Laleh Bakhtiar: Thank you, Jack. It’s good to hear your voice. In answer to your question, I was in the Ph.D. program at the university taking a course in Group Counseling. One day as I was walking out the door, I heard the Professor say to the class: “There is another method of group counseling in which you may be interested. It is called “The Enneagram” and it has Sufi origins!!! Being a practicing Sufi and a published author on Sufism with the University of Chicago Press and Thames and Hudson at that time, I decided that this was a moment of “awakening” for me to find out more.
JL: That must have been a while back since it has been almost 15 years since we last had you in our pages, but feels like yesterday. It's true that as every year becomes a smaller percentage of our life, it appears to be passing faster and faster. What must it be like for a centenarian when the years just fly by? I suppose that if we take good care of ourselves we'll have the fortune to find it out sooner than we think.... Come to think of that times does not affect our sense of "being." Our earliest childhood memories of what we call "self" are no different today -- unaffected by any event is that wondrous stable and timeless sense of witness/awareness... We can't imagine when we were not, or how some day we may cease to exist. It puts personality issues with its quirks somewhat on the back burner doesn't it? That has always impressed me about your work and the central point you made differentiating the familiar Enneagram of Personality we usually read about from how you see it. Can you recap it for us?
LB: Yes, but first I would like to say that I have not been MIA for the last 15 years, but rather concentrating on my computer based training course for the Sufi Enneagram. I have managed to train many in the art of moral healing offered by the Sufi Enneagram. Now, in regard to your question: I mention the fundamental differences between the Enneagram of Personality Types and the Sufi Enneagram in the Preface to the book, Rumi's Original Sufi Enneagram. Basically, the Enneagram of Personality Types ties a person to a number, “types” them to a particular personality while with the Sufi Enneagram the numbers are not as important as what they symbolize, that is, too much (1+, 4+ and 7+) too little (8-, 2- and 5-) or lacking (9°, 3°, 6°) three of Plato's cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Courage and Self-Esteem (or sometimes called Temperance). They also symbolize cognition (wisdom, thought), affect (temperance, self-esteem, emotion) and behavior (courage, action) or the ABC of the self.