The Teaching
The Diamond Approach offers an immense and precise body of knowledge about the nature of reality and the process of spiritual realization. Rather than positing an end goal or condition, it points to an open-ended, continuous process of discovery. Even nondual realization is recognized as a step toward greater mysteries and forms of freedom. This leads to deepening realization of the fullness of being human—a being who experientially embraces and expresses the totality of the cosmos in all its physical and spiritual dimensions. Our potential is to be free: to be anything, everything, or nothing at all, as we live the simplicity of ordinary life.
Spiritual reality is seen to have many qualities important for us as human beings. These essential aspects of our nature include love, compassion, will, peace, strength, joy, and clarity. Each aspect has a unique flavor and particular function for the human soul and the realization of its ground. This ground includes boundless love, universal consciousness, transparent awareness, profound emptiness, nonlocal truth—unities of many kinds.
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Remember the story of Buddha before his enlightenment? The devil Mara came to him, sending dark forces against him, in the hope of distracting him from finally letting go of attachment. First he threw spears at him and sent monsters to scare him, but Buddha didn’t budge. Then he started sending wonderful, beautiful women with luscious breasts who tried to tempt him. The detached heart of Buddha didn’t move. That is when Mara himself acknowledged the Buddha and was converted. This state of poverty and purity, this depth and level of work, require that we really want the truth as it is.
In the work of self-realization, the first and most important part of working on the narcissistic constellation involves exposing the shell. This means realizing directly that what we take ourselves to be is not real, that it is an empty shell, a facade constructed from images and identifications. For most students in our work, this happens completely naturally, in the course of self-exploration. It is not necessary for the teacher to introduce or create these perceptions.