Tag: ah-almaas

  • The Diamond Approach by Phrasr

    Diamond_approach

    These images represent the following sentence taken from the home page of www.ahalmaas.com

    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.

    …and interpreted in images by phrasr. See the show here

    What do you think? I like it. I’m going to open The Soul’s Compass to a random page and do one from it – next post.

  • Ipseity

    Ipseity according to the dictionary is: selfhood; individual identity, individuality. [from L. ipse, self, himself]

    The absolute is both my nature and my identity. Is the nature of the soul and her very identity. It constitutes her manifestations but it is also her depth and deepest essence. Alternatively, we can say the absolute is our true self, our objectively actual self. But it is also the nature of the soul. That is why we like to refer to the absolute as ipseity, for the word ipseity means both nature and self. To recognize the absolute as ipseity is a profound experience, for it is the self-realization of this dimension of true nature. A. H. Almaas

    Breathe into Being

    The Sufis say that existence came about because the Divine ‘Himselfness’ (Arabic: Huwiyyah, often translated as ‘Ipseity’ in scholarly works) breathed the Breath of Compassion, Nafs ar-Rahman, on the possibilities (Arabic: ayan-i-thabitah) that were latent in Himself.

    Be that as it may, the human soul is referred to in the Qur’an and elsewhere as a breath, nafs. (Interestingly, the word for spirit – ruh – also means ‘wind’). God moulds Adam with his two ‘hands’ and breathes into him His Spirit. And that part of us that is not moulded ‘clay’ (our materiality) is the nafs, the breath, our soul.

    According to some Sufi sources, there are seven gradations of the human nafs, ranging from the habitual, unreconstructed self of people who have done no ‘work’ on themeselves (the so-called ‘commanding self’, ‘Nafs al-ammarah’, which is really nothing but fragments of conditioning) through to the ‘completed self’, Nafs al-kamilan. – from James

    What would the Buddha say about ipseity? Is there self-identity in the absolute nature of the everything/anything

    Image by Amy TheissIpseity 28

  • The Unfolding Now

    Unfolding_now

    A new book by A.H. AlmaasThe Unfolding Now – will be released 6/10/08. With all the interest generated in the NOW by Eckhart Tolle and Oprah, it will interesting to see if Almaas’ works become more widespread.

    I have a manuscript copy of The Unfolding Now and I think it is one of Almaas’ most useful books for people interested in presence, the now, and spiritual development.

    The Unfolding Now goes into great detail about the barriers and issues that keep us out of the now.

    I love The Unfolding Now! Almaas’ clarity never diminishes, yet each book brings an increasing simplicity and gentleness. As I worked with this latest material, I felt like I was receiving a transmission of pure compassion. His strong, true voice reminds us that beyond the endless self-improvement projects and idealized mystical states with which the spiritual path is strewn lies the simple but exquisite taste of our own being.

    Cynthia Bourgeault, author of Mystical Hope, The Wisdom Way of Knowing,
    Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

    Almaas is a genius at revealing both the core qualities of Essence and the veils that obscure it, always in language that helps peel away those veils, always holding open the door to the unfolding presence and awareness that remains when the veils have dissolved. The Unfolding Now leads the reader through a masterful series of inquiry processes, invitations to sense and know ourselves at increasing levels of subtlety, gently walking us deeper and deeper into Truth.

    Sally Kempton (Durgananda) spiritual teacher and author of
    The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience

    “Without heart, we are not really human. And the possibility of having an authentic and deeply satisfying human life is only a pipe dream when our love is not directed to what truly fulfills the heart. To find true fulfillment, many of us at some point in life turn to the spiritual search. But what is it in spirituality that gives this fulfillment? Where does this deep satisfaction come from?

    First we need to find out why we become involved in the spiritual search in the first place. What are we looking for when we begin the journey? To experience new and remarkable states of consciousness? To travel to extraordinary realms beyond our everyday world? To be liberated from the difficulties and constraints of the world? Or are we looking to enrich and deepen the meaning of the lives we are living here on Earth? If our aim is to engage in our spiritual work so that it can impact and transform the way we live, we have to begin by seeing what we are actually doing in our lives. What are we up to? What do we really want?”

    The Unfolding Now

     

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  • Fantasy vs. Imagination

    My friend Gordon, co-author of Your Soul’s Compass, was attending a workshop with Hameed Ali (A.H. Almaas) recently. According to Gordon, people were using the the words “fantasy” and “imagination” interchangeably.

    I commented that in fact these were opposite concepts. “Fantasy” is a mental construct–a substitute for reality. Imagination, on the other hand, is an intensification of reality. It is depth perception, the percieving of the divine arising from the absolute that is your lover and also you in this holy instant, seeing the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower as William Blake did, perceiving the fertile realm of concrete potentiality that lies beneath the surface reality in which we find ourselves embedded. Hameed agreed with me that in fact imagination is indeed a different faculty from the one used for fantasizing.

    Your Soul’s Compass deals with how we can intentionally engage spiritual imagination–what Ibn Arabi called “the creativity of the heart”–to open us to a more harmonious and intimate dance with ultimate reality as the realm of our own and the world’s unfolding possibility.

    How do you see fantasy vs. imagination?

     

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  • Inner Terrorist

    Are you being abused and violated by an Inner Terrorist?

    Inner_terroristTerrorism is a hot topic these days. I am constantly reminded as I walk through this world how many people live in fear. It is fairly common, or so it seems, that many people don’t know their neighbors – and don’t want to.

    Many people seem afraid to address a stranger. I guess that’s symptomatic of all the fear, suspicion, and violence running amok these days, but – holy moly – I see people avoiding contact due to habit and fear, not common sense.

    The inner terrorist is much more threatening than all of the external forces. It operates 24/7 and is one of the main factors in perpetuating the fear and suspicion.

    Dealing with the inner terrorist

    How can we effectively neutralize our tendency to undermine ourselves?

    A.H. Almaas observes that:

    As we have seen, the main reason we engage in meddling, resistance, and defense is that we’re afraid that if we’re vulnerable, if we’re open, if we allow ourselves to just simply be where we are, we will not be safe. Many people these days blame their insecurity on terrorism in the world. But the actual lack of safety is more a result of the terrorism that is inside your mind—the internal saboteurs. Our primary fear is that if we are open and let ourselves be where we are, we’re going to be belittled. We’re going to be rejected. We’re going to be humiliated. We’re going to be attacked. We’re going to be judged. We’re going to be criticized. We’re going to be shamed. We’re going to be made to feel guilty.

    We’re afraid that other people will do these things to us and sometimes that actually happens. But more often, we do these things to ourselves. Have you ever said to yourself, “If I really let myself be vulnerable, I feel so delicate, sweet, and innocent. If people notice that, they will judge me as good for nothing”? Or maybe you’ve thought, “If I feel that sweet innocence, I’m going to get embarrassed. I’m going to be humiliated. It means I’m not strong. Somebody is going to reject me or shame me.” These worries are usually a projection onto other people of our own inner terrorist that’s scaring us.

    All of these projections are examples of the obstacle of aggression. We normally think that aggression is about people killing or hurting other people. But for people who are on the inner journey, that’s only a very small part of it. The primary form of aggression for those on the path is their aggression toward themselves. We don’t allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable, to be where we are, because whatever we find as primary in that experience of vulnerability is often connected to a feeling of deficiency, and we might attack the hell out of ourselves for it: “You’re no good. You’re not enough. You’ll never amount to anything.”

    Right away, we become afraid that somebody is going to think those things about us. But why do you always believe that no matter what, somebody’s going to think you’re not good enough? Why can’t you imagine that they might think something else? Is it likely that everyone on Earth is thinking the same thought—that you’re not good enough? Why doesn’t it occur to you that some of them will just think you’re weird? And that others will think you’re naive? No, you believe they will all think you’re not good enough.

    Obviously, the common factor among all these people is that you are projecting onto them. This is one way that we avoid facing the primary component that is arising in our own experience. We rationalize, defend ourselves, justify ourselves. But to whom are we justifying ourselves? Why do we need to blame anybody? We simply are not comfortable about where we are, but we don’t want to feel that, so we make others responsible for our discomfort by projecting onto them our own reaction. Our focus is outward on them instead of inward on what’s true about ourselves.

    What we’re seeing here is the activity of what we call the superego. The superego is a specialized part of our ego structure that has the job of making sure we live up to the standards we learned as children to survive in our families and communities. It does this by various means, including judging, criticizing, advising, warning, encouraging, threatening, and punishing ourselves in reaction to our thoughts, feelings, and actions. The superego is one way that aggression toward ourselves manifests, and it becomes a big obstacle to finding where we are and just being there. It is a major barrier to being ourselves, to being real.

     

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  • Inner Journey

    Inner_journeyGoogling – Inner Journey – I see in the search results many people offering inner journey newsletters and inner journey workshops, but in the descriptions, I see very little that may define what the inner journey is.

    I guess we assume that everyone knows what the inner journey is.

    For the (inner) journey is essentially a journey home, to our original primordial ground and source. To be at home is to be whole, contented, and at peace, for no reason but that we are abiding in our true nature. – A.H. Almaas

    Inner Journey is, in a way, a strange description because, according to most that make the journey – when you get to where you’re going, there is no inner or outer and you never really went anywhere.

    Alice: I was just wondering if you could help me find my way.
    Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
    Alice: Oh, it really doesn’t matter, as long as…
    Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn’t matter which way you go.

     

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