The Exchanges

Q I'm talking with Russ Hudson, the co-founder of the Enneagram Institute. This episode covers what the Enneagram is, how it was developed, how it helps us grow, its limitations, the nine interconnected personality types, the triads, how you can use the Enneagram to deepen your relationships, what it means to be present, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn. How did you get started with the Enneagram?

A Well, like a lot of things, it's not a, a simple or a one-shot deal. Um, I, you know, like a lot of people back in the 19 seventies, I was looking at various, uh, systems of spirituality. I was checking out Indian gurus, and I was going to churches, and I was doing all kinds of stuff. But I encountered a book called In Search of the Miraculous, and it was, um, It was a book written by a man named Peter Ospensky, but it was about the teachings of Gurdjieff, and George Gurdjieff was a Greek guy who brought the Enneagram symbol and the teachings around it into the modern world. So I was really impacted by that book, and after searching around for a while, I actually found, um, an ongoing real Gurdjieff group and started studying it. And that was long before I learned about how the Enneagram could also be about types, because the original sensibility, it wasn't that. But, you know, it was, um, this, the stage two of that process was that I read the first book of my, uh, friend Don Richard Riso, and that book was called Personality Types, came out in the mid-nineteen-eighties, and I was so impressed with it that I sought him out, and it turned out his, He lived about a mile away and his office was even closer. So we started talking and I started working with him.

AI assessment note: “I encountered a book called In Search of the Miraculous... started working with him.”

Q Body. And then the two, three, and four were the heart. Heart. And then, so the five, six, and seven are the head. So the five is the investigator?

A That's right. The investigator. Another popular name is the observer. Which is fair enough, but I think it, it muddies the water a little bit because nines are also good observers. Nines observe, but observing and investigating are kind of different. There's more of an aggression investigation. You're going to go find out. You're going to, you know, you're not just looking at the beautiful stone. You're turning it over and looking at what's under it, or you're chipping off a piece and looking at what it, what's inside. So investigator is the five, and the five has to do with the capacity in human beings to come to realizations, to new awarenesses, to seeing new truth, And, you know, think of where we'd be if we didn't have that. We'd still be back in caves if we even found caves, right? So that capacity is enormous to come to, to have a kind of clarity, a clarity of thought, of communication, of perception. And I would add that, um, another big component here is that when we find our true mind, our deeper mind, it brings with it a sense of solitude and Solitude is a kind of inner quiet that's kind of not disturbed, uh, by the activities of life, uh, not disturbed by other people. So that solitude is kind of like I can hear myself think. So those are really important, and in a healthy five, not only are those qualities there, but they're also in service of the heart. It's kind o…

AI assessment note: “That's right. The investigator. Another popular name is the observer.”

Q spectrum between those two at any given time. Like nothing great would be accomplished without ego. We'd never try anything new. We'd never, um, you know, endeavor to do anything because we would, we need to feel confident. Um, where do you think that Like, how do we identify when it's helping us and hurting us? And then a follow-up question to that is like, where does confidence come from?

A Well, it's, it's a tricky business, as you're saying. From my point of view, the ego is helpful to the degree it's taking its proper place. In other words, if I'm remembering what I am here and now, If I'm presencing with you here and now, then my ego is here as what it's for, which is to help me function in this world. It's a set of habits and customs and protocols and programs that are just helped me to operate in the world, and I learned them very young and they still work. I don't particularly want to have to learn how to speak English all over again, right? So, That is very functional and necessary, but when we are present in those centers, like I was saying, the ego more naturally takes its correct position. It's meant to be a servant, not the master, is the traditional way of putting it, and I think that's right. Confidence can be different things. Confidence could be acting tough, you know, uh, that's a kind of ego version of it, but actually, Organically, confidence arises out of our relationship with our body. Like, the more I feel embodied, the more I feel I'm here, I feel like I belong here. Like, it's, in a sense, right for me to be here, or I have a right to be here, and it's, it's not an inner debate. It's, it's not something that needs to be argued or asserted. It feels natural. So the more we're in our The more we're in our power, and that relates to one of the…

AI assessment note: “Organically, confidence arises out of our relationship with our body.”

Q Why do you think we find that later in life?

A I think because as we're getting started in life, we're, we're sort of eliminating things that don't get what we need, and we're putting our eggs in the The best means for us to get what we're looking for, and so we narrow our focus. We're trying to figure out who we are when we're adolescents and teenagers. We're, we're trying things on and eliminating things, and so we're zeroing in on something, but having zeroed in on it and it producing whatever result it does, in the latter part of life, we can relax a little bit and say, okay, what's, what else is there in life? It's pretty normal, you know, um, A lot of the people that I end up working with who are in mid or later life, that's it. Like, I did X, Y, and Z, and now I'm feeling like, what's the, what are these chapters about other than, you know, playing golf or something?

AI assessment note: “in the latter part of life, we can relax a little bit”

Q how can I Um, go deeper into my connection with them? Or what if they're feeling, uh, what do I do as a partner to, um, to bring that to a more meaningful place? Or what if they're anxious? How do I respond when they are anxious? What are the things that we can do as partners to improve that aspect of our relationship and go deeper with our partner?

A Well, it's kind of a two-parter, and, uh, there's general principles I could give us in, in the timeframe we have. Um, people, when they're having difficulties, are always hoping that someone will show up for them in the way they would for us when they're at their best. For example, if, if I'm in relationship with a nine, when I think about my nine beloved or my nine friend, What do they do that's so helpful to me when they're at their best? They're just there. They're not laying trips on me. They're not putting an agenda on me. They're not trying to fix me. They're just there in a steady, kind, understanding way. And, and in that I can kind of find my feet and, and get back into orientation again.

AI assessment note: “people, when they're having difficulties, are always hoping that someone will show up”

Q So, uh, I was thinking about how to approach this with readers or listeners in this case. And I think there's just so much mystery around the Enneagram. So we can start with the basics and like work our way up. So what is the Enneagram?

A Well, I think it gets, ah, complex for people around the fact that it is more than one thing. Originally, the Enneagram is a symbol, and it's, uh, it's a circle with some inner lines in it, and some people think it looks like a pentagram, but it's not a pentagram. It's, uh, in fact, there's a, there's a triangle in the middle of it, uh, but it, that has certain esoteric meanings, the, the symbol itself. It's looking at the relationship between what things are in their fundamental nature, you might say, As consciousness, and it's looking at how things come into form, and the relationship between those things. But the, uh, the part that got popular is that a man named Oscar Chazzo, studying the symbol in relation to a lot of other Long-term spiritual teachings, shall we say, uh, started to see some connections and brilliantly saw that there was a sensibility around each of the nine points. The Enneagram is a circle with nine points on it, and he saw that there were elements of character that had been studied for thousands of years that fit in a certain pattern around that symbol. So I think the part that most people learn about Is this nine, the nine points, and how they are actually representing facets of humanity. I think sometimes people take it too far, and the sort of popular version of the Enneagram that is also a turnoff for some people is this nine boxes. Which box do you…

AI assessment note: “Originally, the Enneagram is a symbol... The Enneagram is a circle with nine points”

Q We're going to get into the types here. I know everybody's just waiting to hear about the types, but before we get there, we sort of have to like build this up a little bit, right? And, and figure out like where it comes from and what the limitations are and like, how does it help us grow?

A I think it helps us grow by learning a few things and, and the growth comes from seeing our type in action, but it also comes from learning a different orientation toward ourself. We're learning to be self-aware, but compassionately self-aware. Kindly self-aware. To not judge ourselves, cause, you know, we didn't decide to be this way. It wasn't like I woke up, I, my dominant Enneagram point is five. I'm a dominant five. So I didn't wake up one day and just decide I was gonna be this. It just happened. As I start to see what that fiveness is, In real time, while I'm doing it, not just as a reflection later on, but as Don and I used to put it, to catch myself in the act. In that moment of seeing, right now, I'm stuck in my pattern. To take a breath. To pause. To get grounded. To look at it with kindness. Opens up a whole new toolbox. Opens up a whole new palette of colors to paint with. Suddenly I have access. When I am, I always tell people is, as we get liberated from being Identified with the pattern. As we get less stuck in it, the good sides of all of the nine points, which also represent human capacities or talents or gifts, start to come into play more and more. And that's why we learn it. So we can be, not so we could just be a type, but so we can be a more total human being.

AI assessment note: “I think it helps us grow by learning a few things and, and the growth”

Q Where, in your experience teaching this to tens of thousands of people over the years, like, what are the limitations of the Enneagram? Where do people take this idea too far?

A Well, they take it too far all the time. For one thing, they try to put everything into the Enneagram, and there are things about human beings that just have nothing to do with the Enneagram. Talents, for example. If you have musical talent, or athletic ability, or you're, you have a good Brain for numbers, whatever. All those things really have nothing to do with your Enneagram point. They're independent factors. Enneagram can help us understand certain kind of emotional problems and things, but for others, good old regular psychology will do the trick. I think also the big problem I see, you touched on this earlier, Shane, people learn this and they use it to reinforce Their self-concept. They use it, and oftentimes, and this is, you know, what I have to be very patient with, uh, I do not bust people on their Enneagram type. I don't believe in it. I think it's rude. Uh, and it's just also presuming that I know that truth, which I may or may not. I find that people identify with a concept, and sometimes it's not even their correct Enneagram type.

AI assessment note: “they try to put everything into the Enneagram, and there are things about human beings”

Q So what does it mean to be with your feelings or your emotions?

A Well, again, it comes down to this, uh, acquiring the capacity to be In the body. If I'm in the body with anger, anger has very particular sensations. It usually feels like heat for one thing. Uh, we may feel it in particular places. Sometimes it manifests when we're resisting it. It locks up our jaw, our necks get tense, our shoulders. There's a whole musculature around the resistance and holding of anger. But when we sort of let it go, it feels almost more liquidy and it feels like liquid heat. And that heat can be useful in dissolving these rigid places where I've been holding anger. So there's a logic to how we unpack, you know, some people study trauma. I think of Peter Levine, uh, looked at how animals are so good at just doing, going through their kind of physiological paces to release trauma, but trauma will usually come accompanied with really big Emotional energies. It doesn't always have to be at the level of trauma, but we learn from that study that that's how you can work with these things. So just getting in touch with the energy of it, moving, expressing can all help to move anger through. When anger is presence, it transmutes into empowerment and confidence and the ability to take a stand, to have a voice, to speak your truth. People who can't be in touch with their anger have trouble with all of those things.

AI assessment note: “acquiring the capacity to be In the body. If I'm in the body”

Q How, how was this developed? Like, where did the Enneagram, like, how did this come into being?

A Well, there's, as I said, there's several pieces that a lot of credit has to go to a man named Oscar Echazo, as I said, who, um, passed away, uh, just a few weeks ago, and he was originally from Bolivia, but lived a lot of his life in Chile, and he learned about the Enneagram through Gurdjieff sources, and really was a brilliant genius guy who was looking at various Ancient systems for looking at human development. He was looking at ancient Jewish and Christian, uh, sources, some Buddhist sources, Hindu sources, et cetera, and seeing correspondences between them, the way they fit together, and so he kind of came up with a map of these patterns, shall we say. Uh, there was a psychologist named, uh, Claudio Naranjo, who, um, Was a Gestalt psychologist, actually a psychiatrist, to be more accurate, and he studied with Fritz Perl. He went and learned this from Michazo, brought it to the United States, and started teaching it to a small group of people. Well, subsequent to that, it kind of exploded. Uh, my old friend and writing partner, uh, Don Richard Riso, learned it through the Jesuits. And he started to, um, write about it. It took him 10 years to write his first book. It's sort of funny. It's, I, I get a lot of, uh, enthusiasm from young people. It seems like a lot of people have discovered this work recently, and it, it's not really so much about having a guru tag or being, u…

AI assessment note: “a lot of credit has to go to a man named Oscar Echazo”

Q How do we learn to debug our brain in real time? Like that seems like, how do we, Like, sort of like we have this execution path that's default and habitual, and then we want to intersect it. Like, how do we learn to do that as it's happening, and not, as you mentioned, later, which is post and reflection.

A Right. Well, as I was saying, the Enneagram was originally meant to go with the practices to help us be more present and awake in our life, and we do that in the Enneagram by learning about what are called the three centers, the three centers of intelligence, which is the body, the heart, And the head. The body is kinesthetic intelligence. It's instinctual intelligence. As I tell people, if you're hungry, it's not a thought. It's not an emotion. It's a, it's your body in a very direct way communicates that information. Food is needed, right? The heart has its forms of intelligence, emotional intelligence, right? Uh, heart has certain roles to play and the head When the head is actually presenced, it becomes something different than what we're used to. It's not this inner chatterbox. It's more a quality of deep listening, and not just listening externally, listening internally, so that, you know, new ideas, new realizations can emerge, and we're not just feeding on the stuff we already have thought about or already believe. So, we, we learn A practice of getting more grounded in our body in the here and now. Good thing about the body is it can't be anywhere but here and now. It's, it's, my thoughts and feelings can be all over the place, but, you know, if I can feel, you know, Myself breathing, or feel my self resting in the chair, standing, or wherever I am, in the car, whateve…

AI assessment note: “we, we learn A practice of getting more grounded in our body in the here and now.”

Q What do you mean the stuff you leave out?

A Well, for example, practical example, I worked with a number of banks back in the mid to late, uh, knots, you know, around 2007 and so, and not surprisingly, a lot of financial institutions were reaching out for help at that point because in their, you know, 1130, uh, wake up call, they realized they were in big trouble. And a lot of times, I would work with a group of directors of those institutions, and what we found on their team over and over was they had a lot of energy that, another grouping that we used, the Enneagram, they had a lot of assertive energy. They had a lot of go-getter energy, which you would expect from somebody in that, in finance and arbitrage and so forth. You kind of need to be that. If you're going to succeed in those businesses. And so there was a lot of that energy, a predominance of those types in the group, but also just their overall values were in that direction. So they saw a goal, went for it. There was a certain degree of what I call the sort of maintenance and standards types that were, and that energy was there, like maintaining things, making sure protocols were observed, making sure that You know, things got connected, and there was follow through, and all that stuff. They had a certain degree of that. What they were almost always absent in, uh, was what I call strategic long view, or what in, uh, in our book we called the withdrawn style,…

AI assessment note: “What they were almost always absent in, uh, was what I call strategic long view”

Q certain point. Like at what point, like what is experience? Is it, is it just that you've gone through something or is it the reflection component that you've thought about it? And then you come up with, Um, sort of heuristics on the other side of it or an understanding or simplicity because you've gone through the complexity. Walk me through your, your thoughts on like what experience actually is.

A Oh, what a cool question. Yeah, there's, well, there's some elements to it in this work that's a little different than maybe what they were finding in that study. And if I look at it more from a medical perspective, Or a physiological perspective. One thing that they were studying out in California a few years back at UCLA Medical and some other places was the fact that what we're calling mindfulness or presence changes some things about the human brain. Uh, which isn't surprising to people who have explored it, but, you know, it's interesting that they actually were looking at this. They were doing real-time brain scans, and they were actually studying, um, people with OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. And seeing what methods helped them, because it's known as a cognitive disorder. When they did this study, they gave placebos, they gave drugs, they gave them different things to do, they did different kinds of therapy, but they had one group that practiced, they learned mindfulness, they learned Buddhist meditation, practice, centering, presence, etc. What they discovered in doing these brain scans was something they did not expect, was that The group that was practicing mindfulness had good results in terms of their OCD, but also that it seemed to reactivate what psychologists call neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is our brain's ability to rewire itself. Now, it was thought …

AI assessment note: “if I look at it more from a medical perspective, Or a physiological perspective.”