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What we will be doing instead is participating with the universe in the universe enjoying its own beauty. Why not?
The presence of an essential aspect manifests as a substance, as subtle matter, only through the direct and immediate experience of that aspect. This direct experience of each aspect has characteristics of color, texture, taste, and so on. In terms of color, Brilliancy is brilliant, which is not one of the known colors.
Brilliancy usually flows in the body through the cerebrospinal fluid in the spinal column. As such, it is directly involved with the nervous system and the brain, so it affects the functioning of thought. Imagine Brilliancy flowing through your synapses; imagine feeling it in your nerves. Imagine the sensation of exquisite smoothness and purity coursing through your nervous system, lighting it up, setting it ablaze with the brilliance of intelligence. Like a lubricant or a conducting substance of complete smoothness in your nervous system, Brilliancy dissolves any resistance in the nerves with its smoothness and flow, with its incredible ease, speed, and penetrating power.
The basis of hurt is the sense of being cut off from oneself, from one’s own truth. That has to happen first, before you can be hurt in other ways. If you are not cut off from truth, you can’t be truly hurt. But if you are cut off from truth, then you will be hurt by all sorts of things. But those hurts are just provoking the deeper hurt. They’re a reflection of it.
What we are talking about here is a taboo that runs really deep in our society. It seems to me that there is a taboo against knowing and living and shining with your truth, even more so than there is about sexual things.
But that is not new; society has always been like that, and it’s probably going to be like that for the next few million years. You can take that as a given.
Instead we can ask ourselves, “What is the most intelligent way to go about this so we can be the truth of what we are? How can we use the present situation in the most intelligent way possible to support ourselves and our endeavor—and hopefully benefit society as well?”
AH: I mean that being yourself 5 percent of the time is pretty good for most people. Really. I am not kidding. If you can be yourself 5 percent of the time, you at least know what it is like to be yourself. A lot of people haven’t even got the vaguest idea what it is like to be themselves. In fact, the majority of people don’t even know when they are not being themselves.
Brilliancy is an actual part of who we are. It’s like your stomach. You don’t say a person is stomachy. A person has a stomach. It’s part of being a person, of having a body, that you have a stomach. It is the same with Brilliancy. You can’t say a person is brilliant or not brilliant. You say that a person is not being that part of themselves, that they are not in touch with their Brilliancy.
If you are really normal, you won’t have to take yourself to be anything; you won’t bother about what it is that is you. Who you are, whatever you are—you won’t need to think of it.
AI Summary
Brilliancy by A. H. Almaas presents key insights from the Diamond Approach tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.