Regardless of where we are in our inner work, despite whatever we are working to realize, at some point on the path we are going to have to let go of it. Whatever it is that you feel you’re attaining you will have to drop. Whatever it is that you’re accomplishing you will realize is false. What is true shifts. In one sense, truth is what you experience to be real in the moment. But when you really understand any particular experience, you realize it is not truth, it is falsehood. Then you discover a new dimension and realize that as the truth. You stay with it for a while until you realize it too is false. Even when you get to objective truth, you realize it is not ultimately true. So what we refer to as the various dimensions of truth are in a fundamental way only levels of conceptualization. The dimensions of truth are identical to the levels of falsehood. From one side they appear true, but from the other side they appear false. If you look from beneath, it is truth, and if you look from above, it is false, until you discover something that you can’t look at from above or below. 

When the ego resolution of rapprochement tips more towards separation from mother, autonomic regulation will weigh more towards the charging up and mounting of tension. This is reflected in an individuality with a higher active energy, and more difficulty in rest and relaxation. It is also reflected in a more rigid kind of body armor. Of course, there are many other factors determining the final outcome of ego individuality, but we are discussing the factor of the resolution of the rapprochement conflict. It is interesting to see that the organism functions as a whole system, integrating all levels of functioning. The state of the organism reflects early childhood development, the status of the nervous system, and existence on the Being level. All these dimensions, and many others, cannot be separated in any real way. The ego’s capacity for autonomic regulation, which is the core of its capacity for inner regulation, is reflected in the capacity for having a stable sexual relationship. Sexual activity and discharge is the most efficient way the ego develops for autonomic regulation.

When we understand deeper levels of the human potential, we see that the internalization of psychic structures is only one of the mechanisms in the development of support for the self. When the self is in touch with its essential nature, support comes increasingly from Being itself. As the soul recognizes and integrates this presence, it develops a wisdom whose source is the essential presence itself. This wisdom can expand the horizons of our understanding of human development.

It’s no simple thing to recognize this identity with the body and see through it. Just saying, “Oh yeah, I can see that I really believe I am my body,” does not mean you’ve seen the identification. You have to look very deep, because there are many levels of identification and the important ones are so deep that they are completely unconscious and implicit. That’s where you believe so much that the body is you that you’ll instinctively fight for it. Don’t you believe deep down that your existence depends on the life of your body? That’s why people are so afraid of death—we know the body definitely ceases to exist then, so if I believe I am my body, well, that’s it for me. Many of our difficulties in life are a result of this powerful identification with the body. And I’ll emphasize again: I’m not saying that the body isn’t a part of us, or that it’s something bad. I’m just stating the fact that our core—our essential true nature—is not the body. The body is simply a form, an external form that our true nature takes. And true nature actually needs the body to live on this earth as a human being. 

Ego structure depends on two levels of impressions in the soul. We have discussed primarily those semi-permanent impressions that are due to the self-representation and its subunits molding the field of the soul. This self-representation is built up using memory traces of earlier, more momentary impressions. However, some of these early impressions remain in a semi-permanent way, not through representational memory, but by the impressions being strong enough, or repeated frequently enough, that they directly condition the substance of the soul. These are the kind of impressions we discussed in chapter 7, the direct structuring of the soul field by her own intense or repeated experience. These direct impressions also become integrated into the overall self-representation, and synthesized with the mental structures. The presence of direct impressions, due to the vulnerable malleability of the infant soul, shows that the soul can develop structure before her memory and that cognitive capacities develop to the extent of being able to hold and organize memories. This means that there are two levels of structuring in ego development that become integrated together as one structure, the ego structure of the soul.

In a remarkable and direct way, Almaas introduces us to the space or ground of Mind within which mental structures operate. He shows how inner spaciousness can be experienced in somatic, psychological and spiritual ways, details some of the many levels of inner space and, more importantly, illustrates how these experiences of space can lead to fundamental healing and integration of our being. This experiential understanding of non-identification with content, discovering the pattern of object relations and self-representations as grasped images in the mind, is called the Truth of Selflessness, the central key to the Buddha’s realization and enlightenment. From the experience of the Mind ground (the inherent emptiness of mind and its objects), there spontaneously arises a liberating sense of wholeness and true well-being, as well as strength, compassion and other natural qualities which Almaas calls our Essential State(s). While this book is an important contribution to the psychological understanding of mind, it is also a plea for dissolving the false split between psychology and spiritual life. In a world where we have not dealt with our shadows, where the split of body and mind, light and dark, persona and shadow have led to the threatening devastation of the nuclear arms race, our way to recovering wholeness and sanity is only by means of healing these splits. 

The way we usually see reality is determined by the ideas and beliefs and patterns of our minds. When the mind stops, when the ego stops, and you let perception be there, clear and cleansed and pure, then reality is what is seen. Everything else is an interpretation, and there are many levels of interpretation. There are many levels of consciousness, many levels of reality. But ultimately, when you completely let go of that interpretation, of the desire to interpret, it is possible to see things as they are. Oneness is not a mental idea. It is not an idea that everything is one. The idea of oneness is not the same thing as the experience of oneness. The oneness is that you do not feel you end here or there; you do not end anywhere. You continue on and on and on, through everything. In the normal ego state, you can observe that your sense of self always includes a sense of boundaries. But when the perception of oneness is there, you do not feel anything like that. It is as if there is just air there, where your boundaries used to be. You feel yourself extended, continued through the air, through other people, through the walls, through the mountains, through everything. It is all one nature, one thing, and that is your nature. When you recognize yourself ultimately, what are you, ultimately? When you go to the deepest self-realization, then suddenly everything is one nature. Every atom that exists anywhere is that, and it is not an idea, it is not a point of view, it is not a perspective, so it cannot change. You might not see it, but that does not mean it is not there.

The first level of pure perception, prior to these two steps, is the level of perception with no discernment, no discrimination at all, simply pure consciousness aware of awareness itself and nothing else. This ground of pure awareness is the fundamental ground spoken of in many spiritual traditions, and is the medium in which all levels of knowing appear. The capacity to discern differences in the field of our awareness is a fundamental element of our consciousness. But here we need to make a difficult and subtle distinction: in describing this capacity, we want to discriminate it from the capacity to actually recognize the forms that arise. So in what we are calling pure perception, associated with what is traditionally called nonconceptual awareness, there is the perception of differences within a field without recognition of those differences. There is awareness that there are different forms, but in pure perception these forms are not discriminated in such a way that they can be recognized or named. This is consciousness with no mind involved, awareness with no knowing of any kind. There is merely the awareness of shapes, colors, movements, qualities; there is no recognition, knowing, or understanding of what one is perceiving. There is differentiation but not discrimination. 

And the ultimate truth manifesting as or in form is not simply a new illusion. It can be seen as a new illusion, but it can also be seen as a new creation. Out of nothing comes something. It is true that in some sense nothing is the ultimate, the most pure, but out of that, there is something new. To say that the Ultimate Truth is absolute and beyond form, beyond concept, is true, and this is felt to be the deepest or highest perception. But to say that this perception is the final goal of the soul’s realization is like saying that the ultimate nature of the body is atoms, to the detriment of all the other levels of life, thought, and feeling. If we recognize and experience the atom as part of us, we realize that we are not bodies, that everything in us is atoms. So you could say that the level of atoms is a deeper reality than the body. And it’s true that on the level of atoms there are no organs, no person, no other people; everything is atoms. But can you say that this level is more real? Can you say that the atoms are somehow more real than the body? It is true that the self-organizing forms of the body are not in some sense more fundamental than the atomic level. The forms constitute a creation out of that undifferentiated sea. So part of the Christian revelation is that the body itself is no longer seen as form moving away from the Source, but rather that the body never departs from the Source. The body never leaves the reality that “I and the Father are one.” This is a new development in the understanding of the human being. Some other teachings have included this insight, but I think that Christ gave it a central place.

The direct awareness of the operation of the Diamond Guidance does not occur until the subtle perceptual capacities begin to function. These capacities can be seen as corresponding on a subtle level to the physical senses. They perceive the inner realm, the discriminations in our field of experience that do not manifest physically. For example, with the inner subtle capacity of touch, we can feel our essence as if we were touching it with our nerve ends. We can feel its texture, its density, its viscosity. It is as if you were touching your essential presence with your fingertips. This inner touch is obviously not physical, because you are recognizing the texture of a state of consciousness, not sensing a state in the physical body. We can make this distinction because it is possible to experience both a state of consciousness and a body state simultaneously in the same location, which indicates that they are on different levels of manifestation. This particular subtle capacity needs to be activated for us to be aware of our soul as a presence, and to be able to discriminate the essential aspects. When we use our physical senses, we are aware only of the effects of Essence but are not directly aware of Essence itself. We cannot physically perceive the presence of our own consciousness. In the presence of Essence, we merely feel clearer and deeper, maybe happier and lighter, but we don’t really feel what is causing these effects in us. In contrast, if the inner touch is open and active, then you begin to experience the actual palpable Essence itself. You will recognize it as presence—a conscious medium, almost an aware substance. Depending on which aspect is manifesting, the inner touch will feel it as water, or gold, or oil, or mercury, and so on. 

We see here two kinds of differentiation, making up two levels of manifestation. The first is the differentiation of true nature into its own qualities, aspects, and forms of essence. True nature is perfect in all ways, but it has special perfections that are eternally present in it in an implicit way, the way white light inherently contains the colors of the rainbow. These are the perfections of love, truth, compassion, contentment, peace and so on, the diamond vehicles and other essential forms and dimensions. Being timeless qualities, they are independent of human mind, history, and culture. True nature presents these depending on historical situations, but the qualities themselves are timeless and primordial. True nature manifests them by differentiating its own field into the forms, colors, and flavors implicitly inherent in its pure presence. Such level of differentiation is purely spiritual, forming the objective and true universal realm, and hence hidden to the physical senses. The second kind of differentiation of pure presence is differentiation into the myriad recognizable forms—the physical, emotional, and mental forms. This is the totality of physical manifestation, in all of its levels of structure and process, plus the ordinarily experienced inner forms. So it includes the physical universe with its galaxies, stars, planets, atmospheres, elements, atoms, elementary particles, forces, the bodies of all living creatures, plus the normal experience of these creatures, their sensations, feelings, thoughts, images, and so on. Strictly speaking, the ordinary inner mental forms can be classified as a third level of manifestation, but since they are not timeless and do not reflect the perfections of true nature we include them with the physical forms in one level of manifestation. These two levels of manifestation are coemergent with pure being, which forms the ground level of manifestation, as a pure transparent infinite expanse.

A particular contribution to the process of inner work made by the understanding of the Holy Ideas is the idea that the principles or laws governing manifestation can be understood, and that this understanding can lead us to a realization of unity. There is a particular, specific order to all levels of manifestation, and there is a continuity between what Ichazo calls cosmic order or laws and all levels of reality, including the physical and psychological. The Holy Ideas address the objective understanding of the relationship of the individual to the greater whole. We use the knowledge of the Diamond Approach to develop a particular view of how the Holy Ideas relate to the fixations, exploring for each ennea-type the specific effects of losing touch with awareness of unity. Losing touch with unity is losing the sense that one is part of Being, part of the manifestation and flow of the whole of manifestation. In other words, the delusion of separateness from the whole takes nine forms, representing the loss of the nine Holy Ideas. 

Thus we use the mind to go beyond the mind’s limitations; we use the capacity of discrimination to reveal subtler levels of mind. But here, the heart’s innate love for beauty and truth is a guiding principle: The marriage of heart and mind is a must on this spiritual journey, for it is the segmentation of our experience that keeps them limited and restricted to conventional reality. The love of truth allows the mind to open to new possibilities that mental logic alone cannot reveal or consider entering. And the heart can be clarified of its historical and emotional content through the mind’s clarity and precision, making available the energy liberated from the trapped structures of our personal history, so it can nurture and enliven our evolving spiritual development. This is the hidden tantra within the work of this path. The term “tantra” refers to teachings that use energy for the sake of evolving spiritual being. Energy can be erotic, even sexual, but energy can also be emotional, mental, or simply energy itself. In this seminar, we made explicit the ways in which newly unblocked and released energies can liberate the spirit and reveal deeper mysteries of relationship and love—whether with God, true nature, or another human being. 

The discussion of the Diamond Approach so far might lead one to assume that it is an example of the perspective on inner realization which says that realization is a gradual process, and emphasizes the development of the Personal Essence. The approach is not intentionally aimed in that direction, but since it is based on the metabolism of personal experience, and personal experience is usually not very advanced, the progression of experiences and insights does tend to take the more gradual route. Nevertheless, in rare cases, and for varying reasons, the more sudden jump to the impersonal realms does occur. The understanding of the psychic metabolism of experience seems to imply that human realization goes from the development of ego, to the realization of the essential aspects with the Personal Essence as the central aspect, to the enlightenment on the nonpersonal levels of Being; however, the realization of the nonpersonal aspects does not involve abandonment of the personal and other aspects of Essence. In fact, the Personal Essence goes through another stage of development as its relation to the nonpersonal aspects is understood and metabolized. It becomes the personal actualization of the nonpersonal aspects of Being. We will discuss these nonpersonal realms in detail in Part III of Book Three. For now we will examine further the development of the Personal Essence. 

Consciousness: This is another aspect that is sometimes regarded as a part of the lataif system. It is the presence of Being as pure and undifferentiated consciousness. It is consciousness of consciousness; as a delicate, fine, restful kind of presence. It is the capacity for inner absorption; for contemplating one’s consciousness, by being absorbed in it. It is connected with the state sometimes called samadhi, because there is no mental activity or agitation in it. The experience is of a delicious kind of restfulness, at all levels of the organism. Anyone who has taken morphine for pain knows the delicious and pleasurable kind of restfulness, almost like a numbness, as the drug begins to take effect. This is close in feeling to the state of pure Consciousness. The particular issues related to Consciousness are those of ego agitation and the affect of negative merging. This ego state manifests in the mind as worry, in the heart as guilt, and in the body as attachment. All these reflect the ego state of desiring, which is the specific barrier against this aspect. When one goes deeply into these ego states, one realizes that they are different manifestations of the state of contraction itself, of negative-merging affect, and also that they are differentiated emotional expressions of the undifferentiated state of negative merging. This aspect’s relationship to the Personal Essence is reflected in its effect on ego boundaries. The pure aspect of Consciousness is ultimately what dissolves the partitions between the various manifestations of consciousness. So it contributes to the dissolution of the boundaries of the separate individuality of ego. When this happens one realizes that one can be a person without the need for ego boundaries. This precipitates the experience of the Personal Essence. 

We can see the Personal Essence as the prototype, on the Being level, of an integrated and integrating capacity. So when it is present its integrative function is felt not only on its own dimension, that of Being, but on all other dimensions. It tends to enhance the integrative capacity of the body, the nervous system, the intellect, the intuition, the energy system, the emotional tendencies and so on. Even the tendency of ego structure to move towards greater integration, under optimal conditions, is greatly enhanced by the presence of the Personal Essence. So we believe that when it makes its appearance in childhood it facilitates the integration of ego identifications. The capacity for integration exists on all levels of organismic functioning: physical, mental, emotional, and on the Being level. But since the Being level is the deepest, when it is present it enhances all dimensions of integrative capacity. It also integrates all these dimensions into a whole, individuated presence, the essential person. One feels one, and not composed of parts. The Being, the body and the mind are all experienced as one presence. 

The incomparable pearl is the individuation on the Being level. It is a new synthesis, which in a sense creates a personal Being from the impersonality of the nondifferentiated Being. The capacity for synthesis on the Being level belongs to another aspect of Essence—objective understanding. This aspect has the capacity for both analysis and synthesis on all levels of perception and knowledge. It is closely related to the Personal Essence; it is the inner guidance needed for its realization and development. But, like all other aspects, it becomes integrated into the Personal Essence at some point in the process of inner realization. The synthetic capacity is then experienced as a quality of one’s own Being. Synthesis is not experienced as putting things together in a unified whole: this is the quality of the synthetic capacity of the mind. The Being capacity for synthesis manifests in the ability to see the unity before differentiation. One does not bring two things together; one simply does not see them as two. 

Usually, there is a general sense of being a person, an individual with a sense of self or identity. However, this is only the surface phenomenon. At deeper levels of the personality, there are many self-images, with definite traits, organized in a particular structure that gives the feeling of an overall self-image. Different life situations bring to the surface different self-images and their corresponding object relations. This determines the changing of moods, emotions, states of mind and actions throughout a person’s life, and even throughout a day. This activation of past object relations is called “transference” by psychologists. Kernberg relates how in the process of psychoanalysis, as the patient goes deeper in understanding his mind, there first manifests the general overall self-images and their corresponding object relations, but that as the process deepens, the more specific constituent sub-self-images become expressed in the analytic situation. 

The sensation of frustration is very painful, usually intolerable to feel directly. What most people call frustration is really a softened and smoothed-out frustration; the frustration is usually filtered through some defense or numbing of the sensation. It is possible to perceive the raw affect of frustration, but usually only when one goes very deep within oneself. One’s consciousness must become fine, subtle and minutely discriminating. One must be able to discern one’s state at the subtler levels of personality, which generally requires the aid of essential experience. One starts feeling a kind of heat, as in anger, but it is a dry heat. It is an unpleasant feeling of heat and dryness. This makes it feel prickly, a hot prickly sensation, similar to the sensation of irritated and inflamed dry skin. When one is willing to go deeper into the sensation one feels it as a harshness, a dry and hot harshness, prickly and almost feverish. There is a hot irritation here or there in the body, a restlessness on the skin. Even though the purest form of this affect is very subtle, the reader might recognize these “symptoms” of negative merging, which are actually very common indeed in our experience, but so ubiquitous and so filtered through defense that they are not noticed. 

What makes it so difficult for us as human beings to be deeply authentic and spontaneous, to feel free to be who we naturally are? One aspect of the answer lies in what most spiritual traditions understand to be a case of mistaken identity. Most of us are consciously and unconsciously identified with self-concepts which greatly limit our experience of ourselves and the world. Who we take ourselves to be, as determined by the sets of ideas and images that define us, is very far from the unconditioned reality that deeply realized human beings have come to recognize as our true nature, who we truly are. Numerous approaches, such as psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and various self-improvement techniques can help us change our self-concepts so that we are more realistic, more satisfied, and more effective in our lives. But only an exploration of the actual nature of the self, beyond the details of its content, can bring us to realms of experience which approach more deeply fulfilling, fundamental levels of philosophical or spiritual truth. 

This clear example shows that space or emptiness makes possible the ending of the old and the allowing of the new. It is the room vacated by the old which is needed for the new to manifest. There can be no change if the old continues. Change is the death of the old and the coming to life of the new. This is true at all levels of psychological or spiritual change. We stress this relation of space to change and transformation because, first, psychologists are not aware of this phenomenon, and second, because spiritual teachings indicate that emptiness is important only for the most radical of transformations. From the perspective we have developed here, we can see that changes in self-image always involve space; the smaller changes are those seen as psychological, the deeper ones are those seen as spiritual. We are focusing here on changes in the self-image as allowed by the arising of space, and we maintain that the self-image is in some sense the central point in the person’s object world as constituted by the set of self-images, related object images and affects between them. However, it is clear that the process of transformation we are describing involves changes not only in the self-image but in the object-images and affects as well—in short, in the person’s entire world view and perceptual experience. When people who are in psychotherapy are able to become more objective about the external world, they see the objects in their world, especially other people, in an entirely new way. In spiritual practice, the dissolution of boundaries on deep levels of the self-image allows profound, revolutionary changes in the perception of the true nature of the world. 

We could describe the path toward realization in this way: Our desire to understand where we are and who we are takes us on an initial journey of learning to have more and more insight about our ordinary experience. Gradually, we come to recognize the relationship of ordinary experience to deeper levels of reality—how it reflects True Nature. Eventually, we are able to see how our individual experience is nothing but True Nature, and we move toward the realization of pure Being—the oneness that is nondual reality. This recognition of the nondual ground of experience is the realization that there is basically only presence. Presence is what exists, what is, and everything that exists is a form that presence takes. Reality is one unified field of luminosity that differentiates itself into the various perceptions that we have. Thus, True Nature and Being are really the same thing as truth, or reality. All those terms mean the same thing: presence that is in a condition of conscious full realization. In this condition, experience is not filtered through the mind; things are experienced exactly as they are. We see their nature and recognize that it is True Nature—which turns out to be the nature of everything, all the way down to the tiniest particle. This means that nothing exists but True Nature. It pervades everything so intimately, so completely, that it doesn’t leave any one spot unoccupied by it. 

Physical reality is the appearance of things, and by its nature it appears as separate things with boundaries. There is a pole, there is a fireplace, there is a chair. We take that perception of physical reality and apply it at all levels of reality. But on the level of Being, these partitions do not exist. On the level of energy, they do not exist. My energy does not stop at my hand; it goes further. Why don’t I take my energy to be me? My energy might be filling the whole room. Why don’t I say that I am the whole room? Why do I say that I am something sitting here? You say, “I am sitting in this chair,” because you take the body to be you. Why not take your energy to be you? Your energy could be smaller than your body or bigger than your body. When you are your essence, it is much more expanded yet. When you reach the depth of your essence, which is the fundamental reality, you see that no boundaries at all are there; the boundaries exist on the surface only. 

So discussing the various qualities and aspects independently does not mean that each one is separate and functions on its own. They all function as organs within the same organism—as an integrated whole. They might all function at the same moment, or alternate in various combinations. Guided inquiry has the capacity to use all the aspects in an integrated way to support us in discovering the various dimensions of experience. By revealing the truth, it has the capacity to penetrate all the levels of reality. If we follow it, the Guidance can lead us all the way to the source of all manifestations, the ultimate truth, which is our home. When we make the journey with the Diamond Guidance, the soul at some point becomes the Guidance itself apprehending the absolute nature of everything. During the third journey, the Diamond Guidance is inseparable from the soul’s ongoing presence, shining with its exquisite precision, delicacy, refinement, intimacy, and indescribable beauty and freshness. We are sweetness, delight, warmth, appreciation, and preciousness. We experience ourselves at this stage as all of these qualities in a presence that touches the Absolute—perceiving it and unifying with it. 

As far as I can tell, we are the only beings who are permeable to everything that exists, from the most painful to the most sublime. We’re sensitive not only to experiencing the pleasures and pains of our bodies, to feeling our emotions, the painful and the pleasurable, and to sensing our thoughts, but our vulnerability also gives us the possibility of experiencing, being aware of, being in contact with all levels of reality. We’re permeable to not only physical, emotional, and mental stimuli, but to essential and spiritual stimuli as well. So, not only are we vulnerable in the sense that our feelings, our preferences, even our identity can be influenced, but we are also vulnerable to being aware, conscious, and permeable to our true identity, and to the nature of all existence. So you see, our uniquely human quality of vulnerability is a disadvantage from one perspective, and a great advantage from another. We are wide open to all influences, all possibilities if we allow ourselves to be—if we don’t defend ourselves, if we don’t build a shell and hide behind it. Our human consciousness is so vulnerable that we can actually know who we are. We’re so conscious, so permeable, that we can experience the very nature of all of reality—the nature of a stone, a tree, the nature of ourselves.

Most of the time, insights give us liberating information and understanding of how our minds, emotions, and personalities function. They might even help lead us to essence. Insights can be liberating, profound, exhilarating, or powerful, but still they are not essence. Essence is more. Insights can go even deeper, to more profound levels of reality, and can give us information about the nature of reality. But what is this reality? It is nothing but the reality of our true nature, our essence. At such times we are receiving insights about essence itself. For instance, an individual can have the sudden deep flash that “I actually exist,” or an expansive insight that “Love is my true nature.” These are insights about essence, realizing some of the truth about our real nature. But this activity itself is not exactly the presence of essence. It can reach essence and give glimpses of it, but if the person remains at the level of insight, essence will not be realized, embodied, or lived in its fullness and beauty. 

When a person knows love completely and embodies it, the next step is to let go of it. That is the natural process. It is the same thing when you realize that the various levels of realization are nothing but a process of actualizing the concepts of the mind. You actualize love; you actualize success; you actualize happiness; you actualize this and that. Every time you actualize something completely, when you really have it, that’s when you realize that it is really an idea in your mind. You cannot tell before that; only when you have it completely can you see that it is an idea. The moment you know that it is an idea—pop—it is gone. Then the next one comes and you seek it and you actualize it, and when it is completely there—pop—it is gone. The need for love goes, but you continue to be a source of love, without even thinking about it. 

We do our work here so that in time, there will arise in your consciousness many insights and understandings of the personality, of your life, of your past, and of the mind. This understanding will reveal the false elements, and unveil the dimension of Essence. Together with this process of insight and understanding, the path will reveal Being in many kinds of experiences. There will be a series of experiences of different dimensions, and different levels of realization. All these insights and all these experiences are needed for full development, and, at some point, need to be integrated with action. If it does not happen spontaneously, a person will need to intentionally live life according to what has been learned and what has been experienced. This might not necessarily happen by itself. Some insights, realizations, and even actions, will come to you as gifts that just happen, but some of them you will have to work for. You will have to put in the effort to regulate and balance yourself. That is the reality of human life. If you are open, if you are interested in the truth, things will happen to you, but not everything. For some things, you will have to take action, you will have to make greater effort. Both elements are needed: the spontaneous arising and the effort, the expenditure of energy. The first part of understanding is the easiest part. It is sometimes difficult to see the significance of states of being and to allow oneself to abide in these various states of being. Then, the most difficult task is to embody being in action. 

Featureless consciousness challenges all dichotomies and reveals other ways of experiencing reality. One of the features of ordinary experience is the dichotomy between subject and object; this is usually referred to as dualistic experience. We have seen that in deeper levels of realization, especially realization from the perspective of the boundlessness of true nature, the sense of duality disappears. The self and the object are not separate, and the ground and its manifestation are not separate. Reality appears here as nondual experience—it is all one fabric. But from the perspective of total nonconceptuality, both dual and nondual are features of experience; they can be isolated and can be recognized and known. When our experience is featureless, we think, “Nonduality is wonderful, but what does that have to do with me? Dual, nondual—neither of them applies to me. My experience is neither dual nor nondual.” Both duality and nonduality have to do with separateness or the lack of it. This means that things either have discrete existence or they are manifestations of the same reality and are not separate from each other. If we explore this more subtly, we realize that boundlessness is based on the concept of boundaries, and nonduality is based on the concept of duality. One annuls the other; one is an antidote for the other. That’s how they traditionally function in inner work: If we don’t experience nonduality, we are always constrained by dual experience. And dual experience tends to come with headaches. It involves all kinds of suffering and pain that dissolve in nondual experience. So we tend to prefer the one that feels good over the one that feels bad. This is natural and understandable and is one way that Total Being experiences itself. But Total Being can also experience itself in such a way that the awareness or consciousness is truly nonconceptual, so much so that we cannot say that things are separate or not separate. This brings us back to the lizard. When the lizard is experiencing, looking around and seeing things, is it feeling that things are separate or is it feeling that they are not separate?

Therefore, ultimately, the truth is something positive, but it is really beyond good and bad, for it is the ground of all reality. But that is not in the differentiated realm of our lives. In this realm what is true can be harmful or useful, but to love finding out the truth is to love our true nature, the truth that makes it possible for us to discern truth from falsehood. We love the nature of truth and not necessarily the many forms it takes. On deeper levels of realization, as on the boundless levels of Being, where everything is a manifestation of true nature, loving the truth becomes even more subtle. Here we feel we love everything, but that doesn’t mean that we love crimes and diseases and so on. We are aware of the reality that pervades everything and that reality is what we love. At the level of the boundless dimensions, we do not love an individual form but rather the immaculate nature of the wholeness. As we go deeper into our journey of discovering truth, we will see the meaning of truth change. At the beginning, truth is finding out about relative phenomena and space-time events: our emotions, our feelings, the world, conflicts, and relationships. But that is only one kind of truth, where the love is not of these elements but of the process of revelation of the truth, for this revelation is the essential truth penetrating our ordinary experience. In the next stage, essence becomes the truth. The various essential states are truth, various manifestations of truth. Here, we love both the process and what we discover. However, it is tricky to love the essence itself, because this can lead to the reification of essence and to the attachment to experiencing it, which is antithetical to loving the truth for its own sake. In the following stage, we go beyond essential aspects to something that is beyond essence and personality, the truth that is the essential ground, transcendent true nature. 

That is exactly what understanding something means. To understand something means ultimately to sacrifice it, to let it go, to be done with it. If we do not let it go, if we keep holding on to it, we have not fully understood it. When we thoroughly understand something, it’s gone—whether it’s an aspect of the personality or an aspect of essence. We’re attached to it only when we haven’t completely understood it. The path of the heart shows us that everything we become attached to remains in our heart, filling the abode of the Guest. Our attachments become idols filling the sacred space of the Kaaba, the holy place of the absolute Beloved. We need to recognize all our attachments, even to spiritual states, as distractions. All the levels of realization—even though they’re good, wonderful, and useful, and inevitably we fall in love with them—are ultimately seen to be distractions. As long as we can conceive what it is we realize, as long as we can remember it, as long as we have a relationship to it, even if it is a deep realization, it is a distraction. That still is not the Secret. And anything we realize, anything we understand, will stop being a distraction and the attachment to it will fall away the moment the relationship to it disappears. When there is no duality of subject and object, when you and what you realize become one, only then is it sacrificed, only then is it gone. In that very second of complete understanding and realization, you go beyond it. Understanding is the last step toward transcendence. 

Essence manifests as many elements, many aspects, but it also manifests on many dimensions or levels of those aspects. For example, when you experience the Strength Essence—the Red Essence—you can experience it on many levels of refinement, subtlety, or depth. At the beginning of essential revelation, it’s just the Red Essence. You feel the redness, the heat, and the strength, but your understanding and knowledge of the aspect is not precise. Your understanding can still be influenced by your conventional knowledge—by your reactions and beliefs. However, in another dimension of Essence, the experience of the aspect itself and the comprehension of what it is are inseparable. In this dimension, the experience of the Red Essence and the understanding of what it is arise as the same experience, so our comprehension is free of the influence of our mental concepts, free from the conventional dimension of experience. The insight about the Red Essence is now protected by the new level of manifestation of the aspect. This means that as the Red Essence arises, there is inherent in the very experience of it an exact understanding of what it is. This kind of knowledge is not available in the conventional dimension; it is not conventional wisdom. In some sense it is a magical property, because there is no rational explanation for it. So this knowledge of the Red Essence does not arise from our storehouse of acquired knowledge, it arises independent of our mind. It is real knowledge, authentic knowledge, because you didn’t get it from someone or something or arrive at it through logical analysis or deduction. It is a direct knowingness, a new basic knowledge. It’s an insight that comes from the very depths of the Red Essence itself. The Red Essence is stating what it is. Not, of course, through one word, one sentence, or one insight, but through an entire gestalt of understanding. And there is no question here about the accuracy of the new knowledge; the only barrier that arises is the veil of our conventional knowledge reacting to this new knowledge and trying to distort it. 

Divine eros sounds so good. It is goodness. It is pure goodness. It is the presence of purity, of energy, of an awesome pleasure beyond anything you can ever imagine. It’s a powerful motivation and drive for being yourself and being willing to feel the truth of whatever you’re feeling, regardless of circumstances. Divine eros is a way you can experience your inner nature. How much do you want that for yourself? For another? We have the opportunity to enjoy the connection on the various levels of relating, but some of us find that our lover is in our friend because he or she loves the same thing that we love, and that is what we share. And when we share the love for the depth of truth, it creates the foundation that the relationship connection needs in order to continue to spiral to ever greater depths. In the case of sexual lovers, the desire to unite can reach a level of intensity of wanting to embrace each other simply to feel the union of the shared field. You want the union to be as complete as possible. The beauty of the physical dimension is that souls can interpenetrate on a new level, the physical, but it is not 100 percent interpenetration since human bodies remain distinct. The desire of the essential heart for complete union can lead to the discovery that something exists that can transcend the physical while including it, unifying the hearts, bodies, and minds of both people as one. The yearning to be inside one another arises with uncontrollable energy and love. The desire, the wanting to unite in every way possible, completely and totally, continues to expand and deepen, into territory where eros can manifest and create new forms of experience.