Episode 194 Mapping the Enneagram for Personal Growth and Integration with Jennifer Joss

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Jennifer Joss, a psychologist and leadership coach who has been using the Enneagram in her work for many years. Dr. Joss shared her journey with the Enneagram, which began in 1993, and her recent deep dive into understanding the Enneagram symbol itself.

She discussed how her exploration was sparked by a transformative experience during a workshop led by Uranio Paes, where she felt a profound connection to the Enneagram as a map for personal and spiritual growth. Dr. Joss emphasized the importance of the Enneagram's three laws— the law of one, the law of three, and the law of seven— and how they reflect universal patterns of creation and renewal.

Throughout our conversation, we explored the idea that the Enneagram is not just a tool for understanding personality types but a deeper symbol that can guide us toward wholeness and integration. Dr. Joss highlighted the significance of holding paradoxes and the necessity of coming apart in order to experience a new level of being.

We also touched on her coaching approach, which she describes as hermetic philosophy, focusing on distilling truths from various spiritual and philosophical traditions. Dr. Joss expressed her desire to create a workbook to make her insights more accessible and practical for those looking to navigate their own journeys.

This episode was rich with insights and reflections on how the Enneagram can serve as a powerful tool for personal transformation and understanding our interconnectedness. We hope you enjoy this enlightening discussion and find inspiration in Dr. Joss's journey and insights.

To learn more about Dr. Joss and her offerings, visit: jumpingcurves.com

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:
You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by The Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about The Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O.

Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram, a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell and Scott Smith. Hey guys, how are y'all today?

Joe: Hey, Nanette. Hey, doing well. How are you?

Nanette: Good, good. We're looking forward to having our guest here today. Excited about it. Yes, we're always excited every week during our podcast.

Joe: Especially this one. We have somebody coming from the West Coast.

Nanette: Yes, we don't always. So we're very happy to have Dr. Jennifer Joss with us today. And she spoke with our Awakenings group recently and is a friend of Art Wimberly, part of our adjunct staff. And so we're really pleased to have you here with us, Dr. Jennifer Joss. Jennifer, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jennifer: Sure. I am a psychologist by training. And I, by profession, I did leadership coaching and development for most of my career. I use the Enneagram in quite a lot of that work to facilitate both individual development and team and organizational development, taught at the university and leadership and use the Enneagram in that work. So I'm I learned the Enneagram in 1993, actually, and, and yet I had no idea what, what we were working with. And so my, my passion at this point, and as of maybe the last maybe seven or More years has really been trying to understand the enneagram symbol. And so I wrote a book about that exploration process. Let's say that was published in February of 2023. And as it turned out, the Awakenings group at ICD was doing a Sunday afternoon session discussion about the book or just kind of an overview or preview. And I popped into that with the folks there, Barbara and Roger, and there was a great group of people. But anyway, so after that, I got to know even more of you and art connected me with you guys around the podcast.

Nanette: Yeah, we're, we're really pleased that that happened. Because you you seem to have some insight that we're really interested in hearing about today. So you obviously you had some familiarity with and growth in working with the Enneagram. But what led you to take a deep dive into the symbol itself?

Jennifer: Yeah, that's a good question. There's a few threads into that, but a couple things. So I had been working with the Enneagram for a long time and Funny enough, I wasn't one of those people that said, oh, got my type. I just I feel seen and nailed by this system. And over the course of 23 years, I had kind of bumbled around a little bit from nine to six. And then, well, so and I, I was a nine initially, I took a class in the narrative tradition that was David Daniels was teaching at Stanford Business School, strangely enough, I think was the only time I was taught there. until more recently. And then I did the narrative tradition training, and I ended up landing at six. You know, when people are really indecisive, you kind of go, you must be a nine or a six, right? And so you can imagine there's a lot of deconstruction and working on different things when you're traveling around like that. But I was always frustrated that I didn't really kind of feel it in the same way and I didn't see the path. I mean, one of the things reading your book, Joe, is it just kind of triggered me all over again of, you know, like the beauty of seeing a really clear path when you know your type and how fulfilling that can be and how it can ease the journey. So, I didn't really have that. And so, in 2016, in the midst of that, and I'm teaching it, and I've still got this kind of funky secret, and I've explored many, many schools of the Enneagram, all the versions of subtypes you out there in trying to kind of discern where I fit and how to teach it better. In 2016, I was at a meeting in which Uranio Paes, a Brazilian teacher who now works with Beatrice Chestnut, he did this demonstration where he laid out this big enneagram on the floor and he used it to map a process of growth. you know, the details weren't important. It was a fairly short demonstration, maybe an hour. But as part of that, I was invited to step on the mat. And I was like, like my head just twisted on access, you know, orthogonally. And I was, there's something else here, it really felt like a field that we were part of, you know, and, and I just kind of had to know more, you kind of get the I got the bug there. As part of the deeper work that I was doing with them, at one point, I just kind of woke some energy shifted for me, and I kind of woke up and, you know, I'm definitely not a three. My family is a very three culture. And I went home from that retreat. And, and for the first time I looked in, I was going through books, you know, and I looked in one of Naranjo's books, I read the chapter on five, and I was like, Oh, Okay, at least my insides are a five. You know, I know I didn't grow up that way. So anyway, long story short, I was having a lot of trouble. My community didn't see me as a five and I could understand that. And so I was in kind of having a crisis of faith and I found it very hard to sit in any Enneagram work. And at the same time, that was an important community to me that I had left. And I was feeling kind of lost. And I had combed through my life for two years trying to figure out what slot I fit in. And it was just not making me a better person, let's say. But at the same time, I just had this draw. When you meet something that's on your path, maybe if I could understand this symbol, It was clear to me there was a matrix of meaning in there, some sort of architecture that I thought, if we understood this, maybe it would help us with our differences in type and typing and subtypes. that happened kind of during a very difficult time in my life when my younger daughter was having a lot of a lot of trouble. And that was calling me away from from work and calling me into, you know, quite a lot of self reflection and struggle. And, and I just had this sense that in the symbol, there was a map for helping myself find the way out and maybe even helping my daughter find some way out. But nevertheless, I, I took a deep dive. I had the cover of COVID and whatnot, but I literally was like, eating, sleeping and living in the symbol, studying this map from many different lenses to try to kind of make sense of I guess I was always a person that was trying to find the instruction book for life, you know, And I'm kind of a mapper, and always finding my own way into whatever it is I approach. So anyway, that's a much longer answer than I intended there. But it was the confluence of kind of things coming apart, that caused me to be drawn deeper in, which is kind of what the symbol does, right? It draws draws you in at the point when something comes apart.

Joe: This is interesting. Just I know we don't have tremendous amounts of time, but given the beautiful background that you've just offered us, what have you learned? What's the creme de la creme of what you're learning about that symbol now?

Jennifer: Wow. Yeah. Well, I'm assuming that the community knows a little bit, your community knows a little bit about the laws, that the symbol is a depiction of the three laws and just the depth of wisdom that exists and guidance that exists in that symbol has blown me away. If I had to say the most compelling thing, I would say, you know, indeed, at the center of the symbol is a triangle. And the triangle represents this idea and ideal that it's kind of radical, that the only way to kind of transcend our challenges and evolve to a higher level individually and as a community is to essentially love the other. right, that all the split off parts of ourselves, all the people, the other people that we banish and blame in life, and that when we can kind of hold the paradox at every level of this symbol is this idea that the reconciliation of opposites leads to a restoration of unity and a kind of repairing our soul and repairing the world at the same time. I think maybe I would also say that, you know, sort of the punchline, because I took a different tack, instead of studying it through the Enneagram, which you clearly have very, very deeply. It was important to me because Gurdjieff said these laws are universal, as I went after the question, are they universal? And if so, we're going to find them everywhere. So I love looking in science, in spiritual traditions of various types, in mythology, our stories, and many of the the fields that you covered in terms of Jungian psychology and alchemy and symbolism and things like that. And so we're trying to find what are we really talking about in these laws? Because I don't know about you, I'd actually be interested in your answer to this, Joe. I didn't find agreement, a shared agreement on what exactly is the law of one, the law of three, and the law of seven, and how do they work together to inform this octave of growth around the symbols.

Joe: So you didn't find really what you were looking for, which was agreement across cultures and religions and so on.

Jennifer: No, I didn't find it across people in sort of the Enneagram or the fourth way community. It wasn't clear to me that there was a shared understanding, for example, of the law of three and what's the third force. there wasn't clear to me that there's shared understanding about the law seven and how that how that works. And then so but I did find I think what you're asking is that I do believe 100% that these laws are universal that they're they're not unique to the Enneagram that that they that Gurdjieff and earlier Enneagrams were showing us a pattern, you know, something like the Logos, like a central blueprint that originated probably at the beginning of the universe and then infused itself in the universe. I think something like Richard Rohr calls the first incarnation, right? So that there is a pattern that governs the continuous process of creation and renewal. at every level of reality, including in us, right? So we are made in the image of our Creator. I think that was in your daily meditation today, something about every creature is a word, every creature is a word of God.

Joe: Yeah, Meister Eckhart.

Jennifer: Yeah. So there's something about this pattern that is universal. And so, although we are made in the image, Gurdjieff would say, we, you know, we've, we've forgotten that we and we have to kind of build the laws within ourselves, right, build ourselves into that law. Yeah, well, in order to repair our souls and restore unity in the world. And so that's a really exciting concept, and an important one for today's fragmented

Joe: Yeah. Well, you also coach and you bring people to the fullness of their lives. We're interested in knowing. You mentioned a type of coaching that you do. I believe it's hermetic.

Jennifer: That's in my bio. I've just sort of taken to calling myself a hermetic philosopher. And so really what I mean by that, and I suppose you're a hermetic philosopher if you don't mind me saying so, in the sense of what is that? Really, I mean, we can go deeper into detail but fundamentally this is someone that looks at the world through multiple lenses like multiple spiritual traditions through philosophy through science even through symbolism and stories the multiple traditions to try to distill what's the one truth, what's the one true thread that can bring people together, right? And so that clearly has been your orientation, although at the end of the day we might find ourselves in one spiritual home. There's this fundamental belief that all these lenses, when they start to reflect the same ideas, like the Law of Three, the Law of Seven, there's some truth there that everyone can get around. And this is the beauty of the Enneagram, is that it's non-denominational. So, you can come to it and see your own tradition mapped in the process of the symbol.

Joe: Yes. Well, you and Scott have a lot in common in enjoying the five space, the ego five. And I understand you're identifying with with that more. So is that right?

Jennifer: That's a rabbit hole, you don't want to go down. But I I would say I'm a very 5-ish 9, or 9-ish 5, or something like that.

Joe: Well, you and Scott have tremendous amounts in common. You and Nanette may have a lot in common as well.

Nanette: That might speak to, I don't know where this theory comes from, but I know I've heard Joe say it, that he believes that you probably have a type in each of the centers of intelligence. Maybe nine is your body type and five is your mind type. But I'm more interested in, I think, in how you're using this awareness that you have now of the symbol in practical ways in your coaching and in if you're still teaching or in the Enneagram work that you do. How is it that you're taking this deep dive, which sounds like very deep information to me, and utilizing it in practical ways?

Jennifer: Right. Well, you know, that would be the rub. Right. And so that's what I loved about your your latest book, Joe, is that there was this very practical, pragmatic path. I love the stories that you told and the ways that people have been served by going deeper into their soul child and finding a way to integrate. I think any time that we integrate, split off parts of ourselves, whether it's the inner critic or the soul child or other aspects of the shadow, we start to become more whole, right? And it makes sense that as we become more whole, maybe we could say the soul in some sense is the archetype of wholeness. As we become more as one, we can connect with the one, right? Until we develop some greater level of integration inside, I find it's really hard for people to drop into their center of their being, where the door to the eternal, or that vertical aspect of growth in the symbol. And the cross is a really good metaphor for how that works is like, you know, every tradition has a law of three around what I was saying around holding opposing thoughts. that are difficult to hold, how can I be a one and the seven thing over here, you know, like, I think that, helping people hold paradox. It's important teaching tool because it scrambles the brain, right? And when we get out of our analytical mind and our conflicted heart and our appetites of the body, right, we can't start to come to this center. And there's a deconstruction, there's a dropping into not knowing. And from my version of the map here that that work of being willing not to know, of being willing to hold the complexity of two different things, or for example, when your life falls apart and you neither run back to the rigidity of your ego type nor dissolve completely into the chaos of your symbol, if you can stay there in that place, something new can arise. And that's, like I said, every tradition has a law of three, but I think the symbolism of Jesus on the cross is such a you know vivid and impactful example of that because you know what could be more difficult than like, loving your enemies while they're crucifying you right like something dies in that recipe. And probably the thing you're most attached to your small self. But with that, there's a kind of composting, let's say. There's a drop down into the intelligence of creation. The pattern of creation is a pattern of creation. You know, in the beginning, there was the void. There was darkness over the deep, right? So there's a way in which we have to drop into that no-thing inside ourselves, that no-thing that's everything at once, if that makes sense. And only from there can we take a dimensional lift. The law of three really has to do with that fourth thing that's created. Imagine a tetrahedron, right? So as the three centers come together at one, now all of a sudden we start to open this door to the eternal, which is in no time, where I'm no one, nobody, nowhere, no time, and I can start accessing the virtues of the soul or the higher mind might drop in, which I think is another word for spirit. But that's sort of a long answer to your question. But I find the more that I can help people, like love themselves back together, like integrate all these parts in all different ways. And in some ways, we're taking We need to integrate all those points around the symbol. Each has an energy, motivational, emotional system that's wired in us. This is part of my problem. Who doesn't have all of those passions at times? You know what I'm saying? In some ways, it's like a process. process of working with the passions and the virtues can really start to rebuild the soul to allow for a different kind of knowing through the line of spirit, a different kind of gnosis, let's say, through the line of spirit and the holy ideas. And I know your work has really emphasized that line of spirit and the holy ideas. And I think there's a way in which the arrow lines and the journey around the symbol are meant to come together. That's a long answer, and it wasn't very practical.

Nanette: But as you can see, I think it can be practical. This is in our intensives, which our students get together three times a year. And during that intensive, we set up something called the Living Enneagram. And we set up a map of the Enneagram. And we have a questioner who enters the space of the living Enneagram. And we actually have a person who identifies as that egotype at each number. And we have someone enter in as their egotype with a question and engage with the holy ideas and the virtues as they travel the map of the Enneagram. And we have them ask that question over and over again through the nine types as they travel, and then to return back to their original space. And it is never not profound. It is profound to watch somebody experience it. And it is also profound to participate in it. And I realize now that it is just as you said in your own experience where you stepped into the map that it is something more than just a symbol. It is not just a way that we justify the philosophy of the Enneagram. It is something more supernatural than that. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott: It's something more in touch with the flow of reality rather than just a more sophisticated system of ego strategies, if you will.

Nanette: Yes. It becomes very tangible. And I guess that's the practical use of the symbol as I've experienced it.

Scott: And that's the same sense I'm getting from you, Jennifer, that You know, it is about something deeper and it's more aligned with reality because as I feel it, reality is about unions of complementary opposites. And in our egos, in our culture, we see things as either this or that. We want the good without the bad. We want the tall without the short. I mean, We think that gentleness is the opposite of strength, whereas to me gentleness is a thing that balances strength and keeps it from becoming belligerent. I'm off on a tangent now.

Jennifer: I mean, I really 100% believe there is an intelligent pattern at the center of creation. And the Enneagram gives us a very precise map for how to get out of the way and allow this logos right to live through us. Unfortunately, creation is always a cascade into opposites. It doesn't matter which traditional lens you look through, you know, let's say when God created the world, it was a cascade into separating light from dark sea from the land the waters above the firmament from below the earth you know so there's this way in which that you know some many layers down we live in a world of duality like you're saying scott and we know this inside ourselves because we have these head centers from which we think this is good and that's bad, and the heart centers where we like and dislike, and we have the body where we're pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, and we're always caught between duality. We miss the center. Gurdjieff said, you know, that the law of duality is always affirming, denying, pushing here, pushing there, is an objective law to which you're all enslaved. Only those who stand in the middle are free. So again, the image of being able to hold the tension of opposites to allow them to kind of scramble our analytical mind, so we can drop into this place where the fundamental intelligence at the center of creation can reveal through us something more, something of a different level. And that's why the law of three is a law of creation, because there's always, you know, there has to be a kind of a coming apart, which I experienced in my own life. And I know, I know you did too, Joan, I don't know your bios, Nanette, and Scott as well. But there has to be a kind of a coming apart, which is painful, in order to experience a different level of seeing and being in the world. And I think in our culture, we resist that coming apart so much. And this has given me a lot of faith that that process is actually an important part of our building a soul.

Nanette: Yeah, we do talk about at the Institute, a critical mass of suffering. And I think most people who come to the work have experienced that on some level. And certainly when we talk about comparing it, we can get in a dangerous space because What is critical to one is maybe not critical to another. But at the end of the day, suffering does motivate change. And that is the gift it is to us, the healing process and something that most of us have experienced to study together at the Institute for sure. And I think, I think in today, and we have a map, and we have a map. Yeah, sorry, good, which which is definitely very helpful. Yes, especially to figure out like, oh, this is the direction I might need to go. And and we we talk about a lot. that we are all those numbers on the map. And I think that is really why we reinforce the living Enneagram is because we don't, I mean, yes, we naturally resonate with certain types, but at the end of the day, we are human. And so at some point, we relate to all these numbers. We all travel it either in integration or disintegration. And I think that is maybe what gives us hope that there is healing for the world because we live in a really difficult space and time at the moment. So can I ask you how, this has been our kind of our question for the year and this podcast is how does this that you've learned help you to know your soul?

Jennifer: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, to me, for me, they're, you know, not having the map of a type, which I think is a very helpful map in terms of kind of avoiding some of the deconstruction that can happen. But I felt like I had to just kind of jump out of all those centers, like really learn how to be present in my my body, to be in my heart, and to be out of my analytical mind in various ways so that I could access the center. This is my idea about, you know, the soul is in the Sufi Enneagram, for example, is the circle is the space of our soul. And the x outline, the line of spirit carves a path in our soul that emanates from source in the center, you know, so coming to the center of my being, and I don't know, like, finding, finding guidance, they're finding my connection with all that is, I mean, I would say I really found God in the Enneagram, believe it or not, which, but it, but it's, very, very meaningful to me that this coming apart, I had nothing to, to fall back on except whatever energy was going to move through me when I finally jump out of the fixated use of centers. And that's a much longer story. So, um, But the symbol, you know, it's the that's the point. I mean, what you're doing with it, it's the point of the symbol, it was always meant to be a process of soul building, right of building ourselves, we're actually meant to build ourselves into this, into this symbol, which becomes not just a flat one, but a 3d version. So the law of one is a sphere. And the law of three is this tetrahedron, actually double tetrahedron. you know, there's a lot of history behind what I'm saying, I obviously can't back up at this point. But, but just for me, like, knowing that there's, there's a map or something to trust that has given me, I don't know, a sense of that. Yeah, I can believe in something beyond this material life.

Nanette: If our listeners want to know more about your work, Jennifer, can you tell us the name of your book and share how they might find more information about you?

Jennifer: Yeah, sure. It's called the Enneagram Symbol, mapping the journey of personal, social, and spiritual evolution. That's the primary way that you'll learn about me and the symbol. I do have a website called jumpingcurves.com. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn. And that's about it. I taught a course on the symbol took 25 people about on the journey of awakening around the symbol, because that's what it is. It's a journey of awakening. Really just sharing, we did it together. And like you said, once you lay out the symbol, there's something kind of magical that happens. And so I may offer that course again, but your book, Jo, has made me think about, I think I might write a workbook or something to make it more pragmatic, as you're saying, Nanette, I think, so people can really, you know, find their way through this process. And yeah, so. Well, we would look forward to it. There's so much that we could talk about. Yeah.

Scott: It's been, it's been so rich, Jennifer. I feel like we only scratched the surface of what we could have dived into. So I guess I'm saying we'd love to have you back sometime. Yes.

Joe: Yeah.

Jennifer: Really? Thank you. I'd love to do that. I just a little teaser here is I so I was after going through your book, Joe, and I think I've talked way more than I meant to, I actually wanted to hear from you. But I, anyway, I, I sort of had kind of this panic of, um, You know, you focus so much on the integration, disintegration through the hexad lines in your work. And I know you've done really deep, rich dive in the traditions behind the symbol. And whereas my version of the journey and the map is the journey around the symbol, I mapped the hero's journey around the symbol, not because it's fun, but because I think it's also a metaphorical version of this same intelligent pattern at the center of creation. But I woke up at 430 this morning, and I was like, Oh, no, of course. I mean, everything in this symbol is about combining opposing lines, right, of energy to opposing forces. And so the journey around to gather all the points and parts of oneself, and then the hexadeline is Like, then we can have a different relationship with spirit, right, with the holy ideas and the line of spirit as the Sufis call it. And I was like, oh, of course, like, it's really, we're like, coming from different places here. And it was kind of a beautiful realization that gave me some peace at 430 this morning. So someday, I'd like to talk through that with you. You know, maybe I'll have to come to IEA just to have a conversation with you.

Joe: Well, maybe you can come down to Alabama sometime during our school and we can have some conversations.

Jennifer: I actually think I need to come to your school. Maybe I'll finally kind of understand my life through time. And not that I haven't worked on it, believe me. But I think maybe you guys have a way in here that's different. I'm going to do the soul child meditation in the book. I didn't have a chance to do that. But I sure appreciate the work that you've done and that you're doing in the world and how many people you've touched, all of you with your podcast and with the school and with your individual work. Joe, it's clear that you have so, so many stories and touched so many people with this work, with this work that is what the whole point of the Enneagram and what Gurdjieff was teaching. It's really about building a soul.

Joe: Yes.

Nanette: Well, really pleasure to have you today, really. Thank you so much for joining us.

Scott: Yeah, thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.

Nanette: Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.