Articles

ARTICLES

The following articles are based on the Diamond Approach, and give some sense of the flavour of this work, in no particular order. All have been written by Persephone Maywald and published in Adelaide's quarterly InnerSelf magazine, August 2008 through March 2010.

The Diamond Approach to Self Realization

Everyday Self as a Portal to Spirit

Losing your Soul, Recovering your Soul

Attachment. What does it mean to 'Let go'

On Being Here Now

Anger. A Doorway to Vital Strength

Hatred, Power and Peace

Getting Free from the Inner Critic

Getting Free of the (other persons's) Inner Critic

THE DIAMOND APPROACH TO SELF REALIZATION

By making intimate contact with the truth of your everyday life, you can know the depths of who and what you are. You can learn to invite Being itself to provide you with profound guidance and understanding for your inner journey of self-discovery. You can come home to the still sweet simplicity of spirit while living in today’s complex world. - A.H.Almaas 1

This is the understanding of the Diamond Approach, a unique modern spiritual work school developed by A.H.Almaas in California.

And as Almaas explains further, “the Diamond Approach is a path of wisdom, an approach to the investigation of Reality and a method of working on oneself that leads to human maturity and liberation. It is a spiritual teaching, a method of connecting with our spiritual nature and bringing it into our life. The Diamond Approach represents a new paradigm in human/spiritual knowledge and understanding. It is not a synthesis of existing knowledge, but rather a new, more integrated understanding of the entire human psyche – ego, personality, soul – and the psyche’s relationship with its fundamental nature.” 2

The aim of the Diamond Approach is self-realisation in a gradual, systematic way that is always governed by our unique personal history, capabilities and needs. This involves a dynamic form of teaching which supports the unfoldment of the soul through the process of open-ended inquiry into our personal experience. This process naturally and gradually activates the unconscious psychological barriers to self-realisation that are unique to each of us.

Over time, as these barriers are made fully conscious, and become more and more transparent to us, we can start to contact and mobilise our deepest potential, or Essence. In time, Essence becomes the source of self-understanding and the autonomous guide for the soul's journey Home.

The Diamond Approach is unique in its understanding that our Essence is not just a uniform Presence, but has many distinct qualities or aspects, like the facets of a diamond. Some of these aspects are Joy, Love, Will, Compassion, Peace, Clarity, Intelligence, Strength, Personal Essence and Absolute Nature. It is also unique in its very precise understanding of the ego’s barriers to each aspect of Essence, and in its methods of working with these barriers to reveal the hidden Essence.

In the Diamond Approach we work to rediscover and fully experience the preciousness of Essence - the 'honey' or 'elixir' of enlightenment, and also that part of ourselves which is most true, real and substantial. Precise knowledge of how this happens, step by step, aspect by aspect, is one of the unique contributions of this approach. 3

The Work

Rather than fight against the ego’s barriers to self realisation, the Diamond Approach invites us to understand them from a radical perspective, not merely as barriers but as doorways. They are both locks and keys. Hurt and the hostility that covers it are not simply blocks to genuine compassion; fully experienced, they allow us to access infinite love and compassion for ourselves and others. Anger is not just a shallow substitute for real strength; experienced and understood deeply, it opens into the expansion, capacity and vitality that is our birthright. 4

The fundamental method is a process of open inquiry into whatever arises in our experience in the moment, be it an emotion, a sensation, a thought, a belief or a memory. We inquire into the truth of our personal everyday experience, working with presence, sincerity, compassion and precise awareness, without judgement or goal.

This method of inquiry also includes meditation and awareness practices, supported by the Diamond Approach teachings, which provide a framework for the inquiry.

We inquire into our awareness at all levels of the self, including body, mind, emotions and spirit. Nothing in our experience of ourselves is left out, and ultimately every part of the personality comes to be included in the process so that it can be refined and purified by the action of Essence.

This inquiry into the Truth of our own experience is what guides us on our journey towards personal liberation.

The Method

The Work is carried out with the assistance of ordained Diamond Approach teachers in private sessions, in small groups, and in the teaching of the Diamond Approach in retreat settings.

In private sessions, our individual teacher acts as a guide to help us resolve and dissolve the specific personal, psychological, historical and universal issues that block each aspect of Essence. Students generally start in the Work with an individual teacher, and then, when they feel ready, go on to join a particular teaching group for twice-yearly retreats and ongoing small group sessions. At the moment, all Australian retreats are held in Sydney. Groups also meet in the US, Canada and Europe.

Conclusion

The Diamond Approach shows us that our personality is actually a necessary stage of our spiritual development, and rather than being a barrier, holds the keys to our liberation. Thus all self exploration undertaken with openness, sincerity and a deep desire to seek truth, insight and meaning can be a part of our ongoing spiritual journey and path to self realisation.

1 See www.ridhwan.org

2 See www.ahalmaas.com

3 See www.diamondessence.com.au

4 See Davis, John. The Diamond Approach

EVERYDAY SELF AS A PORTAL TO SPIRIT

Many spiritual paths aim to transcend the personality, seeing it as the primary barrier to enlightenment. It is true that the personality is a barrier, but it is not only a barrier. It is also a doorway, lovingly beckoning us towards self realization.

How can this be?

We find that the key is understanding, in the deepest sense of the word. As we come to explore and understand our everyday self, it slowly dissolves, and what is revealed is the True Self that’s been hidden.

When we pause to really notice our everyday self, we see that it is often a troubled self that seems far from enlightenment. We find that we regularly experience difficult emotions and reactions. We yearn for the unattainable, and desire things that ultimately do not bring us satisfaction. We find that we are often pushing ourselves around, telling ourselves that who we are and what we want or feel should be somehow different or better. A subtle distrust often motivates our actions towards others and the world. We find ourselves repeating the same patterns and habits, whether or not they bring happiness. In other words, we often experience the truth of the Buddha’s teaching, that life is suffering.

So how did we end up here, and what’s to be done about the situation?

IN THE BEGINNING we come into the world as pure expressions of Spirit. When we look at infants, we can see their unmistakable glow, purity, spontaneity, complete being-here-now, and even if it seems very long ago and far away, we can assume that that’s now we arrived too. But the infant’s connection with Spirit is fragile, because even though we are Spirit, as infants we do not know it.

Life events soon conspire to put barriers between our conscious self and Spirit, which slowly sinks into unawareness. This mostly happens because our parents seldom recognize Spirit, and cannot reflect it back to us. Instead, they reflect and react to our emotions, body, gender, intelligence, temperament, “goodness” or “badness”, and so on, and we eventually take those parental messages to be who we actually are.

This process forms the foundation of our everyday self, but unfortunately there are some problems with this self. Not only does it cause us a great deal of suffering, it also forms a defensive shell around the True Self, blinding us to who we really are. Because it is built on a foundation of unconsciousness it is inherently shaky, uncertain and lacking. Even if we don’t feel this consciously, it plays out as self criticism, self-doubt and lack of trust.

THE WHOLE CATASTROPHE of adulthood is that we are trying our best to be enlightened beings, but it’s impossible without ongoing access to Spirit. Instead, we struggle to make do with the everyday self that replaced our True Self.

Let’s take love as an example. As adults, we have mostly lost touch with the Love of Spirit, the infinite luminous field of lovingness that’s actually our fundamental nature. Because of this loss, we experience a profound lack of Love, often believing ourselves to be unloved and unlovable. So we do our best to fill the aching void. We imagine that love is something that we can get from the outside, and come to treat it as a kind of commodity which we can earn by being “good” and doing the right thing, whether or not we feel like it. When we do have some love, we see it as something that we own, that we can give or withhold in order to influence the actions of others. We become extremely attached to our sources of love, and react with hurt, despair, anger and self-criticism when we lose them.

TRANSFORMATION BEGINS when we simply recognize exactly where we are, when we start to see that our underlying disconnection from our true nature as Love has led us to seek it in all the wrong places. As we bring acceptance, curiosity and kindness to ourselves, we may remember the events of our childhood that stamped in the sense of unlovableness, and the messages we received from others about the deficiencies of our love. We start to understand more and more deeply our current predicament and how we got to be here.

Eventually, we can bring the whole pattern and history into consciousness. And as we go even deeper, we will eventually find the ultimate jewel, the hidden True Self with its unbounded Love.

Miraculously, the path that led us away from Spirit is also the exact path back.

There are of course many other aspect of Spirit that we lose, such as Peace, Value, Power, Aliveness, Will, Contentment, Joy and Strength. Instead we find restlessness, self-criticism, hatred, fatigue, powerlessness, depression, hurt, anxiety and anger.

THE MAGIC is that, just as our issues around love lead us back to Love, every one of our difficult emotions can lead us back to the exact aspect of Spirit that we lost. For example, when we explore and understand our anger in all its ramifications, we eventually arrive at Strength and Aliveness. When we explore our powerlessness, we find True Empowerment. When we lovingly investigate our lack self esteem, we eventually find that we are actually of infinite Value.

We come to understand that our everyday self is both a barrier and a doorway. It locks us away from Spirit, but it’s also the key to Spirit. We do not have to struggle to transcend any part of ourselves, but can lovingly embrace it as a signpost pointing to a lost aspect of our True Self. Thus any personal exploration done with sincerity, curiosity and a desire to understand brings us closer to who we truly are, to the True Self which is our birthright and our deepest heart’s desire.

LOSING YOUR SOUL, RECOVERING YOUR SOUL

Holes of the Soul

You may have noticed that, every so often, you feel as though some inner quality you ought to have has gone missing. Sometimes it might be a very clear sense of what’s absent, and sometimes it might be just a vague feeling that our lives really should be better than they are.

For example, we might feel as though we just don’t value ourselves enough, and that if we could find some value to fill that empty place, our lives would be much smoother and happier. We’d have better self esteem, and love ourselves more. We wouldn’t constantly doubt that we measured up to our own inner standards.

We might try to tinker with ourselves and add some of the value that’s missing. But even when our self esteem is boosted by repeated affirmations or things well done, the glow soon fades. We may spend many years trying to gain value with these things of the world, only to finally realize that the only true cure is to connect with a value that is permanent and indestructible.

We eventually understand that these empty places we find in ourselves are actually holes of our Spirit, or Essence. They can seem to be holes of the ego, but ultimately what’s missing is the infinite beauty, value, love, power, peace and capacity of who we actually are.

How do Holes Happen

We are all born as pure expressions of Essence, undimmed by the constrictions of ego. However, as infants we cannot self-reflect – we have no capacity to see who we actually are. So we gain a sense of self, not from our Essence, but from our parents mirroring back to us what it is that they see. And that reflection is distorted by our parents’ needs, issues and holes, no matter how much they love us. For example, Essence is genderless, but even before birth we’re being related to as a boy or a girl, with all the reactions and expectations that our gender triggers in each of our parents. So inevitably, we take on the reflection that is given to us, and create a self, or ego, from it. We lose touch with the Essence we were born with.

The particular ways that we lose contact with our True Nature depends on our history. Sometimes we are profoundly separated from a particular aspect of Essence, and sometimes we are just a veil away. But each loss of contact creates a hole of Essence.

We Build an Ego to Compensate

These holes are extremely painful, and Essence, in an act of great kindness, allows the ego to compensate for each hole with a facsimile of the lost aspect. For example, we lose contact with our true Strength, and the ego creates the closest qualities it can, which include anger, false strength, and pushing through life. These ego qualities then become the foundation of our personality and ego structure.

If an ego quality is not acceptable to us, a further layer of ego, often its opposite, is added to hide that quality. For example, if our anger is not acceptable, we may become depressed, which effectively hides our anger.

Ego Becomes the Portal to Spirit

The wonderful thing about our ego is that, although it separates us from Essence, it also provides a very precise pathway back to the particular aspects of Essence that we have lost. All we need for this journey of recovery is a willingness to be present with the truth of where we are right now, a curiosity about that truth, and compassion for what we discover.

If we start with where we are, sincerely sensing our state, no matter how difficult and unenlightened, understanding about its qualities, underpinnings and history starts to arise of its own accord. For example, as we truly feel our depression, we start to understand that, deep inside, we are actually quite angry. If we are willing to truly acknowledge and sense our anger, without judgment or inhibition, this then continues the process of uncovering and understanding deeper and deeper layers of the ego, and we eventually arrive at the original hole of Essence. This is a scary place, but again, if we are willing to just be there and truly experience that void, then sooner or later it opens into Essential Strength. This inexhaustible Strength then fills the hole. It’s alive and clear, giving us a flexible, unassailable autonomy that has no need for anger.

Since every quality of the ego is a compensation for a particular aspect of Essence, there are many pathways back to Essence, and eventually we travel most of them. Very briefly, some of the more common are; powerlessness and hatred leading to true Power; agitation and numbness leading to true Peace; hurt and pity/sympathy leading to true Compassion; grief, flatness and happiness-seeking leading to true Joy; and wilfulness, control and compliance leading to true Will. And so on.

The Way Forward

Traditionally, the ego has been seen purely as an obstacle to Essence, as something that needs to be ignored and transcended. It’s certainly true that it is an obstacle, but it is also a portal, and if we can embrace it with compassion and curiosity and the desire to understand its truth, it will automatically lead us back towards our True Selves. There are many different methods for doing this – meditation, therapy, various psychological and spiritual paths – but whatever method we embrace, if we bring curiosity, compassion and desire for the truth of who we are, our understanding will inevitably move us closer and closer to Essence, and to who we truly are.

With gratitude to A.H.Almaas, Diamond Heart book 1, Ch 2, and John Davis, The Diamond Approach, Ch 6

ATTACHMENT

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO 'LET GO'

Most spiritual traditions teach us that letting go of attachment is a necessary part of our spiritual practice. And yet, when we really look at our lives, we realize that this ‘letting go’ is no small thing.

When we engage in some sincere self inquiry, we see that our attachments run very deep indeed, and embrace most aspects of our lives. We see that we are attached to our image, our possessions, our loved ones, our jobs, our homes, our pets, our status, our roles, our emotions, our views, our beliefs, our bodies, our achievements, our habits, our memories, our money – the list goes on and on.

When we look at the reality of the multitude of attachments in our lives, we might start to wonder what’s wrong with this picture. What is it we don’t understand. Are we really supposed to just ‘let go of attachment’? What does it mean to ‘let go’? What actually is ‘attachment’?

We usually think of attachment as an attachment to things, and as we can see from the list above, these things can be part of either our inner or outer worlds.

But as we look a little deeper, we see that the fundamental glue that attaches us to these things is actually the desire to feel good, or at least better than we do now. The things we are attached to all give us pleasure, and if they don’t exactly give us pleasure, then they help us avoid discomfort in some way. The fundamental attachment is to the pleasure itself, rather than the things themselves that create the pleasure.

For example, the things we’re attached to may give us the pleasure of familiarity, as with old habits and old friends, or the pleasure of predictability, as with roles and patterns of relating, or the pleasure of the loving feelings we share with those close to us. Alternatively, they may help us avoid the discomfort of the anxiety we would feel without our social standing, or the discomfort of the physical suffering we would have without sufficient money.

The origins of attachment to pleasure are profound, as they lie in both the physical and the spiritual realm. In the physical realm, our bodies are hard wired for survival, and pleasure and pain are crucial parts of the evolutionary survival signalling system. When we experience physical pain, it’s signal that our survival is threatened by illness of injury, and our instinctual response is to do whatever we can to stop the pain and the threat. On the other hand, we are also instinctually driven towards pleasurable physical states such as a full belly, sexual expression, and the relaxation inherent in belonging, because they each enhance our bodily survival.

But it’s not just our physical instincts that drive us to attach to pleasure. One aspect of our true spiritual Being is actually a complete and delicate fulfilment and contentment, and at some level we all know this, even if this knowledge is largely unconscious. Somewhere inside we all feel the drive towards this state of sweet, complete contentment. But inevitably we misinterpret it, and imagine that our fulfilment resides in the states of our psyche and the things of the world.

So we see that the drive to attach is motivated by extremely powerful forces, both physical and spiritual, and that we are all in the same boat, getting attached to almost anything that maximises pleasure and minimises pain.

However, there is a very basic problem with this way of being, in that any time we desire a state more pleasurable than the one we’re in, we are rejecting ourselves as we actually are in that moment. It is not possible to get rid of our attachments without rejecting the innate parts of ourselves that are deeply and fundamentally attached to pleasure. In trying to reject our attachments, we actually compound the problem and cause ourselves immense suffering.

In this deep self rejection we move even further from the true fulfilment of living in Being.

Once we recognise this truth, then we see that striving to make ourselves happy in the old familiar ways is actually pointless and self defeating. We can start to feel as though we are in a no-win situation - attachment is inevitable, and keeps us from the true fulfilment of Being, but trying to get rid of it also keeps us from that fulfilment.

There is an answer to this dilemma, a third way, which we may not see at first. It is the compassionate acceptance of our situation exactly as it is.

We can simply accept that as human beings, sometimes we feel pain, and sometimes we feel pleasure. We can recognise that we have a preference for pleasure and the things that seem to bring us pleasure. We can just be with these truths, without trying to change anything, and without trying to hang on to the pleasure or avoid the pain. We can understand that rejecting or trying to change any part of ourselves or our experience can only lead to suffering.

So ‘letting go of attachment’ becomes letting go of needing to be any particular way. Nothing more, and nothing less.

We start to see that true ‘letting go’ consists of bringing as much acceptance as we can to what we are actually experiencing in the moment, be it pleasurable or painful. It means embracing and inquiring into the attachments to the things and pleasures we have, without trying to change them, so that we can simply be with them as deeply as possible.

Eventually, as we come to understand more and more deeply the truth of our desires, they do start to lose their hold on us, but unfortunately we cannot push or control or speed up this process. All we can do is keep sincerely inquiring into our truth in the moment.

As we do this, we slowly but inevitably move closer and closer to Being. We eventually discover for ourselves that residing in Being is the very deepest desire of our heart, and the true and profound fulfilment of our soul.

'Last night my teacher taught me

The lesson of poverty:

Having nothing and wanting nothing.

I am a naked man standing

Inside a mine of rubies,

Clothed in red silk.' Rumi

With grateful acknowledgement to A.H.Almaas, especially Diamond Heart Book 2 Ch 4.

ON BEING HERE NOW

Be here now!

We are all familiar with this spiritual exhortation. Most spiritual traditions and practices put great emphasis on being in the moment, and we have become so familiar with these words that many of us use them without stopping to think about their profound implications for our lives and our spiritual unfolding.

So what does it really mean to ‘be here now’. What is the ‘here’ that we are supposed to be with in the ‘now’, whatever that is, and why is it so important to pay attention to our hereness and our nowness.

The Here

Our usual habit is to focus pretty much exclusively on our thoughts, actions and outer environment. We spend much of our time thinking and doing, not really noticing what is going on in the totality of our selves. While thinking and doing are important components of our experience, when we stop to thing about it, we can see that they are only the surface manifestations of an underlying consciousness that goes much deeper than these outer appearances.

So our hereness is actually much bigger than our thoughts and actions. Taken to its logical extreme, it is everything that we are, the totality of our experience. WE start to see that being here means being present with the fullness of ourselves, from the inside to the outside, from the depth to the surface, from the inner spaciousness of spirit to the busy clutter of everyday life.

Thus to ‘be here’ means that we are tracking the thread of awareness as it follows whatever arises in our consciousness through every level that we have access to. It means that we do not cut off what is actually going on in our inner awareness but allow it just as much space as we give to outer actions and events.

This awareness is both broad and focused at the same time, broad enough to access our whole filed of consciousness, but focused enough to tune into specific manifestations, as it follows our experience of ourselves as we weave among all the aspects of our consciousness. It includes our physical sensations, our energies, our breath, our emotions, our reactions, our thoughts, our memories, our patterns, our spirit and the meanings we’re giving to our experience. And so on through every kind and level of experiencing that we do.

So ‘being here’ means that we are here with ourselves without preference, tracking both our inner and outer experience, our depth and our surface. allowing ourselves to be with whatever is coming to our attention.

The Now

A common human experience is to feel as though nothing is really changing, that this moment is much the same as previous moments. We feel stuck bored and frustrated as we repeat the same old same old. However, if we scratch the surface, we start to find that nothing ever repeats exactly the same way. At the very least, we are an individual having this ‘same’ experience for the ninetieth time rather than the eighty-ninth.

We start to notice that, as human beings, there is always an inherent dynamism to our existence, and something, no matter how small, is always changing in our inner or outer worlds. Our conscious experience unfolds moment by moment by moment, each moment subtly different from the last. It is each of these moments that constitutes its own particular ‘now’.

So the ‘now’ is literally this very moment, as distinct from the last moment, or the next moment. Being with the now with that constant flow of change means being with what we’re experiencing now – and again now – and again now, literally being with ourselves moment by moment by moment. From birth to death, our lives are an unending stream of moments of now, and each now is an unfolding of the now that preceded it, a unique drop in the flow of the stream of our conscious existence.

Being Here Now

Thus ‘being here now’ is being with the totality of our consciousness right in this moment. It brings in a whole other dimension to our usual everyday awareness as we actually notice where we are and include what’s happening in our deeper experience in the moment that it happens.

So being here now means being willing to follow the thread of awareness as it moves freely through the depths and surface of our existence is every waking moment of our lives.

Why Bother

You may have noticed that when we’re on automatic, we seldom get insights or awarenesses about ourselves. We just run the same unconscious patterns and actions over and over again. However, when we make a conscious decision to actually look at what’s happening in the moment, then insight and meaning start to arise of their own volition. We start to make sense of our experience, and understand better why we are what we are. Every insight and understanding removes some of the misunderstanding we’ve been living with, and brings us a little closer to our ultimate truth. Each tiny enlightenment brings us a fraction closer to the depths of our spirit.

It is as though our soul has been patiently waiting for us simply to pay attention, and when we do, it rewards us by bringing us ever closer to itself.

In time, the weight of understanding starts to have a significant effect, and we feel that we have become more real. We notice more presence, maturity and wisdom. We are less reactive, less on automatic. We are more objective, perceptive, relaxed and accepting. But most important, as are closer to the beauty, wonder and capacity of who we truly are, ad more able to live from that depth.

'For sixty years I have been forgetful in every moment,

but not for a second has this flowing towards me stopped or slowed.' – Rumi

With gratitude to A.H.Almaas, especially his latest book, the Unfolding Now

ANGER. A DOORWAY TO VITAL STRENGTH

You might have noticed that anger gets a pretty bad rap both in and out of spiritual circles. It’s seen as a ‘negative’ emotion, keeping company with such undesirable states as jealousy, shame and guilt. We’re quick to condemn it wherever it appears, afraid when it bursts forth, and regard it as a problem to be tamed. We see our own anger as a personal failure that should be overcome, and strive to change it for the better. And only when our anger is ‘justified’ do we feel OK about having it.

But the real problem is not that we’re angry, but that we don’t really know our anger. Our judgements, fears and beliefs make us so quick to push it away that we just don’t let ourselves sit with it, examine it, be curious about it, and see where it might lead us. We don’t understand that it is actually a signpost, directing us on a journey of discovery to essential qualities of Spirit.

So I’d like to propose that we suspend judgement for a few minutes, and let ourselves take a discovery tour through the land of anger. Let’s just be as curious and open as we can, and see what we can understand about this very human emotion. Maybe it’s not as negative as we fear.

What Is Anger – Really

Just looking at anger objectively, the first thing we notice is that it’s a very instinctive response to the perceived possibility of some kind of injury. When we feel threatened, physically or emotionally, we usually get angry. There may be other responses, such as fear, and we may not feel our anger right in the moment, but almost always, if we dig deep enough, it’s there.

At the surface level, anger can certainly be very harsh, destructive and hurtful, especially when it is acted out and used as the fuel to attack those who seem to be harming us. It can be difficult to discern the fact that feeling this emotion, and acting on it, are two very different things. Often we do not quite understand that it is absolutely possible to feel a murderous rage, but not actually kill anyone or even get up from our zafu. But if we can just let ourselves be with our feelings of anger, and not act on them or push them away, what is it we actually experience?

First, we might notice that there is a whole lot of energy in anger. It makes us feel large, hot, red and strong. We feel alive, energised, even passionate. We get clear on the perceived threat to our wellbeing, and how to push back. We feel quite separate from whatever’s threatening us, ready to set boundaries and defend ourselves from attack. We might also experience a kind of ongoing strength to take a stand, or to push through the opposition that seems to be barring our way.

So we see that just under the surface of anger, no matter how unpleasantly it wants to express itself, lies a certain kind of strength, energy, expansion, autonomy and clarity.

In their pure, essential form, these are also qualities of our Spirit, or Essence.

This may come as a surprise. Many of us have the notion that our spiritual selves are quite monastic - calm, peaceful, contained and merged with the Oneness. If they have a colour, it’s some kind of attractive pastel, and certainly not red!

But what’s true is that our Essence, like the Oneness, contains all qualities, even those that seem to be the opposites of each other. Essence is certainly calm and peaceful, but it’s also alive and dynamic. It’s inseparable from the oneness of Being, and also a unique arising. It’s every soft pastel colour, and all the primary ones too. It’s an infinite, endless vastness, and also a personal intimacy.

Anger Leads us to Strength and Vitality

So we see that the vigorous aspects of anger can be a reflection of Essence just as much as our quieter qualities are, and in fact anger is a certain reflection of the Strength capacity of Essence.

However, anger is a distorted reflection of this true quality of Essence. For all its expansive energy, anger is hard, inflexible, threatening, blaming and attacking. Its strength and expansion are limited by fear, and its hidden counterpart is actually a feeling of weakness and impotence.

The great value of anger lies in the fact that, despite its negative aspects, it is a reflection of Essence, and is also the pathway back to the true qualities that it distorts.

If we are willing to just be with our anger with presence, curiosity and the desire to truly understand it, it will eventually deepen into the true strength and aliveness that is our birthright. On the other hand, if we suppress our anger out of fear or judgement, we can never start on that particular path of unfolding, and may find it very difficult, if not impossible, to uncover and embrace the infinite strength and aliveness that can fuel our lives and our spiritual quest.

True Strength Replaces Anger

When we’re plugged in to the Strength of our Essence, there’s no longer a need for anger. We no longer feel threatened, knowing that nothing can ultimately injure us, and that we are naturally whole and autonomous. We see that we can take care of ourselves easily, flexibly, openly and clearly. We feel a spacious expansion, a dynamic energy, an incredible aliveness, an invincible courage and an indestructible strength.

Thus we find that the true remedy for anger is not to push it away. Paradoxically, it’s to enter deeply into it, so deeply that we find the glowing, faceted ruby that is hidden at its depth, the Strength and Aliveness of who we really are.

'This being human is a guest

house. Every morning

a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness....

Welcome and attend them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture, still

treat each guest honourably,

he may be clearing you out

for some new delight' - Rumi

HATRED, POWER AND PEACE

Almost all of us have been taught by our culture and families that hatred is bad, wrong and evil. As children, many of us were punished, threatened or rejected if we dared to express any hatefulness. So as adults, we tend to automatically reject our own feelings of hatred, fearing that we’ll be outcasts if we don’t.

What we generally don’t see is that our hatred is actually trying to help us, despite the mayhem it causes. After all, hatred seems to be at the root of much of the world’s suffering, fuelling rejection, abuse, murder and war. And this is absolutely true – when hatred is acted upon, these are its tragic results.

But there is a great difference between acting on an emotion, and just feeling it. We have little control over our emotional uprisings, those winds that continually blow through us, but we can control our actions. What I’m proposing is that, in order to understand it better, we start to become more aware our hatred, while trusting that we have the power to not act it out on ourselves or those around us.

You may be feeling quite challenged by now, and if so, I invite you to take a deep breath, feel your feet on the floor, and invoke whatever courage and curiosity you have. Let’s use those qualities to explore our hatred and see what it’s really about. And you don’t have to like hatred to do this investigation, so don’t worry if that’s how you feel. The aim is just to explore.

Hatred Tries To Serve Us

When we really sense into our hatred, it can be felt as a dark force whose energy and intent is to destroy. We can see this on many levels. At the personal level, we attack and reject the parts of ourselves that appear to be weak, shameful, unloving or unenlightened, hoping they’ll go away. At a societal level, we punish criminals with the intent of stamping out crime. At a national level, we engage in wars where we kill others who threaten our freedom and peace. And so on.

So let’s look more precisely at what hatred actually wants to destroy. When we do, we see that it always seeks to eliminate whatever obstructs our wellbeing - it wants to annihilate anything that looks like it’s in the way of happiness, harmony, fulfilment, freedom, peace, love, and enlightenment, whether that be a feeling, a person or a nation.

In this way it is trying to help us, but from a very limited perspective. In the physical world, if something’s in our way, it makes sense to get rid of it. If there’s a tree blocking the road, we get out the chainsaw. So the ego assumes that the same method works for emotional impediments, and the very best tool it has is the destructive force of hatred. So the action of our hatred is to hate and reject the parts of us that seem to block what we most desire.

However, this ends up creating the situation that’s exactly the opposite of what was intended, because ‘what we resist, persists’. The hated parts dig in their heels, solidify their position, and retreat further from consciousness. They push back at the hatred however they can, creating stuck and agitated places in the soul. We are divided against ourselves. The result is tension, agitation, unconsciousness and rigidity.

The Power To Be

So rather than acting on our self-rejective impulses, what’s needed is simply to be curious about them and investigate them just as we would any other emotion. We can just sit with this dark, annihilating force within us. As we work on the issues around it, and slowly deepen into it, we eventually start to uncover its true nature. We find that at the level of Spirit, or Essence, it is actually the power that makes possible the disappearance of the ego. For it is only as the ego dissolves that we can live fully as Essence, and know the profound peace that’s available when all the agitation of ego is gone.

The desire to live as Essence, in its peace, contentment and joy, is a true drive in our soul. It is the desire of the soul to know itself fully, as its deepest nature. But in order to live as Essence, all parts of the ego, not just the negative places, eventually need to dissolve. What our hatred attempts to do is to help us ‘disappear’ ourselves in the quest for enlightenment. It does not understand that true annihilation of the ego cannot come from a head-on attack. On the contrary, what eventually dissolves the ego is self-understanding. And we can only understand ourselves when we relax into ourselves with acceptance, curiosity and compassion.

As we do so, we see that hatred is simply a very limited expression of the annihilating power of Essence, which gently dissolves the ego, piece by piece, in the deep, still, luminous, loving blackness of the ground of Being. We discover that slowly, with the help of this power, we can become who we are. We discover that we too are a powerful peace, a peaceful power, and that just as sunlight imperceptibly dissolves the mist, this power annihilates all inner division in the unified ground of Being. We find that we are the peace, joy and contentment that we have always sought. And we understand that exploring our hatred, just as we would any another emotion, is an essential part of the journey towards living as Essence.

GETTING FREE FROM THE INNER CRITIC

The Inner Critic is a formidable barrier to personal development and spiritual growth.

Although it tries to help us by telling us how to live, its prescriptions for life are based on the past rather than the present, and do not allow us to simply be here in the now. We find ourselves reacting to its insistent inner messages rather than responding creatively to the unique circumstances of each moment. Our lives become dull, constrained and repetitive, rather than open, fresh and alive.

So what can we do about this situation? Fortunately, there are a number of effective techniques for freeing ourselves from the bondage of the Inner Critic.

Identify the Inner Voice

The first step is to consciously identify the voice of the Inner Critic. At first, it feels like part of us, but as we listen more closely, we realize that we have heard those messages before. Usually, we hear the voices of our parents. It’s their job to prepare us for life, and in that process they give us many shoulds, musts, and have to’s. They can also get angry with us, or doubt our capabilities. As children, we naturally absorb these messages, and they slowly combine to create our own Inner Critic. Typical messages are “Anger is bad”, “Big boys (or girls) don’t cry”, “Don’t trust anyone”, “You’re stupid”, “You’re not OK”, and so on.

Understand its Intentions

The Inner Critic is actually trying to help us as best it can. At first we can experience its messages as supportive, and fear that if we let go of its guidance, we will really mess up our lives. We need to see our understandable attachment to it before we can start to contemplate not having it. This takes courage and trust that, deep inside, we are OK, we do have the innate capacity to know what is truly right and can thrive in the process of manifesting it.

Understand the Problem

The problem is that the Inner Critic’s guidance is based in the past. It is basically formed between the ages of 4 and 7, and so comes from the limited perspective of a child. Young children love repetition, and have a deep need for consistent rules. So the Inner Critic becomes the rules that keep on repeating themselves in a one-size-fits-all kind of way.

Thus there is no way that the inner critic can allow us to “be here now”, creatively and appropriately responding to the unique needs of the present moment. We come to see that the Inner Critic, in trying to help us, is actually stopping our realization. It keeps us stuck, repeating the same old patterns over and over again.

However, even seeing this is often not enough. So we need to learn ways to actively disengage. Different methods work at different times for different folks, but these are some that I have found useful. Try what appeals to you, and see what happens.

Feel the Hurt

The fundamental message of the Inner Critic is that we are not OK, that we are somehow defective. This wounds us deeply and destroys our self-esteem. As we hear the not-OK message, we need to take the time to truly contact the deep pain it causes. We can then tell the Inner Critic “You’re hurting me, and I want you to stop”. The more deeply we can allow the hurt, the more we summon the inner kindness that stops the self-abuse.

Use Humour

Poking fun at the Inner Critic often deflates it completely. For example, we can take its criticism to absurd lengths. “Yes, I AM bad, I’m the wickedest, horriblest nastiest person that ever lived and I’m about to go take up a teaching position in the University of Evil”.

Yell Back

When we hear that familiar nagging voice, we can turn around and yell back. We can mobilize our justifiable anger at the emotional abuse that our Inner Critic heaps on us. When we hear “You’re stupid” or “You should … ” we can yell “Shut Up” or “Stop!” or “No, I won’t”. It’s best to keep it short and simple. Just as a small child reacts much more to emotional content than words, fewer words and more force will better stop our Inner Critic. It’s best to keep going with as much energy as we can until the voice actually is silenced. Hint - a good place to do this is in the car.

Living Free

The Inner Critic is a persistent voice, and we usually need to disengage from it over and over again. But as we quieten its insistent judgmental commentary, what we find is a the wonderful open spaciousness beyond the incessant activity of the mind. It is only within this space that the true self can arise. This self does not engage in fixed recipes for life, but has all the guidance and creativity it needs to live out its true potential. It is wise, compassionate and peaceful, and knows innately the right action in every unfolding moment of life.

Out beyond notions of wrong doing or right doing

There is a field.

I’ll meet you there - Rumi