“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” ~Rumi

One of the secrets of Inner Work is that it’s not just hard to do it alone—it’s impossible. This is why we have so many communities of practice, and helping professionals such as consultants and therapists and coaches.

Many of us know we are stuck, and yet often feel powerless to get unstuck. We have dreams and yearnings and things we’re excited about, but for whatever reason we struggle to summon the energy necessary to act on them. Sometimes, even when we do muster the courage to take a leap of faith, we are met with pushback from our loved ones and from our culture as a whole, and it can be difficult to stay the course.

Mentoring with the Enneagram can be a powerful ally in this regard, because not only does it help with discernment around how to work through resistance and inertia, but you also are supported by the energy and accountability of having someone in your corner cheering you on and wanting you to be your best self in the world.

"Understanding is the essence of love." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

The Enneagram is an incredibly precise instrument for self-awareness and understanding others; but it’s also very complex, and these days there are so many books it can be hard to know where to start! Discerning where to look, what to practice, what to focus on, and which books to read can seem a daunting task.

One approach to Enneagram mentoring is to bring all of your questions about the system (including about yourself and your loved ones) to a teacher who has been living this material for over a decade. Having a guide to explore your curiosity and offer specific suggestions for next steps can be very supportive. It helps make the Enneagram digestible and usable on a daily basis.

This might involve learning more about the dynamics between you and your partner or boss, your relationship to your own inner critic, your childhood patterns, and whatever else seems to be getting in the way of your living an awake and loving life.

“There is only one life you can call your own, and a thousand others you can call by any name you want.” ~David Whyte

We all know we are here on this Earth for something. If you’ve ever had that vague sense of something missing, or an inner restlessness that just won’t go away no matter what you do, you know this. If you’ve wound up in a job that feels empty, or if you completed your major and suddenly realize you don’t want to do anything even remotely related and you’re left feeling confused—you know this. If you’ve “made it,” and you have everything you thought you wanted, and you still feel like there’s something missing… you know this.

Mainstream society is bad at dealing with this. We either hear “Suck it up, that’s life,” or “Just follow your passion and you’ll be happy.”

Neither of those are helpful, because whether I’m taking the cynical route or the optimistic one, as long as I’m not actually present with myself (in body, heart, and mind), the decisions I make will not be in alignment with what I’m really here for, and I will continue to experience that “sense of something missing.”

Of course, what’s “missing” is you! Enneagram mentoring is a powerful way to reconnect with yourself, and in doing so to live a purposeful, soulful, even mythic life—because the Enneagram teaches us objectively and compassionately exactly what is getting in the way of experiencing that: our identification with our Type patterns.

“Whether they are raised in indigenous or modern culture, there are two things that people crave: the full realization of their innate gifts, and to have these gifts approved, acknowledged, and confirmed.” ~ Malidoma Some

Our society suffers from a lack of conscious mentors. In traditional communities, when teenagers reached a certain age, they would be initiated into adulthood through a combination of mentorship, ritual, and the container of the village. In most Westernized communities today, however, most of us are expected to figure this out on our own or from people who themselves were never initiated into a healthy adulthood. This is an absurd, impossible expectation—and yet it’s extremely common. As a result, our society suffers from a widespread arrested development, where we relate to each other in adolescent ways of “us vs. them” and a lack of capacity to think more than a single generation ahead.

Thus, for those of us wanting to live a mature life and feel confident about the choices we’re making, and to change our culture for the better, we need to find ways that help us grow beyond the largely unhelpful and outdated ways that we’ve been taught to do things—to initiate ourselves into a truly healthy adulthood.

Enneagram mentoring is one way to address this, offering encouragement and support for your gifts while also challenging you to stay present to your personality and learn to live with it as an ally rather than an adversary. Combined with a nature-based practice, this ensures that we are growing into citizens of the world, able to be good stewards for the planet and contribute to the conscious evolution of our species.