In this episode of the Real Enneagram podcast, Dr. Joseph and Lark Howell and Nanette Mudiam reflect on the recent ICB Intensive, an intense weekend of diving into a deeper level of the Enneagram types. Dr. Howell shares his biggest takeaway from the weekend and the benefit of attending future intensives.
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Email us: therealenneagram@gmail.com
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Visit The Institute for Conscious Being: theicb.org
In this episode of the Real Enneagram podcast, Dr. Joseph and Lark Howell and Nanette Mudiam reflect on the recent ICB Intensive, an intense weekend of diving into a deeper level of the Enneagram types. Dr. Howell shares his biggest takeaway from the weekend and the benefit of attending future intensives.
Connect with us:
Email us: therealenneagram@gmail.com
Follow us on Instagram: @therealenneagram
Visit The Institute for Conscious Being: theicb.org
[00:01] Outro: You're listening to the Real Enneagram podcast, a Spiritual Quest, brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being.
[00:11] Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram.
[00:13] Joe: A Spiritual Quest.
[00:15] Nanette: I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell and Lark Howell, his better half. And we just got back from an intensive a week ago, which is our time that we spend in the Institute for Conscious Being with our students to learn about consciousness. And so it was a great event, wasn't it? Nice to be with you.
[00:39] Joe: Nice to be with you.
[00:40] Nanette: Nice to be with you again. And we did our recent... We do our intensives on centers of intelligence. We do them three times a year. Shout out to all of our students. We had a great time being with you guys. And our last one was on the heart center, which is personally my favorite. How do you feel about the heart center, Joe?
[01:01] Joe: I love it because it's so close to the soul. The heart and soul are so linked, and not anymore really than the soul and the mind or the soul and the body. But there's a special linkage to me between the heart and the soul. I guess it's the depth, the feeling that can be experienced when you're having the feelings of the heart center. Lark.
[01:38] Lark: And it's interesting too, because I think when we're doing that center, people just feel like they want to express love more or something. Because people hug you more, and people seem to happy and we're smiling. And people just like the heart center, because it tugs at your heart with everything that we lecture about and that we do. So I think of all the centers, I think it's the happiest one that people enjoy going through and doing, and they express it in their interactions with everybody.
[02:13] Nanette: Well, it touches our hearts. And we know that brings out sentiment and emotion. And we don't normally have license in day-to-day life, maybe in our work and professional realms, to feel all of our feelings. And so maybe we just have the liberty while we're at the intensive to do that, because really literally, it really is always my favorite center of intelligence that we study.
[02:44] Lark: Well and I think that we've worked very hard at this, but I think all of us on faculty tried to create an atmosphere of love and acceptance for one another. And people who come know that it's a safe place, and that they can share deeply with one another.
And we encourage that in our mentor groups and then the times that people gather other than the lecture time. And so I think people just feel safe and freer to share what's going on in their lives if it was happy or sad. And there's just a freedom when you know you're accepted and you're cared for, and that it's a safe environment in which to share.
[03:26] Nanette: Yes, it's been a beautiful experience I know for me and my husband Sai to participate in for the last four years. So well, tell us Joe, how did you feel the intensive went and what was your favorite moment? Biggest takeaway?
[03:45] Joe: Well, I think that for people who are not familiar with the inner flow of the Enneagram, they may think that they are not in the heart center. But everybody's in the heart center and you can go to the heart center even if you're not a Point Two, Three or Four. Because if you're doing the Enneagram, you're going against your arrow to your point of integration, which is your soul point, and then after that you continue against the arrow to all of the points along that Enneagram.
And some people say, “Well, I'm on the Hexad and that lets me out,” but no, even if you're on the Hexad or the Inner Triangle, you have a wing and one of your wings is in the center that your ego type is not in. So once you let your wing and your ego type travel the inner flow - Sandra Maitri refers the arrows to the inner flow. - once you relinquish to the inner flow, you're gonna pass right through the heart center and get everything you need.
[05:08] Nanette: Well, and that inner flow really represents the truth of who we are as whole beings, right? We are all spirit, soul and body. We have centers of intelligence, all three of them, no matter where our ego enters the Enneagram, so because we are whole. We should be whole.
[05:30] Joe: In fact, Oscar Ichazo, in his later writings in the '90s, expanded his idea of the Enneagram personality to have us not only have our ego type in one of the centers, of course, but that in the other two centers, there is another type that each of us has that we most identified with out of the three of those two types.
[05:57] Nanette: Interesting. OK.
[05:59] Joe: And that some of those three types makes up even a different quality of who we are on a soul level. So you have that. Then you have the subtypes. And you have the wings. You have the soul point. You have your virtues, and all of these make up the character of our soul and no two souls are exactly alike.
[06:38] Nanette: Well, that's an interesting point that you make, Joe, because I think when people start to learn about the Enneagram, we find this commonality with, say another number who might be like us, and we're looking for connection. But the truth is, yes, we're all... There is a sense of unity and oneness in all of us, but we are all uniquely ourselves as well. And no two numbers are ever exactly the same kind of person.
[07:08] Joe: Like snowflakes. Each one of them is very, very different. And going back to the last ICB school intensive last weekend, and I could see the lights going on with a lot of people. This really resonated with me.
This makes even more sense than I thought it did now that I've actually been in classes, studying the heart, singing the music of the heart, like Drexel Rayford and Melanie Rogers do for us with their well trained voices and instruments. They set a harmonic tone with music that actually fills up our meetings space. Our meeting space is big. It's got a huge, as you know, huge ceiling and wide, kind of a big breath to the seating area. And all of that hall is totally filled up with music.
And music doesn't have to have words to speak to our hearts. And so, music with words speaks to our hearts doubly, because the music gets in our body. It vibrates in our body. The different notes mean different things to different people. And the words are words of encouragement, of happiness, of peace, and of healing and restoration. So you've got all that going on in that intensive too.
[08:56] Nanette: So if someone is out there listening to us today, and they've never been to an intensive, how would you describe what it is that we do at intensives? And why they might want to join us?
[09:11] Lark: Contrary to our conferences, the intensive at our school is what it says, an intense weekend of delving into a deeper and deeper level of each Enneagram type. And for the heart, we had all the heart centers - the Twos, the Threes and the Fours - and we focus on the ego numbers for each and for each intensive, depending on whether it's the heart center, the head center or the body center. And so we just delve much more deeply into it, not only with the numbers.
Like this time, Drexel Rayford, he did a beautiful job with presenting the song for the Four that he has created. He took Joe's prayers that are in his book for each Enneatype, and then he's creating songs for each one. And this one for the Four this weekend was particularly beautiful and meaningful.
So we just go to a much deeper level with each. And so everybody gets a chance to experience... Like, I'm not One in the heart center, but it really touched me. And it really helps me to learn more about who I am when I experienced the in depth of those heart-centered Enneatypes.
[10:28] Nanette: Well, and what I will say, I really appreciate about the intensives is the community that we've built of people who are very like-minded in their pursuit of the spirituality of the Enneagram and discovering their soul child and knowing that there's an antidote to the ego. That there is more to be discovered. There's deeper and richer and spiritual truth that can be mined out of the Enneagram.
And that you can do so in a community that has really built friendships and relationships for many of us. We've gotten to know each other. One of the students that I've been studying with for several years, and I were having a conversation back from eating dinner, and a new student was walking in front of us. He, as the established guy that I was talking to, and I were talking, the new student harped in on our conversation, and he said, "Oh, I just I have to ask you a question about this. I hope you don't mind that I've interrupted your conversation." And I said, "All conversations are open here. It is not rude to come in on a conversation. You're welcome at any table. You're welcome to join in on any conversation.”
It really is an open community where we can have conversations that are intelligent and sometimes elevated, but also light hearted and fun. We've really enjoyed taking this journey together. So I not only honor those students who are listening, but welcome those who may be looking for a community as well. You don't have to be afraid to come join us. We would be a welcome community to you.
[12:21] Joe: And these intensive too are not only learning times, cognitive learning times, and information gathering. The state of consciousness for most people at these events is altered, because the defenses have gone down. The ego is not at the fore as it usually is because we're usually out in a demanding, stressful world.
But the conference center where we meet is in acres and acres and acres of forests, and the beauty of just being at Camp McDowell is phenomenal. But there's also a fantastic feeling of being held in a spiritual container while we're there. And people like you say, Nanette, people feel freer. And there's not a hierarchy and there are no no-no’s or high expectations. It's a flow.
[13:34] Nanette: Or hierarchy.
[13:35] Joe: No, there's no hierarchy. And I mean, there are teachers and students, but lots of us teachers learn from our students.
[13:43] Nanette: Yes, yes, we do.
[13:45] Joe: And we all do the activities together. It's not like the teachers are segregated in any way. But I guess the other thing I'd like to say is that the spirit is so relaxed while you're there, and I would say altered, that we have to talk about how to reenter after we leave those intensives.
Because a lot of people go back home and don't realize or remember that other people weren't there that weekend, that are at their house. And they're not seeing the world as they have come to live it for three days. They are still perpetuating ego. And to live in that world, we have to kind of gather up our ego again to deal with it all.
So reentry is a very important process because you've got to learn how to get back in the egoic world, but not lose your soul. And that's the beauty of it. It's practice about how to be in soul after you've been purely in it for a weekend. How to be in soul when everybody else around you isn't and hasn't defined of what that means.
[15:08] Nanette: Interesting. Yeah.
[15:11] Lark: And one thing too I'll add is that there's no expectation for everybody who comes to be on a certain level of consciousness or on their journey. I mean, of course, to be interested in our school, you have to be knowledgeable about the Enneagram, and you want to be learning more and more about it.
But we all have our own journey, and we're all on different levels. And it's okay that we're on different levels, because we learn from each other and grow. And there's no pressure or expectation to have read so many books or didn't know so much information.
[15:43] Nanette: Uh huh. Absolutely. Well, I think that is encouraging, because so often, it can be intimidating to think about joining a group of strangers on a spiritual quest, you know, call it intensive. But really the opposite is true. You will find such a welcome.
It doesn't have to be intimidating at all. We really do welcome different points of view and to share in our consciousness, whatever level that might be at. So it's a beautiful, beautiful experience. And one we definitely welcome people to come to.
[16:24] Joe: We seem to have a lot of people who are in healthcare and in the ministry. Lay ministry as well as full time vocational ministry. And that's heartening, because they are actually living out their knowledge of the spirituality of the Enneagram and influence others for whom they care to.
That's a beautiful... In fact, you yourself as a nurse, Nanette, and Sai, who will be with us on our next podcast. He is a businessman, but he has affected his workplace with the spirituality of the Enneagram.
[17:15] Nanette: Absolutely, I mean, we all know it has been... The Enneagram has certainly been pitched as a model that can be used in Fortune 500 companies and in the business world. And we know the traps of that, of using it in any way to maybe... There are positives and negatives to that, of course, but I will say for me and for Sai to take this wisdom back with us to the realms in which we have influence in both our work and our families has been phenomenal.
I mean, it is certainly helped me to be a better manager, a better people coordinator. It's helped me in so many different ways. So I know it's been the same for you guys. And the Enneagram just continues to be a wealth of wisdom.
[18:09] Lark: Well, and just in your personal life with your family, your loved ones. Once you understand this, it gives you such great sympathy and understanding for other people, and realize that we're all compelled to be the way we are. We can't change that.
[18:27] Nanette: And also that person, whoever that other might be, is also compelled to be exactly as their ego dictates as well. So yeah, it gives us a lot of compassion and understanding for another viewpoint.
Well, we certainly appreciate our audience today, especially our students. So thank you for joining us and hopefully some potential students for the intensive. So we hope to see you in a future Camp McDowell ICB intensive. And our next one is the mind center. Is it not, Joe?
[19:04] Joe: In May.
[19:05] Nanette: Yeah, and in May. So details of that can be found on our website. And so thank you so much for being here with us today.
[19:14] Outro: That wraps up another episode of The Real Enneagram brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. If you're interested in furthering these conversations, please reach out to us through our Instagram at @therealenneagram. Or if you're interested in our upcoming trainings or other resources, please visit our website, www.instituteforconsciousbeing.org. Thanks for listening.