from Enneagram Monthly
Travels
With Odysseus, Uncommon Wisdom From Homer’s Odyssey
by Michael Goldberg
reviewed by Lynette Sheppard
Travels With Odysseus
is a must-read tome for any Enneagram enthusiast.
Author Michael Goldberg engagingly retells Homer’s Odyssey, a
mythic journey to Home, with a twist.
Odysseus’ home is Ithaca, but Home is actually the place
where he is known and accepted for his true self stripped of false
assumptions and identity.
Each of the ‘stops’ on Odysseus’ long sojourn corresponds to
the passion or fixation of one of the nine Enneagram types.
We travel with Odysseus around the outer circle of the
diagram, from Point Nine to Point One before ultimately reaching
Home.
This is a wonderful introduction to the Enneagram that never uses
the words “personality”, “Enneagram”, or “system”.
For those who have friends, family, and clients reluctant to
read anything about personality, this book is the perfect gift.
After they are hooked on the insights, you can let slip its
connection to the Enneagram.
At the conclusion of the Trojan War, Odysseus leaves Troy for
Ithaca, and is first waylaid in the Niney land of the Lotos Eaters.
Comfortable, laid-back, and narcotized, this land of
self-forgetting is difficult to escape.
Odysseus manages to get away, though I won’t give away how.
He then encounters pure, unrestrained instinct in the Eightish form
of the Cyclops. He
escapes, though he is no match in the strength department.
Aeolia is Odysseus’ next stop, a Sevenish paradise of non-stop
feasting, joyful play, and partying.
The Aeolians help him get close enough to actually see Home.
Alas, events conspire to rob Odysseus of his vision he will not
reach his desired destination for many years.
The crew incur heavy losses in the Land of the paranoid Sixish
Laestrygonians who believe the best defense is a good offense.
Odysseus is left with only one ship.
Circe is sorceress and wise mentor on the minimalist island of
Aeaea. She helps
Odysseus, but not before she turns most of his men into pigs, as
they act out the avarice of Point Five.
Point Four is encountered in two lands.
Odysseus must journey to Hades and back, where he confronts
ghosts of the past and envy.
He passes the Siren’s island where their song of “I feel your
pain” exerts a profound pull on unwary travelers.
Two lands describe core aspects of Point Three: those of efficient
doing and of image.
Odysseus must be efficient and results oriented in order to navigate
the strait of Scylla and Charybdis
He then visits the Three-ish island of the sun god Helios,
where he is warned not to eat the god’s golden cattle.
Unfortunately his men disobey, and Odysseus loses everything.
After floating lost at sea for nine days, our weary traveler washes
up on an island where Calypso, the ultimate nurturing Two, resides.
True succor and caring nourish our hero but there are strings
attached. This
seductive bondage is Odysseus’ most difficult challenge.
It takes him seven years to break free.
He finds himself finally in the land of the principled One-ish
Phaecians, where he begins to learn his own intrinsic value and to
live out his gifts.
This penultimate step to Home is critical for all of us.
At long last, Odysseus completes his journey Home.
(Yes, I’m giving away the ending, but it’s not like we didn’t
know it.)
Yet his story does not end with merely reaching his destination.
Travels With Odysseus
is a delicious read that you’ll want to savor slowly.
Written in light, clean prose with deft touches of humor, the
insights are so clear, one wonders how she missed them when reading
the original. Goldberg shows us this classic for what it is: a
symbolic journey we are all traveling.
Most important, the author makes the lessons of each land practical
in the here-and-now by showing us how to recognize when we are stuck
in one of these places and offering solutions to free ourselves.
To help illuminate the challenges of each land (Enneagram
point), world leaders of past and present are profiled by the places
they’ve been waylaid or stuck.
Problems of contemporary companies lost in the various
regions Odysseus encountered are also examined.
Understanding these dilemmas brings us to “aha” revelations
that we can apply in our own lives.
While this book is useful in dealing with others who inhabit the
many lands of Odysseus’ wanderings, it may be even more helpful to
each individual reader as he chronicles his personal journey Home.
This book gives us a guide to the inner sojourns of the
Psyche. The wisdom
gleaned by Odysseus at each destination brings us that much closer
to Home, “...where you can see clearly without exaggeration or
distortion, inflation or deflation. ...Home is where you can get out
of your own way.” And
isn’t that what the Enneagram teaches us every day?.
Lynette Sheppard, author of
The Everyday Enneagram, hosts www.9points.com.
She can be reached via email at lynette@9points.com
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from amazon.com
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Inspired insights in the tradition of Joseph
Campbell
September 16, 2006
Joseph Campbell believed that one of the basic functions of myth
was is to help each individual through the journey of life,
providing a travel guide to reach fulfillment--a map to discover
"bliss."
In our daily travels, one of the biggest obstacles to
experiencing a more "blissful" journey are aggravating and
difficult people--people who willfully or unconsciously stop us
dead in our tracks--blocking our way with their unwieldy and
overstuffed emotional baggage.
Long before Freud, Jung, neuroscience, the DSM-V, and Homer
Simpson, the Greek epic poet Homer understood and described nine
different types of aggravating and difficult strangers--not in
the often cold and reductionistic tone of neuroscience or
clinical psychology--but in the rich, symbolic, and textured
language of poetry.
In other words, it turns out that Homer's "Odyssey" is at least
on one level a "travel guidebook" for successfully dealing with
difficult people. Not surprisingly, the "Odyssey" also serves as
a mirror to help us discover and overcome barriers to
fulfillment that we put in our own way when we adopt habits of
mind and heart that are typical of the various types of
"aggravating and difficult people."
"Travels with Odysseus" reveals the psychological wisdom of
Homer's "Odyssey" in a way that I suspect would please both
Joseph Campbell and another beloved popularizer of ancient myth,
Edith Hamilton. True to the metaphoric and poetic form of the
"Odyssey," Goldberg uses carefully crafted and satisfying prose
to reveal patterns and character types that are strikingly, and
often uncomfortably, familiar. At the same time, Goldberg offers
insights and allusions that do not distract from or "psychologize"
the powerful insights that are revealed through Homer's poetry,
symbolism, and word-pictures.
Perhaps one of the more compelling aspects of "Travels with
Odysseus" is how it reveals that the same cast of character and
personality types that cause us grief today, were causing the
ancient Greeks grief in 800 BC. If you observe very carefully,
you will be able to see people at work or in other areas of your
life who uncannily embody the traits and themes revealed by
Odysseus in his travels to the nine lands.
Although Goldberg does not refer to the personality typology
with ancient origins known as the Enneagram, those who are
familiar with this model of personality will appreciate what I
think is one of the more striking patterns discovered by
Goldberg. Without any explicit discussion of the Enneagram
personality typology, Goldberg reveals that in the "Odyssey,"
Odysseus travels, in sequence, through each of the nine
Enneagram realms--confirming that the nine patterns described by
the Enneagram model of personality were recognized by a teaching
tradition that is at least 2,000 years old.
Again, while the beauty of "Travels with Odysseus" is that it
reveals the psychological wisdom of Homer's "Odyssey" without
theory or psychological jargon--those who are familiar with the
Enneagram theory will find, thanks to Homer, a richer
appreciation of the nine types described by this metaphoric
model of personality.
Homer recognized that on our journey to a happier and more
satisfying life we would encounter at least nine recognizably
different personality types (both outside us and within us) who
would block our way. In "Travels with Odysseus," Goldberg has
distilled Homer's insights on these nine personality types and
the strategies as well as Homer's allegorical but sage advice
for dealing with these difficult personality types. For example,
we have all run into one of the most difficult personality
types--a type characterized by Homer as the "Cyclops." Goldberg
observes that
"As a condition of being human, we all must meet the Cyclops in
our lives. They are usually big and loud. They can be terrible
bullies, abusive, raging, intimidating forces of nature who run
over you, without guilt or remorse. They see the world the same
way Polyphemus does; it's a power game pure and simple, in which
the strong survive. The Cyclopes choose to survive."
Homer's strategy for dealing with the personality type
symbolized by the Cyclops, as highlighted and described by
Goldberg in "Travels with Odysseus," is perhaps the most
effective strategy that I have been able to find for dealing
with the occassional "Cyclops" that shows up along on my own
journey.
As I read "Travels with Odysseus" I kept recalling the Junior
High School English class, too many years ago, where I first
encountered Edith Hamilton's Mythology. I couldn't help but
wonder how much easier my own travels through life would have
been if I had been given "Travels with Odysseus" as a companion
book. "Travels with Odysseus" makes the psychological wisdom of
Homer explicit.
I recommend "Travels with Odysseus" to anyone who seeks a deeper
understanding of personality and character--an understanding of
human temperament that is informed by ancient insights that are
as applicable today as they were over 2,000 years ago.
While science continues to reveal more and more secrets about
the brain and personality, "Travels with Odysseus" reminds us
that some truths are best revealed through image, poetry, and
story--whole and without reduction or dissection. "Travels with
Odysseus" is full of these beautiful, and perhaps "eternal"
truths. It is a guidebook that will, if you choose to use it,
help you on your "travels towards bliss"--or at the very least,
help you to get around a Cyclops or two.
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from amazon.com
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Life wisdom, October 24, 2006
This is a most fabulous book!
It is a treasure of life wisdom and should you have time left for only
one more book in this lifetime let this be the one.
The author, Michael Goldberg, shows us how to read Homer's "The Odyssey"
as an allegory of every human being's travel through life, unraveling
layer by layer of prejudices until you meet with your own true self. In
other words your homecoming - i.e. to be and to know your innermost self
free of all pretence.
This journey is what life is all about, and the author combines his
great knowledge of an ancient model of different psychological types,
the Enneagram, with the psychology of Freud and Jung and thus
illustrates that "The Odyssey" is actually about how to avoid to get
stuck within any framework or mindset- boxes that we, as frail and
insecure human beings put up trying to make existence in this world more
simple, safe and organized - in fact, we create a model of how the world
and everyone in it functions.
To free ourselves we need to acknowledge our own underlying model, which
can be reached by experience and knowledge of the very different ways of
existing in this world. Probably, you will be acquainted with one or
more of these types you'll meet in the book, and here we are shown how
to identify the mindset of each one as well as how to tackle the threat
of getting stuck by being flexible and adjustable. Qualities that
everyone will need to get through a life of challenge and change.
Finally, the author connects to publicly known situations with companies
and people as an illustration, which make this reading useful in many
different ways.
Altogether, a story that many will know from their schooltime is now
known to go far deeper and to have a much more important message to
everyone than what we were told then.
In the end let us introduce ourselves:
Jette Abildskov, consultant, OT, coach, NLP and Enneagram Trainer
Hanne Josephsen, attorney, coach, HR-, NLP and Enneagram Trainer
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