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Wonderment

Diamond Approach

Glossary of Spiritual Wisdom

From the teachings of A.H. Almaas

What is Wonderment?

Diamond Approach Teachings About: Wonderment

Inquiry is a Journey of Wonderment

Inquiry, based on love and dynamic openness, is a journey of wonderment whose center is a question that embodies knowing and unknowing. That dynamic openness makes all our questions penetrating and encompassing, which activates the optimizing force of Being – in the form of the Diamond Guidance -- so that it may reveal the hidden truth, the truth beyond the known. What is needed now is love of the truth for its own sake to give that questioning power and urgency…

The Nondual Absolute is a Wonderment

This experience of the nondual Absolute is a wonderment. Everything appears more clearly defined, more three-dimensional, more textured, but also transparent and luminous. Everything makes up a nonconceptual unity, multifaceted and multidimensional, but glittering brilliantly as if made out of diamonds.

When Experience is Full of Wonderment

That kind of adventure, with its exhilaration and wonderment, is implicit in our Being. In time, your response to experience is not only delight but pure wonder. You come upon an experience and your mind hasn't got the vaguest idea what it is, but it is so beautiful, you are full of wonderment. You can't experience this wonder, though, if you hold on to a particular identity and frame of reference, if experience continues in its rigid habitual grooves. Wonderment arises when you are open to something that is mysterious, new, and fresh, when your old knowledge is completely suspended for the moment.

Wonderment, the Integration of the Love of Truth with the Openness that Arises as Unknowingness

What kills the wonder is asking questions only in a utilitarian way, to get something out of the answer. Such an approach makes it necessary to find the right answer. But in inquiry, it is not important to be right. We do not ask questions to find the right answer; what is important is that there be an unfoldment, an illumination, an openness that is fertile, that keeps opening up, that keeps expanding. Being right is ultimately meaningless, for there is no final, absolute knowledge about our experience. Most of the time, we are probably right to some degree, wrong to some degree. Whatever knowledge you have is limited, approximate; regardless of how precise it is, it is never the end. It is important, of course, to value your perceptions and insights, but the point is not to find an answer, which is a destination. It is to keep things rolling, so that the flow continues and the natural dynamism is liberated. Never forget that what matters is the movement, the expansion, the freedom—not which bit of information you have arrived at. Our inquiry is then filled with wonderment, which is the integration of the love of truth with the openness that arises as unknowingness. We find that the inquiry, and all of our experience, embodies an appreciative quality, a heart quality. Sweetness and appreciation pervade the openness. Wonder can become the source from which questions arise. It becomes the heartfelt dynamic essence of inquiry. If we let our questions arise from this true wonder, they will open to further questions, which in time become free from bias and positions. Our questions will call forth a knowledge that reflects the power to go beyond the known, transforming our basic knowledge into forms and dimensions our ordinary knowledge can never imagine.

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