Saturday, July 28, 2012

This is a Fork - Discovery through the Enneagram

Last night, I picked up a fork (to eat dessert with) and remembered the 5 magical days I spent in Ginger's Coaching with the Enneagram course in Hong Kong.

To me, the enneagram is complex and as I read more each day, things fall into place, yet often the mist parts only to reveal even more areas of obscurity and tantalising bits of insight. The greatest learning I gained from the course was that when we are open and awareness to the innate possibilities of each type, we find that we are indeed all deeply connected.

Being aware is truly only the beginning. Through learning to listen to what is unspoken, to connect at the head, heart and gut level, sharing and understanding paradigms, not assuming that we all have the same maps of the world,  tapping our intuition, laughing joyfully at ourselves when we trap ourselves with baffling stories of what we hold ourselves to be, then did we begin the journey towards insight. And this awareness then allows us as coaches to gently challenge what our clients really could become.

In a way, the mix is the class couldn't be more perfect. We had all the 9 types, albeit some still sitting on fence of their "chosen type", and enough interaction time to understand the motivations, pecularities, impulse and defense mechanisms of each type. If you asked me before the class whether I understood the monkey mind of a type 7, the need to be needed of a type 2, or the concept of success as self of a type 3, I would be totally baffled, but today as I think back on those energetic discussions, role plays and exercises we did, I remember fondly how beautiful every soul in class was regardless of type, and how beautifully the light shines in each of us.

For me, the course started a journey with the enneagram that I did not anticipate, suddenly the world really is multi dimensional and filled with texture, imagery, sounds and sights. (No, we did not eat anything unusual in class) Expanding our mind and energies past the old confines really made all the difference.

Back to the fork.

Somewhere in Aberdeen, HK, there is a hotel in which some of the forks now know that they are:

"shiny, prickly, useful, glittering, a weapon, a comb, curvy, sensual, hard, just the right weight, balanced, beautiful, branded, plays a nice tone when tapped, silver, bright, sharp, sometimes sad, sometimes optimistic, ready to see the world"

Just like the wonderful enneagram coaches they are most similar to. Isn't it absolutely beautiful that we can be anyone we choose to be, just like those shiny happy forks in Aberdeen.

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