The Markabah is a structure of essence composed of all aspects in the diamond form except that in this dimension each aspect appears not only clear, faceted, and precise but also as the very presence of pure pleasure. Each diamond feels and tastes like a wonderful piece of candy, with an affect deeply and pleasurably satisfying, a state of consciousness that fills the soul with a pleasurable bliss that penetrates and suffuses all of her field, filling all the cells of the body with a glowing and fulfilling sensation. Each diamond feels like a heavenly and full-bodied presence that combines the pleasure of the best food, the greatest sensual and sexual contact, and the utmost of a loving fulfillment. Each diamond is a different kind or flavor of pleasure, so we feel compassion as pleasure, as well as love, strength, truth, clarity, will, and so on. The Markabah is revealed as the body of pleasure, a body composed of the purest and most authentic pleasure, in various qualities and flavors.

When the body cannot accommodate the presence of essence, a person might attempt to get the pleasure and freedom he seeks through involvement in various physical activities. But whatever pleasure results involves either tension, friction, exertion, discharge, or physical contact. These are good on their own merit, but they fail to reach the richness of essence in its qualities of pleasure. They don't come close to the sweetness, exquisiteness, smoothness, refinement, and delicacy of essential experience. In a sense, essence is pure pleasure, a pleasure that exists in itself, and not a reaction, a response, or a result of anything. Our true nature, in one of its many facets, is pure unadulterated pleasure and delight.

The nonconceptual positivity that is Holy Love is not just a feeling. It is how reality looks, how it feels, how it smells, what touching it feels like. In terms of seeing, it is beauty. In terms of hearing, it is harmony. In terms of tasting, it is sweet. In terms of smelling, it has a quality of perfume. In terms of feeling, it is positive affect. It is what truly turns on all your senses, what stimulates and is pure pleasure to them, making you feel happy and loving. So Holy Love invokes descriptions like positive, blissful, ecstatic, pleasurable, uplifting, wonderful, delicious, enjoyable, warm, delightful, and so on. To understand what we mean by Holy Love and to not restrict it to one conceptual quality or another, it might be helpful to see how it manifests in some of the essential aspects; or to put it another way, to see what the Holy Love is in them. Holy Love is a clear and distinct quality of the very substance and consciousness of each essential aspect. Holy Love is seen in the positive, uplifting, and blissful affect and effect of each aspect. It is the sweetness and softness in Love. It is the lightness and playfulness in Joy. It is the preciousness and the exquisiteness of Intelligence and Brilliancy. It is the purity and the confidence of Will. It is the aliveness, excitement, and glamour of the Red or Strength aspect. It is the mysteriousness and silkiness in the Black or Peace aspect. It is the wholeness and integrity in the The Pearl Beyond Price, or Personal Essence. It is the freshness and the newness of Space. It is the depth, the deep warmth, and the satisfying realness of Truth.

That’s the paradox to which Jesus was referring. If you become poor in spirit, you will be in the kingdom of heaven. If you are completely poor, you get nothing absolutely, which ontologically is the same thing as having everything. The switch point concerns the sense of an existing self, the feeling that there is a me who has or who doesn’t have. The transition is that the sense of self goes. Before that goes, you have things or you don’t have things. That central sense of self who is going to have this, who is going to be enlightened, who is going to experience God, who is going to get rich, who is going to have pleasure, is what ultimately goes. Everything else will be left. God will be left, pleasure will be left, fun will be left, everything will be there without you. Then everything will be experienced purely. Pleasure will be pure pleasure because you are not there to contaminate it. As a separate self that possesses things, you are an impurity. Without that self, when there is love, there is pure love. It is not you who says, “I love you.” Sometimes when you feel love you can actually sense a little, dark, murky cloud sitting somewhere and looking at this ocean of love. When you feel, “I’m loving and I’m going to save the world,” the world needs to be saved from you. As long as there is a you that wants to save the world, the world needs to be saved from you. You are just making trouble for people by pretending to save them when in fact you are asserting your own deficiencies. You haven’t got anything to save anybody with anyway. And if you’re fortunate, you will be saved someday by that love itself. It comes and melts you, and shows you it is not you who is going to save anyone. You can be saved, but only by everything being taken away from you. One thing after another will go, until you become completely poor; then you will be gone. The riches are your support; when you are completely poor, you have no supports, and then you just dissolve. You are gone. A wave of death comes and purity pervades.

So we see that true understanding is not a matter of searching; to seek understanding is the same thing as trying to seek wealth or love or anything external. It is just a different arena, a different place. The attitude that you are deficient, that you need to get something in order to have peace and fulfillment, reveals that you are not seeing yourself. You are not seeing that who you are is not someone who needs to get something. Your very nature, by itself, is pure pleasure, pure bliss, pure peace. Only the activity of searching cuts you off from this peace.