Diamond Heart: History, Traditions, and Practices

The following is a part of my paper about Diamond Heart.  This post shows my personal experience of Diamond Heart.

My personal experience

I actually applied one of the spiritual practices in the Diamond Heart to myself.  I followed the following guideline to practice my past experience with inquiry.

A good place to begin now is with an exploration into your past experience with inquiry.  Give yourself fifteen minutes to sit with and reflect on those questions and any associated insights that arise.  What kind of self-inquiry have you done?  Did you like doing it?  How do you see your concerns, your capacities, and your limitations in relation to inquiry?  How fixed is this knowledge about yourself?  How does that knowledge affect your experience of inquiry now and your openness to pursuing it further? (Almaas, 2002, p. 74) 

              I took a deep breath and relaxed deeply then I started my inquiry.  I came up with the following inquiry “Why did I sometimes feel disconnected to my friends or groups?”  When I inquired this question to myself, I remembered my undergraduate days and I felt guilty and regretful for disconnecting to my friends.  I didn’t know the reason, but I was sometimes disconnected to my group and I felt lonely.  While I was remembering my undergraduate days, I felt a little hurt.  Regarding to the second inquiry, “Did you like doing it?” I replied “Yes, I did.  That is because I really would like to know the reason why I sometimes feel disconnected to other people even if they are my best friends.”  About the third question, “How do you see your concerns, your capacities, and your limitations in relation to inquiry?” I replied “I think I’m a sociable man, so I like communicating with other people and enjoy various conversations with them.  However, I sometimes seek for and curious about how to communicate with other people more naturally and comfortably.  In addition, I’m often worried about how my friends feel or what they think about me while they are talking with me.  As for my capacities, I suppose I have enough capacities to connect to other people, but I feel there is something missing in my capacities.  What’s that?  I may lack confidence in myself and I may not have breadth of mind toward other people.”  After the third inquiry, I seemed to find a clue to solve my worry about disconnecting to other people.  However, it is difficult for me to describe in words.  Regarding to the last two inquiries “How fixed is this knowledge about yourself?  How does that knowledge affect your experience of inquiry now and your openness to pursuing it further?” I answered “I don’t know how this knowledge about myself is fixed.  I believe that that knowledge provides me a good opportunity to think about and face with my past experiences even if those experiences are what I don’t want to remember.  Also, I somehow feel relieved after the last two inquiries.” 

After I finished my inquiry, I experienced a feeling of calmness.  I would like to enrich my understanding of the Diamond Heart by taking a class next fall quarter. 

  Reference
 1 Spacecruiser Inquiry (Diamond Body Series)

2 The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas

3 Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)

4 Joy of Sects, The: A Spirited Guide to the World's Religions

Diamond Heart: History, Traditions, and Practices

The following is a part of my paper about Diamond Heart.  This post illustrates the traditions and practices of Diamond Heart.

Traditions and practices

              This section indicates the traditions and practices of the Diamond Heart.  There are a number of spiritual methods in the Diamond Heart.  In fact, private sessions or small study groups use emotional, cognitive, and intuitive processes, breathwork, and subtle energy exercises.  In addition, teachers of the Diamond Heart use a combination of lectures, experiential exercises, and meditation.  Then students of the Diamond Heart explore their own truth little by little with teachers.     

              Especially, this paper pinpoints on the central practice of the Diamond Heart.  It is called Inquiry.  As Davis (1999) points out, “inquiry encourages and enables open-ended exploration into your immediate experience without preconceptions or prejudice about the outcome of that exploration” (p. 25).  The subject of inquiry can be every experience and then inquiry begins and proceeds.  As the inquiry proceeds from one experience to another, our consciousness broadens and finally reaches at our Essence.  Moreover, as inquiry goes on, the depth and width of our Essence are enhanced gradually.  Davis (1999) describes “In this way, Inquiry leads to growth, healing, release, and fulfillment.  Its ultimate outcome is freedom and the experience of your true nature and full human potential in whatever way it manifests (p. 25-26).                   However, there is one point we look out for about inquiry.  Inquiry is always open and it does not have any particular goal.  In addition to that, at first, I misunderstood that inquiry was like a free association technique.  However, Davis (1999) points out that “Inquiry is not free association or mindfulness meditation, although these practices are useful in supporting Inquiry” (p. 27).  In other words, free association and mindfulness meditation supplement inquiry but they are never inquiry itself.  

              Last, in a word, the role of inquiry is to shift our experiences.  We may feel this shift as an insight, a release of energy, a powerful emotional state, or spaciousness in our consciousness (Davis, 1999).  However, this shift is not similar process of psychotherapies and spiritual practices.  Whereas a lot of psychotherapeutic techniques tend to aim at a change of our inner experiences, inquiry in the Diamond Heart never aims at that kind of change.  Instead of that, inquiry shifts our experience and opens us to a deeper level of experience.

Reference

1 Spacecruiser Inquiry (Diamond Body Series)

2 The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas

3 Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)

4 Joy of Sects, The: A Spirited Guide to the World's Religions