So inquiry requires that we dive into experience but continue to be aware and present while in the middle of it. And it is the Diamond Guidance that gives us this capacity to be present and objective in the middle of everything. We can be feeling emotional or cynical, or have all kinds of physical reactions, but right in the center can be an objectivity, an awareness, a presence, and a curiosity about the situation. The presence of the Diamond Guidance provides all these elements in the inquiry. But for it to arise, there must be a personal involvement, a personal investment, a personal passion. We need to have a personal love for the process, for the exploration, for the truth, for our soul, for reality. Otherwise the Guidance will not show up. We can’t just be distant observers; we can’t just look at experience as if it were a movie. Many spiritual experiences of transcendence or oneness are similar to watching a movie; but that’s not inquiry yet, that’s impersonal witnessing. For there to be personal inquiry, the witnessing must occur in the middle of experience—in contact with it—not outside it. We continue to witness, but we’re in the middle of it. Our witnessing is embodied. Why would the soul strip herself, expose her beauty and her richness, if we’re not completely and personally interested in her revealing her full truth, if we are inquiring with a prejudice or an aim in mind? Real inquiry coincides with a passionate involvement with one’s process, with one’s realization, with one’s life. That way it becomes the core that goes through our life. All of our life then feeds into it and is an expression of it.

In pure witnessing the soul is so completely her ground that her posture of awareness is complete witnessing of arising phenomena without any self-reflection. The witness does not reflect on itself. In this case there is awareness of the various arising forms, but no perception of the ground that is the source of awareness, even though one is currently being the ground. This means one is currently being one's true nature, but there is no discrimination of it in consciousness. This is not unconsciousness; this is total awareness. It is being oneself so completely, so intimately, that one has no perceptual or cognitive awareness of it. One is so much one's ground that there is no distance that allows self-reflection. This is the characteristic mode of awareness in the self-realization of the absolute.

The background of this unfoldment, the absolute, is so totally dark it appears black, but luminous crystal clear black. We experience it as beyond the world. The world looks like a transparent picture, as if it were a soap bubble with pictures on it. It looks like a reflection on the inside of a transparent bubble, within the infinite immensity of the crystalline absolute. This perception changes depending on how involved we are in the manifestation, or how concentrated we are on the absolute. When we are witnessing within the manifestation but still being the absolute, we can perceive our body moving, doing what it does—eating, talking, and so on. However, all this is seen as completely spontaneous functioning, not belonging to a person or a self. There is no doer whatsoever. Everything is happening as functioning, each part is doing its functioning smoothly and spontaneously. The functioning is not related to a doer, a person, or a self. And it is not seen as separate from other functioning in the environment, for all functioning is a unified dynamic field. Furthermore, the functioning is the same as the phenomena, the perceived reality, the logos whose dynamic pattern is the universe. However, there is no I, no self, no center. The awareness and perception originate from the darkness of the absolute.