Lessons from the Ancient World: The Enneagram and the Philosophies of Ancient Egypt
About Workshop
While it is difficult to draw direct lineages of the Enneagram back into antiquity, we can find many religious and philosophical frameworks that clearly correspond to the deeper Enneagram teachings. Clearly, George Gurdjieff, who brough the symbol and context of the Enneagram and Inner Work to the modern world, tells us of how he came to understand this view of reality during his travels in Egypt. We will not find any Enneagram symbols in ancient Egypt, but we will encounter a wealth of wisdom teachings utterly relevant to our current work.
In this talk, Russ will explore some of the ideas from this amazing civilization and share how these perspectives are not only root teachings for Enneagram studies but are also part of the deeper teachings in the Western religious and philosophical traditions. Perhaps more importantly, these ideas may hold important ingredients for our world as we learn new approaches in addressing arising global challenges. We cannot become ancient Egyptians, but their understanding of the world may help us recover some key ingredients for our future.
About Speaker
Over the last three decades, Russ Hudson has established himself as one of the top teachers and developers of the Enneagram personality typology in the world today. He has been writing and teaching full-time with The Enneagram Institute as well as on his own since 1991 and has co-authored with Don Richard Riso five best-selling books on the subject, including The Wisdom of the Enneagram and Personality Types. These books are widely considered to be not only groundbreaking contributions in the field of Enneagram studies, but also important contributions to the literature of psychological type. His most recent publication, The Enneagram: Nine Gateways to Presence, moves typology into dynamic personal transformation.
Beyond the books and teaching, Russ also worked for several years to develop a scientifically-validated test instrument, the Riso-Hudson Type Indicator (RHETI), now considered a standard test in the Enneagram field.
He originally encountered the Enneagram through the Gurdjieff Work and sees it as a map for personal development and awareness more than as merely a system for categorizing people. He has emphasized the importance of cultivating presence and mindfulness as a foundation for authentic work with the Enneagram, and has worked to align the study of the Enneagram and spiritual practice and bring their mutual benefit into greater public awareness.