When there is objective understanding of the Will Essence, we find that trying, effort, control and so on, are antithetical to the presence of the real Will. Real Will is an implicit confidence that the organism will function correctly. This allows the attitude of surrender, which brings about the manifestation of the Merging Essence. So we see that the loss of Will, resulting in effort and willfulness, impedes the smooth functioning of autonomic regulation. This in turn disturbs the capacity for functioning in the world. There is no sense of inner support, or confidence in one’s capacities. The final result is a deep sense of inadequacy, of not being able to function in the world as an integrated and mature individual. It is illuminating to see the organic, multileveled interconnections in the functioning of the various essential aspects. Essence is not only the ultimate ground of human existence, it also governs our functioning. Generally speaking, women have more difficulty with this aspect than men, because its characteristics are culturally associated with masculinity. The generally held belief is that to have Will is to be masculine. And since the characteristics of the Merging Essence are associated culturally with femininity (mostly through the mothering function), they tend, more than men, to resolve the rapprochement conflict by abandoning the Will for the Merging. It is interesting to see women pushing away their Will, even when they experience it, because its realization means often to them the end of the possibility for marriage, child bearing and the like. The tendency is to project the Will aspect onto the man. This contributes to their oedipal situation with the father, which develops into the fantasy of marrying Prince Charming. They are often contented to have the support of a man. They acquire Will, in other words, by marrying Prince Charming, who personifies Will. This way, as the fantasy goes, they attain both Will and Merging, both support and love, both father and mother. 

Many of us have had experiences in which we felt a sense of unfoldment that has happened naturally, without manipulation, or have had a sense of being guided. These experiences can help us understand this Holy Idea, in that this Idea is a larger, non-specific version of these experiences. To understand this connection will also confront our egoic view about functioning and unfoldment, which is necessary to expose our ego-based convictions. As we learn about the Holy Ideas, we might judge ourselves harshly because we don’t experience them. But believing that we should be experiencing from these enlightened perspectives is based on a judgmental comparison, which is not part of the Holy Ideas. It is the delusion of enneatype One, as we have seen. There is nothing in the Holy Ideas that judges whether you are experiencing it that way or not. From the perspective of the view of reality that the Holy Ideas describe, there is no judgment and there are no comparisons. In fact, because it is the dynamism of Being, Holy Law includes and allows egoic experience. This, also, is the functioning of Being. You are not creating it, even though it might seem that way. Being allows itself to be experienced accurately and it allows itself to be experienced inaccurately, in both cases with complete compassion. 

Practice and realization are one dynamism manifesting in different ways. One is manifesting as the action of the soul, and the other is manifesting as the arising of true nature. But it is one indivisible process. Neither one causes the other. The more I recognized that, the more I had a deeper understanding of how practice is realization and how realization is practice. So we are seeing that there is a force, there is a power, there is a dynamism that manifests. Looking at it from the perspective of the individual soul, this dynamism manifests as the interest, the longing, the yearning, the orientation, and the practice. Looking at it from the perspective of reality, this dynamism manifests as Being unfolding spontaneously as grace. They are both part of one process, two complementary expressions of one force, whose intensifying feedback loop culminates in conscious insight or realization. This unitary process appears in the locus of the soul as individual practice and in the locus beyond the soul as the spontaneous functioning of Being. So the question of how anything happens is no longer a question of what is causing what. In some sense, the situation expands, the perspective becomes wider. We don’t need to look at what’s happening from the perspective of only the self or only true nature. Both views, and many more, can be included at the same time. This refines the understanding that realization is ultimately uncaused.  

When we say that you are not an independent doer, this does not mean that in the objective view, there is no feeling of functioning happening through you—it is not that you don’t feel you are moving your arms or talking, nor is it the sense that someone or something else is moving you. It is a different perception in which you see that all functioning, all doing, all activity is happening as one thing. What you are doing and what everyone else is doing is all part of the same movement, so there is no isolated functioning separate from that one flow of activity. When you are driving your car and you see others driving their cars, instead of perceiving that each of you is engaged in a separate activity, from this perspective, you would see that you and everyone else you pass on the road are all manifestations of the same thing. There are not separate individuals at this level. At a still deeper level, you realize that not only are you and everyone else manifestations of the same reality, but the cars are also manifestations of that reality, and the road itself. The car and you and the driving itself are all the functioning of Being, and so in reality there is no one driving a car. Then you realize that you have never driven from one place to another, that reality has simply manifested in such a way that it appears as it you have driven a car on a road. 

The intelligence of Being does not function in a mechanical way like a computer does—by stringing together perceptions and memories. It is not like artificial intelligence, which is why artificial intelligence will never become real intelligence. There is an innate creativity in the functioning of Brilliancy. Intelligent inquiry possesses an organic, intuitive magic in how it arrives at insights. As a result, there is always a newness in the experience, and always an efficiency in our way of understanding. The inquiry embodies a lucidity, a fluidity, and a radiance that illuminate experience and make it possible for us to see more directly. Consciousness becomes so luminous that it cannot help but see more intrinsically, more to the core of the matter, always in a very smooth, easy, and lucid way, without effort or method. The more that Brilliancy is present, the more we see directly without having to travel the route of making a series of connections. We are able to bridge big gaps in our understanding of experience without having to go through exhaustive, methodical analysis and correlation. We can jump between places due to the intensity, the fluidity, and the smoothness that is going through our consciousness. It is as though the Brilliancy itself were flowing through our neocortex and leaping across our synapses. In addition, our consciousness is not only clear and transparent from the clarity of Essence, but a radiance from within illuminates and highlights the various associations and connections. Connections are more readily obvious because of the intense light shining through them. 

When you are complete, you are complete. You become a still, delicate, exquisite pool of milky Brilliancy that is luminous; and this luminosity is exquisiteness, and this exquisiteness is deliciousness, and this deliciousness is complete fulfillment. When you feel the completeness, you recognize your pure nature before you left it, before your consciousness separated from it. You are recognizing yourself in your utter purity before any disturbance happened, before any stirring occurred. We see here that intelligence is the functioning of completeness. Brilliancy appears as an intrinsic intelligence. Because Brilliancy has everything in it, it imbues the psyche with intelligence by providing it with all the qualities it needs for its functioning. And it provides them in a synthesized way, creating a complete synthetic capacity. The psyche can now function in a complete way, which is bound to be an intelligent functioning. Just as the longing for Brilliancy can manifest as the longing for intelligence, so it can also manifest as the longing for completeness; and the absence of Brilliancy can be experienced as incompleteness. 

The capacity to discern differences in the field of our awareness is a fundamental element of our consciousness. But here we need to make a difficult and subtle distinction: in describing this capacity, we want to discriminate it from the capacity to actually recognize the forms that arise. So in what we are calling pure perception, associated with what is traditionally called nonconceptual awareness, there is the perception of differences within a field without recognition of those differences. There is awareness that there are different forms, but in pure perception these forms are not discriminated in such a way that they can be recognized or named. This is consciousness with no mind involved, awareness with no knowing of any kind. There is merely the awareness of shapes, colors, movements, qualities; there is no recognition, knowing, or understanding of what one is perceiving. There is differentiation but not discrimination. We refer to this perception without recognition as nonconceptual awareness, for recognition and knowing require concepts. There is awareness of content but no recognition of it; recognition requires a further step in the functioning of consciousness. The traditional metaphor for this pure perceptivity is the mirror. The mirror analogy describes the soul’s primordial and original condition, which is the pure nonconceptual awareness of experience. This is the fundamental ground of any experience, which is the pure nonconceptual bare awareness of experience before recognition, reaction, categorization, or any such phenomena occur. Becoming conscious of this nonconceptual awareness is an important aspect of inner work, and something we begin to understand from the first glimpses of recognizing the soul. Simply understanding that the soul is a medium that is aware of experience within its own field, we begin to understand the mirror-like quality of the soul.  

The Diamond Consciousness is the prototype, on the level of Being, of the faculty of understanding. The ordinary capacity for understanding is only a reflection of this capacity. When an individual manifests an unusual or brilliant capacity for analysis and synthesis in his or her understanding, it is usually an indication of some degree of realization of the Diamond Consciousness. We can see the functioning of this capacity in the work of the great original synthesizers of mankind, such as Gautama Buddha or Sigmund Freud. The Diamond Approach is the result of the perception and understanding, by the Diamond Consciousness, of the realization and development of the human potential. This aspect is experienced in the work of inner realization as a guidance, specifically a guidance for the realization and development of the Personal Essence. It is the inner guide, on the Being level, for the essential person. The Jungian archetype of the wise old man, the guide for the journey of individuation, is an image that symbolizes some of the functions of the Diamond Consciousness. This aspect of Essence, however, is not an image and not merely an archetype; it is an actual state of Being. The methodology of the Diamond Approach is based largely on the presence and functioning of the Diamond Consciousness. The qualities of the Diamond Consciousness can be seen in the attitudes of individuals who have some integration of it, such as Buddha and Freud as we have noted, or additionally, the Sufi Sheikh Ibn Arabi and the Greek philosopher Socrates. All these individuals, on different levels and to varying degrees, embodied a thirst for understanding reality, especially the reality of man. 

We can recognize the functioning of the Diamond Guidance through its impact on the soul. The soul experiences the structuring brought about by contact with the Guidance as giving her certain potentials. The Diamond Guidance is thus the source of various capacities that are fundamental to the soul’s unfoldment. Depending on one’s level of awareness and realization, the Guidance may be felt as the source of these capacities or as the functioning of the capacities themselves. Here we will look at the most significant of these endowments made available to the soul through the presence of the Diamond Guidance: the capacities for insight, discrimination, direct knowledge, understanding, objective perception, and articulation. All of these capacities operate together in the process of inquiry. In the next chapter, we will explore further the ways in which the Diamond Guidance works directly on the soul to guide its unfoldment. The Diamond Guidance may appear as a source of intuition and insight—not the intuition or insight itself but its source. As the source, it is the clarity, the light, and the presence that touches our experience and ignites sparks and flashes that we recognize as intuitions and insights. Thus, the Diamond Guidance is the magic source of knowing. When it comes into our experience, it illuminates it. Its illumination comes from itself, not from outside itself; it is inherent, intrinsic illumination. The Diamond Guidance functions as a source of pure and real knowledge, new basic knowledge, completely fresh discrimination. Because it is made up of elements that are each gnostic, or direct, knowledge about an essential aspect, the Diamond Guidance becomes a source of knowledge about anything it touches in our experience. Real knowledge is not only basic knowledge, but basic knowledge that is free from ordinary knowledge and that originates in reality. 

In the same act true nature generates forms and perceives them. It is the creator, the created, and the process of creation. Creation is simply generation, a continuous unfolding of forms and experiences. One way this appears to us in the inner journey is the recognition that there is no such thing as individual action. When we realize that there is ultimately no separate and autonomous soul we see that there is no such thing as independent action, personal choice, or volition. We began to understand this in working with the previously discussed boundless dimensions, in the form of questions about action and functioning. In fact, one of the primary difficulties in integrating these boundless dimensions of Being is the question of functioning, of how expression, action, and behavior happen. We understand functioning completely when we realize the dimension of dynamic presence, for we see how all change and movement occur. Since change and movement are limited ways of perceiving universal transformation, we see that individual action is a way of viewing a particular transformation of a certain region in the field of presence. Since an individual is only a form taken by a particular region of the field, one’s action is actually the action of the field. One’s behavior is nothing but the manifestation of the dynamism of Being, just as one’s choices are made by the same dynamic presence. Volition becomes a concept that we cannot apply in this experience, for there are no autonomous entities that can have volition. All is done by the dynamism of Being, all chosen by the dynamic presence, and there is only one will, the dynamic will of true nature. In other words, there is only one doer, one mover, and that is true nature. Furthermore, the universal doer has only one act: the act of continuous creation. This doer does not take individual or specific actions, for it is not an entity in the space-time of manifestation. It is the force that in one unified act manifests the totality of existence. 

What happens when you inquire into your experience? You notice that after a while, certain things begin changing, moving, and manifesting the various feeling states, beliefs, and associations involved in your experience. These arise as you question your experience. Do you ever wonder why? What is it about questions that does that? A question is really the functioning of both the dynamism and the optimizing force of the dynamism. When we inquire, Being’s dynamism moves toward expansion, toward light, toward understanding, toward truth. We experience this in the process of questioning. Or we can say that the openness toward the expansion and understanding is manifested through a question, for a question allows the possibility or the space for Being to manifest, to display whatever it is that we call an answer. But the answer is not just another piece of ordinary knowledge; it is a new experience, a new perception, a fresh insight. And this new experience, this fresh insight, is the output of the activation of Being’s dynamism. It is true that a question includes concepts, words, and previous knowledge, but what is its living force? If it is a genuine question, the living force in it is this unknowingness that wants to know, this dynamic unknowingness. The openness manifests at the beginning as not-knowing. And as questioning continues, this not-knowing proceeds toward the revelation of whatever manifestation will occur in that space of not-knowing. So the not-knowing, in some very real sense, invites the answer. That is why I call it dynamic.

Of course, there must be a prototype, an underlying basis for this ability to synthesize. What is that prototype? Because Brilliancy is the original synthesis of all qualities, it is the prototype and archetype of synthesis on the essential level. And because it is an inherent synthesis, an intrinsic unity, its presence makes it possible for us to see the underlying synthesis in the various elements that we have analyzed. Brilliancy functions as the capacity for synthesis in any dimension, just as the Red essence functions as the capacity for discrimination in any dimension. The dimension we are discussing here is understanding. So analysis is related to the Red or Strength essence, and synthesis to Brilliancy. Analysis is based on separating elements in a situation or an experience—that is, discriminating parts and specifics, which brings clarity, precision, and knowledge. However, the presence of Brilliancy as the prototype of synthesis gives the soul the additional capacity to see underlying unities. This capacity appears as synthetic insights that engender understanding of larger and larger segments of reality. The functioning of the Guidance in inquiry is primarily an interplay of analysis and synthesis. Sometimes analysis dominates, sometimes synthesis dominates. But they can also work together. We break down an object of inquiry into components and recombine certain parts; then we analyze other parts and make other combinations, until at some point an overall final synthesis emerges. We call that an insight or realization, which is the understanding of the entire matter we are inquiring into. 

The instincts and their drives are usually the categories that people question least. People are driven by their instincts, and this drivenness is seen as the natural course and therefore is not questioned. People are usually not interested in being free from the deep influences of their instincts. The instincts are so deep and basic and determine the personality and its life to such an extent that it does not even occur to the individual to wonder whether it is possible to be free from instinct. The only possibility seen by depth psychology in terms of the functioning of the instincts is their repression and distortion by the developmental process. They are either functioning normally, or they are repressed and distorted. At most they can be sublimated, that is, their energies diverted into other activities. The possibility of actually surpassing the functioning of instincts is never questioned. Instincts are taken as an unalterable part of our biological existence. Not questioning the power of the instincts is tantamount to not questioning the most tenacious sector of the personality—the sense of identity, the sense of self, or what is called in depth psychology the ego identity. In ego psychology and object relations theory, a distinction is made between ego and ego identity. The ego is the overall process and structure. But the ego identity, the self, is the organizing center, the apex of the developmental process. It is the normal sense of identity that people have. It is what the ordinary person means when he says “I.” It is an identification tag designating the ego, which differentiates the individual psychologically from other people. It is responsible for the psychological boundaries of the individual.

Brilliancy can also be experienced as the utmost refinement. In experiencing the presence of Brilliancy, it is as if one were experiencing the smallest possible atoms in existence. I am not implying that this aspect exists as atoms or is experienced as atoms. I am using the analogy of atoms to illustrate refinement because Brilliancy is so fine, so delicate, that its refinement is almost complete. The only thing more refined is the presence of the Absolute itself. The presence of Brilliancy is so fine, so exquisite, and so delicate, that it operates in an amazingly penetrating way. It can penetrate anywhere. There is no place in the body or in the psyche that Brilliancy cannot easily penetrate; it just flows smoothly, as if there were no hole too small for it. That is why brilliant minds are also penetrating minds. Penetration is part of the exquisiteness of the functioning of intelligence, one of the elements that makes intelligence not only brilliant but also beautiful, delicate, and refined. Experiencing intelligence is knowing yourself as the most delicate, the most refined, the most exquisite presence, and at the same time as organically intelligent in a purely brilliant way. 

So true intelligence gives us the capacity to function in ways that cannot be deduced from preexisting facts. It gives us the capacity to make completely original leaps, to be truly creative. The functioning of this capacity points to a quality in us that is not in a given situation to start with. It is something that we can bring to it through our presence. This functioning of intelligence is not a direct application of knowledge or skill. You can learn a skill and then merely apply it correctly; or you can apply it with intelligence, and the intelligence will add something that you never learned in developing the skill. Intelligence is not something you are taught in school. School learning may exercise your capacity for intelligence, but nothing in schooling itself really teaches you how to be intelligent. Intelligence is one of our capacities, one of our potentials, just as love is one of our potentials. Nobody can really teach you how to love. Love is something you have to find in yourself. People may allow you to exercise the capacity for love, but nobody can ever really define love such that if you practice that definition, you will become loving. It isn’t like that. Love is something you have to open to in yourself and then bring to the situation. The same is true with intelligence.

Spontaneity is another characteristic of the functioning of intelligence. Understanding happens spontaneously in a flash; insight is instantaneous. You can’t look for it to happen; you can only be truly interested in the investigation and exploration of a situation. If you really want to understand, really want to know, and your heart and mind are engaged in the inquiry, then if Brilliancy arises, it creates synthesis spontaneously.

In my experience, it’s been mysterious in its occurrence. You can’t create it, but some things seem to trigger it. It comes and goes when it wants to.

 Each essential aspect is part of the potential of being a human being. If you are open to that part of your potential and you don’t have barriers to it, then it will arise whenever it is needed in the situation. What makes an essential aspect arise is the objective need of the situation, not that you want it to be there. It arises only as an organic and appropriate response to the totality of the situation. Essence can intuitively read the totality of the situation and respond as some kind of innate, organic intelligence to that totality through the arising of the particular aspect needed by the situation. You might not know the quality that is needed, but in a mysterious way, Essence knows and functions by manifesting what is needed. If that happens frequently and consistently, you start experiencing brilliance in your understanding and consciousness; for this functioning of Essence is a reflection of its intelligence—which means that Brilliancy is present. 

This is an important factor in the functioning of intelligence. So an intelligent person, an entrepreneur for instance, is a person who can make that synthesis, can see all these various situations, and by a leap of insight can see . . MONEY! Right? [Laughter] That is a practical example, but it shows that synthesis can reveal insights in psychology, finance, communication, or whatever.

 But it could also be purely mental, such as figuring out a theoretical problem.

There could be synthesis in the mental sphere, but synthesis itself does not happen through a mental process—that’s what I’m saying. Synthesis itself is an essential experience that can happen in any area of functioning. The functioning can be of the intellect, of the heart, or of the totality of the soul, which is the totality of your consciousness.

Are there precursors to synthesis, such as the willingness to let go of certain analytical perspectives in order for synthesis to happen? Don’t you have to be willing to loosen the strings of analysis?

It is true that in synthesis you have to be able to let go of the analytical mind, but analysis is not necessarily antithetical to synthesis. Analysis is also the functioning of an essential quality; thus it is not exclusively a mental activity. As we said, the integration of analysis with synthesis is in fact necessary for any true understanding. 

This is true nondoing, which can happen only when we have no interest in any doing because we are not striving toward any state. From this place, there is freedom from all teachings, freedom from desiring specific states, freedom from ideas and perspectives—even one’s own perspective. For it is implicitly understood that any perspective or teaching will be an overlay on whatever is purely arising. Instead, we merely recognize the subtle movement of the psyche toward goals, and that understanding naturally dissolves the movement and liberates our unfabricated and uncontrived naturalness. The pure perception and understanding of what is actually there in our experience dissolves the subtle movement of the psyche. The Diamond Guidance is present and operational as a natural and spontaneous functioning of intelligence and awareness. The result is a discriminating understanding of what is arising, liberating the display of Being from our opinions. This discriminating understanding appear as the flashes of insight that are inseparable from our intimacy with the qualities of experience. We recognize here the functioning of the Diamond Guidance as spontaneous curiosity, love of the truth, and steadfastness, which together result in the spontaneous unveiling of truth, as both unfoldment and insight. As this continues, the unveiling finally merges into a nondual condition—the natural perfection, which is the lucidity displaying experience. At this point, lucidity and understanding are inseparable, completely unified. There is unity of presence and discriminating awareness, which is a guided, dynamic flow and unfoldment. 

The Diamond Guidance is a particular patterned structure of all of the various perfections, or essential aspects of Being. However, in contrast with the undifferentiated perfections of Brilliancy, the perfections of the Diamond Guidance all operate in a manifest, explicit, and differentiated way. They are explicitly differentiated, but they function together as one unit that activates understanding. This means that the Diamond Guidance itself is an expression of Brilliancy, of intelligence. It is the brilliant light that has been differentiated and then integrated in a specific function—that of understanding. This is one way of recognizing the functioning of intelligence in the Guidance, which has prompted us to sometimes refer to the Diamond Guidance as the discriminating intelligence of Being. However, we can see that the Guidance functions intelligently in three major ways. We have been discussing the first —namely, that the whole vehicle is a manifestation of intelligent action in the sphere of understanding or discerning the truth. 

The merging gold is what melts the separateness of the soul from its ground and nature as essential truth. That is because the fundamental characteristic and functioning of the merging gold is that it melts structures, melts boundaries. It reveals that the main psychodynamic issue is about having separating boundaries. Thus the basic issue that arises when we are doing the work on the merging essence is the belief that we need to hold on to—and identify with—being a separate entity. That is the main barrier.

Unconsciously, Merging Essence is equated with the good undifferentiated representation, the positive dual unity. But consciously it is associated with the good mother, or the all-good love object. A devastating outcome of this association is the development of the strong belief that the Merging Essence is not part of oneself, but that it is, or is part of, the good mother. In the usual process of ego development, the most integration an individual can have of this aspect is the belief that one can experience it only with the good mother, or with somebody who stands for her. We see this clearly reflected in Ruth’s report when she says about her mother: “I believe she has the love and warmth, and I am nothing without her.” Another important factor in this aspect is its relation to the nervous system. It is a state of melting and flow, expansion and pleasure. When it is present it seems particularly to affect the nervous system, facilitating the functioning of the nerve cells and ends, as if energy and electrical impulses become smoother and more easily transmitted. It is a profound relaxation of the nervous system, and of the whole organism. It is closely allied to the functioning of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. So it facilitates discharge, rest, relaxation, metabolism, gestation, which are all features of states of satisfaction and gratification. Its effect on the organism, at all levels, is that of comforting, soothing, nourishing, relieving tension and discharging energy. It is no wonder that the good mother becomes the promise of everlasting happiness for the ego. She represents a vehicle for the return to Essence.