​It took over two years before my prayers were heard and I found my new teacher: Faisal Muqaddam who not only knew and understood my predicament very well but helped me over the course of the next 13 years to integrate the big bang event. Faisal is the founder of the Diamond Logos Academy International with courses and retreats in different parts of the world
In the meantime words like awakening, enlightenment and transcendence have lost their importance to me. What has become a much deeper quest is becoming a true human BEING.
But more about that later.
 
First I want to respond to what these women in the above article experienced and why that is both not needed and not helpful in my understanding ( which is of course limited)
Thomas Wachter speaks of intense fears, loss of memory, panic, incapacity to function, loss of self to mention a few.
And from what their teacher reported these were normal phenomenon, things one has to go through if one wants to awaken.
 
I feel that one of the greatest misunderstanding in spirituality nowadays is the meaning and the place and the transmission of the absolute.
In most teaching it is the alpha and the omega, the only “thing” to strive for. Once reached, one is liberated and that is the end of the story and the journey.
As it is the goal, many spiritual teacher now try to bring their students to the absolute as direct and fast as possible. And this is possible, it is not so difficult to transmit the state once you have opened it in yourself. (I did the same in my satsangs)
Of course this brings great liberation because the awakening to the absolute frees the mind. What a relief, all your troubles gone in one go.
 
It is so appealing that many then become what some of us call ” Absolutists”.
They focus wholly and fully on the absolute only and all the rest is discarded as illusion.
What most people don’t realize that the ego survives awakening, it even survives enlightenment. As it is not supposed to exist according to most enlightenment teachings or schools it either tells itself that it is nobody or it goes in hiding or both.
When it goes into hiding it can create terrible physical symptoms e.g. permanent headaches, a minute but strong tension in the perineum or solar plexus and more.
This can ( and often does) leads to severe splitting.
All that is perceived as illusion e.g. the material and psychological  is no longer accepted when it appears and then split off. Instead of disengaging the person starts to dissociate.
 
When the absolute opens in its immensity and the system is not prepared properly to receive such a huge influx of energy all the symptoms described in the article can happen.
The body is not prepared to deal with the energy and the psyche is not prepared to deal with all the issues that show up.
 
Somewhere along the line, my view of the spiritual journey also changed completely from being a human being on a spiritual journey to being a spirit on a human journey.
In order to transform both body and psyche I embarked on the long lasting Diamond Logos path, that was sometimes tedious and painful, of course, but always attended by a well-grounded practice, a close facilitation and precise maps.
Here I learned that we as humans exist in three different domains simultaneously and that in order to fully realize ourselves we have to not only free the mind but also the ego and the body.
The three domains being : The absolute , the essential and the material. The absolute is considered as the ground of being , the essential as the realm of our soul, and the material as the realm of the personality. All have their place and their value.
By opening one essential quality after another over a course of perhaps ten years on this particular path we prepare both body and psyche to open to the absolute which we don’t call the Self, but Selfhood, overlooked in many spiritual traditions as regarded as not real
 
So like this our students in one of the ongoing groups in Germany landed last week, in the first retreat that deals with the absolute.
We open this through the more gentle way of the feminine side.
The Deep as we call this deep deep darkness which is beyond darkness at the same time, is gentle.
Therefore we don’t speak of enlightenment but of endarkenment.
 
We sink into it, we dip in and come out, dip in and come out. Slowly getting used to how it is to dissolve (just as when we go to sleep).
And simultaneously we look at all the “issues”, all the things that have been imprinted on this dark empty nothing.
As it is the feminine side of existence, naturally it brings up issues around our relationship to our mother. If it was a beautiful connection we may love to fall into that gentle embrace of the deep. If it was a frustrating or difficult relationship we may not even want to go there etc.
 
We look at all the attachments the ego has so that it can survive. It is attached to so many things, e.g. to identity, to success, to functioning or being beautiful . (by the way we don’t view the ego as something that needs to die, rather some part of us that needs to be understood and transformed back into its original light).
In this way slowly slowly we familiarize ourselves with TEMPORARILY
Not existing. I emphasize temporarily, because it is neither the aim nor a realistic possibility to live this human life from this dissolved seemingly not existing place. We always come back, we need to function and live our lives.
The question is how we come back…. Do we come back as an ego or as the light of our soul?  (more another time perhaps)
 
In this retreat about the deep, we continue our exploration while dipping and in out of the deep and examine and explore the fears so that we no longer fear them when they show up. If you have not yet found back the eternal light of your soul, which is your true identity, it can be so terrifying to seemingly not exist for some time. Some of the women in the article of Thomas Wachter might have experienced this. Slowly we begin to savor “not being” and are capable of taking longer and deeper dips.
 
The deeper we go the deeper the issues are there. We have projected these issues on the darkness.
Some fears are so deep, they stem from the time where the ego was not yet formed and we were entirely without structure which can lead to extreme vulnerability and even paranoia sometimes.
In our work we welcome this vulnerability as it makes us so human. It allows the system to become fluid again and completely open.
But before we reach this total openness we have to move through deep sorrow and helplessness.
As we have become also so alienated from what is real we often experience deep loneliness and isolation here.
 
After we explore this feminine side for many months we will move to the male side of the absolute.
This is the domain of the light, a light so strong that it is beyond light and by lack of a better word we call it radiance.
In our work we call this the awakened state. This is what is generally referred to as truth. ( The deep is wisdom)
The deep brings dissolution; the radiance brings resurrection.
Of course in a way we cannot divide the absolute in two parts as it is non-dual. So this is more a non-dual duality, for the sake of recognizing both aspects.
Also some people tend to go more to the feminine passive side of being other to the male active. The middle state is the balance of the two; the state of restful awakening.
 
I am well aware that I may disturb some readers view of things,
And touch on some holy houses.
Please bear with me I ask you. I don’t claim to know the truth, yet I speak from experience (and of course from having received the teachings from my teacher). All this is my experience, it resonates with me as true, it has helped me and continues to help me integrate and realize the totality of who I am.
It also helped me to slowly undo the demonic state I had landed it. When we become absolutists like I was, our ego, instead of being dissolved, starts crystalizing until it reaches what Trungpa has described in his book: Cutting through Spiritual Materialism as “the demonic state”. The most painful state in existence, it is complete ego-hood instead of being ego-less as one thinks. An average ego is not easy to melt and transform, a crystalized ego is very very hard to melt again. It has become so hard, so impenetrable that sometimes only the blow of the axe can do the job. I know so well…..We find example of this in the life of Milarepa with his master Marpa but also in some of the people I know. This state is severe. Some have landed in psychiatric hospitals. Myself I had to take medication for some time to be able to deal with it.
My motivation for writing this piece comes largely from this experience. I feel great compassion for all who, like me, where prematurely exposed to the absolute and received either no guidance ( in my case) or unskillful guidance as the teacher himself  is often in the same state or ignorant of all this. The women in the article of Thomas Wachter might have experience something similar.
I pray that we so called spiritual seekers and spiritual teachers begin to understand more that the teachings as they have been presented in the east are often not applicable for us western soul who have deviated so so far away from home, from reality, from who we are.
And ……. I know that once one has found the absolute most people I have met (including myself) are unwilling to hear this because it means they will have to give up the so coveted but not complete freedom of mind.
It reminds me of something I read many years ago from the Korean Zen Master Seungsahn. It went something like this.
The disciple asks Seungsahn: Master I have been your disciple for so long now and I have reached the absolute a long time ago.
How can I become a master ?
Seungsahn: When you can convince someone who has awakened that this is not the end but the beginning
The disciple eagerly: How do you do that?
Seungsahn: I have so far never managed.
I read this when I was in my fresh awakened state and dismissed it as not relevant for me. 
So I know…..
And yet there is so much more to us then just our source. We are such beautiful creative creatures that need the absolute, that need transcendence but also need immanence.
 
 
All of this is just a small glimpse into the long journey that in my eyes would need to precede the awakening.
Faisal, my dear teacher speaks of the ascending journey and the descending journey.
Those who went to the absolute first need to descend again, to bring the blessings back into the body, until every cell is soaked and transformed and the feet are firmly on the ground as well as in being.
 
We have to transform the ego identity back to it true identity as I said before but we also have to transform the body back to its true nature.
In our work that means that the totality of our essential qualities is liberated and the body has become again essentially one with being.
 
If one has reached the demonic state first, this journey is often  intensely painful and difficult.
 
If however one is lucky enough to walk the ascending path, the journey can be much more smooth and gentle and slow.
Of course if our history was painful (and whose was not?) the journey is also challenging and painful but as I said much more gentle.
I see it in my students and I have seen it again and again in my fellow travellers on the Diamond Logos path.
 
Before I close one more thing:
Over the years I have come to understand my position as a human being on this planet in a very different way.
I used to think that the absolute was doing everything and I was not the doer.
Now I see that I as a soul but also as an ego make the absolute move.
The absolute in itself does nothing at all until…… it is activated by…. sound; by thought, by intention.
This brought a shocking realization to me that I AM the creator after all. If I am in ego activity and I curse I create a very different reality than when I am deeply connected to the light of my soul and I intend well being for all beings on earth.
 
Recently I read this:
Master Hui Neng said:
As far as Buddha nature is concerned, there is no difference between a sinner and a sage…… One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.
 
The true integration as I understand it till now is when we can integrate the vertical reality of being with the horizontal reality of time and space, when we can integrate the spiritual and the material.
And this only the heart can do.
This as far as I can see is the journey of a life.  A beautiful journey in which the soul matures and learns to create from being and learns to create beauty and learns to live in accordance with the Holy Laws.
Then we are not only liberated but also saved
But that is yet another story.
 
 
 

All this was followed by a period of deep depression, and instead of finding a spiritual teacher I found a psychotherapist who first helped me to get on my feet again. Later I found alternative therapists, and I learned oriental healing methods which brought me more in contact with myself and with my body.
 
Throughout the years I had different teachers. Originally they were all of Zen tradition. Rarely did I have a female teacher. The spiritual world was full of male teachers, and I did not know any better. My thirst was deep, and I did not waste a lot of time. In a way, I can say that from that moment in 1976 rarely a day went by in which the search from my true nature did not come by, even though I was often looking in all the wrong places.
 
At first I found enough food in Holland because I was connected to a Center that invited all kind of inspiring people to Amsterdam.
But in the end I went on a journey and, after some detours, I landed in India at Osho’s feet, who became my spiritual teacher and master.
 
In 1994 I was walking through the Nullah Park in Pune, and there I saw an enormous statue of a female Buddha. I was so deeply touched that the tears rolled down my face – very silently. Only in that moment I realized how few female role models or teachers there were, and how important it was for me to have this mirror.
 
For some time I went to visit her often and look her in the face. Something moved deep in my uterus, and at that time I could not understand what it was.
 
The journey went on. My master had left his body, and maybe because of my hunger for truth, or my long years of meditation and participation in many self discovery therapies and awareness intensive retreats, or maybe “simply” through Grace, I experienced a big breakthrough in 1997.
 
From that moment on, I experienced everything as one. From that moment on, there was only the source. All my problems had vanished like snow under the sun. The endless chatter in my head became completely irrelevant. I could listen to it and give it life. But when I did not listen to it, it  receded to the far, far periphery of my awareness. At that time I experienced all this as enlightenment, and in 1998 I began with the sharing of Satsang.
 
I was delighted to notice that there were several women amongst the Satsang teachers. I met some of them, but found all of them more or less on the same, rather known and male path of Advaita like myself. One of them I experienced as more feminine, more female, but she was too embedded in the old traditions, and for me that was no longer relevant by this time. I missed the link to a more evolutionary consciousness.
 
A dear girlfriend gave me a book: “Women of power and grace”. It described the lives of nine very special enlightened women. It brought more mirrors to look into. These women, however, were all such great beings that the mirror was almost too big to look into. It had a humbling effect on me.
 
However, I noticed one thing, and that was that for many of these women their act was primary. Most of them had been busy their entire life with the relieving of pain, the caring for the poor, with charity. There was also a teaching, but it often was not much interesting, and it had a much less important place than life itself, than translating this teaching into action and making it known to the world. While with most of the male gurus or teachers the teaching itself was in the foreground and meditation was the main practice, for many women devotion and care for other people was central.
 
In 2000 I met Ammachi in South India. This very simple small/big Indian woman made a deep impression on me. So deep that it created a lasting connection. Amma emanates divine love, and she hugs every single person that comes to see her. Sometimes she does this for twenty-two hours in a row, without any break or drink!
 
With Amma I experienced for the first time that female enlightenment not only expresses itself differently, but it also brings a different and more round EXPERIENCE. Her hug became a symbol for the way God embraces me as the archetypal mother. It was as if the universe held me in a loving and intimate embrace.
 
God obtained a second face for me that day. Not only God, but also the Goddess was here. Together they were ONE.
 
Her teaching was simple and direct: share love and compassion and do selfless service.
 
Since then I’ve visited Amma every year, and I’ve let myself be inspired and nourished by her feminine way of being and by the divine love that she emanates.
 
In 2004 my enlightened state came to an abrupt end (see the article on enlightenment). The fall from the big light into total darkness was intense.
 
It took about four years before this change, this turning point, was overcome.
 
During this time I learnt many lessons. First I discovered that I had achieved my state of oneness through a splitting from my human duality and from my body.
 
The journey back to earth was not simple. It took some years before I again felt a solid contact with it.
 
My nervous system had received an enormous blow. The shock of this abrupt landing (crash is actually a better word) and the opening of many unresolved traumas from my life, was really more than my nervous system could handle.
 
Some years of intensive trauma healing (Somatic Experience) followed, to bring the very needed balance back.
 
During that time I obviously could not teach or be a therapist. Internally I was completely ruined, and so I returned to one of my oldest professions: nursing.
 
For three years I took care, as a private nurse, of old, sick and dying people. And even though these were heavy years, I also enjoyed the simple care for others. I also got deeply involved in the so-called normal world, where no one was interested in the spiritual.
 
I watched TV for hours with my patients; I read to them stories out of women’s magazines for an infinite time, and I shared a lot of ups and downs with the patient and his or her family.
 
A world that I hardly knew anymore opened up to me. A world that also made me more and more human. Deeper layers of compassion were awakened. I saw and experienced so much grief, pain and misunderstanding. I revisited everything that I had left behind some thirty years before.
 
In this time it became more and more clear that just the source of being did not bring the enlightenment that I had tried to reach my whole life. The source, that feeling of having come home. But WHO had come home? What had happened to ME in this whole story?
Where was I?
 
Osho had given me a vision of a new man. Zorba the Buddha, he called it: a man with the vitality of Zorba the Greek and the wisdom and the silence of the Buddha.
 
I had been trying to figure it out for years already. How did this happen? I had been a Zorba. I had lived life to the very fullest. I had burnt the candle on both ends and I had deeply enjoyed it. I had been a detached Buddha in silence and peace, almost not anymore part of this world.
 
And now?????
 
I was looking for totality, for integration. I wanted the totality of existence and I wanted to heal the fundamental split between the spiritual and the material world, between the inner and the outer.
 
But how in God’s name could I connect these two worlds? It became the only thing on my mind, the only thing that interested me. And like always I was praying for help, because I had not been able to manage it on my own.
 
Almaas’ books came back from under a layer of dust. He inspired me with his modern vision. But the fire did not really ignite.
 
Then Faisal Muqaddam appeared in my life. He had a similar vision. He spoke directly to my whole being when he spoke about the three domains: the three kingdoms we live in.
 
The absolute (the one that in Advaita is often called the Self, the emptiness), the essential, and the worldly domain. The Tibetans call these the three Kayas, the three aspects of an enlightened being.
 
In the absolute and in the worldly I was rather at home. But the domain in between, the essential domain, was unknown to me. This is the domain which unites the so-called personal and spiritual. The presence of the essence in the body seemed to make embodiment possible.
 
Faisal:
 
In general, we talk about enlightenment as the stage of discovering our true nature, our enlightened nature. This enlightened nature, this godlike nature, this Buddha nature is the basic quality of all existence.
This basic being differentiates itself in many, many states. Just like when you put white light in a prism there appears a rainbow, so the absolute differentiates itself into different qualities. Some of them are boundless, not limited. Other states are defined, very defined, palpable, you can feel their form, their structure.
And then all of those qualities get even more defined and more solidified – and eventually become the physical universe.
The differentiated states between the Absolute and the physical universe are what we usually label as the essential states of being. Those are essences.
Those essential states have characteristics. They have texture; you can feel them in your body. They are not just energy. Some of them are dense, some of them are light, some of them are liquid, some of them are solid, some of them are cold, some of them are hot, some of them are  neutral. So they have all kind of palpable characteristics that you can really sense. And your body is the best thermometer you can gauge essence with. Essence has to flow in your body. It is not just a state you can go into like your emotions or your mind. It has to circulate in your body. And each quality of essence can only be integrated when it runs fully in your body. It has to circulate in your head, in your heart, in your belly, in your legs.
( taken from audio material )
 
 
Faisal taught me to differentiate between the three domains and to respect these. He showed me that every domain had its own laws and teachings. And that it is very important to know which domain you are speaking of when you teach.
 
All of a sudden I understood that in Satsang I had tried to approach the worldly domain from the laws of the absolute. I also understood why it had been so difficult for many people that came to me to bring and actualize these insights into their daily life.
 
Even though originally I had great resistance to once again open myself and learn a completely new teaching, I started.
Faisal spoke too much to my whole being. Moreover, the teaching was so intelligent – high-tech almost, like modern mysticism!!
Faisal used both the deep insights from the different spiritual traditions as well as from the modern discoveries and developments in psychology.
 
Ah – here was the piece of evolution that I had missed so much!!
Here the ego was no longer something that needed to vanish or die, it instead became a starting point – almost a guide, an instrument to find the way back. He compared the ego with a child that needed to be taken by the hand and shown the way home.
 
And so started again a new chapter on the long road of self-discovery.
There are so many aspects and facets of essence that we need to be able to be a complete human being and actualize our insights, our realizations. For example, to really land on this planet we need very earthly essential aspects. To be able to truly love, it is necessary for the different qualities of love to actually be present in our body, so that we become love. To really experience joy, we have to become joy.
 
Almaas says:
Essence is not alive; it is aliveness. It is not aware; it is awareness. It does not have the quality of existence; it is existence. It does not love; it is love. It is not joyful; it is joy. It is not true; it is truth.
(Essence, pg 80)
 
I discovered that there were personal and impersonal essences. We reach the impersonal through transcendence, through negation, by seeing that I am neither this nor that. What is left then is only the source, the ocean.
The personal essence however comes to life only when we do the very opposite; when we recognize that we are everything. I am this, AND that too. It brings the vision of the fish in the ocean. It exists as a unique fish and it seeks participation, it wants to evolve.
The ocean does not seek evolution, it is eternally the ocean.
But the fish wants to move on. So once we realize that I AM EVERYTHING, the split between inner and outer disappears. And now we can also take total responsibility for our lives. Now we can no longer say that there is no personal self. If we make a mistake, we own it and clean it up.
 
The more I began to experience and recognize essence, the more I realized that the Sufi have had this wisdom for centuries. The poems of Rumi, that I so love, are full of hidden pointers to essential states. He refers to them a.o. as honey, or gold or ruby.
 
 
If we had had enlightened parents, we would have grown up without losing the contact with our true nature, and all the different qualities would have opened and developed naturally, and all our abilities would have been reinforced instead of being lost. Essence is our birthright. God or the existence created these qualities for the human being so that he or she can both function in reality and remain connected to the source.
 
In my groups now I let people often imagine that they were the baby Dalai Lama or another higher being. When he was born, he was surrounded by respect and love, by many beings who saw his soul, who provided a good holding environment and who were reliable.
Beings for whom enlightenment was a natural state of being.
 
And then I ask them to imagine what their life would look like now had they been raised like this. And then tears flow, and long closed doors open again and essence starts to flow again.
 
For me personally the Diamond Logos (the name of this teaching) is an enormous support in the process of integration. Little by little I retrieved my essence, slowly my bones and muscles and nerves opened again. Very slowly, but very surely, essence melts the old personality structure. Step by step, the unreal qualities learnt melt, and the essential natural qualities start to emerge.
 
With the opening of each new essence, old blocks show up, old issues that need to be seen come up so that they can dissolve. This is a complex and intricate but very interesting process.
 
This is not the place to go deeper into this now.
 
The first and strongest opponent on this path is our super ego, our inner judge. That voice in us that always plays god and that punishes, criticizes, manipulates or even praises us with every step we take.
In Satsang I used to say: simply don’t listen to that voice. But of course no one succeeded.
 
Now I can give clear tools and ways to learn how to recognize that voice and learn to deal with it. This is really crucial if we ever want to come to an embodiment and actualization of our realization. It is such a highly developed and complex automatic mechanism. Its goal, its job is to keep our conditioning in place, and if we don’t recognize this, it will always pull us back to the start. And it will hold us back from truly being an individual.
 
When the super ego reigns, it is very, very difficult for the essence to flow. And that is why the work with the super ego has a big place in the work of actualization which I now share.
 
Realizations are beautiful; by now, many of us have them aplenty - deep realizations of oneness and love and perfection. But what are they good for if they cannot be lived, if they cannot be embodied, if they cannot spontaneously manifest in our daily life?
 
The path of Advaita, of the non-duality, had been a marvelous path for me, an incredible tool for coming back to the source, for coming home.
It had awakened me and many others. But then what???
What happens after one is awake?
 
Unfortunately, I still meet people who, in their longing to transcend their pain, have split off their human duality. All they want is emptiness. And they have reached a beautiful state, but I experience them as only half.
 
I now know that, if we want to be a full and complete actualized human being, we have to embrace all of our human aspects. They all belong to our being. They are all part of the divine – the duality as much as the non-duality.
 
The more my integration took place, the more I was drawn back to my old passion to share with others everything I learnt and discovered, and to assist them in their process of transformation.
 
Groups and retreats began to form, and after a while I had so much work that I had to say goodbye to my nursing job.
 
I was asked to write about women on the path.
But what is the way of the woman?
It’s only been two years since I’ve asked myself this question.
Partly because Faisal, every time I meet him, brings to our attention that men and women function differently, and that it is about time we women discover for ourselves how essence opens itself in us.
But even more so because I started to listen to my uterus.
The echo from that first stirring in Pune with the female Buddha was still there.
 
It shocked me to hear what my uterus showed and told me.
I became aware that I (and many women with me) had lived my life from a very male active principle. This had hardened and contracted my uterus.
Our society demands action, performance, if we want to belong in it.
 
The painful suppression and abuse of women throughout the ages had brought us in the 70s to feminism. At that time, it looked like if you wanted to feel yourself equal to a man, you had to develop the male qualities of competitiveness. The soft, loving, caring and receptive woman became old-fashioned. We became powerful and strong, and we did not notice what we lost in the struggle.
 
Many, many years later my uterus cried silent tears over this loss while it slowly, slowly started to open again.
 
In my feminist years, I had been very proud to be an androgynous woman, someone who had both female and male qualities. My bisexuality also had a place in that way. It had never been very clear to me what male or female was. I felt both energies very clearly in my own body.
 
Now, however, I am feeling very clearly my feminine biology.
 
Now that I am well grounded in my body, it’s able to open up more and more. Through the growing presence of essential qualities, my uterus shows itself more and more as an important center of my system and also as the source of essence. I am still at the very beginning of this research, of this process of discovery. I asked some friends and colleagues how they see it.
 
Annemie Flamez:
This is an amazingly inspiring time! The woman, the mother, the Goddess, the queen gets her throne and crown back.
 
For a very long time, the female wisdom has lived underground in our culture. But now the sacred womb sees a new day of light. My passionate love for the sacred womb was shown back to me first through the book The Mists of Avalon. Now, thirty years later, I don’t remember much of the book. But at the time I felt like the frog that was kissed by the prince and had changed into a princess.
 
In my early childhood, I remember my search for the Holy Grail. And, just like my body, the mind and the spirit are able to know a process of development, so that also this female wisdom can show an ongoing awakening as essential quality.
 
The mystery opens itself, and is very deeply connected with my sacred womb and consciousness. This consciousness is inherent to being a woman, and it is built into the fabric of my soul. The pregnancies and different births I have experienced were not only of this world.
 
I did not know the essential language at the time. The love that is born together with the baby does not know its equal.
 
The changes that that brought in me were irreversible, and so every different phase of my life brought a very precious treasure to me.
Now, being a grandmother, I see how I protect and cherish life in all its beauty.
 
But it is not all “hunky dory”.
 
It has never been obvious that I, as woman and mother in the world, would be able to follow my own spiritual desires. The path is full of roses and thorns.
 
In enquiry (a practice of self discovery) I met, among others, my mother and the mother of my mother, and sometimes in a very painful way. My love was also unearthing deep hatred.
 
My heart and uterus are connected with the world and with life in all its dimensions. My life sings its own soft spirited heart sutra.
 
These examples are expressions of the sacred womb. But, like with all qualities of essence, it can also be experienced in all her glory in a more direct and substantial way.
 
Faisal instilled in me a strong desire to discover the female wisdom in the spiritual domain in a deeper way. Together with other fellow female travelers on the spiritual path, we are currently drawing from this natural source of wisdom.
 
Another colleague and friend:
I come from a family lineage of strong, successful businesswomen, very emancipated for that time. Being born in 1954 and having spent my teenage years in the 60s, I was admiring Angela Davis and the women’s liberation movement, going along with my girlfriends and the spirit of the time. Secretly I was dreaming of a “normal family”, where the mother was home, cooking and waiting for the family to gather for the meals. I was very confused about being a woman, and in that my path was leading me to in-depth inquiries, both psychological as well as spiritual.
 
From childhood on, I felt something was missing in my mother’s life and in the life of all the emancipated women around me. Even though there was power, strength and a certain kind of dignity, which was so much longed for by the Females of that time, I longed for something else, not knowing what it could be.
 
I could neither find it by living in a country home, being home for my little family, nor by proving to myself that raising a child and having a professional life is both doable. Not by being the femme fatale, the sweet loving mate, nor by living in a spiritual commune, trying to surrender to my master. No role model could do it.
 
I did not know it then, but what I was really looking and longing for was what I call now a new dimension of the Feminine, which cannot be found through role modeling or by any attempt of the conditioned personality. It is an essential quality, residing in depth in all of us Females, waiting patiently to be reconnected, containing the old archaic wisdom and connection of the female tribe.
 
I am very grateful to my teacher, who, even though he is a man, supports me in my search and helps me to reconnect with this quality that has no words for me yet.
 
 
And now?
Throughout the years, the idea of wanting to arrive somewhere has been left behind. Like Tao said it centuries ago: The journey itself is the goal.
 
I used to look for the light – the focus of my journey was to find enlightenment, and I wanted only the light. The darkness had to be left behind at any cost. Darkness meant pain, sadness, fear and being lost. Through my work, I still often come in contact with other people who have that same focus. They want to get rid of their pain and they want to feel good, they want the light.
 
I discovered, however, that when we have the courage to feel this pain, we notice that another door opens into a dimension of darkness that is peaceful, loving and pure goodness.
 
Many of my old friends asked why I am still searching and why I am still working on myself. My answer is not often well understood.
For years I’ve been neither searching nor working on myself anymore. It is rather a journey of discovery.
 
It is the following of an evolutionary pull that comes deep from within my belly. I could also say: I listen to the call of my heart. And at the same time there is also my inner guide that shines its light on ever new, awesomely beautiful new territories that beckon to me.
 
Retrieving the essential qualities that I need to be truly human seems a lot of work. And that’s true.
The difference is that it’s not me (read ego) doing the work, but it’s the essence or the presence.
Like I tell my students: Presence does the work; our only job is to be present.
 
Sometimes the journey is so exciting and brings treasures beyond belief. And then it goes again through dark valleys and swamps of sadness and pain, which cover up the fullness and peace that lays beneath it.
Sometimes I meet the valleys and the mountain tops with equanimity. Sometimes not.
Sometimes I fight the valleys because the old habits and deep defense mechanisms in our systems are very powerful.
Seen from within the ego, everything we do on our spiritual journey serves only one goal or purpose: to not ever feel again the old pain of the ego deficiency. Actually, everything we do is gymnastics to cover that.
 
A new resolution comes when we learn to endure these deep states and pains of the ego. Compassion deepens. Peace grows rounder and fuller. We are better well-established. Integration grows, only to disintegrate again and regroup as new again and again.
 
Darkness and light, they belong together. Light is the male aspect – darkness the female. Together they are ONE. I am still greedy, I want everything! Light and darkness, Zorba and Buddha, fullness and emptiness. The journey goes on – that is evolution. And where does it go? We can see that only when it happens a bit at a time during each moment.

New paradigms in a changing world
About 13 years ago, Faisal Muqaddam brought such a new spiritual understanding; the Diamond Logos® Teachings. 
It offers a detailed and elaborate map of reality and brings precise knowledge about what we and our journey are about, and why we are here.
For a long time, a common spiritual understanding was that only the inner was important. The outer world was considered illusion.
Meanwhile we clearly understand that the path of transformation includesthe outer reality too. We definitely need to transform ourselves first but then it needs expression and manifestation in the world. The world is actually a mirror of ourselves. What we have done to this planet reflects what we do to ourselves.
A human being is not an island and needs to interact the world around him. 
But we have forgotten what a human being is, we are scared to show and act upon our humanness. We have neglected not only the life of animals, but also of our planet. Why? How did we get lost in the material world?
The Diamond Logos teachings give us answers to these questions and help us to realign.

the Diamond Logos Teachings 
Presence and mindfulness are the basic pillars of waking up to our truthful existence, to Being, here on this planet now. Without them we cannot notice what is going on in and around us, let alone how we influence our environment. 
We might be aware of a sense of lack, life does not appear fulfilling to us and we try to compensate it e.g. by accumulating goods. In doing so we do not consider under which circumstances and at what costs these goods have been manufactured. We do not want to get out of our comfort zone disregarding the drastic effect our material compensations can cause. Being present and mindful in what we do with ourselves and our environment is the beginning of the awakening process.
Once conscious and anchored in presence we begin to realize all the treasures as well within and as around us. This is the beginning of a saner life. Diamond Logos takes it a step further, by retrieving one by one all the essential qualities of our soul.


Essence and the environment
Through circumstances in early childhood we lost contact with most of our essences. The good news is, they are still alive in us, but we need to find and open these long-forgotten channels.
Take e.g. the essence of strength which is natural in a small child. It will flow easily and freely as a warm fiery substance that we call red essence.  Children have heaps of this alive energy; they are still connected to their natural boundless source. It is not always easy for the caretakers to tolerate this wildness, so this juicy aliveness gets frustrated and buried.
As a consequence, strength is no longer a free-flowing essence but it is an effort and needs muscle power to produce it.
It speaks for itself that once we understand how we lost this connection, we can retrieve it again.
Once retrieved we have a new stance in the world. We have the courage to stand up for our values, become responsible and contribute to the benefit of all beings and the planet. 
The same process is true for many different essences like:
When we retrieve the black essence of peace and truth how can we be anything else but an agent of peace and truth and leave self-deception, hatred and war behind.
When the green essence of empathy and compassion is alive in our system, we cannot but feel compassionate I thought you want emphatic towards all living beings on our planet.  Nothing leaves us indifferent. We will naturally contribute to a more loving and saner world.
Here we mention just a few of the essential qualities intrinsic to our souls. Imagine what is possible when the entire all of our soul qualities comes to life again….We could not do other than to prevent disaster on the planet.

How can we open those channels?
In our groups we transmit directly the quality we want to open, which makes them palpable for people. Once the essence is present, almost automatically the issues that blocked it, shows up. Issues derive from all the undigested traumas of the past. We digest and deal with them in form of inquiries, processing and meditations. With presence and objectivity we can see, sense and feel them again and free the essential flow. Often after all the issues are dealt with, we experience an absence, a kind of emptiness. Tolerating this, instead of looking for compensations, the blocked quality will emerge from within.
One quality after another can be liberated in this way.


Climate change
Science can do a lot to undo the damage we caused but as the scientist Gus Speth recently said: The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy. To deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation- we scientist don’t know how to do that.
It is clear: we need to adjust our human behavior, which can be either sane and responsible or unconscious and fueled by greed, hatred and comfort.
Becoming a conscious truthful human being implies that we take responsibility for our own actions and for the planet we live on. We are not living alone; we need one another and we need the earth with all its manifestations.
We need to differentiate between what sustains and what destroys us, otherwise we are prey to our desires, wishes and wants. Without a solid presence, without awareness and a certain maturity, this is hardly doable. We will want our coffee to go, in the plastic or paper cup, we will want the cheap flight to go to a beach in winter or to go shopping in Milano. We want what we want when we want it. The temptations are endless.

Why is desire so hard to overcome? We have to understand that what our ego is desiring are actually inner qualities. We can’t stop desiring until these are retrieved. If we don’t feel our inner richness, we will always need to compensate this inner lack with outer richness and by that in many ways contribute to climate change and pollution.

Connected to our inner resources instead of exploiting the outer ones, we become the responsible adults that we are.
We will be contributing our gifts to each other and the planet 
We can shop responsibly for clothes and food and participate in respecting our planet. We can take care!

This highlights the benefit for all by returning to our essence and our light.
Once realigned we feel the purpose of our life and naturally live and act from the right place. 
Coming together in groups of likeminded people we can remind each other that we do have the choice. 

​The hot sea wind blew past my head; I sat bewildered and alone at the Red Sea coast, with this mind blowing new insight.
I was 25 years old, I had dropped out of society a year before and lived currently on the beach under a palm tree with a piece of plastic to protect from me the Chamsin. This was the sandstorm from the Sahara that came to us here in Nueiba, Israel from time to time.
I was one of the many lost wanderers on the planet of the seventies, all in search of freedom and a life worth living.
 
I was supposed to feel free but reality was that I felt like a prisoner. The further I had pedaled away on my bicycle from Amsterdam, all the way down to here, the more I had realized with every turn of my pedals, that I carried my whole past within me. I had left “it” but “it” had not left me.
So far had I thought of my childhood as privileged and idyllic. We had been rich and lived in a big house in a small village by the river. We had ‘everything a child could wish for ‘. At least that is what I was told over and over again. My parents had lived through the war and the stories were gruesome. So what would we have to complain about? We had not been in the war. We should be grateful that there was food on the table, grateful for where our cradle had been.
So if I was not happy it certainly was my own fault. I grew up feeling terribly wrong, ugly and different.
Not knowing how to find my place in life I had finally dropped out and was convinced that I would find something, somewhere along the line.
 
From a point of view of consciousness, I was in a deep coma.
I was looking for something without knowing what it really was. All I knew that life how I had lived it until now was deeply wrong. It was not worth the while.
So my friend and I set out for a trip around the world on bicycle. Being Dutch it seemed only logical to take the bike. A Dutch couple had done it before and if they could do it, so could we.
Freedom was another word for nothing left to lose….as Janis Joplin sang. I felt like I had really nothing left to lose by the time I left.
 
So now here we were, in Israel on a deserted beach. On the surface all was good and exciting even.
My travel companion and I had been close friends for a few years and we had travelled to Canada before. We were compatible in many ways. Moreover, she had been crazy enough to join me on this trip.
All our other friends had declared us as certified nuts.
 
The Nueiba beach was empty in those years. The Sinai desert still belonged to Israel and I guess people did not yet travel so much as now. Probably world wide the tourist industry was yet to boom.
Apart from the famous stone house and a few other freaks, there was just the vastness of the sky, the water and the hot sun. An occasional Bedouin came by on a camel, letting me ride once in a while with him.
Food supplies came from the local army base, as there were no restaurants, shops or anything else there in 1976. We would sneak into their kitchen at night and the boys, bless them, would give us something to eat or to cook.
Life could not be more easy and idyllic.
The handful of people that were there, came from various nations. Most of them were Jewish, discovering the promised land and having long and stoned discussions about what it meant to be a Jew.
We were not Jewish and the conversations were rather boring to us so mostly we were by ourselves.
 
Who would have thought that I was lacking a center?
I had never occurred to me before. Now the question was; how to find it?
A few days later, out of nowhere I started to draw the Mobius sign in the sand over and over again without knowing what that sign meant. It brought a special feeling. Looking back I think it put me in some kind of a trance.
Everything seemed to be connected in one endless closed circuit.
My father had died some 12 years before but through this drawing I felt that he was still around, somehow, somewhere.
All of a sudden I knew that all was one; that we were all one.
It was as if a door opened for a few seconds, into an unbelievable silent and peaceful vastness.
Everything disappeared and for that tiny eternal moment I WAS…….THAT.
And then….. I was back in my normal reality.
If left me baffled and curious.
Until then I had been looking for freedom and I had almost been certain that it was to be found in the outer circumstances of life. Obviously this was not the case, as I still did not feel free, not even in paradise.
Now that the quest for a center had appeared and now that this vast space had been shown to me, it was clear that this was to be found inside oneself.
And just like that, my inner search started as a tiny little flame in my heart.  The flame turned out to be big enough for it was never forgotten.
Of course I wanted to find the answer immediately. I was in a hurry; my life was slipping through my fingers. I wanted it as immediate as that vision had come to me but it would take many years before I had a next glimpse. Many detours had to be taken and many shortcuts tried.
 
Much drama was to unfold.
The great show from darkness to light had only just begun. Little did I know that I would burn in the fire of my quest for the next 40 years and that it would take me to different continents, inner and outer, through many awesome peaks and horrendous valleys, through great losses and wild adventures before it brought me home.
 
What follows is the story of my life.
I describe it as I see it now, after many years of therapy and meditation. I did not always have the understanding of the events at the moment itself. Particularly not in my childhood and I describe it now as I discovered it over the years. Of course one has to take into consideration that we all live in a universe of our own. In the emotional realm there is not such a thing as truth, it can only be “my” truth. Some friends and some of my siblings don’t recognize themselves in my story.
So it is MY story as see it now in retrospect with the clarity of one whose eyes have been opened after a long sleep of ages. Some of the names of people have been changed to protect privacy.
May the story be of inspiration to you who is reading it.
 

This knowledge is known to most of us seasoned seekers but before it has landed in every cell of the body, it can’t turn into true knowing, true wisdom. 

So until not long ago there was still that waiting to come full circle which in some ways put my life on hold. Hope does that to us. Hope creates desire and desire creates postponement.

To many people it looks like my journey had so many cuts and breaks. To me however the whole search has always been organic, simple, human and even logical.

I was born in 1951 in post war Holland, in a not so healthy body and in a rather challenging emotional climate.
From day one, health was an issue that kept me busy. 

It was only logical then, that my search started with the search for health.
At the age of 28, I immersed myself in the world of yoga, shiatsu, oriental healing and macrobiotics with absolute totality.
I became healthy and fit and enjoyed teaching to others what I learned. This is something that I would continue to do during the rest of my life. I would learn something and then start to teach it.

After 5 years of this, I woke up in the middle of the night, shook my boyfriend and said:
“Something is wrong here. Look at us, we may be healthy but we don’t smile, we are not happy”.
Through that realization that journey ended quite immediately.
A circle closed and a new one opened by itself.

My quest was now for happiness. This led me soon to a therapeutic community. I moved in and I immersed myself with the same abandon into this world. I screamed, cried and beat the walls for days and nights on end. Releasing all that was pent up in me emotionally. It “broke” the thick armor I had carried around me, and therefor it brought a lot of relief. My puritan Christian holding left me and the pendulum swung the other way. Sexual, drug and other indulgences took its place. I abandoned my health program feeling that it was the emotional body that really determined my health and not the food I ate. 

Exactly 5 years later I woke up again realizing that: “Okay, I can release my emotions and that is great but I also go on each and every day creating new disasters and drama’s which then again I need to release. This does not seem intelligent. How to stop that cycle?”

Meditation promised an answer.
Apart from some active meditations and some unsuccessful encounters with Zen (for me that was only about enduring the pain in my back and keep my teeth together to do so) I knew little about meditation and I had never tasted the peace that meditation promises.
And I wanted peace now and I wanted to sit. 
This posed a great problem. I could absolutely not sit still unless I was stoned. There was too much restlessness and action in my body. I was a well-trained survivor; I needed to stay on the ball and always on the alert. Relaxation was definitely not part of my program.

Ecstasy brought the answer. I discovered that when I took that pill (they were of relatively clean substance in those first days), not only could I sit still but I could be in my heart as well. Self-love appeared and it brought a whole new dimension to my life.
A few months passed like that with several “ecstatic meditation” days.
But the hunger for a lasting silence kept pulling me. Another circle was closing again.

A little later I left that community and I found myself at the feet of Osho in Poona- India. Shortly after my arrival he hit me with a hammer on the head. That is literally how it felt and from that day I could ONLY sit. Often I could hardly move.
I was seen for long periods with a silence button on and a Vipassana stool under my arms, only to get a tea or some food and go back to sit in the garden next to Osho’s house.
Fanatic again??? For sure. My love of totality has always bordered on the fanatic.

Soon I found even the ashram too full and to busy. I wanted to be alone. 
I moved to Thailand to a remote island and lived in a hut for 5 or 6 month, barely known to the rest of the world. Living for a great part in silence and meditation in the purity of nature, I felt truly happy and fulfilled for the first time in my life!! 
I had however not yet given up my drug habit and I still smoked marihuana, be it only after 5 o’clock. (The fact that the grass in Thailand was so good and so cheap did not help me to stop.:))

I felt deeply connected to Osho and never lonely or alone. He was with me.

Just as I was about to make a wrong move (I wanted to withdraw from the world for the rest of my life and live like a recluse), He called me back. For three nights in a row I had the same vivid dream.
He would stand on the balcony of my hut and say this very clear sentence: “ It is time to come back to the Buddhafield”.

The first night I was annoyed and dismissed the dream. The second night I became angry and reactive, but after the night I simple bowed my head and said:
“I am on my way”

Without enough cash for the journey and with great trust I embarked a few days later on my way back to Poona. The journey was miraculous.
The money always showed up when needed, literally from strangers.
Doors opened by themselves, the journey was easy and my trust unshakable. I knew He called me home and I trusted that He would take care and He did. My trust was innocent and absolute in those days.

Then followed many years of hard work in the ashram.
A new circle opened.

Hard work because there was a much deeper layer of emotional pain waiting for me. The emotional work now was finer, the groups more meditative but I still screamed and cried quite a bit in those first years.
Next to my groups and processing, I worked as a therapist sharing my insights as they came in groups and sessions, under the umbrella of Osho.

And of course there was daily life in the ashram, where I lived out my dramas of relationship, love and hate, passion and agony. They were once again the food for my inner work.

All in all it was a time in which I felt truly happy. Osho had created a miraculous garden for us to play and grow in. Looking back, those years often feel like a fairy tale to me now. How lucky I am that I could live that.

He spoke once or twice a day, holding us together in a field of meditation. Blessed days.

In 1990 Osho left his body, which had left me strange enough with a sense of deep gratitude and responsibility. I remember standing at the burning ghats, his body going up in flames and me saying to Him: “ You have given us more than we will ever be able to digest. You have said it all. Now it is up to me”. My focus had been so outward, I was hooked on his physical form, now the arrow shot back in my direction. It felt strangely good and empowering. Of course there was deep sadness too but I had become a little bit more adult.

We carried on with the work and life in the ashram in his spirit.
Meditation brought me step by step to a new dimension inside of myself. The dimension of being. 
Over the years its pull became stronger and stronger. I started to lose interest in therapy.
So when the time was ripe, some 6 or 7 years later, I started to move into the world of Zen. The world of Koans, the world of presence and no nonsense. The main Koan for me was: Who am I?
With intensity as my middle name no need to describe how I sat day after day after day with that Koan.
Until, just as Zen promised, one day the bubble burst in 1997 and I had a full blown awakening. I was catapulted into the absolute, the empty source of all things, the ground of being. 
I had transcended all my pains and troubles and was in deep peace.
It was as if a dam had broken and all the non-essential had vanished.
All boundaries dissolved and only oneness remained. The search was over. 

For all kind of reasons, soon I was no longer welcome in the ashram and I was on my own at home, digesting and integrating this blow, or was it a kiss, from God? My days were spent in my lush tropical garden in the hammock.
Bliss upon bliss, even though my health deteriorated very fast. Osho had often said that if the body was not strong it could break under the impact of awakening/enlightenment and so I did not worry. It seemed to be part of the process and I was completely detached from all the pain.
Friends tried to convince me to see healers and doctors but I was not interested. If this was it for the body, then this was it. My search was over. I was ready to die if that was to happen. 

Something touched me deeply in this time. Through a friend, I met Amma, the first enlightened woman in my life. As I did not recognize the need for Her support and guidance then, I visited only shortly and she would come back into my life only a few years later.

For 5 years I was in this state, giving satsang and initiating many people into the absolute.
Until, one day, to my great shock also this Satori bubble burst.

It was devastating and so overwhelming it took me years to sort out the pieces of what happened.

Now 16 years later I can say this:

By the time the bubble burst, my body was in a terrible state. 
So bad that I almost lost my life, so I had to open my eyes. 
Slowly, slowly, it became apparent that I had created a severe split in me. A split between the material and the spiritual, between body and soul. This is an age-old split that still pervades in many misunderstandings of the teachings. 

I had simply split off everything that belonged to duality. Dismissed it as unimportant and worthless. I began to realize that I was born into this body out of duality and that duality somehow had a place of value in the bigger scheme of things. But at first not much more understanding was there.

I was in a mess, sometimes suicidal and I prayed for guidance for about two years. I picked up meditation again as well in my desperate attempt to find my way back.
Dark years they were. Obviously I could not work anymore but needed to earn a living. I worked as a cleaner first and later as a private nurse, supporting old people to die in their homes. Very challenging for the body but very grounding at the same time. And oh so humbling.

Two years later, my prayers were heard and Faisal Muqaddam appeared. Miracle of miracles, he understood what had happened to me in detail. He became my beloved guide to this day.

He introduced me to the idea that we as humans live in 3 domains simultaneously.
The worldly, the essential and the absolute domain.
I knew the worldly and the absolute but the essential domain was totally new for me. This domain refers to subtle energies and substances, which are also called: the organs of the soul. To uncover these lost essential organs again, became a long and painstaking process. Another circle opened and with it I was on another merry go round of Father Mother and Me. The Holy Trinity as Faisal lovingly calls them.
Quite some years of ongoing trauma healing work needed to happen on the side as well. 
Now the process was ultra slow. This was a challenge to my impatient and pushy character structure. Perseverance was needed and patience. 

The Enneagram became an invaluable asset in the understanding and the unraveling of the ego structure. (I am a Three in that system)

It would go too far to explain the Essential domain here. There is a lot of information on Faisal’s or my website.

For me the effortlessness of essence was mind blowing. I was so used to efforting. Being in essence is a natural state of being. Essence provides whatever it is we need to live in this world.
E.g. if we need strength we don’t need to tighten ourselves but the red essence will flow through the body like fire or lava and bring the strength in a very natural and effortless way. If we want joy, we don’t need any outer stimuli, we only need to be in contact with our yellow essence and a deep joy rises from within. Etc. etc.

Also, it became clear over the years that therapy was important and very valuable in the healing of the conditioning but that resolution, true resolution of these issues could only be found in the essential domain. When the holes that opened through the loss of essence in childhood will be filled in again from the inside with that very essence we will experience wholeness again.

At first I wanted to put my awakening down but Faisal honored it again and again until I did the same myself. But now I kept only one foot in the absolute.
The other foot was either in the worldly or essential domain.

The “drop-out” that I had been, started to die and I started to learn to live and appreciate to be in the world. Dealing with it. Meeting it. Slowly, slowly, this age old split between matter and spirit started to melt.

For quite some years Osho had been in the very far background. Now I found my way back to Him. He says:
“This earth is a challenge. You are made to work your way through this darkness of existence. This is a task to be done, this is a way of growth, and to be here on the earth simply means that God has given you an opportunity to grow. This earth is a challenge, accept it, encounter life, don’t escape”.

Amma became a strong guiding force in my life and through her teaching of humility she keeps uncovering my pride and arrogance.
It took some years before I could accept another master into my heart next to Osho but in 2008 I delighted all of a sudden in having a spiritual father and a spiritual mother both. And so Amma became my beloved guru. I visit her often but I know now that I want to fully live in the world. I have something to do here.
Her presence is a salvation again and again and an enormous catalyst for my maturing and embodying.

Faisal gives me the “nuts and bolts” of spirituality in his own humble way. His wisdom and experience are awesome. 

One of these nuts and bolts is inquiry.
I could write an ode to inquiry alone. This scalpel of consciousness reveals the smallest blockages in our system with laser like precision. It dismantles all our beliefs and idea’s, opening patiently one blockage after another, allowing the old content to be released and the lost essence, the intrinsic to unfold. Now I can finally say: I have digested my life.

In 2012 another big bang opening came. Rivers of tears flowed in the realization of the totality of me.
Me as awareness, me as the soul, me as the absolute. Finally everything was there simultaneously. 
Often first openings are very overwhelming for me and also now, I could not see the pieces but I felt that I had truly come home. 
Now it was not just realization, it was embodiment.
This time I kept quiet.
A few weeks later the opening went as abruptly as it had come. I lost access to my totality. 
Even though I did not want to admit it, I was disappointed like a small child again and even angry with God. 

Running to Amma for refuge and hoping the find myself back there another shock awaited me. Even in her presence I felt or experienced absolutely nothing but an empty dry desert. Not the beautiful empty nothingness but a sense of total lack. Lack of love, lack of life, lack of everything. No essence, no absolute. The only thing I could do was bowing my head and endure this untresspassable void. I wanted so badly to surrender but did not know how. The ego in fact cannot surrender. Surrender is quite a different matter, but I did not know then.
Rumi says: Be silent, 
Only the Hand of God Can remove
the burdens of your heart.
So I waited for God. Bowing my head, slowly giving up. 
Life finally had brought me to my knees. I realized that there was nothing but nothing I could do. I had done all that could be done. Now I had to wait for the hand of God.
So I prayed and waited.

This new circle that opened made me face the deepest loneliness that I could ever have imagined. Once I was in, it I understood why we avoid it our whole life. In fact our whole personality is built for that purpose: to never again have to feel that unbearable desert of desolation and abandonment again. 
Faisal (whose guidance at this point was so valuable and essential) kept saying: Endure it, in time it will start to shine from within.
I waited and waited and hoped to get back to that beautiful state of totality. 

Oh that hope! How it find its way back in our lives again and again, ever more subtle. 
Step by step, very little bit by very tiny little bit I gave up on my desires. A painful and agonizing process. In the end I had only three desires left:
To live in nature, to have a man and to reach nirvana.
To these I held on for dear life. 

Two years later a very simple quote on Facebook did it.
It said: “The grass is not greener on the other side, It is greener where YOU water it”. It hit my like a bomb.
I started to water wherever I was ( in the city, on the train, at home) and the desires slipped away by the side without me noticing almost. So simple. I finally realized that it was the desire itself that created all the misery in my entire life.

Now when bigger and bigger openings come I can enjoy them and ……. let them go. Watching my soul wander in whatever domain it goes. Nirvana is not a fixed place. Nirvana is here now when I am one with the tide of life, with the tide of the whole. 

I know the body needs care and I practice yoga and Ayurveda without being fanatic now but with healthy realism.

I know the worldly domain needs care. I am living in the world. Inwardly I am a free wandering soul rooted in being, but outwardly I have a home now. I have put my roots down on the earth at last.

And of course the soul, the spirit needs care. Without daily meditation and prayer I would not be where I am today.
I value and nourish the essential body in the ongoing unfolding.
I cherish the dissolving into the absolute again. The recharging of the body that comes with absence is simply phenomenal.
I honor my ego and my soul for its courageous journey through time and space.

Sometimes I dissolve in the absolute; sometimes I am a shining light in the heart, sometimes an essential person, fully embodied. And so often I am in the worldly domain, getting lost, forgetting and remembering. And even the forgetting is so valuable because it reveals ever more subtle strategies of the mind.
Which in turn keeps purifying the soul, it polishes the diamond.

All is as it is. Everything is good and has its place. The waiting is over. The journey in full bloom, on and on and on…
Charavedi Charavedi as Buddha said. Carry on, carry on.

The circle is never full or if it is it is only for a short moment only to open into a new one, always spiraling up even when it feels like it goes down. It is in the nature of things to evolve eternally.

Osho says it so beautifully

“...the journey never ends. One path ends, another opens; one door closes, another opens. A higher peak is always there. You reach to a peak and you were just going to rest thinking everything is achieved suddenly a higher peak is still there. From peak to peak, it never comes to an end; it is an endless journey... God is an endless journey. 
That’s why only those who are very, very courageous so courageous that they don’t bother about the goal but are content with the journey- just to move with life, to float with the river, just to live the moment and grow into it - only those are able to walk with God”. 

How many years it takes to grow into this understanding! To enjoy the highs as much as the lows. To be as content with happiness as with loneliness. 

May this story be of inspiration to you.

Rani

February 2015




 

The thing is, we NEED trust on all levels, also in the normal daily life.
And certainly in this moment, life on the planet probably rarely knew such a lack of trust and had such a fear consciousness as today.
We seem more estranged from our true nature than ever before.

Everything is moving and changing so fast.
Nobody is sure anymore about the future. All predictions about the climate changes or the financial situation have to be adjusted on a monthly or weekly or even daily basis.
Not knowing is lurking around every corner.
This “not knowing” makes us fearful.
We want to secure our future; we want to know what is going to happen to our money because we are not at all sure that things are moving in the right direction. 
For sure not now.


For me, a big part of my life trust meant:
Keeping the strings in my own hands and never giving up and never letting go of control.
I was convinced that all the good things in my life were a direct result of my own efforts.
Everything that came from the outside was at its best dubious. I had learned very early on, to keep my own course. This tactic had proven again and again to be the trust worthiest of all.

When I came close to the spiritual path, messages like: “let go” and “trust” seemed simply dangerous and unintelligent to me.
However with the support of a new group of people and all kinds of books on meditation and the soul, I started to “practice”.


Then drugs presented themselves. First a joint, later the other stuff.
That meant trusting and letting go in huge leaps. 
LSD brought a big opening in the sense that it showed me for the first time ever that there was a reality beyond the mind. In this reality everything was connected to everything else and on top of it, the whole was moved by a force that was way beyond the personal. 

Later on meditation came and by and by drugs left. Over time my meditation grew, but my basic trust however did not grow that fast. It was a slow process, little step after little step. I remained self sufficient and self-reliant.
During my meditation trust was okay, but outside of that it remained a dangerous affair. This created a split in me. I could trust in god by now, but people…and life…. that remained another story.

After some years I became so desperate. I wanted to let go of control but could not do it.
I knew beneath that was fear but I could not feel this fear.
I started to pray.

Praying is a dangerous thing, in the sense that if a prayer is sincere, it generally gets heard. It was heard indeed.
Very soon , my partner left me, I lost the house in which we had lived together and my health collapsed to a point that I had to stop working for quite some time.
Now, it was not very difficult anymore, to get in touch with my fears. I was terrified, all the time.
I used the therapeutic tools that were available at the time, to move through yet another layer of old pain and fear and mistrust.

Looking back, a year later, I could see clearly that everything that had happened had been absolutely perfect.
My ex had not really fitted with me and the direction my life wanted to take; it was also better to live alone for a while to allow for the new course of my life to unfold. This made it possible for my work to take on a whole new course as well. The whole drama had changed me profoundly; I was more open and more clear.

All these changes had been necessary for a transformation in me that I would have never been able to create myself.

Throughout the years that followed, life presented me of course again and again with new situations that evoked fear and asked for a letting go.
And every time I was surprised that my previous experience was not sufficient to let me trust once and for all, in the loving intelligence of the universe.
I mean, I “knew” that everything always turned out for the better. Then why would I get so scared again?  

Even my awakening into oneness did not do the job. It did not bring a lasting direct contact with this basis trust yet. I did not know at the time, that the ego survives many stages and levels of enlightenment and that there are certain essences in the soul that restore trust.

Still I noticed that the part in me that is aware, awake, knows and sees that all is one and that all is good and that everything moves and unfolds according to a completely loving and intelligent plan.
I saw that we all have our karmic place in this whole and when we really start to understand this, we know that whatever happens is perfect and that it fits perfectly on our path.
Great justice reigns, always and everywhere, however difficult it is sometimes to experience this.
A deep trust grows both from insight and from the direct contact with an essential quality of our being.


While we experience the part in us that is aware its clarity, the ego, which I also call sometimes “the inner child”, hides somewhere in a corner, usually deep inside of us.
The light, the realization has not reached here yet. In fact, to our ego it feels as if it is a child that still lives with the parents. So it is only logical that there is not much trust present in this separated closed nucleus. 

When we come in touch with difficulties now, or things that bring us fear, we, as aware beings, have two choices.

We can negate the ego/child in us (it often only makes itself noticeable with a small voice) and split it off  in our desire to follow our knowing.
On the level of the absolute source this is also the truth. But we function on different levels at the same time, and each level has its own laws and experiences. rephrase
I call this: living from realization and direct knowing.
This brings a certain amount of freedom.
However the danger here is that it can give rise to a certain split in our consciousness that we can justify in the name of awareness.
E.g. we can stop having personal relationship in order not to be confronted with issues that can stir our ego and think that there is no longer an ego. In most cases this shows more that we have become masters in avoiding and denying our ego activity. 

Or we can notice the deeply hidden fear in us and allow it to surface. In this way it can open and we can experience it. This is a very simple and direct, but also confronting and painful way, to allow the fear to dissolve.
We don’t deal with it in a traditional therapeutic way though, we let it be and sense it and in that way it gets released.
If we keep following this process, we may begin to experience an emptiness or a hole behind our fear. Not a positive emptiness but rather a sense of lack.
If we stay consciously present in this hole/lack and accept the not knowing, sooner or later this emptiness will fill up from within with an essential quality of our soul. 


In the case of trust it is the quality, which Faisal and Almaas call:”Living Daylight”. It brings us a very direct physical experience of the loving goodness of existence. Basic trust arises as a natural and direct result out of that. The “knowing” has now landed in the cells. It also has reached the ego nucleus and now we can speak of transformation.

This process is often very slow. Little by little the light and the knowing land in our cells.
This part of the journey is often referred to as the process of integration, a stage needed to come to stabilization first and actualization later.
It is a slow process, which needs time, patience and practice.


It reminds me of the story of Meher Baba*, a guru from Pune/India. He received a kiss from Babajan* on his forehead when he was 19 years old. This transmission brought him a very direct awakening. Later he said that he had needed 30 or more years to integrate this kiss and come to full actualization of his enlightenment. (He received help from other masters and teachers in this process)



But let us come back to trust.
How easy or difficult this process of trusting is in a life is of course very dependent on how the “holding environment” in the family of origin was. By this we mean: the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual climate in the family.
In other words: Does the child get touched and held in a loving way? 
Does one sense and recognize its sensitivity, does one see its true nature, is there intelligence present in the parents? 
If all this is the case, then the child feels itself safe and held in the family and it will not lose its inborn contact with the goodness of existence so deeply. His soul can open and unfold itself in a natural way, like a flower opening to the sunlight.
On top of that, it will also learn that people are good and loving and so learn to trust in both an absolute and a relative way.


Is the environment however not safe or even hostile, and then it is clear that the contact will be disturbed on both levels.
As soon as we lose contact with this living daylight, we cannot truly trust anymore and we will increasingly hold on to the ego structure that we built around this lack.
We will base our trust now on this false structure. Our way back home will be a lot more difficult, because on this road we have to meet the unknown again and again and we need to let go of the old. Our false structure does not let go so easily.


Living Daylight.  God’s goodness smiles at us.
Existence is filled with and made of this living daylight, this living goodness. In fact it is the only thing there is in all its different appearances. On a physical level it feels as if we are surrounded by an atmosphere of goodness, warmth, light and space. Some people say they feel like they are held in the arms of God when they sense it, others say they feel safe and supported when they experience it.


If our early experience was one of fear, then we keep our doors and windows closed for this warm light. Often we close ourselves to many other things as well that come from the outside and mistrust becomes a way of life. We create an energetic barrier that can start already on the level of the skin. And the loving daylight cannot reach us anymore. We are locked up in our self-created prison.

The way back to this basic trust is not without pain or fear. It may seem like a  contradiction but the more contact we have with this light, the more we also come in contact with the barriers and the old fears.

Someone who has a lot of basic trust is particularly capable to allow the deepest fears to surface from the depth. On the surface it can then look as if that person does not have any trust.
The deeper layers of mistrust can however only be allowed and felt when there is a certain amount of trust present. Trust is like the bedding for it. The more light, the more darkness.


In this way deep wounded parts of our psyche can be felt and through this a letting go of old ego structures can take place.
This means a letting go of our identity. This can be felt as disintegration, a sense of falling apart. 
Again this can be fearful because the old falls away while we don’t know yet if there will be anything to replace it. It feels more like the famous fall into the abyss.
If this falling or jumping is easy, then the original family settings was usually fairly healthy and the transformational process will be relatively easy.
Was the trust very disrupted or disturbed, then we don’t jump so easily but rather clamp or hold on to our old safe ego identity. Make shorter and simpler


What could ease this process?
As I said before, the absence of this light is felt as a hole. As a lacking, a missing of something that should have been there. The more we can tolerate and accept this hole (often it is filled with all kinds of unpleasant or fearful memories), the more the loving daylight can stream in again. From there, the passage to our basic trust is restored and letting go will be less hard. This takes place step by step. Each time we notice that our true nature DOES show itself when we let go, by itself, we trust a bit more.


The disintegration of our ego structure is not a matter of one jump or one fall. We would not be able to let go of this structure in one go.
If we did, we would not know how to function anymore. Just like Meher Baba who was in coma after the kiss of Babajan. When he came to, it took years before he finally could manage to live from his new essential and healthy structure.

The good news is of course that whether or not we feel it or know it, the goodness of the universe is always here. It never left, it never diminished and it can never leave because it is intrinsic to existence itself.
And on that we can always count.

*Meher Baba ( Indian Guru from Pune 1894-1969)
*Babajan ( Hazrat Babajan, a Persian guru who became 141 years old and who lived in Pune under a neemtree, 1790-1931)  

*Faisal Muqaddam is the founder of the DiamondLogos work and co founder (with A.H. Almaas) of the Diamond Approach.
*A.H.Almaas is the founder of the Diamond Approach and the Ridhwan School

2009

Stay together friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made
Of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water
And turns and gives it away , weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,
Whereas another roundness
Rolls through a dry riverbed looking
For what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment
Like  drop of mercury.



---------------

Gamble everything for love,
If you are a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.

Half heartedness does not reach
Into majesty. You set out
To find God, but then you keep
Stopping for long periods
At mean spirited roadhouses.



---------------

There are guides 
Who can show you the way
Use them

But they will not satisfy your longing
Keep wanting the connection with presence
With all your pulsing energy

The throbbing vein
Will take you further
Than any thinking

Mohammed said: Do not theorize
About essence. All speculations
Are just more layers of covering
Human beings love coverings

They think the design on the curtains
Are what is being concealed

Observe the wonders as they occur around you
Do not claim them. Feel the artistry
Moving through and be silent.


---------------

Life is not for waiting
Do not postpone
Love is bringing everyone by the ear
To a place where reason cannot go
Where Muhammed’s eyes close in sleep
And the night grows quiet

Truth does not sleep. Sunlight does not go away
The stars are suns. Shams is everywhere.



---------------

In the slaughterhouse of love
They kill only the best,
None of the weak or deformed.

Do not run away from this dying.
Whoever is not killed for love is dead meat.

.


---------------


The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling they're given wings.


---------------

One who does what the Friend wants done
will never need a friend.

There is a bankruptcy that is pure gain.
The moon stays bright
when it does not avoid the night.
A rose’s rarest essence
lives in the thorn.



---------------

When I see you and how you are,
I close my eyes to the other.
For your Solomon’s seal I become wax
Throughout my body. 
I wait to be light.
I give up opinions on all matters
I become the reed flute for your breath.

You were inside my hand.
I kept reaching around for something.
I was inside your hand, but I kept asking questions
Of those who know very little.

I must have been incredible simple or drunk or insane
To sneak into my own house and steal money.
To climb over my own fence and take my own vegetables.
But no more. I have gotten free of that ignorant fist.
That was pinching and twisting my secret self.

The universe and the light of the stars come through me.
I am the crescent moon put up
Over the gate to the festival.

All this was followed by a period of deep depression, and instead of finding a spiritual teacher I found a psychotherapist who first helped me to get on my feet again. Later I found alternative therapists, and I learned oriental healing methods which brought me more in contact with myself and with my body.
 
Throughout the years I had different teachers. Originally they were all of Zen tradition. Rarely did I have a female teacher. The spiritual world was full of male teachers, and I did not know any better. My thirst was deep, and I did not waste a lot of time. In a way, I can say that from that moment in 1976 rarely a day went by in which the search from my true nature did not come by, even though I was often looking in all the wrong places.
 
At first I found enough food in Holland because I was connected to a Center that invited all kind of inspiring people to Amsterdam.
But in the end I went on a journey and, after some detours, I landed in India at Osho’s feet, who became my spiritual teacher and master.
 
In 1994 I was walking through the Nullah Park in Pune, and there I saw an enormous statue of a female Buddha. I was so deeply touched that the tears rolled down my face – very silently. Only in that moment I realized how few female role models or teachers there were, and how important it was for me to have this mirror.
 
For some time I went to visit her often and look her in the face. Something moved deep in my uterus, and at that time I could not understand what it was.
 
The journey went on. My master had left his body, and maybe because of my hunger for truth, or my long years of meditation and participation in many self discovery therapies and awareness intensive retreats, or maybe “simply” through Grace, I experienced a big breakthrough in 1997.
 
From that moment on, I experienced everything as one. From that moment on, there was only the source. All my problems had vanished like snow under the sun. The endless chatter in my head became completely irrelevant. I could listen to it and give it life. But when I did not listen to it, it  receded to the far, far periphery of my awareness. At that time I experienced all this as enlightenment, and in 1998 I began with the sharing of Satsang.
 
I was delighted to notice that there were several women amongst the Satsang teachers. I met some of them, but found all of them more or less on the same, rather known and male path of Advaita like myself. One of them I experienced as more feminine, more female, but she was too embedded in the old traditions, and for me that was no longer relevant by this time. I missed the link to a more evolutionary consciousness.
 
A dear girlfriend gave me a book: “Women of power and grace”. It described the lives of nine very special enlightened women. It brought more mirrors to look into. These women, however, were all such great beings that the mirror was almost too big to look into. It had a humbling effect on me.
 
However, I noticed one thing, and that was that for many of these women their act was primary. Most of them had been busy their entire life with the relieving of pain, the caring for the poor, with charity. There was also a teaching, but it often was not much interesting, and it had a much less important place than life itself, than translating this teaching into action and making it known to the world. While with most of the male gurus or teachers the teaching itself was in the foreground and meditation was the main practice, for many women devotion and care for other people was central.
 
In 2000 I met Ammachi in South India. This very simple small/big Indian woman made a deep impression on me. So deep that it created a lasting connection. Amma emanates divine love, and she hugs every single person that comes to see her. Sometimes she does this for twenty-two hours in a row, without any break or drink!
 
With Amma I experienced for the first time that female enlightenment not only expresses itself differently, but it also brings a different and more round EXPERIENCE. Her hug became a symbol for the way God embraces me as the archetypal mother. It was as if the universe held me in a loving and intimate embrace.
 
God obtained a second face for me that day. Not only God, but also the Goddess was here. Together they were ONE.
 
Her teaching was simple and direct: share love and compassion and do selfless service.
 
Since then I’ve visited Amma every year, and I’ve let myself be inspired and nourished by her feminine way of being and by the divine love that she emanates.
 
In 2004 my enlightened state came to an abrupt end (see the article on enlightenment). The fall from the big light into total darkness was intense.
 
It took about four years before this change, this turning point, was overcome.
 
During this time I learnt many lessons. First I discovered that I had achieved my state of oneness through a splitting from my human duality and from my body.
 
The journey back to earth was not simple. It took some years before I again felt a solid contact with it.
 
My nervous system had received an enormous blow. The shock of this abrupt landing (crash is actually a better word) and the opening of many unresolved traumas from my life, was really more than my nervous system could handle.
 
Some years of intensive trauma healing (Somatic Experience) followed, to bring the very needed balance back.
 
During that time I obviously could not teach or be a therapist. Internally I was completely ruined, and so I returned to one of my oldest professions: nursing.
 
For three years I took care, as a private nurse, of old, sick and dying people. And even though these were heavy years, I also enjoyed the simple care for others. I also got deeply involved in the so-called normal world, where no one was interested in the spiritual.
 
I watched TV for hours with my patients; I read to them stories out of women’s magazines for an infinite time, and I shared a lot of ups and downs with the patient and his or her family.
 
A world that I hardly knew anymore opened up to me. A world that also made me more and more human. Deeper layers of compassion were awakened. I saw and experienced so much grief, pain and misunderstanding. I revisited everything that I had left behind some thirty years before.
 
In this time it became more and more clear that just the source of being did not bring the enlightenment that I had tried to reach my whole life. The source, that feeling of having come home. But WHO had come home? What had happened to ME in this whole story?
Where was I?
 
Osho had given me a vision of a new man. Zorba the Buddha, he called it: a man with the vitality of Zorba the Greek and the wisdom and the silence of the Buddha.
 
I had been trying to figure it out for years already. How did this happen? I had been a Zorba. I had lived life to the very fullest. I had burnt the candle on both ends and I had deeply enjoyed it. I had been a detached Buddha in silence and peace, almost not anymore part of this world.
 
And now?????
 
I was looking for totality, for integration. I wanted the totality of existence and I wanted to heal the fundamental split between the spiritual and the material world, between the inner and the outer.
 
But how in God’s name could I connect these two worlds? It became the only thing on my mind, the only thing that interested me. And like always I was praying for help, because I had not been able to manage it on my own.
 
Almaas’ books came back from under a layer of dust. He inspired me with his modern vision. But the fire did not really ignite.
 
Then Faisal Muqaddam appeared in my life. He had a similar vision. He spoke directly to my whole being when he spoke about the three domains: the three kingdoms we live in.
 
The absolute (the one that in Advaita is often called the Self, the emptiness), the essential, and the worldly domain. The Tibetans call these the three Kayas, the three aspects of an enlightened being.
 
In the absolute and in the worldly I was rather at home. But the domain in between, the essential domain, was unknown to me. This is the domain which unites the so-called personal and spiritual. The presence of the essence in the body seemed to make embodiment possible.
 
Faisal:
 
In general, we talk about enlightenment as the stage of discovering our true nature, our enlightened nature. This enlightened nature, this godlike nature, this Buddha nature is the basic quality of all existence.

This basic being differentiates itself in many, many states. Just like when you put white light in a prism there appears a rainbow, so the absolute differentiates itself into different qualities. Some of them are boundless, not limited. Other states are defined, very defined, palpable, you can feel their form, their structure.

And then all of those qualities get even more defined and more solidified – and eventually become the physical universe.

The differentiated states between the Absolute and the physical universe are what we usually label as the essential states of being. Those are essences.

Those essential states have characteristics. They have texture; you can feel them in your body. They are not just energy. Some of them are dense, some of them are light, some of them are liquid, some of them are solid, some of them are cold, some of them are hot, some of them are  neutral. So they have all kind of palpable characteristics that you can really sense. And your body is the best thermometer you can gauge essence with. Essence has to flow in your body. It is not just a state you can go into like your emotions or your mind. It has to circulate in your body. And each quality of essence can only be integrated when it runs fully in your body. It has to circulate in your head, in your heart, in your belly, in your legs.

( taken from audio material )

 
 
Faisal taught me to differentiate between the three domains and to respect these. He showed me that every domain had its own laws and teachings. And that it is very important to know which domain you are speaking of when you teach.
 
All of a sudden I understood that in Satsang I had tried to approach the worldly domain from the laws of the absolute. I also understood why it had been so difficult for many people that came to me to bring and actualize these insights into their daily life.
 
Even though originally I had great resistance to once again open myself and learn a completely new teaching, I started.
Faisal spoke too much to my whole being. Moreover, the teaching was so intelligent – high-tech almost, like modern mysticism!!
Faisal used both the deep insights from the different spiritual traditions as well as from the modern discoveries and developments in psychology.
 
Ah – here was the piece of evolution that I had missed so much!!
Here the ego was no longer something that needed to vanish or die, it instead became a starting point – almost a guide, an instrument to find the way back. He compared the ego with a child that needed to be taken by the hand and shown the way home.
 
And so started again a new chapter on the long road of self-discovery.
There are so many aspects and facets of essence that we need to be able to be a complete human being and actualize our insights, our realizations. For example, to really land on this planet we need very earthly essential aspects. To be able to truly love, it is necessary for the different qualities of love to actually be present in our body, so that we become love. To really experience joy, we have to become joy.
 
Almaas says:
Essence is not alive; it is aliveness. It is not aware; it is awareness. It does not have the quality of existence; it is existence. It does not love; it is love. It is not joyful; it is joy. It is not true; it is truth.
(Essence, pg 80)
 
I discovered that there were personal and impersonal essences. We reach the impersonal through transcendence, through negation, by seeing that I am neither this nor that. What is left then is only the source, the ocean.
The personal essence however comes to life only when we do the very opposite; when we recognize that we are everything. I am this, AND that too. It brings the vision of the fish in the ocean. It exists as a unique fish and it seeks participation, it wants to evolve.
The ocean does not seek evolution, it is eternally the ocean.
But the fish wants to move on. So once we realize that I AM EVERYTHING, the split between inner and outer disappears. And now we can also take total responsibility for our lives. Now we can no longer say that there is no personal self. If we make a mistake, we own it and clean it up.
 
The more I began to experience and recognize essence, the more I realized that the Sufi have had this wisdom for centuries. The poems of Rumi, that I so love, are full of hidden pointers to essential states. He refers to them a.o. as honey, or gold or ruby.
 
 
If we had had enlightened parents, we would have grown up without losing the contact with our true nature, and all the different qualities would have opened and developed naturally, and all our abilities would have been reinforced instead of being lost. Essence is our birthright. God or the existence created these qualities for the human being so that he or she can both function in reality and remain connected to the source.
 
In my groups now I let people often imagine that they were the baby Dalai Lama or another higher being. When he was born, he was surrounded by respect and love, by many beings who saw his soul, who provided a good holding environment and who were reliable.
Beings for whom enlightenment was a natural state of being.
 
And then I ask them to imagine what their life would look like now had they been raised like this. And then tears flow, and long closed doors open again and essence starts to flow again.
 
For me personally the Diamond Logos (the name of this teaching) is an enormous support in the process of integration. Little by little I retrieved my essence, slowly my bones and muscles and nerves opened again. Very slowly, but very surely, essence melts the old personality structure. Step by step, the unreal qualities learnt melt, and the essential natural qualities start to emerge.
 
With the opening of each new essence, old blocks show up, old issues that need to be seen come up so that they can dissolve. This is a complex and intricate but very interesting process.
 
This is not the place to go deeper into this now.
 
The first and strongest opponent on this path is our super ego, our inner judge. That voice in us that always plays god and that punishes, criticizes, manipulates or even praises us with every step we take.
In Satsang I used to say: simply don’t listen to that voice. But of course no one succeeded.
 
Now I can give clear tools and ways to learn how to recognize that voice and learn to deal with it. This is really crucial if we ever want to come to an embodiment and actualization of our realization. It is such a highly developed and complex automatic mechanism. Its goal, its job is to keep our conditioning in place, and if we don’t recognize this, it will always pull us back to the start. And it will hold us back from truly being an individual.
 
When the super ego reigns, it is very, very difficult for the essence to flow. And that is why the work with the super ego has a big place in the work of actualization which I now share.
 
Realizations are beautiful; by now, many of us have them aplenty - deep realizations of oneness and love and perfection. But what are they good for if they cannot be lived, if they cannot be embodied, if they cannot spontaneously manifest in our daily life?
 
The path of Advaita, of the non-duality, had been a marvelous path for me, an incredible tool for coming back to the source, for coming home.
It had awakened me and many others. But then what???
What happens after one is awake?
 
Unfortunately, I still meet people who, in their longing to transcend their pain, have split off their human duality. All they want is emptiness. And they have reached a beautiful state, but I experience them as only half.
 
I now know that, if we want to be a full and complete actualized human being, we have to embrace all of our human aspects. They all belong to our being. They are all part of the divine – the duality as much as the non-duality.
 
The more my integration took place, the more I was drawn back to my old passion to share with others everything I learnt and discovered, and to assist them in their process of transformation.
 
Groups and retreats began to form, and after a while I had so much work that I had to say goodbye to my nursing job.
 
I was asked to write about women on the path.
But what is the way of the woman?
It’s only been two years since I’ve asked myself this question.
Partly because Faisal, every time I meet him, brings to our attention that men and women function differently, and that it is about time we women discover for ourselves how essence opens itself in us.
But even more so because I started to listen to my uterus.
The echo from that first stirring in Pune with the female Buddha was still there.
 
It shocked me to hear what my uterus showed and told me.
I became aware that I (and many women with me) had lived my life from a very male active principle. This had hardened and contracted my uterus.
Our society demands action, performance, if we want to belong in it.
 
The painful suppression and abuse of women throughout the ages had brought us in the 70s to feminism. At that time, it looked like if you wanted to feel yourself equal to a man, you had to develop the male qualities of competitiveness. The soft, loving, caring and receptive woman became old-fashioned. We became powerful and strong, and we did not notice what we lost in the struggle.
 
Many, many years later my uterus cried silent tears over this loss while it slowly, slowly started to open again.
 
In my feminist years, I had been very proud to be an androgynous woman, someone who had both female and male qualities. My bisexuality also had a place in that way. It had never been very clear to me what male or female was. I felt both energies very clearly in my own body.
 
Now, however, I am feeling very clearly my feminine biology.
 
Now that I am well grounded in my body, it’s able to open up more and more. Through the growing presence of essential qualities, my uterus shows itself more and more as an important center of my system and also as the source of essence. I am still at the very beginning of this research, of this process of discovery. I asked some friends and colleagues how they see it.
 
Annemie Flamez:
This is an amazingly inspiring time! The woman, the mother, the Goddess, the queen gets her throne and crown back.
 
For a very long time, the female wisdom has lived underground in our culture. But now the sacred womb sees a new day of light. My passionate love for the sacred womb was shown back to me first through the book The Mists of Avalon. Now, thirty years later, I don’t remember much of the book. But at the time I felt like the frog that was kissed by the prince and had changed into a princess.
 
In my early childhood, I remember my search for the Holy Grail. And, just like my body, the mind and the spirit are able to know a process of development, so that also this female wisdom can show an ongoing awakening as essential quality.
 
The mystery opens itself, and is very deeply connected with my sacred womb and consciousness. This consciousness is inherent to being a woman, and it is built into the fabric of my soul. The pregnancies and different births I have experienced were not only of this world.
 
I did not know the essential language at the time. The love that is born together with the baby does not know its equal.
 
The changes that that brought in me were irreversible, and so every different phase of my life brought a very precious treasure to me.
Now, being a grandmother, I see how I protect and cherish life in all its beauty.
 
But it is not all “hunky dory”.
 
It has never been obvious that I, as woman and mother in the world, would be able to follow my own spiritual desires. The path is full of roses and thorns.
 
In enquiry (a practice of self discovery) I met, among others, my mother and the mother of my mother, and sometimes in a very painful way. My love was also unearthing deep hatred.
 
My heart and uterus are connected with the world and with life in all its dimensions. My life sings its own soft spirited heart sutra.
 
These examples are expressions of the sacred womb. But, like with all qualities of essence, it can also be experienced in all her glory in a more direct and substantial way.
 
Faisal instilled in me a strong desire to discover the female wisdom in the spiritual domain in a deeper way. Together with other fellow female travelers on the spiritual path, we are currently drawing from this natural source of wisdom.
 
Another colleague and friend:
I come from a family lineage of strong, successful businesswomen, very emancipated for that time. Being born in 1954 and having spent my teenage years in the 60s, I was admiring Angela Davis and the women’s liberation movement, going along with my girlfriends and the spirit of the time. Secretly I was dreaming of a “normal family”, where the mother was home, cooking and waiting for the family to gather for the meals. I was very confused about being a woman, and in that my path was leading me to in-depth inquiries, both psychological as well as spiritual.
 
From childhood on, I felt something was missing in my mother’s life and in the life of all the emancipated women around me. Even though there was power, strength and a certain kind of dignity, which was so much longed for by the Females of that time, I longed for something else, not knowing what it could be.
 
I could neither find it by living in a country home, being home for my little family, nor by proving to myself that raising a child and having a professional life is both doable. Not by being the femme fatale, the sweet loving mate, nor by living in a spiritual commune, trying to surrender to my master. No role model could do it.
 
I did not know it then, but what I was really looking and longing for was what I call now a new dimension of the Feminine, which cannot be found through role modeling or by any attempt of the conditioned personality. It is an essential quality, residing in depth in all of us Females, waiting patiently to be reconnected, containing the old archaic wisdom and connection of the female tribe.
 
I am very grateful to my teacher, who, even though he is a man, supports me in my search and helps me to reconnect with this quality that has no words for me yet.
 
 
And now?
Throughout the years, the idea of wanting to arrive somewhere has been left behind. Like Tao said it centuries ago: The journey itself is the goal.
 
I used to look for the light – the focus of my journey was to find enlightenment, and I wanted only the light. The darkness had to be left behind at any cost. Darkness meant pain, sadness, fear and being lost. Through my work, I still often come in contact with other people who have that same focus. They want to get rid of their pain and they want to feel good, they want the light.
 
I discovered, however, that when we have the courage to feel this pain, we notice that another door opens into a dimension of darkness that is peaceful, loving and pure goodness.
 
Many of my old friends asked why I am still searching and why I am still working on myself. My answer is not often well understood.
For years I’ve been neither searching nor working on myself anymore. It is rather a journey of discovery.
 
It is the following of an evolutionary pull that comes deep from within my belly. I could also say: I listen to the call of my heart. And at the same time there is also my inner guide that shines its light on ever new, awesomely beautiful new territories that beckon to me.
 
Retrieving the essential qualities that I need to be truly human seems a lot of work. And that’s true.
The difference is that it’s not me (read ego) doing the work, but it’s the essence or the presence.
Like I tell my students: Presence does the work; our only job is to be present.
 
Sometimes the journey is so exciting and brings treasures beyond belief. And then it goes again through dark valleys and swamps of sadness and pain, which cover up the fullness and peace that lays beneath it.
Sometimes I meet the valleys and the mountain tops with equanimity. Sometimes not.
Sometimes I fight the valleys because the old habits and deep defense mechanisms in our systems are very powerful.
Seen from within the ego, everything we do on our spiritual journey serves only one goal or purpose: to not ever feel again the old pain of the ego deficiency. Actually, everything we do is gymnastics to cover that.
 
A new resolution comes when we learn to endure these deep states and pains of the ego. Compassion deepens. Peace grows rounder and fuller. We are better well-established. Integration grows, only to disintegrate again and regroup as new again and again.
 
Darkness and light, they belong together. Light is the male aspect – darkness the female. Together they are ONE. I am still greedy, I want everything! Light and darkness, Zorba and Buddha, fullness and emptiness. The journey goes on – that is evolution. And where does it go? We can see that only when it happens a bit at a time during each moment.


 
 
If you have a body, where is the spirit?
If you are spirit, what is the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.
Both are both. Corn is the corn grain
and cornstalk. The divine butcher
cuts us a piece from the thigh
and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world
does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone’s head,
nothing will happen.

If you throw water, nothing.
But combine them into a lump.

That marriage of water and earth
cracks open the head,
and afterwards there are other marriages.

Rumi

July 2009

Every seeker wants Enlightenment. Most people perceive that to be a state of ongoing bliss and oneness and believe that after that, life is easy and simple forever after, because of the eternal expansion into the beyond.
While it is true that there is something called “the enlightenment experience” which has all of these characteristics, the true enlightened life is something quite different. The bliss is not the emotional experience we can know through the ego. It is beyond that.
This truth is revealed overtime, bit-by-bit as we grow into who we are and loose our ego identity.
Some parts of the learning are guaranteed; 
We have to first recognize who we are beyond our mind and body to the point that a shift of perspective, of context occurs, but then we have to crash and come down from the enlightenment high. We need the courage to admit that every experience wears off, even after a few years, that clarity can be lost again and that identification with the mind can come back. That nothing is permanent and that to reach higher peaks we need to pass through different valleys.


Failing is an essential part of the path. When we have spiritual success our ego grows side by side, when we fail, it is diminished and is ground down.

The Enlightenment experience is the end of the search but surely the beginning of the path. (Or as I often say, the search moves from the horizontal to the vertical dimension) 
Often it takes the loss of that experience, for us to be truly committed to the discipline of the spiritual life.
We have seen paradise. We have tasted the natural state and now it is gone
What is left is that we are constantly confronted with our failing, our fears, clinging and despair. 
We must open, and open deeper into the pain and fear, letting it cook us, break us and pulverize us, so we can truly disappear as a separate self. 

When we do not have the proper understanding, the proper context, the valleys are very difficult to move through.
What follows is my own experience of this process. May it be of help to other travelers on the path.


By the mid nineties my life looked like I had made it. At least on the outside.
I lived in India in a very beautiful area outside of town.
I was a respected member of the ashram that I was a part of. (Osho’s) I loved the work I did as a therapist, the relationship I was in was wonderful, rewarding and fun. At least that was what I was telling myself. The house we had built up was splendid; we had several servants, cats, dogs, fishponds etc.
We lived the successful life of the neo sannyasin.
Daily meditation was comfortable; I had come to settle in the comfort of knowing how to leave the mind behind and experience bliss. I had found a good refuge from pain.
What more could I ask for? 
 
I told myself I was fulfilled, denying the fact that I was always feeling inferior to my lover because I brought in a lot less money, denying that I felt deeply insecure about my capacities as a therapist and denying so many other little facts. 
In fact denial had become my way of life and I can see in retrospect that I vaguely knew it always, but it was too threatening to admit it to myself.
Compensation was an art that I had mastered since early childhood.

Then one day my lover left. The hole I fell in was profound; it was as if every time I fell into that hole it became deeper. 
Determined to finish with it once and for all (ego always thinks in terms of permanent elimination) I dove into it for about a year and did some intense therapy, until I rediscovered the Awareness intensive group.  In this group you ask yourself the koan: “Who am I” from very early morning till late at night. The “results” were amazing.

For the next year I participated in each and every one of these 3 or 7-day groups.
Usually it would take me 24 hours of struggling before I would pop into another dimension; the realm of oneness, clarity and peace.
I got addicted to the highs, as they would lift me straight out of all my unresolved pain. I learned how to “do” it. Popping koans became my specialty.
For a while I would come down as soon as the group was over but then it started to happen that the highs would not go down anymore. The clarity would not leave me anymore and peace was more or less permanently present.
In other words I had accumulated a lot of energy (shakti).
Now greater breakthroughs and greater revelations came. I was finally free from all my suffering!! I had found a way out!!

I even remember now some thoughts that were immediately dismissed like:
“Now I never have to worry about money anymore, I have what everyone wants”.
“Now I never have to bother about sex and relating anymore cause I am beyond them”.

The ego was always lurking just by the side and in a way I knew it but I was too ignorant about the true mechanics of the mind to fully realize what that meant.
I told myself that I was staying clear of ego because I was aware of it.

I looked in Osho’s words for a context to understand my precise situation but did not find much. May be I did not know how to formulate the question because I thought that I was already enlightened but I found nothing much that was truly helpful. 
I felt very alone and thought that this is what he meant when he said that in the end you are alone and I decided to trust my experience.

For a while I met with a woman who had declared herself enlightened and she helped me clear away some doubt. On top of it she gave me all the conformation I was looking for! (This is exactly what the mind wants: confirmation, and so unconsciously we look for someone who will give it to us)

However the most dominant experience was one of joy and peace. The shift was dramatic and profound.
I wanted to share it immediately with whoever wanted to hear it. There was a very genuine and naive sense of wanting to help others out of their suffering.
The intention was clean and innocent as far as I could see.
Not knowing that as long as there is ego our intention is never 100% pure.

Someone later described people who declare their enlightenment prematurely as little girls who dress up in their mother’s clothes and wear high heels pretending they are adults.
It was a bit like that, now that I look back.
I felt like a kid with a bag of candy that I wanted to share.


And even though friends avoided me like the plague eventually people showed up who wanted to hear what I had to say. Many seekers today (Like I had been myself) want only one thing and that is to be lifted out of their pain with a shortcut, and shortcuts I had!
Of course they were in awe. I was generating a lot of cosmic energy; everyone in the room could feel it and whomever I talked to or looked at, shifted for some time into a state beyond the mind. I was blown away by it as well.

I was loved and revered. I finally felt worthy of that love as well.
Pride started to slip in. After all this person that had been humiliated so often (me) had made it and was someone. I saw the pride but told myself that because I was seeing it, it did not matter. Everything was anyway all happening in the ONE and therefore temporary.

My fame grew fast, more and more people attended the satsangs and had great awakening experiences.
They were the proof of my “rightness”. 
My ego swelled up again a little more.

From time to time the old insecurity knocked on my door but I would not open.
I did not want to acknowledge that it was there.

You have to understand the very delicate situation one is in.
You feel like you have transcended suffering, which had been the motive for the search all along. And then to realize that this is not true is not an easy feast. The ego will fight it.
The soul has an imprint of ego protections that is centuries old. It does not give way that easily.
 
For many years on the path, all we want from the search is freedom from suffering.
Only much later is our intention pure and clean enough for us to only want what is, howsoever painful or uncomfortable it may be.

So I felt very expanded because the awakening was strong and I could channel huge amounts of energy and did not really know that they were all passing through the ego and were therefore colored by it.

All the while my ego was expanding beyond its wildest fantasies, without me being very aware of it.
It became more and more transparent and smart and spiritual, it told itself it is nobody and it is not there!!! And it succeeded very well at fooling even itself.

This ego is very smart. Because I kept sharing every pitfall I saw with my students, I thought that I was free of it.
Not seeing that sharing was not enough for the ego to lay low.
That it needs absolute dedication and willingness to stay vigilant at all times. That it needs the scalpel of the surgeon all the time!!
The thing is through the sharing I believed that I was doing WAS being honest and vigilant.
And to some extend of course that was also true.

The enlightenment experience is always a mixture of clear and honest intention and a power hungry ego. If we do not have an alive teacher at the time of awakening, we are in great trouble. We simply cannot travel alone at this point; precisely because we can hardly see the ego by ourselves. 

My fame kept growing and tirelessly I traveled the planet, thinking I was doing something very good for humanity. Now I see that it was the old primal story all over again: 
I needed to help everyone who was in pain otherwise I had no right of existing.

Burn out came after two years. I had to stop. The body collapsed and I was shocked to find the first thing that arose when the doctor said I needed to rest was:
“Who will love me now?”

In a way that was the beginning of the fall.
Of course honest as I was, I shared all this with the students in satsang, showing how much ego is still accompanying this awakening experience.
I shared my pain and errors and found to my amazement that not many wanted to hear the truth if it did not sound blissful. 
Over the four years that I was teaching, I found that rarely someone wanted to hear the truth. Many people come to this type of satsang because they want to be told that there are shortcuts and often they want to adore someone. Not many want to hear about the painstaking work of purifying our minds and healing our pains.
In fact, in the satsangs, the jokes about working on yourself are plenty full. 

The beauty as well as the difficulty of our time is that the spiritual knowledge and secrets are available at the click of a mouse. All the scriptures are public.
In the past this was not the case, information was given only in relation to the students/disciples advancing in practice and experience.
Now we do not have to practice meditation or doing any hard work in order to receive the teaching and so the danger is that we only absorb the teaching in a mental way.


In the meantime I had moved into a relationship (after much initial protest from my side) and this provided another reality check. I was not as beyond as I thought I was.
Learning to love and be loved provided and still provides endless lessons.

I took a year off and met with a lot of old childhood pain and present loneliness.
First only my old friends had despised me but I had been welcomed with open arms into the  satsang community, but now also the satsang community threw me out. 

I was not supposed to feel pain and be honest about it.
Finally though, I was being able to welcome it and feel it without further manipulation.
I took some months in silence and started to feel again the need to meditate.  (Of course in the years of being nobody there had been no one to meditate)
Still all the while I enjoyed mostly the bliss and peace of being at one.

Then the real hit came. My best friend and working partner was diagnosed with cancer.
For some months we kept it up, saying that it was okay. That we felt no fear or pain, that dying was as good as living and that everything that comes must also go again.

But then we cracked, both of us.
I spent the last weeks at her side, nursing her at home until she died in my arms.

That split me right in two. There was simply so much pain. I was overwhelmed by it, consumed by it, helpless with it and bewildered by the fact that I was feeling all this again.

My sharing became again more honest, I no longer pretended anything anymore or offered miracles and shortcuts. Of course people came less and less. Slowly I saw that what was left was a handful of sincere seekers whom I actually had not much more to offer than my friendship and limited wisdom and experience.

I realized that I was longing for guidance. I was looking left and right in old and new teachings until I found what I was looking for in my new teacher Aziz. His Zen hits were painful and not always welcomed but over time I understood more and received for the first time a map of reality that resonated with me.
My own master had been too wide, too rich for me to see a clear and practical path. He spoke about so many practices and left it to me what to choose. This had brought me were I was. I felt and feel a deep respect and gratitude for him but I needed more. 
I needed personal guidance from an alive teacher.
Now I found this very precise teaching that resonated in my soul as a reflection of reality.
He guided me in my practice and taught me a complete new way of meditation.
He also told me to stop teaching but I was afraid to stop. It was my only source of income

I believed that I needed the money, I needed the recognition and I needed somehow the position (more for myself than for others).
But above all I needed to NOT let myself know THAT IT WAS OVER. That I had had an amazing opening and enlightening experience. One that lasted for years even and that bit-by-bit it had slipped away.

Slowly I have come to understand that corruption lives in all of us and that it is not entirely possible to not be corrupt. 
After all we do most everything we do for ourselves. 
By keeping the meetings going I could still tell myself that it was not over.
I could continue to dream a bit more and tell myself that it would pick up again.
Or worse I would blame it on the low quality motivation of the seekers that it was not happening anymore.

But life is generous when the intention is honest.
I prayed daily for truth and sincere prayers are always heard. 
I moved to the west, to the country I was born in, and found it extremely difficult to adjust to that culture after 16 years in India.

There came a time where there was no more money. Friends and family needed to keep us afloat. Now I truly crashed. The entire shadow side of the personality appeared.

The ego had grown stronger, (it keeps growing side by side with our realizations. The more powerful we become the more powerful the ego also becomes.)
The super ego came back with a vengeance. The self-torture and self-blame returned with the force of a tornado. The Shadow was here, presenting itself loud and clear. I thought that I had met my shadow a long time ago but never to this depth.
Shadow exist in relation to light, the more light, the bigger the shadow I found out.

All of a sudden I was identified again with almost each and every single thought.
I was emotional from morning till night, apart from the hours that I meditated. 
And meditate I did, and pray, and move my body to ward off the depression till it could not be warded off anymore. I was in hell and realized that the healing had to happen right here in hell.

The money was finished, I started to take a cleaning job and was ready to take any job still dreaming to some extend that after this all was over a new miracle would happen and I would be magically lifted out of here again. And life would be forever good.
But truth does not live in the presence of hope.
Giving up our hopes is one of the many prices we have to pay for the priceless pearl.

The ego screamed and screamed.
It simply did not want to part with the glorious times.
My entire life with all its undigested and denied pains came for another round.
Thoughts of suicide were my companions. 
Without the support of my partner and some dear friends, family and some good healers, it would all have been a lot more difficult. The love that I received was so supportive and healing.
Nevertheless I was really lost and only partly grasped what was going on. I needed help.

One thing was clear, that there was no way out but only a way through, my only interest became to stay present in the pain and whatever emotion presented itself.
I felt lower than I had ever been, and it started to glimpse that: to go down is to go up.

I was grateful that my teacher came to the west for another silent retreat!! However, at the end of that one-week he announced that he was going to live in seclusion and would no longer be available as a guide and teacher!
Once again on my own and not fully realizing what was happening I prayed for help.

My great luck was that a book fell into my lap called
Half way up the mountain by Mariana Caplan.
It brought all the missing pieces in the understanding. This book was about me. It was my story in detail.

Here I read about each and every pitfall I had fallen into.
It gave me a positive context and sufficient information about the process I was going through.
Reading that book was like being in retreat.
It reminded me again and again that there was a healing power in this crisis. That is was what I wanted.
My dignity was restored again when I started to understand that this is a mechanical response in the mind and not a personal failure or trip. My suffering became more dignified. 

I learned that disillusionment is not only necessary on the path but a true gift of the Grace of God. It is like you are being weaned off the breast of God and allowed to walk. Of course you fall left and right like any toddler does but eventually you will find balance and walk.
The fall from paradise seems in truth an integral part of the enlightenment process.
In fact some teachers say that you have to earn it to deserve it.

When we realize that the path we are on is not at all what we thought it would be, and that reality is something completely different than all our illusions about it, we are shocked.
This is not an easy transition to make. It is extremely painful and it feels like being skinned alive. And yet this pain magically opens us deeper to what and who we are.
Enlightenment comes to life when we embrace our endarkenment in the very same way.

We realize deeply that our human reality will always be here, that pain will always be here, that suffering is an integral part of human life. Either we suffer unconsciously or we do it consciously. 

We realize that the freedom we thought we had found in the bliss and joy of the Enlightenment high is not the real freedom at all.
It is much deeper. It is truly accepting what IS.

By the time I had finished reading the book the let go was complete.
I closed down all teaching activities, cancelled my ticket to India and am ready for a new chapter in this adventure called life. This time it can happen right here where I am.
And I truly do not know anything about where this is going.
No hope and no plan.


Om shanti.


Rani 
First Published in Spirituality and Health Oct 2006
                  

Just Sit There


 
Just sit there right now.
Don't do a thing.
Just rest.
 
For your separation from God
Is the hardest work in this world.
 
Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you would like to drink.
 
You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.




Love

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our tea cup talk of God.
               
If you had the courage and could give the Beloved His choice, 
some nights He would just drag you around the room by your hair,
Ripping from your grip all the toys in the world that bring you no joy.
                   
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
 And with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days.
                           
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside a tiny room with Himself
And practice his drop-kick.

The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favour:
Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear He is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know quickly packs their bags and 
hightails it out of town.





When no one is looking



I swallow deserts and clouds
And chew on mountains , knowing
They are sweet bones.

When no one is looking
And I want to kiss God
I just lift my own hand to my mouth.

How to support yourself in this act of self-love?
 
We come to a master or a spiritual life because we want to be free of the chains that bind us to our past. That hinder us to be spontaneous, alive and passionately present in our own life. Mostly we want to feel better and finally be happy.
 
Then we hear the teacher say it all the time: “Let meditation be on top of your laundry list”. “Make meditation your first priority”.
Why does it seem so important to have a daily regular practice of meditation? And why does it appear so difficult for many?
 
Every human being has a consciousness but unless it is nourished, unless it is awakened, nourished and supported it will not grow. It will remain only a seed, a possibility.
An average person may have only a few seconds a day of consciousness, of being aware of himself.
A seeker seeks to be conscious every moment of the day.
So our consciousness is not something that grows automatically as we grow older. It is not part of our biology. Existence leaves that up to us.
We either expand it or not. We either spend time to nourish it or not.

In our society there is hardly anything that supports this endeavor.
We are constantly pulled out, the collective is full of fear and violence and we are constantly invited to consume.
 
Most people that I know, are pretty clear that they want to be more conscious and that it is a very good idea to support themselves on a daily basis. Yet many report that they do not manage.
They say things like:
“I don’t have the discipline, I don’t find the time, My partner does not let me, I don’t like to be forced”, and other things like that.
All sorts of excuses, that sound reasonable and with which they can convince themselves.
Yet they suffer all kind of troubles and difficulties that could easily be reduced or eliminated would they find the key to support and love their daily meditation.
 
What are those keys?
In the first place become clear about what it is that you really want and get a realistic picture of what it takes to achieve that.
We are dreamers and we love to hope that someday some miracle will happen and our life will change. But reality is different.
Some understanding is needed.
We cannot change ourselves but awareness WILL change us.
Presence will bring more space into all of our activities.
We don’t realize that WE are the miracle makers. If we don’t make the effort to expand, the collective effort to dominate us takes over.
Now effort is a dirty word for many, which only points to misunderstanding.
 
If you could experience that if you take  time, every day, to expand your awareness, so that all of your goals will be achieved in an easier and smoother way, wouldn't you naturally choose that?)
We are intelligent beings, when we notice the difference between pain and no pain we will choose no pain. So we need to have an extended experience so that we know from deep within.
 
Here is a suggestion from one meditator to another.
Make an experiment, make a commitment that is realistic. E.g. set a time to sit every day for 15 minutes for the next three weeks or whatever is reasonable for you.
Do it first thing when you wake up. That is proven to be by far the easiest moment in the day, before you have time to listen to the objections in your mind.
Don’t look for bliss in meditation, just be present to whatever it is that is going on. It is not about feeling good (even though often you may experience peace and quiet) but about being aware of what is here.
 
 
A commitment, when taken from the right place, will hold you and support you in spite of the difficulties that may arise. Perseverance is needed, that is a fact we cannot skip which brings us to the next step.
 
Begin to observe what are obstacles to your perseverance and commitment (without following them).
We have an inner program that runs 24 hours a day which tells us what to do, which wants to keep us in place. Which is really objecting expansion and change.
This is the part in us that has absorbed the voices of our father and mother and society and has transformed them into what we call the inner judge or inner critic.
This is a fully mechanical mechanism that is part of the ego and not personal at all. In other words it is not our fault, nor the fault of our parents that it runs our life. This is how the system functions in this time and age.
Often this is running unconsciously so we do not recognize that there is a force within that tries to prevent us from change.
We don’t realize that first there was a voice telling us something like:
“You will never manage cause you never finish what you set out to do”
or “ Why would you meditate? You know it does not lead you anywhere” or “ You have something much more urgent to do”. That voice came before we believed that this is true.
This inner judge is the glue that keeps our conditioning and our beliefs in place.
It makes us feel weak, incapable and postponing.
It makes us sabotage our own dreams and plans.
It wants to keep us forever within the chains of the past, within the boundaries of the ego.
 
Usually we do not like to confront this inner tyrant and saboteur, we rather complain about someone else.
There are however simple ways to look it straight into the face and reclaim our birthright to be a free and unconditioned human being.
 
Meditation is a direct threat to our conditioning as well as a direct way to liberate our energy and be free.
And what needs perseverance now will eventually change into an unconditional effortless support from within.
But we have to start where we are.
It is really up to us.
That is the very good news!
 
Even the impossible is not impossible if resolution is there, and even the possible becomes impossible if one lacks will.
The world we live in is our own creation.
Osho

 
 
As rivers seek out the ocean, so man if he wants to, can find the truth. No peak, no mountain can stop him, in fact their challenge awakens his sense of adventure.
 
As the river finds the ocean, thirsty souls find the temple of God.
But the thirst must be intense and the work tireless and the waiting without end and the calling with the whole heart.
 
. Whatever is, observe it. Just be a witness. Just watch. If there is ego then watch ego. What else to do? Only watch and by watching the transformation happens.
 
Trust in matter and you will live in hell.
Trust in consciousness and you have the key to open the doors of the Kingdom of God.
 
Escape is futile. Only transformation can help, and transformation needs deep acceptance of your being as you are.
 
Published in German Osho Times 2006

Also in the normal daily life we really need trust.
And certainly in this moment. Life on the planet probably rarely knew such a lack of trust and had such a fear consciousness.
We are more estranged from our true nature than ever before.

Everything is moving and changing so fast.
Nobody is sure anymore about the future. All predictions about the climate changes or the financial situation have to be adjusted on a monthly or weekly or even daily basis.
Not knowing is lurking around every corner.
This “not knowing” makes us (read our ego) fearful.
We want to secure our future; we want to know what is going to happen to our money because we are not at all sure that all is moving in the right direction. 
For sure not now.



A big part of my life trust therefore meant:
Keeping the strings in my own hands and never give up and never let go of control.
I was convinced that all the good things in my life were a direct result of my own efforts.
Everything that came from the outside was at its best dubious. I had learned very early on, to keep my own course. This tactic had proven again and again to be the trustworthiest.

When I came close to the spiritual path, messages like: “let go” and “trust” seemed simply dangerous and unintelligent to me.
However with the support of a new group of people and all kinds of books on meditation and the soul, I started to “practice”.



Also drugs presented themselves. That meant trusting and letting go in huge leaps. 
First a joint, later the other stuff.
LSD brought a big opening in the sense that it showed me for the first time ever that there was a reality beyond the mind. In this reality everything was connected to everything else and on top of it, the whole was moved by a force that was way beyond the personal. It also made me aware of the projection field.

Meditation came and drugs left. Letting go and trusting became topics that returned on a daily basis, year after year.

My basic trust however did not grow that fast. It was a slow process, little step after little step. I remained self sufficient and self-reliant.
During my meditation trust was okay, but outside of that it remained a dangerous affair. A split remained between my meditation on the one side and my daily life on the other. I could trust in god by now, but people…and life…. that remained another story.

Again years later I realized that, in spite of my efforts to let go, I was still trying to keep my life in full control. I also noticed that it limited me. My psychological knowledge told me that behind control lurks fear but I had no contact to that emotion and I knew even less how to let it go.
I started to pray.

Praying is a dangerous thing, in the sense that if a prayer is sincere, it generally gets heard. And it was heard indeed.
Very soon after, my partner left me, I lost the house in which we had lived together and my health collapsed to a point that I had to stop working for quite some time.
Of course, all of a sudden, it was not very difficult anymore, to get in touch with my fears. I was terrified.
I used the therapeutic tools that were available then to move through a layer of old pain and fear and mistrust.

Of course, a year later, I could see so clearly that everything that had happened had been absolutely perfect.
My ex had not really fitted with me and the direction my life wanted to take; it was also better to live alone for a while to allow for the new course of my life to unfold. This made it possible for my work to take on a whole new course as well. 
I had changed; I was more open and clearer.

All these changes had been necessary for a transformation I me that I would have never been able to create myself.

Throughout the years that followed, life presented me of course again and again with new situations that evoked fear and asked for a letting go.
And every time I was surprised that my previous experience was not sufficient to let me trust once and for all, in the loving intelligence of the universe.
I mean, I “knew” that everything always turned out for the better. Then why would I get so scared again?  

Even my awakening into oneness did not do the job. It did not bring a lasting direct contact with this basis trust. Neither did I know at the time, that the ego survives many stages and levels of enlightenment.

The part of us that is aware, awake, knows and sees that all is one and that all is good and that everything moves and unfolds according to a completely loving and intelligent plan.
We see that we all have our karmic place in this whole and when we really start to understand this, we know that whatever happens is perfect and that it fits perfectly on our path.
Great justice reigns, always and everywhere, however difficult it is sometimes to experience this.
This is a deep trust which grows both from insight and from the direct contact with an essential quality of our being.



While we experience the awake part of our true nature with its clarity, our ego, which we also call sometimes “the inner child”, hides somewhere in a corner, usually deep inside of us.
The light, the realization has not reached here yet. In fact, to our ego it feels as if it is a child that still lives with the parents. So it is only logical that there is not much trust present in this separated closed nucleus. How much or how little trust there is there is actually dependent on our early life circumstances.

When we come in touch with difficulties now, or things that bring us fear, we, as awake beings, have two choices.

We can negate the ego/child in us (it often only makes itself noticeable with a small voice) and continue to say that there is no body here and that there never was, and deal with the situation from an awake perspective.
On the level of the absolute source this is also the truth. But we function on different levels at the same time, and each level has its own laws and experiences.
I call this: living from realization and direct knowing.
This brings a certain amount of freedom.
However the danger here is that it can give rise to a certain split in our consciousness that we can justify in the name of awareness.
E.g. we can stop having personal relationship in order not to be confronted with issues that can stir our ego and think that there is no longer an ego. In most cases this shows more that we have become masters in avoiding and denying our ego activity. 

Another choice however is that we notice the deeply hidden fear in us and allow it to surface. In this way it can open and we can experience it. This is a very simple and direct, but also confronting and painful way, to allow the fear to dissolve.
We don’t deal with it in a therapeutic way, we let it be and feel it.
If we keep following this process, we often begin to experience an emptiness or a hole behind our fear. Not a positive emptiness but rather a sense of lack.
If we stay consciously present in this hole/lack and accept the not knowing, sooner or later this emptiness will fill up from within the system itself with an essential quality of our soul.



This quality, which Faisal and Almaas call:”Living Daylight”, brings us a very direct physical experience of the loving goodness of existence. Basic trust arises as a natural and direct result out of that. The “knowing” has now landed in the cells. It also has reached the ego nucleus and now we can speak of transformation.

This latter process is often very slow. Little by little the light and the knowing land in our cells.
This part of the journey is often referred to as the process of integration, a stage needed to come to stabilization first and actualization later.
It is a slow process, which needs time, patience and practice.

 

It reminds me of the story of Meher Baba*, a guru from Pune/India. He received a kiss from Babajan* on his forehead when he was 19 years old. This transmission brought him a very direct awakening. Later he said that he had needed 30 or more years to integrate this kiss and come to full actualization of his enlightenment. (He received help from other masters and teachers in this process)



But let us come back to trust.
How easy or difficult this process of trusting is in a life is of course very dependent on how the “holding environment” in the family of origin was. By this we mean: the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual climate in the family.
In other words: Does the child get touched and held in a loving way? 
Does one sense and recognize its sensitivity, does one see its true nature, is there intelligence present in the parents? 
If all this is the case, then the child feels itself safe and held in the family and it will not lose its inborn contact with the goodness of existence so deeply. His soul can open and unfold itself in a natural way, like a flower opening to the sunlight.
On top of that, it will also learn that people are good and loving and so learn to trust in both an absolute and a relative way.



Is the environment however not safe or even hostile, and then it is clear that the contact will be disturbed on both levels.
As soon as we lose contact with this living daylight, we cannot truly trust anymore and we will increasingly hold on to the ego structure that we built around this lack.
We will base our trust now on this false structure. Our way back home will be a lot more difficult, because on this road we have to meet the unknown again and again and we need to let go of the old.



Existence is filled with and made of this living daylight, this living goodness. In fact it is the only thing there is in all its different appearances. On a physical level it feels as if we are surrounded by an atmosphere of goodness, warmth, light and space. Some people say they feel like they are held in the arms of God when they sense it, others say they feel safe and supported when they experience it.

This is also dependent on through which of the three main centers we experience it. 
In the head we call it also the light of awareness, in the heart is feels more like love and in the belly more like a presence.
In the east they call it Sat Chid Ananda when all centres are open.
Most of us have surely sensed if before.

But if our early experience was one of fear, then we keep our doors and windows closed for this warm light. Often we close ourselves to many other things as well that come from the outside and mistrust becomes a way of life. We create an energetic barrier that can start already on the level of the skin. And the loving daylight cannot reach us anymore. We are locked up in our self-created prison.

The way back to this basic trust is not without pain or fear. The contradiction is however that the more contact we have with this light, the more we also come in contact with the barriers and the old fears.

Someone who has a lot of basic trust is particularly capable to allow the deepest fears to surface from the depth. On the surface it can then look as if that person does not have any trust.
De deeper layers of mistrust can however only be allowed and felt when there is a certain amount of trust present. Trust is like the bedding for it. The more light, the more darkness.



In this way deep wounded parts of our psyche can be felt and through this a letting go of old ego structures can take place.
This means a letting go of our identity. This can be felt as disintegration, a sense of falling apart. Again this can be fearful because the old falls away while we don’t know yet if there will be anything to replace it. It feels more like the famous jump or fall into the abyss.
If this falling or jumping is easy, then the original family settings was usually fairly healthy and the transformational process will be relatively easy.
Was the trust very disrupted or disturbed, then we don’t jump so easily but rather clamp or hold on to our old safe ego identity.



What could ease this falling or jumping?
As I said before, the absence of this light is felt as a hole. As a lacking, a missing of something that should have been there. The more we can tolerate and accept this hole (often it is filled with all kinds of unpleasant or fearful memories), the more the loving daylight can stream in again. From there, the passage to our basic trust is restored and letting go will be less hard. This takes place step by step. Each time we notice that our true nature DOES show itself when we let go, by itself, we open a bit more.



The disintegration of our ego structure is not a matter of one jump or one fall. We would not be able to let go of this structure in one go.
If we did, we would not know how to function anymore. Just like Meher Baba who was in coma for months after the kiss of Babajan. When he came to, it took years before he finally could manage to live from his new essential and healthy structure.

The good news is of course that whether or not we feel it or know it, the goodness of the universe is always here. It never left, it never diminished and it can never leave because it is intrinsic to existence itself.
And on that we can always count.

*Meher Baba ( Indian Guru from Pune 1894-1969)
*Babajan ( Hazrat Babajan, a Persian guru who became 141 years old and who lived in Pune under a neemtree, 1790-1931)  

*Faisal Muqaddam is the founder of the DiamondLogos work and co founder (with A.H. Almaas) of the Diamond Approach.

*A.H.Almaas is the founder of the Diamond Approach and the Ridhwan School 

There are two types of creators in the world:  
one type of creator works with objects;
a poet, a painter, they work with objects, 
they create things.
The other type of creator, the mystic, 
creates himself, he works with the subject;
he works on himself, his own being.

And he is the real creator, the real poet, 
because he makes himself into 
a masterpiece.
.





Just our being here is such a miracle. 
It cannot be explained why I am here, why you are here. 
Why these trees are here, why these stars are here. 
Why at all this universe exists, and goes on peopling itself 
with trees and birds and people. 
Why in the first place it is there, there is no way to know. 
It simply is there. But it inspires awe! 
It fills the heart with wonder. 
It is incredible! 
It is absurd, but tremendously beautiful.


.
  


Principle
Remember one principle: 
whatever happens is somehow needed, 
whether we understand it or not...

Osho: Uruguay Talks: "The Path of the Mystic"


Truths will give you a rebirth. 
We are just pregnant for centuries and centuries, 
and lives and lives, and the birth has not happened.
We are just pregnant, just a seed, 
because no one is ready to pay the price.
And before one comes to that bliss which is our seeking, 
one has to pass through a deep suffering. 
That suffering is a must. 
That is the birth pain you cannot escape it.

Osho: "That Art Thou"


Drop worrying. 
There is nothing to worry about; 
all is taken care of. Live with that trust.




As the river finds the ocean, 
thirsty souls find the temple of God.
But the thirst must be intense 
and the work tireless 
and the waiting without end 
and the calling with the whole heart.



Whatever you have become,
however far you have gone 
from your natural potential,
it does not matter. 
Your Buddha remains within you. 
You can come back home any moment 
you decide with totality and utter urgency. 
Nothing can prevent you.



The way of the heart is the way of courage. 
It is living in insecurity; 
it is to live in love, and trust; 
it is to move into the unknown; 
it is leaving the past and allowing the now to be.



Trust in matter and you will live in hell.

Trust in consciousness 
and you have the key to open the doors 
of the Kingdom of God.