How did you find the Diamond Approach?
I happened to watch a video in 1993 where Hameed was doing a demonstration of inquiry. Back then the only method i knew to explore one’s experience in a way that came close to inquiry was Eugene Gendlin’s technique of Focusing. I was trying to learn this technique by myself with no other guidance than Gendlin’s book, so it was thrilling and very inspirational to see Hameed do an inquiry: I got the full transmission of his unstoppable curiosity and the precise way the diamond guidance was working, just by seeing this short demo. Half a year or so later a friend showed me a book by Almaas and I remember thinking when i started reading this book by Almaas that it reminded me of something that had touched me in watching the video of Hameed Ali. Until I found out that both were one and the same person. I joined the first European Diamond Approach group in 1994 and met Hameed in 1995 during his first visit to our European group. I was not consciously looking for a spiritual path or a teacher, but when I met Hameed it felt like i was resonating with him in a way that was so awesome, it felt like my soul had been searching him for aeons, and I still feel immensely grateful for all the gifts and the guidance I am receiving as his student and as a teacher of the Diamond Approach.
When you first started, what was your greatest challenge?
My greatest challenge was to find the financial means to attend the EU 1 group and also Hameed’s summer retreats in the US. At the time I was in between careers and without a stable source of income, yet I was convinced that I needed to do whatever it took to attend these retreats. Internet did not exist yet, something like Skype still needed to be invented, nor did we have any DA teachers living in Europe, so the only opportunity to communicate and work with our American teachers was at retreats a few times per year.
What has kept you engaged with the Diamond Approach teachings?
What kept me engaged until today is that the teaching is alive, new, fresh. I can listen to and study, eventually teach, any of the teachings at any time, and I learn something new each time.
What aspect of the teaching is most alive in you right now?
Most alive is perhaps the felt potential of Openness: an openness that does not allow me to take things for granted but keeps me open to the possibility that reality may present itself any moment in new and different ways than I already think I know. New wormholes may appear that open up to new experiences and new revelations, over and over again. Life is truly adventurous that way.
What has been the most surprising discovery for you (in the past year? Month? Week?)
I had two different encounters with little children last week, children that I did not know and that I just happened to meet on the road: one of them was with a girl of about 5, who proudly showed me a grass that she had picked and she told me how giddy it made her when it tickled her cheek. The other was a little boy, maybe 2 years old, who showed me his face that was damaged because he had apparently fallen flat on it. When he felt that I was truly interested in what had happened to him he lifted his head up to me and pursed his lips from between the wounds in his little face, as an invitation to kiss him. Both chance meetings are rippling through me for days, and I feel deeply touched by them.
They gave me a beautiful little teaching of how true nature is spontaneously being expressed by children while it may take decades of personal work to retrieve this kind of immediacy and contactual authenticity in our mature relating and functioning.
What advice/encouragement would you offer to someone ‘on the fence’ about attending an intro event?
I don’t think there is one advice and it really depends on the person I would be talking to: some people need encouragement to make their acquaintance with our work; others shy away from too much advertisement and may need to be left alone to make up their mind. There is a lot on offer nowadays: books, videos, public talks, intro days, book groups, inquiry groups, Quasar, ongoing groups, private sessions… My experience is that students have their unique story of how they came to the Diamond Approach and I trust that every individual has their own timing and rhythm to find their teacher or their teaching, whether it is our approach or another path.
If you could have one wish for humankind, what would it be?
What I wish for humankind is that we learn to be truly curious about one another so we can listen to one another’s perspectives. I think one main cause of the suffering of our times is that there is a lack of dialogue between people. We have the potential to see ourselves in the other. Even when we have different points of view, when we look one another deeply in the eyes, we meet the same depth, the same source as where we all come from.
Elsa Teeuwen has been a student of the Diamond Approach for 23 years and has worked as an ordained Ridhwan teacher since 2006 for several groups in Europe. She is one of the lead teachers of the DAWN groups in The Netherlands and has begun to serve on the Obsidian Synod in May 2017.