Diamond Approach

The Diamond Approach is a contemporary spiritual path integrating the teachings and practices of the ancient wisdom traditions with modern depth psychology. The Diamond Approach is derived from the experiences of its founder, A. H. Almaas, the pen-name of Hameed Ali, along with Karen Johnson and Faisal Muqaddam (who split off early on to develop his own approach). They were among the first students of Claudio Naranjo, an early pioneer of the integration of spiritual and therapeutic work.

The curriculum of the work draws upon the founders' backgrounds in Sufism (both Ali and Muqaddam are natives of Kuwait), Platonism, Buddhism and the Fourth Way. Teachers of the Diamond Approach focus on the students' specific perception of their own immediate work issues. Presentation of a canonical body of knowledge and practice is introduced over time as required.

Spiritual practice as a phenomenology of being
The Diamond Approach is described as a "response to an important need that is being felt in many quarters, a need for a spiritually informed psychology, or conversely, for a psychologically grounded spirituality. This perspective does not separate psychological and spiritual experience, and hence sees no dichotomy between depth psychology and spiritual work... This body of knowledge is not an integration or synthesis of modern depth psychology and traditional spiritual understanding. The inclination to think in terms of integration of the two is due to the prevailing belief in the dichotomy between the fields of psychology and spirituality, a dichotomy in which the Diamond Mind understanding does not participate." (A.H. Almaas)

The Diamond Approach, according to its followers, can be called a Phemonenology of Being that offers a precise description of the various aspects and dimensions of Spirit or Being and is also a very efficient spiritual psychotherapy, healing the wounds of the soul by reconnecting it to Spirit.

Principal ideas
Structure of reality
In the Diamond Approach, reality is seen as consisting of three important elements: God / Being / Spirit, soul / self, and world / cosmos. The world is the outer manifestation of reality, the multitude of physical forms that we are all familiar with. Being is the inner source and true nature of reality which is the focus of the great spiritual traditions of both East and West. It is known as Dharmakaya, Shunyata, Brahman or Tao. The Diamond Approach describes Being as consisting of five co-emergent "boundless dimensions": divine love, pure being, non-conceptual awareness, dynamism, the void. The soul is the individual consciousness that connects the world with Being, an idea that we also find in ancient Chinese philosophy. The soul can be experienced as a living presence that contains the thoughts, feelings and sensations we usually call our self.

Essence and the essential aspects
While most spiritual paths conceive of Being as universal, the Diamond Approach also pays a great deal of attention to a more individual way of experiencing Being, called Essence. The concept of Essence is similar to the Hindu idea of Atman. While Being is the true nature of all of reality, Essence is the portion of it that forms the true nature of the soul. It is experienced as a substantial Presence which can differentiate into various qualities or Aspects, such as Compassion, Strength, Will, Joy, Peace, Love, Value, Humaness, Personalness, Identity, Space, etc.

Theory of holes
As our soul develops it is faced with a double challenge, it must learn to function in the world while staying connected to Spirit. For various reasons, some innate and others environmental, we slowly become alienated from our Essence through the development of fixed patterns of perception and behaviour known as the personality or ego. Each of these patterns or ego structures disconnects us from a specific Essential Aspect. In other words, it is built around the "Hole" of this aspect. By exploring the structure, both cognitively and experientally, one eventually comes to the Hole and by going through it the lost aspect is retrieved.

Methodology
The Diamond Approach uses methods which its founders learned from Claudio Naranjo. Almaas' scientific background (he studied physics at Berkeley) helps explain the emphasis on rigorous (self) inquiry. Several contexts for participation are provided, including regular one-on-one sessions with a trained teacher, seminars and participation in various formats of organized ongoing groups.

Presence
The practice referred to as "presence" is based on two methods, learning to sense one's body (especially one's arms and legs) in an ongoing manner and regularly focusing one's attention on a point in the belly called the "kath center" (known in Chinese philosophy as the tan tien). These methods help a person to become more grounded in the body and in physical reality and also, in time, to develop the ability to experience oneself as the presence of Essence.

Inquiry
The Diamond Approach centers on practice of investigation of the self, experience and perception. "Inquiry" answers the question posed by Socrates: "How does one set up as the object of one's investigation, that about which one knows nothing?" One starts by wanting to find out, living a question, while recognizing preconceptions, preconditions and expectations as to the nature of what one may learn and instead attending to one's immediate or present experience. While not explicitly acknowledged as such, Inquiry in effect combines the practice of Edmund Husserl's "transcendental phenomenological reduction, or epoché", with Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic exploration. An important feature of inquiry is that a person learns to be aware of both the content of experience (emotions, thoughts, sensations) and the attitudes and reactions towards it. In this way the subject-object dichotomy is transcended and one learns to relate to oneself without having to create inner splits. Open-ended Inquiry is both a path to, and the state of, a realized person and in time is understood to be a self-revelation of the mysteries of Being.

Motivation
The main motivation for embarking on the spiritual journey in this approach is love for the Truth. "Truth" refers to seeing things as they really are, which ultimately comes down to recognizing Being as the true nature of everything. Love for the truth therefore combines the traditional bhakti and jnana perspectives on spirituality.

Writings
Almaas has written a number of books on the Diamond Approach. See references at A. H. Almaas. Works by other authors include:

* "The Diamond Approach" by John Davis
* "Soul Without Shame" by Byron Brown
* "The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram" and "The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues" by Sandra Maitri.

School
A.H. Almaas has established The Ridhwan School for the purpose of teaching the Diamond Approach. It is principally based in Berkeley, California and Boulder, Colorado but has outlying groups throughout North America, Europe and Australia.

Critiques
In recent years the work of Almaas has received high praise from important spiritual teachers and explorers such as John Welwood, Brant Cortright, Jack Kornfield and Ken Wilber. Wilber, while tentatively supportive of the Diamond Approach, disputes some details. For example, he does not agree that infants have essential experiences, maintaining that the infant exists purely in the physical, material world - "instinctual, vital, impulsive, narcissistic, egocentric; living for food, its God is all mouth." Almaas has responded that Wilber's critique demonstrates a misinterpretation based on Wilber's own linear, 4-stage categorization of spiritual development. Almaas' perspective is that infants experience a type of true nature/Spirit, but one that is very distinct from, and less integrated than, the experiences of essentially realized adults.

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