Customer Reviews

Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas

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This book hit all the right spots for me. I bought it when it first came out. In spite of the fact that I had read many good books on inner work before this one, I was still surprised by the power that the words had on me. What really pleased me about this work is that it treats the ennea-types as fixations. I have found that in my own life, I was not just one type for very long. In other words, I could relate to all the other "types" at one time or another. Almaas explaines this by saying that if you have one fixation, in a sense you have all of them. If you are totally free from one fixation, you are free from all of them. One's inner orientation is either on the ennea-fixations or on the "Holy Ideas." There a many details about this that I hope you will read for yourself. I would recommend this book for those people that have had some experience with inner work already. I wouldn't recommend this book if you have had very little or no experience with inner work. I don't think proir knowlege of the enneagram is necessary to get the most from this book.

Currently, there are many very good books available on the enneagram of personality types. With only a little conscious work, students soon see the reality that they are not their types, their learned personalities. It is much more difficult to experience with such clarity who one really is then. Students are clear that their type must be a distortion or immature development of their basic true nature. But the relationship between one's type and one's unique essential self and how to work with this knowledge can be difficult to determine. A.H. Almaas focuses his great clarity on this particular knot so that each person can explore her personality type as a doorway, an access, to her essential nature. The brillancy of the logical, precise arrangement of reality shines forth, as it does in all Almaas writing, and beacons one forward to the next level of unfoldment. This book provides an exceptional opportunity to be guided by the wisdom of the greatest spiritual psychologist of our time.

It was Ichazo and Naranjo who led us to the door, Palmer and Riso who opened it, but Almaas is the one who leads us through. Profoundly revealing and insightful, Facets of Unity is a must read for serious students of the Enneagram. Almaas surpasses the merely descriptive language of the personality types and clears a path for the development each type unprecedented in the field of Enneagram studies. Perhaps Almaas has described for us the pinnacle of what can be understood about the use of the Enneagram as a compass for the soul. The rest he rightfully leaves to us and the degree to which we desire to experience freedom from the fixations of our type.

Dense abstract language and complicated sentences and grammar.

I really wanted to like this book, but wow, what a slog! There are some great ideas in here, if you can find them under all that obfuscating language.

I like the author's premise of replacing fixations with holy Ideas, but seriously, where was the editor? The book is also not well laid out, it buries the holy ideas and does not make use of good section headings or a logical layout.

Really, was the author attempting to make this a difficult read, to keep the knowledge "secret?" I don't know, but despite many people's affection for this book, my strongest emotion reading it was frustration.

Here is an example of the kind of paragraphs that makes up most of this book, "When we say that Holy Love is the "nonconceptual positivity" of reality, we don't mean that it is positive because our subjective minds respond to it positively. We mean that it is how reality is, regardless of how we feel about it. What we normally describe as positive is something that we like, and what we describe as negative is something that we don't like. However, the point about Holy Love is that when you objectively apprehend reality, when you experience and see the Holy Truth, you cannot help but feel positive toward it. In this experience, there are no positive or negative categories that your mind has divided things into. There is no polarity here; this nonconceptual positivity is beyond all polarities. The nature of reality, then, is such that the more it touches your heart, the more your heart feels happy and full, regardless of your mental judgments of good or bad."

Firs of all, I'm not sure you can have a nonconceptual positivity. Any judgment carries some conceptualization. Nor do I think you can say that there is a reality beyond positive and negative and it is positive. You might say that there is a reality beyond dualistic thinking, beyond both positive and negative labels, but whatever that reality is, it can not be one of the labels in the duality!

And why the word "positivity?" Why could you not say that Holy Love is a "positive reality beyond concepts?" Throughout the book I was struck by the massive amounts of these awkward phrases and concepts.

Critics will say I didn't get it because I was trying to make it conceptual. That is, I'm afraid, a circuitous argument, because any book written about anything will have lots of concepts. We think in concepts. If you are trying to encourage non-conceptual apprehension of reality, that is fine, but say that.

I agree that there is much of interest in this book, but be warned that the language is heavy and the style is academic.

Touching, warm, gentle and precise. Almaas explains how we get fixated on certain enneatypes, and also points the way out of fixations. Reaching far deeper than the 'standard' personality approaches to the enneagram, this book really opens the gates to those who are seriously pursuing the Work of self-liberation.

a couple of years ago, i was out camping, spending hours just sitting in the woods, reading a.h.almaas's "facets of unity".
with arica, and oscar ichazo's teaching being my first personaly chosen foundation of building my understanding, it was a great pleasure to read this same orientation, from which i had been 2 decades removed, restated in soft loving, easily understood expression.
arica is like a warrior training school, it is not soft, or gentle, it puts all responsibility on each individual, with tools for personal work, perfect for me, and my spartan , samauri, isolated self, attractions.

but almaas brings to mind the same ideas with a soft , loving , gentle, fatherly/brotherly/masterful kindness. just writing about this book makes me remember i want to reread it.

the KEY for me that brought the whole world into focus in a way that made me want to run around and hug the whole world, go meet everyone, and share this great feeling in me, was the section on holy love.
a.h.'s ability with the language, his way of setting up the idea, and bringing me home into it, opened me up to the obvious that was right with me all of the time, that i could not see, about holy love.
he restated oscars objective principles, but some how helped me see my own self denial through his understanding expressed in the wisdom that seems it must come from his love.

i have always been able to see the faults and flaws of others in a way that brings me to understanding, acceptance, tollarance, and love, of even the most evil perpetrators of villiany. hitler, jeffery dahmer, my wife who tried to kill my children, my parents whose own inner insanities made my life so difficult, the oppressive authorities of school and society, some one who stole or wrecked my stuff,my wishes, plans, desires, etc..
i could always come to an understanding of why they did what they did, how they needed to do what they do, and not hold it against any of them in my mind, even come to an empathetic compassion, even for the situations where they had destroyed parts of me.

but i could not do this very same thing for myself. i always held myself against impossible ideals of perfection, to which i could not rise. even worse if i did accomplish a moral victory, or a brave crusade, it would be a fleeting appreciation, then a quick moving on to some other part of myself of which i was inwardly critical.

this is why i think it is more difficult to live in our idea of perfection and what is right for a nine then it is for a 1 or an 8. that they seem to be able to take some solace from meeting external versions of what is right and perfect, but having rejected all authority, all inner resolve of what is right, and the right way, there was never anywhere to land and find peace or self satisfaction for me.

however almaas came to me when i was ready to see this unfair descrepency in my harshness with out relent that i put on myself, in a light of seeing that in the idea of holy love, the love that permeates the entire universe, including me, i deserved the same kindness, peace and acceptence of myself, by myself, that i had always extended to others, but not myself.
it was a consciousness changing realization, and i will always have a fondness for a.h. and his book, for opening this to me.

Reading "Facets of Unity" was a transformational experience for me. I experienced my foundamental connection to all that is as I read it. Love and light became more real than the bed I was sitting on. My ego seemed transparent. I highlighted several key parts, and I regularly go back and read those when I need to reground myself and get perspective beyond my story.

This is truthfully the best book ever. If you know anything about the enneagram, this book will let you know what the enneagram is made for. Alright, it's fun to think about all the frilly little quirks inherent in the enneagram that the "other" books like to get stuck on, but this book is actually the real thing. The JUICE. The whole point lies between these covers. If you are looking at this review, you need to buy this book. Get it used if you are low on money, just get it and read it.

This exploration is a most valuable contribution to the understanding of Gurdjieff's Holy Ideas. I found it to be very seminal and I am sure that for some time to come it will be an often referred source.

There is more enlightenment truth in this book than nearly all spiritual books I've read. Almaas was most likely enlightened but I feel he was a bit distorted due to too many convoluted teaching systems. He has stood on the shoulders of some great guys such as Gurdjieff, Oscar Ichazo, and Naranjo. If you are advanced and academic, you may be able to mine the hidden gold in this book. But you may need to be enlightened to do that.

This would have been a great book if it did not include anything about the enneagram. Almaas' premise is that the enneagram types spring from loss of being (basic trust) and therefore are fixations and problems. My experience is that enneagram types are ego strengths that will eventually get you to higher perceptions and awakening. He rejects ego while embracing evolution as truth, failing to see that all awakened people once had egos as necessary steps on their path. Because of this error, he has written an incredibly difficult to follow book.

Having read a dozen different books on the enneagram, I can respect the nine types as strengths - not problems. Ultimately, I see embracing all nine strengths and perspectives as leading one to awakening. Almaas sort of gets this idea of multiple perspectives and a hierarchy of perspectives. His flaw is in trying to reverse a fixation to get one back to being...which would put us into the state of a newborn. What we need to do is transcend ego using the nine lines of development to get into awakening.

If you know a lot about the enneagram, you may be disappointed in his cause and effect conclusions for each type. To me, none of them were logical. They seemed as unrelated as a square peg and a round hole. For example what does the type five observer have to do with the holy idea that nothing is separate? His writing is repetitive and convoluted given that holy ideas do not correspond in any rational way to enneagram types treated as aberrations.