AT THE HEART OF MOST OF our human activity is the search for meaning. We look for it explicitly in all sorts of places, from tiny, invisible particles to grand, transcendent states. The point of the search is to find a place to rest, an ultimate truth that can bear the weight of the entirety of our human experiences. Our sciences chase elusive supersymmetrical particles in the hope of finding a unified theory of everything. Our spiritual traditions travel the inner realms looking for the final dimension of reality. Our philosophies investigate being and nothingness for master concepts with maximum explanatory power. And each of us mirrors this impulse for finality in our daily calibrations of who we are and what we are all about. We can even see our conflicts—be they personal, intellectual, political, religious, or cultural—as a clash of competing ultimates. Looking for the one thing that will make sense of all things often has the paradoxical effect of obliterating the particularity of each thing. Unity becomes a matter of sameness and equality a matter of equivalence. We want to get either to the bottom of everything—say, the Higgs boson—or beyond everything—the absolute emptiness of reality. But life happens across a broad scale of things: quarks, Aunt Cathy, the Pacific Ocean, a traffic jam, boundless awareness. The impulse to subsume this multiplicity into a single, fixed, and overriding unity—whether quantum, macro, or both—springs from our need for stability, for knowing once and for all, for shoring ourselves up against insecurity. In our inner life much as in our outer, we tend to trade freedom for security. In Runaway Realization, A. H. Almaas, the founder of the Diamond Approach to inner realization, presents another possibility. What if reality is not limited to any single ultimate? What if there is no fixed truth that unifies all human life?
search for an ending is a vestige of subtle concepts of the self? What if unity includes particularity? What if freedom means never coming to a final rest? Almaas introduces us here to the view of totality, a view that holds all possible views as valid without limiting reality to any one of them. Rather than holding fast to any one ultimate truth, the view of totality recognizes that no single view or combination of views can exhaust the richness of reality. The view of totality includes all possible views—the dual, the nondual, the unilocal, the theistic, the scientific, the philosophic, and others—without reducing them to mere iterations of a single truth (as do the perennial philosophers). Although each view is a complete understanding of its own particular truth, none of them is a complete understanding of all of reality because reality is inherently free and cannot be fully captured in any view.
At its core is a radically new conception of identity and difference, one that is not relative but absolute—meaning that unity does not come at the expense of particularity, or infinity at the expense of the finite. The view of totality is…
Because it recognizes the validity of all views, each with its own ultimate, the view of totality does away with the notion of any single, conclusive truth. Reality remains ever beyond the reach of any one totalizing view, reflecting the fact that all views contain certain truths about reality. Runaway realization is the triumph of reality living its life, freely moving from one realization to another.
Freedom becomes a matter not
of arriving at some ultimate truth, but of being able to be nimble in view, to hold any view or multiple views or even no view at all. This underlying openness of view—to hold any or many, one or none—is at once the essence of the dynamism that animates all possible views of reality. In this view of totality, Almaas extends Gödel’s famous mathematical proof into the realm of spiritual work: No view or combination of views, no matter how consistent, can completely exhaust the truth of reality. The price of human freedom, then, is to live this uncertainty.
His previous books articulate what can be considered a hierarchical view of realization, where spiritual practice is a gradual process of seeing through ego identifications, realizing various qualities of presence and levels of nonduality, and integrating these realizations into our daily life. In this book, there is no refutation of the Diamond Approach as we have known it—a steady progression of experiencing essential qualities, boundless dimensions, and wisdom vehicles—but rather it is seen anew from the enlarged perspective of nonhierarchy.
From the vantage of totality, we can discern not only the distinctness, the validity, and the experiential universe of that particular view but also the relationship of one worldview to another. Doing so unleashes the inherent freedom of reality, and reality shows its delight by leading us to other views and further mysteries. This is the upshot of uncertainty: We are loosed from the search for final meaning into a life of limitless adventure.
The Turnings Of The Wheel
Reality itself begins to live our life in all its daily expressions. Our life can become an endless revelation of reality, an adventure with neither beginning nor end. This book that you find in your hands is my attempt to point out the endlessness of reality, the unceasing revelations of the adventure of being. Like life, the teaching that I communicate, the Diamond Approach, is a living truth that constantly evolves and reveals more about itself and more about reality.
Inquiry, our central practice, always begins by exploring exactly where we find ourselves in the moment. For most of us, this means that we begin our inner work by dealing with the structures and beliefs that constrain the aliveness of our immediate experience. Over time, this open and open-ended inquiry into our experience carries us through all kinds of realizations and awakenings. We discover the soul, we discover presence in its myriad qualities, we discover the boundless dimensions of true nature and the nonduality of reality, and we learn how to live a personal life that reflects the wisdom of all these discoveries. The journey into the absolute heart of reality and its integration into our daily life is fundamental to waking up and to continuing to wake up in novel and unexpected ways.
It is as we move toward living and expressing our realization—instead of just discovering and abiding in it—that we begin to discern these new possibilities. How does reality manifest itself in action, in expression? How does realization live? If life is the life of reality, does a human life still have meaning? What is the point of the particular individual?
This new view, which I call the view of totality, reveals that the Diamond Approach cannot be mapped because reality itself cannot be captured in a map. Reality is not a monolithic, static truth that can be defined in a fixed way. It is actually way more alive and mysterious than that. We might feel chagrined by this if we believe that we have reached some final, eternal truth about reality; or we might feel delighted by the freedom of not having an end or a goal to reach. Regardless of how we feel about it, recognizing this indeterminacy of reality is crucial to living our realization and our freedom. So even though the experience of aspects and dimensions of reality is instrumental to waking up, even though we cannot bypass the journeys of ascent and descent with their different kinds of nonduality, there is still more to explore about reality, more to live and to find out. The mystery of reality has more angles than we can imagine. And we soon find that by looking at reality from these new angles, we can more easily and readily learn the various aspects of the teaching. So the view of totality makes more available and accessible to experience and to understanding the usual progression of the teaching, both of this particular path and also of many of the nondual approaches, whether gradual or sudden.
When we consider the development of this teaching and how it expresses reality, we can distinguish, in its present condition, four broad movements that are turnings of the wheel of the teaching. The first turn of the wheel encompasses the individual phase, which is the learning, development, and realization of the soul or individual consciousness. Here, the soul discovers essence as her true nature. In the second turning of the wheel, the soul realizes the boundless condition of her true nature. This is
usually equivalent to the realization of the unity, oneness, and nonduality of reality. If we survey the history of this teaching, we see that we have been working primarily within these first two turnings of the teaching. We work long and hard to realize our essential identity and to wake up to the unity of existence. We can see our work thus far as the movements to realize the absolute nature of reality and to integrate that realization into our life; these are known as the journeys of ascent and descent. In this book, I am introducing some of the wisdoms related to the third and fourth turnings of the wheel of the teaching. The third turning of the wheel has to do with what I refer to as the freedom vehicle. This vehicle signals a move beyond even the boundlessness, unity, and nonduality of true nature. It presents reality from an entirely different vantage. Basically, it is like going to a parallel universe that is altogether different from ours, and then contemplating realization, enlightenment, and spirituality from the perspective of this new universe. We are investigating the same phenomena that we always have, but from a radically different angle. The fourth turning of the wheel reveals understandings that arise from the realization of the freedom vehicle. Reality opens up in many unexpected ways, showing that enlightenment and realization have many meanings. Not only are there different stages of realization, as we see in the first and second turns of the teaching, but there are also different kinds of realization. We discover many angles and perspectives from which to view and explore reality. The view of totality arises as one of the wisdoms of the fourth turning.
Each one of us at each moment is reality expressing itself. The idea is not complex or sophisticated. But to feel and to know it directly in experience are often difficult because we encounter all kinds of mental obstacles to this simplicity. Even though it is, in some sense, quite simple, we have to go through all the spiritual experiences—the visions and insights, the understandings and processing, the dimensions and illuminations—before we can realize this simplicity. Whatever it is that is happening is really it. There isn’t another “it” that we are going toward. In the first and second turnings of the wheel, it seems as if there is an “it” that we are moving toward—deeper revelations and more subtle insights. But by the third turning, we wise up. We realize after we have gotten to the “it”—whatever that might be for different people and different teachings—that there actually isn’t any “it,” and whatever we are experiencing is reality and cannot be anything but reality. Gone is the sense of the hierarchy of realization that appears in the first and second turnings of the wheel. The fourth turning reveals the wisdom of nonhierarchy. There are no levels or degrees of progress, no process or development, no ultimate goal or aim. Instead, there is the pure simplicity of reality expressing itself however it wants.
We have to use language to go beyond language by constantly deconstructing the language that we use.
The view of totality, which can entertain multiple views without having to attach to or be constrained by any of them, expands exponentially the power and the freedom of our inquiry.
One of the central issues that we deal with in this book is the relationship between duality and nonduality. Discerning the implications inherent in the nondual view opens up whole new possibilities of experience. We will spend some time exploring these new frontiers by examining the nature of time and space, the role of the particular individual, the paradox of nondoing, and the various mysteries of emptiness—all from the perspective of totality. What is revealed as we do this is that reality is far more indeterminate, far more mysterious than anything we can conceive of. No single view—whether dual, nondual, unilocal, or something else entirely—can capture the dynamism of reality. Freedom is the freedom of reality to reveal its dynamism, to express itself as form, as formlessness, as both, or as neither. No single feature and no combination of features can exhaust the potential of reality. It is a mystery without end. Reality is always revealing itself by knowing itself; and knowing reality and living it becomes the fulfillment of our life. The purity of reality expresses itself to us, through us, and as us, all at once. Our life becomes the life of true nature—the purity at the heart of reality—living consciously and expressing itself as us, using us by being us. This is the miraculous heart of human freedom.
Continual Practice
MOST SPIRITUAL PATHS, including the Diamond Approach, involve a certain paradox of realization. We practice, we do exercises, we become responsible for our own liberation, and, at the same time, we know from our experience that realization often happens without being directly connected to the practices that we engage. By exploring this paradox, we can come to understand the relationship between our own intention to wake up and the action of grace. We can come to appreciate the relationship between our own responsibility for our experience and the view that God or Being or true nature makes freedom happen. Both perceptions, both ends of the relationship, reflect truths. Understanding the paradox involves seeing how practice and realization interrelate, interact, and interweave until they become one dynamic.
We practice, we do exercises, we become responsible for our own liberation, and, at the same time, we know from our experience that realization often happens without being directly connected to the practices that we engage. By exploring this paradox, we can come to understand the relationship between our own intention to wake up and the action of grace.
Both perceptions, both ends of the relationship, reflect truths. Understanding the paradox involves seeing how practice and realization interrelate, interact, and interweave until they become one dynamic.
And in order to open up this new view, we must deconstruct a number of the basic terms in our spiritual work so that they become more…
What do we mean by “realization”? Generally, realization suggests progress on the path; more specifically, it refers to the nondual experience of our nature by being our nature, by recognizing that I and my nature are not two things, by knowing that I and my nature are one and the same. Many of the teachings of the Diamond Approach explore different facets of realization. We can experience our true nature, the purest nature of reality, as being authentic, being real, being what we are, being where we are, or being in the enlightened condition. For some years now, our teaching has been emphasizing that realization is not simply a matter of arriving at the condition of Being, arriving at the condition of being our true nature, arriving at the condition of pure…
We find out that it is not simply the extending of the same state into activity, but rather that living our realization is realization realizing further and deeper and more complete realization. This is a point…
When we fully explore what it means to live our realization, we discover that it means to practice uninterruptedly, to engage the work without cessation. Many people believe that realization signals the end of practice, the end of doing the work. We might think, “When I am realized, I won’t need to practice any longer; I can simply be.” When we are not realized, the situation appears that way. But from the perspective of realization, living is a matter of continual practice and continual engagement. This raises the question of the relationship between…
This is the mystery at the heart of the relationship between the one who inquires and meditates and the beingness that…
From the conventional perspective, from the perspective of nonrealization, the one who inquires and the truth that is revealed are separate and have a certain relationship. As we go on, we will deconstruct this relationship and the various delusions of practice because they stand in the way of living our realization, of integrating our realization in life, of bringing our realization into our everyday circumstances. Understanding the true relationship between practice and realization allows us to express and to embody the totality of the realized condition. It also…
From the view of the individual self, we have seen practice as an activity that we do in order to accomplish a particular task. In realization, we find out that is simply not true. When I say practice, I mean it in the authentic sense—simply put, practice is being engaged with reality and doing the work, whether meditating or eating a steak. In other words, practice is not limited to our formal practices; it is not only when we are inquiring or when we are meditating. Practice is engaging all the moments of life through practicing being present—sensing and looking and listening as we go through our day. So practice is not simply the specific activity with which we are engaged. It also includes the orientation, the intention, the motivation, and the attitude of devotion to practice. Our devotion to practice reflects our love of the truth, our love of the condition of realization, our love of reality. Practice…
Continual practice includes that kind of attitude, that kind of devotion, that kind of interest, that kind of love, that kind of commitment that is continually remembered. I don’t simply mean mentally remembered, although it might sometimes be like that. I mean that as we are living our life, we recognize and don’t forget the deeper values that are reflected in our practice.
If we are truly sincere in our attitude and we begin from a real place, realization is there whether or not we recognize it.
Recognizing and experiencing and understanding realization manifesting itself as our practice amplifies the drive to continue our practice. We love it, we value it, we care about it, we don’t want to forget it. We don’t want to forget how to be, or what attitude to take, or what kind of focus to have. As our commitment to align with reality deepens, as our actualized devotion to realness intensifies, a quality of consciousness manifests that is more concentrated, more clear and pure. We recognize this concentrated consciousness as presence or as in-touchness with the immediacy of our being.
How can we understand the dynamic between what we do and the action of Being itself? How do intention and grace work together? How do practice and spontaneous realization interrelate? When we understand practice, we see that practice is already realization in some way. Practice expresses the values of realization and is infused with the qualities of realization. The stage of living our realization is epitomized by a classic expression from one of the most celebrated Zen masters, Dogen Zenji. He said, “Practice is realization and realization is practice.” As we go on, we will explore different angles from which to understand this one expression.
Practice is not merely doing something repeatedly and mechanically. Simply sitting and meditating is not necessarily practice. Practice requires true intention, true motivation, true devotion to the truth. Otherwise, we are not practicing or engaging the work. If you inquire into the truth in order to solve a problem or make yourself feel better, then you are not actually practicing. True practice expresses the values and the qualities of realization: the curiosity and the love, the openness and the steadfastness, the enjoyment of reality, the appreciation of authenticity, the delight and the clarity, the happiness in stillness.
The entirety of all and everything is practicing as the individual is practicing. As the individual meditates, we learn that it is Living Being in its totality that is actually meditating. Living Being is the beingness and aliveness and dynamism of everything and everyone; it is reality living its life.
Living Being is practicing in the sense that it is experiencing, revealing, and expressing itself. Although this is always the case, for a long time it is not apparent to us.
Once we understand that it is the totality of all there is that is practicing, living our realization becomes simpler and easier, and many questions and conflicts evaporate. We see that practice and living what we learn become one thing. Our practice does not simply produce the experience or the insight of realization but it bodies forth the realization.
Before we can live the totality of our realization, our practice needs to become continual and needs to become clear about itself. Why do we practice anyway? Why do we bother to take the time, the trouble, the expense, and spend the energy to practice? This is always a big question for us as we begin to engage inner work. As our attention collects from being dispersed in outer activities and forms into the inner subjectivity, into the inner atmosphere, our value system changes. We practice because we want to live fully, we want to be free, we want to discover the mysteries of existence, we want our life to fulfill its purpose. We can see our motivation in many ways. It’s a natural process. The journey commences for some sooner than for others, and for some more intensely than for others. We are fortunate if it has commenced at all. We are lucky that we are willing to dedicate so much energy and effort to it.
Since each of us is drawn in some way by that force, let’s not assume how much time remains or even that there is any time at all. Let’s take each moment as the most precious moment. Let’s take each moment as a moment that might not be followed by another moment.
The total engagement that is required from the perspective of practice challenges the idea or the belief or the delusion that we can practice later, or practice more fully later, or put our heart into our practice later. “Now is for other things; later is for practice. Now is for e-mail and friends and gardening; later is for true engagement with reality.” We commit ourselves to our practice when we recognize that there is no time to waste, when we recognize that the situation is always urgent. We want nothing short of full engagement with reality—we want to see it, find it, live it, be it, touch it, be consumed by it, and consume it. We practice to express the passion of our heart for the truth, to express the fierceness of our soul for the authentic life. We practice so that when the moment of death arrives, we have no regrets.
When our practice embodies the value of realization, we understand that there are no interruptions to reality revealing itself. Reality does not take breaks. And when we put everything we’ve got into the engagement with life and with reality, the totality of the universe is practicing, and that practice is realization. When we practice with total openness, we are not trying to get someplace, not trying to find anything in particular. We practice, we engage, because that is how reality lives. That is how reality does its thing. That is how reality manifests itself. That is how reality becomes luminous and self-illuminating.
This wholehearted exploration of “where I am” includes exploring the “where,” the “I,” and the “am.” All of them are up for grabs. Proceeding with this kind of open-endedness respects how reality is presenting itself through you, to you, and as you in the moment, and, at the same time, it embraces the particularity of what is happening in your location.
We might recognize that whatever is being revealed at any moment, from the very first moment we practice, is realization, is reality manifesting itself. What else could it be? Who else would be doing it?
We need only to live each moment as it is, to live each moment fully and authentically without rejection or acceptance, without commentary or second guessing. With such total practice, we begin to live the mystery of the paradox of practice and grace.
The Enlightenment Drive
THE COMMON VIEW OF realization is that we practice until we are realized, and then we are done. But that is not what usually happens. There is no end of practice. The view from realization is a re-visioning of what practice is—it is understanding practice from the perspective of realization. If we imagine the enlightened or nondual condition as disjointed from everything else that happens, then we do not truly understand what nondual means because nondual does not exclude anything. In this view that I am presenting, we are opening up what usually happens, what has happened, and trying to understand it from a bigger perspective.
The continuity of practice doesn’t depend on whether we are enlightened or not, whether we are realized or not, whether we are beginners or advanced. Practice is always an expression of realization. Greater maturity in our realization might change the form of our practice, but its continuity is what remains central. The more we are realized, the more we will recognize life as practice, all activities as practice, all situations as occasions for practice. Engaging practice so completely and so totally requires a particular maturation of the soul. We are not able to have our practice be a continual practice until our motivation and interest for practice have become our own. The soul matures in this particular way when we develop an autonomous, independent, and true motive for engaging the inner work. This means you are not driven by your mind, you are not driven by what you heard, you are not driven by some experiences you had. You are driven by something much more fundamental, something beyond your individual self. From the beginning of our lives, we are driven by powerful inner forces. These inner forces, these drives, help our survival, our learning and maturing. These drives express life in us; they are expressions of the life force as it differentiates into various arenas of life, such as skills and functionality. Perhaps the most obvious and well known of these forces is the survival drive—the drive to keep on living, which commands potent energies and wide-ranging intelligence.
There are other unconscious drives that express our sexual and social energies. These powerful drives—the survival, the sexual, and the social—permeate our feelings, attitudes, and actions. Generally considered biological in nature and origin, these drives are often referred to as instinctual. The particular maturation of the soul that fosters true practice involves the awakening of a fourth drive, the enlightenment drive. Although similar to the instinctual drives, with similar energies and intelligence, the enlightenment drive is not completely biological. Its aim is not a physical one; rather, it is about the quality of inner experience. We may recognize the enlightenment drive as the religious drive, the longing for God or divine union, the desire for enlightenment or truth, or the love of discovering the secrets of existence, what life is all about. As we recognize the truth of this drive, we learn to work on the instinctual drives and harmonize them into the enlightenment drive. True nature, our inherent beingness, has its own dynamic force. As the soul matures, this dynamic force appears as the drive within us to go toward greater actualization of that nature, to bring that nature forward and display it in full consciousness, in full awareness.
This is a natural drive that we all have that can wake up at some point. For many people, it hasn’t awakened. Mostly, it functions unconsciously insofar as everybody wants to be happy and everybody wants to improve their life. When this drive toward freedom functions consciously, it appears as the recognition that what is at stake in our lives is the quality of our inner experience, the realization of our inherent beingness, the awakening of our spiritual nature. When we recognize this truth, the enlightenment drive has awakened. The true motivation for practice is the direct expression of this drive. For most people, the enlightenment drive awakens first through the head center, as what I call the “thought of enlightenment.” This is the usual entrance—the idea that there is such a thing as enlightenment, that there is the possibility of a spiritual life or experience and,…
with its higher values. For most people, that is how it begins, that is how the enlightenment drive wakes up. However, if the heart is not involved in the drive toward truth, then the enlightenment drive doesn’t have adequate juice or fuel. When the drive wakes up in the heart center, it appears as love, compassion, and the irresistible passion for the truth of inner life. We experience this as love for truth, love for God, love for reality, or as compassion for the suffering of ourselves and others and the desire to do something about it, the recognition of the need to wake up, to be real, to make a difference.…
When our motive to practice issues from the enlightenment drive, then it has become our own motivation. We don’t practice because we think it is a good idea. We don’t practice because somebody else…
And, as we’ve seen, practice is not only formal practice like inquiry, prayer, or meditation but also the general orientation and attitude of continuing to be…
Practice does not become continual practice until the enlightenment drive wakes up in the belly center, which has to do with application and actual functioning. We can have the idea of practice…
For that to happen, the soul will need to mature so that the enlightenment drive begins to express itself through the belly center, what is called the Hara or the Kath center. This is the center of grounding in actual life, the center of action, which takes functioning from the realm of idea and feeling to that of action and direct…
When the drive toward enlightenment expresses itself through the belly center, then the impulse and drive to practice attains the possibility of becoming persistent, steadfast, and impeccable. We begin to understand our true responsibility for ourself, not in the sense of something that we have to do but in the sense of recognizing with happiness what our responsibility is. We see, “Oh yes, this is what I ought to do and it is the same thing as what I want to…
Practice is Being itself unfolding and revealing its possibilities through its own dynamism. This understanding of practice is beyond our mind, and beyond the influence of our mind. From the perspective of reality, practice is no longer experienced as externally motivated. Nor is it only internally motivated. True practice is below the internal—it functions like the instincts that drive you consciously or unconsciously.
The drive toward truth is like the drive to survive. Do you ever forget about surviving? It’s not possible. The organism works constantly and automatically to survive. You don’t need to think about it or agree. Survival is natural, is second nature. From the view of enlightenment, the spirit engages the spiritual work in the same way, as second nature. Living our life from the perspective of practice means that practice is second nature to us.
True practice means that you are engaged with all your experience in a way that reveals reality; it means that you have an interest or focus or orientation or alignment that brings in greater clarity, greater depth, greater optimization.
Practice is the fact that things are happening and impacting you, and that you are interested in and learning from that impact. There is a dialectic between your mind, your consciousness, your heart, your life, and what is happening. That engaged dialectic is practice.
When practice is continual, we realize that all the situations of life are occasions for practice, all the activities of life are part of practice. This doesn’t mean that you are supposed to be concentrating on your belly center at every moment. It means that even when you are taking a shower, it is from the perspective of the enlightenment drive, in the sense that it is always a learning and growing experience. You are not just getting clean; even getting clean is an expression of the enlightenment drive. You get clean as an expression of appreciating the beauty of reality, as an expression of being open to the possibilities of Being.
Motiveless Practice
So we recognize at some point that our motivation needs to be grounded in and originate from this place beyond the individual soul, beyond the individual self. That makes our motivation true. True motivation expresses itself in the interest, the love, the compassion, the service, the devotion, the respect, and the appreciation that we feel for the truth of reality.
To liberate the enlightenment drive, we must specifically work with the question of what motivates practice. We can view the enlightenment drive as the source of our motivation to practice, to learn, and to grow. We can think of it as the source of our love and longing for liberation. We can consider the enlightenment drive the source of our engagement with and attitude toward our practices. In particular, we can attribute to the influence of the enlightenment drive our motivation to practice, to engage the path, to long for union, and to desire freedom. However, from the perspective of realization, this way of looking at motivation is inaccurate and limiting. This view hinders our practice by limiting the enlightenment drive from exercising its dynamism. So, for example, many people engage the work and the practices to be free from suffering, to be free from pain, to improve the quality of their experience or their life. But we can already smell the ego self when we regard practice in this way. Self-centeredness is implicit in the motivation to be rid of suffering. Although it’s natural to long for the cessation of suffering, this motivation interprets the impulse of enlightenment through the filter of the individual self. This view tends to close down the openness to truth and limits our practice. Our engagement with the work will not be practice that is realization, but instead will be practice that has the aim of satisfying the individual self. There is nothing inherently wrong with satisfying the individual self, if this self is the truth that is present and its satisfaction is something that is meaningful. But satisfying the individual self is limited in its expression of truth.
Mahayana Buddhism developed what is called the bodhisattva ideal, which means working to liberate all sentient beings and not just oneself. That teaching practices compassion for others, helping to free them and to alleviate their pain. Because the motivation to free others is not self-centered, this attitude reflects more of the truth of reality and is also more effective for our practice—and effective not simply for our own liberation. Many traditions espouse the motive of serving God or serving reality in order to bypass the possible self-centeredness of practice. In the Diamond Approach, we address the self-centeredness of practice through the central orientation of loving the truth for its own sake. And for us, “for its own sake” has been very important, because that is one way we circumvent the usual self-centeredness that arises in doing the work. The practice is not for us, it is for the truth’s sake. Many other kinds of motivations tend to be selfless and bring us closer to how reality actually is. However, all these selfless motivations are still approximations. As long as we adhere to any of them, our practice will be limited and the enlightenment drive will not be fully liberated to exercise its power. What I mean is that even selfless motivation, such as selfless love or selfless compassion, still contains a subtle self-centeredness. The self-centeredness is no longer the explicit feeling that “I want liberation for me.” We have gotten rid of that cursory level of self-centeredness by focusing on others instead. We think, “The enlightenment is not for me. It is for others, for God, for truth.” But the self-centeredness persists in the position that “I have selfless motivation. It is my selfless motivation. I developed selfless motivation. I want to liberate all sentient beings. I love the truth for its own sake. It’s not for me, it’s for the truth’s sake. I really, really love the truth selflessly and I want to give it everything I’ve got.” Who is talking? So we begin to see that there is an implicit, subtle self-centeredness in having any motive. As long as we look at the situation of practice as requiring a motive, we have not fully realized the enlightenment drive.
So how does the liberated enlightenment drive manifest? How will we experience motivation? How will we experience…
Realization informs not only the practice but also the motivation for practice. We can recognize that anything we can say about motivation only…
You just practice. You simply can’t help it. You move toward reality because that is how things are. Prior to this realization, you practice because of your love, your compassion, your wanting to serve. All these are appropriations of the enlightenment drive. We try to own the enlightenment drive; we make it our enlightenment drive. The liberation of the…
And even more accurately, the dynamism of true nature simply expresses itself as our practice. So from the condition of realization, when you are meditating, you don’t feel that you are practicing for any particular reason. You are not doing it for your benefit or for anybody else’s. You are not doing it for any special reason. You are just practicing. You love reality naturally and spontaneously. There is love of truth and movement toward it. Reality itself inherently moves toward greater truth; it naturally moves to reveal further secrets of its nature.
This delusion of being motivated to practice and to seek the truth is instigated by reality itself stirring within us.
The enlightenment drive is liberated when we understand how we appropriate its dynamism as our own motivation. The enlightenment drive is the drive of enlightened awareness to become conscious of itself, to manifest and realize itself. In other words, the enlightenment drive is not that we, as individual selves, selflessly love the truth. It is living reality loving its own truth and loving to reveal it. There are generally three stages of recognizing the movement of the enlightenment drive. Each stage reveals something further about the motivation to practice. In the beginning, we feel motivated and want to practice, to engage the path, to optimize our experience in a way that is self-centered. At some point, the soul begins to be infused by the qualities of true nature, such as love and compassion and generosity, which then appear as selfless motivations for doing the work. The last movement is
that of realization itself. Here we see that practice is true nature manifesting its luminosity, its love, and its natural intelligence in a way that spontaneously and without reason, without premeditation, opens itself to greater illumination.
When we understand motivation from the perspective of realization, it becomes much easier for practice to become continual practice. Practice is no longer dependent on our own personal position or attitude or interest. Seeing through our appropriation of the enlightenment drive liberates it to function fully as continual practice, a practice that both expresses realization and realizes further realization.
When I say “establishing realization,” who is going to establish what, and for whom? We need to be careful because we use those words to mean something that is useful, but if we reify those expressions, we get ourselves in trouble again. We create another obstacle to the full expression of the enlightenment drive.
When we love truth for its own sake, it is actually truth loving itself. It is truth manifesting in our consciousness, manifesting its love for its reality to appear. We experience that through the lens of the individual self as “I love truth for its own sake.” Although this orientation is definitely an advance over not loving truth and over loving truth for our own sake, it still is incomplete. The love of truth is not ours, or is ours only in proxy. So the issue we are dealing with here is appropriation—how we appear, cohere, and persevere through appropriating these things that don’t belong to us. We never imagined that the love didn’t belong to us. We didn’t know that we were appropriating. We thought that we were knowing and describing reality. Many of us might be feeling concerned, and divested in some way. “Do you mean that you want me to give up my love for truth? Do you want me to give up my compassion and my service? If I do that, I won’t do anything. What does it mean that the love isn’t mine?” All this time, you have believed that you are the one who is doing it, and that you’ve got your own motivation to do it, and that you’ve been doing it because of that motivation. As we start to challenge the delusion of motivation, you might be scared and say, “Well, I’m not going to do anything then. The love isn’t mine anyway.” But your fear also expresses that same delusion of appropriation, assuming that you are the center of any action, of any doing or not doing. It is true that the love is not yours, but you also cannot disown it. You might feel sad and think, “But I’ll be heartless if I don’t live from the perspective of love and compassion. I won’t be human at all.” Well, think again! When we love truth for its own sake, it is true nature experiencing its love through you. It is reality expressing its compassion through your particular, individual soul. You—what you take yourself to be, the individual consciousness—are the vehicle through which true nature does its thing, and you have mistaken it to be that you are doing your thing. So, we just want to set things straight! You are not losing anything you have had. By appropriating the enlightenment drive, we are negating the action of the divine, of true nature. We are being infidels, not recognizing where the truth is coming from and believing that it comes from us. Using the language of monotheism, appropriation is believing that there is more than one God; it is believing that there is somebody else that does what God does.
What is the role of the individual and what is the role of true nature or God or the divine? How do they interface? How does practice happen? What makes it work?
Practice To No End
Love, compassion, kindness, and generosity change their function from being motivations for practice to becoming expressions of realization. They don’t disappear, they don’t lose their value; they simply become the way realization expresses itself. When we are realized, when we are in the condition of being truly what we are, we can’t help but be kind and loving and selfless. It is natural. It is not because we want to be that way or we think it’s a good idea—it just happens. Love and compassion are not what motivates us, not because there is no love and compassion, but because there is no motivation and no need for it. Action and functioning do not rely on any principle of motivation. The flow of the dynamism of reality happens naturally and is revealed as what we are.
So, from the perspective of the individual soul, one of the holy cows of practice is that we practice in order to become realized, awakened, enlightened, and free. When we say that practice is realization, we mean precisely that: Practice is not for realization, it is realization. This challenges the conventional belief that we practice so that we can become enlightened.
In the Diamond Approach, the central practice of inquiry reveals clearly the pitfalls of practicing with any particular aim. Practicing toward any end already implies that we know what is supposed to happen next. We are second-guessing reality about what it is going to present. Having a goal for our practice also assumes that what is happening is not enough, is not sufficient. When we strive toward some end or another, we are rejecting what is actually happening. Aiming for any particular end becomes an obstruction, a subtle veil over our immediate experience.
Seeing the truth of the moment develops and unfolds the moment in whatever way it needs to go, independent of our desires and beliefs. In the practice of inquiry, it is vital that we are not trying to orient what is happening, to direct it in one way or another. We don’t inquire, we don’t practice, in order to change where we are. We inquire simply to see what the truth is in that moment—and
Many traditions, including the Diamond Approach, talk about all sorts of states and dimensions. And every time we teach a new state, you think, “Yeah, that is what I need to get to. That is the answer to everything. How do I get there?” So, in a way, we are constantly confusing you, telling you we are not going anywhere and then telling you where we are going. That is part of the conjunction of opposites, part of the fulcrum of realization. And it’s not only you who are subject to this; I still go through the same process myself. I’ve been duped many times, and I’m still liable to be duped again! But being duped is part of the practice. Getting duped and recognizing how you get duped is part of the practice. If that doesn’t happen, there really is no path, no progress, no discovery.
But as the practice becomes subtler and deeper, we realize that intention is not necessary, a goal is not necessary, motive is not necessary.
We all feel this temptation, we all hope for this panacea that will cure our long sufferings. We feel tempted by a miracle state in which we will settle and rest, where suffering ends, where the search ends. But to think of it that way means there is no more practice then.
no realization can ever end discovery. Practice then becomes a realization that is realizing further and deeper realization. And the realization that is realizing realization is endless. It has no end.
Saying that true practice has no end is not the same as saying it is endless. It is simply a matter of not trying to reach any end. So no end means the transcendence of striving toward any goal. We don’t posit an end, because we are not motivated by the need for things to settle, to rest, to conclude.
The development of the soul itself, the particular vehicle through which realization happens, never concludes. The other kind of revelation is the discovery of what’s called the natural condition, the discovery of our true nature, of the enlightened condition. At some point, what becomes important in this condition is not what the nature of soul or reality is but the freedom of the soul and reality to manifest whatever it wants to manifest.
When I say that practice is realization realizing further realization, I don’t mean that practice keeps realizing further realization until we get to the ultimate realization. That is what many of us think. And we are accustomed to this way of thinking because many teachings assert this view. In the view I am presenting here, there is no need to hold the position of ultimate realization. When we become free from the position of being oriented toward a goal, when we let go of that, we will be amazed to discover new possibilities of experience, new ways of living and being. The freedom that can happen is unimaginable—you are free not only from your conditioning and constraint but also from what your experience tells you is the truth. There is no need to adhere to anything at all.
Of course, this understanding of practice without goal is bound to be controversial. Even though many teachings talk about not having goals, they still have goals in the sense that they have the state of no-goal as an end. Many teachings hold not having a goal as a particular state or dimension. I am suggesting something different—that not having a goal is not a particular state, not a particular dimension. I mean truly and literally practice with no goal. This could be quite terrifying. “Wow, where am I going to stand? How am I going to orient myself? How is anything going to happen?” But also it ushers in an unprecedented kind of liberation and freedom.
Uncaused Realization
One common and reasonable way of looking at practice is that as we engage the path—as we meditate, we inquire, we exert effort, we learn effortlessness, we surrender, we let go, we practice nondoing—we open up and true nature manifests itself, manifests its possibilities. So far, so good; this is what we would expect. What doesn’t strike us about this view, until our practice deepens and our realization matures, is that there is an implicit assumption in it—namely, that because we practice, truth arises. We assume that the practices that we do, our engagement with the path, are the cause and that realization is the result. This sounds reasonable. I’m not saying it’s not reasonable, I’m saying that it’s a belief intrinsic to the conventional way of looking at things: What we do has results.
So it’s easy for us to believe that realization is the result of our practices. How else could it be? This is exactly what we are trying to understand. How else might it be—the behind-the-scenes relationship between practice and realization? The cause-and-effect approach to understanding how things happen seems to have a lot of scientific and experiential evidence to support it. People who don’t practice don’t seem to develop spiritually; but there are exceptions. And one of the exceptions is that sometimes you have certain experiences—Being arises, true nature manifests—and it is not obvious that it has anything to do with what you were doing. And this brings us back to the side of grace, the side of spontaneous arising—true nature sometimes simply erupts, simply manifests and looks you squarely in the eye. There are many stories about people, ordinary people, who haven’t done any practice at all and one day simply wake up.
I remember one particular sequence of events that illustrated this understanding for me. It was when I was first dealing with the empty shell of egoic identity, before I knew the experience of essential realization. I was dealing with narcissism, hurt, and the need for mirroring, and feeling that my sense of self was empty, that there was nothing to me and I was unreal.
I felt as if I were a figment of the imagination, as if what I believed to be me for all these years was not real. I understood the principles of inquiry and was looking into and feeling the emptiness and the spaciousness and, before I knew it, the feeling of losing myself and being empty and not knowing who I was revealed this brightness and simplicity and timelessness. The recognition of that simplicity as what I was, in a much more profound way than I had understood before, is what I call the experience of the condition of self-realization; it was for me the beginning of recognizing true nature as what I am. I was this point of light and presence recognizing itself.
So I understood that even my interest in narcissism as the thread of my inquiry was a result of the point arising in my consciousness. The whole thread—the questions I had, the books I was reading, the feelings I was having, the object relations I was focusing on—was caused by the point arising in consciousness to reveal itself as my true identity. That was what generated in me all the questions and all the states that I described. The experience of the point of light actually got me interested in the narcissism and interested in knowing myself because it was my real self arising.
Enlightenment arises and, as it arises, it appears as a drive. The enlightenment drive embodies enlightenment, embodies realization. We get interested in realization precisely because realization is approaching, precisely because realization is manifesting itself. Looking into it further, I recognized that even though, at this stage, I was more oriented toward seeing that I wasn’t in control of the practice, I was still basically looking from the perspective of cause and effect. I was still assuming that one thing precipitates another thing. First I believed that the practice was causing the realization, and now I was thinking that the realization was causing the practice. So my mind was still thinking in terms of cause and effect. But the more that we can see behind the scenes, the more the realization deepens and expands to reveal the dynamics behind the scenes. I began to see, at some point, that the quality or dimension or realization that is approaching consciousness and the interest in the realization with the practices and processes were actually two sides of one movement, were actually two manifestations of one force in dialectic communication.
So we are seeing that there is a force, there is a power, there is a dynamism that manifests. Looking at it from the perspective of the individual soul, this dynamism manifests as the interest, the longing, the yearning, the orientation, and the practice. Looking at it from the perspective of reality, this dynamism manifests as Being unfolding spontaneously as grace. They are both part of one process, two complementary expressions of one force, whose intensifying feedback loop culminates in conscious insight or realization. This unitary process appears in the locus of the soul as individual practice and in the locus beyond the soul as the spontaneous functioning of Being.
As we continue, we will see that the notion of causality does not understand time correctly or completely. And further, it doesn’t understand the relationship of time and space and how those are the expressions of our being. Beyond seeing that realization is a dialectic interplay between the spontaneous arising of Being—which many refer to as grace—and individual action, there is much more to understand about how realization is uncaused. The understanding that realization has no cause continues beyond seeing that practice and realization are two sides of one process. The understanding of this question of causality or noncausality can bring a great openness, a great lifting of burden from our practice. When we say continual practice, we tend to think that we have to be continually practicing if we are going to be enlightened. And then we read the books that say that we have to practice for about fifty thousand lifetimes. And we think, “God, fifty thousand lifetimes of continual practice!” It feels like an impossibly heavy burden. So when you recognize that your enlightenment does not depend on your practice, when you see that is not how reality works, you might experience great relief. “Phew, okay, I’m not responsible for it. I’m not going to have to twist God’s arm so that he shows me his face. God will show me his face when he wants to.”
If we truly understand the noncausal view of how realization happens, the questions of both motive and goal disappear naturally. Both motive and goal support the idea of causality. I am not saying that causality is a bad thing.
I am not asking you to believe what I’m saying. You can take this teaching as a proposal or hypothesis to consider and test in your own experience. It requires a great deal of basic trust, a deep inner grounding in the goodness of reality, to even give it serious consideration. I really mean it—being open to learning is not a matter of taking anything I’m saying as an article of faith.
Learning what reality is by grappling with the immediacy of our experience brings a completeness to our engagement with the spiritual path.
Sometimes I refer to this teaching that I am presenting as the view of totality, meaning that it is a view that includes or accommodates many views, many perspectives. It so happens that when we are in a condition of realization, we cannot help but view reality from the perspective of that condition—just as when we are in a condition of ego realization, we cannot help but view reality from that perspective. So too, when we arrive at the realization of true nature to one degree or another, our view assumes the perspective of whatever particular realization we are embodying. Now the view of totality is a radical departure because it is not a view of a certain condition of realization—it is a view that accommodates and utilizes the views of many conditions of realization at the same time. And it is also not an intellectual or abstract perspective. The view of totality has to do with a certain maturation of realization, but it is not a matter of being in a particular state or dimension or condition of realization. It is different from realizing and integrating some dimension of reality and then seeing things anew from the perspective of that dimension.
Strictly speaking, the view of totality expresses an unconditional openness to all possible real ways of experiencing and intimately knowing reality.
The view of totality recognizes that dual and nondual perspectives are different ways that Being manifests itself. Seeing how these two views interact opens up the possibility of experiencing reality in ways that are neither dual nor nondual.
We can come to understand what we are doing when we practice because we understand how things happen behind the scenes. The view of totality also has the advantage of a greater openness that heralds other conditions of realization, which cannot be apprehended simply by moving from dual to nondual understanding. What I like about the view of totality is that it brings everybody along, meaning it addresses everybody in terms of where they are. It includes all perspectives at the same time. It doesn’t speak from any one particular vantage. It addresses all possibilities spontaneously and naturally without the mind having to think about it or figure it out or plot the right course.
What I mean is that as an individual consciousness, our true nature or beingness is beyond our usual sense of identity, is not constructed by our individual mind. This beingness is the beingness of everything and everybody and is connected to true nature because it is the true nature of everything. And it’s not only that this beingness is true nature but also that this beingness has an aliveness and a dynamism. As we are understanding ourselves and reality, at some point we recognize that there is something larger, something bigger and more fundamental than our sense of individual self or individual life. There is something that underlies it all, that underlies everything and, ultimately, is everything. We can realize this truth to different degrees, which brings in the nondual view that reality is one indivisible unity.
And Living Being progressively reveals more of its truth as it evolves our experience. In its evolution, we discover how our understanding is not complete and how our perception is only an approximation of how things can be. And as it evolves our experience, Living Being further illuminates the wisdom of surrender, nondoing, and realization in enlightenment. Living Being may then appear as the unity of Being, the spontaneous arising of the Dharmakaya, or of nonconceptual freedom. This spontaneity of Being ushers in the fulcrum of realization: the relationship between our individual responsibility and the agency of Being. But as our realization matures, we realize that even to see it as the
Living Being is always the only arising; it is continuously becoming without any appraisal of spontaneity or nonspontaneity. In other words, it is not only arising in the moments we deem spontaneous. That is the perspective of the individual self, looking at reality and thinking, “Oh, something arose spontaneously.” And it is a big deal for us when we perceive the spontaneity of Being. “Oh, wow! I diligently practiced, meditated, chanted, whirled, inquired, and contemplated. I lived authentically and then, without warning, God showed his face, or Dharmakaya arose spontaneously, or the divine essence appeared in my heart!”
In addition to the assumption of causality in this attitude, there is in it a persistent self-centeredness. We are still looking at things from the perspective of the self. Now I’m not saying that looking at things from the perspective of the self is a bad thing. I am not even saying that it is a wrong thing. I am simply saying that it is one way, and that there are other possibilities. And we can observe that looking at things from the perspective of the self, after a while, doesn’t feel very good. People are unhappy with it. And it’s good to know that there are other possibilities that Being can manifest, in which people find themselves full of joy and happiness and freedom. When we are genuinely interested in the truth, we cannot help but want to see the various other possibilities. We learn, as our practice matures, that as we understand the practice and as we become wise enough to be out of the way and not interfere, Being manifests more explicitly in its total freedom.
The self-centeredness I am referring to is the appropriation of practice. This is a subtle and crucial point. We appropriate not only the enlightenment drive as our own motivation to practice but also the practice itself. The idea of causality appropriates doing, action, and what is happening as the activity of the individual self: “My sitting and practicing, my sincere effort, makes things happen.” The centeredness of the usual self usurps Being as source and locates it in an individual self: “I am sitting and practicing and I am making things happen.” We see here how the notion of causality—that an action creates a result—is mixed and conflated with the belief that we are a separate autonomous self, a self that is the agent of such causal doing. So we appropriate not only the activity and the realizations of practice but also the practice itself.
To go beyond appropriation is to recognize that the individual soul is the vessel through which reality manifests. To truly understand how practice is realization is to recognize that practice is not the practice of the self. Recognizing that true practice is Living Being practicing is central to understanding how practice is realization. Or, put another way that is more accurate, you as an individual practicing are Living Being practicing. And as it perfects its practice, Living Being pervades the individual soul with its luminosity and truth, which appears as nondoing and realization.
We can further see, by going beyond the notion of causality, that the interest in reality is not exactly caused by the arising of true nature but is itself Living Being manifesting interest and practice. In other words, the one who attains realization is Living Being. The self does not attain realization. The self is not the one that achieves enlightenment. Living Being manifests the condition that we call enlightenment as it perfects its practice.
This teaching didn’t come from some other mouth, but we need to see who is speaking through that mouth. I am mentioning this as an example. I am not saying this is something unique to this individual self; I am saying this for all of you. When you are truly practicing, it is Living Being practicing; when there is insight, it is Living Being presenting its clarity; when there is realization, it is Living Being presenting its nature. When we don’t see that, there is a self-centeredness that appears as an appropriation of the source, the activity, and the realization of the practice. And if we don’t catch that self-centeredness, it becomes a support for the individual self to endure, which keeps us within the limited and frozen point of view that tends to generate conflict and strife.
Living Being is not a being, not a separate entity. It is the all-inclusive and all-pervasive beingness, essence, and aliveness of everything at all times. If you can understand practice from the perspective of Living Being, you recognize that practice is realization because you recognize what you really are. However, even before you become aware that practice is realization, when your practice is true practice it is already expressing the enlightenment drive. Practice reveals itself as realization once you recognize that when you are practicing, it is Living Being practicing. Then it becomes explicit that your practice is realization. When it is Living Being practicing, then your practice is realization realizing further realization.
Opening Time And Space
I AM SURE MANY OF YOU HAVE questions about what I have been saying. You may be wondering what the point of spiritual practice is if there is no motivation and no goal, no cause and effect. Why is there a teaching if there is no place to get to? Why present all these aspects, qualities, dimensions, and vehicles of true nature? Whose experience and liberation and realization are being discussed if not yours? Aren’t the states we experience various goals that are leading to some final goal? Doesn’t the teaching get subtler and deeper until we reach the final ground where the journey finishes? These are good questions because that is how things appear. And that is the primary way in which we have worked with the path. But we are approaching the question of realization differently now. How we teach the Diamond Approach is different from some other teachings that present the most complete view from the beginning, and students practice to actualize the state of that most complete view. We don’t do it that way, even when we do present an overarching view. We usually do it from a perspective of the view expanding and developing as the path progresses and as the student’s practice matures. So our view keeps opening and evolving as we proceed on the path. That is one way of seeing how we have conducted this teaching, as many of the previous books have shown.
The view of totality is basically a departure from the view of the journey of ascent and descent. So far in the teaching, we have mostly been working from the perspective of a journey of ascent—going deeper and deeper into the nature of reality—and a journey of descent, in which we integrate those realizations into our life.
When the teaching assumes the form of presenting qualities, aspects, and dimensions, several things are happening. One of them is that we are learning that these possibilities exist. We have not yet known that we could experience reality in those ways. So these teachings point to the possibilities that Being can manifest in our experience, and this helps our consciousness open up to them. For some time, the path involves learning about these possibilities—recognizing them, experiencing them, and opening our consciousness to those ways of being. This reveals that reality is much richer, much more open, and much more fluid than we know, that reality has more to it than what we grew up believing about what we are, what reality is, and what can happen. As the perspective expands in this way, the path moves from one realization to another. The view I am presenting here is that this journey has no end. The moment we see that the journey has no end, everything changes. The whole idea of progression, of the journey of ascent and descent, appears differently. That sense of progression is one way in which we can understand reality, but reality doesn’t have to be understood only in that way.
This is why in the view of totality we see the different realizations as way stations. Saying that they are way stations is also not entirely accurate. It’s a useful formulation but, after a while, it is deceptive because it implies going toward a finite end. We might assume that the different realizations are stations on the way to some final destination. But the destination itself turns out to be a way station. All realizations are in fact way stations.
We can think of reality as a living, dynamic beingness that has infinite possibilities of revealing itself, of revealing its nature and its manifestations. And it reveals those manifestations in time and space. Time and space are the projection screen that reality uses to reveal all the possibilities of experience. We ordinarily consider our experience of time and space to be normal life.
This is called the dual perspective, the dualistic view. Instead of a dynamic living reality that plays with time and space in a fluid open-ended manner, time and space are frozen in segments and partitions, constituting selves and objects, experiences and events. That is the reality to which humanity has gotten accustomed. There is a self, a human being among others, and there is the world of many things—life becomes a matter of perceiving objects and having experiences.
Reality sometimes presents itself by deluding itself in a certain way. It can also reveal other possibilities by liberating itself from those delusions and showing itself without those delusions. We could call those other possibilities realization and enlightenment.
I am not saying that the perspective of reality is free from the individual self—I am saying free from the view of the individual self. The individual self has so many bases, so many positions that it uses to construct itself. Because many of them are subtle, it is difficult to see through them completely, so we continue to see reality from their perspective without being aware of it.
That is what is presenting itself. It doesn’t need to be compared to something else. All we need to do is experience it fully and appreciate it for what it is. From the perspective of reality, we think of enlightenment differently than we think of it from the perspective of the journey of ascent and descent. Enlightenment here is runaway realization—with the capacity to experience things from the perspective of true nature, not only from the perspective of the individual self. Runaway realization means that each condition of realization leads to another condition of realization and then another, and each realization is free to realize itself in ever-deeper ways, changing and transforming itself to other conditions of realization. Realization begets further realization. Furthermore, the conditions of realization are not always going from one dimension to another, which is the way it is in the journey of ascent and descent. After a while, that model of progressive realization breaks down.
The perspective of spiritual awakening as a progression of ever-subtler dimensions is useful in bringing about the relaxation of our fixated views about what and how we think reality is. But as we open up time and space, as well as the fixation of the individual and the other, and the beliefs about motivation, goal, and causality, we discover a new view of experience.
If you can accept that completely and let the experience be, the reality of that state will naturally transform into something else.
Opening time and space to reveal the mysteries of reality doesn’t only mean that there is no journey and no ultimate condition. Opening time and space can reveal much more profound mysteries. For instance, one of the things that we believe is that we cannot experience a whole hour in one minute. We think it takes a whole hour to experience an hour of time. But sometimes we can have the experience that what takes an hour can happen in a minute. That does happen. And space too can open to more space than you can possibly imagine, and can reveal secrets about itself that, after a while, you can’t even think about. Space and time have unfathomable mysteries, some of which we will explore further as we go on. In our day-to-day lives, we have parceled out space, measured time, and constructed a self within that. The construction of that self within fixed ideas about time and space gives us a sense of stability and security. We feel that is how things are. “Now I am stable, and the world is stable.” And we need to have that stability. When what we have held fixed is challenged, our equilibrium is thrown off, and we might begin to feel disoriented and discombobulated. As long as anything throws off our equilibrium, that means reality is not completely free. Something in us still needs a frozen view, some kind of fixity to give us stability. We are afraid that if there isn’t stability, there will be chaos.
Think of life and its evolution—does it have an end? Is there some place it is going to get to? Does a human being have an end beyond which there is no more change? A place where there will be no more evolution of different forms, different ways, different capacities? None of the theories of evolution posit a stopping point. In other words, reality is not teleological. It doesn’t have an end toward which it is working. Reality is spontaneously alive and naturally intelligent, and it is always revealing unexpected possibilities. Why would the realization of reality be any different? What does that mean for you right at this moment? You might see that reading these words and receiving this teaching are a form of practice. Practicing is not only when you are meditating, or chanting, or doing spiritual exercises; it can be all the time. As you are receiving the transmission, feeling its impact and exploring it, you are practicing. What else do you think you are doing? This is reality realizing itself as you reading. So as I am expressing this to you, reality is practicing. As you are receiving what I say, reality is practicing. We are interacting, and this interaction is reality practicing and revealing some of its possibilities. Is it you who is doing it, or is it me? You might think, “Oh, it’s the transmission and I’m just sitting and receiving it,” which is true. But you could also say that your taking in of what I am teaching is developing the potential for reality, and that too is true. Yet another way of saying it is that reality is manifesting some of its possibilities through me and you and everyone who reads these words. So you might see that the spiritual journey is not a matter of going someplace—it is a matter of opening up to the possibilities of exactly where you are right now.
Total Being
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE FREQUENTLY transcends time and space as we begin to realize the timeless and spaceless character of our true nature. However, as we abide in these conditions and continue inquiring as an expression of continual practice, time and space themselves can open in mysterious ways. Instead of simply transcending time and space, such total practice, such movement of realization, can manifest unexpected ways of knowing reality and its true nature. This can reveal the open-ended character of realization and reality, which helps us understand a more total view of reality—what I’ve been referring to as the view of totality. Opening time and space makes possible the understanding of the view of totality.
is actually an aperspectival understanding. In other words, it is not one particular view. The view of totality is an understanding that allows and holds multiple views at once: the ego view, the essential view, the boundless view, the view of one or another realization, the Christian view, the Buddhist view, the view of nonduality, the dual view, the view of being an individual, the view of not being an individual, and infinite other views.
Total Being is inexhaustible, absolutely inclusive, and totally indeterminate. It is not defined by any particular experience; however, every experience expresses it. Any experience, any dimension, any quality, any form, any formlessness is bound to be an expression of Total Being.
And yet, we can with full awareness and knowing realize that we are Total Being. It is more in the nature of a felt understanding, irrespective of the particulars of experience or the kind of perception. When we recognize that we are Total Being, what we usually sense is freedom. We are free because we don’t have to be anything. We can be anything, but we don’t have to be anything. Since we can be anything without having to be anything in particular, there is no limitation and no judgment and no comparison. And we also don’t need to hold on to anything as the source of freedom. We all want to be free and want to experience that freedom in many ways. Freedom is subtle and elusive, even more elusive than happiness, which is itself quite rare. So we practice because we value the freedom that is possible in total practice.
When we know that we are Total Being, we recognize that we are everything and also that we are nothing. We are everything and we are nothing and we can experience those separately, or we can experience that we are everything and that we are nothing at the same time. When I say that we are everything, I don’t simply mean nondual experience.
We are all naturally driven to find out who and what we are. And we must find out. However, this drive to find out who and what we are and what reality is, which is an expression of the enlightenment drive, is intermingled with the obsession to be something. We also want reality to be something, something in particular—even if that something is formless or unknowable. We are obsessed with being something, even if the something is boundlessness or emptiness or nonduality or totality.
Total Being is a recognition that freedom means there is no need to be something. When I say “something,” I don’t mean a specific thing; I don’t mean an object; I don’t mean form. I mean any experience, perception, or realization. Because we are obsessed with being something, we are always trying to find out what is the exact something that is truly what we are. And that is precisely what the inner journey is about, what realization or enlightenment is about—finding out what we are or what reality is. And, as you know, we find out many things as we go along. We find out everything—from being a body, being a self, being an individual, to being presence, being awareness, being nonduality, being totality, being the absolute, being the macrocosm. Or these conditions might arise without the sense of being them. And it is necessary for all these experiences to happen. They need to happen not because one of them is the final answer, but because their happening is the expression of the freedom of Total Being. Every experience is always an expression of Total Being.
As time and space open, we see that Total Being is everything at all times and everything outside of all times. Nothing is excluded. No experience or truth is excluded. No form is excluded. No formlessness is excluded. The realization of Total Being is basically an understanding of the nonexclusivity of what we are.
For many of us, the understanding of Total Being initially might feel like a loss and might feel disorienting because we still feel the need to be or the need to be something. Total Being is not a Being. The language is tricky—I don’t mean beingness, but I don’t mean nonbeing either. Both of those are experiences that can happen. You can experience Being, you can experience nonbeing, and you can experience Being and nonbeing inseparable from each other. From the view of Total Being, none of those experiences is privileged. The realization of Total Being is that whatever is happening at any moment, whatever you are experiencing—whether you are experiencing it as what you are or as what you are not—is Total Being.
Some traditions believe that when we arrive at a certain dimension of experience—whether it is pure consciousness or awareness or mystery—we have arrived at the primordial, unchanging ground, and that realization then becomes a matter of sustaining that condition. By understanding Total Being, we see that, although this might indeed happen, it does not exhaust the mystery of reality. Total Being might still change or altogether eliminate ground and reveal that reality is much more indeterminate than that.
When we are being completely depressed or being completely enlightened, what is common to both states is that we believe we have to be that way; we believe there is no way out. That is the lack of freedom. Freedom means that we are free to be anything at any moment, and we are also free from having to be it. So there is no holding on to anything; there is a total embrace of whatever arises, whatever happens, whatever reality appears to be. However reality appears is Total Being—that is its liberating power. Fully experiencing and totally realizing any experience whatsoever—of any form, shape, or kind—is how we begin to understand Total Being. Whether we’re experiencing true nature or an egoic manifestation, if we fully embrace it and are totally immersed in it, if we understand it and inquire into it, we will recognize the perspective of Total Being. Usually, the spiritual journey is a matter of moving on, a matter of freeing ourselves from the various assumptions that we take our self and reality to be. When I say that we can be anything or we can be nothing, I don’t mean that we are a self that can be anything. I literally mean we can be anything. Whatever it is that is happening is what we are, and we can also experience ourselves as not that. I refer to this as the emptiness of whatever we are experiencing, which is determinate; and Total Being is continuously changing and ultimately indeterminate.
The more that we appreciate Total Being, the more we can recognize reality as infinite potential. There is infinite potential to be anything or not to be anything—to be a self, to be no self, to be dual, to be nondual, and also to be other things that are neither dual nor nondual.
And it liberates us from having to define reality in any particular way. But that doesn’t lead to chaos. Rather, it heralds freedom. Total Being indicates that reality is not encompassed by any one particular way of being or experiencing or perceiving.
but Total Being remains always elusive and indeterminate—neither a thing nor a being, but rather a liberating indeterminacy.
The Organ Of Realization
But the important thing about any condition of nondual realization is that there is a freedom from the conventional view of being a self that experiences objects and the world as separate from that self. We are free from the conventional view of duality between the experiencer and the experienced, between oneself and other things, between oneself and reality as a whole. In the nondual view, of course, not only is there no conventional self, but even the individual consciousness is one of the forms that manifests like any other. So we experience ourselves as the totality, as the whole universe. We are all the universes. We are the Being that is the nature of the universe that is in constant transformation, and that transformation is the evolution of the universe.
Nondual realization is definitely a condition of freedom, a condition of deep realization, and to be in that condition is considered by some teachings to be true enlightenment.
But from the view of totality, the nondual condition is only one of infinite kinds of possible realization.
In the nondual condition, the individual consciousness is not foreground. The self disappears, the individual disappears, even the soul disappears—there is only reality. There is only nondual presence. However, if there were no individual consciousness, there would be no perception, no sensation, and no awareness of nondual truth
manifesting its possibilities. So you, as an individual, are important for realization. Enlightenment needs you to recognize itself; it needs you as an individual. In nondual truth, your sense of who you are is not as an individual. You are the Living Being that is the nature of everything and that is manifesting and creating everything. However, you as an individual who is practicing is how this nondual truth is recognizing its enlightenment.
If there were no individual consciousness, this nondual truth would be manifesting the universe, but it would be an insentient and unconscious universe, not aware of its mystery and transparency. Many teachings, of course, recognize this truth. It’s obvious, unless you abide in the nondual condition for a long time. If that is the only condition you experience, you might tend to forget the value of individual consciousness because the nondual condition doesn’t readily reveal the importance of the individual. Even though the enlightened view is that there is no individual self who can be responsible for enlightenment or take actions that lead to enlightenment, the individual is nonetheless necessary for the dynamic of realization. From the perspective of totality, the individual soul is not only the organ of perception but also the organ of realization. There would be no awareness or experience of realization without the individual consciousness. Many teachings have recognized the significance of individual consciousness. One of the most obvious examples is the Sufi tradition. Ibn Arabi, a major figure considered the Grand Sheikh of the Sufis, wrote, “God needs the individual soul just as much as the individual soul needs God.” For many people in the thirteenth century, and maybe even now, that is blasphemy; God doesn’t need anything. But the Sufis understand the soul as the organ of perception and action in the world. That is…
The conventional self is born and lives and dies—that is the ordinary view. As we explore this view, we realize that it has a great deal to do with impressions from our history and with mental constructions and concepts of a self-existing, autonomous individual. As this conventional sense of self is deconstructed by spiritual practice, it is possible to experience the individual consciousness without the fixation of a separate and dual self. Most Western traditions use the notion of soul to connote the individual consciousness that is without the fixation of a separate self. The Eastern traditions have different views and terms for it. Most Hindu schools usually refer to it as jiva or jiva-atman. And the closest terms for it in the Buddhist tradition are “…
But the view itself can still be ego-logical, since the individual consciousness can continue to experience itself as a separate…
The individual soul matures and develops through life and experience and understanding. Its maturation reveals the essential person we call the pearl beyond price, the manifestation of the true individual instead of the ego individual. There is an essential person, and this…
Whatever we experience is all the same body of reality. But reality has other secrets and mysteries, which can reveal another kind of realization—that each particular manifestation is not simply an ephemeral form manifested by nondual presence. Each particular manifestation has significance and importance, and recognizing that can help to pierce the mysteries of what the individual human being is. Some teachings actually speak about these mysteries. For example, the Greek philosopher Plotinus had a good understanding of the importance of the particular. He knew about the realization of unity and nonduality, but he also frequently referred to the relationship of the particular to the whole. He sees that the whole universe is a dynamic reality, like a total soul from which emerge or particularize individual souls. This recognition is aligned with the nondual understanding of manifestation. But then Plotinus goes on to discuss the relationship of the individual soul to the total soul, or the wholeness of reality, or the nondual presence of manifestation. In the Enneads, a collection of his teachings that is a classic of Western spirituality, Plotinus says, “And each of them [meaning each soul] contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in every other, [the nondual condition is the all that holds everything but it does not see all in every other] so that everywhere there is all, and all is all and each all, and infinite the glory. Each of them [each particular] is great; the small is great; the sun, There, is all the stars; and every star, again, is all the stars and sun… There each being is an eternal product of a whole and is at once a whole and an individual manifesting as part but, to the keen vision There, known for the whole it is” (V.8.4).
On various occasions, we have worked on what we refer to as the microcosm pearl, which is a personal manifestation of the whole universe—the whole universe manifesting in one particular. But Plotinus’s view goes a little further. He says that the microcosm contains the entire macrocosm. Each particular, each star, each point, contains every other point. So the particular does not simply replicate the whole in miniature, as the microcosm does the macrocosm. The particular is the whole and is also every other particular as particular, not as an agglomerated whole. He also speaks of another realization that comes from understanding emptiness in a subtle way, something we will explore more when we get to the question of emptiness. Reality can appear in enigmatic ways when we do not hold the belief that there is a final condition of enlightenment.
This viewpoint opens the possibility that you can be aware of the boundlessness and infinity of the nondual condition and, at the same time, recognize yourself as an individual. The individual can be part of the wholeness, can be a particular expression of the wholeness, or can be the wholeness that does not lose the sense of being a unique individual. You can realize yourself as the universe of Being that fills all space and all time and, at the same time, be a distinct individual. That is a mysterious and paradoxical possibility. How can you be completely the whole and completely the particular at once? As we explore this dynamic, this fulcrum, between particular and whole, reality is revealing itself more and more, and what it reveals is more and more enigmatic.
Reality is far more nonlinear and indeterminate than the boundlessness or the nonduality that true nature reveals. The indeterminacy of true nature allows realization to behold reality in many ways. Yet that perception always happens through the individual consciousness—a consciousness that is always present, whether explicitly or implicitly, in any condition of realization.
How do we reconcile the fact that we are responsible for our realization with the fact that realization happens on its own? We have been exploring different aspects of this question, this riddle. On one hand, we need to practice with commitment and to engage the work earnestly. On the other hand, realization is a spontaneous arising, a gift from the unseen world, a blessing.
And Living Being attains realization by manifesting all our life and all our experience and all the influences that open us up to realization.
In other words, your taking responsibility for your realization is true nature intensifying its practice to reveal its enlightenment. They are not two things. Divine grace and your responsibility are not two things. You taking responsibility for your realization is grace. The fact that you have capacities is also grace. The fact that you practice is grace. There is no dichotomy between your practice and grace. Your practice is grace. Your practice is always already Living Being appearing in your consciousness as the enlightenment drive—as the motivation, as the capacity, as the sincerity, as the commitment, as the clarity, as the emptiness, as the radiance, as the luminosity, and as the enlightenment.
Living reality is actually what manifests the individual soul. Living reality is what develops the individual soul, what ripens the individual soul. And it is what opens the individual soul to recognize its own realization. By opening the individual soul to recognize realization, Living Being lives its enlightenment consciously, with full awareness. It is your realization and it is not your realization. It is not your realization because it is the realization of Living Being. It is your realization because you are practicing and it is your experience, not someone else’s. But you cannot own it or appropriate it. If you do, you disconnect yourself from the grace that gives you the capacity to practice. This appears as a paradox when you are standing on one end or the other—on the end of the individual or the end of Living Being. But the individual and living reality are two sides of one thing. So the practice moves from being practice that is self-centered and externally motivated, to practice with selfless motivation, to practice without any motivation at all.
You do need to acknowledge that it is your realization and, at the same time, you cannot appropriate that realization as the individual self.
You can experience it as ego self—a separate self that believes it exists on its own. You can experience it as a soul, either as a separate soul (a version of the ego self) or as an organ of reality (a wave in the ocean). When the soul experiences herself as a separate
soul, the ego self is still patterning the soul. But when the soul experiences herself without being patterned by the ego self, then she is simply an organ of reality.
As you notice, from the perspective of the individual, you practice. Realization is your responsibility. And from the perspective of true nature, all of what happens, including practice, is reality functioning. However, if you look at both perspectives at once, they are not contradictory. In fact, there is no paradox. As the individual is practicing, reality is practicing and, in true practice, there is no difference between the individual practicing and reality practicing.
Even though the two sides are important and their value needs to be acknowledged, realization is not a coparticipation, because the two sides are not exactly two. Coparticipation or cocreation assumes there are actually two things. From the view of totality, there are not really two things, but there is not exactly one either. The mystery is more subtle and more interesting than either of those possibilities. This is a nonlinear view, a nonlinear logic. You sit and meditate and, as you meditate, you might begin by feeling you are this person sitting and meditating and, as the practice happens, it is as if the whole universe were practicing, as if you were the whole universe knowing itself. And that might happen in varying degrees—you might experience yourself as presence knowing itself or as pure awareness being aware of itself, either within your location or pervading the whole universe. So there are many degrees of realization.
responsibility, which is a dualistic view, makes sense because it is the expression of the nondual view that as you practice, you are the nondual reality practicing.
As Living Being perceives itself as an individual functioning, it misidentifies its own dynamism with individual activity. When it sees that this confusion has disconnected it from itself, Living Being simply ceases identifying with individual activity. Functioning happens without identification with a centered self. This is nondoing.
Alive means there is intelligence and growth and evolution. We are talking about force. We are talking about dialectic. Realization won’t happen without you practicing. I don’t necessarily mean sitting and meditating; I mean being open and interested in reality. When you are learning and evolving and maturing, that is practice. At the same time, realization won’t happen simply through practice. Practice and grace, the two sides of realization, both have to be there. And yet, they are not exactly two, nor are they simply one.
The view of totality shows us that an understanding can happen that brings the dual and the nondual together, that doesn’t consider them contradictory. The paradox is resolved only if we can perceive the dual and the nondual at the same time, and see both the value of each and how each is actually related to the other. So dual and nondual are one thing; practice and grace are one thing; the individual and the cosmic are one thing. If we explore the dynamic nature of these paradoxes, we understand something very important about how things happen, which will help us a great deal to be open in all our practices.
From the beginning of spiritual practice, it is your own enlightenment and your own realization. You cannot, however, appropriate it as an individual self. Although it is your own realization because you are Living Being, by believing that it is your realization as an individual, you appropriate it in a way that disconnects you from what you truly are. The appropriation is neither a sin nor a moral mistake, but simply a delusion. Basically, it is a cognitive error that creates discord, that shows you how Being manifests when it is not revealing its enlightenment and its freedom.
The Paradox Of Nondoing
The more complete our understanding of any aspect or dimension of true nature, the more we see everything from its inherent viewpoint.
We sometimes view our path as including two major journeys—ascent and descent—a journey toward enlightenment and a journey toward becoming a complete human being. The journey of ascent is a matter of realizing one dimension after another, all the way to the absolute dimension. We recognize and experience that dimension as the nature of reality in its vastness and mystery and clarity, as the ground of everything. Then the journey of descent is a process of integrating all the dimensions and qualities and vehicles into that absolute reality. The path of descent is actually a matter of integrating our lives into our realization. So the view of totality includes the views of all the aspects, all the vehicles, and all the dimensions of reality. It also includes the views of many other paths and teachings, and is open in such a way as to include whatever path we might encounter and from which we might learn. But it is not simply a synthetic hodgepodge of all these views into one state or one view. The view of totality holds, without losing or blending, many particularized views. I use the word “totality” because this is a view that encompasses many different perspectives, as different perspectives, at the same time. Each view is differentiated in its own right. So the view of totality includes the perspective of each aspect, the perspective of each vehicle, the perspective of each dimension, the perspective of integration of the dimensions in various ways, and the perspectives of other paths that we understand well. This view has all these perspectives available to it and many more as well. The view of totality as a whole is larger than the sum of its parts. But each part is also at once the whole. We cannot grasp the view of totality as a mental understanding. It’s a certain development, a specific realization of human potential.
The view of totality itself can be understood as aperspectival, but this is only partially true. More accurately, the view of totality is an openness that can hold any view or many views of reality and realization, precisely because it does not need to hold any one particular view.
For a long time, I thought that if somebody has experience embodying this view, he will, at some point, know it. But after extensive experience with many students, I see that is not the case; familiarity does not translate into knowing unless the knowing becomes explicit. That is why the job of the teacher is to help make it explicit.
We have considered many formulations of the paradox we are exploring. Here, we see it as the paradox of practice—how to recognize what we know and be open to what we don’t know. This is not an easy dilemma to work through. It requires utmost sincerity, courage, and autonomy. We know and we recognize that we know, but we
are still completely open to the new, to what we haven’t yet experienced or haven’t yet recognized for ourselves in our experience. This is another iteration of the paradox of realization. What is the relationship between our contribution of individual effort and work—putting into practice what we know—and being open to what we don’t know, to the spontaneous manifestation of Being? How can we be responsible and dedicated and earnest and, at the same time, be completely open to grace? How can we harmonize the necessity of our own responsibility and application with the fact that true realization is a spontaneous eruption of reality?
So when we are established in the understanding and the certainty that we are not in control of our process, that Being or true nature is actually in charge, then our unfoldment becomes a runaway unfoldment, which means that everything happens on its own. When we recognize that everything happens on its own, reality begins to unfold consciously on its own, which further intensifies the process. Our process flows from one quality to another, one dimension to another, one insight to another, intensifying and deepening all the time. This is an important juncture in the Diamond Approach. We call it runaway unfoldment, meaning that unfoldment is unstoppable. Our unfoldment is no longer dependent on our practice—rather, it makes our practice happen.
But practices contain and express the logos of their teaching, so when they are done outside of that context, they lack the holding, support, and guidance of the larger field of the teaching. So although the practices might be useful in some ways, their impact will be limited. Many have criticized this contemporary phenomenon of sampling practices as being a trivialization and degradation of the original teaching.
In this particular stage of maturation of practice—when we recognize that our process is largely determined by an underlying force that is emerging in various qualities and dimensions—what makes reality emerge in those ways has to do with our involvement with the logos of the teaching. Different traditions have different logoi, which impact how true nature might emerge in experience. Being involved with the logos of a teaching is a complex thing. Part of the involvement is understanding the logos, being attuned and devoted to it, feeling aligned with it, feeling it speaks to us, and, as a result, having our own interest in and commitment to it. But it also requires an active engagement with the particular teaching, in terms of direct involvement with the transmission of the teaching. Receiving transmission means being in the presence of a teacher, whether in a large or small group setting or in one-on-one work.