This insight reveals that the identity of the ego-self has not only developed through the integration of early object relations, but that this process of internalization and integration has depended on the conceptualization of the elements of experience. Patterning of the ego-self depends on concepts that form the ideas and images which compose the self-representation. Thus, the familiar sense of identity is totally dependent on concepts. This understanding exposes how the student has been using her mind, in the form of concepts, to support her sense of self. Seeing this undermines a very deep and basic support for the structure of self-identity, and she begins to feel the absence of grounding and the sense of emptiness, that signify the absence of support. When investigated fully, this new level of emptiness leads to the realization of the Diamond Will on a new level, a nonconceptual level of experience. This development thins away the mental shell and further exposes its dry emptiness. As we have seen, the narcissistic wound will arise whenever there is a lapse of mirroring. At this stage, the student experiences this lapse whenever she feels the pressure to conceptualize her experience of herself so that she can be seen and recognized. When anyone defines her with words or concepts, or expects her to manifest herself with words and concepts, she experiences the loss of the mirroring selfobject. This activates the narcissistic wound, the hurt and sadness of her alienation from her Being. At this level, the hurt is activated by any identification with a mental structure, sometimes by any conceptualization of her experience of herself. This is a deep and fundamental hurt that underlies all experiences of the ego-self, any experience of self in the conventional dimension of experience. It is very subtle and cannot be contacted without the capacity to experience the warmth of compassion on a very deep level, beyond thought or concept. 

Inquiring into how our ordinary knowledge determines, patterns, and limits our experience enables us to learn a different way of approaching the content of that knowledge. Usually we take our knowledge as the determination, as the boundary, of what is possible and what can be known. However, if we understand indeterminacy, the openness of inquiry, in time we learn to take the knowledge not as a boundary but as a pointer. We can use our words, concepts, and thoughts as pointers toward truth, toward what is possible, rather than as boundaries for what can be known: “This is a possibility” instead of “That is what you will find.” If we can inquire into our experience by using knowledge as a pointer, it becomes a helper, a kind of guidance. For instance, we know that anger frequently hides hurt. That becomes knowledge from repeated experience. The next time we see anger, how do we use that knowledge? Do we say, “There must be hurt there; let’s find the hurt”? Or, rather than making this automatic assumption, are we open to the possibility that there is hurt, which then can guide our investigation? If you assume that you are hurt, you might be wrong, for once in a while hurt does not underlie anger. There are always exceptions. Knowledge can be used in a way that will aid our inquiry, but we usually use it in a way that limits and binds our inquiry. 

Suppose, for instance, that our love for our mother is rejected, not valued. That love in us is hurt, wounded. To avoid experiencing the hurt, we deaden a certain part of our body, and in that way we are cut off from the sweet quality of love in ourselves. Where that love should be, we have an emptiness, a hole. Forgetting that it was our love that was lost, we think that we lost something from outside and try to get it back from outside. We want someone to love us, so the hole will be filled with love. Connected with the hole are the memories of the situations that brought the hurt and also the memory of what was lost. It is all there, but repressed. Since we do not consciously remember what happened or what we lost, we are left with the sense of emptiness and the false qualities or ideas we are trying to fill the hole with. In time, these holes accumulate. They are filled by various emotions and beliefs, and this material becomes the content of our identity, our personality. We think we are those things. Some people are left with a bit of Essence here and there, but in those whose childhood problems were most severe, everything is repressed, resulting in a subjective sense and look of dullness, almost deadness. It is the knowledge of these processes that makes the work we do here, the Diamond Approach, possible. Now we are able to be very clear, very precise. We have an obvious way to lead people back to themselves. First, people must learn to sense themselves, to pay attention to themselves, so that the necessary information is available. Most people go through life without this self-awareness because they are trying to avoid feeling the emptiness, the falseness, the something-is-wrong feeling. You can’t avoid self-awareness and do this Work. 

This brings up a basic assumption in any spiritual work, investigation, or inquiry: the notion that confronting and accepting truth is helpful. We take that as implicit, but not everybody believes that. To accept, or even know, that knowing the truth is helpful, our heart must not have been so hurt or closed down that we lost all contact with our love. If we were hurt so badly that we can’t open up, it might be difficult for us to feel that discovering the truth is a good thing. We might want to dissociate and not be aware of the truth. The question of whether the truth is going to feel overwhelming to us is sometimes a realistic concern. For some people, recognizing certain truths might be too much due to their lack of inner strength and development. And left to itself, the soul tends not to open up to such an overwhelming truth. Usually the soul has built-in defenses to prevent what is overwhelming from arising, unless life presents it with a situation where it can’t use these defenses. Sometimes the truth might arise as overwhelming, but that’s not generally the natural process of the unfoldment. Usually, if we are attuned to the truth in our own experience, our inquiry will tend to reveal things in a way that is exactly what we need and what we can handle in the moment. Guidance never reveals things to us that we don’t need. The revelation of truth is what Being presents in our experience, and Being is intelligent, compassionate, and loving. It will present exactly what is needed in the moment. That is why inquiry is generally a much safer approach than many other methods we can use. It follows what arises, it does not push, because it is not trying to get somewhere or achieve some goal. 

Even though the child might be seen and related to, he might be misunderstood and thus alienated. When a child’s manifestations, actions, motives or expressions are interpreted incorrectly, this misunderstanding has a deep wounding effect on the child because he is not related to as who and what he is. The child will not only feel hurt and betrayed, but is likely to become confused and uncertain about his sense of himself. The child’s self not only needs to be seen and related to, but seen accurately and responded to accordingly, for his sense of self to develop accurately. Otherwise, some qualities will be incorporated into his sense of self in a distorted way because they will be integrated into his sense of self compounded with the misunderstanding. Clearly, this particular disturbance affects most children’s relation to essential presence, because even if the parent is open enough to see her child’s essence in a vague way (for instance, because of intense love), she is likely to misunderstand it. She may understand his expressions or motivations, but misunderstand who he is. This is a fundamental failure of the environment; it is not possible to estimate the extent of devastation to the growing self of the child as he becomes alienated from who and what he is, his inner preciousness and truth. 

When we are self-realized we have these characteristics on the Being level. They are well known within various spiritual traditions. When the Essential Identity arises in the practicing period, the child feels these grand qualities. However, as we have discussed, she is not consciously aware that she is being the Essential Identity, so her realization is different from the mature self-realization of an adult. She is the Essential Identity completely and nondualistically, but at the same time she is dualistically aware of her body-mind. So she believes that these characteristics of her true self are the properties of her mind and body. On the Being level, the Essential Identity has no limitations, since the identity is directly in touch with the timeless, vast, ontological ground of being; but because she is experiencing these qualities intuitively while aware of the body-mind objectively, the child comes to believe that her body and mind have no limitations, which is obviously a delusion. The delusion is not the feelings and attitudes of grandeur and omnipotence, for these are the actual feelings of the Self of Being. The delusion is in attributing them to the body-mind. The limitless qualities become grandiose when attributed to the body and the mind. The child’s imperviousness to hurt is an expression of her identity with the Essential Identity of Being. It takes her a long time to become aware that these feelings of grandeur and omnipotence are false, in the sense that they are not true about her body and mind. When this happens, she is thoroughly disappointed and deflated. This usually occurs at the beginning of rapprochement, the third subphase of the separation-individuation process. This is the big fall, the realization of limitation and dependency.

The first journey I call the journey to presence. Our inquiry is primarily in our familiar conventional reality, exploring the beliefs and barriers that keep us from resting in the immediacy of our present experience. In this journey, the functioning of the essential aspects, the various qualities of our beingness, serves to motivate our inquiry. For example, the presence of compassion is what allows us to tolerate our hurt enough to open to it and explore its origins. Strength gives us the capacity to defend our vulnerability against self-criticism, and personal will is called upon when we commit to aligning with the truth in our inquiry. These are three of the five essential aspects known as the lataif, which we will look at in detail in Part Four. These five qualities are basic supports in the first journey for keeping us on track in the inquiry process. We may not know these manifestations of Being in a direct way as essential presence, but they are operative in our soul and instrumental in our travel. Though they arise from a different dimension, the essential qualities are still recognizable within our conventional reality, for we can appreciate their importance through their impact on our soul. Thus the power drive gets its energy from these aspects of Being, as Being calls us toward the knowing of our own presence. 

Compassion is a kind of healing agent that helps us tolerate the hurt of seeing the truth. The function of compassion in the Work is not to reduce hurt; its function is to lead to the truth. Much of the time, the truth is painful or scary. Compassion makes it possible to tolerate that hurt and fear. It helps us persist in our search for truth. Truth will ultimately dissolve the hurt, but this is a by-product and not the major purpose of compassion. In fact, it is only when compassion is present that people allow themselves to see the truth. Where there is no compassion, there is no trust. If someone is compassionate toward you, you trust him enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to see the truth rather than reject it. The compassion doesn’t alleviate the pain; it makes the pain meaningful, makes it part of the truth, makes it tolerable. This way of viewing compassion makes a tremendous difference in our lives. Seeing compassion as a guide to the truth rather than something to alleviate hurt can change the way we behave toward ourselves, our friends, everyone. It may seem like a subtle difference, but one perspective will take you away from truth and the other will take you towards it. One will keep you unconscious, and the other will help you learn the truth. 

We have seen that the negative-merging affect is the state of contraction of the nervous system due to undischarged mounting tension. This contraction is always the core of any contraction or tension in the organism, any painful or stressful condition. In anger, in fear, in hurt, in jealousy, in anxiety, in any painful emotional state there is a contraction in the nervous system, and this contraction is the negative-merging affect. It is also the core, at the nervous system level, of physical contraction and tension. Most, if not all, of human suffering can be reduced to physical pain and tension, or painful emotional states, which involve contraction in the nervous system and thus the negative-merging affect. This indicates that suffering is ultimately frustration, and that tension produces it. It is also significant that an aspect of Being, the Merging Essence, is what can eliminate this suffering; this is another reason for the infant’s desperate need to internalize the good mother of symbiosis. We note also that autonomic regulation cannot be very efficient in the absence of the Merging Essence, and thus the state of the organism is kept always in a less than optimal condition. 

Believing that we need to be thick-skinned to survive is not something we hide from ourselves; it’s completely accepted in our society. We are told that to get ahead, we have to become more thick-skinned and not feel things. And this point of view is actually rationalized with all kinds of philosophies. But something happens when we build a shell and hide inside it, which is the source of most human complaints. When we cover up our vulnerability so that we’re not open to hurt and pain, fear and influenceability, we also become insensitive to joy, love, happiness, pleasure, and aliveness. This helps us understand further what vulnerability means. It is true that we are physically vulnerable, but if you look at the physical vulnerability of a human being, you see that that vulnerability itself is also an asset. This vulnerability gives us the capacity to adapt better than other creatures. Vulnerability ultimately means sensitivity, transparency, penetrability. We see it as influenceability, which we think is negative, but it actually means that we’re open, we can be penetrated, we’re sensitive to impressions coming into us and going out of us. This leaves us at the mercy of all kinds of influences, but also gives us the possibility of greater versatility and flexibility in terms of what we can do, how we can respond, what environments we can live in. We can adapt and respond differently to different stimuli. Human beings have been able to adapt to and live in all kinds of environments. Most other creatures can’t do that because they have a narrower range of responses. We have been able to adapt because of our mental, emotional, and physical vulnerability. 

For example, if somebody was repeatedly hurt by her mother, you can be kind and help her feel that it is okay to be hurt, it is okay to be mad at and hate her mother. But that is only part of the story. Emotional attunement recognizes that there is hatred because the soul has been hurt, and hurt naturally produces hatred when one feels powerless to stop what is causing the hurt. But the true attunement of the Green Essence is aware that the real reason she is suffering is that she has lost touch with her true nature. She is not really suffering because her mother hurt her, but because this hurt has disconnected her from what is most precious in her. We see here that from the perspective of the Diamond Guidance, the impulse to be kind to this person because her mother hurt her is only the beginning of true Compassion. The Compassion of our true nature responds from the knowledge that even though hurt, pain, abuse, and trauma happen in childhood, the most central element in our soul’s suffering is that those experiences disconnect us from true nature. If a guide does not have that perspective, then this person is not a true spiritual guide yet. Such a guide may help you deal with the pain and feel better about yourself. But a spiritual guide will start from this pain and disruption—because that is what feels true for you now—and from there take you on the journey to your true nature. This is a very delicate operation and requires the unlimited openness of Being. 

When a baby is born, it is pretty much all Essence or pure Being. Its essence is not, of course, the same as the essence of a developed or realized adult. It is a baby’s essence—nondifferentiated, all in a big bundle. As the infant grows, the personality starts developing through interactions with the environment, especially the parents. Since most parents are identified with their personalities and not with their essence, they do not recognize or encourage the essence of the child. After a few years, Essence is forgotten, and instead of Essence, there is now personality. Essence is replaced with various identifications. The child identifies with one or the other parent, with this or that experience, and with all kinds of notions about itself. These identifications, experiences, and notions become consolidated and structured as the personality. The child and, later, the adult believes this structure is its true self. Essence was there in the beginning, and it is still there. Although it was not seen, not recognized, and was even rejected and hurt in many ways, it is still there. In order to protect itself, it has gone underground, undercover. The cover is the personality. There is nothing bad about having a personality. You have to have one. You couldn’t survive without it. However, if you take the personality to be who you truly are, then you are distorting reality because you are not your personality. The personality is composed of experiences of the past, of ideas, of notions, of identifications. You have the potential to develop a real individuality, the Personal Essence, which is different from the personality that covers the loss of Essence, but this potential is usually taken over by what we call our ego, our acquired sense of identity. 

These issues from childhood arise when we begin to experience the state of self-realization. Every time an aspect of our Essence is realized, it brings up the lack of support that we experienced in childhood. These issues need to be explored and worked through. If they are not worked through, you will look for support in your present environment. You might fall in love with someone who you feel sees you; you might associate with people who you feel see you and support you. These people might not be even seeing or supporting the real thing in you; they might be seeing and supporting something else, but you create the fantasy that they support you. When you realize finally that it isn’t real, you feel hurt and deeply disappointed. You experience a deep sense of collapse and disintegration. When you feel that your support is taken away, which amounts to feeling that your real self doesn’t exist, it brings a state of loss of self-realization which is a pointless, meaningless and deficient kind of emptiness. Wanting to be seen, wanting to be appreciated, wanting to be loved, these become very strong and powerful. You find out that you have become so sensitive that if anyone says something that indicates that they haven’t seen you, you really feel it. You take it as a big insult when you say something and another person misinterprets it. It’s not only an insult, but you are personally hurt, devastated. Your whole reality crumbles because you feel the lack of support.

This emptiness will actually be experienced as a cavity, an absence of fullness, if the person succeeds in not defending against it. The person will experience a hole, a cavity in the energy system of the organism, usually centered in the lower part of the chest. This particular hole, specific to the merging essence, is connected with a subtle center located in this area at the place where the diaphragm meets the sternum. At this point the person might go on to experience himself as an empty space, devoid of any fullness or quality. If he deals with the associations he has to this emptiness—such as those of dependency and need—and the fears produced by them—probably the fears of disintegration, disappearing, and so on—then he will remember the old hurt that cut off the essence. This is another big dark spot. The person will unearth the painful situation or situations that ultimately led to the loss of this particular aspect of essence. Besides the memories and affects, the individual will experience the emotional hurt as a wound. It will feel physically like a wound in the chest, but it is a wound in the energy system that corresponds to the emotional hurt and the loss of the essence. When one allows oneself quietly to experience the hurtful wound and the memories connected with it, the golden elixir will flow out of it, healing it, and filling the emptiness with the beautiful sweet fullness that will melt the heart, erase the mind, and bring about the contentment that the individual has been thirsting for. 

Perhaps one morning you wake up and feel a little movement in your belly. If you’ve never felt anything like that before, you might react with fear, believing that something is wrong, and decide to go to the doctor; or you might ignore it and go back to sleep. Both reactions are based on supposed knowledge: if you are afraid and worried, you believe something is wrong; if you ignore it, you believe it is unimportant. However, if you knew that there was an energetic center there called the Kath or Hara, and that sometimes energy bubbles there, then you would recognize that feeling and say, “Ah, nice, my Hara is open today.” So your reaction depends on your knowledge. Suppose a person feels a stabbing pain or hurt in the chest, in the heart. He’s never felt anything like this sensation before. He becomes alarmed: “Oh, I might be having a heart attack.” Or maybe he’ll be less alarmed but still want to get rid of the pain, so he says, “Oh, I’m hurting, I’m in pain, give me some Valium.” But a person with a different perspective, a different knowledge, might react differently when he feels the hurt: “I must be feeling hurt, oh good, let me feel it, let me explore it.” And if he feels the hurt for a while, he will begin to feel soft and gentle and warm inside himself. This person had the knowledge that it isn’t helpful to turn away from his pain, that when he is willing to feel the pain some kindness toward himself will arise.

However, the moment we feel insecure in our sense of ourselves, the moment we sense that we are not centered in what and who we are, this whole picture reverses. A heavy darkness descends on our experience; we cease to be open or generous, and we find ourselves forgetting our humanity. We begin to feel self-centered and self-conscious, and we become anxiously and egotistically concerned about ourselves. An obsessiveness over how we appear to others develops, and we find ourselves needing an unusual amount of admiration, approval, and recognition. Our self-esteem turns extremely fragile, and we find ourselves unusually vulnerable to feeling hurt and insulted over the slightest lack of understanding or empathy. Our sense of ourselves grows shaky and, rather than coming from within, depends upon feedback from others, making us defensive. Our actions and expressions tend to become false, inauthentic, and reactive, making it difficult to know what authentic action would really be. Without a spontaneous and free sense of who we are, we can only feel empty and unimportant; our lives will lack meaning or significance. Rather than experiencing a sense of value and esteem, we find ourselves feeling worthless and ashamed; rather than enjoying our interactions and activities, we find ourselves beset by anger, rage and envy; instead of being generous and magnanimous, we slide towards exploiting and devaluing others.