The Jeweled Path invites you to enter into the story of how the modern spiritual path of the Diamond Approach emerged. With humor and intimacy, Karen Johnson, cofounder with A. H. Almaas, reveals the personal experiences that birthed the teaching and furthered its development. These profound awakenings—occurring amidst ordinary life—became the building blocks of a remarkable new approach to human nature and to our understanding of reality.
The Jeweled Path is not the story of a single awakening or epiphany from which a path arose, as happens in many teachings. Spanning many years, it is an unfolding tale of a path that simply erupted on the scene and unpacked itself in our lifetime rather than over the course of generations. It is the story of a logos that reveals a heartfelt knowledge and a discriminating intelligence that I believe the world is now ready for.
Although a great deal of understanding and synthesis occurred spontaneously as the experiences were revealing themselves, much of what developed into the formal teaching was synthesized, systematized, and refined in hindsight by looking back at the copious notes that Hameed made along the way in his journals. The thoroughness of his record keeping is remarkable. Tracking the detailed, interlacing threads of our processes would have been impossible without them. Rereading those journals as I wrote this book gave me the opportunity to follow the timeline of the teaching as it displayed itself through our experiences. I saw relationships between segments of the teaching I’d never noticed before, and when Hameed and I discussed them, new details of the teaching were unpacked. - Karen Johnson
"For anyone interested in the origins of the marvelous Diamond Approach, here it is. Karen offers an inside glimpse into the DA founders’ passion, truth seeking, and wisdom—a journey that can inspire your own." —Geneen Roth, author of Women, Food, and God and Feeding the Hungry Heart
"A rare, intimate dive into the development of a spiritual path. We don’t usually have the opportunity to witness the birth of a path from the perspective of one who is engaged with its development. Nor are we often invited into the lives of its founders as they awaken to the teaching that is emerging through them. Through Karen Johnson’s writing, her humor, her keen-eyed observations, her willingness to reveal her humanness, and her ever-cascading realization, we are able to hear the untold story of the Diamond Approach and experience its profound gifts in a new way. What a privilege." —Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Meaning of Mary Magdalene and The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three
"A humble, honest, intimate, lucid, and above all astonishing account of the rise of a remarkable teaching. It’s good to find confirmation here that even pure diamonds don’t fall ready-made from the sky; they must be ground and polished in the crucible of the human heart. Karen’s and Hameed’s four-decade journey of unflinchingly honest and deeply mutual discovery sets a new benchmark in our appreciation of the full potential of spiritual friendship." —Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart
Available at Shambhala Publications or most book retailers.
Contents
1. The Journey Begins
2. Growing Up in Kuwait
3. Accidents and Opportunities
4. Fledging
5. Out of the Blue
6. In the Lap of Love
7. The Golden Cog
8. Cracking the Cosmic Head
9. When the Student Is Ready, Essence Delivers
10. And Now We Are Three
11. Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend
12. In the Heart of Paradise
13. Labor and Delivery
14. Westward . . . Whoa!
15. Diamond Buddies
16. Unsettled in California
17. My Guardian Angel Flies Away
18. The Proof Is in the Pleasure
19. Being in Boot Camp
20. Marching toward the Land of Truth
21. Love and Peas
22. A Star Is Born
23. The View from Beyond
24. Tapioca Supreme
25. What Did You Say the Name Was?
26. The Absolute End
27. Soul Dancing
28. Down We Go
29. Through the Jeweled Portal