The Diamond Approach and The Inner Journey Home
By Tim J Sullivan, M.Sc. and John Davis, Ph.D.
“Whenever we do any work on ourselves, or engage
in any way the inner journey, we are invariably working
with our soul. There
is nothing else to work on.” -- A. H. Almaas, Inner
Journey Home
A. H. Almaas’s Diamond Approach is a complete and
unique path of realization, arising
from, and appropriate to, our time, place, and culture.
Developed over the last thirty years, this spiritual path
arose from Almaas’s own experience, informed by his
work with many students and groups in his Ridhwan School
and enriched by his studies of psychology and spirituality.
In two decades Almaas has elucidated many aspects of the
Diamond Approach through nearly a dozen books. The most
recent, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization
of the Unity of Reality (Shambhala, 2004) presents the larger
view of the Diamond Approach. Two main elements are emphasized:
a detailed discussion of the nature of the self
or soul and an overview of the path of the soul’s
journey to the realization and embodiment
of Being.
The Inner Journey Home is a book about the soul. Almaas
uses the word soul as the best description of what a human
being actually is: the individual consciousness
that is aware, alive, and dynamic and the embodiment of
the potential for awakening,
transformation, and liberation. Consistent with its traditional
use in the Western Gnostic wisdom, the word soul refers
to the totality of our subjective experience, including
both our familiar experience and the potential for full
realization of our unity with the source.
The Inner Journey Home reveals Almaas as a cartographer
of the soul’s inner landscape. But more, he shows
us that we too are on that journey and can discover for
ourselves the truth of our own nature. His detailed and
careful descriptions are precise discriminations of his
own experiences and understanding. These descriptions engage
a sensing process in the reader that can bring similar experiences
to awareness.
There often arises a felt presence for the aspect, feature,
or dimension he speaks about, or at the very least, an intuition
or heart-felt longing to know more deeply. His writings
function, therefore, as vehicles of invocation, inviting
one’s own consciousness to respond immediately, to
experience its unfolding more intimately, to step into the
journey home.
What is most remarkable about Almaas’s work is how
this understanding makes it so very transparent that the
soul is not only who and what we are, but that its specific
characteristics and properties are designed to reveal to
us its own nature, and the nature of reality itself. The
soul, as Almaas says, is the window into reality. And a
window is designed, after all, to let the light in.
Almaas describes the soul as the organ of experience
and the medium through which Being manifests in our consciousness.
It is the soul that experiences. “The soul is literally
the vessel that contains and hold all inner events,”
say Almaas. Thus, the soul is the internal context for the
work of realization. This is the starting point for inner
investigation, and this understanding allows us to investigate
the medium of experience, not just the contents of experience.
Perceiving the soul directly allows us to deal effectively
with the obstacles to its full and free experience of reality.
Typically, the soul is dulled, thickened, and obscured
by the residue of old wounds and patterns.
We live in a world dominated by this dullness, constricted
and contracted. As we turn to inquire into these contractions,
they open. The medium of consciousness, itself, is transformed,
allowing us to experience ourselves and the world
in a way that is richer, deeper, and more satisfying.
Knowing the soul’s properties means we will see more
clearly which way to go, where we are going, and what tools
will be needed. Guidance, one of the intrinsic properties
of the soul, becomes available to our journey. Like the
potter who must be intimately familiar with the clay in
order to form the pot and ensure it will endure the firing
to be both beautiful and functional, our intimacy with our
own soul’s potential, substance,
and characteristics will ensure we gain the most from our
own transformation.
Almaas clearly shows that the soul is not an object or
thing apart from reality and Being. Rather, it is the means
through which Being perceives, knows, and transforms. Ultimately,
the work on the soul
reveals that the experiencer is not separate from the content
of the experience. In this way, our deep longing for connection
is satisfied. While the soul has the potential to know itself
in a differentiated, even separated way, its journey is
toward a unity with Being. Like a wave that can be distinguished
but is never separate from the ocean, the soul can forget
its true nature but never be completely disconnected from
it. Exploring the soul directly, we begin to know the nonduality
of subject and object
and discover that we were never separated from our source.
The soul, seemingly in exile from its source, returns.
The central and most important potential of the soul is
her essence, for essence in its various aspects
and dimensions forms the ground and provides the Platonic
forms for all of our higher states of consciousness,
and the higher faculties of experience and action.
Soul and essence meet at the level of pure consciousness.
They both come from the same ground, where essence constitutes
the primordial ground and nature of the soul, her spiritual
potential, the richness of her depth. Only with the actualization
of essence can the soul be free, completely authentic and
totally serene. Essence is her true nature, without which
she is estranged, lost, inauthentic, empty, twisted. Regardless
of how much of her potential she actualizes, regardless
how much a genius she becomes, artistically or scientifically,
if she does not recognize her essential nature her experience
comes to be characterized by emptiness and strife, on the
same level as most human beings.
The central path of the Diamond Approach is based on the
practice of inquiry.
As Almaas describes and teaches it, inquiry is the exploration
of present experience. It is open-ended and goal-less. Inquiry
is not intended to bring our experience into any particular
state or
condition. Rather, inquiry opens the soul to its experience
in the present in a more complete way, whatever the nature
of that experience. Inquiry is always present-centered and
it always brings us into direct contact with our experience,
at first through our feelings, body-centered experience,
thoughts, memories, and associations, and then through direct
knowing of presence or essence.
As we begin to practice inquiry, the true nature of the
soul guides its unfolding. The unconscious
is revealed more completely, and the barriers that limit
the soul are exposed. This material is often difficult or
painful to experience. Undigested wounds get calcified in
the soul, defensive structures get fixated, and the result
is rigidity, thickness, and a lack of aliveness in the soul.
We fear the breakdown
of our familiar structures and the exposure of the unconscious
issues we have avoided. The rigid and fixated structuring
of the soul that contains the sum total of these obscurations
is what we call the ego. While these structures may have
begun as necessary defenses to protect the soul and allow
its functioning,
they now block the soul from knowing and expressing its
true nature.
At this point, the Diamond Approach’s understanding
of the psychodynamic roots of the ego is extremely helpful.
Knowing where, and how, to explore these obstacles, along
with knowing the soul’s qualities, allows them to
be explored, dissolved, and integrated. Almaas shows, in
very detailed ways, how the soul’s properties, functions,
and indeed, its very nature are oriented and designed to
reveal the nature of reality and its own unity with reality.
The process of open-ended inquiry allows these revelations.
Orienting ourselves to the soul helps demystify the more
esoteric elements of the spiritual journey. Touching the
soul directly, we find a profound settling and a contented
simplicity. We have an immediate sense of our experience
without the overlay of habits, history, and patterns. We
are here, alive and awake in the present. Our experience
flows in a smooth, harmonious way. The abiding fullness
of presence and the quiet stillness of emptiness
attend the soul. This sense of just being ourselves, as
we truly are in the moment, cuts through our complicated
ideas about spirituality.
Whether we are taking a walk, having tea with a friend,
working at our jobs, taking care of the details of our lives,
sitting in deep silence on a meditation cushion, or loving
with passion -- regardless of the content of our experience
-- the soul’s potential is to be present, alive, open,
and satisfied. The soul’s potential is to transform
itself on its journey. Equally important, our painful, contracted,
defensive, judgmental, and avoidant experiences also hold
potential for supporting the soul’s unfolding. By
working with the emotional blockages, conditioned patterns
of thought and feeling, and the internalized structures
of self-image
and concepts, the soul unfolds.
The soul’s natural tendency is toward freedom and
realization. The Diamond Approach provides understanding,
guidance, and support
for this ongoing discovery. As we experience the soul with
more clarity and more presence, it reveals the obstacles
that need to be dealt with. As we open to the soul’s
possibilities, it guides us by revealing precisely the qualities
needed to continue its journey home.
Finally, we realize that the soul’s potential is unlimited
and boundless. The journey is never complete, and we are
always home.
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