Blog | Enneagram Teaching

About this blog

We learn who we are by asking questions of the self. This blog is my notebook - my questions, my conversations and reflections as I go along. Some relate directly to my own experience and explorations with the Enneagram but some are simply observations and my own personal take on where I am and where we, on a societal and human level, are now. It is part of my own journey towards understanding not only who I am but who you are and who we are, collectively. In such critical times we need to ask ‘how can I, how can you, how can we, get to know and understand ourselves better?' because with understanding comes co-operation and compassion for our shared journey on this earth. And because now, more than ever, we need to work together. We need to recognise that we are all one.

How do we experience our experience?

Unsurprisingly we do not experience our experiences in the same way. Our Enneagram type reveals a lot about this because, guess what, our ego is involved. Our type together with the passion related to our type - fear, lust, pride, sloth etc - give a good picture of how we experience our experience. We can see how each type is, in its own way, stuck in a pattern of experiencing. And this doesn't really change unless we become conscious of it. In the coming posts I will lo

Emma Pearson

Who do you think you are?

I have an article entitled 'Who do you think you are?' in the new volume of Psychology Now (Volume 12) which has just come out...

Emma Pearson

The Path of Wisdom or the Path of Woe

Caroline Myss, the spiritual teacher and author, talks about there being the path of wisdom and the path of woe. She says we have a choice as to which path we take, that we are not powerless. I've been thinking about how best I would define the path of wisdom and I think one way of describing it is perhaps understanding in advance - which is different from knowing. We can know many things but knowledge, of itself, doesn't necessarily alter behaviour. Understanding, howeve

Emma Pearson

Growing Up

'I think you have to grow up twice. The first time happens automatically. Everyone passes from choldhood to adulthood, and this transition is marked as much by the moment when the weight of the world overshadows the wonder of the world as it is by the passage of years. Usually you don't get to choose when it happens. But if this triumph of weight over wonder marks the first passage into adulthood, the second is a rediscovery of wonder despite sickness, evil, fear, sadness,

Emma Pearson

Taking time

I think it is really important to take time to think about things, to reflect a little on ourselves, our life, our world and our place in the scheme of things. It takes time to understand things and that includes understanding ourselves which is a life-long process. The world is so busy now that we can find ourselves lurching from one happening to another, racing to get through a never-ending to-do list, struggling with procedures and systems and so on, but in doing so, we

Emma Pearson

Words of Wisdom

In their book Personality Types, published in 1996, Don Riso and Russ Hudson wrote about the unhealthy Eight:- 'How to stop a tyrant without becoming a tyrant oneself is an age old problem. Must one become ruthless to fight ruthlessness, unjust to fight injustice? How far can one go to protect oneself from predators, from those who destroy without remorse? In searching for an answer, no other personality type makes others consider what they really believe the ultimate val

Emma Pearson

Other people

'Our inner lives are actually quite boring - the same thoughts repeat over and over and over again, the same emotions, the same preoccupations, the same anxieties... and other people? They're so different. They have their own worlds. It's like travelling to another country' . - Robert Greene, Author

Emma Pearson

The Expert

The Social Role of the Five is that of The Expert. This is born out of the Five's fear of being useless and incapable. To counteract that, they invest their efforts in knowing more than other people about something - usually one or two things only (because if you're going to go in as deep as the Five it simply wouldn't be possible to do it with many things) and they rely on this as a means of being useful, to create a niche for themselves and to feel confident and competent

Emma Pearson