Yes, absence is absolute lack of identification with anything. Usually, though, we do not know what this means if we have not yet experienced absence. That is why I prefer to refer to it as the cessation of consciousness. Although I can describe it pretty well, absolute absence is difficult to imagine and understand. We can relate it to the experience of clarity, when your consciousness sometimes feels as clear as transparent glass or crystal. Now take that clarity and make it more clear, absolutely crystal clear. Then make it clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer until it is so clear that you can’t even feel it. As the transparent medium of consciousness becomes so smooth, so clear, and so fine, it becomes thinner and more subtle and transparent. At its limit, absolute clarity is so fine, so clear, so subtle, and so thin that there is nothing there. The medium of consciousness is then absolutely erased. Complete absence is a state of complete lightness and openness because there is nothing there, not the slightest sensation, to obstruct the openness. 

Clarity, which is luminous transparency, is the heart of objectivity, the essence of objectivity. It is also the essence and the core of the Diamond Guidance. The clear, transparent presence is the fabric of the Guidance, the very substance of it. The guidance is fundamentally a clarity that assumes various colors. It is a transparency that luminates with various qualities, while its central nature is revelation and guidance. Being, in its absoluteness, is mystery beyond any description. It manifests its potential richness by differentiating itself into dimensions and qualities. The qualities of Being are its inherent implicit perfections, now manifesting as essential aspects. These aspects also appear in Diamond Dimensions, where each dimension is a particular synthesis of all of the aspects that operates as one vehicle with specific functions. Diamond Guidance is one of these Diamond Dimensions, whose function is guidance through discriminating, knowing, and understanding. We have been exploring the role or contribution of each of the aspects as we learn how Being functions as guidance. The overall dimension of the Diamond Guidance is that of a functioning vehicle, which operates as guidance or understanding. But each one of the perfections of Being—the essential aspects—has its own contribution to the Guidance.

So the Diamond Guidance is the specific manifestation of the Divine Mind arising in our soul as a personal capacity. It is what gives our soul the ability to know exactly what is going on and to understand our experience. Understanding our experience is knowing what it is, directly feeling it, and having insight into that feeling, all as part of the immediate experience. Because it is a reflection, an emanation, or a particularization of the Divine Mind, the Diamond Guidance has the capacity to reveal our experience, to penetrate its obscurations all the way to clarity and truth. I call the Diamond Guidance a vehicle of real knowledge because its specific capacity is to make it possible for the soul to know herself. And if you know yourself, then you know your source, because this source is your ultimate identity. 

We dull our awareness and thicken it in a manner that opposes and pushes away whatever element is arising in our experience that we prefer not to have. And when we do that, it becomes very difficult just to be present. How are we going to be there, how are we going to be ourselves, if we are fighting something in our experience? We are trying to divide ourselves; yet, as we have seen, we are indivisible. We are trying to partition ourselves, but our consciousness doesn’t have parts. So, all that happens is that we get thick and dull, and our awareness loses its lightness and lucidity and clarity. In fact, our normal awareness has already lost its clarity and lucidity because we are dividing ourselves in so many ways automatically, consciously or unconsciously.

In other words, understanding is a matter of clarity shining through the various manifestations, clarifying and dispelling obscurations and illuminating the truth. What is happening as we are clarifying is a rise in clarity. What is this rise in clarity? The whole field of experience, the whole soul, begins to become clearer. We become aware of the resistances and blockages, the wrong beliefs and fixed positions that cause such obscuration, dullness, and unclarity. And as we see them, we become clear about what they are and what they are about. As we become clear about them, we understand them and they are dispelled. Obscurations dissipate like clouds as clarity shines through. We discover more and more of the truth, and experience is illuminated. The truth begins to stand out and become manifest. This is the process we go through when we inquire.

We eliminate unclarity and obscuration by becoming precise. Precision means a specific, exact, sharp delineation. This sharp delineation needs to be not only in the thinking mind, but primarily in direct experience. We know when we feel heat or anger, for instance. We don't merely feel some kind of energy, or a vague hot emotion. Exploring vague feelings is the beginning of understanding, but the understanding is still not complete, not objective, because it is not precise yet. For example, we might feel sort of feisty, or maybe we’re feeling angry, but we’re not exactly sure yet. Inquiry asks for more precision: "Am I feeling angry or feisty?" When we recognize that we feel more feisty than angry, we become more precise. Some dullness and unclarity is dissipated by the questioning.

The process of clarifying the issues that impeded the embodiment of this essential clarity gradually eased, and the searing presence itself resumed its prominence and remained constant for weeks. The clarity was blissful. I loved that. My mind was unhinged and free. No longer was there a tangled web of ideas or associations to crawl through – just crisp awakeness. And I felt lucid not only in my mind – I was cleared out everywhere. The diamond presence brought more understanding of my relationship to this new way of being, as well as knowledge of itself. It grew brighter, and I realized that it was not only an experience – it was an intrinsic aspect of me. The presence of the faceted compact light expanded, filling my torso. It was an inner diamond made of consciousness. I felt intoxicated with its limpid presence. I was diamondized. Just as remarkable was the effect it had on my perception of the world. Everything appeared as if it had been polished. Each petal of a flower stood out; every cloud in the sky was distinct; each pebble came into high relief. Colors were so vivid that they were of another otherworldly category. Everything appeared fresh, vibrant and new.

The Diamond Approach is characterized by a distinctive realization about our essential nature: Essence manifests in various forms as an intelligent response to the changing conditions of the human soul. These forms, which we call the aspects or qualities of Essence, include the perennial flavors of human experience such as Love, Peace, Joy, Truth, Clarity, Compassion, and Intelligence. Each essential aspect has a distinct experiential reality and function, while all share the basic ground of Essence: presence, self-aware luminosity, and openness.

As the dynamism takes the soul into new realms, our Being reveals many pure qualities, which I have called essential aspects. It displays the quality of Love, the quality of Clarity, the quality of Strength, the quality of Peace, the quality of Truth, the quality of Contentment, the quality of Spaciousness, the quality of Existence, the quality of Passion, and so on. These qualities are elements from the beyond, from the unseen world, and our conventional wisdom cannot fathom them, can't really see or discern their meaning, function, or usefulness.

That's what I mean when I say that the soul becomes clearer. The soul herself begins to feel the quality of clarity and transparency. Of course, that will affect your physical experience. You will feel lighter, clearer, cleaner, and more lucid. There is more space and less obscuration, less thickness, less opaqueness, less vagueness, less unconsciousness, less sleepiness. There is an increasing quality of being awake and alert, a brightness and clarity. Clarity is actually nothing but the luminosity of our consciousness, the transparency of awareness.

More than all the discourses in the world, the clarity of this pure being illuminates the barriers against realizing it, gross and subtle. We begin to see that locating ourselves anywhere within the self-structure separates us from this simplicity. Any motive, any hope, any desire, any ego movement means identifying with the structured self, with the ego-self. Thus, any movement of rejection, choice, desire, motive, hope, preference, holding, grasping, trying or effort will separate the self from this simplicity of being. The ego-self is always trying to approach the simplicity of realizing the Essential Identity (the point), but the more it tries, the farther it moves away from it. However, as the point, the student is aware of the ego self as if from the outside. It becomes possible for the first time to see and experience the normal self, the ego-self, from a vantage point totally outside of it. The student begins to have glimpses of the person he has been experiencing himself as, seen throughout his life, trying to free himself. He sees his virtues and vices, and understands—maybe for the first time—that this person has been doing all he could. He sees his purity, his effort, his confusion, his frustration, his dedication and his laziness, his sincerity and his blindness, his anger and his pain, his fear and his anxiety. As the pure presence of awareness and light, he perceives his ego-self as if in the third person. He recognizes himself as a compassionate and loving center, while the person who is the ego-self is doing everything in his power to approach and be this center. He sees how these attempts are inherently frustrating because they take him away from the true center.

The clarity we are discussing is a specific element in the process of understanding. This clarity is indistinguishable from objectivity. And objectivity and clarity are the qualities of the Clear diamond of the Diamond Guidance. Both qualities are important and specific to the Guidance, and the Clear Diamond brings them into the operation of the guidance. Or you can say that the operation of the Diamond Guidance is an objective operation of clarity in the process of inquiring into the truth. In its operation, in its guidance, it clarifies our situation. It penetrates or cuts through our positions, beliefs, and ignorance.

The dynamism of Being is creative; it is what underlies all change and movement in the universe. At the same time, since Being is essentially true nature, free and open, this dynamism possesses an inherent tendency to reveal true nature, with all its purity, beauty, and subtlety. This revelation appears as an inherent direction of the dynamism in the human soul. In other words, when the dynamism functions freely and spontaneously, without the cramping and distorting influence of our conventional minds, it tends to transform our experience and perception toward greater clarity, knowledge, openness, truth, and freedom. We call this evolutionary tendency the optimizing force of the dynamism of Being.

The truth arises as the truth, but we do not see it as it is because of our own unclarity, our own positions, prejudices, identifications, limitations, preferences, and goals—the totality of which we call subjectivity. However, if we really love the truth for its own sake, we will want to see it as it is, we will want to behold the objective truth. This will translate into the wish and passion to discern all our subjective positions that are preventing objective perception. So, for instance, I do not just realize, "I'm feeling angry," but I also observe and discern how I feel in response to seeing my anger. Do I have a judgment about it? Do I believe that it's okay to be angry or not okay to be angry? What are my opinions and prejudices about anger? I explore everything I bring into the experience of anger. In other words, we always need to be aware of our subjective reaction to our experience in order to see how we interfere with it.

Simply stated, inquiry requires the presence of loving kindness. Our clarity and precision need to embody the sensitivity of kindness to respond to exactly where we are. With compassion, inquiry considers appropriately—in a very gentle, delicate, selfless way—how we are vulnerable and how we are hurting. So our inquiry must be courageous, curious, and steadfast, but also considerate of the pain and sensitive to our vulnerability. In this way, our soul will feel willing and interested to open up and reveal her hidden pains. This presence of precise and attuned kindness also allows our soul to be touched by the healing element, which is the presence of loving kindness—the Green Essence.