Love on the Path of the Diamond Approach

What makes love essential on the spiritual journey? In this teaching from the “Love and Emptiness” series, A. H. Almaas explores the essential role love plays in spiritual transformation. He reveals how love is not only a feeling or devotion, but the very fuel for transformation, revelation, and evolution. When we engage our hearts with sincerity and passion for the truth, our soul begins to unfold in ways that logic and effort alone cannot access. 

The Power of Love on the Inner Journey 

While realization can emerge through many doorways, it is deep, heartfelt and selfless love that makes the path workable, joyful, and deeply alive. 

Almaas begins by emphasizing that true spiritual work cannot progress without the sincere engagement of our hearts. The heart’s devotion and generosity allow us to stay with the path, even when it’s painful, confusing, or difficult. Without love, the path can feel like duty. With love, even failure becomes part of a deepening process of opening and surrender. 

What is it about love that gives life meaning and makes transformation possible? Almaas observes that all living beings thrive in love. Love is not merely a sentiment, but a dynamic force at the core of reality itself. In the deepest view, all of reality is an unfolding presence. And when that presence includes the sweetness and generosity of love, it doesn’t just manifest—it evolves. Love is what enables our unfolding to become revelation. 

Love of truth, he explains, is the most powerful motivator for spiritual realization. But it must be love of truth for its own sake, not to gain enlightenment or peace, but because the truth is beautiful, magnificent, and inherently lovable. When we love someone truly, we long to know them deeply, not for what they give us, but for the joy of seeing who they are. The same is true for our relationship with truth, freedom, and reality. 

This kind of love opens the universe. It activates the generative force of reality, allowing the source of Being to reveal itself more fully. Just as a rose opens in sunlight, our soul opens in love, not through control or effort, but through surrender to the beauty and power of what we cherish most. 

In the final moments of the teaching, Almaas echoes a timeless insight from the Sufi poet Rumi: “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.” Love is not only the beginning of the spiritual path—it is the path itself, the revealer of truth, and the transformer of the soul.