How the mysterious nine-pointed symbol of the enneagram illuminates the worst pitfalls and highest virtues of our psyches.

The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues elucidates human experience beyond the personality structure. In the tradition of the enneagram, the Virtues are said to be the affective atmosphere that replaces the compulsive and reactive emotional patterns-called the Passions-as one becomes freer of the ego.

Sandra Maitri shows how the shift in our consciousness, or soul, from being informed by the Passions to being informed by the Virtues, is one of the hallmarks of inner development. In this book, Maitri explores how our awareness of the Passions, in turn, leads to the manifestation of the Virtues. This shift supports rowth on the level of personality as well as on the level of what is beyond-Being, or True Nature.

Maitri is widely known as one of the most literate and indepth writers and teachers on the uses of the enneagram as a tool of inner development. In this book she provides what can be for some an entry into inner work, and for others, who have been engaged in the journey for a longer time, a uniquely incisive explication of concepts they may have missed.

Sandra Maitri was a member of the first group of students to whom the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo presented the enneagram system in the U.S. almost three decades ago. Throughout her many years of studying and teaching it, Maitri has preserved the legacy of this original transmission. In addition to her work with Naranjo, she has studied with various Eastern and Western spiritual and psychological teachers, including A.H. Almaas, founder of the contemporary spiritual path, the Diamond Approach. As one of the principal and supervising teachers of the Diamond Approach, she teaches the enneagram as part of the larger work of personal transformation, working with hundreds of students each year in the U.S. and Europe. She lives in Marin County, California.