A journey for your spiritual yearnings, The Diamond Approach: The essence of being human. By John Davis. From its beginnings as a small group in Boulder almost 30 years ago, the Diamond Approach has developed into a whole spiritual system. It has its roots in a man named Hameed Ali. Born in Kuwait, Ali came to the United States to study physics. He later turned to the study of bioenergetics, depth psychology and spirituality. He credits his early teachers and his studies of Sufism, Buddhism and the Gurdjieff work, among other systems, with helping him to develop the Diamond Approach. In the early 1970s, Ali began teaching a small group of about 20 students in Boulder and Denver. That initial group has matured into the Ridhwan School, a multi-faceted organization with branches throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. The Ridhwan School teaches the Diamond Approach and trains Diamond Approach teachers. There is now a body of more than a dozen books by Ali (under the pen name A.H. Almaas) and his students, and he has ordained more than 50 teachers of the work, as it is often called. The Diamond Approach is taught in several different formats: one-to-one individual sessions with a teacher, small groups led by a teacher, and weekend and week-long retreats. It is a spiritual path based on new insights and timeless wisdom. Diamond, in this sense, refers to the quality of clarity, preciousness and precision, both in the human spirit and in the work itself. This diamond-like quality also suggests the possibility of ultimate truth in the world and in our personal lives. The Diamond Approach includes knowledge of psychological development which was not available until recently. The development and functioning of the ego is now well understood by modern psychology, including the fields of ego psychology and object relations theory. This knowledge, integrated in the Diamond Approach along with spiritual wisdom, helps us develop beyond the limitations of ego. The Diamond Approach has two major orientations: realization and development. The first orientation, realization, means knowing who we are beyond the conditioned, habitual and unconscious patterns of thought, reaction and emotion. Ali uses the term essence for our true nature. We recognize essence in our moments of clarity, in our immediate contact with ourselves, others and the world. Essence has a quality of freshness, authenticity and depth. Some dimensions of essence feel very personal, as we experience ourselves with intimacy and genuineness. Other dimensions of essence feel more universal, as we discover the boundless and fundamental nature of existence, its beauty, richness, presence, purity, spaciousness, creativity, flow and, ultimately, its mystery. Ali illustrates these various qualities and dimensions with teachings from many spiritual wisdom traditions, including Buddhism, Sufism, and esoteric Christianity. However, the Diamond Approach itself is an original and thoroughly integrated system and not merely a collection of other approaches. While everyone has the potential to experience and live from essence, our direct contact with our essence, our true selves, is dampened or obscured by the residue of unresolved conditioning and wounds, primarily from our early childhood experience. In the view of the Diamond Approach, the ego is the result of arrested or incomplete development. So the ego is not something to be conquered or eliminated. Our ego is something to be understood in order to unlock our capacities for joy, value, strength, love, and peace. The Diamond Approach is especially adept at understanding and working with the egos blocks to spiritual realization. The Diamond Approachs theory of holes helps us understand the relationship between essence and ego. A child is born as essence. The infant is not yet able to integrate or understand this essence, but it is there nevertheless. However, the infants parents rarely recognize this essence and often punish or reject it. As a result, the child loses contact with essence, creating in the child a sense of deficiency or holes. The child then tries to fill the holes, to relieve the feeling of deficiency. The child uses counterfeit essence to relieve the feeling of loss of her essential qualities. These counterfeits, which form the basis for ego, imitate the essential qualities which were abandoned or hidden, but they cannot really do the job. Thus, we live most of our lives in a struggle to compensate for a deep sense of deficiency, wrongness or failure. Rather than being in touch with our capacity for strength, passion and expansive vitality, we find ourselves aggressive and angry or helpless and depleted. In place of tenderness and compassionate empathy for suffering, we settle for pity and a subtly agitated need to get others out of pain in order to protect ourselves from our own pain. The egos version of value is what others think of us, rather than an autonomous feeling that is robust and ever-present. The egos version of joy is shallow and short-lived rather than rich, full and delightful. The theory of holes offers a path for understanding these counterfeits and reclaiming our birthright, our essential nature. This process of exploration and understanding, known as inquiry in the Diamond Approach, includes body, sensations, emotions, associations, beliefs, and intuitions. The inquiry process helps us reclaim and realize our essence bit by bit. In addition to focusing on helping us realize our essence, the Diamond Approach focuses on helping us develop and mature our essential nature. Although the infant is essence, the consciousness or container for that essence is immature. When we encounter the world with the necessary support, trust and courage, first coming somewhat from parents and the environment and later from within, the individual consciousness or soul develops its capacity for depth, aliveness and fulfillment. As we mature we become more settled, more able to encounter whatever life offers with clarity and confidence. This maturity can eventually enable us to live as essence and with freedom, alertness, intimacy, and a profound simplicity. Realization and development go hand in hand. As the consciousness develops, its capacity to experience various states and dimensions of essence grows. Essence is more available, and we find ourselves turning less often to the counterfeits. Similarly, direct and immediate contact with essence provides what is needed for the consciousness to expand, mature and transform. We thrive on contact with our essential strength, compassion, confidence, joy, value and peace. This interweaving provides a path to freedom, releasing us to be more fully awake in each moment. For those already on a spiritual path, the Diamond Approach can enliven and enrich spiritual work. For those new to spiritual endeavors, the Diamond Approach offers a path that develops those qualities needed for realization and transformation. John Davis, Ph.D., is an ordained teacher of the Diamond Approach and a professor at Naropa University. His book, The Diamond Approach (Shambhala Publications, 1999), is the first systematic overview of this work and has been translated into German, Dutch, and Spanish. For more information about the Diamond Approach and the programs of the Ridhwan School, call 303-494-2613 or visit ridhwan.org. nexuspub/journeys/diamond.php
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:26:34 +0000
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