Chapter One - Presence & Essence
“I seem to be more here,” the expression goes.
But what is this presence? Is there really an “I” that is more present, or what exactly is it?
Now, what is this presence that exists in the arms, in the body, that seems to bring with it power, energy, contact, and awareness? We are seeing that presence is more of an actuality than an idea or a metaphor. We are getting a sense that presence is much more profound, more real than feeling or emotion. We are approaching, although still vaguely, an appreciation of what presence is.
Chapter Two - Essence
Essence And The Mind
Essence is not a thought or an idea a person has about himself. It is not self-image. In fact, the self-image, the collection of concepts one has of oneself, is one of the main barriers to the recognition and development of essence.
The more the individual is grounded in the embodied experience of essence, the more accurate his perception and the less it is influenced by the subjective mentality of his personality.
Insights can go even deeper, to more profound levels of reality, and can give us information about the nature of reality. But what is this reality? It is nothing but the reality of our true nature, our essence.
The reasoning mind is linear; it cannot consider too many facts at the same time to find a solution. It is limited in its capacity to hold information simultaneously.
A person who is this essence does not need to use the linear mind and rack his brain over certain important situations. The direct knowledge is just there, available. There is usually a certainty with it, a clarity and precision, and also an aliveness that is very delicate and exquisite.
Essence And The Heart
The main difference between emotional states and essence is that the former are discharged processes of our nervous systems, whereas the latter is definitely not.
Essence is independent of the nervous system, transcends physiological processes, and can, in fact, exist without the physical organism.
The motion of water is not the water. Water can be still, without motion. Essence, on the other hand, is like the water. It exists whether there is motion or not.
So the person who takes his positive emotions to be his true nature or essence is really missing the truth. Such a person will continue to develop the life of the personality, based on certain emotional states, rather than the life of the essence.
We know how impoverished the life of the emotionally blocked person is in comparison to that of the normal person who enjoys a full and deep emotional life. From the perspective of essence, the person with the deep and full emotional life is just as impoverished in his experience, compared to that of the essential individual, as is the emotionally blocked person compared to the healthy one—impoverished, in fact, by many more orders of magnitude.
Essence And The Void
"the personality is a certain structure, more or less rigid, that organizes our experience under the aegis of a sense of identity."
“The ego is formed to a great extent out of identifications which take the place of abandoned cathexes by the id.” - Freud
"Essence, on the contrary, has nothing to do with identification [] In fact, its presence is concomitant to the absence of identification with any self-image or psychic structure."
Chapter Three - The Loss Of Essence
IF ESSENCE IS WHO WE ARE, our true nature, then why is the majority of humanity not in touch with it at all? Why is it something we seek?
Essence is gradually lost or covered up (veiled from our perception) as the personality develops. We tend to identify more and more with the personality that develops in response to our environment. By the end we forget that we even had essence.
This disidentification, which can culminate in the experience technically termed ego death, is the main requirement necessary for the discovery of essence.
It is true that everyone loses essence, but the processes of that dimming and loss are different for each person. Different aspects [Joy, Strength, Will, Etc.] are more deeply buried in one person than in another.
The methods needed and the attitudes emphasized to free a certain aspect will be different from those needed for the other aspects of essence. The heart of the matter here is the possibility of specificity, precision, and flexibility in our methods and techniques.
Chapter Four: The Retrieval of Essence
For the individual operating on a subtler level of existence, self-esteem rises as a result of living and acting according to one's own principles and convictions. At still deeper levels, self-esteem accrues as a result of being true to one's deepest feelings and stirrings.
From the perspective of essence, that self-esteem is not a result of anything. Self-esteem, when it is real, is the value of essence. And the value of essence is nothing but essence itself in one of its aspects. Value, according to this perspective, is not something we gain; value is our nature. Essence is value.
It is just filling a certain hole, the hole that resulted from the loss of our true value, an important aspect of our essence. In fact, any attempt to get value by excelling in any endeavor, inner or outer, will just cut us off from the true value, the absolute value of essence, where we are value, without this value being attributed to anything.
The tremendous and omnipresent forces and influences that suppress essence are the same ones that work against retrieving it. Thus it is extremely difficult for most people to extricate themselves enough to taste essence or to know life from its perspective.
Now the personality, both inside and outside, works on all levels to solidify its position as the master and the center.
wrestling until the personality until it relinquishes its hold and surrenders its position to the true master, the human essence.
What the yogis see is the repressed unconscious content, but they understand it only energetically and not psychologically. In our approach, we use psychodynamic understanding to see through these dark spots and dissolve them. The spots are dark because they are repressed material; the light of awareness and understanding does not reach them. So we open each knot, and shed the light of awareness on its content. This will bring out to consciousness the relevant repressed memories and affects. The discharge, the actual experiencing and understanding of this content, usually dissolves the dark spots.
Chapter Five - The Development Of Essence
Since essence becomes repressed (as do affects, ideas, and fantasies), the job of retrieving essence becomes simple and obvious: to make the unconscious conscious. This will, however, alter the structure of the personality itself and will change its position in the overall economy of the human organism.
In this method, the Diamond Approach, there is no need to wait for the experience of ego death before one understands essence. A person can traverse the path by going through small “deaths,” which will bring out the aspects of essence, which will in turn lead to the final experience of ego death.
When some authors write of the refinement of perception, there is more intended than to make the mind sharper and the body more feeling. By awakening the body and refining its sensitivity, the deeper and subtler capacities of perception are awakened and developed.
These subtle capacities are organized by the subtle energetic centers, which are to be found in various locations in the body. And these subtle capacities for perception are needed for awareness of essential presence.
[] essence has various aspects that are unique and distinct from each other. They are all essence, all substantial, but different in
qualitative experience, function, and influence on the personality. It is as if they are different organs of the same organism, and this organism is one's being.
Also, these aspects are absolute. They are absolute in the sense that they cannot be reduced further to something else or analyzed into simpler constituents. Love is love and is always love. And love is not the same as will. Will is always will, although it is essence, just as love is essence.
Creative Discovery
The moment essence is recognized as one's being and experienced as such, a radical transformation occurs. One's life will never be the same. Although the transformation can be total, it is usually partial.
The mind and personality are clarified steadily, and objectivity becomes more and more complete. Essence transsubstantiates into its various aspects and dimensions.
Discovery itself becomes the heart of life. Life becomes a continual creation because essence is the creative element in us.
The personality then will not be letting go out of desperation and hopelessness. It will let go because of understanding. It will melt away because it will see that its life is suffering [] The personality will realize that it itself is the barrier to the life of fullness and abundance. It will see the necessity of its own death. It will long for it. And then it will not only disintegrate into emptiness, it will melt and disappear into the sweet honey of the divine essence."