“The Work” is any way, school, or method that recognizes the fact of suffering and the cause of unnecessary suffering and works to lead a person back to his true nature, which will eliminate the unnecessary suffering. – Diamond Heart Book One, ch. 3
The Work is to see objectively what reality is, how the physical relates to the spiritual, how the outer self is related to the true self, and what the role of each one is. – Diamond Heart Book Four, ch. 17
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. – The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 10
In our Work, we do not seek the harmonious life by putting Band-Aids over our difficulties or patching up the rough spots in our personalities. Regardless of how useful we find the results of therapeutic techniques, we see them as bandages for little rips here and there. That is fine for therapy, but it is not the Work. I think most of you know by now that everything in you is connected with everything else in you and that Band-Aid therapy does not reach deeply enough. We are concerned here with growth, transformation, and development, not with therapeutic intervention or the results of therapeutic techniques. – Diamond Heart Book One: Elements of the Real in Man, ch. 12
It is not easy to recognize or appreciate true essential work. It is not a matter of having ecstatic experiences, of seeing visions, and so on, although these events happen as part of the learning process. The work is more for an individual to be a true and real human adult, integrated on all levels from the most physical to the most sublime. The work is oriented toward reality, truth, objectivity, completeness, and so on, and these things are not usually visible to one without inner development. Experiences are not only for enjoyment but are to be digested as nutrition essential for a human being if he is to grow to be an actual complete adult. – Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization, Ch. 5
The correct perspective from which you can do this work is always to be aware of whether you are interested in the truth of what is happening right now, or whether you are trying to achieve something. Are you doing the work now to acquire something, to arrive at a certain goal, or are you doing it because you love the truth?
This is a shift in attitude that is needed for us to finally understand the hopelessness of the situation. You are caught and divided because you still have hope that things will be different. That hope creates desire, that desire creates rejection of what is there, the rejection of what is there creates division, the division creates conflict, the conflict creates suffering, the suffering then creates searching. The searching creates more rejection and more conflict and the cycle continues. – Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, Ch. 5
An important part of the Work is to understand the view of objective reality. This understanding comes through discussions about it and through your own investigation, your own exploration and experience. This view is, in some sense, not one experience, but what unifies all experiences. It is the over-arching picture that makes all experiences intelligible and meaningful. The more we understand the view of objective reality, the more we know where we are in our journey. The more we understand the view, the more we know how distorted or how objective our experience is. Thus, understanding the view is a valuable guidance and an important orientation. In time, as our realization process progresses and deepens, our experience corresponds more with the view. When experience is exactly harmonious with the view, this is what is called total realization or enlightenment. – A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, Ch. 18
This work is for you to learn to know yourself, to pay attention to yourself, to be watchful of your feelings, attitudes, and thoughts. Observe what your attitude is toward what’s happening inside and outside, to yourself and to others and to the situation. What are you doing with yourself? What is the movement, the action happening within you? What is the commentary? What is the reaction to what is happening inside you and outside you? Be watchful of that, be aware of it now. What are you saying to yourself, what are you wanting to do about what’s happening? Are you saying, “Oh, this is good” or are you saying, “Well, I don’t know about this, I’d like it to be different.” What is your attitude toward yourself, toward your feeling, your thinking? Is it okay to have the experience that you are having? Is it completely okay? Or is part of it okay and part of it not okay? Is it okay for it to be the way it is, or should it be different? And if it’s not okay for it to be this way, how do you want it to be? If you’re looking at what’s happening inside you and you see a part of you that wants things to be different, a part of you that has an idea of how things should be different, in what way do you want them to be different? Ask yourself where you learned that it should be different in that way? Who said things should go the way you say they should? – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, Ch. 7