Public Memorial Service for Don Richard Riso to be held on May 4th, 2013

A Public Memorial Service and Reception in honor of Don’s life and work on Saturday, May 4th in Stone Ridge, New York. The Memorial Service will be held at 2 pm in the Quimby Auditorium at SUNY Ulster Community College, 491 Cottekill Road, Stone Ridge, which is located literally just around the corner from The Enneagram Institute. Following the Memorial, a reception will be held at the Barn and EI grounds to provide everyone with time to reconnect and share personal thoughts. Dress is casual. If you plan to attend the Memorial or the reception, please RSVP to Patrice to confirm that there is room.

Please remember that you will need to make your own lodging arrangements while you are visiting the area. We have rooms set aside at both The Garden Plaza (past: Holiday Inn) and the Courtyard by Marriott. Mention that you are with The Enneagram Institute to receive the special discount. Housing and travel information is available for your assistance. 

Whether you can attend or not, if you would like to write a tribute to remember Don, we intend to collect them and make them generally available.  Please let us know your relationship with Don if you choose to write one. These can be sent to Katy. You can also find information about donating funds to the Don Riso Memorial Fund or to purchase luminaries to help light the paths on the grounds around Barn, the Enneagram Institute Training Center, which was Don’s dream and which he so cherished.

Riso-Hudson Student Information: April 2013

Milestones. Please send us your news to include here or in the next Student CyberGram. We'd like to know about births, deaths, marriages, new degree programs, degrees earned, illnesses, and major life changes. We hope this new feature will help us to keep in closer contact with each other.

New Book by Roxanne Howe-Murphy: Deep Living. In Deep Living, Roxanne provides one of THE most accessible (simple and understandable) descriptions of the spiritual journey yet published. She has made understandable and simple what generally defies language—the experience of the soul. Deep Living guides readers to understand and “be with” themselves in a surprising new way that makes possible greater intimacy with their true nature. This book’s message is one that we know will resonate with you, and we think you’ll be amazed by its transformative, sustainable approach to real growth and change. Read more. "We recommend this book as an important source of spiritual guidance to support and accelerate your own awakening." —Don Riso and Russ Hudson

EI Faculty Member Lynda Roberts has joined Roxanne Howe-Murphy's Deep Coaching Institute and will begin to teach with the Institute in April. We are very happy to have this cross-fertilization and think it's a win-win situation for everyone!

Norwegian Enneagram IEA Annual Meeting. Please join other Norwegian Enneagram students for their first Annual Meeting on the 20th of April, 2013. For more information, see http://www.iea-norge.no or contact the IEA Norway here: post@iea-norge.no.

Becoming A Certified Riso-Hudson Teacher. The The Winter 2013 Certification Review is underway! There will also be a Summer Review; please notify Laura by the end of May if you want to be included, and then submit your Certification materials during the month of June. The last day Summer 2013 Certification Review materials will be accepted is June 30.

For the Winter 2014 Review, please notify Laura by the end of November if you want to be included, and then submit your materials during the month of December. The last day Winter 2014 Certification Review materials will be accepted is December 31.

We are currently revising the Certification Guidelines and will have the new ones available by the end of April. Watch the site and the CyberGram for updates. Please contact Laura with Certification questions.

Your Writing Projects and Ideas. Since Russ is so busy these days, especially since Don passed, he does not have much time to review projects for students. If you have ideas or manuscripts that you'd like his feedback on, please contact Katy before sending a direct email to him.

Riso-Hudson Students Looking to Connect. We are receiving requests to help RH students connect live with others in their locale. Here are a few requests. Please let us know if you'd like to reach out in this section of CyberGram, too!

• In the New York Area: Aine Ni Cheallaigh has started an Enneagram Meetup in Beacon, NY.
• In Ireland: Marie Kavanaugh is looking to connect with Enneagram folks for social opportunities and conversation. You can send her a Facebook message if you're interested. 

Short Notices & Quick Takes

EnneaPottery by Enneagram Institute's Jen Jeglinski. Those of you who have been to events at The Barn have seen Jen’s pottery at the bookstore. Now her Enneagram inspired pottery line is available for purchase online! Read more and purchase a selection of stoneware mugs, trays, magnets, and porcelain pendants, all decorated in lively colors with Enneagram impressions.

Help Italian book translations get back into print! Only Understanding the Enneagram and Personality Types have been translated into Italian, and these have gone out of print. Please contact the publishers to let them know you would like to have The Wisdom of the Enneagram available in Italian and purchase those books:

• Le nove personalità: Publisher: Viviana De Mitri, editoriale@armenia.it, commerciale@armenia.it, or on the web: http://www.armenia.it/contattaci.html, or call +39 02.683911
• Conoscersi con l'Enneagramma: Publisher: Mondadori, redazione.internet@mondadori.it, or on the web: http://www.edizpiemme.it/contatti, or call +39 02.430051

Thank you to Network Member Maura Amelia Bonanno for her assistance with this project!

Expanded Type Descriptions. If you take our most popular personality typing test, the RHETI, you gain access to the top three Expanded Type Descriptions as part of your results, as well as one or two more if there are ties. We are making all nine Expanded Type Descriptions available as a set of .pdf downloadable files. Read more.

Free Feature: EnneaThought for the Day. Sign up for this free service of The Enneagram Institute! We hear every day from people who love receiving this daily type-specific reminder that supports their Inner Work every day of the year. It's a great way to make sure you're correctly typed—if they don't ring true, question your self-typing.

RHETI Available in Other Languages! In booklet form in German, Swedish, and Russian, and online in French, Spanish, Japanese, and Dutch!

Connect with us on FaceBook! In between CyberGrams, if you'd like to keep up with news, photos, musings, and more, "friend" Enneagram-Institute Katy. She also checks her Facebook emails, but you'll get a quicker response by using this form.

Research on Enneagram Type and College Major

You are invited to participate in this research study being conducted by Michele Mattis, MS, LPC, a doctoral student from the Department of Psychology and Counseling at Carlow University.  This research is under the guidance and direction of Robert A. Reed, Psy.D. You are eligible to participate if you are currently enrolled in an undergraduate program either part-time for full-time AND you have achieved either Junior or Senior academic standing.

The purpose of this research study is to identify student’s personality types according to a personality assessment and to compare those results with your choice of college major.  The information gained will help the investigator learn more about the relationship between personality types and career paths.

If you agree to participate, you will be send a link to an online survey that will take approximately 40 minutes of your time to complete. In the first section, you will be asked for anonymous, demographic information. The second section consists of the RHETI (Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator, v. 2.5), which will help you to identify your Enneagram personality type. Your results will be made available to you immediately as you finish the survey.

Your answers to these questions are completely anonymous. The information obtained in this study may be published in academic journals or presented at scientific meetings but your identity will be unknown and therefore kept strictly anonymous. Your participation is voluntary. You are free to decide to participate in this study or to withdraw at any time without adversely affecting your relationship with the investigators, or the faculty staff, or administration at any university.

Thank you in advance for your valuable contribution to this research. If you have any questions, please contact Michele.

Instinctual Variants Research

Do you already know your Instinctual Stack with a high degree if certainty? Would you be interested in sharing your knowledge in an effort to help others more easily recognize their Instinctual Stack? If so, Sherry Andre, a doctoral student at Florida Atlantic University, is planning to conduct a validation study on the Riso-Hudson Instinctual Variants Questionnaire (IVQ) and would appreciate your participation.
 
The study will be conducted electronically, in which participants anonymously complete the IVQ and provide their self-identified Instinctual Stack for analysis. The IVQ is only 25 questions long and takes about 15-20 minutes to complete. Sherry is hoping to collect at least 500 responses.

If you would like to participate in this research on the Instincts, please send Sherry your email address. Please note all email addresses received for this study will not be sold or shared and will only be used to confirm participation in and receive updates on this study. You are also under no obligation to complete the study once you submit your email address.

Sherry is eager to begin her research in this fascinating area of the Enneagram after this current semester. If you know your Instinctual Stack, she would greatly appreciate your participation in this study so we can not only expand the validity and awareness of the Instincts, but also help others recognize their Instinctual Stack for personal growth.

Riso-Hudson Student Information: January 2013

Becoming A Certified Riso-Hudson Teacher. The January Certification Review is underway! There will be a Summer Review—please submit your Certification materials in the month of June. For the 2014 Review, plan to submit your materials during the month of December. We are currently revising the Certification Guidelines and hope to have the new ones available by the end of April. Watch the CyberGram for updates. Please contact Laura with Certification questions.

Your Writing Projects and Ideas. Since Russ is so busy these days, especially since Don passed, he does not have much time to review projects for students. If you have ideas or manuscripts that you'd like his feedback on, please contact Katy before sending a direct email to him.

Riso-Hudson Students Looking to Connect. We are receiving requests to help RH students connect live with others in their locale. Here are a few requests. Please let us know if you''''d like to reach out in this section of CyberGram, too!

• In the New York Area: Aine Ni Cheallaigh has started an Enneagram Meetup in Beacon, NY.
• In Ireland: Marie Kavanaugh is looking to connect with Enneagram folks for social opportunities and conversation. You can send her a Facebook message if you''''re interested.

Milestones. Please send us your news to include here or in the next Student CyberGram. We''''d like to know about births, deaths, marriages, new degree programs, degrees earned, illnesses, and major life changes. We hope this new feature will help us to keep in closer contact with each other.

Free Enneagram Webinar with Grahame Morgan-Watson, Riso-Hudson Certified and Authorized Teacher and UK Network Member hosted by www.RobertDigings.com called “Bringing the Enneagram to Life” on Thursday January 31st at 7.30pm UK / 11.30am PT / 2.30pm ET. Grahame is passionate about helping people apply the rich insights the Enneagram offers to their daily lives, by finding practical ways of bringing it to life. In this webinar Grahame will explain the Enneagram from the start, highlighting its usefulness in the cut and thrust of day-to-day life and providing ideas for working with this model on a daily basis—even if you’d don’t yet know your type. Whether you’ve heard of the Enneagram before or just want to see if this approach could work for you, join us for this live webinar which will include some short workshop-style exercises as well as the opportunity to put your questions to Grahame directly.

New Book by RH Student Anthony Falakowski: Higher Reality Therapy: Nine Pathways to Inner Peace

• If you don''''t know the Student Discussion Board Password, email Katy
• Create a new account by following this Registration link OR Log in with your own User/Pass
• Click on the Student Board
• A red message will appear saying you have the wrong password, but once you enter the password you''''ll be set!

Riso-Hudson Student Information: November 2012

Becoming A Certified Riso-Hudson Teacher. Russ and Gayle will conduct the next Certification Review in January of 2013; the deadline is December 31, 2012. Please notify Laura by the end of November if you plan to submit your materials for this review. If we also have a mid-year review, it will be announced, along with deadlines, in the CyberGram. You can download the Certification Guidelines. Contact Laura with Certification questions.

Congratulations, Paya Naderi! We are delighted to have you join the ranks of Riso-Hudson Certified Teachers!

Your Writing Projects and Ideas. Since Russ is so busy these days, especially since Don passed, he does not have much time to review projects for students. If you have ideas or manuscripts that you''d like their feedback on, please contact Katy before sending a direct email to him.

Riso-Hudson Students Looking to Connect. We are receiving requests to help RH students connect live with others in their locale. Here are a few requests. Please let us know if you''d like to reach out in this section of CyberGram, too!

• In the New York Area: Aine Ni Cheallaigh has started an Enneagram Meetup in Beacon, NY.
• In Ireland: Marie Kavanaugh is looking to connect with Enneagram folks for social opportunities and conversation. You can send her a Facebook message if you''re interested.

Milestones. Please send us your news to include here or in the next Student CyberGram. We''d like to know about births, deaths, marriages, new degree programs, degrees earned, illnesses, and major life changes. We hope this new feature will help us to keep in closer contact with each other.

• If you don''t know the Student Discussion Board Password, email Katy
• Create a new account by following this Registration link OR Log in with your own User/Pass
• Click on the Student Board
• A red message will appear saying you have the wrong password, but once you enter the password you''ll be set!

Message from Russ: November 2012

Greetings Everyone!

This is my first message to you since Don’s passing on August 30th—and I find myself writing to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina, having just finished teaching the Enneagram Journey of Growth workshop here over the weekend. There are many things I could write about, but I suspect many of you are curious to know what is happening here at the Institute, and what our plans are in this new era of our work. To say that things have changed here at the Institute since our last Cybergram in July would be an enormous understatement. All of us here are still coming to terms with losing Don, and we have all been doing our best to maintain our own open-hearted Inner Work, while dealing with the significant challenges of reorganizing the Institute in Don’s absence. All of us are missing him very much, but also, we all can feel him in our hearts quite directly. I can report that all of us here—the Faculty and the staff—are filled with great optimism about the future, even while we are still measuring the extent of our loss. I am sure all of you were touched in some way by Don’s work and by his great heart, and perhaps this time can be a great coming together for many of us—a time to not take the good things in our lives for granted. Don would have liked that!

The support we have received since Don’s passing has been overwhelming. We send a big thank you to the hundreds of you who sent us emails, messages, cards and letters, and wishes for the wellbeing of our hearts. Similarly, we were moved deeply by the support and generosity of our colleagues in the field—almost all of whom passed encouraging words to us, and in some cases went out of their way to find ways to honor Don’s passing. We have received your beautiful wishes, and this has renewed all of us in commitment to provide means for this work to continue and to grow. We are looking at new ways to be of service to our students and our community, and we are taking advantage of this major “shock” in the Gurdjieffian sense, to look anew at our goals and our greater sense of mission. So in that sense, it is a very exciting time. We are also looking into an optimal date for a Memorial for him, and it will likely be in early May of next year—details to follow.

The Part I Faculty—Gayle Scott, Michael Naylor, Lynda Roberts, Tim McLean, and myself—has been meeting regularly to look at next steps and to create a vision of what we would like to see happening in the coming years. We are committed to continuing and expanding the existing Workshops and Training programs while also looking at new creative possibilities. We foresee new Workshops, some new symposiums and retreats, and more work combining our talents and skills with other Enneagram teachers outside our school as well as with leaders in other related disciplines. We are already booking programs throughout 2013 and we will be introducing this work in a number of new settings both here in the USA and in a number of new countries for us. Meanwhile, Katy Taylor and Brian Taylor—not related!—are stepping up to the plate to look at many of the administrative aspects of Institute. Our office staff, Jen, Donna, Laura, and Patrice, have been working hard to keep the continuity through this time of great change, and we have all been exploring new methods for staying in contact and communication with each other to further enhance our ability to serve our community. The Nine Domains team is also fully committed to carrying on and continuing to develop the work that they started with Don.

On a personal note, I just want to share that I was with Don in his final moments and that he passed very beautifully and peacefully. I spent his last day with him, and he was full of his characteristic ironic humor and droll observations. We listened to music some of his favorite music—Brahms and Faurẻ being highlights—while Don conducted from his bed. Brian Taylor also played Don some of his favorite pieces on the piano, and the atmosphere was light and filled with a sense of gratitude. None of us thought that he was leaving us so soon, yet when he did begin to leave his body, there was a deep peace and acceptance both in Don and in all of us there. As he drew his last breaths, the room felt filled with tremendous Presence, and we all sat together and laughed and cried and told stories until dawn. He died at 2:07 AM, which I instantly realized added to Nine. Everyone who was there felt it was a truly extraordinary, life-changing experience, and I can safely say that all of us have been changed for the better—both by our time with our beloved friend, and by the extraordinary example he made in his illness and in his incredible passing.

More than ever, I am aware that we are working here with a transmission—a knowledge from source which is still growing and developing, but which we feel can be of great benefit to people. It has been a time to take deep breaths, to review, and to see with fresh eyes what we have been doing. I am confident that the very best of the work that Don created and that we created together is not only going to go forward, but is going to take its place in a renaissance of understanding the human condition that is only just beginning. Amazing times indeed!

Love, Gratitude, and Remembrance,

Russ Hudson

Buenos Aires
November 5, 2012

A Note From Don about the Future of The Enneagram InstituteApril 2012

Enneagram and Learning Styles Study

NOTE: Thanks for your interest. The data-collection is completed. The purpose of this study is to see if certain learning styles appeal to specific Enneagram Types and what styles resonate with how each Type takes in information to learn. Part of this survey includes Memletic’s learning style test. This survey takes less than 10 minutes, and there are 79 questions total. Please spread the word to anyone else you know who might be interested! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate contact Mellissa through www.GivingExcellence.com.

What's Missing with Mitt?

Mitt Romney is an oddly different kind of politician. It seems that he has little personal or original to say and no new ideas. Worse, it is as if there were something fundamentally, even essentially, missing from his core. As many have noted, he is a blank slate, an automaton, someone who improvises glibly—saying what he thinks people want to hear—with little thought about his statements’ implications. The “Missing Mitt” seems without a significant sense of conscience or self-awareness, and is able to wipe the slate of his memory clean to present himself as he needs to be right now. From speech to speech, he has an amazing ability to start fresh, as if his past was an utterly irrelevant bump in the road. Almost universally, political observers (even in the Republican Party) have rightly noted that there is detached, inhuman quality about him, a palpable incompleteness that makes him a dangerously unpredictable actor on the world political stage.

By means of a proprietary psychological tool (The Nine Domains) we can get a systematic overview of the major features of his personality. This view will help us see which core human capacities are so undeveloped that a Romney Presidency would amount to "human on-the-job-training." Indeed, one fears that so much of Mitt Romney is undeveloped that it may be too late for him to learn to be fully human.

While many political commentators have noted some of the following points, what is new and revealing is seeing all of the “missing Mitt” areas together. To be missing one or two of them may not be a "deal breaker" with voters since no candidate is truly a fully-developed human being. But missing so many of the following significant personal qualities puts the viability of Mitt Romney’s Presidency into the most serious question.

1. Presidential leadership on the global stage requires honesty, integrity, being a person of one’s word, having an inspiring purpose and vision, deep personal values, and the ability to think logically. A strong sense of priorities, well-enunciated, is essential. Mitt Romney is weak in all of these qualities, as his generic, non-specific campaign stump speeches indicate.

2. Presidential leadership requires real empathy for people, for their suffering, their fears about health, and the future, for the safety and betterment of themselves and their children. Above all, Presidential leadership is about the ability to connect with the widest possible range of people and their ordinary concerns. And yet empathy for ordinary people is so clearly missing in Mitt Romney that it is shocking.

3. Presidential leadership requires the ability to motivate millions of people to work hard to attain worthwhile goals. Putting people to work through a wide array of "infrastructure" programs, educational and cultural enrichments and the like all depend on the power of passionate persuasion, deep personal conviction, and the courage to take political risks. Mitt is clearly missing most of these qualities.

4. Presidential leadership requires significant periods of aloneness, personal reflection, and deep intuition that go far beyond mere political calculation. In the functioning of a President, there is a paradoxical need for deep solitude as well as deep communion with self and others. It is virtually impossible to believe that the Mitt Romney we have seen for the last two years is capable of this: he is all exterior calculation.

5. Presidential leadership requires enormous technical know-how, subtlety, and expertise in many different areas of the law and of practical affairs, There must be real nuts-and-bolts "know how" about how the government works and how to get things done legally and effectively. Mitt did show some of this capacity when he promoted the Massachusetts model for the Affordable Health Care Act—even though he is now rejecting it.

6. Presidential leadership requires the constant, on-going forging of a sense of national community—that we are all in this together. The most difficult part of this point is that in a country of our size and diversity, there are many different communities, all competing for what they need and want. The President must be able to be “the still center” of the maelstrom of never-ending change. Mitt seems to be missing the desire for real change and the creation of real, inclusive community.

7. Presidential leadership requires open-mindedness to new ideas and methods for solving old problems. It does not matter where the ideas come from, as long as they are plausible and can do real good for as many people as possible. Experimentation and the humility to throw out what does not work are essential. Hide-bound ideological positions will almost never be able to produce fresh, generative results.

8. Presidential leadership requires the capacity to take on almost impossible risks. The bail-out of the auto industry, the economic stimulus package, the Affordable Health Care Act, as well as the taking out of Osama Bin Laden were all accomplished against "the odds" of success. One wonders if the uppermost quality Mitt does not possess is that of bold leadership. He is a man of safe, predictable beliefs and platitudes—not bold action.

9. Presidential leadership requires the dynamic balancing of these and many other important qualities. While change and crisis are constants in the country and the world, so must one also have emotional depth and stability, and the ability to stay calm and centered amidst it all. Mindfulness, calm, and emotional stability are among the deepest hallmarks of a successful President. We do not see Mitt Romney embodying virtually any of these qualities, only their artificial, ersatz forms according to the needs of the moment.

Unfortunately, there are more things that are missing from Mitt although most of these are facts about himself which he chooses to keep secret and "off limits" to press and public scrutiny. For example, what are his deepest thoughts and personal convictions about his Mormon religion? How can he square keeping his fortune in secret off-shore bank accounts with having kind of social conscience or sense of accountability to the public to be transparent about himself and his business dealings? How can he seriously consider himself a "job creator" after Bain Capital sucked dry the assets of scores of companies and fired tens of thousands of workers? How can Mitt Romney be trusted with the most important public office in the world when he repeatedly lies, blithely distorts facts, changes his positions constantly, and, in brief, makes a mockery of the moral leadership required of a President?

As much as we see "what's missing with Mitt," there is an even more disquieting aspect to this picture. Mitt Romney is such a shell of a person, such a leadership non-entity, that we suspect that Mitt is actually not the real problem. He is clearly a cipher and a figurehead for other individuals and of Machiavellian forces which will do generations of harm to this country if he is elected. Through him, they will lead the country closer to the likelihood of class-driven revolution and untold suffering for millions.

So much is "missing with Mitt" that we cannot take the risk of allowing him and the selfish people who control him ever to gain power.

Copyright 2012 Don Richard Riso. All Rights Reserved.

Don's Health Update: July 2012

Thank you for your concern about Don's health! Right now, he is facing major back surgery. His back has reached a critical stage in the arthritis and stenosis, and he is either in bed or in a wheel chair. He is receiving physical therapy three times per week and can feel his muscles getting stronger. His spirits are good and his mind is clear, so he’s working as much as he can while convalescing at home before having a back operation this Fall (date TBD).

As you can imagine, Don’s energy is extremely limited right now due to this and other ongoing health problems. You can read more about his health history in the posts below--here and here. 

Don Riso's Health Updates 2008 to 2011

Really Using the Enneagram

New Gurdjieff Book and CD Set

Johanna de Bont's Enneagram Work in Brazil

Riso-Hudson Student Information: July 2012

Becoming A Certified Riso-Hudson Teacher. The 2012 Riso-Hudson Certification Review has been greatly disrupted by Don's health challenges and other factors. We normally announce all the newly Certified Teachers at one time, but, due to the protracted nature of this process, we are notifying and announcing new Teachers as soon as each review is completed. We are happy to announce these new Certified Teachers:

• Pass with Honors: Gérard Battarel
• Pass: Dan Bishop, Karen Bishop, Maura Amelia Bonanno, Jenny Campbell, Delynn Copley, Peter McGaugh, Patricia Anna McLean, Susan Olesek, Diana Redmond.

Congratulations! We are delighted to have you join the ranks of Riso-Hudson Certified Teachers!

The next scheduled Certification Review will be in January of 2013, with a deadline of December 31, 2012. If we also have a mid-year review, it will be announced, along with deadlines, in the CyberGram, but don't count on it as Don and Russ are very busy. You can download the Certification Guidelines. Contact Laura with Certification questions.  

Your Writing Projects and Ideas. Since Don and Russ are so busy these days, they do not have much time to review projects for students. If you have ideas or manuscripts that you'd like their feedback on, please contact Katy before sending a direct email to one of them.

Riso-Hudson Students Looking to Connect. We are receiving requests to help RH students connect live with others in their locale. Here are a few requests. Please let us know if you'd like to reach out in this section of CyberGram, too!  

• In the New York Area: Aine Ni Cheallaigh is looking to connect with Enneagram folks for social opportunities and conversation. You can send her a Facebook message if you're interested.
• In the Philadelphia Area: Diane McNamara is looking to connect with Enneagram folks for social opportunities and conversation. She is willing to travel a little, too. You can send her a Facebook message if you're interested.
• In Ireland: Marie Kavanaugh is looking to connect with Enneagram folks for social opportunities and conversation. You can send her a Facebook message if you're interested.

Milestones. Please send us your news to include here or in the next Student CyberGram. We'd like to know about births, deaths, marriages, new degree programs, degrees earned, illnesses, and major life changes. We hope this new feature will help us to keep in closer contact with each other.

Enneagram Prison Project: Freeing the Incarcerated from the Prison of their Own Making. After four inspiring years of working with hundreds of inmates in a Texas prison, RH Certifed Teacher Susan Olesek decided to bring this work she's grown to love closer to home. With much support from our Enneagram community, she proudly announces the founding of The Enneagram Prison Project, a NonProfit 501(c)3. 

InsideOut Enneagram: The Game Changing Guide for Leaders by RH Student Wendy Appel. InsideOut Enneagram as a resource and tool for you in your growth as a leader or for your work with leaders. It was written for leaders and those who work with them to apply the wisdom of the Enneagram for change and transformation. InsideOut Enneagram is replete with exercises, tools, practices and a self-typing process. Wendy also has Enneagram Typing Cards as a companion product to the book.

• If you don't know the Student Discussion Board Password, email Katy
• Create a new account by following this Registration link OR Log in with your own User/Pass
• Click on the Student Board
• A red message will appear saying you have the wrong password, but once you enter the password you'll be set!

The Passing of Don Richard Riso

Don Richard Riso, 66, author, counselor, leading authority on the Enneagram personality system, and an influential figure in the human potential movement, died peacefully at his home in Stone Ridge, New York, in the early morning hours of August 30, 2012. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi to Leo and Beverly Riso, he was raised in New Orleans where he attended Cor Jesu High School. He entered the Jesuits on July 30, 1963 at Grand Coteau, Louisiana. His undergraduate years were spent at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, where he graduated with highest honors in philosophy and English, and was inducted into the Jesuit academic honor society, Alpha Sigma Nu. He then attended graduate school at Stanford University as a Ford Foundation Fellow in communications and social psychology. 

In 1973, while studying theology at Regis College in Toronto, he encountered some very general and sketchy notes on a theory of personality types called the Enneagram which fascinated him immensely. These notes did not describe (let alone explain) much about human behavior, yet there was something compelling about them since they seemed to be pointing toward an objective truth about human beings. After contemplating the original notes for over a year, and then, for an additional two years, writing down his observations on human behavior, Don decided to focus his attention full time on developing the descriptions and rationale of the personality types of the Enneagram. He dedicated the rest of his life to expanding those seminal notes, and developing new and original Enneagram theories, most notably the Levels of Development within each personality type, showing how each type is structured into healthy, average, and unhealthy areas of functioning, and the Psychic Structures which are visual models that illuminate the psychological activities that occur at each Level of Development for each personality type. In addition, he coined much of the terminology of Enneagram theory that has now made its way into the mainstream teaching.  In 1987, he published his first book, Personality Types, with Houghton Mifflin, which has gone on to become a classic, translated into over twenty languages, and now in a second edition. In 1990, he published his second book, Understanding the Enneagram, also with Houghton Mifflin.

In 1991, he was joined by Russ Hudson, who became his teaching partner and co-author of their book The Wisdom of the Enneagram, published by Bantam, which is widely regarded as the definitive book in the field, presenting a sensitive and practical combination of psychology and spirituality. Sales of his books long ago exceeded one million copies.  With Russ Hudson, he also developed many other products and tools, including the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator, a leading personality test. At the time of his death, he was working with a team from South Africa in developing an instrument to provide precise and practical means to improve the health and functioning of groups and organizations by recognizing nine fundamental elements that must be present and in balance for a team or organization to survive and thrive (the Nine Domains).

In 1986, he created The Enneagram Institute as a vehicle to present trainings and seminars on his work, and in 2002, moved the Institute to its beautiful and special grounds in Stone Ridge which provided the inspiration for his later work and private writings. He was also a founding member of the International Enneagram Association established in 1995, a former member of the Gurdjieff Foundation, an organization devoted to helping seekers of truth actualize their latent potentialities through self-observation and “work on oneself”, and, at the time of his death, a spiritual student of Hameed Ali (A.H. Almaas) in the Ridhwan School. 

Don taught thousands of students around the world, and was known and greatly loved for his wise and gentle manner. If there is a single overriding theme in his interpretation of the Enneagram, it is Presence, which he believed will never fail us. He saw transcending the ego as the gate to every spiritual path, and believed that the Enneagram can show each type what that gate is and how to pass through it. Without real self-knowledge, he taught, it is not possible to awaken to the deeper truths of the soul or to sustain whatever degree of realization we have attained.

As Don himself wrote: “The Enneagram is an invaluable tool for the growth of consciousness in human beings. When the personality types (and the system as a whole) are rightly understood, they help illuminate what is so often unconscious—and therefore hidden—in us. The Enneagram helps turn the light of awareness onto those features of our personality that operate automatically, not only keeping us "asleep," but so often getting us into more trouble, more conflicts, and increasing our suffering and that of others. But, of course, the Enneagram is not automatic, much less magic. In fact, it is not something that can even be all that useful unless we have some degree of awareness, as well as the willingness to work on ourselves with honesty and humility. Given these, however, the Enneagram is one of the great helps available for alleviating human suffering. Through self-observation, we can come to a deeper level of self-awareness and self-realization. Through this process, things can begin to change. Transformation becomes not just an idea, but a reality. When enough individuals begin to change, the world will begin to change.”

Don is survived by his partner of over 41 years, Brian L. Taylor, also of Stone Ridge, an attorney with the Los Angeles-based law firm of O’Melveny & Meyers LLP. Don and Brian were married in Lenox, Massachusetts on September 12, 2008. In addition, Don is survived by his father, Leo J. Riso, of Picayune, Mississippi, his brothers David of Carriere, Mississippi, Jeffrey of Covington, Louisiana, and Joey, of Palm Springs, California, and thousands and thousands of students world-wide. A public memorial service will be held at a later date.

A Christmas Message from The Enneagram Institute