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A.H. Almaas' foreword from John Davis' The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas
I never intended to create the Diamond Approach. It emerged and developed under its own intelligence and dynamics. It is true I am the primary person responsible for presenting it, but I have been more a vehicle and, much of the time, a guinea pig than one who intentionally developed it.
At the beginning, I had no idea that a particular complete teaching was unfolding. With an intense interest in the inner journey of liberation, I was doing all I could to be real and open to the timeless truths of spirit. I was passionately committed to finding the truth of what a human being is, what spirit is, and what reality is. It was not easy, and for some time, not much seemed to be happening. Yet I noticed that at times when my love of truth became selfess, when I was loving truth for its own sake and not for any personal gain, my experience opened up and deepened in ways I did not expect. I thought that my work was beginning to bear fruit when the first discoveries of soul and spiritual Essence occurred, but it has gone far beyond that. My experience increasingly became a flow of discoveries, realizations, and insights, revealing amazing and unimagined qualities and dimensions of Being. As these discoveries emerged, I found that they were accompanied by precise and detailed knowledge about them. My inner journey became an adventure that was thrilling and, at times, terrifying.
It took me a few years to recognize that this surprising unfoldment and revelation of the mysteries of Being was not only for me personally. The arising of the inner spiritual guidance of Being, and my recognition of it as such, led me at some point to recognize that a wisdom path was unfolding. I came to see that a contemporary teaching appropriate for our times was forming. I began to see that it was spirit itself, the true nature of Being, that was revealing this knowledge and developing this teaching. I became a willing and happy guinea pig, going through the various experiences that Being was revealing in my consciousness. I saw that my accompanying struggles with the barriers were necessary for Being to reveal the knowledge of how Essence is related to egoic experience in a very precise way.
Being has revealed its mysteries in my experience in a way that has profoundly impacted my consciousness and transformed it. The person that I am has steadily become a vehicle, servant, and mouthpiece for the truth that is being revealed as the Diamond Approach. The result is the deepening and expanding realization of my real identity as true nature. This identity is the same ultimate spiritual truth that I humbly and gratefully serve. And the beautiful thing is that this process turned out to be identical with the development of the new teaching of the Diamond Approach.
A few associates and my first students also became guinea pigs for the development of the new teaching. The teaching developed as my own personal needs, and those of my associates and the students I was working with, invoked Being to present the qualities and dimensions that were necessary. The Diamond Approach thus developed as a response to real needs in our contemporary times and not as a theoretical construct or a synthesis of existing teachings.
The author of the present book, Dr. John Davis, is one of the first students who joined this work at its inception. As one of my first committed students, he has witnessed its development and has personally undergone the path of transformation of the Diamond Approach. He writes not only from what he has heard from me but primarily from his own personal experience and understanding of this new path of wisdom. The fact that he is also a psychologist who teaches transpersonal psychology at the college and graduate levels preeminently quali.es him to give a coherent and accessible overview of the Diamond Approach. He has a great deal of experience in teaching and working with students in the Diamond Approach, and it is clear that he puts it to good use in the present book. The result is a very clear, detailed, but simple overview of the Diamond Approach, written by one who knows the subject matter both intellectually and experientially. Dr. Davis has rendered a great service here, both to the Diamond Approach and to the many readers who want a fresh look at the human potential and its spiritual dimensions.
Hameed Ali
Berkeley, California
