Enneagram Retreat and Epiphany

Enneagram Retreat and Epiphany

“The good news is we have a God.. who remembers who we are, the person he knit together in our mother’s womb, and he wants to help restore us to our authentic selves.”

Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, The Road Back to You, p. 23, IVP Books 2016.

This past year our rector at St. Mark’s, Danny Schieffler, invited the staff to the retreat center for our diocese, Camp Mitchell, for a day to study the Enneagram with Presbyterian minister and therapist, Rebecca Spooner. Usually staff retreats are about planning sessions for the year or exercises such as the Myers Briggs personality Inventory study to see how we can relate to each other.

Knowing someone else’s Enneagram number can be helpful but the real heart of the Enneagram is about personal growth, how to learn about the mask you have developed for survival and how can you find your true self, the person that God created you to be. So, our rector was giving us a day away from our usual work during a busy liturgical season for our own personal enrichment. I wish I had done that when I was working in the medical field to let those I worked with know how much I cared about their own personal growth. Let this remain an example for all of us.

This was my third Enneagram study course. The well-known sin of my Enneagram number is pride, and it was front and center when I heard about the retreat. I already knew all this. Today, I am still amazed how things came together at our retreat and how much more I learned. This is my second lesson. Exposure to a spiritual tool such as the Enneagram is more awakening each time we go through this process.

We spent a great deal of time on the Enneagram during my spiritual direction study. More and more I see why. This is a tool to help us know who we really are, the mask we have developed that has become our persona, what the world thinks we are, so that we can make our way in the world. Rebecca reminded us of Richard Rohr’s famous definition of the Enneagram, “the coat and hat we put on to weather the storm.”

This persona has helped us survive, but we are now searching for our true self, the person God created us to be. Learning about our Enneagram number can lead us in the direction of finding our relationship with God that has been blocked by this mask we have developed.

The Enneagram is not for everyone. Rebecca reminded us that it is only one tool in our spiritual tool box. If it is helpful, stick with it. If it is not, there are so many other tools to help us connect to God, but if we do relate to it, there is more gold there than we can ever imagine.

This is an ancient tool that has been proven to be true over many centuries. Epiphany and Lent are great seasons to spend time learning more epiphanies about ourselves through the Enneagram especially if we study it with other spiritual friends.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Reading again

Reading Again

“In a course on contemplative prayer, I assigned just six books. – and we read them each twice.”

Stephanie Paulsell, “ Faith Matters, Reread it again, The inexhaustible spiritual practice of rereading,” Christian Century, January 17, p. 27, 2018.

View from Bill’s window on Ground Hog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania

There are so many books I want to read. When friends tell me they are rereading a book, I roll my eyes away from them and wonder about all the other books they are missing. Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, tells me to roll my eyes back toward my friends and listen to what they are learning.

Certainly, we all have experienced studying again the most reread book, the Bible, especially if we try to follow a systematic study of yearly lectionary readings. It never fails that we see things the second or third or tenth time that we never saw or heard previously, probably because our life experiences and concentration are different.

How could we have missed before that word or that meaning or what that person was doing?

During this year I have been blogging about spiritual direction and reconnecting to authors and books I have read in the past that have been meaningful to me. I am rereading material I underlined a year ago or ten years ago and sometimes fifty years ago. As Paulsell suggests, I have become more intimate with the texts and am called to practice more intently some of the teachings presented, “continuing to see things I have not seen before. The authors and their books for some reason now more deeply intersect with my life.” I must admit that yes, rereading and reconnecting to writers is remembering truths I have forgotten and seeing truth which I previously overlooked.

Is there any comparison to Bill Murray’s experience in the all time classic movie, Ground Hog Day?

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

De Mello, Ignatius: Consciousness of the Past

De Mello, Ignatius: Consciousness of the Past

“The postulate is that awareness alone will heal, without the need for judgment and resolution. Mere awareness will cause to die whatever is unhealthy and will cause to grow whatever is good and holy. There is no need to use your spiritual or psychological muscles to achieve this.”

Anthony de Mello, p. 101, Sadhana: A Way to God. ImageCatholicBooks.

I try not to read too many de Mello exercises a day in his book, Sadhana: A Way to God, but I find myself not being able to wait to read the next installment! As I start to write, I am ending up listing almost all of the exercises as so useful especially exercise 30, “Consciousness of the Past,” practiced at night, where we think of our whole day as a film, unwinding the day as a movie, not approving or condemning what we did, just becoming aware.

This is different from the Ignatian Examen where we do examine and make judgements from our day. In the Examen, we review our day, give thanks, review where we found God and where we ignored God, recall actions we wish we had not done, ask for forgiveness, and ask for grace for the next day. (James Martin, The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything, p. 97, HarperOne 2010).

De Mello believes on the other hand, that if we are only aware, we will heal without the need for judgment and resolution. The finale of the exercise by de Mello after we have observed the day as a movie is noticing where Christ was with us in the day. How did Christ act? De Mello asks us to concentrate on how “Christ” acted in our day more than on how we acted.

We can see similarities in both of these spiritual exercises and differences. This is just one more small example of the diversity of how we can try to be aware of our connection to God.

My experience is that when I simply become aware and look for Christ, as de Mello describes as I review the movie of my day, God indeed heals, much slower than I would like, however. At other times I need the awareness exercises described in the Ignatian Examen to get me back on track.

I am going to have to stop describing all of the de Mello exercises. Otherwise, I will be going over his whole book! The miracle of finding and choosing his book as well as the exercises of St. Ignatius was an answer to prayer, and I now share it with you!

Joanna. joannaseibert.com