Last night, I was trying to find an old Enneagram type 5 panel on youtube for my boyfriend (I always think about the lady in the blue sweater), but I ended up clicking on another video instead- a Conscious TV interview with Helen Palmer. It was so profound, we watched the whole thing. All it took was a couple minutes, and I was feeling pretty contrite for having ignored her all these years. I needed what she was talking about.
I’m going to mess up the dates here, but between around the 1980’s to the 2010’s, there were two mainstream Enneagram schools in the United States (and the world)- there was the East Coast school in New York with Don Riso and Russ Hudson, and then the West coast school in California with Helen Palmer and Dr. David Daniels at Stanford. I believe the California school came first by several years, but I don’t know how many.
From what I understand, there was rancor and/or competition between the two schools where each pair of teachers was trying to fill in the type descriptions as clearly and authoritatively as possible and make their mark on this new, wide open field of study. I think it was kind of the wild west back then, and there was a competition to see who would come out on top- I don’t remember where I read this, but I’m pretty sure I heard this somewhere- sorry for the vagueness, but this just speaks to how little I had to base my dismissiveness on. I also think I remember someone criticizing her use of the term “Narrative Tradition”- as if the Enneagram has been passed down orally throughout history (it kind of has, but also not really). Or there was some criticism about her use of panels (putting people up on stage before they fully understood their type).
Anyway, I had already aligned myself with the New York school after having attended their first two training programs in the mid-2010’s, and loved how systematically they organized each type. I had read Helen Palmer’s seminal The Enneagram in Love and Work: Understanding your Intimate and Business Relationships and it was more prosaic, and while I got a lot out of it, I liked Riso and Hudson’s more organized way of breaking down the types.
Moreover, Helen had gotten into legal troubles in the 70’s, I believe, for some wording that Oscar Ichazo accused her of plagiarising. Not sure how it turned out, but that added some solidity to my judgement. Finally, I think there was some good old fashioned sexism that I had picked up on from the New York school (or actually probably more from myself). I don’t remember anyone saying anything specific, but I know I considered her a weaker teacher and left it at that.
However, as I was watching her speak last night, I felt this welling up of sadness and regret in my chest for the years that I had passed by this teacher. She had insight that I needed now, and had been needing for years now. The Enneagram has given me so many insights over the years, but recently, I’ve plateaued. I had a profound insight through astrology late last year, and another good one last week, and I’ve been feeding off those two, but it’s still been slow going. Helen was talking about attention, and I’ve been struggling with mine so much these past few years that I’m going to be testing for a series of neurological deficiencies this year, the first one being sleep apnea, and eventually adult-onset ADHD. The way she spoke of the self-observation faculty of the human brain, and gave some advice besides just “scan your body for tension”, I was able to take away some strategies for dealing with the anxiety I’ve been coming up against recently.
But it was also more than the contents of her discussion, it was the way she spoke. In my part of the world, there isn’t much of a spiritual community, let alone an Enneagram community, and it’s embarassing to talk about your spiritual journey in such a serious way here- no one in my personal circles can relate to my journey inward. But the way she lent so much gravity to the sacred journey toward integration and healing, I wanted to cry for how lonely my journey has been these last ten or so years, and how much I need to be part of the community that was around her- people who take spriritual work seriously. She has clearly made her personal work a major part of her life. This is the practical draw-back of doing the work far from a major city. You wouldn’t think it’s a problem at the beginning of your self-discovery journey, but it gets to be a problem later on. Eventually you need community to feel fed.
Astrology also provides a map of the inner terrain for one’s spiritual journey, but not many people read it that way, and it’s rare to find someone who is actually using it for deep personal growth on par with someone who is using the Enneagram to the extent that they could speak at the same level of depth.
They say you become like the five people you hang out most with in life, but Helen clearly demonstrates that you become what you devote most of your life to; she has become a beacon of presence, and it made me wonder if my spritiual-life-to-regular-life ratio was enough to make me happy; it’s not. This video was a feast of Helen’s wisdom for a hungry soul and I hope it meets you wherever you are in your journey.