The soul comes up against this deeply entrenched view of reality when she begins to learn to love truth for its own sake, especially when this truth turns out to be inside her, for it is the truth of her nature. She experiences a deep conflict between her love of truth and her love of pleasure and allegiance to its external sources. When the soul learns at some point to make this significant shift, and turns toward the truth, this turn becomes the state or station that invites the descent of the Markabah. This is the diamond body of pleasure, bliss, delight, and celebration, which arises as the soul’s love of truth deepens and becomes a true turning away from the habitual egoic orientation and toward authentic loyalty and allegiance to the truth. The turn of the soul’s heart is not a turn away from pleasure; it is simply the shift of allegiance from the pleasure of gratification and its sources, to the inner truth of the soul and Reality. The soul moves her allegiance toward truth, understanding its centrality and value irrespective of whether the truth is pleasurable or painful. This turn is the necessary condition for the descent of this diamond vehicle, which turns out to be what gives the soul the desire and the capacity to transcend her egoic pleasure orientation.

Tears flood the consciousness, a black ocean of tears. Sadness softens the plastic contraction, and I begin to feel the surrender. I realize the question is not only attachment to sex, pleasure and company. There is something powerful and deep about the desire for physical contact, sleeping together, the physical warmth. This attachment has so far felt too powerful for me to resist. It is becoming clearer, however, that not only these satisfactions, but even their promise, is paltry. The pleasure, the warmth, the various sensations and feelings of satisfaction pale in comparison to the exquisite delicacies and delights that only Being can provide. At first the tears are about aloneness and letting go of attachments. Then it becomes clear that at a deeper level, they are caused by the attachments. The attachments are a great betrayal of Being. They are equivalent to turning away from what is true. The tears overflow now. They are not about recognizing the need to let go of the objects and promise of attachments, but because the attachments indicate how I have not fully valued the preciousness of Being. This recognition illuminates the awareness that my attachments obscure the value and the preciousness of the inner realm, the land of truth. It is this that hurts me most. 

The disconnection of the self from its essential presence manifests as a profound and deep wound to the self. It is as if the very core of the self is yanked out from within it. This is the specific narcissistic wound, the hurt that expresses the pain of this fundamental loss, and reflects the actual state of loss. All of the factors which contribute to narcissism, compounded by the self turning away from its connection with essential presence, lead to this narcissistic wound. Centrally, the narcissistic wound is caused by the decathexis of the Essential Identity. Alienation from the Essential Identity leads to the loss of the profound sense of value and preciousness intrinsic to the sense of one’s identity with Being. Value is a quality of Being which, when lost, leads to a loss of self-esteem. When we are in touch with Being, self-esteem is experienced as an intrinsic feature of the self, as part of one’s inalienable human inheritance. The wound of the loss of value is intimately associated with the narcissistic wound. 

Now, what do I mean by these three elements? Each center contributes to the process of understanding. If the head center is functioning correctly, it means that space or emptiness is allowed. What is the significance of space and emptiness? Space and emptiness make possible the quality of allowing. When there is space in the mind, there is no self-image. You’re not trying to stick to something in particular. You’re not trying to go somewhere. The mind is allowing whatever is there to be there. So the head center’s participation or contribution is space, which is an allowing, a welcoming in a sense—space for things to happen without rejection, without trying to hold on. You become complete allowing. The heart center’s contribution has to do with its central quality, which is the personal essence. The contribution of the personal essence is the diving movement, the actual living of the experience. You not only allow it, you’re in the midst of it, you’re one with it. You’re really it, you let it happen, you feel it fully, you sense it fully, you experience it fully, right? That’s the contribution of the heart center. The belly center has its contribution, which is represented by the self, the essential self. The contribution of the essential self is the disidentification, the turning away. When you are truly functioning in the belly, you are completely present, and being completely present, you are being yourself. So you are not identified with the usual activity of trying to get somewhere else. I am not implying that space is always in the head, the pearl in the heart, and the essential self in the belly. Centers lose their importance after a while in terms of locations of essential aspects. What I mean is that when space is functioning as allowing, it activates the head center; when the pearl is functioning as involvement, it is usually in the heart center; and when the essential self is functioning as disidentification, it is usually in the belly, in the Hara center.  

One issue that tends to arise at this point is guilt. We frequently feel the turn towards the inner depths of Being as a turning away from the world, as an abandonment of the world of manifestation and experience. This can bring up what has remained of our rapprochement conflict, but deeper still, it brings up guilt for abandoning the world. Abandoning the world can be understood at this level as abandoning our mother, the deepest object for the libidinal ego. This brings up deep anguish and guilt, with a torrent of tears and sorrow. We are actually turning away from all objects, including mother’s internalized image, and towards the depths of our Being. There might also be conflict, fear of separation, and fear of loss. Some students report sleepless nights, turning restlessly in one’s bed, not being able to feel warm, as if one’s skin has lost all comfort and warmth. The passionate love for truth can be so powerful that it dissolves all these barriers with clear and discriminating understanding. Now, the student might find herself turning completely towards the depths, into her heart, the window to the mystery of Being. 

The development of and identification with the self-representations is of course not simply a result of the student turning away from her essential self. Many other factors determine this development. However, she has participated, wittingly or unwittingly, in the process of going to sleep, of turning away from the aspects of her soul that her environment could not or would not recognize. She did it to survive, because the loneliness and hurt were intolerable; nevertheless, she did participate. Understanding her choiceless choice, her extreme dependency on her early caregivers, helps her now to acknowledge her part in the betrayal and to feel compassion about the untenable position she found herself in early childhood. The truth may help her now not to deny such choices, which she is still making, but to understand the situation. The understanding can bring warmth, acceptance and compassion, which will help her to stay with the pain, to feel it fully, and to understand its significance completely, until it opens her to awareness of the emptiness of her false self, to the vastness that feeling this emptiness allows, and then to the preciousness she no longer need abandon. She can now work through the guilt, self-recrimination and self-hatred that arises when she sees her betrayal of herself. As she uncovers and sees through these feelings, she can see more clearly how she is still betraying herself by not being authentic in her life. At the deepest level, the wound is about having sold out. We begin by feeling betrayed by others through narcissistic insults; we realize the betrayal of our true nature by our parents; and ultimately we realize that, in our struggle for survival, we have rejected our own truth and lost our precious Essential Identity.

The love appears after the longing, as if the longing has been hiding it. The love first manifests as an exquisitely faceted form of presence, a form that combines all aspects of essence in one manifestation. I feel it as intense, pure and selfless love, of various flavors and colors. The sweetness is heavenly, and the appreciation feels so pure it has a sense of divinity. I realize that many things have been preventing me from recognizing and feeling this longing, from becoming fully the person of ego with all of his feelings and emotions. The heart has been slowly turning, directing its love and yearning towards the absolute. This turning of the heart has produced guilt—guilt for not loving or longing for anything or anyone. I have unconsciously interpreted the shift of libido towards the absolute as a turning away from what I have loved before. This explains the subtle guilt I have been experiencing lately for not feeling that I miss my wife, or my friends, when I am away from them. There has been guilt for not feeling love and longing for the divine being, the unity of Being, which I have loved since I recognized it some years ago. I did not know my heart was turning towards a greater truth.

By divine being I refer to the unity of being, when the experience is of everything, the whole universe in all of its content and dimensions, as pure consciousness, pure presence or pure love. This is a state of oneness and harmony, the state of the real world, but I differentiate it from the experience of the absolute, which is transcendent to presence and consciousness, and turns out to be the inner essence of the state of oneness. 

Many people teach a practice of simply turning away from whatever happens. Some traditions talk about such a practice, but not everyone can do it. It is not possible to turn away from something if you are unconsciously identified with it. It’s not possible, because you believe you are it, in a way that is deeper than your awareness at that moment. It is your ground. You cannot disidentify from your ground. First you have to become aware of it, understand it; then your awareness will be deeper than it. Then it is possible to turn away from it. So turning away from something is always turning away from something you have seen and understood. Turning away means not indulging in something you understand. However, if it is not a matter of indulgence, if it’s something you actually don’t understand, and if you are unconsciously identified with it, how can you turn away? There is no way. What’s needed then is an immersion experience—allowing whatever that experience is and becoming involved in it as completely as possible, in order to understand it. Notice in your experience of understanding yourself, part of the process is this immersion, is an involvement with the experience, whether it is a belief, an emotion, a contraction in the body, a sense of frustration, a sense of attachment to something—whatever is there is experienced completely, without trying to get rid of it. When there is a complete involvement with what is there in you, then after a while an understanding arises. Without involvement, the understanding will not arise.

However, if we follow the thread of being aware and present as our practice of learning to be where we are, we might be able to increase the time or the space where we can be ourselves in an open way, extending it beyond the quiet, secluded moments. The more we remember to practice awareness of ourselves, and the stronger the awareness in our presence, the more we are able to stay open and attuned to what is arising in our consciousness even as we live our lives. Of course, it also means that we need to consider the life we live and how we are living it. What takes us away from just being where we are? What do we value instead of valuing the truth of the moment? Where does our attention go? How much of our resources of time and energy are actually needed for taking care of the necessities of daily life? What do we lose by turning away from where we are now? Exploring these questions becomes a process of integrating presence into the rest of our life. So, our practice is a process of settling deeper into the moment and learning more about what takes us away from it. The mirror of our awareness gradually becomes less obscured and more luminous as it reveals to us the preciousness of what we truly are. The capacity of this teaching to transform your own life can extend out to affect your environment, changing the way that you relate to other people and the world at large. As you come to appreciate and value True Nature and know it for the mysterious and limitless source of life that it is, it impacts and transforms your own manifestation as a person. True Nature can express itself through you more directly, touching others and opening up the richness and possibility of what it means to be human. That is one way that the flame is passed on, that the light is spread. In my experience, this is the most effective way to support a deeper change in the condition of consciousness in our world.