Diamond Heart: Being and the Meaning of Life

by A.H. Almaas

We find that the identification with the body is powerful and consistent. It is much subtler and deeper than we usually imagine it to be.

One reason for this investigation is to show you that you really don’t know.

What is “you”? Experientially, at this very moment, what is it you take yourself to be? If you become aware that you’re taking yourself to be the body, the awareness of the identification usually leads to disidentification. You begin to see that maybe you are not the body. What are you then?

The mental sense of identity and the emotional sense of self are indistinguishable from everything that has happened to you. It is as if all that has happened in your life—all the events, feelings, emotions, reactions, good and bad experiences, your whole history—are inseparable from what you take yourself to be now. In fact, that is how you usually know yourself.

This body is moving through time and space, and all these things are happening to it. So either you take the body itself as you, or you take what has happened to it and form an amorphous construct, a kind of psychological identity, that determines your present sense of identity. And somehow you feel it will determine your future.

When you take a memory to define you, it doesn’t matter what you remember—good, bad, fundamental, superficial, true or false; it all accumulates in your personal history.

Most of the time you identify with that totality; you are in the middle of it, as if in a medium like a cloud, and you let the atmosphere of that cloud define you.

Don’t try to disengage. Just be aware of how you are not disengaging. We are not trying to do anything, we’re just trying to see. We just want to see what is really there.

We don’t necessarily assume that there is a definite answer or that the answer can even be found.

When you look at the totality that way, you will see that there are patterns that seem to be unchanging.

Personal history has a vague sort of consistency and continuity that gives us a sense of identity. The sense of identity is nothing but a tag, a feeling that comes from a collection of memories.

Your personal history defines who you are, what you’re about; in fact, it defines what you feel like now, and what you will do when you stop this investigation.

at different times you take your body to be you, or a feeling to be you, or an essential aspect to be you. Your sense of identity keeps changing its tag. Who you are taking yourself to be shifts all the time. The content is changing, but you’re always saying “I” as if the “I” were one thing.

it is possible for our awareness, our consciousness, to expand to include more and more.

We need to observe the process of attachment; we need to observe the process of labeling. When we explore these questions, we find a process of thought that involves concepts. There is a concept of self, of identity, that we feel we need. There are also tensions in the body that accompany that thinking process. And the tensions in the body, the thinking process, and the sense of attachment to our identity go together; they are inseparable.

is possible to be aware of that process of thinking and the process of holding on, and thus the pattern of tensions in the body without having to change any of it.

look at them as a totality, as a...

awareness watching the thought processes and associations, physical and emotional, but not nec...

you will see by following your awareness that if it is not possible for you to be aware of the totality, it is because there are thoughts that you are involved in. You’re stuck in certain thoughts, stuck in certain tensions that hold you in the middle of the whole thing.

simply to be aware of everything at once—the totality.

some of our identifications are limited by our ideas of time, and some of them are limited by our ideas of space.

Be aware of the thought process. This is not a matter of thinking. The thought process is determined by your personal history.

This is not a matter of knowing something by being able to name it; it’s a matter of simply being aware of what we’re talking about.

You put yourself in a form, in a package, and that limits you. If you can see the package from all sides, obviously you are not what’s inside the package. If you can allow this perception to happen, then it is possible that you may see that you are beyond all that. You may see that your universe does not define you and must not define you. At the moment that you are defined by that universe, or any content in it, you’re trapped. You are in the middle; you are in it. You are at the mercy of all the forces within that personal universe. If you allow yourself to see the whole, then it is possible to see that you are really none of it. There is no need to attach yourself to that universe or any part of it, nor to define yourself by it or any part of it. And it is possible for that universe to continue in whatever way it continues without your having to take it to be you.

Just the mere fact that there is the possibility of a complete awareness of the totality indicates that it doesn’t have to define you. Just the mere fact that you can contain the whole thing, and still your capacity is not exhausted, indicates that you are bigger than all that. The moment you become aware of something is the moment of going beyond it. The moment you say, “I am that,” you are beyond it.

When we believe our labels, when our identity is any content, we are defining ourselves and not allowing expansio...

every time we say, “That is me,” we are not that, because our awareness can include it.

The moment you say that “I” have been doing anything, you are making assumptions about an “I.”

There’s no need to think about what you’ve done and haven’t done, since what you think “you” have done depends on what you thought you were. The past is completely irrelevant. Completely.

Knowing the answer to “Who am I?” happens only in the moment. The answer has nothing to do with the past. If the past determines the answer now, then it is obviously not a correct answer, since the past no longer exists. To really answer the question requires that we see that we don’t know, and also that we don’t know how to find out. Is it possible to let yourself see that you don’...

If we assume we know, then we stop the inquiry. If we assume we know how to go about it, we assume we know what the answer is, that we know what we are looking for. Perhaps not knowing is the real knowing. If you allow yourself to see that you don’t really know and you don’t know how to know, something can happen.

Assuming that you know and assuming that you know what to do are barriers to true knowing. When you finally know that you don’t know, you finally have absolute knowledge. Complete ignorance is what will bring true knowledge.

Your mind can only answer the question and say that some of the answers are not the answers. The only thing we can do is to eliminate what we believe we know and see that we really don’t know.

When you see that you don’t know and don’t know how to know, you may stop all the activities that you do to try to know, and then maybe something will happen.

when you define yourself, you restrict yourself.

Most of the time our personal history is arranged so that we are totally enmeshed in it. By doing the Work, we rearrange the pieces so that we can look at it. When you look at it, it is possible to see beyond it.

every time you define a totality, you go beyond it. If you define the beyond, you may go beyond it, but beyond means not defined.

You have to be aware of your language, because it can trap you. If you believe what you are saying, you are trapped.

knowing myself doesn’t make a difference because the real self is always there. But for my body and my mind, there is more rest, there is more peace, there is more pleasure, and there is more relaxation, when there is a knowingness that I am beyond all of that.

That question is a statement, and the statement is that you don’t know who you are. You can’t not know who you are and not have the question.

as long as you don’t know, the question is always there.

People want so much to stop the question, to silence it. There are two motivations behind that desire: not wanting to suffer, and the deeper motivation that the question has to be answered. The question is there because you don’t know the answer. And it’s going to stay there; it will stay with you until it’s answered. It has a force of its own.

Each of us has a central need: to find meaning in our lives.

Sometimes an individual directly questions the meaning of life. But most of the time people are preoccupied with activities and endeavors that they assume will give meaning and significance to their lives.

When a person is really questioning his life, it doesn’t feel intellectual.

I am asking a fundamental question for you to ponder, so that when this issue arises in you, you might stay with the question without dismissing it with a superficial answer.

For a person to arrive at this issue of meaning, he must already be disappointed in his life, either by having reached his goals or by having been disappointed in his dreams.

This is often the time when a person begins to question, when the dreams have been played out but there is no contentment.

It is difficult to convince someone who still has dreams, plans, and ideals that have not been accomplished, that the issue of meaning is important and that it has nothing to do with these things, accomplished or not.

these ideals will give meaning and significance to our activities. In order to feel that what we are doing is significant, we cling to an ideal, project perfection on the future, and work toward it.