Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas

by A.H. Almaas

Our orientation is that the nine Holy Ideas are representations of one reality, each highlighting a different facet of its direct perception. The nine delusions are principles inherent in all egoic structures; they underlie the totality of egoic existence. Understanding the delusions inherent in one’s experience is useful not only to penetrate and understand one’s own fixation, but more importantly, it is useful for understanding the principles that form the foundation of egoic experience. Regardless of one’s particular ennea-type, it is important to observe all the nine cores in one’s experience, and to penetrate experientially into all nine delusions which keep one’s egoic experience going. In our experience, this is more important than recognizing one’s particular delusion, because the deeper we penetrate into what determines our experience, the more the universal principles and the barriers to realizing them are recognized in their entirety. At that point, one’s particular ennea-type becomes less significant. All nine delusions make up the obscured or conditioned experience of egoic existence, and all need to be recognized and seen through if one is going to transcend that existence.