So, there is no place for morality here. You do not say that it’s good to give. Yes, it is good to give, but it is also good to receive. You need to serve and serve humanity, but if everybody is just serving humanity, who is living it? If you sacrifice your life for your children and your children for their children, whoever gets to live a life? There has to be a balance between the two. And the balance will be the natural thing. When a true human being is giving, he does not feel he is giving. When he is taking, he does not feel he is taking. A true human being simply experiences himself as doing something that needs to be done. When the situation requires that such and such a thing be done, the integrated human being does it. Who it is for isn’t important because that action takes into consideration all levels, all dimensions, physical, emotional, personality, Essence, Being, the present, the future, all these things. However, that kind of action does not happen by calculation. It needs a balanced consciousness to do it. In action, the being flows and the flow of being is the doing. The intelligence of Being is functioning at all dimensions, all in the same act. Its intelligence is beyond the mind, beyond the awareness. But as I said, although it is the ideal thing and it is possible, a lot of work is needed to realize it. It might take all your life to do it. It is not a matter of getting from here to there. It is a matter of continual development. It does not have an end. You can grow and grow and grow and grow. There is no end to human maturing. 

It is very important that you understand that if you think you need to look at yourself and your experiences in a judgmentally comparative way, your motivation is not that of understanding, and your activity will not be that of Being. It will be the activity of ego. Real activity is not a matter of comparing and judging; it is a matter of experiencing things as they are and responding from the dynamic intelligence of Being. The underlying motivation in it is that you are curious to know about what you are observing because you love experiencing reality. This is a very different attitude from that of looking at things with the underlying belief that they need to be improved. For someone who is operating objectively, whatever comes up is fine. He or she doesn’t even say, “Oh, this is what should be happening.” Whatever arises is the way it is, and it has a sense of perfection to it. There’s no activity of looking for some sublime state to arise. If what arises feels sublime, or if it doesn’t, these are just the specifics; its perfection is something much deeper than that. If you are not operating from the perspective of objectivity, you are bound to be operating from the perspective of ego, and your experience will invariably include resentment, judgment, and comparison. There is no alternative. The more you understand Holy Perfection, the more these ego activities will slow down, but it is important to understand that they will still be present until the perspective of Holy Perfection is fully realized. 

We have seen that the pattern of unfoldment that is the Holy Plan is not a predetermined plan, but rather, that the universe unfolds according to inherent natural laws. This absence of premeditation indicates that the universe is intelligent. Its intelligence keeps it from being completely predictable and mechanical; if this were not so, we could discover all of its laws and plot its movement, as science attempts to do. But we cannot do this because Being is intelligence, and thus is responsive, and this responsiveness is completely spontaneous. You can understand this quality of intelligence when you see Being as an organism that is manifesting and expanding. This manifestation and expansion of life has a pattern, a lawfulness, a harmony, that expresses the intelligence of Being. In fact, when you feel the Beingness, it feels like it is teeming with intelligence, and its movements this way or that have a spontaneous intelligence. 

Each of the Diamond Vehicles is a particular combination of all the perfections. They appear in a certain pattern, in a certain juxtaposition that gives each one of them a particular, intelligent function. So the Diamond Guidance is a particular patterned structure of the various perfections. Unlike the undifferentiated perfections of Brilliancy, however, 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 brilliance, 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. 

I am clarifying the relationship between our central practices of inquiry and nondoing from the perspective of totality. How do we practice nondoing? Isn’t that doing something? How can inquiring be nondoing? Exploring the paradox of nondoing brings us closer to how reality actually works. Nondoing supports the practice of inquiry by emphasizing beingness, presence, and noninterference. Inquiry develops the discriminating intelligence of Being and integrates that into our process. At some point, our inquiry can engage our process without interfering with our experience, and our nondoing can attain the dynamic intelligence of Being in service of discerning what is true. The practice of inquiry is actively engaged because we are engaged with life. We are living and we are active, and part of our living is the engaged practice of inquiry. Inquiry doesn’t mean that we are always asking ourselves questions. It doesn’t mean that we are always sitting around thinking. Inquiry is the natural and spontaneous flow of our interest in life. When something is not understood, a spontaneous movement and inquiry arises that may not even be formulated as a question. All we know is that something is not understood and, after a while, there is a revelation or a further discernment. The stillness and quietness of our concentration practice helps stabilize the condition of nondoing, which is the base of the practice of inquiry. Concentration and nondoing support and stabilize the realization of presence, the realization of true nature. Inquiry helps to discriminate and integrate this realization as well as to develop it and open it to further possibilities, which are partly a response to our life and its circumstances.  

Is Brilliancy the same as intelligence?

Yes, it’s the same. Brilliancy can be experienced as intelligence, which is the main quality of the aspect of Brilliancy. But it can be experienced in other ways. As I mentioned before, one way of experiencing it is purity, another is innocence, and yet another is exquisiteness. When we experience the pure intelligence of Brilliancy, it gives a sense of utmost preciousness to our consciousness, to the soul, and also to the totality of the universe. Brilliancy is really the essence of intelligence. I don’t know how to say it better. Intelligence has an essence, has a true intrinsic existence that can be experienced as part of us. It is not an activity of the mind; it is part of the essence of who we are, of our innate nature. One consequence of this truth is that experientially I can be intelligence. When I am Brilliancy, it is not that I am intelligent; rather, I am intelligence. When you are being Brilliancy, your functioning is intelligent; but you are also, and more importantly, existing as intelligence. This is a new concept of intelligence. But the fact that there is such a thing is part of its beauty. And if you have been thinking all this time that your IQ is low or high, it turns out that the true situation is that there is a certain substance you are more or less of. 

Intelligence is a very difficult concept to analyze because it includes many elements, many facets. We first need to realize that the intelligence of Brilliancy is not just mental intelligence, it is intelligence in any dimension, any action. We can have intelligence in the response to a situation, in the way we live our life, the way we think, the way we inquire, the way we interact, the way we communicate. This intelligence is organic and it underlies the actual experience of our consciousness. Brilliancy is the inherent intelligence of our Being. The more in touch we are with it, the more it penetrates and pervades our life, our perception, our experience, and our actions. 

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. 

The moment we recognize the living soul it becomes possible for us to see others as souls, and not just bodies. We may begin to see and appreciate the energy, the vitality, the color, the glow, and the intelligence of life in everyone. We can come to appreciate these qualities as manifestations of the presence of the soul, rather than viewing them as properties of the body. Recognizing in this way what a human being is naturally brings us to a deeper respect for people, and an appreciation of humanness. When we are in the presence of the recently dead it is possible to see that when the body dies it loses not only aliveness but also something much bigger, something that has life. It loses the soul that gave it life, but that also gave the person many other characteristics, some in common with other persons, and some unique to this particular person. We might need to be attuned to recognize this loss, and we possibly need to be sensitive and receptive to see it clearly. However, this sense of the loss of the soul in a corpse is a common perception, and the sense that the corpse has been vacated is also common and unmistakably clear. Death seems to come when the soul vacates the body. The loss of life is identical to the loss of the soul. It is clear then that life is a property that the soul gives to the body. As the soul leaves the body, she takes away life with her, for life is one of her basic properties. If we have subtle perception, we might be able to perceive that some kind of consciousness or presence has left the body. We might be able to sense or perceive this presence, depending on how sensitive we have been to our experience of soul. Individuals who have learned to experience their souls directly will generally be able to perceive the soul when she leaves the body. She is the same soul, whether occupying the body or not. 

Although the current will move toward wholeness when we align ourselves with Being’s optimizing intelligence, the wholeness does not immediately arise every time we align ourselves. Wholeness is simply the natural direction, and it will naturally arise whenever it is the appropriate response. Being’s intelligence is responsive to where the current finds itself at the time of change. Therefore, the nature of your situation, which is the totality of your experience, changes and transforms depending on how it is manifesting at the moment. The intelligent movement directly responds to your experience; it doesn’t just leave whatever is present in your experience and abruptly move to the wholeness or to the Absolute. I’m saying this because many teachings assert, “Leave what you are experiencing now and go to a higher state. The practice is to actualize wholeness in the present moment, to actualize the mystery right now.” This may be one way of doing it, but the natural intelligence of our Being doesn’t function this way. It does not skip the present and its content, no matter what it is, and jump to the ultimate. This is because Being’s optimizing intelligence is responsive to the specific details of this moment. Sometimes the wholeness of Being will be the appropriate response to the situation of the moment; most of the time, that is not the optimal response. You might very well ask, “Well, if the movement is not going toward wholeness now, but it ultimately will, why not push it that way?” But are we as intelligent as Being itself, in its natural responsiveness? Do we know what the next step will be? Are we as omniscient as Being itself that we can determine how the current should go? How do we know that the way the current naturally is flowing when we are aligned with Being’s intelligence is not the most efficient route toward wholeness? 

The central thread of wisdom informing the methodology of the Diamond Approach is that our normal human consciousness does not possess the knowledge or skill necessary for traversing the inner path of realization. However, the intelligence of our underlying spiritual ground tends to spontaneously guide our consciousness and experience toward liberation. This spiritual ground, which is the ultimate nature of reality, is unconditionally loving and compassionate in revealing its treasures of wisdom to whoever is willing to open to it. We simply need to recognize the truth about our present experience and learn the attitudes and skills that will invite the true nature of reality to reveal itself. Toward that end, this methodology brings together classical spiritual techniques and new practices that can help us be open and vulnerable to our true nature. The task of communicating the teaching and logos for this method is the central function of the Ridhwan School, its teachers, and all the literature of the Diamond Approach. Like any genuine spiritual teaching, the degree to which this logos reveals itself depends on how faithfully the method is applied. And the skill in applying the methodology develops over time as the experience and understanding of the teaching matures. 

The precise intelligence of reality has a fluid and free balance between analysis and synthesis of all the content of experience. It takes into consideration clearly and exactly the whole of our experience. Analysis means that we discriminate, we see differences, and we see the relationships between things; and synthesis means we see the picture that connects all these discriminations together. The dialectic of analysis and synthesis opens up the revelation of “Oh, this is what it means!” and that becomes a new truth we haven’t seen before. And this creative discriminating intelligence cannot operate without compassionate sensitivity. It is sensitive to the situation—aware of it, attuned to it, and responsive to it. Although this discriminating intelligence is the teacher or the guide—or rather, the facet of true nature as inner guide—that doesn’t mean it is something separate on its own. It is still true nature. It is an expression of true nature. It is true nature manifesting as the guide who points the way, who inspires the aspirants, and who supports the journey of discovery, awakening, and transformation. 

The inner guide is a prevalent and powerful notion in contemporary culture. In our teaching, the discriminating intelligence of reality can function as guidance in the sense that it points the way, but it is not somebody or something different from who we are. In other words, guidance is the functioning of our intelligence, of our truth sense, of our heart combined with our mind in a synergistic balance that allows us to see what is happening and what it means, to penetrate the opaqueness of our experience in a way that illuminates it and that reveals further facets of the truth. In this way, this intelligence becomes a functional tool of Total Being in its revelation of the truth. 

Various teachings have different formulations that suggest different ways to listen to or connect with guidance. In the Diamond Approach, guidance is connected to the comprehension of the messages and indications that are arising in all the levels and parts of our experience. Guidance doesn’t appear only, or mostly, in the form of an angel or a wise old woman or man. It usually appears in the context of our normal everyday experience: in our relationships with our family and friends, in the state of our physical body, in our job situation, in what we feel and what emotional conflicts we are having. We want to be able to discern the guidance in all of these experiences so that our soul will unfold toward optimization. And since our mind can never know all the elements and forces involved in our experience and unfoldment, we need to listen to the guidance of Being itself—the guidance that is an expression of the intelligence of Reality. This is inherent to our Being, whose intelligence is in contact with everything. 

Sometimes these two radically nonconceptual dimensions—pure awareness and absolute reality—combine. When we experience the absolute, pure awareness is always present, but now as one capacity or one facet of the absolute. These two dimensions are instrumental in exposing and distinguishing the presence of primitive structures, which cannot be represented in the usual way because they are not conceptual or cognitive. So the obstacles that arise as we work with these dimensions are nonrepresentational, meaning that the obstacles don’t require concepts in order to function. Even though there is no conceptual knowing in these dimensions, it is still possible to discern them—what they are and what one’s being is, which is also the being of everything—because the discerning intelligence of reality is present in all its dimensions. The intelligence of Being not only can discern that a new dimension is arising but also can investigate the nature of its presence. When the investigative capacities of Being are functioning in their mature form, you can’t help but discern your experience and see its further implications. At the time that these nondual dimensions first came into focus, this discerning intelligence allowed us to investigate the stuff of pure awareness, which is not exactly “stuff,” because nothing is actually there. As we explored the nature of pure awareness, what was revealed was the absolute vastness—the absolute nature and source of awareness—which is much more mysterious than the emptiness of awareness. In other words, when you thoroughly inspect pure awareness, what you discover is total nonbeing. It’s not only that awareness is empty—which is the first striking thing about both of these dimensions—but also that it has a sense of nonbeing, a kind of radical nothingness, which basically reveals all manifestation as ephemeral and transparent. 

The arising of a deficient emptiness indicates the lack of a quality of Being, of an essential aspect. Since this absent quality is essential support, Being first manifested in the peaceful and restful state. This is because you usually try to support yourself through effort—mostly mental and active effort—while real support is an effortless state of presence. So Being manifested in a quality that puts the mind to rest, that quiets the mind and empties the mind. This made it possible for you to recognize the quality of the true support that you needed from your father. It is so wonderful to see the exquisite intelligence of the functioning of Being. Since what was needed was support—and your fake support is effort, and a mental effort at that—Being manifested in a state of peace and restfulness to eliminate the efforting. More specifically, it manifested in a state of mental peace that eliminated mental effort and activity. This made it possible for you recognize true support and for you to see how it is not an activity, and not an effort. It is presence, which at deeper dimensions of Essence is inseparable from emptiness. It is important for all of us to appreciate here how his work started with a psychological constellation—the relationship with father—and that it unfolded naturally and spontaneously into the realm of Being, into the dimension of Essence. The resolution was essential, spiritual, and it happened after going through the deficient emptiness. The importance of the end result is not just the resolution of the particular issue—that of father’s support—but is primarily the reconnection with our Being and the reowning of the essential and spiritual dimension of our humanity. 

The complete process of direct transmission in logos-speaking is that the speaker communicates the truth from his own experience. This invokes it in the moment in his own presence. If he has also integrated the diamond guidance, his speaking will be guided and skillful, so that his communication is empathic and attuned to his listeners. His communication will also precisely guide his listeners through their own ignorance and positions, helping them to open up and be receptive to his transmission, which is more accurately an opening up to the unfoldment in their own soul. In other words, the direct transmission is an embodied speaking where both the logos and the diamond guidance are present and operating; the logos unfolds the experience and the guidance opens up the consciousness and aligns it with the unfolding truth. In reality, the diamond guidance is the discerning eye and intelligence of the logos.

The intelligence we use in inquiry is the intelligence of the mystery of Being. This essence of Being is the zero that is the source of all infinities, the indeterminacy that is the source of all determinations and discriminations. More specifically, for intelligence to engage the hyperdrive, it has to have as its core the complete openness of indeterminacy, the absolute emptiness of the essence of Being. Otherwise, intelligence will be limited by the various ideas, positions, and concepts in the mind, by our ideas of what can happen and what can be. So intelligence needs to have as its source that indeterminacy, that complete mystery which gives it its maximum power, where intelligence can use all the understanding, all the knowledge we have without limiting the functioning of that intelligence. It can use its power, it can use its compassion, it can use its gentleness or determination, without the limitations of preconceived ideas or already established positions or beliefs about what is supposed to happen. It is completely fluid. So for inquiry to engage the hyperdrive, it has to be powered by the freedom of this nonconceptual openness. This amounts to inquiring without having an identity, since identity is based on the positioning we take. We take a position in order to establish a sense of identity. So not having a position means we cannot have identity. That is why the essence of Being, the Absolute, is the experience of no position. When the inner core of intelligence is this absolute indeterminacy, then your inquiry flows without operating from any established position. You do not even adhere to the position that you are a human being—or beyond that, that you even exist. 

Guidance manifests in many ways and means many things. But what is really happening when we say we are getting guidance? We are recognizing the discriminating intelligence of the optimizing force. We are seeing whether a particular direction is going toward more optimization, or, if there is a distortion, what the nature of that distortion is. The messages of guidance that we get are nothing but the comprehension of whatever experience is going on, and the meaning or significance of that experience. You become guided about whether or not you are going in the right direction, how you may be stuck, what the difficulty is, how to go about dealing with the difficulty, and so on. Thinking of guidance as a voice or a person telling you to do this or that indicates that you are not in touch with your own optimizing force. You are identifying with a child who is in need of a parent’s guiding hand for wisdom and direction. But the reality of our Being is that we have an inner force, an inner life that wants to express itself and actualize itself. And it is constantly doing that—in all kinds of ways, some successful, some not. Guidance is then a matter of recognizing which ways are successful and which ways aren’t. We need to know where our unfoldment has gotten bogged down, and how. That means that we really need to listen and receive the manifestations of the optimizing force in our experience. Only through understanding these impressions can we begin to recognize the messages of guidance—the signposts along the path of our continuing development. 

If we inquire into the energy of the optimizing force, we find that it is love. Love is the creative energy that disposes the dynamism to move in an optimizing way. This makes love the fuel of inquiry—and points to a very clear relationship between love and the revelation of truth: When we love truth for its own sake, we truly love. When our love is selfless and genuine, it is the love of what is real. This shows more specifically why it is the energy for the optimizing, energizing, evolutionary force. Love, by its very nature, is a matter of revelation, of unfoldment. It is a manifestation of Being whose very nature is a matter of opening up and unfolding, like the unfolding of a rose. Rumi once said in a poem, “This is love: to fly heavenward. To rend, every instant, a hundred veils.” To love is to rend the veils. What does it mean to rend the veils? To reveal. So love is Being in the process of revealing its truth. It is the dynamic, revealing energy of Being. This unveils two things about the engagement with the Diamond Guidance. First of all, the Diamond Guidance is the discriminating intelligence of the optimizing thrust, the guiding intelligence that specifically reveals through the recognition of what is being revealed. There is a dynamic interaction between this Guidance and love, an interaction related to the optimizing force of Being. Love is the energy of the dynamism that displays the truth, while Guidance is the magnifying lens of Being that helps us recognize what is being displayed. Furthermore, the Guidance is the discriminating intelligence that opens the way for love to display the truth. 

The functioning of this thinking capacity evolves various rules and principles that we call logic and reason. Although knowledge is not static, but is always in a state of change and transformation, these transformations are not chaotic or haphazard; they follow fundamental patterns that reflect the self-organizing intelligence of the soul. In fact, as we will see in later chapters, they reflect basic patterns of Reality, including Being and universe and their relationship to the soul. The recognition and abstraction of such fundamental invariant patterns develop into our rules and principles of logic and reason. We leave a more complete treatment of this interesting subject to chapter 20, but it is important to realize that logic and reason are not contrary to direct experience; they arise from and reflect its inherent patterns. The difficulty tends to arise when they become estranged from their source and ground, and are applied in an abstracted and rigid way. When the patterns of our thought are not informed by basic knowledge, they can stray from Reality.

Everything that happens is totally spontaneous. In non-theistic terms, everything is done through the will of the whole, or in theistic terms, through the will of God. But when most people think of God’s will, they conceive of Him as though He were a human being who has ideas about what is going to happen, as if He had a blueprint and was going to make everything conform to it. This is a very limited idea of God. Maybe God is so intelligent that He can create the universe moment to moment without any blueprint! This is not to say that there is no thread running through everything that happens. The thread is nothing but exactly what is happening now, where you are in this moment, and how this moment unfolds. As you understand what your state is right now, and follow it as it unfolds, you are following your thread. This is Holy Work, the Holy Idea of ennea-type Seven. So things unfold according to Holy Law in a manner that is not random, but is also not determined. When we understand the intelligence of the universe, we understand how this is possible. This intelligence, which we call the essential aspect of Brilliancy, doesn’t need to rely on the past in order to act. This intelligence is so bright that it can respond immediately and spontaneously in the most optimal way possible without having to refer to what has happened in the past. If you don’t believe God can do that, it indicates that your image of God is based on your own ego, which can only act based upon what has happened to you in the past. This is like saying that God is as conditioned as you are; while in truth, God is what is within and around us that is wholly unconditioned. 

The intelligence of the universe is not a thinking intelligence. When we talk about the universe being intelligent, or God being intelligent, it doesn’t mean that the universe or God is thinking about what to do next [Laughter] It is not wondering about what the intelligent thing to do is. That way of seeing things is due to conceiving of intelligence as only mental. It is to avoid this misconception that I discussed intelligence as being organic. The mystery becomes more obvious when we can perceive the intelligence of the universe, when we perceive cosmic functioning. This is seen as the Divine Intelligence, which manifests as God’s thinking. However, by “God’s thinking” we do not mean it is the same kind of thing that happens inside your head. For the universe, or God, the thought itself is the creation of the universe. On that level of perception, there is no separation between thinking and action. This is a true illustration of the function of real intelligence. You don’t think and then act. Intelligence is not a matter of thinking intelligently and then acting. Intelligence does not ruminate. The spontaneous action is itself the action of intelligence. So God doesn’t have to think about what he’s going to do before he does it. The thinking of doing it and the action itself are the same thing. So there is no set plan, no premeditation. Brilliancy is much more intelligent than someone who needs a plan. Brilliancy doesn’t need a plan because it takes in the totality of the situation and acts in the moment, instantaneously. It responds to the need of the moment with the most intelligent possibility. This is the action of a realized being.

As we discussed in the last chapter, guidance is a specific expression of the optimizing force of our Being. The direct expression of the optimizing force is the unfoldment itself, the self-revelation of our Being. It is reflected in the way our experience goes from one depth to a greater depth, from one element to a deeper element, from one dimension to a more expanded dimension. Guidance as a specific expression of this optimizing force makes it possible for inquiry—as an evocation of that force—to engage its power drive, hyperdrive, or even the superluminal drive. It is the intelligence of this evolutionary force. Without guidance, there will be changes in our experience, but no optimization. The guidance guides the dynamism so that the dynamism starts going deeper, which means that our spaceship can leave Earth’s orbit and go to other planets. It may even be able to leave the planetary system and travel to another star system. 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. So how can we discern what these essential qualities are? We need to recognize what they mean; we need to understand how they are related to our conventional experience and how they can optimize our lives. For this, we need a vehicle of understanding—a source of discrimination and knowledge—that originates from the same or a deeper dimension than the one these qualities come from. The specific guidance that makes this possible is what I call the Diamond Guidance. The Diamond Guidance is itself a pure manifestation of our Being, which is necessary for it to be able to guide us in the essential dimension. Our Being not only displays its richness, it also provides us with the capacity to comprehend, appreciate, and integrate that richness. 

One of the functions of the discriminating intelligence of true nature is that it operates as an inner teacher. I don’t mean that there is something sitting inside of us teaching us something all the time. It’s more that this penetrating intelligence gives us the capacity to research our experience, to investigate it and inquire into it in a way that allows the experience to unfold and become an expression of the freedom of true nature. It is as if we had at our fingertips all the discerning capacities—the telescopes and microscopes and MRIs—of true nature with which to investigate our experience and the situation at hand. And the more input, the more data and experience there is, the more comprehensive is the insight and understanding, which then guides and transforms the situation. The bigger the field of perceptions, the greater the scope and the power of the synthesis.  

Experience alone will not transform who and what we are. How we see the truth of the experience—what it is and what it points to and what its relevance to other things is—is also important. People frequently have insights without the presence of this discriminating intelligence, but that sort of intuitive insight or realization is isolated and short-lived. When we have integrated the penetrating intelligence of true nature, we have this capacity of understanding at our command. This means that whenever we want to explore something, that capacity is available. But being at our command does not mean we own it. It means that there is a selflessness that allows it to operate freely. It is actually at the command of true nature. Even though we cannot appropriate it, it nevertheless functions as our capacity. It feels like what we are, and with no self to hinder it or appropriate it, it can function with the entirety of what we are. It doesn’t belong to the individual, but it has at its disposal all the capacities of the individual. In this sense, the discriminating intelligence is the functioning of our higher intellect, our divine intellect. Imbued by the discerning capacity of true nature, this intelligence can operate on all dimensions at the same time.  

From this follows the wisdom of open and open-ended inquiry, of the freedom from searching for any particular state or realization. It is the wisdom of knowing that because the dynamic intelligence of true nature, expressed through its creative logos, is what is always manifesting all forms and experience, the best approach to Reality is to recognize what form or dimension is manifesting in the consciousness of the soul, and to abide there. Any attempt to determine one’s experience, by the exercise of any practice, will be a manipulation and an interference in the flow of Reality, or at best a second-guessing of where the logos is taking our experience. Hence, the center of this wisdom is that of holding no end state to strive toward, but knowing that the ideal of liberation is the freedom of the unfoldment, of the surrender to the flow of the logos. Since we are then not trying to direct our experience to go toward any particular state or condition, the dynamism of the logos is liberated to unfold according to its optimizing intelligence. 

These characteristics of the personal essence now appear in the new integration of boundless personal Being. Therefore, in the experience of this wholeness, we realize there is a sense of individuation, which is more like a feeling and recognition of organized and coherent functioning. We experience this oneness as a sense of individuated and personal wholeness, whose actions are coherent, self-organized, and organizing. This is almost like being a person, but a person with no particular form. We arrive here at a condition of Being where there is personalness, self-organization, individuation, cohesive functioning, and will, but with no hint of anthropomorphizing. This personal Being is not a form, it does not have arms and legs, or a white beard, and does not premeditate and discriminate in its actions. Personal Cosmic Being acts in total spontaneity, for its action is the dynamic creativity of the logos. It acts with total attunement and responsiveness for it possesses infinite intelligence, the boundless intelligence of true nature that appears in the orderly flow of the pearly logos. We find this condition of Being to be the closest, in our experience, to the concept of a personal God.

Another sign of the presence of intelligence has to do with a sense of brilliance. If your mind is operating in an intelligent way, after a while you notice that there is pleasure in your brain, as though the cells themselves were having orgasms. They are illuminating from within, bursting with living intelligence and brightness. And using the intelligence of your mind will feel smooth and pleasurable. Things start to happen easily, and your thoughts, ideas, and perceptions begin to have the smoothness and the freedom of movement through a fluid medium. The operation of intelligence becomes like the flow of mercury. Such smoothness is the basis of the penetrating power of intelligence. This penetrating power has to do with the fluidity and delicacy of the movement and physiognomic properties of intelligence. The capacity to pierce to the heart of the matter is seldom as evident in other aspects as it is in Brilliancy. The presence of intelligence has a delicacy and smoothness that is so refined, so exquisite, and of such gentleness that there is nothing it cannot pierce and penetrate. 

The moment you have a goal in your mind in terms of how you are going to experience yourself, you are not being personal with yourself. Personal means that right this moment, where you are is where you personally are—it is you now. The moment you say, “I’m going to go someplace” you are no longer personally relating to your immediate reality. You have adopted an abstract, impersonal aim from some source. So looking from the perspective of a certain state or aim is not appropriate to finding your thread. It is forced and unnatural because the particular state or aim that you have in mind is most likely not what is going to happen at this moment. You are in fact trying to force something on yourself instead of finding out where you are. This is true even if the state you are wanting to go toward is wholeness or the Absolute. You are trying to put yourself in a certain place instead of finding where you actually are. Then you are not following the Holy Will, which is the natural flow of the unfolding of reality as a whole; you are just being willful. You are not cooperating with the intelligence of your own being; you are superimposing a direction on top of your Being’s true movement.