Diamond Heart: Being and the Meaning of Life

by A.H. Almaas

awareness itself is enough. If you’re aware that you’re not allowing, you might see why you’re not allowing things to happen. If you’re aware that you’re not participating, then you might find out what the resistance is, what the block against the participation is.

usually the belly center has to do with embodiment, with the capacity to sense oneself. However, the belly center is also the will center. In a sense, the ultimate function of the will is to surrender to what happens, surrender to the now. And surrender to the now means not to hold on to something. The true function of the will is complete surrender to what’s happening without holding on.

You are embodying it if you are it.

When you are the true self, you can become completely what is there—

Participation is not the same thing as embodiment. Participation means experiencing it, living it, feeling it.

The sensation of pain is an indicator that something is happening that’s not supposed to be happening. Basically, pain is always an indication of danger.

Your body gets tense and pain results. And the pain is an indicator that that you need to look at the tension.

what pain is for—to get your attention.

You can uncover beliefs and hopes and dreams by working on yourself, rather than having to act them out in life.

Sometimes we keep our ideals fuzzy to avoid the moment of truth, the moment of finding out that they don’t satisfy us. We fear the despair that we are sure will follow when we see that what we really wanted doesn’t satisfy us.

We want to arrive at the place where there is no hope, yet no despair.

The point is not to worry and be happy. There isn’t really even a point to get to—it’s just that the centers are functioning harmoniously.

In time you realize that as long as you live according to any ideal, as long as you try to actualize any ideal, there is suffering.

A ripe human being is a human being who feels deeply that at the deepest level there is happiness and harmony, but who knows at the same time, that desiring happiness and harmony cuts him off from reality.

A mature human being knows that he wants happiness more than anything else, and he also knows that by wanting it, he will not get it; so he acts accordingly.

Being mature means that your knowledge allows you to actually stop pu...

If you don’t have a goal, you can just let yourself be in the now.

A person who really loves himself likes doing what he has to do. It doesn’t matter what it is. The liking and the enjoyment have nothing to do with the external activity. It has to do with accepting yourself. So it doesn’t matter what you do.

Your external activity should not make any difference at all to your happiness. If it does make a difference, you’re obviously identified with something that is not you. When you see that it doesn’t really make a difference, you won’t always be anxious to get things over with, or anxious about what’s going to happen. The tension and anxiety will not be there, because there is no reason for it.

Joy has to do with openness in the moment, with not choosing one thing over another. When there is no prejudice about what should happen, there is joy. Joy is openness to experience. There is no striving. Joy is not the result of anything. If you are yourself, there is joy. If you are accepting and open to your experience, if you’re being yourself, you’re naturally joyful because you are the source of the joy.

When you are complete, there will be no waiting. You anticipate and wait only when you are not complete, only if you need something, believe you need something, or feel you want something. When you don’t feel a need or desire for anything or for the absence of anything, then there is no waiting.

There is only Being.

To be complete means that you are not pulled by anything and you cannot be pushed by anything.

To feel complete means to be, which means knowing yourself as the one who cannot but be complete.

If you’re not anticipating, wanting or fearing anything, then there is no waiting.

To be complete means to be thoroughly serene, totally, completely in repose, so much in repose that pleasure and pain come and go, but are irrelevant, surface phenomena.

Completeness is the absence or end of interest, in the sense of preference.

If you experience yourself as incomplete, you remain unaware of your innate completeness, and behave like someone who needs to be filled. The behavior of someone who is incomplete is easy to recognize: the person always acts as if he wants or needs something.

As long as there is an itch for something, you know you are not complete. If you experience interest in anything at all—an object, a person, an activity, or an idea—you know that, in that moment at least, you’re not complete.

Completeness is independent of the mind. The mind typically functions out of a sense of incompleteness. Much of its activity occurs because you take yourself to be incomplete.

The mind spends most of its time designing ways to fill needs, satisfy desires, and quell fears.

The moment you take yourself to be anything in your mind, you are split from who you are, and you will experience insecurity, fear, and desire.

How you experience yourself most of the time is based not on completeness, but on the absence of it, on a gap.

From the deficient perspective of incompleteness comes a feverish activity to accomplish, to fill, to acquire.

Identifying with your desire will only perpetuate the chasm by strengthening a self-image that is split off from who you are.

Having this perspective helps us to orient ourselves towards self-understanding and towards our work here.

We can also see from this perspective that ultimately, the only thing that will work is being, is for you in time, to value Being, just being.

The more you’re aware of this movement of becoming and allow yourself the possibility that it is not working regardless of what it’s moving towards, the more you can observe and experience the gap directly.

So completeness does not come as a result of any action or effort, nor is it the end of a process. The personality, the construct of your mind with which you identify most of the time, is a movement of becoming, always wanting to be something, wanting to get something, wanting to become something, go somewhere, move toward something. It’s an activity; it is not a stillness. If you become completely aware of this movement, then you’re not engaged in it. And when you’re not engaged in it, you are the completeness.

when you are complete, everything is as it is. Your perception is not colored by the distortions of incompleteness. You don’t need it to be one way or another. You see it very simply. There’s no big deal in it, nothing dramatic.

the process of the Work becomes an exploration of the desires, fears, wants, gaps and holes, uncovering them one by one, so that in time you stop believing they are real or necessary.

Fulfillment, which is simply the absence of the lack of fulfillment, arises through denuding yourself, baring yourself, becoming more and more naked. It’s a matter of letting go of the things you’ve been trying to fill yourself with, of shedding the unreal, until you’re so simple that you’re simplicity itself.

A person who is not self-realized is a complex person. The person who knows him or herself truly is very simple; there’s nothing there to understand and no complications.

Completeness is beyond awareness. It is just Being itself. You’re complete without having to know that you’re complete.

awareness is inherent in witnessing.

From the perspective of completeness, the whole universe is your body. There’s no separation, so you take care of it as an action of love.

the action of love is spontaneous. The moment you do something out of interest, it is not completely spontaneous; there’s a little gap.

The ego and the mind always think in terms of cause and effect, preferences and choices and time and results and categories.

when you act from completeness, you act without the mind; you are completely spontaneous. The mind doesn’t know how to do that.

Love will not flow spontaneously and continuously without that spontaneity. If your love is channeled through the categories of your mind, then love is not completely spontaneous and the heart is closed.