A.H. Almaas on Discovering our Essence

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is a h Almas, which is the pen name of Hamad Ali, who has been on the show once before. He's the creator of the Diamond Approach to self realization. The Diamond approach is a contemporary teaching that developed within the context of both ancient spiritual teachings and modern psychology theories. He has authored eighteen books about spiritual realization, including the Diamond Heart series, The Pearl Beyond Price, The Void, The

New Love Unveiled, and many others. Hello Hamid, Welcome to the show. Good to talk to you again, Eric. Yes, it's a pleasure to have you on for the second time. We will get into your work here shortly, but let's start like we always do with the pair of old. In the parable, there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves

inside of us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. It reminds me of some of the story that's one of the teachers you used to use, which is the story of the two heaps. And the story is that everybody who comes into the path he has two heaps, and then one big one,

one small one. The big heap is mostly of negative emotions and tendencies and difficulties, the small heap of positive one, and by engaging the path and the practice, a small heap that keeps growing, growing, growing, until at some point the big heap becomes a small heap, but a small heat becomes the big It reminds me of that a

similar thing. So, yeah, that's a good approximation. And I like that idea because it's not necessarily that either heap goes away completely, right, It's just that the balance is shifting. So let's talk about your work. Your work is known as the diamond approach. And in order for us to talk about the Diamond approach at all in any useful way, we need to use the word essence. And so tell

me what you mean by the word essence. So essence is like the essence of what we are, meaning the true nature of the human being, which ultimately means the true nature of our consciousness. We are conscious being, and consciousness pervades our body in our mind. And when you realize that which is the true nature, which is the essence with the stron nature, that's what I call essence, and it's as usual only experience. It is aluminous light and presence. It's a both a goodness and the truth

at the same time. And we find that to be what we truly are and at the deepest level, so it is the very nature of the good d Wolf. You say that essence is forgotten and that instead of essence we now have personality. The essence is replaced with various identifications. Talk a little bit more about the difference

between say, personality or identifications in essence. Well, what most people know as themselves is what I call personality, because the way human beings developed seems almost everybody, maybe except Jesus Christ. If we if we take the story that when we're born we are essential with our essential nature is still present with us, but withe their animal tendencies and desires and all that, but we still have our pure nature and innocence. And through encounters of life and

to the action with parments, that nature becomes eclipse. It becomes covered over by tendencies and impressions in oneself and believes, and basically, experience impresses our consciousness and leaves impressions. Those impression time become organized into a sense of self that we know ourselves to be. And that's why sometimes called the personality, so their personality or the sense of self,

or what I call the ego self. It's really it is still our usual consciousness, whose essence is the spiritual essence, but it becomes impressed and conditioned and formed by various experiences all the way to the exclusion of our original assense. So some few people grow up with some contact well then goodness and innocence, and that's purity. They have the tendencies and all that, but the actual presence of itself and most people are not touch with it because that's

the spiritual essence. And that's why people engage in spiritual work to reconnect or discover this spiritual essence, which when we discover it is not just what we are. It's not on the goodness, but it is also freedom. Let's talk about what is personality and what's not because one of the things that's interesting if you look at a little child is you notice right away that children have

preferences of some sort they're not a complete blank slate. Yeah, they have the preferences, they have qualities and the differences in the quality each each baby is unique in terms of other quality and pure good qualities and also desires reaction, all of those. Yeah, the child has a mixture, and in some sense, the child is born with the two wolves.

You could say we're born with our essentially, but we're also born with instinctual drive, constinctual forces that are force, revible and propagation, all of that, and those are the animal level. They are primitive and they just want to live and survive and sometimes irrespective of our good nature, so it becomes self centered. And so even the child can be self centered. Right, babies seem to be very much.

So what sort of way might you raise the child that you would preserve as much of its sense as possible. First of all, you cannot raise a child who will for sure be in touched with their essence consciously. It's just like part of our nature human being that we

develop an ego or call the ego self. But you can help a child be closes the essential nature or essential nature more easily accessible by the way you raise them, partly through love, through love when you really love your child for who and what they are, not because their your child, because their innate qualities. You see your essential nature and you love them for it. So that love and that care and giving them the protection and the care, and and also recognition of what they are, the unique

qualities and supporting that for to mature and develop. They will still have, you know, reaction and all of that, and and that we don't want to reject them, but have an accepting attitude that also guide them that well it's okay, you're mad now, but other ways you could get what you want. Yelling and screaming doesn't do it. So it's a skill really to be a good parent.

Most parents don't have some of that skill, but not to the extent where the child can develop with some kind of openness to the session nasure because most people, most parents don't have their own connect you with the sentential nature. They don't know what it is. It needs somebody who's already awake into the session to mature and it filled with it to and both parents have to be there or three pairs, whatever the situation is, to actually raise a child like that, and still that will

not make them completely pure. Just give them more than most people, than the average person, more openness and capacity to connect to that in the nation that really on human being at some point. I'm looking forward because it is them and they've lost contact with it, so of course they're going to be look for it, and they tend to look for it outside and to think that

will make them happy whatever. But what will make them happy is really the happiness that is their heart, and that the movement inward that at some point happens for many people excellence. So let's talk about what is the

theory of holes? Yes, so a thief whole I developed at the beginning of my work as a new contribution to spiritual understanding and spiritual practice, which is that as a person developed from childhood and they are first open to that is such a nature and the SUCHI A nature has many qualities as said, love, passion, strength through will, peacefulness, gratitude, stillness, all of these qualities that are part of such a nature. Is not one monolithic, uniform medium. It is a medium,

but it can manifest itself as a different qualities. Sometimes the child is innocent, Sometimes the child is a search of or strong. Sometimes the child is quiet, and serene. All these are qualities that we originally have. That's part for all essential nature. I call them essential aspects, aspects

of essence. So depending on what happened, we lose contact with each one of them in a different way than we do that depending in our situation, a certain interactions, certain events that happened in our ear a few years will disconnect us from one partical quality. As we become disconnected on our partic quality, we develop something instead of it,

which is part of our personality. As we go through that part of our personality and sort of deconstructed and see through it, we will encounter the emptiness, which is the disconnection of the quality, and that emptness will feel like a whole in our consciousness and whole in our soul, like something is missing. So that where the theory of whole comes. That we all have many holes when we begin our spiritual search, but we're not aware of the whole.

We're just not in touch with many of these qualities. So as we study and explore the construct our personality part by part, because I don't do it all at once, which many teaching do, you just get rid of yourselves and that way you become awakened. Well, that's when way

of doing it it works. But the one way I found, and this teaching which has very handy, very useful for many people, You could deal with one segment of your personality lack your self esteem, difficult self esteem, or feeling of losing your sense of well or any of those things by working with them, understanding them and seeing what is their history without the beliefs around them. That opens up to some kind of emptness which we go through we will begin to reconnect with that quality that we

have lost at some point. Usually we see a history, in particular history that we've come through personal power. Person has seen. It's either encounter our parents, accident, illnesses, diseases. I think that happened in school, many things. But you know there's a lot of fears or a lot of pain that allies is a reaction, believes and all that.

It's a constellation around each of the qualities which when we made transparent it opens up to some kind of emptiness that that called the whole, but that would become the entry, the portal to that partic quality of our essential nature. Then we begin to experience it like if we disconnected from course of for our love, we feel unloved, unlovable, and we deal with the sense of being unlovable or experience it and not fight it, and not to try to prove to ourselves we are lovable or our love.

Were just feel the feeling of being unlovable, and you believe that that in our heart there is an emptiness as a whole, and I feel unlovable. There's no love there. And when you feel that, we might feel what does it happen? My father didn't love me, or I just believe there was out love because some they love somebody

else more than me. There is a herod to the wom that our eyes that's open to an empty Then the love of all eyes is that the heart becomes full of love like sweetness and love and goodness, sense of feeling both loving others and loving oneself and also feeling that love is part of me, part of my heart, part of my essential nation. So what we're saying here is that as essence disappears, then it leaves a hole, and most of us see that whole as a deficiency

of some sort. But by looking deeper in that way is a path back to essence. Exactly the deficiency is actually the path to us because it is the disconnection. On essence, it's confronting the disconnection. Let me dig into this just a little bit deeper then, because for a lot of people there is a sense of Okay, I'm feeling an emotion. It's pretty popular in spiritual circles these days to say, feel the emotion. Don't go up into

all your stories, but stop and feel the emotion. But for a lot of people, they don't really know how to do that. So this is I think would fall under a pretty big category in the Diamond approach, which was inquiry. But what are some ways to inquire into emotional states that are actually useful? Well, first of all, that's true, many people might not even be able to feel their emotions. First, we need to be able to have access to our We all have emotions. Whether we

can access them or not is another story. So the beginning of the path is learning to access our emotion by seeing what's in the way of them, the beliefs or fears or whatever it is. And we use breathing techniques and as you said, inquiry, which is you inquired into your state, whatever you're experiencing right now. What is it what I my experiencing. I might feel well, um, I don't feel anything. And what's that like to not feel anything? If somebody has just let themselves feel I

don't feel anything. There is some kind of hardness in their hearts or some kind of gauzy kind of thing, and if they feel it, let it happen. Priven to it, it will disappear. And then emotional arizes as fear or sadness or jealousy or any of those things. And then the point is not just to feel. Over then we need to ful feel our emotions. But our emotion is just part of our experience. There is emotion, the or sensation, their thoughts and images, their memories are connected with them.

So when I say in our path to inquire, I need to inquire into what is happening right now, A bush is a very important part of it. But that does not mean I should forget about what I'm thinking. Does not mean I should forget about what does get associated to the emotion. All of it is the data that the inquiry uses includy basically means I have all these all these parts of my experience. What are they

all about? What is the meaning of all of them together, and by asking the question what are all they about? They be? They begin to change and transform and become more focused until it becomes clear what is the meaning of what's going on? That then opens up to another level of emotion or another level of experience. And I inquired into that, and equity keeps happening. Even if I get into my essential nature and I feel love or I feel a sense of presence or strength, question continue,

what is that? What that feel like? What does a sense like? Doesn't have a textion? Does a smell like? Something doesn't make me feel one way or another? Inquiry opens the doors of consciousness to create and create a discovery of what and who we are and what we can be. Now For a lot of people, myself included certainly at points, right, inquiry stays in the realm of

mental it's just thoughts. What you're saying is to inquire into the totality of our experience its thoughts, emotions, sensations, sounds, smells, the whole, the whole kitten caboodle. Right, And so I know that the diamond approach is not based on tips, right, So I'm not expecting you to summarize huge amounts of work that you've done in in one little sentence, but any general ideas for principles that can ground us in inquiry. No, it's a good question. When I say inquiry, I don't

mean mental cuority. I mean inquarities to the totality if our experience, not only that totality of my experience at the present moment. So we stopped with the question of where am I now in the experiential universe. Suppose there's gonna check with myself or somebody check with themselves and experienced some anxiety, and then the question is what's the anxiety about? There might be thoughts with it, but what's the anxiety about? My presson my No, No, what's anxiety about?

There's something you feel, of course in your psyche, in your heart, and if you're asking in my d real, Oh I have a date for the first time, or this person I am anxious about meeting. I wonder why am I anxious about that? You see you ask about what is alliesing, and then you find out, well, the answer allieses is because I'm afraid I won't know how

to be myself, how to be real? Well, you ask yourself, what's the big deal about that, and then the answer all your heart, I like this person, I want to be real through with them. That becomes what I mean by meaning, the meaning if you experience, you realize you're anxious because you really you want to be truly yourself with this person you're going to meet who you really

like very much. So you start with anxiety, but you end up with feeling of liking and love and some kind of society, as it says, all staying with the now. And so in what ways does this differ from or in what ways is it similar to a lot of what somebody might be doing in psychology. I've heard you sort of say that the advent of psychology and everything we know about psychology is a great boom for spiritual seeking, but that oftentimes people separate the two, and the diamond

approach tries to integrate the two. Very true, there are similarity of psychology in the sense we use some psychological understanding and knowledge that developed in the twentieth century essentially at the same time, as different from psychology in the sense it's not a therapy because I begin here luck with anxiety, and I'm not encoding into anxiety because I want to get rid of it, which is what therapy wants to do. I want to get rid of get all of an anxiety. I want to unders and it.

I don't know what's the anxiety about, so I really want to know it's truth. So the motivation is a little different than therapy. And the result that allises is a feeling not just a feeling of love, but the feeling of presence of love, which is a spiritual quality, which usually therapy doesn't get to. So both the orientation and what we get to is different from what psycho therapy.

Psychology does. Lost the psychology does not include think like our essential nature or essence, right, and so is just by having a different orientation is that enough to make what happens and how it comes out different? In big part of the orientations. The other part is the view of reality m hm. The view that includes our our essence such a nature. Psychology doesn't. It's view doesn't have that. You see the view, I mean the perspective you take

about yourself. And of course when you're working spiritual worker, frequently you have a teacher, and the teacher already have that view, already has not only the view but the fruit, the fruit of the fruit of the view, which is such a nature itself. So their intention the teachers already is the person is coming from the presence of goodness or love or whatever, and so it's a inquiry, is a guidance. But the orientation part of it, the views part of it, And it's difficult to really know how

it's different until you actually do it. And you see in therapy, for when you get to the emptiness, they think it's a bad thing. You want to get away from it. For us. For me, when I get to the emptiness, I welcome down. I'm getting someplace, you se, I'm getting to the entry door. It's not a problem. It is actually the beginning of the solution. Now psychology doesn't have that perspective at all. Right, it's a very

different orientation. And so is doing inquiry something that we're really capable of doing by ourselves or is it really take someone to help us inquire and guide the inquiry. I think some people can do it by themselves to some degree. Having somebody skilled in it who really done it for some time helps a great deal. And some people can do it. I don't know how whether everybody can do it some people can do it. I've written books. Purpose of the book is that's what people can learn

how to do it. We have online courses actually about inquiry now that some people can take and because we believe people can learn to do it. Just like mindfulness or something people can do, you can learn to do. Inquiry is similar so mindful, it's start with mindfulness and goes a little further by its more dynamic, more engaged, and mindfulness because it engages, the experience is still just

being aware of it. Got it. And so if people are inquiring, the idea is to keep coming back to what the direct experience is and the direct response that you're getting from your inquiry. That's very central for the inquiry is the direct immediate experience because really, if we stay with the direct immediate experience, in time, we will get in touch with the source of immediacy itself, which

is our essential nature. I've done a few different types of inquiry, but I once did a little bit of work with somebody who had been trained in the diamond approach, and what I noticed was, I think sort of what you've described, which is when they asked me what's going on, I had a lot of like, I'm not really sure because I'm not used to paying attention in this way. Very true. So we teach first people how to pay attention.

We have meditation practices. Some of them are awareness of what's happening, some of them have concentration on some parts of it. The person needs these initial skills to be able to engage inquiry. Just like meditation, you need special skills. So these skills are are given at the beginning of our teaching, the beginning of the path. Because some people have them to some degree, many people don't have them.

How to feel oneself, how to stay able to feeling oneselves, set of rationalizing or running away from it, and then staying with it in a way that we can inspect it, we can ask questions about it, level to it. That's another capacity that people need to develop. So you're right about all these things. It's a skill. And that's why inquiry is not your learner that you don't learn it. It's more you learn a little piloting and you get better and better at it, and the better you get

at it, the easier it is. And the fact that goes the deeper you go. In a short period of time, excellent. You have said once that this is not about changing yourself. The quote is you do whatever you do in your life and then study what's happening. That's all you need to do, study your life to understand it. Yeah, if I try to change myself, it means trying to change myself. I mean, I'm not letting myself experience what I'm experiencing right now, So how can I inquire into it if

I am trying to change it. If I wanted to change I'm already interfering. So one thing to change experience is the interference of the experience or rejection of the experience, which mean experience is not that just by itself and has to be thereby as it is for me to find out what what it is, what its meaning. The motivation though, to often do inquiry or spiritual work, is because the experiences we're having are generally not pleasant or

they're not what we want them to be. So there's uh, this is always that paradox we talked about with spiritual work, which is, on one hand, I need to leave it alone. I need to leave experience alone enough to truly observe it and let it be. And yet the beginning, motivation tends to come from because I don't like what experience is giving me. Yes, for most people, that's how they stopped. So it takes time for somebody to learn the pure motivation, which is to love truth. I call loving truth for

own sake not very unfined skill. Human being kind of elop at the beginning. Yes, we have motivation, we have the goals and aims. We don't like this, we want to change that. So the way we deal with that is we include that, and the include that's part of what's there. If I feel anxious, but I also feel I don't want to be anxious, I'm aware also I don't want to be anxious. That's part of what I inquire into. Why do I not want to be anxious? You see what I mean? So I inquire into the

desire to change it. I enquire into the desire to make it different so I don't like it. That's frequently the beginning of what I enquire into. We include the reaction or the attitude, and then Corey, we just keep circling back to what am I experiencing? What am I experiencing exactly? Because if I want to change it, that's

part of what I'm experiencing, right, everything is included. Oftentimes when we're described mean this sort of thing to people will say something and I do it, something along the lines of allow everything to be exactly the way it is, which is a wonderful teaching except when you can't do it. Yeah, but you see a loud thing to be what it is is the highest teaching there is, meaning most teaching, their highest state is to let themselves be just be

themselves without any attempt to change. However, that's not an easy place to be, and it's the final final result. However, we use it in our practice as a beginning. We don't have it completely, but we we are oriented that way. We know that trying to change something is not going to work for us, that we were standing in our own way, so little by little we developed the attitude of just the love to know, the love of discovery,

which we all have. Yes, if you were to sort of sum up what you keep saying about inquiry, one way of saying it would be become consistently curious about what's happening, consistently curious, loving to find out what does it's going on with me? And what turns out. What am I? What does the meaning of my experience? Was it? The meaning of my existence? All will come if I

keep staying with my experience. One of the things that pulls us out of curiosity most often is pain, and so on one hand, the antidote for pain is to be curious. But what are other qualities that can help us stay with the curiosity. Obviously, different levels of pain are different. There are people who have severe trauma. That level of pain to remain with is a different animal.

And I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking more about, you know, the run of the mill types of pain that that a lot of us experience, emotional pain that we want to turn away from. So curiosity is is one sort of key orientation. Are there others? Oh? Yeah, many. Curiosity is one of them. The other one is courage, kind of boldness, because to stay with pain it acquire strength and boldness and adventtion of spirit. That is another

spiritual quality. Because curiosity is really expression of one aspect of assets. Boldness or carriage is an expression of another aspect of essence. And the steadfastness, which meaning you stay with it, you have bold to go into it, but your steadfast you keep staying with it, you don't get distracted, you don't go away from it. And there's the love, the love to know, to know the truth, the love to know reality, which becomes the love to know God

or whatever could develop. So these are some of the qualities. So there are others that these are the some of the basic ones. Another one is kindness, kindness stared oneself. It's not a matter of pushing oneself. It's not what matter. Being hard in oneself does a matter of being gentle oneself. There's approaching our experience with gentleness because we're already having a hard time. So we don't want to push. We

don't want to do it from a hard place. If we do it from perspective, I want to change just a hard place rejecting it. So part of the letting it be is a kindness, is a loving kindness that is there with the pain, and the pain requires really kindness more than anything else. And the more kindness we feel ourselves, the more we were able to stay with the difficulty with the pain. In fact, the main thing that helps us stay with the pain is kindness and

the love and kindness that all human beings have. But they might not have complete access to it, but we can access as more and more as we see what's in this way. Yes, I have found all those qualities to be imminently useful and critical. And then you know, all of it turns into realizing that all those are qualities that I only possess some of the time. You know. That's where I think that kindness sort of comes in most importantly, is to go, well, you know what, I

gave it my best effort there. I'll come back and give it my best effort again and again and again, because I think perfectionism is is a great enemy. Perfectionism is being hard in oneself, you know, because you can't be perfect, and to accept our limitations and to be with them, be gentle with them. And another quality also, I want to mention the clarity and precision, meaning I don't just want to know what I'm experiencing. I want to know it exactly as it is. So it's not like,

well I sort of feel a little bit disturbed. You might find that little disturbed mean I'm really piste off. That is more precise, you see what I mean. So precision meaning you really want to know, be exact about what you are experiencing. The exactness is important. Is some of that just a broader emotional vocabulary? What are some things that guide us in exactness or precision? Precision, clarity, specificity, particular nous, All these help us recognize what is it

really happening? Like sometimes people cannot tell the difference between sadness and kindness, you see, because there's very close. The boss had a warmth to their materials to them, but they're really slightly different. The sadness is an emotional happening in the heart, while the kindness is a subtle warm atmosphere that is gentle, and it's not exactly sadness. It has more of a healing energy to it, and you could differentiate separate the two if you stay with them.

It's that you want to be more precise about what's happening. That's a really good example as someone who often feels great emotion which can manifest his tears, but realizing it has nothing to do with sad exactly. That's a great example of an emotional precision. Yes, and that's very important for our inquiry. More precise we are, the more effective the inquiry excellent. Well, any other ideas on how to strengthen our power of inquiry that are easy to describe

well than many of them. All the qualities of our essential nature are actually needed. The more of them are they're more effective our inquiry. If we have a couple of them, we're doing pretty good. But the more of them we have, the more effective and powerful inquiry, which means the bigger is the openness and the expansion and the deeper we go. Another quality is what I call intelligence or brilliance, And what intelligence means is the capacity

to synthesize. You hold everything together in a way where you could see their interconnectedness. So synthesis is a capacity some people have and but we can develop. So it's not a matter of just it's just this, and it's not that when you see all the pieces, what is it that bring them together, because we're putting them together, is what will reveal the meaning of them all. That's another equality and aspects and beating, which has to do

with radiance or brilliance of our essence. The radiance shines through from underneath through all the parts, revealing their and the long unity, but connects them. That would be the insight to them. Excellent, well, I mean, I think this is a great place for us to wrap up. But thanks so much for spending some time with us going deeper into how inquiry works and how we can make it useful in our own lives. Appreciate the opportunity to talk about inquiry and the fact that I haven't talked

about inquiry. We have online course now about inquiry, an audio course inquiry too, and we'll have links in the show notes to all of your different pieces and things that people can learn from you. I know you did a couple of courses, which sounds true also, so there is there is a lot of material out there and we'll have some links to it. And one thing I wanted people to know it's important that's coming up is

an online course. So we're calling Spirituality in a Fractioned World, which you will begin next year, and it is really irrelevant. It's is inquiry into our experience. But in the world we are in, which is a difficult world these days, with religion and polarization and politics and all of that, many people are scared or angry whatever. We are doing a course of how to deal with these things using

the inquiry we're talking about. That's great that's a great course idea which I think will be very useful because many people don't know what to do all these things that's happening with them. Yes, so how to use spiritual qualities and practices to deal with these things, and how to also act with other people from this place so there can be more harmony, more understanding. Where we can certainly use more harmony and understanding, there's no doubt about that,

especially these days, you know, Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much. I mean, it's been a real pleasure talking with you again. Plas just talking to you. Eric. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now.

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