The Diamond Approach® is a path of inner discovery
The Diamond Approach is often called a spiritual path, but what does that imply? To understand the question – What is the Diamond Approach? – some perspective, orientation, and understanding of – spiritual, approach, inner, religion, and discovery might be useful.
- Approach: The Diamond Approach is a methodology, a way or means of practice that leads to personal discovery, revelation, and understanding.
- Discovery: A central element of the Diamond Approach’s methodology is inquiry. Open and open-ended inquiry into immediate experience is a means to penetrate surface understanding and beliefs to explore and clarify reality.
- Inner: Your inner experience includes your thoughts, feelings, sensations, tickles, etc., whatever ‘appears before the footlights of your consciousness.’ Your inner experience is the most intimate thing you have and are: what you attend to or ignore, what you think about and how you think it, and how you feel about something—these experiences shape (and are shaped by) your existence.
- Religion: The Diamond Approach is not a religion. It is not a belief system. The Diamond Approach is a way to explore our beliefs and convictions about the nature of reality, who, and what we are.
- Spiritual: The dictionary defines spiritual as relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul instead of material or physical things. The Diamond Approach sees spirituality as that which is closer or more fundamental to our true nature or being.
What I mean is that as an individual consciousness, our true nature or Beingness is beyond our usual sense of identity, and is not constructed by our mind. This Beingness is the Beingness of everything and everybody and is connected to true nature because it is the true nature of everything. – A. H. Almaas, Founder of the Diamond Approach
The Diamond Approach addresses the fundamental impulse in all human beings to be real.
The desire to be real, the quest for authenticity, and genuine purpose bring most people to a spiritual path. Human beings are paradoxical conundrums – we want to be real, and we want others to be real with us. However, being real puts most of us in a dilemma with the vulnerability necessary to discover who and what we are.
The Diamond Approach recognizes that most people must go through a process of waking up to their true nature and reality as it is without all the filters and projections.
The path of inner discovery includes growth and understanding in these realms of human experience:
- Emotional Experience and Range
- Psychological Development and Psychodynamics
- Identity and Functioning
- Spiritual Experience and Mystical Experience
- The Human Body as an Organ of Perception and Experience
The Diamond Approach is a personal stream of discovery and understanding that grows, deepens, and expands daily. New discoveries do not necessarily displace the old but often build upon them. One’s process of unfoldment is a natural evolution. Life evolves into deeper, more expansive, more inclusive, and more subtle levels of awareness, consciousness, and understanding. Students’ lives and experiences become richer and more diverse.
Unique contributions of the Diamond Approach to human understanding include:
- The unity and synthesis of psychological and spiritual experience
- How personality and ego develop as a loss of connection to true nature
- How true nature differentiates into essential qualities and the relationship of various ego structures and personality sectors to specific qualities.
- How personality and ego are misdirected and misinformed attempt to reconnect with true nature.
The word diamond reflects the precision, clarity, and multifacetedness of this approach, its perspective, and the understanding it helps to reveal.
Although the Diamond Approach has led its founders, students, and teachers to a deeper and more expansive understanding of human nature and the interplay of inner and external reality, it is not a dogma. Though cosmological and ontological perspectives have emerged, the teaching and path remain one of personal exploration and discovery. The fruit of the teaching is not in the conceptual understandings and models but in the lived, experiential knowledge of each practitioner. The Diamond Approach helps students to understand the nature and functioning of their vehicle, and with the ‘keys to the car,’ we are free to explore the known and unknown and go boldly into the last frontier.
A few of the topics and subjects explored within the Diamond Approach are:
- Understanding Essence & Presence – the moment – here – now – I AM – consciousness- awareness
- Qualities/aspects of reality – helps us to understand how these aspects are related to conventional experience in the world and how they can optimize our lives.
- Ego Activity/Reactivity vs Personal Essence
- The nature of our normal mind is to always be reacting within certain limited patterns of emotion and behavior defined by our self-image. The self-image is a construction of familiarity created by reactions to past events beginning in early childhood.
- This inner psychic activity is the life of the ego-self fueled by hope and desire, which disconnects us from what is happening in the moment, projects the past into the now and focuses the consciousness toward the future – a rejection of Being.
- Personal essence leads to greater actualization of one’s potential. One becomes more creative, productive, original, and fulfilled in personal involvements. A sense of confidence in one’s capacities develops speedily, along with certainty about who and what one is.
- Understanding the Power of Space on Ego Structure – spaciousness results from the dissolution of psychic boundaries. The arising experience of space challenges boundaries, ego structures, and self-images. Space manifests in various ways: Emptiness – The Void – Black Space – Dense Space – Clear Space – Death Space
- True Identity vs. False Identity – We discover our true identity when our normal, historical identity ceases.
- The Transformative Power of Inquiry – knowing and not-knowing – one’s personal thread of discovery. The dynamism between awareness and curiosity is the agent of revelation.
- The Process of Understanding – Dialectic Inquiry – Nonverbal/Experiential Inquiry – Inner Guidance & Grace – Clarity, Precision & Synthesis
Practicing, exploring, and studying the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization is simple but challenging. Steadfast beliefs about oneself, others, and the nature of reality get confronted. Personal issues and historic patterns arise and must be explored for greater understanding. Our mind and our historical-self desperately hang on to the past for security. In the Diamond Approach, there are no sacred cows.
What is the Diamond Approach? Simply stated: The Diamond Approach is an understanding of our deepest human nature and a path to realizing and developing our fullest potential.
More information: Introduction to the Diamond Approach Online Course
What is the purpose of the Diamond Approach?
The Diamond Approach addresses the fundamental impulse in all human beings to be real. It recognizes that most people must go through a process of waking up to their true nature and reality as it is without all the filters and projections.
What does the Diamond Approach involve?
The Diamond Approach involves growth and understanding in realms of human experience such as emotional experience and range, psychological development and psychodynamics, identity and functioning, spiritual experience and mystical experience, and the human body as an organ of perception and experience.
What are the unique contributions of the Diamond Approach to human understanding?
The Diamond Approach contributes to human understanding in various ways, including the unity and synthesis of psychological and spiritual experience, how personality and ego develop as a loss of connection to true nature, and how true nature differentiates into essential qualities.
What does “diamond” signify in the Diamond Approach?
The word “diamond” reflects the precision, clarity, and multifacetedness of this approach, its perspective, and the understanding it helps to reveal.
What are some of the topics explored within the Diamond Approach?
Some topics explored within the Diamond Approach include understanding essence & presence, ego activity/reactivity vs. personal essence, the power of space on ego structure, true identity vs. false identity, the transformative power of inquiry, and the process of understanding.
7. Is the Diamond Approach easy to practice?
Practicing, exploring, and studying the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization is simple but challenging. Steadfast beliefs about oneself, others, and the nature of reality get confronted. Personal issues and historic patterns arise and must be explored for greater understanding.