The Sacred Shape
Explore your type. Reshape Your Spiritual Practices. Discover Your Unique Path.
You have been shaped.
Your body, your mind, your spirit, your earliest relationships, and the experiences of your life have all left their imprint. The patterns we explore through the Enneagram are part of that shaping too. They influence how you relate to yourself and others, where your attention naturally goes, how you protect yourself, and how you make your way through the world.
Much of this shaping happened long before you had words for it.
This is one of the reasons I believe understanding ourselves is important, but understanding alone is rarely enough to create meaningful change. We can become remarkably good at explaining ourselves while continuing to live from the same familiar patterns.
Transformation asks something more of us.
It asks us to practice.
We Need New Resources
If we want to develop new ways of responding to our lives, we need experiences that give us access to something beyond our familiar patterns.
I think of these as resources.
A resource might be the ability to become still when everything inside you wants to react. It might be learning to recognize what is happening in your body before immediately turning it into a story. It might be discovering a contemplative practice that helps you remain present to uncertainty rather than trying to resolve it.
Over time, these practices give us access to new voices within ourselves.
The familiar voice may say, Fix this. Prove yourself. Keep everyone happy. Get it right. Stay in control. Don't let them see you.
Practice creates enough space for another voice to become available.
Stay.
Listen.
You don't have to know yet.
You are allowed to be here.
This is one of the ways I understand spiritual practice. We practice something new so that, eventually, something new becomes available to us.
Holding Spiritual Practice Loosely
I use the words spiritual practice intentionally, but I also hold them loosely.
For some people, spiritual practice immediately brings to mind prayer, meditation, scripture, worship, or other practices rooted in a particular religious tradition. Those can be meaningful and important resources.
For others, those practices may carry complicated histories. Sometimes the spiritual practices we inherited no longer fit the people we have become.
I am less interested in prescribing the "right" spiritual practice than I am in discovering what helps you become more present, grounded, receptive, and alive.
That might include contemplative prayer or meditation. It might involve walking, breath, movement, journaling, creativity, time in nature, poetry, ritual, music, silence, or simply learning to sit with yourself differently.
The question is not whether something looks spiritual enough.
The question is: What helps you become available to your life?
The Enneagram and Spiritual Practice
The Enneagram helps us recognize the patterns we have been practicing, often unconsciously, for much of our lives. Spiritual practice gives us an opportunity to practice something new.
This relationship between the Enneagram and spiritual practice is an important foundation for the one-on-one work I do. The Enneagram helps us notice where our attention goes, how we respond when we feel threatened or uncertain, and the familiar strategies we use to find safety, belonging, and value. From there, we can begin developing practices that give us access to new resources and different ways of responding.
I often work from the contemplative foundations of silence, stillness, and solitude. These create space to listen beneath the noise, notice what is happening in the body, and encounter ourselves apart from the expectations and demands around us. Within that space, I use three guidewords I have developed over time: Being, Focus, and Expression. Being invites us to explore the ground from which we are living. Focus brings awareness to where our attention and energy are going. Expression asks how what we are discovering might begin to take form in the way we actually live.
Are You Interested In Doing This Work Together?
My role is to accompany you as you become more attentive to your inner life and develop practices that help what you are discovering become something you can actually live.
If you are looking for one-on-one work that brings together the Enneagram, embodied awareness, contemplative spirituality, and the deeper work of personal transformation, I'd be glad to begin with a conversation.
Would You Rather Schedule A Call?
Whether you are ready to begin or if you have some questions, I do a free first call to discuss next steps.
Find a time below to schedule yourself.
Learn More About Your Guide:
Aaron Manes is a Certified Teacher and Faculty Member for the Marion Gilbert Method of the Somatic Enneagram as well as an Accredited Professional with the International Enneagram Association. Aaron is a Spiritual Director, healer, and maker of room for new faith expression. A published author, workshop teacher, speaker and panelist for new and emerging spaces among multiple denominations and is a preferred Spiritual Director for many non-profits who pursue growth for their members; specifically organizations with a LGBTQ+, Faith Deconstruction and Emerging Leadership emphasis.