Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas

Touching, warm, gentle and precise. Almaas explains how we get fixated on certain enneatypes, and also points the way out of fixations. Reaching far deeper than the 'standard' personality approaches to the enneagram, this book really opens the gates to those who are seriously pursuing the Work of self-liberation.

a couple of years ago, i was out camping, spending hours just sitting in the woods, reading a.h.almaas's "facets of unity". with arica, and oscar ichazo's teaching being my first personaly chosen foundation of building my understanding, it was a great pleasure to read this same orientation, from which i had been 2 decades removed, restated in soft loving, easily understood expression. arica is like a warrior training school, it is not soft, or gentle, it puts all responsibility on each individual, with tools for personal work, perfect for me, and my spartan , samauri, isolated self, attractions.but almaas brings to mind the same ideas with a soft , loving , gentle, fatherly/brotherly/masterful kindness. just writing about this book makes me remember i want to reread it. the KEY for me that brought the whole world into focus in a way that made me want to run around and hug the whole world, go meet everyone, and share this great feeling in me, was the section on holy love.a.h.'s ability with the language, his way of setting up the idea, and bringing me home into it, opened me up to the obvious that was right with me all of the time, that i could not see, about holy love. he restated oscars objective principles, but some how helped me see my own self denial through his understanding expressed in the wisdom that seems it must come from his love. i have always been able to see the faults and flaws of others in a way that brings me to understanding, acceptance, tollarance, and love, of even the most evil perpetrators of villiany. hitler, jeffery dahmer, my wife who tried to kill my children, my parents whose own inner insanities made my life so difficult, the oppressive authorities of school and society, some one who stole or wrecked my stuff,my wishes, plans, desires, etc.. i could always come to an understanding of why they did what they did, how they needed to do what they do, and not hold it against any of them in my mind, even come to an empathetic compassion, even for the situations where they had destroyed parts of me. but i could not do this very same thing for myself. i always held myself against impossible ideals of perfection, to which i could not rise. even worse if i did accomplish a moral victory, or a brave crusade, it would be a fleeting appreciation, then a quick moving on to some other part of myself of which i was inwardly critical. this is why i think it is more difficult to live in our idea of perfection and what is right for a nine then it is for a 1 or an 8. that they seem to be able to take some solace from meeting external versions of what is right and perfect, but having rejected all authority, all inner resolve of what is right, and the right way, there was never anywhere to land and find peace or self satisfaction for me.however almaas came to me when i was ready to see this unfair descrepency in my harshness with out relent that i put on myself, in a light of seeing that in the idea of holy love, the love that permeat

This book hit all the right spots for me. I bought it when it first came out. In spite of the fact that I had read many good books on inner work before this one, I was still surprised by the power that the words had on me. What really pleased me about this work is that it treats the ennea-types as fixations. I have found that in my own life, I was not just one type for very long. In other words, I could relate to all the other "types" at one time or another. Almaas explaines this by saying that if you have one fixation, in a sense you have all of them. If you are totally free from one fixation, you are free from all of them. One's inner orientation is either on the ennea-fixations or on the "Holy Ideas." There a many details about this that I hope you will read for yourself. I would recommend this book for those people that have had some experience with inner work already. I wouldn't recommend this book if you have had very little or no experience with inner work. I don't think proir knowlege of the enneagram is necessary to get the most from this book.

Currently, there are many very good books available on the enneagram of personality types. With only a little conscious work, students soon see the reality that they are not their types, their learned personalities. It is much more difficult to experience with such clarity who one really is then. Students are clear that their type must be a distortion or immature development of their basic true nature. But the relationship between one's type and one's unique essential self and how to work with this knowledge can be difficult to determine. A.H. Almaas focuses his great clarity on this particular knot so that each person can explore her personality type as a doorway, an access, to her essential nature. The brillancy of the logical, precise arrangement of reality shines forth, as it does in all Almaas writing, and beacons one forward to the next level of unfoldment. This book provides an exceptional opportunity to be guided by the wisdom of the greatest spiritual psychologist of our time.

It was Ichazo and Naranjo who led us to the door, Palmer and Riso who opened it, but Almaas is the one who leads us through. Profoundly revealing and insightful, Facets of Unity is a must read for serious students of the Enneagram. Almaas surpasses the merely descriptive language of the personality types and clears a path for the development each type unprecedented in the field of Enneagram studies. Perhaps Almaas has described for us the pinnacle of what can be understood about the use of the Enneagram as a compass for the soul. The rest he rightfully leaves to us and the degree to which we desire to experience freedom from the fixations of our type.