In the history and literature of the Work, we see that knowledge of what we are calling “Essence” is the goal of the Work. In Western philosophy, we find Plato talking about pure ideas, or the Platonic forms. Plato, a student of Socrates (who was doing the Work), wrote about Socrates’ discussions with his students concerning what are called the “eternal verities.” (We call them the qualities of Essence. These include courage, truth, humility, love, and so on.) Socrates wanted to show how people learn these things. He demonstrated that we can’t learn these from someone else. No one can teach you the quality of courage or love. In his final arguments, he showed that we know these things only by remembering them. Everyone has some memory of these essential forms. We have seen in our work that a consistent characteristic of essential states is the feeling that you have known it before, you have been here before, you are recalling a more fundamental reality that, in the process of living, you had forgotten. So we know that although we are generally unaware of it, this memory of Essence exists, and we know that the process of remembering our Essence is the process of remembering ourselves, of returning to our true nature.

As we see, all of these familiar ego states have textures, tastes, and smells just like external physical objects do. And different people have developed different capacities for sensing these states. Some people use mostly the inner touch. Some people can perceive taste easily but haven’t developed their sense of smell much; others develop smell to an unusual degree. But the development of a given subtle capacity has a direct relation to the corresponding physical capacity. For example, people who develop a fine appreciation for different kinds of food and a discrimination of their subtle differences can develop the inner capacity of taste more easily than the other subtle capacities, and more readily than individuals who are not so attuned to their taste buds. The same is true with smell and with touch. But this is not so in every case. Some people who are great connoisseurs of food and wine, for example, never develop the capacity for inner taste.

The moment that we say some experience is ours, we go back to the same attitude, just like the person who has lots of money. We feel rich again and we support our ego with that richness. To learn to be poor, we have to go very far. The attachment to realization has to go. The attachment to inner states has to go. Needing to have good states has to go, just as needing to have bad states has to go. We learn that our attachment to negative states also can make us feel full and rich with oceans of hatred and mountains of jealousy. We can be rich in envy, anger, and fear. These inner possessions support the identity in the same way that oceans of love and mountains of strength do. The ego says, “These are mine.” 

The main difference between emotional states and essence is that the former are discharged processes of our nervous systems, whereas the latter is definitely not. Emotional states are primarily physiological processes accompanied by some ideational content. On the other hand, essence is not a physiological process and is not a discharge of the nervous system. Essence is independent of the nervous system, transcends physiological processes, and can, in fact, exist without the physical organism. Essence, when it is present, affects the nervous system, but it is not the discharge, or the emotion, that results from the contact between essence and the physiology. This is a very important difference. It means that emotions don't really exist except in the sense that activities exist. They are activities, and activities don't have an ontological presence. Essence, on the other hand, is not an activity. As we saw in chapter 1, essence is a presence, and its basic quality is its existence as an ontological actuality, as a “suchness.” 

We have asserted the truth of substantiality to impress on the reader that essence or being is not a state of mind but is an actual and palpable ontological presence. The substantiality of essence is a fact that must be taken into consideration for the process of development, but simply realizing this truth is not sufficient. This is because, for instance, the physical body is also a substantial presence. We have stated and asserted the truth of substantiality to impress on the reader that essence or being is not an insight, not a state of mind, but an actual and palpable ontological presence. 

So everything that is conceivable and experienceable exists right now as one. The formless dimensions, the essential states, and physical reality are not separate from each other, nor are physical objects separate from each other; there is no division anywhere—only complete unity. The alchemical concept for this is the idea of the macrocosm, the totality of the universe. 

Then there is subtle or inner hearing. Inner states have sounds and vibrations, just as they have shapes and colors. We can hear rushing winds, flowing water, crashing and crackling, and so on. Essential states have their own characteristic sounds, such as the gentle sound of streaming water, the delicate tinkling of jewelry, the ringing of bells, flute sounds, and the hum of bees, to mention just a few. We can hear inner music and uplifting sounds. Our experience becomes magnified, attaining new levels of vividness. The deepest subtle capacity is the capacity of direct knowing, which is a function of the Diamond Guidance itself. You don’t go through a process, you don’t even perceive anything—you just know with certainty.

The condition of having isolated experiences of an essential aspect is termed by the Sufis the stage of the hal; the experience is still a state. A state is contrasted with a station (maqam) when the essential aspect is made one's own, when it is attained by one's own efforts and established permanently by such efforts. That an essential aspect has become a station does not mean it is always present. This condition exists after it is just established, but as other aspects emerge they will displace it. In this case, a station means that the aspect is permanently available; it is present whenever the situation requires it.

In most spiritual teachings, the personality is seen as a barrier, the problem, the devil that needs to be slain. Only then, it is believed, can realization occur. It is true that a seeker's personality or his history is a large part of his problem, but it is so only from the perspective of a consciousness that he still cannot relate to. According to his own perception, the experiences of the personality are real, solid, and of great import. Rejecting or ignoring the personality will only tighten the knots that imprison the student. Also, the issues and the conflicts of the personality are not haphazard or meaningless; they are not simply barriers to realization and liberation. They are related in specific ways to the states of realization themselves, to the states of being. To gain a more precise understanding of the situation, and to personalize the teaching, we need first to understand the personality and how it is related to the free reality, the being—what we call essence. Our true nature, our essence, what is real and unconditioned in the human being, does not exist in some mysterious realm, waiting for us to attack and slay the inimical ego, and then show up in glory. Our being, our essence, the divine within us, is connected to our personality in a very complex and intimate way. 

Insight and realization can be used to magnify imbalance, or to balance and harmonize the consciousness. A primary component of this balance is doing, action. Understanding is also very important because you can experience a state of being without understanding. Many people experience all kind of states of realization, but they do not understand what those states are about; they are not interested in understanding. That is just as detrimental as not embodying these states in one’s life. It is possible to block the flow of understanding. When there is a state of being that is not yet understood, whatever understanding can come from it needs to flow, and then the whole thing needs to come out in action. It has to seep completely into your life to transform your life. There is no reason why a human being cannot live a life of truth, love, strength, impeccability, dignity, and self-respect. You do not need any special situation. You do not need any unusual occasion. Any interaction, any transaction, is a place for you to be that way, and that is when you see the grace and the beauty of life.

Experiencing an essential state affects some people in such a way that the experience deeply transforms their life, shifting their whole orientation and perspective. Whether this happens seems to have to do with expectations that the person has, or what the person is already valuing and idealizing. It has to do with that person’s focus… Also, it depends on the depth of a person’s interest and love for the truth itself.

However, because the level of the chakras is dramatic, intensely emotional, and full of visions of all kinds of beautiful phosphorescent lights, it has a fascinating and captivating influence on the mind. The person keeps seeking these dramatic experiences and is not interested in the subtler processes that are necessary for moving to the essential dimension. The drama and the flash are mostly the result of the emotional nature of the experience. Each chakra contains so many deep and intense emotions, which have been suppressed and stored up for many years, that when the chakra is activated the energies of all these dammed up emotions are liberated and flood the person's consciousness. The deepest emotions in the heart are those of love and joy, and they flood out in all their intensity, producing beautiful lights, sensations, and ecstatic states. 

This process of turning a state into a station can be seen in a way that sheds a different light on it. The process is that of working on having the essence, in whatever aspect it happens to be, present in all of an individual's life situations. He might experience essence in a certain situation but find it difficult to be essentially present when he is in a different situation. It is time then to turn one's attention to that situation to understand what exactly is causing the difficulty. The individual will then confront his anxiety and attempt to understand the unconscious material causing it, until it becomes possible for essence to be present in this situation. A person does not usually need to look for these situations; they are usually presented to him by his own personality functioning in his life. The culmination of this process is that the individual will be able to embody the essential aspect in all relevant situations; it becomes a station.

The process of essential development takes the soul from her initial condition at the completion of ego development, in which she is dissociated from her true nature and living mostly as the animal soul with a civilized veneer of ego structures, to the station of the human soul. In other words, the discovery and integration of essence transforms the soul from its condition of being primarily an animal soul to the state of being primarily a human soul, a soul with heart. What transforms the animal soul to the human soul is her becoming receptive and transparent to essence. When essence manifests through the attitudes and actions of the soul we recognize that she now behaves in a more human way, with heart. This is primarily the task of the second journey of presence, the journey with presence. The soul journeys here in the company of presence, receptive to it and guided by it.

All of our experiences, all of our perceptions, are basically due to the dynamism of our Being. And all of them reflect the optimizing force functioning in either a straightforward manner or a distorted manner. There are, in other words, no accidental experiences, no chance inner states. Whatever arises is in us, whatever we experience in the world is a response, or manifestation, of our Being. And our Being is functioning as optimally as it can, given the presence or absence and the quality of our filters. 

There is another, less obvious reason the ego is bound to live in frustration and suffering. We have seen that identification systems, by their very nature, tend to resist Being, and that they always involve some defensive function; further, any defensive quality or posture in the mind must be reflected in the organism as tension or contraction. We have described this either as a thickness in the case of defense, or a lighter dullness like a rubber cloud, in the case of pure identifications. But this thickness, which can become hardness, and the dullness, are nothing but states of contraction in the organism, basically in the nervous system. Thus the core of the thickness or dullness of all the defense mechanisms of ego must be the negative-merging affect. This thickness is the dull coating we have discussed in relation to the feeling of frustration. Thus all identification systems are reflected in the nervous system as the negative-merging affect. So the negative-merging affect forms not only the core of negative identifications that are based on negative merging, but also the core of what are usually considered positive identifications. The wider implication is that the experiential core of the ego is the negative-merging affect, pure suffering. Again we see the truth of Buddha’s first noble truth, this time from the perspective of psychology. 

So understanding is a development which also brings loss. The moment you understand the state you have, you lose it. Because of this, many people aren’t attracted to the path of understanding. They like devotional methods and other such practices, because in them you get to develop love or compassion and keep it. You might be always feeling loving, but not know consciously what love is, what it does. When you understand love, you understand that losing it doesn’t mean you don’t experience it any more, but rather that love will arise in your experience only if your environment needs it. For example, the experience of compassion or love is not something I feel all the time. But if I’m working with someone and that person needs love, I experience love. If the person doesn’t need love, I don’t experience love, I experience something else. That’s what it means for a state to become a station. It means you completely own that state. And it becomes like anything else that’s really yours. You don’t have to feel it all the time, because you know it is there whenever you need it.

As we have seen, inquiry is, by nature, open ended if it is true inquiry. You cannot truly inquire if you choose to go in a predetermined direction, as when you say, “I want to accomplish such and such in my inquiry.” By definition, this is not inquiry, although some traditions call it that. What is frequently called inquiry in the East, for instance, is what we consider in the West to be proof of a theorem, such as a Euclidean proof: “This is the theory; investigate and find out that it is true.” As a specific example, in the Buddhist tradition, inquiry is the investigation of phenomena in order to discover that they are all ultimately empty. So emptiness as the ultimate nature of things is posited from the beginning. That is not what we do in the Diamond Approach. We merely inquire into phenomena so that the truth can reveal itself. This is a very important attitude for finding your thread, for your thread can be anywhere, anyplace. Further, your thread is a process, so any state that arises is not permanent, but keeps changing. Therefore, following your thread requires an open-ended inquiry, which is in direct conflict with any attitude or method that says, “Let’s develop such and such a condition, let’s move toward such and such a state.” This latter attitude asserts, “We know where we need to be, so let’s work to get to this realization.” This is not an open inquiry, and your personal thread will not be able to unfold your experience when you take that attitude.