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THE ENNEAGRAM OF PASSIONS AND VIRTUES: FINDING THE WAY HOME By Sandra Maitri New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005, 210 pp.
Maitri, in addition to being the author's last name, is a Buddhist term for loving kindness for oneself, the prerequisite of compassion of others.
While reading Sandra Maitri's latest book, The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues, I have come up against my own mental constructs, self-representations, and beliefs that bind me to my ego identity, and again, I realize how I suffer through the fixations of the ego personality and the attendant passions. Gratefully, I also know that when I Uve from the virtues and the holy ideas that my Ufe works. As a student of inner transformation, I have come to embrace the truth that is contained within these pages. With the reaUzation ofthat truth I, as Maitri does throughout the book, must return again and again to having loving kindness for myself on this journey. This review is a love letter to the universe as experienced through Maitri's writing.
Maitri frequently quotes her teacher, Claudio Naranjo, and modern Enneagram theorist, Oscar Ichazo, showing the Uneage and tradition of the teaching. I, too, express my gratitude for the work of those who have come before me, particularly in regard to the inclusion of psychological understanding in spiritual work. This psychology is rooted in the great teachings of aU Truth paths. These teachings are the truth that cuts across aU cultural and philosophic boundaries.
Maitri describes the passions deUneated by the Enneagram as the drives, orientations, and emotionaUy imbued attitudes that characterize us when we are identified with our personaUty structure. The virtues describe our inner landscape as we become less identified with our personaUty or ego structure. As we developed the personaUty structure in early childhood, we graduaUy lost contact with Being. Through the study of the Enneagram and the appUcation of its wisdom in our daily Uves, we are able to see how we have become unconscious in our ways of thinking, feeUng, and behaving.
As we work on ourselves and start to perceive reaUty more clearly, there is a spaciousness that opens in our consciousness. We truly begin to understand that the personaUty and ego are constructs. Our passion is...