Speaker 1: So the most important thing is to be interested in
Speaker 1: the truth of reality, but not by thinking about or
Speaker 1: reading about, but experiencing it. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf h Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is a h Almos, which is the pen
Speaker 1: name of a Hamid Ali, creator of the Diamond Approach
Speaker 1: to self realization. The Diamond Approach is a contemporary teaching
Speaker 1: that developed within the context of both ancient spiritual teachings
Speaker 1: and modern depth psychology theories. Almost has authored seventeen books
Speaker 1: about spiritual Realization, including Diamond Heart Series, The Pearl Beyond Price,
Speaker 1: The Void, The Unfolding Now, and the Point of Existence.
Speaker 1: His latest book is Runaway Realization, Living a life of
Speaker 1: ceaseless Discovery. Here's the interview. Hi, Amid, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to get you on. You are one of
Speaker 1: the founders of something known as the Diamond Approach that
Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of wonderful things about, and as
Speaker 1: I got in to reading a variety of your work,
Speaker 1: I became very interested in a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that you're saying. So we're going to explore the Diamond
Speaker 1: Approach and some of your later books also. But let's
Speaker 1: start like we always do, with the parable. There's a
Speaker 1: grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the granddaughter thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, Grandma,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah, so that's a nice parable,
Speaker 1: and I would like to address it from two levels. Actually,
Speaker 1: the first level is the feeding. The one who wins
Speaker 1: is the one your feet. It is a principle actually
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Just like there are laws of nature, physics,
Speaker 1: and biology, whatever consciousness of mind has its own laws
Speaker 1: and principles. And one of those laws and principles is
Speaker 1: the fact that whatever you pay attention to tends to grow,
Speaker 1: to become more there, and tend to develop. If you
Speaker 1: ignore it, don't pay attention to it, it tends to
Speaker 1: not grow, to stay stunted, and it's growth. And now
Speaker 1: we'll come to the second level, which is what are
Speaker 1: the two worlds and a human being? The way I
Speaker 1: look at it is that the human being has a
Speaker 1: consciousness which some people call a soul or spirit or whatever,
Speaker 1: but or mind. But it is like we have a
Speaker 1: an individual consciousness that express is and who we are,
Speaker 1: that holds our experience and through which we know ourselves
Speaker 1: and respond to our environment. This consciousness has many properties
Speaker 1: and has many faculties and capacities and has many layers
Speaker 1: in it and many parts. It is, first of all,
Speaker 1: the main spring of life. It is the life's force
Speaker 1: that functions as the life force in our physical life.
Speaker 1: And the life force has two parts to it. You
Speaker 1: can say to parts that I refer to as the
Speaker 1: angelic part and the animal parts. The angelic part is
Speaker 1: what most teaching think of a spirit or spiritual like love, humility, compassion,
Speaker 1: and ierness, openness, truth, sincerity, awareness, emptinness, expansion, awakening. All
Speaker 1: of that has to do with what I call the
Speaker 1: angelic side or part of of the depth of for
Speaker 1: our consciousness. Okay, the other part that we're all born with,
Speaker 1: all human being upborn with, is why I call the
Speaker 1: animal side. The animal side is like an animal invested
Speaker 1: in surviving, surviving, getting its need math. You're one of
Speaker 1: the founders of the Diamond approach, and at one point
Speaker 1: you say something to the effect that the goal of
Speaker 1: the Diamond approach is the full development and realization of being,
Speaker 1: and that being is with a capital be expressing itself
Speaker 1: in and through an individual human life. Can you help
Speaker 1: us understand what this being is and what that full
Speaker 1: fruition looks like well being, I mean the spiritual nature.
Speaker 1: Our spiritual nature is our being, which mean what is
Speaker 1: our true existence. We are fundamentally at the depth when
Speaker 1: we know ourselves, when we go onto our subjectivity and
Speaker 1: find out who it is, what we are, recognized that
Speaker 1: what we are is not separate from the fact that
Speaker 1: we are, that we are, our being is what we are.
Speaker 1: Our being and our identity become the same thing. And
Speaker 1: that's what I call self realization or learning about our being.
Speaker 1: So here spirit is recognized as the being of our consciousness,
Speaker 1: the true existence. It's what makes us be. So it's
Speaker 1: not just a beautiful, nice thing to have, which is fundamental.
Speaker 1: It is what we are. Yeah, it is what we
Speaker 1: are at the most fundamental level. And it said that
Speaker 1: the primary method of the diamond approaches exploring and understanding
Speaker 1: immediate experience. What do you mean by that? Meaning that
Speaker 1: the method of them approach does not matter of doing
Speaker 1: a prayer or a chant or concentration on an object
Speaker 1: or trying to get to a certain state. It means
Speaker 1: we take our experience as it is now, meaning what
Speaker 1: we feel, what we sense in our body, in our minds,
Speaker 1: the context of our situation, so when I say it
Speaker 1: and quite into experience. Our experience includes the totality of
Speaker 1: what we're aware of and our perception and our enner
Speaker 1: experience all of it. So it's it's inquiring to get
Speaker 1: to find out first of all what it is, because
Speaker 1: we're not always aware of everything that's happening on us
Speaker 1: or within us. So we become aware of it. And
Speaker 1: the next thing after becoming aware of it is to
Speaker 1: find out what is it? What's it about? How commit
Speaker 1: is that way? Which mean to understand it? So immediate
Speaker 1: experience means what is really happening now, not thinking about it,
Speaker 1: it's feeling it, It is sensing it and being curious
Speaker 1: about it. What is the approach towards towards inquiry? Is
Speaker 1: that usually done? Is there a series of questions that
Speaker 1: are asked? Or help me understand a little bit more
Speaker 1: about how how you steer yourself through that in a
Speaker 1: in a type of inquiry that is useful versus possibly
Speaker 1: just ruminating on certain things. Yeah, like in our class,
Speaker 1: we could do it in a formal way when a
Speaker 1: person has asked questions but they're not asked. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: ask some specific questions for teaching something in particular like
Speaker 1: freeing teaching about love, we ask a questions like what
Speaker 1: stops you from feeling love? What way experienced love? So
Speaker 1: for me, it is an organic thing. It's it's always
Speaker 1: I'm having experienced, always curious about what it is, what's
Speaker 1: it about? And as I'm curious about it, it opens
Speaker 1: up and falls and reveal more meaning, more shades of
Speaker 1: meaning which reveal deeper dimensions of experience. One of the
Speaker 1: things you say that is in order to contact the
Speaker 1: deeper truth of who we are, and I think this
Speaker 1: is getting back to that inquiry, we must engage in
Speaker 1: some activity or practice that questions what we assume to
Speaker 1: be true about ourselves. If somebody, for instance, feels I
Speaker 1: don't like this person, If you just that's it, I
Speaker 1: don't like this person, that's the truth. Well, the fact
Speaker 1: is more than that. When you explore how come you
Speaker 1: don't like this person, you might find out that this
Speaker 1: person reminds you of something in the past that hurt you,
Speaker 1: for instance, and your you and earth hurt that you
Speaker 1: didn't know about. And then what might be a whole
Speaker 1: complex like a trauma or something like that. By us
Speaker 1: taking our experience at face value is short changing ourselves
Speaker 1: because our experience is expresses really always the totality of
Speaker 1: our would be eating, but we don't see it at all.
Speaker 1: You only you see the surface men station of it.
Speaker 1: And is that the goal of working with groups and
Speaker 1: teachers is to help you lead you through that inquiry
Speaker 1: in a in a way that's different than what you
Speaker 1: obviously know how to do, because it's very difficult my
Speaker 1: experiences to see the assumptions we're making about ourselves. They're
Speaker 1: they're embedded. Yeah, so, and our work and our groups.
Speaker 1: We teach meditation, different kinds of different practices to develop
Speaker 1: capacities being able to feel yourself. Many people can't feel
Speaker 1: their emotions, or when they feel their emotions, they ack
Speaker 1: them out right away. So a person needs the skill
Speaker 1: of feeling their emotions without acting them out. Some people
Speaker 1: don't feel their body. They don't sense their legs or
Speaker 1: their belly, or their or some part of them and
Speaker 1: that and they need to learn to We have methods
Speaker 1: of how people can learn the uh who feel their body,
Speaker 1: the totality that the whole body become alive and sensitive.
Speaker 1: I get hung up a lot on you know, studied
Speaker 1: a lot of different philosophies, and and it's it's often
Speaker 1: said that this, this sense of a separate self is
Speaker 1: a delusion. And what you say is that it's not.
Speaker 1: Our separate self is not a delusion, but it's one
Speaker 1: of the ways that reality appears. Our problem comes when
Speaker 1: we think it's the only way. Yeah, so you're getting
Speaker 1: that from last book Runaway Realization. When I go further
Speaker 1: than the usual traditional teaching, which is that the self
Speaker 1: is a delusion and the dualistic point of view is
Speaker 1: not real. We are all unity when being and all that.
Speaker 1: All that's true, but you know, there are further stages
Speaker 1: that we have in our teaching. But we recognize that
Speaker 1: the way of experience, in the ordinary way of experiencing thing,
Speaker 1: where we are separate and and have an ego, we
Speaker 1: have our needs, and we treat everybody as another object.
Speaker 1: That is just simply one way that reality manifests itself.
Speaker 1: I mean, ninety nine point nine percent of the human
Speaker 1: race are living in that world that way. So when
Speaker 1: when people say it's all delusion, it seems a little
Speaker 1: bit you know, too much, too much of presumption, because
Speaker 1: there must be a reason why everybody is experiencing that way.
Speaker 1: And so what I learned that there are many ways
Speaker 1: of experiencing reality. One of them is the ordinary way
Speaker 1: of ego. So ego just one way that true being
Speaker 1: manifests itself. Another way it manifests itself as light and
Speaker 1: love and all that, and other ways also of true
Speaker 1: nature or or being through being manifesting itself. So that
Speaker 1: way we take the ego not as a delusion, but
Speaker 1: as one way of experiencing reality. Another way of looking
Speaker 1: at it is that it is it is a way
Speaker 1: of experiencing ourselves that got arrested its development, because it's
Speaker 1: a certain stage of development everybody goes through, regardless of
Speaker 1: how they become, they have to go through the stage
Speaker 1: of being an ego. So it's the stage that many
Speaker 1: people get arrested at that stage, and you can work
Speaker 1: on it so that to go to the next stage
Speaker 1: instead of rejecting it as an error, as a mistake.
Speaker 1: It sounds like when we say that that ordinary viewpoint,
Speaker 1: that that idea of a separate self is a complete delusion,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to that's a hard place to start
Speaker 1: from because it's so it seems so real, Whereas it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to accept Okay, that's one way to
Speaker 1: see the world, and that's the way that by default
Speaker 1: I'm seeing the world. But there are lots of other
Speaker 1: ways to do it, and that just seems to be
Speaker 1: an easier stepping off place for me. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's better to take it not as a delusion,
Speaker 1: but that's just a way of experiencing it and not
Speaker 1: to get hung up on it, that's all. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a gain about you know, who do you feed? If
Speaker 1: you feed that way of experiencing things, that's what becomes
Speaker 1: your reality. If you are open to other ways of experience,
Speaker 1: think think the spiritual with and paying more attention to them.
Speaker 1: That way, it can't begin to grow. And we have
Speaker 1: the option now to experience other ways of being. What
Speaker 1: is essence? You talk about essence and again this is
Speaker 1: with a capital E, that our essence is what is
Speaker 1: really important. So what what is that I used toward
Speaker 1: essence that you know, some years ago more than I
Speaker 1: use it now. But basically, what I meant by essence
Speaker 1: is the essence of our consciousness, the essence of our soul,
Speaker 1: essence of what we are and what we discover. That
Speaker 1: essence is nothing but being, So being an assence are
Speaker 1: the same thing. Essence means just what is what is
Speaker 1: your essence? What is your essential nature? In that way,
Speaker 1: essence is used, and when you discover what your essence is,
Speaker 1: you organize it as a kind of presence that's self
Speaker 1: aware presence, that has its own inherent awareness, inherent lovingness.
Speaker 1: So if being is expressing itself through us, and you
Speaker 1: know we we have these essences, is my essence different
Speaker 1: than yours? And I know that you're probably gonna answer
Speaker 1: that on multiple different levels. Well, essence is is. It's
Speaker 1: basically saying that each each of us, individually we have
Speaker 1: an essence, and our essence turns out to be the
Speaker 1: spiritual nature. So our essence turn out to be the
Speaker 1: true being or the true spirit, which is the nature
Speaker 1: and essence of everybody and everything, So we don't have
Speaker 1: separate essences. It manifests through us in different ways, but
Speaker 1: it is the same spirit. There's discussion that most of
Speaker 1: our suffering is due to being alienated from ourselves, that
Speaker 1: a lot of the dissatisfaction comes, say, not from what
Speaker 1: we think it is, like our sickness or our material
Speaker 1: real problems or other things, but from not being ourselves. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that is true to a large extent. You know,
Speaker 1: Buddhism forms of emphasized that that life is suffering, and
Speaker 1: in some sense life is suffering in the sense it
Speaker 1: has lots of suffering in it. I mean there's physical suffering,
Speaker 1: killing in places, rape, and all the things around the
Speaker 1: world which is suffering that is not related to the
Speaker 1: fact that we have we are trapped in our ego. However,
Speaker 1: at the same time that being trapped in our ego
Speaker 1: causes if we just hold on to the ego perspective,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of suffering because in the ego perspective,
Speaker 1: the animal nature is more dominant, and that one tends
Speaker 1: to be dissatisfied and tends to keep grudges, tends to
Speaker 1: carry the has to with it, to carry the what
Speaker 1: happened in the past to the presence. So there's a
Speaker 1: reputation of especially negative things. So that is really what
Speaker 1: it is meant by that way that our identification of
Speaker 1: the world of ego, the world of the self, if
Speaker 1: we take that to be the only reality, then our
Speaker 1: life will be full of suffering and also the suffering
Speaker 1: that happens around the world, the killing and plunder and
Speaker 1: all that. It's also because those people, those killers, those
Speaker 1: terrorists or whatever, violent criminals, they're traveled in the same things,
Speaker 1: the same they do these things because their bad wolf
Speaker 1: is in control. So yes, they're suffering, and you can
Speaker 1: trace most of it to the ego identification. But I
Speaker 1: would and say that somebody has has cancer or has
Speaker 1: you know, the abetes or asked Parkinson as because of
Speaker 1: the self or the eagle, that the body has its
Speaker 1: own genetic makeup and they're suffering. That happens there too,
Speaker 1: independent whether we are you know, spiritually illuminated people or not.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the diamond approach. You're bringing together some
Speaker 1: meditative practices. You're bringing together psychological inquiry. Are there other
Speaker 1: key parts of it? Yeah, I bring in different meditation
Speaker 1: and inquiry. The inquiry is both psychological and spiritual and philosophical,
Speaker 1: and also there's a philosophical side, which is asking fundamental
Speaker 1: philosophical question but answering them with the experience. The philosophy
Speaker 1: is ask good questions, but they try to answer them
Speaker 1: with their mind, and this approach we answer them by
Speaker 1: experiential inquiry. We can cause psychological but it's not just
Speaker 1: psychological because when you experience love, for instance, or when
Speaker 1: you experience compassion that is not psychological, that spiritual, and
Speaker 1: we inquire into that. When I experienced love, for instance,
Speaker 1: I inquired into us what's that? It feels like a
Speaker 1: sweet atmosphere, it feels like it's a sweet nectar. What's that?
Speaker 1: You see? I'm inquiring in something spiritual and that's not psychological,
Speaker 1: it's beyond the psychological, so psychological as part of it
Speaker 1: that it is also a spiritual inquiry. So and and
Speaker 1: we do include meditation that we borrowed from different traditions,
Speaker 1: and meditation that we developed ourselves. We use chanting, we
Speaker 1: use actually music concentration, contemplation of music as part of
Speaker 1: our practices. Is there is there anything that in this
Speaker 1: very short window of time like an inquiry an example
Speaker 1: of an inquiry question that we could talk about that
Speaker 1: would give listeners just a taste of what that's like. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the important thing is for each one of
Speaker 1: us to realize there's much more to us than we
Speaker 1: tend to think. There is much more potential to human
Speaker 1: being than we tend to know, if we're open to ourselves,
Speaker 1: if we really turned towards our own subjectivity, an exam
Speaker 1: and it. Inquire it, be interested in it, be vulnerable
Speaker 1: to it. Let the empire, let it come out. Traders
Speaker 1: will come out, tragers that we haven't suspected of experiences,
Speaker 1: not just of love and compassion, but of depth and immensity.
Speaker 1: So the most important thing is to be interested into
Speaker 1: in the truth of reality, to find out the truth
Speaker 1: of reality, but not by thinking about or reading about,
Speaker 1: but experiencing it. Find out for oneself. What is the
Speaker 1: truth of what I am? What is the truth of
Speaker 1: the world? Excellent? Well, I will make sure to put
Speaker 1: links on the website to both the school and some
Speaker 1: of your your key works that you talk about. And
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. How mean. I really appreciate it. Good
Speaker 1: luck and have a good time with your program. Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks so much, take care, Okay bye. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about A. Thomas and this podcast at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash almus that's a l M A
Speaker 1: A s. Thank you.