The realization of the Personal Essence, which involves the personalization of essential aspects and dimensions, leads to the complete development and objective understanding of the essential person, as we saw in the last chapter. This realization makes it possible, even easy, to move to the nonpersonal or formless realms. These realms have been called “nonpersonal,” “cosmic” or boundless” and we will sometimes use these terms, but generally we use the term “formless dimensions,” for these reasons:

*In these realms there are no personal or individual boundaries, so there is no sense of entity or separate existence. This is why the dissolution of ego boundaries is the primary requirement for experiencing them.

*The experience is beyond the body, and hence the dichotomy of inside-outside is transcended, and there is freedom from the restriction of consciousness to a center in the body. Thus these dimensions are beyond form; it is the body image that gives us our personal form.

*The experience is also beyond the person, beyond personal life and transcending personal history.

There is no need to make them an object of seeking. When the student merely leads his or her life fully, metabolizing his or her experience totally, motivated and guided by the pure love for the truth, the formless dimensions manifest. The point of transition to these dimensions arrives when the Personal Essence is finally integrated and understood.

The Diamond Approach looks at these formless realms as part of the human potential, in fact as the acme of human consciousness. But we see the idealization of these realms to the exclusion of the personal realms and of other aspects and dimensions of Essence as a limited, even prejudiced, view. Our approach does not value or judge one realm above another; we simply observe that these formless realms become spontaneously available in the process of actualizing the human potential, thus expanding what is normally thought to be the nature of this potential. In time, these dimensions dominate the consciousness, influencing one's experience and determining one's view of reality.

We have been discussing the process of personalization of the Cosmic Consciousness, which shows the direct relation of the Personal Essence to the formless realms of Being. It indicates, in an actual personal experience, that individuation is really the Cosmic Conscious Presence individualizing and manifesting as the Personal Essence. This process is also the deeper resolution of ego inadequacy. It is easy to see here that ego inadequacy is not only a consequence of the loss of contact with Essence, but also due to the separateness of ego boundaries that isolates the ego individuality from the Cosmic Presence. The Personal Essence has no inadequacy because it is directly connected to, and hence completely supported by, the Cosmic Loving Presence. Ego boundaries leave the ego individuality without the inner support of the various aspects of Essence, and without the comprehensive support of the Cosmic Essence (Consciousness). So just as we saw before that ego inadequacy is due to a mistaken sense of self, now we see that it is also due to the presence of ego boundaries. Both intrapsychic self-structures, the sense of identity and the sense of separateness, although indispensable to ego existence, are the reasons for its deep and basic inadequacy. Inadequacy is the deep nature of ego, due to the mere presence of its structure.