The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home

Description

The popular author of The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram elucidates the most intractable pitfalls of our psyches and shows how our understanding of them can lead us to our highest virtues. The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues illuminates human experience beyond the functions of personality. Using the spiritual psychology of the enneagram, Sandra Maitri highlights two core aspects of human consciousness- the passions and the virtues. The passions are the ego-driven emotional states that come to dominate our lives, such as anger, pride, and fear. Discovering and understanding the passions in an experiential way can lead us to what lies beyond the personality itself. As we do, the virtues-which include serenity, humility, and courage-naturally arise to support our unfoldment. This giving way from the passions to the virtues is one of the hallmarks of inner development.

Sandra Maitri was a member of the first group of students to whom the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo presented the enneagram system in the U.S. almost three decades ago. Throughout her many years of studying and teaching it, Maitri has preserved the legacy of this original transmission. In addition to her work with Naranjo, she has studied with various Eastern and Western spiritual and psychological teachers, including A.H. Almaas, founder of the contemporary spiritual path, the Diamond Approach. As one of the principal and supervising teachers of the Diamond Approach, she teaches the enneagram as part of the larger work of personal transformation, working with hundreds of students each year in the U.S. and Europe. She lives in Marin County, California.

"In this second book on the enneagram by Sandra Maitri, she succeeds again, and in a more effective way, in showing how the enneagram is-more than anything else-a tool for inner transformation. She achieves this in a new way, one that illuminates the basic and subtle aspects on the path of transformation." -A. H. Almaas