This recent blog written by Catherine R. Bell was originally published on the Enneagram Canada website. We’re so proud of our affiliation with Enneagram Canada whose mission is dedicated to education and community building. They are dedicated to connecting enthusiasts and practitioners from coast to coast, fostering collaboration and professional development within our diverse country.
I’ve just returned from the Middle East: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and finally, the Maldives. I didn’t come home with a checklist of highlights or a camera roll of monuments. I came home with a softened stance toward humanity and a nagging, beautiful longing to learn from the world’s ancient wisdom and to explore how we can work better together as a collective.
I’m not being naïve. Not sentimental. I’m being softer – as in less defended.
Travel reveals our patterns. Our Enneagram Point doesn’t stay at home or at the airport; it travels with us, our pace, our preferences, our reflex to interpret everything through the lens of our default. Away from the familiar, those reflexes get louder. I met the world through the senses first: the ancient locations of the Dead Sea, Petra, Hegra, the desert heat and stone, salt air and sunlight, the scent of coffee, the hush of prayer, and the hum of a city moving fast with the Museum of the Future.
The Desert and the Mirror
In Jordan, the desert taught with its stunning, heavy silence. Hospitality, there wasn’t a performance: it was steady, ordinary, profoundly human. Tea was poured without hurry. Directions offered without irritation. It forced a realization that I wrote about in The Awakened Company: we often reduce people to roles so we can move through them instead of genuinely meeting them. Presence asked me STOP. When we stop consuming the moment and start seeing the person, the truth becomes undeniable: Most people are good.
The “Discernment” Trap
Saudi Arabia confronted my assumptions most directly. I watched my mind reach for certainty, for the quick stories, instinctive judgments. Instead, I was met by a simple, joy-infused quiet goodness: help given without requiring reciprocation, the genuine delight of deep intimate conversations at a coffee shop between mountains, and eating local faire with our hands, profound ancient landscapes, patience offered without fanfare, and a dignity extended as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It exposed an uncomfortable truth: Sometimes our “discernment” is just distance wearing a nicer outfit.
The Trance of the Shine
Dubai was speed and shine: the invitation to consider “bigger, faster, better, and what is really possible”. It’s easy to
leave the body there: breath shortened, gaze skimming. And yet, small kindnesses kept breaking through: a stranger’s courtesy, a driver slowing so we could cross the street, a warmth where Western cynicism told me to expect indifference.
Abu Dhabi felt like a deeper breath! Space, reverence, cool stone underfoot, light shifting through pattern and shadow, beauty everywhere.
In the Maldives, the salt and stillness offered a choice: let the beauty numb me into escape or let it soften me into a fierce responsibility for the planet and everyone on it. Because if most people are good, then this world is worth saving.
NOW the call is bigger than travel.
The Shock Point
Gurdjieff speaks of “shock points”: interruptions to business as usual. I have reached one, and I suspect the world has, too. No more business as usual. As Canadians, we are being asked to bring higher awareness to the field. Everything has changed since I returned home. The change feels larger, more significant.
The old map is failing. Our lives are entangled: economically, digitally, ecologically, emotionally. Compassion must become transnational, not as an idea, but as a practice of perception and reality. We must think differently. “I am Canadian.” isn’t enough. We must think, feel, and behave as global advocates for peace and harmony. This requires a shift in us that is deep and more conscious.
We are being asked to embody love wherever we go—love that refuses dehumanization, love with boundaries, love that tells the truth cleanly, and a love that can be fierce without carrying an ounce of hatred.
Practice of Presence
We help teams and leaders develop into their potential all over the world. I see now, more than ever, that a broader international lens isn’t just a business asset. It’s a requirement for collective survival.
Most people are good. I remember this when I return to presence: my breath, my senses, and the human standing directly in front of me and the earth I am with.
Believing this is only the first step; the second is architecting our organizations to reflect it. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes “discernment” is just distance wearing a nicer outfit. In the organizational world, we’ve spent decades perfecting that outfit—tailoring our policies, our silos, and our “professionalism” to keep us safe, separate, and ultimately, ineffective.
It’s time for a different kind of tailoring. Everything is done in some form or organization and organizations can be a force for good.
At The Awakened Company, we don’t just talk about consciousness: we provide the framework to weave it into the fabric of organizations. We help you strip away the “distance” of traditional leadership and replace it with authentic, high-awareness presence that drives collective impact.
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The invitation is to stop watching from a distance and start leading from within. We invite Executive Leaders, Coaches, and Consultants to join our Certification Program. We have taught this process to people in over 23 different countries.
Through the Awakened Company framework, you will learn how to:
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Because the world doesn’t need more informed leaders hiding behind distance, it needs awakened ones who are brave enough to stand close.