Welcome to the Awaken Presence Within Enneagram Contemplatives

I’m so grateful you are here to practice bringing more presence into your experience, igniting your most extraordinary life. By giving yourself more space for silence, solitude, and stillness, you’re accelerating the opportunity for your most transformational spiritual work. 

As Eckhart Tolle wrote, “True happiness is found in seemingly unremarkable things. But to be aware of little, quiet things you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.”  This stillness is the language the divine uses to speak to us, it’s where your true essence lives and in order to arrive there, we must obtain that state of “non-thinking” (as the Buddhists call it) through meditative or contemplative practices. Your first 4 - 5 weeks helped you develop a platform for that experience through meditation, and we will spend 4 more weeks building upon that foundation through mindful self-inquiry.

Though part of our focus shifts toward the Enneagram, this is still mindfulness practice. We take what we’ve achieved in presence and add a layer of self-inquiry because, in order to liberate ourselves from our ego-structure, we must first be able to see it for what it is. Contemplative practice is one powerful way to achieve that perspective.

So what is this particular contemplative practice all about? It’s about becoming intentional and leaning in with our desire to become more of who we truly are. It’s about waking up out of our illusion-of-self.

See, unlike most personality tests, the Enneagram isn't about becoming more identified as your type, it’s about seeing your ego structure for what it is so that you can gain mindful control over the conditioned, reactive small-self. We use contemplation to enter presence, which by its very nature moves us beyond small-self constrictions. Only in presence can we become unidentified with ego and reclaim our original essence.

The Enneagram transforms our lives when we pair the self-awareness that the Enneagram stimulates with the silence, stillness, and solitude of contemplative practice. Then our unique path to spiritual growth emerges, and we will never be the same.

In her book Pilgrimage of a Soul, Phileena says that contemplative spirituality carves the posture of surrender (letting go) into the fabric of our being, making us receptive to transformation. Contemplative spirituality is a state of being. It’s the portal to the direct life-giving presence of Supreme Consciousness. When rooted in contemplative spirituality we are more receptive and supple in the hands of the Divine.

This contemplative practice differs from strict meditation in the following ways: 

• Spiritual contemplation can be practiced beyond sitting in a lotus position. You can use these contemplative recordings during a jog, hike, while walking or other tasks that allow you to focus on your body in the present moment. They can also be used in formal meditation practice as well, if that helps you achieve presence.

• Meditation is often about pure being where one is leaning into their felt-experience without an aspiration or inquiry. In spiritual contemplation, we are leaning a bit more into our aspirational desire to transform and through a method of self-inquiry that provokes a subject to contemplate.

• Both are about entering presence through pure being, and both rely on achieving presence in order to create transformation. So though you may use your contemplative audios while you do other things, you must maintain the inward pointed focus you worked on in the mindfulness work throughout the 20 minute session by placing awareness gently on your belly breath sensations.

• Spiritual contemplation requires achieving solitude, silence, and stillness where we can experience more freedom from compulsions and heavy-laden expectations and more liberty in our True Self with all of our unique gifts to offer the world. So the situations you choose to practice them in must offer you those inner/outer qualities.

What is meant by solitude, silence, and stillness? Let’s start with solitude.

Solitude is intentional withdrawal from the people that occupy our lives. It teaches us to be present to ourselves, present to Supreme Consciousness, and present with others. Though all three qualities of presence must be achieved, for Heart Center Enneagram types 2, 3, & 4, solitude is most crucial as it functions as a correction to your type’s dependency on connection and comparison.

Silence is a state of undistractedness, so it’s best to practice with your electronic devices in do-not-disturb mode and in a space that allows you to focus only on yourself for at least 20 minutes. Silence teaches us how to listen to the voice of the divine and to our deeper intuitive self. It also helps us listen to the people in our lives who speak loving, truthful words of correction or affirmation to us. For Head Center Enneagram types 5, 6, & 7, silence is most crucial as it enables you to turn down your obsession with competence and inner noise factory—everything that serves as a distraction—to be able to really listen.

Stillness is existence without the pressure to be anything other than what already is. Stillness teaches us restraint, and in restraint we are able to discern what appropriate engagement looks like. For Body Center Enneagram types 8, 9, & 1, silence is most crucial as it forces you to stop and realize how overidentified you are with your drive to do and your obsession with control while creating interior accountability for proper active engagement in your life. 

Spiritual contemplation facilitates a very gentle awakening to the misguided, selfish, and ego-driven impulses buried in our subconscious and unconscious. It’s meant to provoke insight and authentic inquiry to create realizations about the very nature of your personality. This provides the key to the lock of your identification with the ego self who keeps you in suffering, judgement, comparison, superiority and inferiority, etc. —living out automatic programming not freely chosen by you. When we become awakened to these hidden motivations, we’re able to mitigate some of their unintended harmful consequences; you’re able to do better through your pure intentions.

Doing these practices offers your life more acceptance and ease. As you practice letting go, you learn to receive—all that is good within us as well as all that remains a challenge. Through working with the Enneagram, we come to believe that everything belongs, and everyone’s process and perspective is perfectly their own path to awakening. By pressing into our basic fears, we center ourselves more deeply and find that we don’t have to react to those fears but can respond toward wholeness, toward growth, toward awakening.

When you give yourself to contemplative practices marked by solitude, silence, and stillness, your soul is nurtured, your virtues blossom, and your Highest Self comes forward. Contemplative spirituality calms the body, stills the emotions, and quiets the mind. And in so doing, it liberates you from ego addictions, thereby giving you the freedom to make major adjustments to your behaviors informed by your Higher Self.

Gentle as it is, the contemplative path is also severe, a demanding journey toward humility as we move from belief to faith. Contemplative spirituality holds us accountable by awakening us to the subconscious and unconscious motivations for what we are attempting to do in the context of our beliefs. It allows us to stay in the pain of our human condition yet not be overcome by it, keeping that pain from pushing us over the edge and instead allowing it to transform us by surrendering gracefully.

Ultimately the goal of your journey with the Enneagram is to move you from ‘type’ to ‘identity’, to become rooted in dignity and reflect your essential Higher Self.

For the next 4 weeks, you will receive contemplative audio tracks that are customized to exploring your unique Enneagram attributes. These audios will include questions designed to help guide you through your self-inquiry practice. Please approach them with curiosity and openness, receiving them in a spirit of compassion and kindfulness, rather than using them to feed the inner critic.

Please take time every day possible to enter a space of silence, solitude, and stillness by taking a beautiful nature walk or laying down alone in a comfy room or whatever feels right when you’re ready to listen. Allow yourself to focus intently during the audio by eliminating all distractions and compulsions. Please give yourself time to reflect or write in a journal after the practice.

Note: The 5 As Practice requires a closed-eye participation and should be practiced in a sitting or laying posture (not in movement). However the other contemplatives can be practiced with eyes either open or closed.

These tracks can take the place of your regular meditation practice, but for the optimal mindfulness practice please keep practicing formal meditative sitting if your lifestyle permits it. Treat these contemplative tracks the way you would a podcast. Only one that requires you to listen in a very particular way—mindfully with an open compassionate self-inquiry.

The breathing and centering practice embedded in each audio can be invoked from memory and used without formal audio if you find yourself in reactivity throughout your day-to-day life.

Enjoy these soul-expanding contemplations!