True nature might manifest itself in ways that don’t have anything to do with the absolute or with pure awareness. You might find out that pure awareness and the absolute are simply way stations and that every condition is a way station. So realization is endless—there is no final destination. – Runaway Realization, ch. 4
As I see it, we do not engage the inner work in order to be enlightened and live a happy life. That is not the meaning of realization. Realization means finding out what is really here now. When you find out what is really here, it becomes obvious what to do and how to live. And then, if you do it, if you are courageous enough, lionhearted enough, to venture into the unknown, which means nothing but letting go of what you know, then you realize that the world you live in is a world of mystery, a world of wonder, a world of beauty. The world is magic. If we allow ourselves to see the world without our ton of cabbage, what we see is full of wonder and mystery all the time. It’s beautiful, colorful, magical, transforming each moment. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch.7
Inner realization is a process of shedding, of losing what one takes oneself to be, to ultimately become what one is, without need for any external support, not even one’s mind. This description is not metaphorical; one actually experiences the disappearance of great realms of one’s identity. As one goes deeper and deeper, one realizes that one is shedding concepts that one had taken to be absolute truths. The shedding of all concepts is the realization of the Nonconceptual Nameless Reality, what is. Nothing can be said to describe it because one can only use concepts to describe. – The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being, An Object Relations Approach, ch.38
Understanding soul and essence, and the relation between them, clarifies such confusion. Soul grows and develops. She does this by actualizing her potential. The central potential she needs to actualize is her essence. Realizing her essential nature she is enlightened. Her essence is her deepest and most central potential, but it is a particular potential, one of the elements that constitute her potential. Essence does not have potential, for it is the ground of all potential, the ultimate nature. Realizing essence we recognize we are primordially and fundamentally immaculate and complete. The soul develops, and her spiritual development is the actualization and realization of essence. But in the state of self-realization, development does not make sense, for we are then essence, which is perfection and completeness itself. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, ch.5
The awareness of the existence of the soul’s true nature constitutes the core understanding in all major spiritual teachings. The primary understanding in any authentic experience of spiritual realization is that our soul (our self, our consciousness) possesses a true nature—its essence. Being is the essence or true nature of the soul, as it is of all manifestation. In the Diamond Approach, we use the word Essence to refer to the specific experience of Being in its various aspects when it arises as the nature of the human soul.
We experience ourselves as Essence if our experience is free, unfabricated, and spontaneously arising. If our experience of ourselves is not dictated or determined by any external influence—that is, by any influence extraneous to the simplicity of just being—we are the essence of who we are. True or essential nature, therefore, refers to how the soul experiences herself when she is not conditioned by the past or by any mental images or selfconcepts. We experience our essence when we are simply being, instead of reacting or conceptualizing our experience or ourselves. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, Ch. 1
We are like the river that doesn’t know it is fundamentally composed of water. It is afraid of expanding because it believes that it might not be a river anymore. But once you know you are water, what difference does it make whether you are a river or a lake? – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, Ch. 1
To establish a particular realization or awakening or dimension basically means to be free from the obstacles that hinder our being in that condition and to integrate the support of true nature for that condition of realization. We don’t establish realization by thinking about it, concentrating on it, or doing practices that always evoke it. Our work is more about seeing the obstacles to realization, making them transparent by recognizing and understanding each one of them. And because the individual consciousness does not have the inner support to allow itself to be present in a way that can recognize realization for what it is, we also work to integrate the support for the realization.
So establishing a realization or a dimension of awakening means that it becomes a station, it becomes permanently available to us. But this does not mean that we need to be in that condition all the time, or that any condition is the final abode. When we awaken in one or another of these conditions, it seems so miraculous, so pure, so real, and so comprehensive—explaining everything we’ve ever wondered about—that it is easy for us to feel that it is the ultimate truth. I have made that mistake too. At a number of points along the way, as different realizations became established and became stations, I thought, “Oh yes, this is it. This is the ultimate condition.” But because this teaching never adopted practices oriented toward realizing any particular condition, each realization always led to further openings and awakenings. – A. H. Almaas, The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 10