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If this were my last day, my only day – there is only love. All there ever was and will be is love. Brilliance comes from the inner knowing of this. And by love, I mean the connection of us humans in body, mind, and heart – souls together in harmony with gratitude for what is.

When love is present everything radiates and beauty abounds. We are not captured and hostage to our personality structure, to our opinions or our judging mind, and we know that the fabric of the universe is seamless until we cut into it, creating cause and effect, conflict and damage.

When love is present, no one person is more or less than any other sentient being. We understand the oneness of all. Possibility abounds in love which, yes, starts with a separate self that can pursue wholeness and therein union with others and the universe. Nothing destroys the essence of love. To me love is the divine, the everlasting.

If this were my last day but unknown to me as such, I would start and end this day as if it were THE day of days. In living this simple stance, I do my best to embody presence and receptivity with an open heart no matter what activity or endeavor in which I engage. By this I mean, simply breathing back down and centering plus reminding my self to open my heart in kindness. For when I am in receptive presence combined with non-judgment all matter of positive possibilities unfold.

Then when the reactivity and defensiveness of judgment comes up as it does for all of us, I do my best to befriend it with non-judgment and return to purpose and receptivity. And I remind myself to live love and support the well-being of myself and all others with whom I contact.

I urge us all to embody this stance of living each day fully so that if it is our last day, there are no or few regrets. To make this true, I stop several times a day for perhaps simply a minute or so each time to reflect on presence and purpose and how to live this day fully.

To do this simple, yet not easy task of living love each day requires that we all realize the embedded habitual pattern that we formed as little children to adapt to the world as we experienced it then. Yet then is not now. We all need to become aware of our early pattern so that we can understand the pattern and liberate ourselves from its constraints.

All the great traditions recognize that we humans are subject to automatic behavior for better and worse. The task is to observe the pattern to liberate ourselves from its constraints and reclaim our highest qualities of hope, faith, and above all love.

We need to make each day our path to wholeness of mind, heart, and spirit. So my mantra is, “May I live this day in love’s kindness and its companion of non-judgmental receptivity and presence in each moment.”

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David Daniels, MD is clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medical School, a leading developer of the Enneagram system of nine personality styles, and co-author of the best seller, The Essential Enneagram. He also co-developed the outstanding DVD, The Enneagram: Nine Paths to a Productive and Fulfilling Life and The Enneagram in the Workplace. He was in private practice for more than three decades before concentrating fully on the Enneagram work. David also has taught the Enneagram system at Stanford, in the community, and internationally for over 20 years.

With Helen Palmer he co-founded the Enneagram Professional Training Program (EPTP) and was a founder of the International Enneagram Association (IEA). He brings his knowledge of the Enneagram to individuals, couples and groups, and to a wide range of applications in clinical practice and the workplace. He has developed many innovative Enneagram workshops including the Advanced Training for Therapists, Coaches, Counselors, and Guides with Terry Saracino and Marion Gilbert, The Enneagram’s Gift to Vital Relationships, Anger and Forgiveness, The Instinctual Subtypes, Love and Will, Resolving Conflict Constructively and Compassionately with Curt Micka, and Loss and Grief.

The Enneagram provides us with the supreme path to healthy relationships as it reaches down to the core of our personality pattern and consequently to our adaptive strategy. It is a liberation psychology helping to free us from the constraints of our habitual and limiting patterns. And as its ultimate gift, it provides us with a path to integrating our personality and higher essential or spiritual qualities, integration being the linkage of differentiated elements.

Moreover, the Narrative Tradition of the Enneagram of representatives of the nine types speaking for themselves further gifts us with inspiration and hope. When we become centered, grounded, and receptive in non-judgment, we can explore and share our habitual pattern and with practice free ourselves from its reactivity and defensiveness. We come to understand others as they are to themselves and broaden our acceptance and appreciation of differences.

It is my path. I invite you to explore this path for yourself. It will gift you with a remarkable path to wholeness and love. Visit enneagramworldwide.com for additional information.

For more information, please visit enneagramworldwide.com

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. This article was very inspiring and of course as usual came at the perfect time for me!

    I’m a Licensed clinical psychotherapist in private practice and have had an interest in learning more about using the Ennegram both personally and professionally! I would love to learn more about its application and would be interested in attending any trainings if available. I will definitely visit your website you listed to learn more.

    With gratitude
    Kerrie Aiello, LCSW

  2. Strikes me as containing the usual platitudes, blather and self-promotion. And always with the weasel word “love” to make everything sound yummy and caring.
    Surely someone so eminent knows, as every common or garden psychologist does, that “love” simply doesn’t exist.
    What exists is sexuality, lust, caring, self-projection, shared finances, fear of solitude, wanting to belong, comradeship, fatigue with endless one-night stands, desire to reproduce, etc. But there is no “love.”
    But I have to hand it to him. At $19 a pot he’ll lure countless more into swelling his coffers.

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