Helen Palmer is the author of two best sellers, The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life and The Enneagram in Love and Work: Understanding Your Intimate and Business Relationships – currently translated in 28 languages. In this interview Helen talks about the Enneagram and its importance in our personal and spiritual evolution. She describes how it could impact our relationships in the development of real understanding of our deep-rooted habitual patterns and that of others. She talks about our assumption that we are 'seeing consensus' in our views of the world. We believe that we can have differing opinions but fail to understand that we might actually have fundamentally different views of the world and different internal structures. For us to evolve out of automatic patterns takes reflection on our inward patterns, development of an attention practice. She says, "Take a pause, centre yourself, so you are not going into a premature conclusion or projection about what will happen. A temporary silence brings you to your senses and enables you to be receptive to reality as it is occurring between two people".