So who are you, really?

So who are you, really?

Writer Elaine Davie

For all you know, you could be a prince(ss) in the guise of a frog – or the other way round – looking for love in all the wrong places. If this sounds like your own play script, perhaps you need to turn to the ancient mathematical wisdom of the Enneagram to clear up the confusion.

After all, it has a pedigree of success stretching back through millennia of human development. Great builders as they were, this system was incorporated by the ancient Greeks into their architectural designs which have stood the test of time. It was familiar to the renowned mathematician Pythagoras and to philosophers Plato (‘The worst of all deceptions is self-deception’) and his student Aristotle (‘Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom’), who internalised the same mathematical principles. Even the structure of Homer’s Odyssey is said to have been built around its nine numbers.

Even more amazingly, all the major faiths of the world, from the Jewish Kabbalah to Buddhism, incorporate the same principles. More recently, they became cornerstones of the work of Freud and Jung. In present time, the study and implementation of the Enneagram is gaining traction around the world, but as is often the case, South Africa is lagging behind.

According to practitioner, Karin Wellman of Stanford, “It’s not about who we are, but how we are: it’s about being completely authentic. It’s not putting people in boxes, it’s breaking down walls of unconsciousness. When Buddha was asked who he was, his reply was, ‘I am awake’.”

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