Embarking on the Journey: Seeking a Spiritual Path
If you find yourself here, you are likely seeking a spiritual path, a quest that is as personal as it is profound. This isn’t a journey that can be outsourced or shortcut; it’s an intimate exploration of your experience in the moment. The Diamond Approach recognizes this individual quest, offering a framework that respects your unique experiences and questions. It’s not about following a set doctrine but about engaging deeply with your own inner world, asking the questions that matter most to you, and finding the answers within.
The beauty of seeking a spiritual path through the Diamond Approach is that it doesn’t ask you to abandon your individuality but invites you to dive deeper into it. Your personal quest becomes a gateway to universal truths, an intimate exploration that leads to broader understanding and deeper realization. Here, your individual experience in each moment is not just a stepping stone but the very terrain of spiritual discovery. As you navigate this path, you’ll find that the questions you ask, the challenges you face, and the insights you gain are all integral parts of a uniquely yours, yet connected to a greater whole.
What is a spiritual path?
Many people come to the Diamond Approach seeking a spiritual, but what is a spiritual path? We could say that a spiritual path is a way to spirit or a journey to deeper realization and integration of the spiritual. But what does this mean? What is spirit and spiritual?
Soul, originally coemergent with her true nature, turns into a duality of self and spirit; and Reality becomes self, God/Being/spirit, and world—three separate entities. The soul becomes a self, an ego-self, that may or may not believe it has spirit, soul, or true nature. But this spirit is now something separate, disembodied, otherworldly, and something that some of us want to attain. This spirit mysteriously relates to a spiritual world where God or Being rules. On the other hand, the cosmos becomes a physical world, mostly dead and inert matter with pockets of life and consciousness here and there. In other words, the ego development of the soul includes a basic dissociation from the ground of Being. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality , ch. 24
The purpose and function of a spiritual path is to lead us to spirit and a life of spirit, integration of spirit into daily life, awareness, and action.
Ideally, spiritual life is all of our life. Nothing is excluded. If something is excluded, we misunderstand what spiritual life is. Spiritual life is not just going to church, not just meditating, not just having some wonderful inner experiences. It is living in reality—being what we truly are and living in the world as it is. This is possible for us. It is our potential. Of course, we want to recognize the spiritual world, but the greater potential is to recognize that the spiritual world is not separate from the physical world. The spiritual world is the light of this world, the true nature of this world, the true existence of this world—which means that it is your true existence. When you experience yourself right now, when you feel yourself right now—if you feel yourself completely—you will feel yourself as wonderful, amazing, a luminous presence. – The Power of Divine Eros: The Illuminating Force of Love in Everyday Life ch. 3
The Diamond Approach refers to spirit as true nature, that underlying ground of all of existence.
So the spirit is what makes your body, what makes this world, and what constitutes everything. That is why we call it true nature. It is the true nature of this world. It is my true nature, your true nature, the true nature of this building we are in. When we see the world and its true nature, when we see that the outer and the inner are simply the front and the back—completely inseparable, no distance between them—then we realize how amazingly, exquisitely radiant it all is. Everything you see—the physical bodies present, the clothes people are wearing, the walls, and the ceiling—begins to glitter and shine with an inner radiance. All of it becomes self-illuminating jewels—jewels of light that are, at the same time, beauty and love and tenderness and consciousness. But we normally don’t see it that way because we deeply believe in separation. – The Power of Divine Eros: The Illuminating Force of Love in Everyday Life ch. 3
The spiritual path and relationships.
The spiritual dimension can manifest in our lives to enrich our relating and make it more real, and the reverse is also true. If we approach our relationships with openness and sincerity, with the true sense of who we are—if we are authentic and respect the authenticity of the other; if we listen to and are interested in one another just as we are interested in the truth—then any relationship can contribute to our spiritual experience. It can support our spiritual journey, a crucible for inner work. Relationships can become a natural practice that deepens our sense of who we are and our reality experience. – The Power of Divine Eros: The Illuminating Force of Love in Everyday Life ch. 5