When someone cuts you down or undermines you or devalues you, your tendency is to feel hurt or rejected. But if you really feel the situation deeply, you will realize that you have lost your support, and you feel that you can’t maintain your reality. The usual reaction is tremendous rage and hatred toward that person and you want to get revenge. It is fine to see this. Such a reaction needs to be understood, experienced and integrated, but it won’t give you support. Support will come only when you experience the state of no support, which is not an easy state to experience. It is not easy because it is the state of feeling you don’t know what to do, don’t know what’s happening, haven’t got the slightest idea of what’s up or what’s down. You feel there’s no ground to stand on, no wall to lean against. You look around and there’s nothing to hold on to. You wonder how you can help yourself and you feel you can’t. That’s the state of no support. The state of no support is the state of “I can’t help myself.” You want to put your feet on something but there is a huge emptiness underneath you. There’s nothing to put your feet on. You need some ground to support your reality, but nothing is there. So you try to hold on and the tension brings back the personality with its defenses, and the result is anger, rage, and hatred. This state is not easy. It leaves you feeling deficient, helpless, unable, not knowing, worthless, and weird. It is a state of loss of all support, all capacity. It is only by learning to stay in that state and tolerating it that true support will arise. 

The sadness deepens, and the tears feel like a dark, cleansing, torrential rain. I am not sad because I must let go of everything that has been dear to me. I am not grieving because I recognize all this does not belong to me, that I am ultimately poor. No, I am sad now about recognizing I have lived a lie, that I have usurped what does not belong to me. The sadness is for the hurt of recognizing that by believing such a lie I have cut myself off from Being, my source and nature. I have estranged myself, throughout most of my life, from the source of all meaning and nourishment, with the ego-pride that I have, that I possess, that I do, that I accomplish, that I exist. What a lie, and what a shame! I am sad, but also willing to accept the truth of my situation. I embrace my total emptiness. I welcome my complete, fundamental poverty. I have nothing. I do nothing. I am nothing. The state becomes a sense of having nothing, being nothing, feeling nothing, perceiving nothing. Darkness deepens, blackness fills awareness. At this point, I notice that the indigent emptiness is no longer indigent; I experience it now as an endlessness of peace, an infinity of release, and a completeness of rest. I realize that by totally welcoming its objective emptiness, the individual self has surrendered its existence into the mysterious depths of the absolute. 

Narcissistic vulnerability: Another issue that arises when the narcissistic constellation begins to be dealt with is sensitivity to narcissistic hurt. This is what we call narcissistic vulnerability. It manifests as the tendency to feel hurt, slighted or humiliated at the slightest indication of lack of empathy, understanding, approval, value, admiration or recognition. Some defend strongly against this vulnerability, but even if we defend against it we feel disturbed about the absence of narcissistic supplies. The student might act as if he does not care, but how he feels inside is a different story. The vulnerability is always there because of the fundamental weakness of the normal identity. Vulnerability is usually not in the foreground and is defended against in many ways, but becomes more conscious as the narcissistic constellation approaches consciousness. This sensitivity might readily present itself in the student’s experience, or the defenses against it might come to the fore first, and will need to be worked through before he can feel the sensitivity directly and fully. 

When we study the quality of attunement and empathy in openness, a great deal of pain and hurt is bound to come up for most of us. This signifies several things. First, that by being attuned to where we are, we recognize more fully and exactly what we are truly experiencing. The arising of pain signifies that there is much suffering in our human experience. When we look with an attuned, precise lens, this suffering is what we see. In fact, one important reason why our experience is ordinarily so limited is that we resist seeing the amount of pain and suffering we have. The soul closes down to avoid feeling the hurt, pain, suffering, and difficulties that are normal in human experience. Another thing this observation indicates is that the pain and suffering in human experience require the presence of Loving-kindness—the sensitivity, gentleness, and healing quality of the Green Essence. It also shows that our inquiry needs to embody not just what feels good and wonderful, but also a true openness that welcomes our pain and suffering. When our inquiry is open to our pain, our pain will open up and expose itself to the healing agent of Loving-kindness. Furthermore, our pain and suffering will open itself up and reveal the truth that is hidden when we close down the pain. If our inquiry doesn’t open up to our pain, it cannot proceed very far, because the route to our own truth is blocked by our positions and defenses that protect us against the pain we have—the pain that is natural for human beings to experience. 

The Diamond Approach, then, is not as direct or as pure a practice, but it takes into consideration the fact of unfoldment, beginning with the perception that most people are very far from experiencing themselves as the Holy Truth. So for example, Dzogchen would say that if you are angry, and you stay with that, it will spontaneously reveal itself as the Holy Truth. In our work, we see that if you stay with the anger, it spontaneously will reveal the hurt underneath it; and if you stay with the hurt, it will reveal the emptiness underlying that; and if you stay with the emptiness, an aspect of Being will arise; and if you stay with that, it will take you through deeper and deeper dimensions of reality. If you stay with this process and understand everything that arises, you will, in time, realize that everything is the Holy Truth. So while many spiritual approaches are the same in terms of final outcome, there are differences in terms of methodology, as we are seeing about Dzogchen in contrast with our work. Other approaches utilize special practices, such as breathing techniques and visualizations, which are designed to take you to certain states of consciousness. While such practices are not as subtle or refined as Dzogchen or the Diamond Approach, their advantage is that they are easy to do and so almost everyone can participate. Our work, in contrast, is not easy to do initially, and it is very difficult to do on your own, since it is usually difficult to learn to allow spontaneous understanding and unfoldment, or difficult to allow at the beginning. 

Student: When you change relationships, or a person in your life changes, then there must be a change in the holes involved.

Almaas: Right. If there’s any change, there’s a jiggling around of holes. Some holes become empty and some get filled. The person has to adjust and find other ways to fill the holes. This usually means they have to deal with some of these holes. They have to feel their presence and maybe understand them. So now you know why the loss of somebody who has been very close to you, very intimate with you, is so painful. After being with this person a long time, you’re so accustomed to the fit, you believe that other person is part of you. Losing the person is losing a part of yourself. When you experience this loss and separation directly, you have the possibility of seeing that what was filling you wasn’t really you. If you stay with the hurt and the pain of loss without trying to cover it with something else, it is possible that you will feel the emptiness. You will feel and see the hole. Then, if you allow yourself to feel the deficiency, the emptiness, you may find the essential part of you that will fill the hole from the inside, once and for all. It’s not even filling; it is the elimination of the hole and the identifications with the deficiency. In that way, you regain part of yourself. You connect with the part of your essence that you lost and that you thought only somebody else could provide for you. 

Even if surrender is understood as surrender to experience, it is not realistic to ask a student to surrender, because for most people, surrender, which is felt as being without defenses, means getting hurt. As children, people had the capacity for surrendering to their experience. Their hearts were open. But that openness did not bring about fullness and pleasure. The child, without defenses, was repeatedly hurt in that openness. Therefore openness of heart and surrender of defenses are usually equated in the unconscious with vulnerability, and this brings up the memory and fears of deep hurt. These fears, these associations with surrender, need to be understood and resolved before the individual can experience surrender as syntonic; otherwise surrender is seen as threatening, as contrary to what is best for him. It is an unskillful tactic for a teacher to insist that a student surrender. The student may then try to surrender—but he is simply submitting to a superego demand. A more useful and compassionate approach is to help the student understand his fear of surrender and his resistance to it. 

A typical reaction to this deficient emptiness comes in the form of superego attacks. One feels one is worthless, not important, not good enough, or perhaps fake. The deficient emptiness is the feeling of having no self, which can feel like a lack of center or orientation. When this emptiness is arising, superego reactions—self-attacks, such as feeling one is worthless, not important, or not good enough—might arise as resistances to directly experiencing the deficiency. These reactions are partly due to disconnection from the value of Being. A healthy reaction at this point might be the sense of remorse of conscience, for failing to be authentic. The emptiness and the wound make up one structure, the emptiness-wound. The emptiness and the wound are intertwined elements of narcissistic alienation. The emptiness-wound is where the hurt and vulnerability are felt. In experiencing the lack of all other aspects of Essence, one generally experiences both the emptiness and the hurt about its lack or loss, but emptiness and hurt are experienced separately. Only in the loss of contact with the Essential Identity does one experience the hurt and emptiness inseparable from each other, as two elements of the same felt state. 

If you continue observing and exploring your feelings around the issue of love, you’ll discover a certain deficiency. You’ll find that the need for love is an expression of a part of you that feels deficient and empty. It is always wanting to be filled from the outside. If you stay with that wanting, allow yourself to feel the desire for love deeply, you’ll feel the deficiency, the hole of love, and you’ll experience the hole as the result of the loss of your own love when you were a child. This will bring up the hurt of not being loved, the deep wound; if you allow yourself to experience this wound fully, it will become like a fountain, a fountain from which love flows. You will experience the aspect of essence that is love. This was the missing piece that had to do with the issue of love. Now you have love—not from the outside, but from your own essence. Experiencing this essential aspect of love erases the need to fill that emptiness from the outside just as space or the void resolved the issue around self-image.  

So it’s the best news possible; essence is here, all the time. It’s everywhere, and it’s for everybody. It really is the best news possible. Some people say, “Well, I didn’t know that before. Nobody told me, and I’m mad about that.” Good, be mad. But the point of feeling and understanding your anger or hurt is to be able to connect to the truth that essence is here all the time. If you just continue to be angry, you’ll just continue to separate yourself from it. If you continue to believe you’re a separate, abandoned soul, well you’ll just stay separate from the ocean you live in. And then you’ll keep on looking for it, searching for what’s right under your nose. That’s why it’s useful to see things from the perspective of the boundless dimensions. I teach about them because that’s how I see things—I’m just describing the truth as I perceive it and I don’t care whether anyone believes it or not.  It connects with some people though, and they say, “Yeah, that makes sense.” Not only does it make sense, it fulfils the heart, it releases the soul, and it cleanses the body. The body then becomes really juicy, open and full and we see that the body itself is made out of love and light. So it’s not the way it is with some teachings, those that say we should ignore the body and focus only on the spirit. What I’m saying is that by recognizing that your nature is more than physical and that you are not bound by your body, you open up to this other dimension, which still includes the body. Even if you identify with the body after that, you know that your body is not just physical anyway. And after a while you can’t really identify with it any longer, not because you don’t want to, but because you can see that it’s not a separate thing—it’s made out of the same divine love and light as everything else.  

That’s why people like friendship: because a friend is somebody with whom you can be yourself. You don’t have to pretend, or put up a facade. You can be completely who you are; that is the true function of a friend. A friend is always available to help. But what is the help for? The help is for you to be more yourself because the more you are yourself, the happier you are and the more you love yourself. If the true friend helps you to see the truth and you don’t act on it, the true friend is even more compassionate. The true friend can see why you’re not following that insight; she can see the hurt that you don’t see, and the fears that you don’t see. She doesn’t have the judgments about how you feel. She doesn’t think it’s shameful to feel hurt, or that it’s bad to feel scared. When she sees you are feeling hurt or scared, your friend’s heart is full of compassion and kindness. The more you reject yourself, the more kindness the friend has. Even if you reject the friend, the friend is still compassionate. If you reject the friend because you want to protect yourself against hurt, against fear, the friend cannot help but be more kind. The friend is someone you can trust. And why do you trust the friend? You trust the friend because the friend has no opinions about you, has no prejudices about you, has no judgments or criticisms about you. The friend sees you the way you are, all the good and the bad, and only loves you, regardless of how you are. 

Here, we appreciate Kohut’s emphasis on empathy and acceptance; a kind holding environment is necessary to allow the student to stay with such a deep wound. What is actually needed is the presence of compassion and kindness; these qualities are more fundamental than the presence of one kind of object relation or another. The aspect of Essence we recognize as Loving Kindness is the element of our true nature necessary for the self to tolerate the experience of emotional hurt. The more we are aware of the presence of Loving Kindness, the more our hurt can be uncovered and tolerated. This is like a natural law which we discover when we explore this particular manifestation of Being. The Loving Kindness needs definitely to be present in the holding environment, for instance, in the presence of the teacher. But unless the student herself has some realization of this kindness, it will be almost impossible for her to tolerate the deep hurt of the narcissistic wound. Empathy and empathic mirroring are natural expressions of the presence of Loving Kindness. Loving Kindness is the warmth and openness of heart that makes it possible for us to be genuinely sensitive, considerate, compassionate, and sympathetic, which qualities are the basis of the capacity for empathy. 

We need the kindness of Guidance in order to stay with the suffering of the soul; without that, it is too painful to tolerate the difficulties in our experience, and inquiry would be impossible. Frequently, for example, we close our hearts with our anger and rage. In order to open to the pain that is there, we have to go through the rage and anger. To do this, sensitivity is needed to recognize that the anger is our outrage about the pain. So if we inquire into what the outrage is about, it will reveal the hurt. Otherwise, it will stay hidden. Experiencing the hurt will then reveal the underlying truth, and also open our hearts to the essential quality of Compassion, the Green latifa. The intelligence of Compassion allows a kindness that does not try to get rid of suffering but creates an openness to whatever is happening so the truth will have the opportunity to reveal itself. In this way, inquiry goes counter to the tendencies of the ego. Ego doesn’t want to experience pain. It wants to protect itself from pain; Guidance wants to open up the pain. It wants us to feel the pain as fully as possible, for without that willingness to feel whatever is there, we won’t be open to ourselves or our experience. That is why getting in touch with our Compassion requires us to feel our pain and hurt—because our hurt is what invites the Compassion. Compassion comes out as a response to pain. At the same time, we need the Compassion in order to be attuned to our experience so that we can inquire effectively. Without our pain, our kindness would be limited, which would limit our attunement, which would then limit our inquiry. Human beings get used to believing that emotional pain is bad, but emotional pain is mostly an invitation for Compassion, an invitation for sensitivity. That is how human beings learn to be sensitive—we get cooked, and by getting cooked, we soften. We become delicate and sensitive. 

The moment you change, there is a shift from one state to another, and implicit in this is the possibility of understanding and differentiation, which are at the beginning of mind. But if this understanding can lead you to the unknowable, which is the undying and the unchangeable, then you are free to live life without fear. When you know that you are unknowable, you know you cannot be any image, you cannot be your body or your personality, you cannot be what your mother thought you were or what your father said you were; you cannot be rejected or hurt, you cannot die or be afraid because anything that can die is knowable. What can die? The body can die. What can be hurt? Your ideas about yourself, your self-image? But when you know that you are not knowable, how can anybody hurt or reject you? How can anyone do anything to you? Even your own mind can’t hurt you. How can you criticize yourself? What’s there to criticize? But as long as you have ideas about who you are, you will have ideas about how you should be, and criticize yourself: you should be bigger, smaller, smarter, better looking. But when you reach the place of understanding, your mind asks, “What is this?” and the only answer is “Beats me.” You honestly don’t know. So you can’t give yourself a hard time. You don’t know because you cannot be known. That’s freedom, then. When you can’t pinpoint yourself with your mind, then you’re free. Nothing can happen to you. You’re beyond the concepts of the mind. You’re beyond the concepts of pain and pleasure, life and death, big and small, good and bad. It is the final understanding, the final knowledge and fruit of knowledge to know that you are not knowable. 

Originally, to start with, human beings create all these mind relationships, these mental relationships, these splittings in relationships, to protect the love, to protect the heart from hurt. That protection comes from ignorance. We do not know that our heart is indestructible. The heart cannot be destroyed. Your heart is more permanent than your body. Even when you feel hurt, it is not ultimately your heart that is hurt. What is hurt are your identifications, your self-image, your pride. So to continue loving regardless of what happens is not giving in to the other person; it is giving in to your heart, to your nature. Sometimes we do not allow ourselves to feel loving, and to be loving, and to act loving. This is because we think that loving means we are going to be weak, or that we are going to be taken advantage of, or exploited, or that we are being stupid, or that we are going to lose something. The fact is that the moment you close your heart, you are the one who loses. If you give in to your heart, it does not mean that you are giving in to the other person. It does not mean you are giving in to negativity. You are giving in to your nature. You are surrendering to who you are. To be always loving does not mean that you do not defend yourself. The courageous heart perceives and acknowledges what is there—good or bad. It does not pretend that there is no negativity. It perceives the negativity and deals with it with love. So to continue to be loving does not mean that you are weak. It does not mean that you are going to be dominated by someone. In fact, to have a courageous heart means you are able to be inwardly alone and independent. 

The next factor needed to prepare ourselves for the perception of the experience of liberation is that of compassionate kindness. It is a very important, necessary quality. You need kindness for yourself because the process is difficult. Since you’re not liberated, it is natural that you’ll suffer, so why push yourself in a way that you’ll suffer more? Why beat yourself up if you make a mistake? The factor of kindness also brings a quality of trust in yourself, trust in the process, a kind of trust in your mind, in your essence. Kindness also brings an unselfish attitude. If you have kindness, you have kindness for everybody, for everything. You have kindness for anything that suffers. You’re doing the work out of kindness because you suffer. You see that you suffer, and out of kindness for yourself you want to do something about it, and that kindness in time extends to others. Other people’s suffering hurts you too. You want to liberate yourself and you want other people to be free from their hurt and suffering. This natural course of events brings in a very important attitude that is a factor in allowing this state of liberation. This liberation has no fixation, and if you are focusing only on yourself, that is already a fixation, the biggest fixation. “What’s in it for me, what hurts me, what doesn’t hurt me, what’s good for me?” Activity is focused around the I, the sense of ego identity. Compassion is a vehicle that dissolves this fixation or boundary, and frees you from self-centeredness. Kindness makes the pain of going through difficult work tolerable, and brings more trust to your mind, your essence and your heart; it brings more gentleness into your work, and more compassion for others, and works on the dissolution of the self-centered fixation which is one of the main barriers to self-liberation. It is a very necessary factor which needs to be developed while we’re working through the personality patterns and issues. 

Regulation: The ego is considered to be able to regulate its inner states and its behavior. The Personal Essence is an integration and synthesis of all aspects of Essence in a unified presence of consciousness; it manifests, in its own presence, whatever aspect or aspects of Essence are needed at any moment for the regulation of both inner states and object relations. When there is emotional hurt, compassion manifests; when there is a feeling of weakness, strength manifests; and so on. Whatever the situation requires in terms of capacity is spontaneously and instantly manifested by Being. When the situation requires understanding, the aspect of objective understanding dominates the consciousness. When the situation requires firmness, will dominates the consciousness. This capacity for regulation depends on the degree of integration that one has attained in terms of essential realization. When it is present it is seen to be a capacity beyond the wildest wishes of ego; the regulation is spontaneous, exact, specific, coordinated and to the point. This is somewhat similar to the capacity for regulation of the well-integrated ego, but on the Being level. 

So yearning and longing also signify sadness, hurt, sorrow, a sense of loss and disconnection, of loneliness, and perhaps even abandonment. It's okay to feel the various feelings that arise when we are tempted to make others responsible for how we feel. But we need to remember what the actual situation is because we want to move these kinds of barriers out of the way.  Thus, another indication that we are truly engaged in the Work is that we know that our loneliness is not caused by other people. It is only when we stop blaming our aloneness or loneliness on somebody not being there for us that we can become aware of the true longing, the true passionate yearning for reality. Then our heart is clear and we’re able to listen to it. 

The attitude of the lover is that pain is welcomed as part of the love affair. You can't have a love affair and expect there to be no pain or hurt. Experienced lovers welcome the pain as part of the situation. In fact, every time lovers come across some pain, some hurt, some suffering related to love, they welcome it. When you are doing the work, penetrating the veils, getting nearer to your true nature, all kinds of difficulties will arise. Someone who is not a lover will complain all the time, “Oh, it is painful. It is so hard. It hurts. Is it really worth it?” But the lover has a different attitude about it.  I will read you a verse from Rumi that sums up the attitude of the lover. This attitude is necessary if the work is really going to progress, if rending veils is going to happen—to happen like flying. Before I read it to you, let me note that Rumi is implying that the Beloved is pulling you, attracting you, and guiding you. So, Rumi’s verse goes like this: “He who has led thee thus far will lead thee further also. How pleasant are the pains he makes thee suffer while he gently draws thee to himself." This is the lover’s attitude toward pain.