Part One: Perspective
Chapter 1 - A Brief History of the Enneagram
According to Naranjo, the idea that the figure of the Enneagram embodies an Objective Map of reality in its various manifestations and dimensions originated in this ancient school.
Using the map of the Enneagram, one can acquire detailed understanding of any dimension of experience.
Two categories of Enneagrams refer to inner experience: one pertaining to egoic experience (reflecting fundamental spiritual ignorance), such as the Enneagrams of Fixations and Passions, and the other pertaining to essential experience (reflecting spiritual enlightenment), such as the Enneagrams of the Virtues and the Holy Ideas.
Not only are there inner connections within each Enneagram, but there are also very specific relationships between the various Enneagrams.
He elaborates upon how the personality characteristics of the nine ego-types (which Naranjo calls "ennea-types") are expressions of the loss of contact with Being, our essential nature, and in so doing, shows that the true value of this knowledge is to help us to reestablish this contact.
For example, describing the Passions, the emotional underpinnings of each ennea-type, Naranjo states that they:
"...arise out of a background of ontic obscuration; that the loss of a sense of I-am-ness sustains a craving-for-being that is manifested in the differentiated form of the ego's nine emotions."
"Every person develops a style of compensating for the lack, the ontological emptiness which is at the center of the ego. We say there are nine basic styles or points of ego fixation."
And since it is a true model of reality, one cannot exhaust its knowledge. Knowledge of reality is both unlimited and inexhaustible: Each teaching has a specific way of describing reality and none of these ways exhausts all possible experience.
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Part Two: Living Daylight and Basic Trust
Chapter 4 - Basic Trust
The relative Presence or absence of this condition in our individual consciousness, or soul, has a significant effect on our orientation toward or away from Being.
When this state is present, the development of the soul moves toward Being; when it is relatively absent, the soul develops more toward ego.
The Soul always develops an Ego and an identification with it, due to the nature of infant helplessness, physical embodiment, and conceptual development; however, the degree of fixedness and completeness of that identification will be greatly influenced by the degree to which this state is present.
By understanding it, we can see why spiritual development seems relatively easy for some people and more difficult for others.
The Ego is a Psychic Structure that is based on crystallized beliefs about who we are and what the world is.
We experience ourselves and the world through the filter of this structure.
Spiritual awakening involves connecting with those dimensions of experience obscured by ego structure.
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Part Three: Working With The Holy Ideas
Chapter 11 - Holy Truth
"The awareness that the Cosmos objectively exists now; that this existence is its own definition, and continues whether an individual understands it or not; and that the individual experiences the truth of Reality most completely when he views each moment fresh, without preconceptions about what should be happening."
— Ichazo, 1972
The Holy Idea for Enneagram Type 8 is Holy Truth.
It refers to the unity of existence, and includes and goes beyond Essence and the Absolute.
To understand what the Holy Truth is, we need to first investigate what truth is.
