Quotes from Don Richard Riso

Every moment has the possibility of delighting us, nurturing us, supporting us - if we are here to see it. Life is a tremendous gift, but most of us are missing it because we are watching a mental movie of our lives instead. As we learn to trust in the moment and to value awareness, we learn how to turn off the internal mood projector and start living a much more interesting life - the one we are actually starring in.

If we observe ourselves truthfully and non-judgmentally, seeing the mechanisms of our personality in action, we can wake up, and our lives can be a miraculous unfolding of beauty and joy.

Kierkegaard's advice. He suggested that we become subjective toward others and objective toward ourselves. That is, when we judge the actions of others, we should put ourselves in their place, trying to understand how they see themselves and their world. And when we judge ourselves, we should see ourselves as others see us, overcoming the ease with which we find extenuating circumstances for ourselves.

In fact, life is our greatest teacher. Whatever we are doing can be instructive, whether we are at the office, or talking to our spouse, or driving a car on the freeway. If we are present to our experiences, the impressions of our activities will be fresh and alive, and we will always learn something new from them. But if we are not present, every moment will be like every other, and nothing of the preciousness of life will touch us.

Self-understanding is the prelude to transformation, to moving beyond the ego and all that makes up what is called "false personality.

Attaining the goal of a full, happy life, ripe with experiences well-used, means that each of us will become a paradox—free, yet constrained by necessity; shrewd, yet innocent; open to others, yet self-reliant; strong, yet able to yield; centered on the highest values, yet able to accept imperfection; realistic about the suffering existence imposes on us, yet full of gratitude for life as it is.

everyone wants insight into others, few people are as willing to look so intently at themselves.

In the artist of all kinds I think one can detect an inherent dilemma, which belongs to the co-existence of two trends, the urgent need to communicate and the still more urgent need not to be found....

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?" THOMAS MERTON

Nines must resist the urge to escape into "premature Buddhahood"... and away from the mundane world. They must remember that "the only way out is through.

The Enneagram is not a religion, however; nor does it interfere with a person's orientation. It does not pretend to be a complete spiritual path. Nevertheless, it concerns itself with one element that is fundamental to all spiritual paths: self-knowledge.

Enneagram 9s Basic Fear: Of loss and separation Basic Desire: To have inner stability "peace of mind

the longest way round is the shortest way home." Our truest fulfillment does not lie in the direction of a jealously guarded self but in the direction of self-transcendence as we learn to open to others and to reality.

The difficulty is that average Fours may not know what their feelings are until after they have expressed them personally or artistically. But if they express all that they feel, they fear that they may reveal too much, exposing themselves to shame or punishment.