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REPORTING ON DAN SIEGEL AND A.H. ALMAAS
© Connie Frecker, 2006

At the 2005 IEA Conference in San Francisco, I experienced the divergent yet congruent perspectives of A.H. Almaas and Daniel Siegel.  Siegel, an M.D., extolled the importance of mindfulness on brain activity and the reciprocal relationship between them.  Almaas, founder of the Ridhwan School, focused on the inseparable interaction of psychology and spirituality within the Enneagram.  Following is a brief sampling of some of their points.

Dan Siegel explained that experience shapes connections in the brain and creates synapse formations.  The mental processes shape neural connections, which in turn shape more mental processes.  So, genetics is never separate from experience.  Nature needs nurture.  And memory embeds prior experience so that what you expect in the future is what has happened in the past.

Of significant importance is the role that this information plays in parenting.  The single most important determinant of how well-adjusted children are is to the extent that their caregivers had self-understanding.  When parents make sense of their lives, they have integrated their brain.  Since motor neurons can respond to an intention, even an intentional stance can affect children.

Small inputs can lead to large and unpredictable outcomes.  Motor neurons can fire to a perception and respond to an intention.  When the brain can be prepared, there is the opportunity for choice and change.  The brain is thus a social organism with mirror neurons and the capacity to develop empathy and insight (mindsight).

The optimal pathway for neural plasticity is explained by the anagram FACES:  flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, stable.  Siegel further makes a distinction between temperament and attachment.  Temperament is structurally embedded in the nervous system; inborn, but not necessarily genetic.  It is the constitutional feature of the child.  Attachment, then, is the relationship of the child to the caregiver over time and shapes the developing mind.  Temperament has zero connection or correlation to attachment.

Siegel’s scientific findings support the theory that the mind can change the brain and the brain can change the mind.  Since what one believes is how one lives, there is an incredible miracle in mindfulness.

A.H. Almaas distinguishes Enneagram types, which are not controlled, from fixations, which are ego-patterned manifestations.  We can be free from fixations psychologically, but not from our type.  So, we need to differentiate about what is true.  As we self-study, our spiritual work involves clarity about motivation.  Our consciousness is our sense of self and ego patterning structure. 

The core of fixation is dissociation from source.  The future becomes inflexible and unchanging if our ego difficulty overrides reality, resulting in fixations.  However, through spiritual work our view of reality changes.  The Enneagram serves us as an enlightened and coherent map that details our spiritual nature and provides ways of accessing it and organizing our experiences.  We never have complete freedom from our fixations, but we can certainly experience more space.  And with the bigger picture there is more clarity in contrast to the constrained nature of the fixation.  We need to differentiate between how we are and how we have been led to believe.  This will impact the ground beliefs of fixation that we have taken to always be true. 

If we are a "child of our parents," that is one point of view.  If we are a "child of the universe," we are brought to the moment.  True liberation is in knowing yourself well enough to NOT avoid fixation situations.