Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: holy ideas, holy love, holy will, Holy Truth, Holy Perfection, Holy Origin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A.H. Almaas presents "the holy ideas" that are the spiritual realities of the nine personality types that the Enneagram reflects. For those unfamiliar with the Enneagram, he includes an introduction to the structure of psychological typecasting rediscovered by Oscar Ichazo, founder of the Arica School, who gives this book its high credentials by having written the Foreword. While other books on the subject explain the different characteristics and behaviors of each of the nine fixations or types, Almaas expounds here on how the disconnection from each holy idea leads to the development of its corresponding fixation. Then he provides keys to unlock them. For example, the "seven" type's holy idea is "holy wisdom," which Ichazo defines as "The awareness that reality exists as a succession of moments, each experienced as the present, and that it is only by existing in the present that the constant unfolding of the Cosmos can be experienced ... can real work be done, and results achieved." --Randall Cohan

Review

"Lucid, precise and infinitely helpful to seekers everywhere. I heartily recommend Facets of Unity to Enneagram enthusiasts, to my own students of inner knowing, and to followers of every spiritual tradition."—Helen Palmer, author of The Enneagram "Serious students of the Enneagram will find much of value in this book. . . . The Holy Ideas can be highly challenging material, but Almaas presents them with clarity, thoroughness, and grace such that we can all gain a taste of the deeper truths of this remarkable system."—Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson, authors of Personality Types

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0936713143
• ISBN-13: 978-0936713144
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #50,351 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This was the last "spiritual" book I bought., October 14, 2000

By	Christian Campfield (New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

74 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The next step for the serious student of the Enneagram, November 10, 1999

By	Sarah Drenan, Phd Clinical Psychologist (sdr... (Charlottesville, VA) - See all my reviews

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.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A quantum leap for Enneagram studies., June 28, 1999

By A Customer

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.