TRADITIONAL WISDOM, MODERN SCIENCE,
AND EFFECTIVE PRACTICE
What Is the Diamond Approach and How Is It Different?
There are many spiritual paths. And yet many followers of these paths seem to hear the teachings but not be able to assimilate them directly into their lives. Students may have spiritual insights and still be held back by difficulties related to their childhoods or other life circumstances. What is the barrier between learning wisdom and actualizing wisdom in our lives?
While the Diamond Approach draws on similar traditional wisdom sources as other paths, it also incorporates modern psychological knowledge regarding the formation of our selves. Putting these two disciplines together, the Diamond Approach transmutes the very difficulties and disconnections that are commonly seen as barriers into doorways to greater understandings of ourselves and fundamental reality.
The Diamond Approach is a wisdom path, an investigation of reality, and a method of working oneself that leads to deeper understanding, spiritual maturity and liberation from self-imposed limitations.
Who is The Diamond Approach For?
The Diamond Approach begins with who you are, right here, right now. You don’t need to change or give up anything to begin the work. It is not for monks who have retreated from the world, but for people who live fully in the world of jobs, family, and other responsibilities. It recognizes the gift of your uniqueness and welcomes you in, as you are, guiding you along the next steps of actualizing your potential for greater aliveness, intimacy, clarity, depth, and engagement with your life, others, and reality.
Strong Psychological Foundations
Modern psychology agrees with wisdom traditions that we have no ego when we’re born. So how do we “construct” ourselves? Objects relations and depth psychologists have detailed understanding of the stages of development of our “separate” selves. The Diamond Approach partakes of this knowledge to help create a meaningful and effective practice.
As we mold the self we will become we are heavily influenced by our parents or other caregivers, siblings, friends, schools, and all manner of social factors. Often, we aren’t valued for who we truly are; because we are reliant on our caregivers and institutions we may simply try to mold ourselves to fit expectations. This goes against our true natures, creating conflicts and disconnections. These conflicts create limiting barriers between us and our original nature, as well as between us a deeper understanding of unbounded reality.
While our constructed selves help us get by in the world we come to inhabit them so fully that we forget who we are, and the depth of our being and connections. We may feel angry, sad, or as though we had “lost ourselves”.
The Unique Diamond Approach Practice
Like many spiritual paths, the Diamond Approach teaches and practices meditation. But while other paths may simply seek to transcend self conflicts and barriers, the Diamond Approach uses a unique practice of inquiry that focuses on the very places where we are disconnected. These barriers become doorways to a deeper understanding of ourselves. When we genuinely experience our anger, for example, and metabolize our psychodynamically “stuck” (traumatized) places we are able to move forward.
Practicing inquiry to bring conscious presence to our hidden conflicts allows us to apply wisdom to them. As they get digested, the truth of our being begins so show through. We see that we don’t need to earn or defend our natural value and that even in difficult circumstances we’re not disconnected, but rather can draw on our essential qualities. The Diamond Approach method of qroup inquiry allows us to see the corners of our false self. As we metabolize these the true qualities of our nature, love, intelligence, peace, compassion, and many other pure qualities of our spiritual nature sow through more and more. As we are more guided by our essence, we are more able to connect with the beauty and mystery of life.
Ending Where We Began, Knowing Ourselves For the First Time
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets.)
This wonderful quote from T.S. Eliot describes the process and the aim of the Diamond Approach. Though it may be hidden or forgotten, our original self is never truly lost. It awaits us. And there is a path to return to it.
The Diamond Approach takes us from wherever and whoever we are in life to the reality underneath our constructed selves. Through meditation and inquiry we peel back the onion of our selves to reveal the unlimited potential of the beings that we truly are. While the Diamond Approach is a method that can apply to all, it is also unique and personal to each practitioner. We are unique expressions of a dazzling reality, and it is a precious gift to find out more about us.
