The personalization of Being is a process that goes through all the boundless dimensions of the journeys of ascent and descent. It culminates in the personalization of the wholeness of Being, with all of the boundless dimensions in coemergent nonduality with each other and all manifest forms. We arrive then at a personal Reality, boundless and unified Being with a personal quality, a Reality with which we can have a personal relationship. Yet, it is not the normal idea of relationship, for there is no separation between the individual soul and the personal Being; and the personal Being is not an entity, not a particular form, but the wholeness of Reality. One specific characteristic of the personal Being is that it includes in its coemergence the logos dimension. This dimension of creative dynamism gives our experience of personal Being the sense that it personally acts and responds. Being is what creates and sustains everything, through its logos dimension. It is what makes anything happen, what moves and transforms all manifest forms. It is the only doer. However, since it is now personalized we experience it as personal doing. In other words, personal Being acts in a personal manner, where this action is nothing but the creative display of the logos, now integrated with the personal quality of essence. In the self-realization of personal Being, we experience ourselves as the wholeness of Reality, so we do not only feel personal but realize we are a dynamic and active cosmic presence. We can actually experience ourselves, as this cosmic dynamic presence, moving the winds and the stars. We feel that all that happens in the universe happens through our personal will and intelligence. This is not the will and intelligence of the individual soul, but of the cosmic Being, the personal boundless and infinite Being.

The Diamond Approach says that wholeness is available, is possible, and it will arrive in its own time. The ultimate nature of the wholeness doesn’t mean that it is available to you at each moment. Being just does not operate this way, which should be clear from most of our observations. The dynamism doesn’t thrust wholeness on you. It responds appropriately and intelligently to your unique situation in each moment. It is intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, and empathic in its responsiveness. When you are aligned with Being’s intelligence, the current of your experience in any given moment is either in the condition of wholeness or approaching more wholeness and more integration. The wholeness is the source of the intelligence; in fact, this intelligence is nothing but the expression of the wholeness through the response of Being’s dynamics. Therefore, it is natural that when you completely and deeply relax, your experience will spontaneously settle in the condition of wholeness.

The experience of the body in the dimension of essential presence indicates that the core of the self is experientially deeper than the living body. This core is the very consciousness that allows us to experience the body as living. Our definition of the self includes the living body, but as we have made clear, also includes more fundamental dimensions. More accurately, it is not that the body is a more superficial reality than presence; it is more that the self is a wholeness that contains all dimensions, including the body, and this wholeness is disturbed when there is dissociation from presence, because it is presence which is responsible for this complete wholeness. Presence is the ultimate ontological ground and reality of all the dimensions. Awareness of essential presence does not negate or devalue the body; rather, it gives it, along with the other aspects and dimensions of the self, a greater sense of integration, wholeness, and lightness.

In self-realization our experience of ourselves is a pure act of consciousness. We know ourselves by directly being ourselves. All self-images have been rendered transparent, and we no longer identify with any construct in the mind. There is no reactivity to past, present or future. There is no effort to be ourselves. There is no interference with our experience, no manipulation, no activity—inner or outer—involved with maintaining our identity; we simply are. We are able to respond, feel, think, act—but from a purely spontaneous and authentic presence. We are not defensive, not judging ourselves, nor trying to live up to any standard. We may also be silent, empty, or spacious. We do not have to do anything to be ourselves. We are whole, one, undivided. It is not the wholeness of the harmony of parts, but the wholeness of singlehood. We are one. We are ourselves. We are being. We simply are. In this experience there is no narcissism. We are at ease, spontaneously real, without psychological artifacts, pretensions, falsehoods. We are not constructed, not even by our own minds. Our experience of ourselves is totally direct and unmediated.

Many people go to very deep places, and have very high and refined experiences and insights, without knowing what it is to be oneself. Even when people really work on themselves, they are usually taking a detour. They get to states of being very open, very loving, very compassionate, even universal, without ever knowing what it is to be oneself. Although it might be wonderful, their experience becomes very limited, very restricted. The only way we can experience all that is possible for a human being is to be ourselves. If we are not ourselves, any other development is only a sector of human experience. To be a complete human being, to be a totality and experience wholeness, to be able to experience all possibilities and all potential for a human being, first we need to be ourselves. When a person learns what it is to be oneself, the process of inner development, realization and understanding of truth involves continual discovery and expansion, with surprises and celebrations during the whole process. There is no end to the exploration and discoveries. Many of you can feel a very deep yearning, a subtle flame, a longing for that true life—to live our life as a continual celebration and freshness. In some part of us we know this is possible, and that it is the way life should be. If we don’t live this way, there is always a feeling of incompleteness.

Perceiving the constant, dynamic creativity of presence displaying the richness and color of all manifestation, we see that everything is unified, making up a harmonious whole. The underlying presence—a non-dual medium —unifies its various manifestations in a wholeness that cannot be imagined in an ordinary state of mind. In normal experience we perceive inner forms as objects, separate from each other and existing in some unobservable way in the mind, the body, or the self. Discrete thoughts seem unconnected to the body; feelings are connected only through association; images in the mind seem to pop up from nowhere. This experience is fragmented compared to the awareness of unity. In full self-realization we not only experience our essential nature—the primordial presence; we also experience the wholeness of the self; nothing is excluded. This integration is not mental, nor is it a product of integrating separate objects. We merely perceive ourselves as we are, in our totality and wholeness.

So the Diamond Approach says that wholeness is available, is possible, and it will arrive in its own time. The ultimate nature of the wholeness doesn’t mean that it is available to you at each moment. Being just does not operate this way, which should be clear from most of our observations. The dynamism doesn’t thrust wholeness on you. It responds appropriately and intelligently to your unique situation in each moment. It is intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, and empathic in its responsiveness. When you are aligned with Being’s intelligence, the current of your experience in any given moment is either in the condition of wholeness or approaching more wholeness and more integration. The wholeness is the source of the intelligence; in fact, this intelligence is nothing but the expression of the wholeness, through the response of Being’s dynamics. Therefore, it is natural that when you completely and deeply relax, your experience will spontaneously settle in the condition of wholeness. But many things can get in the way of this settling—glitches, misunderstandings, conflicts, wrong views, conditioned responses, feelings and thoughts that need to be dismantled or clarified. The intelligent dynamism will respond to these interferences as it moves toward the wholeness. The intelligence might operate at one moment by manifesting in you a feeling of strength, for example, to deal with your condition. Or it might arise in you as a condition of boundless love or another of the infinite possibilities of Being. Being’s intelligence responds differently not only to different individuals, its response varies in each individual at different times and under different conditions.