Here’s to you
The title for this post has not appeared yet. What I am thinking about is a little scattered but it definitely has to do with the DVD’s I watched on the plane home yesterday. It was, gratefully, a rather uneventful return to Canada and Calgary. The DVD’s were interviews with come of the people from the conference talking about how they type people and their were some interesting observations. I was still left with the question “Why type at all?” I remain of the firm conviction that you only need to know what BEACH they are on at the moment to effectively work with them so that they can manage their situation. The rest is up to them.
Before I left the conference I attended a morning session which was based on improvisational theatre. It was fun. It reminded me that life and especially conversation is improv. You respond to what is being said. Your role is some what defined by your default Enneagram setting and Enneagram practitioners can see your type and your centre quickly with their observer eye.
I also chatted with some people who had attended my session on conversations who asked about why I had done things the way I did. I explained the purpose of the one exercise was to show people, when they are present to the listening, they can quickly arrive at the essence, the BEACH of another person … in a two minute story. She related it to Blink, a book by Malcolm Gladwell and I said “Yes- the Theory of Thin Slices”. Until then I hadn’t realized to what extent that is part of the PULSE practice.
During the session others had asked about the structure of the Frame. I have been thinking alot about the PULSE Prism and so I began to explain my thinking aroung the four sides as Green Content or Thinking, Yellow Process or Doing and Red Response or feeling and that the base was the Blue of Insight. That feels like the right names for the dimensions. I also found myself talking about Appreciative Inquiry as the quide for the Green dimension, Brief Solution Focused Therapy – holding people capable as the quide to the Red dimension and the Zones of Perception which is based on Dan Dana’s retailiatory and conciliatory cycles and forces toward harmony as the quide for what to do in the Yellow dimension. The base or Blue Zone of insight is quided by the knowledge of the Enneagram. Understanding people and quiding them to their next level of potential is the goal and, more than a base, it is florescent bulb that runs up from bottom and lights the whole prism, from the inside. People come into the conversation as white light and are refracted to the many colours of the rainbow. They see themselves and others differently on the other side.
Really this whole series of entries about the Enneagram and the illusions is that Blue Zone where we work to understand people and enlighten them as to thier own capabilities and potentials. It is about myth and Illusion busting, about managing perceptions and reframing with the PULSE Frame the way people see and act, feel and think in the world. And it happens in a 90 minute conversation. Each time someone experiences the conversation they experience the path from stress to healthy to growth points on the Enneagram. The conversation represents a microcosm of what they will experience through out their lives. The lessons will be repeated … until they aren’t … until the illusion is finally understood as an illusion and the lesson about ‘self’ is learned.
All we can do for others is show them a path to that possibility. We are guides, conversation guides, Delta’s… the Agents of Change. Here’s to you PULSE professionals and practitioners. Your work is important and you are changing the world and the people in it – one conversation at a time.
