This is the season of graduation addresses and the one by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009 at the University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009 was singular. Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author. Starting at age 20, he dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. So he knows about generational change. Using no flim-flam introduction he plunged in, “But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating…Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.”  And he ended with an invitation, “This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. …You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.”

Yes, Generation E take it and run with it as if our lives depend on it. And they do; and that is one reason why I am introducing you to the Enneagram (E-model). If you are “the programmers” as Hawken states and I agree, then let me tell you of a program that helps you to know yourself in ways you have not learned before. A program you can make your own and build on to forge hitherto inconceivable inter-connections between people around our shrinking planet … and within yourself.

As a high school educator for nearly thirty years, parent, author and international Enneagram (E-model) expert and workshop leader, I have become convinced that your generation, Generation E, has unparalleled ability, willingness and a crucial need to look deeply at itself and apply your hard-earned self-awareness to lives that can be productive and rich.

Generation E is for exploration and entrepreneurship. If you know yourself then your personal power and commitment is increased exponentially.

Generation E is for energy and enthusiasm. Follow any wild idea you have about changing the world; you never know where it will take you.

Generation E is for electric excitement when you entertain and enjoy new experiences that can benefit us all.

Generation E is for the E-model, a key to unlock the extraordinary within you.

Check out www.janetlevine.com/blog for ongoing information on the E-model.

Please read the previous blogs as this is a continuing series. Now that you have taken the Student Inventory (TPI) on www.janetlevine.com and discovered that you are an Attacher,  Detacher or Defender your curiosity is piqued and you want to know more about the model.  This blog answers some of the most common questions I am asked by young people when they first encounter the E-model.

In Greek ennea means nine and gram graph or model. The Enneagram is a dynamic flow model of consciousness. Each of us defaults into one of nine positions arranged equidistantly on a circle. At each of these positions (called a Point) clusters of characteristics cling like pins on a magnet and contain the motivations for our behavior. (You can see a diagram of the model on many web sites. Do a simple search on the Internet.)  However, no two people who are the same Point are in any way identical, so the E-model describes the  nine behavioral clusters to the nth degree thus accounting for each and every individual difference. The E-model does not place people in boxes.

On the circle each Point is joined to four others, the two on either side of your own, called wings that flavor your E-type,  and two others on the lines that flow toward and away from you; these lines are depicted as arrows and they are arranged  in a triangle and a hexagon. The direction of these lines describe shifts in consciousness such as when you are under stress or when you feel secure. Furthermore (this is a complex model) there are two hidden arrows that join four of the Points, so everyone has one part of their personality in each of the head, heart and body-based triads. (Hence my name for the TPI or Triads Personality Inventory). The TPI explanation on my web sites describes the Triads.

The origins of the E-model are still somewhat sketchy. For many years it was thought to have Sufi (esoteric Islamic) origins, then, research even further back revealed that it may have originated in the work of the post-Alexandrian Desert Fathers in Egypt, and more recently some claim Vedic origins for the model (myself included), and that is as far back as we can find any record of our ancestor’s thoughts.

Many philosophers and philosophical traditions have developed systems of nine forms and a tenth called unity (in the example of the E-model–a circle). Plato devised his model of the Divided Line and placed his  nine Universal Forms at the top level of cognition. The mystical Jewish Kabbalah with its nine sefirot encompassed within the form of a human body is another dynamic system that explains consciousness. (It has alignments with the E-model.) In the 12th to 16th centuries, neo-Platonists and Christian Kabbalists added important understandings to these models.

The current iteration of the E-model has been sculpted since the 1960s by psychologists  and others in the United States and elsewhere in professions and disciplines that explore the human mind and consciousness. As a baseline they used the Diagnostic Survey Manual (DSM) knowing as they did so that the DSM describes pathologies while the E-model descriptors draw a bell-curve of normal to high-functioning people.

Shorter answers to your questions–the nine E-types are evenly distributed among females and males worldwide. No E-type is better than another they are equally valid. There is no E-Type that is “better” for you as a partner. We all have to work hard at all our relationships

We are born with our E-type. We cannot change it, but the characteristics do ameliorate with age. For most people age 15-25 is when the E-type  is most flagrant. Knowing your E-type brings you immediate compassion and understanding for yourself and others.

How will knowing your E-type help you? Stay tuned.

Generation E is my name for the first generation of adolescents of the first decade of the twenty first century. Generation E is synonymous with you who are learning ecological and environmental awareness, utilizing educational methodologies designed to help you function in a new world of technology with almost unimaginable advances in (for instance) health care, and training you in management skills and practical strategies that will (for instance) one day eliminate world poverty. Other Generation E young people are laying the seeds now to become life-long learners. For as Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great Transcendentalist philosopher, said, “Humankind’s greatest ability is the ability is change one’s mind.” To open one’s mind too.

But among these intellectual pursuits do you yet know where consciousness resides? Is it situated differently if you are Indian, or Zambian, or Peruvian, or Irish? Of course not! Generation E and the E-model can inculcate mutual understanding as never before on our planet, Earth, this place we all call home. The E-model breaks down barriers of self and others in a remarkable way. It gives us understanding and compassion. It is a momentous step forward in redefining the nature of  plurality in our world.

I have taught the E-model to young people and those who teach them from universities in Helsinki, Finland to the dusty townships of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I have taught the E-model to students and teachers in Canada, and England, and in schools and colleges across the United States of America. Wherever I teach there comes that moment when peoples’ eyes light up in recognition and a journey begins to truly know themselves. An Organizer girl in South Africa may use her task-driven attention in different ways to the Organizer young woman graduate student in a business leadership course in Helsinki, Finland. Or an Organizer young woman at a community college in Pueblo, Colorado, will avoid failure, as will an Ivy League bound young person in New England. Organizers everywhere will recognize their drive to complete tasks at all cost, the competitive nature of their inner selves, their avoidance of failure and their sense of entering a deep hole of “now what”, when the task is done, and the goal attained.

Generation E you are primed for adventures in self-awareness. Like most of us though, you do not know who you are, and what makes you behave the way you do. Take the first adventurous step, investigate the student inventory on the website www.janetlevine.com. Become conversant with the E-model, and help break down the racial, ethnic and national perceptions that divide us. Learn a new vocabulary and understand a comprehensive behavioural context. Imagine a world in which we all know our E-type. I have that vision, and like a perceptual tsunami, I know what a positive wave of consciousness it can generate.

Calling all young people, and the adults in their lives. Let me introduce you to Generation E, your generation. In the first decade of this new century you are one of millions of adolescents growing into adulthood facing unprecedented challenges and unequalled opportunities. You live in a world where dating has moved into cyberspace, relationships between parents and children are increasingly complex and multi-faceted, spirituality has become a matter of personal reflection and choice, and new collaborative and distance learning technologies push the boundaries of effective teaching and learning in directions both decentralized, self motivating and international. This is not your parents’ world.

As a high school educator for nearly thirty years, parent, author and international Enneagram (E-model) expert and workshop leader, I have become convinced that your generation, Generation E, has unparalleled ability, willingness and a crucial need to look deeply at itself and apply your hard-earned self-awareness to lives that can be productive and rich. One highly accurate study of the human psyche that can help you achieve this fulfilling life, is the E-model; a model of human consciousness and personality, that has helped millions of people around the world to a better understanding of who they are and how their personality serves them.

Recently I had the opportunity to introduce the E-model to a group of almost two hundred, sixteen and seventeen year olds using an indicator that I have developed for adolescents.

• Susan was amazed when she watched the video after taking the indicator, “Everything the Moralizer girl on the tape said could have been me talking.”
• Robert told his parents about the indicator and video, and learned that his mother knew the E-model, and was surprised by how quickly he could identify himself as an Entertainer. “I’ve known this for a while,” she said “we are the same personality type.”
• Julie was disconcerted to discover she was a Protector, someone who loves confrontation, believes in justice, and often acts out her “My way or the highway” credo. Disconcerted because she, “Didn’t want anyone to know those things about me. I’m shocked at the accuracy of the descriptions of the types.”

This E-world is what I want to introduce to you, our current twenty first century generation of adolescents, Generation E, and with your help speak and write of your concerns, hopes and dreams using the prism of the E-model. In future blogs I will describe what the E-model is and post vignettes of the types. You can find the Triads Personality Indicator for Students on my web site www.janetlevine.com. Leave a comment on the blog site or contact me at jlevinegrp@aol.com with responses to this blog. Know yourself—so the colleges, and indeed all the people in your life, know you. This is only one of a myriad reasons to explore the E-model.