for 30 years. The self-help movement has not seemed to know what to do with it and many people have muddled up the Enneagram and made it superficial. Wouldn't it be surprising if the Enneagram did the most good by being popularized through the business community? The intelligence and the practical needs of this audience may do more to make the Enneagram stretch itself to its full potential than any other audience. We'll see!
Interviewer: Thank you very much for taking time with us. All of us from Enneagram Associates sincerely hope that you enjoyed this interview as much as we did.
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