In this state of complete annihilation of identity, one does not have identity in the usual sense; our identity is now with the presence of Being. In other words, our identity has shifted from the self-representation to Being. To understand this condition we need to answer two questions: What does it mean not to identify? What is identity in the essential dimension?

Before we embark on this exploration, we need to address the significance of the above discussion with respect to narcissism. Our observation that the deepest root of narcissism is the absence of self-realization and the additional observation that in full self-realization the normal sense of identity dissolves, combine to give us a deep insight about narcissism: The presence of the normal identity is the root of narcissism. This implies two further insights, at different levels of the self. The first is that not only is normal identity fundamentally weak and vulnerable, but its very existence is responsible for this weakness, and thus it cannot become completely stable. In other words, the normal self (or more accurately, the ego-self) is inherently narcissistic because its identity is inherently weak and vulnerable. This weakness is due to the inevitable incompleteness of the self-representation, and therefore cannot be eliminated as long as the self-representation forms our sense of identity. Second, since the fundamental narcissism of everyday life is an expression of normal identity, complete resolution of narcissism requires that we cease to use self-representations for self-recognition. 

Both Freud and Wilhelm Reich wrote a great deal about the cultural factors and childrearing practices which lead to blocks in sexuality. In our work it is clear, both experientially and theoretically, that the blocking of both space and essence in the genitals is a critical issue in our work on the dissolution of the various levels of self-image. We must also remember that the genital hole is only the lower part of a column of emptiness that goes through the body, as we have discussed. This column of emptiness is really nothing but the presence of space, seen in the presence of finite boundaries constituting the concept of the person. This means that the genital hole is the presence of space that is still obscured by the unconscious attachment to self-boundaries. We will discuss this point more fully in Chapter 19. Whatever the reason behind the observation that when space is lost the deficiency appears as the genital hole, it is a consistent fact and seems to be a universal one. It is the reason that the acceptance and understanding of the genital hole readily leads to the experience of clear space, and it also explains our assertion that the genital hole is a universal unconscious part of the self- image, because space is universally not experienced. 

The Beast is a very specific issue related to the essential quality of Power. The essential Power of the soul is caught up in, and distorted by, the hatred and pride in the Beast structure. When you allow the black hatred is when you may feel yourself become the devil—a giant, black and powerful demon with tremendous pride and destructive hatred. You might tower over the city, looking at it and laughing. You might be filled with a powerful, destructive, cold, calm, and calculating hatred. You might experience the absolute insignificance of everything you see. Allowing this energetic structure to arise, and understanding its origins, illuminates deep issues about early levels of the soul’s disconnection from love. If you are able to feel the hatred without resistance or acting out, the hatred will transform into essential Power. This Power can penetrate the delusions that keep the ego’s reactivity in place and it can allow the soul to become still enough so that the quality of love can affect its state and its perception. 

The Point is a point of presence, and when it is in consciousness, it focuses our attention. The moment the Point manifests, our attention is spontaneously focused in a very powerful way. The Point is a point of singular presence and brilliance, so its presence in our experience naturally focuses our soul. It does this by providing the capacity to focus on all the levels of the soul’s functioning—perception, thinking, feeling, and action. Later in this chapter, we’ll discuss a couple of ways that this focusing happens in inquiry. As we inquire, we hold the entire experience and yet we are also able to focus on particulars. This happens by seeing all the relevant data within our experience. That might mean our experience at the moment, or during an entire week, month, or year. At some point, we recognize that there is a particular thread connecting all our experience. The thread is a sequence of points, a series of specific significances. At a certain point, one thing is going on; two minutes after that, something else is going on, and so on. If we see the relationship of these points, we find a meaningful thread. And this thread is continuous, for the points of meaning are not isolated or disconnected. Meaning is a continuing process. 

Thus the soul has a much deeper loyalty to her initial object of gratification than most of us suspect. The power of this attachment does not become clear until it is brought up in deep levels of the soul’s inner journey. In our work this issue arises in connection with the experience and integration of the diamond vehicle called the Markabah, the diamond vehicle having to do with pleasure. The soul’s loyalty to the historical object of gratification and to the orientation associated with it is libidinal, emotional, and philosophical. The mother, or breast, was the first external object and hence the prototype of such objects. Each time the soul relates to an object of gratification, or a love object, the soul cannot help but relate to it in a way that is similar to how she related to her mother. She values it as a source of pleasurable satisfaction and fulfillment; at the same time, she has a deep and committed allegiance to it. But the fact that the first object of gratification is an object that the soul comes to recognize as separate from her and outside her, deeply conditions her to expect pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfillment only from external objects. This expectation becomes the libidinal foundation of the materialistic and worldly view of reality, the view that the animal soul adheres to totally. The first instinctual object and love object, the mother, becomes projected onto later objects, and onto the world, for mother was not only the first object but, at the beginning, the whole world for the infant. The externality of the first object makes the soul, at some point, project this onto all objects that she considers outside herself, onto the totality of manifestation. 

Levels of Source. What we perceive to be the Source, from which everything emanates in the second level of understanding Holy Origin, and with which everything is coemergent in the third level, goes through successive refinements. In other words, our sense of what this Source is deepens. This understanding—that Being can be perceived in subtler and subtler depths—is very specific to the Diamond Approach. We call the progressively deeper experiences of Being the boundless dimensions. We see that, as our experience of it deepens, Being is perceived as having fewer and fewer qualities, until in time, it becomes completely quality-less. Many spiritual teachings do not talk about the succession of qualities or structures of Being nor of the progression of experience of Being to its ultimate depth. Buddhism, for instance, considers Being as emptiness or as the union of emptiness and awareness (depending on the particular school), and that that is the ultimate reality to which you are either connected or not. In our work, we say that this is one perception of Being, but there are other levels at which it can be experienced. 

We have not so far distinguished between the various grades of space because it has not been directly relevant to our discussion, and more importantly, it is not relevant to the beginning experience of space. Seeing space in its various grades and depths is a refinement and an added subtlety. However, as one goes deeper into freeing the mind from self-boundaries, and as essence is awakened and developed, it becomes important and even necessary to distinguish between the various kinds of space. Here, the various grades or levels of space will be seen to be connected to different depths and subtleties of the sense of self or separate identity. As the boundaries of the self become subtler and more fundamental, space becomes deeper and more powerful in its annihilating influence. This process continues until one is able to experience reality with no boundaries at all, with no sense of separate identity whatsoever, with no sense of individual experience. Although this might sound fantastic, undesirable, or even frightening, it remains nonetheless the objective of spiritual (essential) development. This development is reached by some individuals, and it is experienced as the freest and most positive condition possible. It is equated with liberation and enlightenment. 

It is possible to see that space is present all the time, and that it underlies and inheres in any object that we perceive. So space becomes the inherent emptiness, the inherent openness in experience. That is why in some of the traditions, as that of Dzogchen, Being is described as having emptiness as its essence. Experientially, as we penetrate the representations through which we perceive, we discover that Being is presence whose essence is spaciousness. Our perception and understanding of spaciousness can go through degrees of refinement, which are experienced as the levels of space, until we recognize it with complete objectivity, which is possible when there are no obscurations in our experience of reality. At this subtlety of perception space and presence are so indistinguishable that experience becomes paradoxical. It is both being and nonbeing, both presence and absence, but not exactly, because even being and nonbeing are categories not free from representations. This is the dimension of the mystery of our Being. Space is the inherent natural openness of experience, which has no bounds, no limitations. It is open through and through, in infinite ways and all dimensions. Being is not only open in three dimensions, it is open in all possible dimensions, to all possible experiences, which include the usual time and space. What we see as physical space is only the most obvious manifestation of this openness. This is the dimension of space which is the openness that allows physical objects to be. 

So we see that although the first grade of space, for instance, might be present, there can still be a sense of identity; but now the sense of identity is connected to the deeper three sets of boundaries. The first space cannot act on these subtler boundaries. The balance of this chapter will describe the various grades or levels of space.

i.  Clear space. This is the space we have mainly described so far in this book: the clear, empty, and light spaciousness. It is related generally to the external self-image, which is the closest set of boundaries to our normal consciousness.

ii.  Black space. This is an empty, light, but black spaciousness. Its phenomenological relation to the clear space is like the relation of night to day. It is generally related to the internal self-image, which is usually deeper and more difficult to surrender. The loss of this deeper boundary is usually experienced as a loss of identity. While for the clear space a commonly associated fear is one of disintegration, for this black space, the fear is of not knowing who one is. As the black space arises, there is a sense initially of a lack of orientation, which produces much anxiety. But if the individual allows the disorientation, and surrenders the sense of self, after a while the black empty space will be experienced as containing a sense of depth, silence and peace.

iii.  Clear dense space. Dealing with the boundaries of the external body image will lead to a clear kind of space, but different from the above clear space in that it will paradoxically be experienced as full. It will have a fullness and a presence, like the body. But at the same time it will be space. It is a compact and dense space, experienced at the same time as openness. But the openness is immense and powerful. The influence of this clear dense space is not exactly the dissolution of physical boundaries; more exactly, the experience of this space allows the perception that the boundaries of the body are themselves space, and hence are not real boundaries. It is not possible to conceive of this dense (full) space without experiencing it. The mind can only conceive of space that is similar to physical space, and this particular space has characteristics physical space does not have.

iv.  Black dense space. Dealing with the boundaries of the internal body image will precipitate the experience of a dense space like the preceding one, but black instead of clear. This space arises when the individual lets go of the sense of identity stemming from inner bodily sensations. This sense of identity stems not only from the quality or kind of inner sensations of the body, but more importantly from the mere presence of these sensations and impressions. In other words, the identity here is very much connected with the mere presence of the body. This identity is with the body. The loss of this set of boundaries will usually bring the fear of loss of the body itself. So in dealing with this particular set of boundaries, the individual comes across the fear of death. In fact, the fear of death is encountered in all the black spaces. The personality does not usually differentiate itself from the body when feelings about death are involved.  

The most typical contemporary view is to think of consciousness as a property of the body. This notion naturally leads to the scientific theory of consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the development of brain complexity. This view is clearly a manifestation of the extreme of materialistic reductionism, which we have seen to be a result of the separation of soul, world, and Being. Our direct and sustained experience—and that of hundreds of thousands throughout the ages who have investigated soul and consciousness—reveals the soul as a conscious field, a sensitive medium, which as we discussed in the last chapter can be experienced as separate from or in a different location than the body, and at many levels of spiritual experience is known directly to be more fundamental than physical reality. The soul is sensitive because it is fundamentally an organism of consciousness, and consciousness is sensitive. Just as the body is an organism of living protoplasm, the soul is an organism of sensitive consciousness; just as the body is an organized field of protoplasm, the soul is an organized field of consciousness. Before we discuss the organization of this field, we must explore the notion of a field of consciousness.

Personal is not in contradistinction to universal; personal is in contradistinction with impersonal. To be personal does not eliminate objectivity; you can be objective without the personality’s assumption that objective means cold and unfeeling. When you know yourself this way, you can go through all the levels of spiritual experience—universal included. Then you are truly living your life. You are actually in anything you experience, you are actually doing it. What comes out is a spontaneous response; it has nothing to do with the past. The qualities of essence are within you like your organs are within you—love, compassion, will, the universal, etc. So you see the mystery is not usually understood because personal is taken to mean personality. The solution is usually thought to be to go to the universal, which is not personal. The personality is in contradiction to the universal. The true personal is not in contradiction to the universal; it is, in fact, a child of the universal, the fruit of the universal. It is possible to contact your personal aspect, to become aware of who you are, before enlightenment and loss of ego. The moment you know who you are, it becomes easier to know what is not you, what is conditioned, and what is personality. The work is very clear then; there is a guidance. Before that, you don’t know where you are going. You don’t know what is you and what is not you, what is real, and what is not real—you have no idea. You have only your thoughts and some people’s ideas and instructions. But the moment you know who you are, what it is like to be you, once you can recognize this, then you can tell what is you and what is not you. 

We have seen that in inquiry, we have to explore both the object of exploration and the explorer simultaneously. This way, we bring objectivity to our inquiry, and this objectivity increases and expands as we understand our experience at deeper and deeper levels. What does this mean? Let’s say an individual finds that it is the objective truth that he is angry at you because you remind him of his mother. However, in the process of exploring the situation and himself, he may discover another level of subjectivity: the position that he is a self who has a mother. This level of subjectivity was not relevant for his inquiry at the beginning, but as he continues exploring, he comes upon the truth that he has an issue with separation. So now we have two levels of subjectivity and two corresponding levels of objectivity. As his objectivity develops, the objective truth he finds is more like: “It’s not just that I’m angry at you because you remind me of my mother. What’s happening in a deeper sense is that I believe that there is a you and a me, and that there’s a separation between us related to my feeling angry. And now I see that I learned to separate from my mother by feeling angry.” When he explores the separation, he may experience and appreciate the Red Essence, the presence of a personal strength necessary for one to be truly separate and autonomous, to be one’s own person. Then, if he inquires even more deeply the next time he gets angry at you, he recognizes that his prior understanding of separation was not completely objective. He understands now that separation does not mean separateness, does not mean that there is you and there is he, as two islands. He recognizes that separation simply means difference, that the two of you are simply two waves of the same ocean instead of being one undifferentiated ocean or two self-islands. He sees it is true that there are two waves but that he is not separate in the sense of being isolated. Thus he realizes another level of objectivity. 

The meaning of curiosity and discrimination changes as our investigation into who and what we are proceeds. At the beginning, our inquiry is full of ego. In time you question whether the egoic perspective and its accompanying effort are needed in order to remain steadfast in inquiry. The curiosity that fuels your investigation becomes more spontaneous and free. Your questions elicit increasingly subtle responses. Everything I’ve talked about manifests on different levels of subtlety and refinement. Loving the truth, openness of mind, courage to be where you are, joy of discovery, and steadfastness of will introduce us to the essential dimension. You first have to see how your ego, your personality, your fixed point of view engage with these qualities. As you explore further, the balance keeps changing. That balance that keeps changing is what we call going through the various levels and dimensions. As each level dissolves a certain idea, a certain way of looking at things and doing things, who you are and what the world is become more real and defined and refined. 

We have so far used the terms “essential presence” and “primordial presence” interchangeably, but there is actually a slight difference in meaning. The presence which is the essence of the self can be experienced on many levels of subtlety, or dimensions of spiritual experience. It is always presence, but we refer to it as essential presence, on any of the spiritual dimensions, to point to its truth as the inner ontological core of the self. By primordial presence, on the other hand, we mean the deepest level of the essential presence, what is referred to in some traditions as nondual presence. This primordial presence can be experienced as the true nature of the self only in the experience of full self-realization. We will use the terms “essential presence” and “primordial presence” interchangeably when the distinction between the two meanings is immaterial. However, on the occasions in our discussion where we focus on one of the two particular meanings, we will discriminate the meaning. 

Presence can be experienced on many levels of subtlety and refinement. It can be experienced as the presence of light, the presence of consciousness, the presence of awareness, the presence of love, the presence of clear light, or the presence that is the nonduality (coemergence) of consciousness (or light) and emptiness. Even emptiness, as conceived of by the Theravada and some of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism, can actually be experienced as presence. But then we move into very subtle domains of discrimination, where emptiness is described as neither being nor nonbeing. That presence and emptiness form a unity, besides being opposites, was also recognized by some of the Western philosophers, as in the case of Hegel:

Nothing, if it is thus immediate and equal to itself, is also conversely the same as Being is. The truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming. (Weiss, 1974, p. 119)

We hope that this note will suffice to clarify our view that the experience of the spiritual and true essence, and the nature of the self, is presence. 

Now, what we take ourselves to be and what we take reality to be are linked with what happened in our childhood. A lot of what we believe has to do with our relationship with our mother and with our childhood environment. However, on the level of essential reality and on the level of identity, the issues that arise are universal; they don’t depend on childhood specifics. Wherever you go in the world, everyone has certain fundamental levels of suffering, regardless of how happy or miserable they might be. The very identification of oneself as an object among other objects makes us suffer at this deeper level. Fundamentally, we don’t suffer because our mother didn’t love us or our father was mad at us, although these things might have made it worse. The problem is much more universal. The fundamental notions about what a human being is and what reality is constitute a universal social phenomenon, although it does vary in different cultures. These notions lead to suffering because they are not true; if they were true, they wouldn’t lead to suffering. So again we notice that seeing the truth is the way to freedom from unnecessary suffering. 

Anytime we experience true nature, we are experiencing a single truth. We are not experiencing different true natures or different parts of one true nature. We are not experiencing different levels of it. Although in the hierarchical view of the path we discover different levels or dimensions of increasing depth and subtlety, the fourth turning of the wheel reveals the nonhierarchical view of the path. The view of totality, one of the wisdoms of the fourth turning, accommodates multiple views of reality, including the view of nonhierarchy. We see that any experience of opening, any fundamental insight into reality and into ourselves, any experience of the purity of true nature and the purity of reality is as valid and important as any other. Any experience of true nature is as significant as any other because it is the other; it is all others. Each experience of true nature is all experiences of true nature. Each form is all of true nature; each dimension is all of true nature. 

We’re getting many points of view. Let’s see how we might synthesize them. It seems trust has to do with truth, certainty, surrender, with the issue of being hurt or not being hurt, and with the ability to be oneself. It is what allows us to be vulnerable. I can think of several questions from this discussion. What are the varieties or levels of trust? What is trust? What leads to trust? First, it seems that trust has different levels and different varieties: for instance, trusting yourself, trusting somebody else, trusting a situation, trusting a certain truth, or certain knowledge, or a certain belief. The experiences of these different kinds of trust feel different. When you trust yourself, you don’t feel the same as when you’re trusting somebody else. When you’re trusting yourself, you’re more surrendered to what is happening inside you, to your own promptings, to your own truth. When you’re trusting somebody else, it feels different. When you trust yourself, you don’t have a feeling of surrender—you just do it. When you trust somebody else, there is more sense of surrender, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to be there without needing defenses. And trusting a situation means you’re feeling somewhat secure in the situation. There is a kind of security and safety that things will be okay or that what’s supposed to happen is going to happen. Maybe there is a common factor among all these kinds of trust. In trusting yourself, or somebody else, or a situation, isn’t there an implied security? A sense of safety or a sense of no need to protect yourself, a sense that you are in a friendly land, not a hostile one? A sense that you can allow yourself to be whatever you are in that moment without having to be too careful, without feeling paranoid? So, trust has to do with the absence of fear and paranoia. The simplest kind of trust essentially means there’s no need for fear. That wherever you are—with yourself, with somebody else—you’re in good hands. 

You have to be personal in your truth. There might be truth, all kinds of truths in the world, but they are not relevant to you at that moment. You must see what relates to you in that moment, otherwise the question is intellectual, and if it’s intellectual you’re not going to be able to solve it. But if you take your personal experience at that very moment, you could find the truth right there. It is that personal, free, alone investigation of your moment to moment truth, that will lead you to all truth, all the levels of truth. But if you try to follow what this person says, or that person says, it’s hard to know the way. Really it is not possible, because though there may be deep truth in it, it might not be relevant to you at that moment. If it’s not relevant there is no need for you to know it then, and it could be an intellectual defense against what you do need at that moment. That’s why I emphasize the personal aspect, to be personally involved in your truth. It is your life, it is your experience, it is your every sensation at that moment; it is for you to understand. The truth finally will be revealed in you, to you, if you stay with the moment without prejudice, just exploring the truth. You can’t do it from the outside, you need to penetrate and own your own experience. 

As I’ve said, it is a law of Being that its Guidance manifests when we want to know the truth. This is not a moral injunction. It’s not ethics. It’s about how reality works. It means that ultimately truth is the nature of Being. So Being says, “I’ll open myself to you only if you’re interested in me. But if you want something else, that’s what you’ll get—you’re not going to get the truth.” In other words, the revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven is the action of the optimizing force of Being, and only the love of truth can invite and activate that force. The optimizing force guides experience toward greater optimization, which means contact with deeper levels of truth. So loving truth for its own sake unites the heart of the soul with Being’s love of revealing its own riches. This revelation is not an intellectual exercise. You can’t do it through a reasoning process. You can’t do it through logical deduction. The mind at some point is incapable of telling you what is needed to reveal the truth. It is the heart that knows, because the heart loves the truth. To love truth for its own sake means that at some point you give yourself over to the truth. This, however, is not a consequence, not a matter of cause and effect. It’s not that you give yourself over to the truth and then the truth reveals itself. It’s not even that you give yourself up to the truth because you love the truth. Loving the truth is giving oneself up to the truth. To love the truth for its own sake means that in the very instant of loving the truth, your self-centeredness has vanished. This is very profound, yet it can be very, very subtle. 

However, none of the levels of truth that we have been describing is what the Holy Idea of Holy Truth refers to. Holy Truth is the perception that all these levels are actually one thing, that all the dimensions constitute a complete state of unity. In other words, all the dimensions of reality are completely inseparable from one another, and all are the same thing. This is the perception that there is absolutely no duality—either horizontally (between objects) or vertically (between dimensions). So although we experience ourselves moving progressively into deeper and deeper dimensions of reality as our inquiry becomes increasingly subtle, Holy Truth is the perception that all these dimensions exist simultaneously. They are all facets of the same reality, so the sense of a hierarchy is ultimately illusory. 

Ultimately, the Origin is the Absolute, but each of us is in a different place in terms of what we are able to perceive and experience, so I am discussing Holy Origin from these other levels as well. We saw in the last chapter that to do the Holy Work means to let yourself be where you are. It means allowing yourself to be wherever the unfoldment is taking you and to perceive and be in touch with whatever the unfoldment is causing to appear—or manifesting in you—as who you are. Ultimately, that is the Absolute, but your perception might not be that deep yet. Many spiritual teachings refer to one dimension of reality as the only true one, and if you don’t experience that dimension, the tendency is to invalidate your experience and to try to go to the level that the teaching is postulating. This disconnects you from where you are and blocks the unfoldment. If you see that there are many levels of truth, you take into consideration that there is an unfoldment that goes progressively deeper, and then you can allow yourself to be where you are and allow the momentum of unfoldment to take you deeper. So while Holy Origin means that we are the Absolute, we can experience it from wherever we are; and by being where we are, we allow the spirit to move us to that Origin.

In the Diamond Approach, students are taught various practices that develop the capacity to recognize and orient to (and later from) the direct experience of presence, of the field of awareness. In addition, ongoing open inquiry into one’s experience, both of the content of mind/emotion/body and of the field of presence experienced by the student, and the effects of the latter on the former and vice versa, constitute a learning and orientation that support the ongoing revelation of various levels of the truth of the soul’s reality and of Reality beyond the individual soul. The transformations in the sense of self that result from these practices turn out to be systematically consistent with various developments in traditional spiritual teachings. In the Diamond Approach, we use the term soul to refer to the whole self, including all its elements and dimensions. Thus, when we work on ourselves we are working on our souls. Our true or spiritual nature does not need work; it is primordially pure and complete. However, we need to work on ourselves in order to become sufficiently open and clear to even glimpse this nature. What is it that becomes open and clear? Many will say it is the mind, but then what do we mean by mind? Is it our thoughts and thinking mechanisms, or does it include our feelings and emotions, our capacity to will and choose, our faculties and potentials? If by mind we mean all of our experiences and perceptions and the various capacities, faculties, and potentials, then we are back to our notion of soul. Our use of soul refers to the totality of our subjective experience, including whatever mechanisms and capacities, conscious or unconscious, are involved in that.

So, if you know that you are strong, what is the feeling of weakness? It’s a lie. If you experience yourself as solid will, what does impotence mean? It’s an emotional state. If you continue living your life as if you’re deficient, you’re living according to what is false, and your life supports the falsehood. Your actions support your false identity. But if you start living according to the truth, however limited it may be, you’re starting to support what is real in you. What is real in you is simply not deficient. So what does it mean to live according to the truth? We have talked before about truth in terms of different levels of understanding. To live according to the truth means to live according to the level of your understanding, to live your deepest experience. In the beginning, the truth might be insights about yourself, about your personality, about your self-image. So to live according to that truth means to actually apply your will, to put your attention into living according to what you have already seen. Ultimately, the truth is you. So to live according to the truth means to live according to who you are. Otherwise, you won’t have a truthful life. Living means the living of who you are, the actual flow of your true nature. So if you’re not living according to the truth, you’re not living. If you’re not living according to the truth, then what is living is the false, the shell, the empty image. You’re living according to the self that is the ego, which is empty, deficient, and small because ultimately the ego is not real. 

As I mentioned before, there are two kinds, or levels, of veils that develop out of our original experience of dual unity. The first is based on the specific qualities of that union—both our positive and negative experiences within it—and it determines our later relationship to union. Many issues and feelings are included in this: our needs, longings, and vulnerabilities; issues of helplessness and dependence; avoidance of and resistance to union; fears of being overwhelmed by negativity, of losing ourselves, of losing our individuality whether in a positive or a negative sense; and so on.  The second level is a more fundamental one, and it is based on the fact that there is a dual unity in the first place. It means that your longing for union later in life will manifest as a longing for dual unity. This veil has to do with seeing union as an attainment or the regaining of a perfect union with another. You are always looking for that all-good, wonderful, completely harmonious union. That is what you think you are after. But you are actually looking for the all-good, wonderful, harmonious dual union. And that becomes a fundamental veil.  It’s obvious how both levels of veils can create all kinds of difficulties and problems, especially in intimate love relationships, in sexual intimacy, or in other situations of sharing, bonding, or connection that involve vulnerability and openness to another person.   So, first you work through all the negativity and issues that relate to the first level, and finally you are able to be in a state of unity. The next thing you realize is that you feel that you can only have that unity with another person—and only with one particular person. If you are not in the physical presence of that person—say, having dinner or lying in bed—there is no unity for you. Your mind can’t make sense of a unity that is not dependent on the other’s physical presence. Thus the thought, “I have to be looking into my lover's eyes; otherwise, there is no union,” becomes a fundamental veil. The issue of the second, more fundamental veil won’t become relevant for your exploration, however, until you have first identified, explored, and worked through the issues that relate to the first-level veil. These arise out of your own personal history, especially the conflicts specific to your unique relationship with your mother. So at this first level, the veils are different for different people. At the second level, the veil is the same for everybody, because for all human beings, it is the dual unity itself that is the veil.     

Here it is not a matter of discovering new aspects of essence. It is a matter of letting go of the ego identity and living from the essence that is already present. In this phase of the work, everything becomes an object of study and understanding. It is no more an inner process. One's life, with all its situations, comes into focus. One's style of life—how one leads one's life in all its aspects—becomes understood and modified accordingly. The individual becomes aware of his environment and ascertains whether it supports or inhibits the life of essence. One's relationships to other people, intimate, sexual, social, and professional, all become clear and objective. Everything, every part of one's life, inner or outer, becomes conscious, no longer under the sway of the unconscious. This is a very deep and involved work. It leads to responsibility and maturity. It would be almost impossible to carry out this deep work if it were not for the presence of essence, with its penetrating power. Most of the unconscious material at this phase relates to the early months of life and even before that. It is material that is considered preverbal and, in fact, pre-personality. The mind cannot function at such depth. Only penetrating intuition and direct perception can be used effectively at such a level of work. Essence does penetrate to these deep strata of the personality. It exposes them to the light of understanding. In fact, essence is the true agent of transformation; it manifests the necessary aspects corresponding to the relevant sectors of the personality, and these aspects make possible the necessary understanding. This knowledge needed at these very deep levels of work cannot come from outside. External knowledge is only information and is not effective at these levels where the mind does not have a structure yet. Only one's own essence can provide the necessary knowledge. Essence itself is the experiential knowledge. Also, essence is what takes the place of these abandoned sectors of the personality.

The Work has always been like that. It is also true that different people will go to different levels of the Work; not everyone will go necessarily to the deepest dimensions. Some people will get to a certain level of understanding and realization, and that will feel like enough for them. They do not want more, or they feel that they do not need more. That is fine; then they can leave. Leaving is preferable to sticking around, pretending they’re learning more, when they are just continuing the status quo. The Work is continuous growth, continuous change. It does not stay the same. Whenever it stays the same it is dead. When the Work no longer makes you feel insecure and uncomfortable, it is either dead, or you do not need it. These are the only two alternatives. However, some people complain that they have a hard time. They complain that they are uncomfortable. They complain that they’re not served enough food, or are not fed at the right time. Who said this is a nursery? Who said the Work is done according to the demands of the student? That applies for instance, in our physical work practice. Regardless of how much you have done it, regardless how much you have learned from it, you can still learn from it. And everyone, regardless of how much you have done it, how much you know about it, whatever else you have got to do, you need to continue doing it as if it is the first day of doing it. Always. Otherwise, it is better not to do it.