What it Means to Be Truly Human

What is it to actually be a real person? In her 2018 talk at SAND (the Symposium on Algorithmic Foundations of Dynamic Networks), Diamond Approach co-founder Karen Johnson talks about it as a development and brings clarity to the Diamond Approach's interpretation of this essential question. Read a synopsis and watch the video below. 

Summary 

When we think of “coming home” in spiritual terms, we describe a sense of feeling grounded, present and immediate with something real. But the word “human” comes from “humus,” which means earth. And that means a real human being has contact with this world, with our individual consciousness, as well as the mystery of a more universal consciousness. We straddle both our earthly presence and something beyond time and space. Both are real, not illusory. 

Our nature can be seen as an ocean of consciousness. Within it is a current that is particularly “you.” That individual consciousness is a palpable medium, a fullness that is conscious of itself, and that medium is an impressionable presence that lives in our bodies, yet is beyond the physical. It is what we refer to as the soul. It interfaces with our history, our experience and our neural memory, but it is a living, dynamic presence that lives through the life forms it creates. 

Many traditions are after transcendence. They reject the ego. But this is, in itself, an egoic position because it is contrary to the openness of our true nature. It is only the ego that rejects, for true nature does not need to reject anything because it is indestructible and infinite. Furthermore, the ego is a natural human development. It is not a mistake. Nothing has gone wrong. But as we develop, we understand it is not the only thing going on, and we learn to distinguish it from what we really are. As this happens, we can begin to act from our being, without our attachment to our history and our past. 

The more the soul develops, the more our hearts become open and vulnerable. Until this occurs, we are not a human being, because if you are defended, you don’t really meet another and you are not in contact. This movement from ego identification to personhood – where we live from the consciousness we really are instead of from our ego – is the next evolutionary step. We can still have our history and value our culture, but we are not identified with it. Instead, we are free to be everything and nothing and still live in this world as a real human being and not just an ego.