“There is a way that we can be listening to the music, that we can be working from some deeper orientation even as we’re moving in the world in apparent chaos.” Everyone is struggling with challenging situations right now. Our minds can get overwhelmed and confused at times like these. Here is a perspective and a presence/breath practice to help you to connect to your inner knowing. This is the Six quality of Guidance, the basic orientation of your mind to the truth of the moment. The post Accessing Inner Guidance in Chaotic Times appeared first on New York Enneagram ..read more

Type Five represents our fundamental fascination with, interest in, and curiosity about ourselves and the world around us. When we’re occupying the Essential Quality of Discovery that characterizes Point Five, we take nothing for granted — every moment is fresh and new. Five expresses the mind’s capacity to be with the mysteriously emerging present so that the living moment can be directly known to our consciousness. In pursuit of the drive to see reality as it is, the Five mind is willing to continuously and fearlessly discard conceptual knowing, leaving no feature or subject unexamined, and ..read more

This post in our Divine Feminine series is by Denise Hoke. Aset, the true ancient Egyptian name for the beloved goddess Isis, means throne or seat of authority. Isis is so loved because she knows us personally, nurtures and cares for us through our pain, and actively helps each of us to become who we are meant to be:  royalty,  seated in Presence. Through her the individual spiritual principle is protected, nursed, and brought back to life again when we feel impotent and lifeless. Isis intimately understands the suffering and pain that are a part of the human condition. Texts say tha ..read more

The Four in each of us is a fundamental yearning to experience ourselves as exactly who we are. When we are occupying the Four Essence, we feel a deep, unbroken, and intimate connection with the source of our true identity. We feel the astonishing beauty of everything — including ourselves — as a unique, flowing expression of that source. Our hearts can be vulnerable and available, with endless capacity to be touched by the wide-ranging flavors of our humanity and our divinity. We willingly dive into the paradox and mystery of our hearts: following its truths down to the depths, not turning aw ..read more

Sunday at 6:30 am, the last morning of the retreat and I’m standing at the edge of the Hudson River. The water is smooth and still, the fog hangs around the trees. I watch as it expands and lifts, the pink mist yielding to the deep blue of the emerging day. On the way back to town, Essence speaks to me through the radio, as she often does when I’ve been turning my attention toward her. She brings me a song, and I play it to open up our session for the day. And then the song keeps playing in my head, even though a week has passed. I thought that I would share it with you. The song is called “H ..read more

Human beings have a need to be conscious of themselves, to be themselves in a full, intimate way. As many of the world’s spiritual traditions have suggested, the greatest limitation on consciousness is our derivation of identity from the drives of the body. While this has led to dangerous and destructive misunderstandings that have typically cast the body as a source of moral evil and encouraged dissociation from our embodied experience, there is a kernel of truth in this. When we become identified with the instinctual drives, the powerful life force of the instincts no longer serves the well ..read more

In September, we’ll return to our monthly classes with an exploration of Type Three — the heart of the Heart. When we are seated in the experience of our own heart, life affects us deeply. We are present to the way that each of us is an expression of some larger glory, like a prism receiving light and shining itself into the world. As the light shines through the facets of the prism, it effortlessly bends and shimmers in multiple ways, all of which are authentic representations of our core identity. The light is inspiring, encouraging, a beacon, an emissary for what a human being can truly be ..read more

This is the fourth post in our series on the Divine Feminine, and the third by Denise Hoke. ***************************** “The heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe. Your heart is that large. Trust it. Keep breathing.” – Joanna Macy Sekhmet is the lioness goddess who led me to do a retreat on the Divine Feminine. Led is too passive of a verb for her fierce, powerful, determined nature. My heart was responding to the sadness and anger that I have felt so deeply and achingly as I experience and witness the decimation occurring to our planet and to the Soul of humanity. Sekhmet repre ..read more

It can be easy to relate to the Enneagram solely as a personality system that describes various clusters of psychological type. Many of us are so blown away by the accuracy, richness, and depth that the Enneagram transmits that when we land on our dominant type, we spend most of our energy and effort there. One of the gifts of the Enneagram Is that there is always more to be discovered, always an opportunity to open up new territory and insight. This investigation can include a robust study of how our dominant type works and can also expand beyond that.  This post is a journey into expans ..read more

This is the third post of our summer series about the Divine Feminine, and the second by Denise Hoke. Ma’at is this beautiful, plumed goddess who lifts us on her wings and lets us fly. She represents the cosmic principle of harmony and guides us in our spiritual journey towards what is true and sacred, until we become as soft and light as the feather that she wears on her head. Ma’at shows us the right relatedness of the whole Cosmos and how we can be in this place with ourselves, each other and all of creation. Her embrace provides us with a sense of safety and trust so that we can go inward ..read more