Retrieving the Holy Ideas

Two-day workshop with Helen Palmer
Date and location to be announced

As children, we undertake a quest that constantly unfolds whether we know it or not. It begins in the child’s original consciousness, which is utterly receptive to things as they actually are, a state where knowing occurs through unity with the objects of our inner world rather than being separate from them.

Propelled by instinct and the need to be an individual, our state of mind progressed from non-duality to the protective I – its viewpoint of type. Yet in that fall from grace, a bias of attention is embedded in each type’s pattern of thought, marking a point of return to the permanent world from which we came. For unlike the transient world of type, Unity is a permanent reality that is constantly happening “now” without memory of “previous” or anticipation of “next.”

Here’s one type’s perspective on the fall. As children, Sixes lived in spiritual Unity but did not recognize their inner state. Their fall from grace occurred by way of a childhood anchored in doubt, which served the protective function of making their world reliable, cohesive and predictable. In adult life, doubt is also a profound source of suffering that constantly recurs, for doubt is a cognitive pattern, a bias embedded in the way a Six thinks.

This program is framed by each type’s search for a specific aspect of Unity, a Holy Idea that was compromised in early life. Doubt, for example, is simply Faith gone wrong, and Faith can be restored by being receptive to things as they actually are. You will accomplish a detailed inventory of your own mind state through dyad exercises, group breakouts by type and insight materials drawn from Cognitive Behaviorism. But the heart of this material lies in panel work focused on the unitive experience as it plays out for different types, and in four periods of meditation on the topics of gathering awareness, recognizing your cognitive bias “on the spot”, shifting from active to receptive awareness, and retrieving the Holy Ideas through an act of becoming.

Psychological-Spiritual Curriculum overview

Other topics:

Type and False Identity
Projection
Presence and Self-Forgetting
Spiritual Antidotes
Virtues of the Heart
A Spiritual Strategy for People in Relationships
Type and Intuition
The Enneagram for Counselors, Spiritual Directors and People Working with Others

Trifold School current offerings

San Francisco Bay Area workshops and classes