This is an interview of spiritual teacher and founder of the Diamond Logos, Faisal Muqaddam. The headlines and bolded texts are mine. The rest is quoted word-for-word from the interview.
Introduction: Moving From Kuwait To Study Mathematics At UC Berkeley In The Sixties
Iain: Faisal started the Diamond Lotus Academy about 25 years ago, and we’re going to hear about his work, but also about his life, his process, his awakening, the integration of that awakening, and many more things about him and his life.
Iain: So what was the reason you moved from Kuwait to America?
Faisal: To study. I wanted to complete my education. After high school, I came to UC-Berkeley, and wanted to study science, you know.
Initially Not Interested In Spirituality: "It's For The Crazies"
Faisal: Yes. I was young, I had no knowledge. I wasn’t interested in spirituality all my life, because I thought that spirituality was associated with religion, and it’s either for the crazies like Sufis wandering in the Middle East lost forever, or for religious people who were exploiting humanity [] So because of upbringing in Kuwait, religious family, religious background, I rebelled against spirituality. ?
Kundalini Manifesting: High-Voltage Electricity
Faisal: So when I got into bioenergetics, I wasn’t interested in any spirituality, I just wanted to feel normal again, function, get my life together. Then as a process unfolded through bioenergetics, I had experiences that were strange, like I began to have Shakti, kundalini, lights, colors, you know, all kinds of things
Iain: When you say kundalini, how did that manifest practically?
Faisal: It’s a very powerful energy streams in the body; it has some effect of high-voltage electricity and current streaming in the body. It’s very good energy, but it’s powerful energy for somebody that hasn’t done much practice. So it opened though bioenergetic breathing and releasing, and that energy was so powerful I could not even control it. I wanted to control it, I wanted to calm down, I didn’t want to see flashes of lights and colours and chakras.
Levels Of Energy: A Scale Of More Refined Energy
Faisal: I was a seer, an inner seer – I could generate inner states. I started experimenting with those energies, and that was the beginning of the Diamond Approach. It started: the first quality was about the lataif, but we discovered there were nine lataif, not just four, so we added to it more. And there are different energetic centers. They are deeper than the shakti, they are deeper than the meridians, like there’s shakti kundalini, surface energy of colors and light, and electricity; and there are meridians, which are streaming of energy and more subtle. Then deeper than that, there is misty energy, and that’s the lataif. And deeper than that, there are essential states, which are liquids and solids, and then deeper than that is Source.
Meeting Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche "Do I Have A Chance To Be Enlightened In This Lifetime?"
Faisal: Yes, in ’76 I went to visit the States, and I stopped by. He was my teacher, and I was granted to have private time with him. And I was shy and I just blurted it out, “Rinpoche, do I have a chance to be enlightened in this lifetime?” like it was asking for the impossible. And he started laughing – he’s a very joyous man, very happy heartful man – he said
“Everybody’s enlightened already, they don’t know it. Enlightenment is not something you reach, it’s something you breathe, you’re in.”
Like a fish asking about the ocean, where is the ocean? It is in the ocean. And that calmed down my deep anxiety about reaching it or not, that somehow I am in it, but maybe I’m not awake to it.
Merging with his Presence & Falling Out of "Cafe de Light" into Infinite Depth (haha)
Faisal: Through merging with his presence – I am a merger, I can merge, I can connect with the field of the other person and to enter that experience, which is a bliss and a nightmare for people who are mergers. It’s a bliss because you can merge with the higher aspects, and if you meet higher beings, you merge with them because you get to experience higher states of being. But when you are among people who are not on the path, be careful because you also merge with negative stuff, you end up with nightmares that might not be yours.
So through his presence, through his field which was very beautiful, very enlightened field, I was able to disengage from a certain domain I was living in spiritually, which was light. I loved the dimensions of light – living daylight, colorful light, if you want to find Faisal you find him in the Café de Light. And he said, “No, just leave the light, let if fall.” It was like a whole domain of light started to subside. And behind it there was this infinite silence, infinite deep, infinite void.
In the beginning my senses were not transparent, I couldn’t perceive it in its purity, and the more I stayed with him, tuned in and him assuring me to just relax, to be with the experience, not to fear anything, the darkness became richer, more palpable, more deep, more nourishing, and soothing. Then, as if the stars had opened in the head, in the mind it calmed down the mind, pacified the mind.
The Deep [Feminine] And The Radiance [Masculine] In Holy Communion [Absolute]
Faisal: His mind was like serene, peaceful, but his heart was shining with golden luminosity – had so much goldenness to it. I remember at that time I was sitting next to him, and the room started to glow with ambaric [like amber] richness, as if the air itself, like butter, you can cut it. So dense, so sweet, so loving, as if it’s God’s heart embracing all of existence with the preciousness, with love. And I remember there was even a can of 7Up. I said, “What’s this can there doing in the room, the holy room?” It was as if the space around it was making it glow as a most precious object, without any of my projections about this. So that I felt, Oh __that’s__ the enlightened nature, and it is made of two elements, the non-dual is made of two elements. It’s made of the deep, which is the feminine aspect of being, and the radiance, which is the masculine aspect of being, and the union of the two is what the Daoists make as the yin and yang. So the Absolute is dual, made of the two combined in Holy Communion, but can be differentiated. And that changed the whole approach to psychology, to processing, to finding the way of how the feminine can journey and the masculine can journey and the integration of the two.
"I Lost My Enlightenment Please Help": Growing The Muscles To Anchor In The Field
Iain: And you were also telling me earlier that you went away to Kuwait again, six months later, and you thought you lost it.
Faisal: Yes. [Laughing]
Iain: And you felt desperate because you lost it.
Faisal: Yes, that was one of the most shocking experiences. I thought once you get ‘enlightened’, this is it, you don’t lose it, you’re enlightened forever. Enlightenment is forever, but we are not forever with it. Because we go into it and we fall back. We go back till the inner muscles, the inner feathers, strengthen; then we can anchor in the field.
Iain: And you were also telling me earlier that you went away to Kuwait again, six months later, and you thought you lost it.
Faisal: Yes. [Laughing]
Iain: And you felt desperate because you lost it.
Faisal: Yes, that was one of the most shocking experiences. I thought once you get ‘enlightened’, this is it, you don’t lose it, you’re enlightened forever. Enlightenment is forever, but we are not forever with it. Because we go into it and we fall back. We go back till the inner muscles, the inner feathers, strengthen; then we can anchor in the field.
[]
Iain: So just to clarify, you found again with your teacher, he reconnected you with the enlightened state, and then you understood more about the integration of it. And the sort of endless nature of that, in one way.
Faisal: Yeah, endless. In ’76 was the first awakening. The second, ’77. I went to my teacher and I told him, “I lost it.” And he started laughing. He knew I was anxious, like a young kid. He said, “Relax, sit down, relax.” And in no time, one minute or two, I am back to the luminous field. Then I realized, yeah, this is eternal. I come and go. I go into a little dream, or another; a little thought or another. I am always in this ocean. That gave me courage and assurance that I can venture in any domain, know that the end of that tunnel is this field, waiting. And that was the beginning of the unfoldment of the essential domain.
Not Developed Enough To Sustain Being In That High Frequency: Clearing "Issues"
Iain: It’s an integration.
Faisal: An integration and empowerment within. Our inner sensors are not now so refined to detect, or to be able to sustain being in that high frequency all the time. Issues come up, mind patterns, psychological, all of those, and they color the field. So being in the field for six months, in joy and love and illumination and bliss showered by petals of flowers, and being kissed by the Absolute with love, that was so glorious that six months later I couldn’t reach it. I mean, you could imagine that you failed enlightenment.So I suffer from it, I inquire into what’s it about, and discover that my inner child at that time didn’t go; even being enlightened. Still there are residues there that need to be sensed.
Iain: So the subconscious, unconscious, I guess in the cells in the body, there’s still all this information and programs which are somehow affecting your human side at that point.
Longing For Humanness: The Unique Personal Aspect
Faisal: Enlightenment is the human nature. There is nothing now in my knowing and understanding that goes beyond the human. We are the alpha and we are the omega. There is nothing beyond the human. So enlightenment is Buddha nature. It’s not anybody else, it’s his nature, it’s your nature, it’s my nature, it’s our humanness. But in the spirituality they split it off, they made it something beyond the human; they made it impersonal. There was so much missing in the spiritual journey about humanizing spirituality and now it got integrated: this is my nature, like the ocean is the nature of the fish. I can dissolve in it, create from it, evolve in it, it’s my nature. It’s not something I go and I finish; there is no such thing. It’s a field that I grow and mature and evolve, and if I awaken to its nature, I navigate better. If I don’t know the nature of my mind, I am playing with a dangerous bull.
The Absolute Is A Sensor: Eternal Qualities Resolving Psychological Patterns At The Root
The Absolute is a sensor. It can detect what is there and it can provide what is needed. So I would sense one layer in the leg, then I’d feel like this silver substance coming and flowing through my hand to that layer, and going maybe to the fascias. And Hameed said, “Oh, I feel silver, I taste silver.” And I said, “I see silver.” Then comes “If I stand on my legs, I’m always afraid father will attack me”. And I said, “Amazing. What does that have to do, silver, with father?” So then, little by little, the guidance began to bring in the synapses between silver – which is the quality of essence, that gives ease, relaxation, solidity, groundedness – and fear of father, castration issues.
The Ascending & Descending Journey - Absolute & Relative
Faisal: He was on the ascending journey to the Absolute. I was on the descending journey, from the Absolute to the relative. So we meet. I am the Absolute, I come to the quality of essence. He was in the personality, he comes to the quality of essence. And through the differences, we began to appreciate the gift of each other. Through struggling with the issues, he was able to formulate much understanding. And through me being in the Grace, in Being and able to manifest it, it brought the passage of Grace, too. It is not all work. We are all gonna work on our issues. It’s a drug. It never ends. Grace has to come. Blessings.
It Is Not About Getting Rid Of The Ego, It Is About Understanding It Then The Root Opens
Faisal: From the beginning, when we were doing our issues, we found out that each time we sorted out an issue, inquired into its composition, its location, as the issue begins to unwind, begins to open up, we see that the ego activity is driven to do something, to achieve something, to heal something, its activity barely touches on what it’s looking for. So, as we calm down the ego activity, there happens a hole inside, like an energetic emptiness inside. And when the person can’t tolerate this energetic emptiness… like some people try to produce so much heart by emotions, they’re all the time generating their emotional body to produce heartful feelings. But it is only the surface of heart. If they calm down this drivenness – emotionality, for example – the heart opens up to an emptiness, which is unbearable. There is a hole in the heart. In fact, there is no heart. There is just a squeezing of the heart. So, if they calm down, feel the heart, or the emptiness of no heart, then from within this emptiness, the heart begins to awaken to its nature, which is essential state.
The same thing with mind. Some people think so much, trying to figure out what’s going on and if they calm down this mechanism, there’ll be a big hole in the head. There’s nothing in the head. They can’t think. They can’t figure it out. And if they tolerate this emptiness in the head, then the mind begins to awaken to a deeper aspect of it, which is intelligence, objectivity, clarity, precision.
So we find out that the ego is always busy, trying to fill in an energetic hole in the body, mind and psyche. And when it stops, the person feels a loss, perceives an inner emptiness, an inner vacuity. If they tolerate it, the essence has a chance to emerge.
The Ego As A Maddened Lover: The Uniqueness From On High
The ego mechanism begins to run by its own self – a momentum we start – and runs by itself until it crystallizes. And that crystallization is the ego preserving its own identity. It’s like the ego working very hard to take a picture of the real self and holding [on] to the picture for dear life. So in the unfoldment, the ego will not go. It can survive enlightenment. Mine did. It can survive enlightenment. It would __not__ go. Because there is an illusion that the ego is not in the Absolute, is not in the enlightened space. The personality is, the mind is, but the ego is the holder of the lineage of the real self inside. So the ego – I call it the madden lover – it’s part of our soul that is madly in love with its Source. It is a part of our soul that is separated from our higher self and the programming in it is to go back to that higher self.
The ego began to reveal what it’s longing for, but forgot. Then I realized it’s really longing for the individuated higher self, not the cosmic self. The cosmic self, the Absolute, yes, we need to all go back home, feel that we’re in the ocean, but each fish longs for its own uniqueness. And that’s when the teaching about the point of light, about the higher self, started opening. That’s when I shifted from being Absolutist, to being Pointist.
The Human Soul Is The Center Of The Mandala Of Existence While The Absolute Is Our Nature
Faisal: [laughing] To Pointist. It’s about individuated soul, its uniqueness in existence, the soul journey – [that’s] what’s it about – and how to discover the soul, how to support it to know itself, awaken to itself, awaken to the holding environment we live in and then to walk our walk. That’s the shift of paradigm. In my teaching now, the human being, the human entity, the human soul, is the center of the mandala of existence, while the Absolute is our nature, is Buddhahood, is belovedness of who we are. But we are the beloved. You and I are the beloveds and [expanding arms to indicate the whole world] this is our ‘belovedness’ of our beloved nature. This shifted the paradigm and brought sanity, brought everything home, here, to everyday life – to deal with my children, living my life, to navigating a better life for now, and for the future.
A Real Teacher Is A Stepping Stone To Your Real Guidance
Faisal: Every one of us has our own guidance. And the work, to me… I rest in my heart and soul when a student reaches their diamond body, their diamond guidance. Then they are in good hands. I am not their teacher, I am a stepping stone. A jeweled stepping stone, but I’m a stepping stone to their own guidance.
The Path Of Liberation & The Path Of Salvation
The path of liberation is so much encouraged by Buddhism, which is to ignore the nature of mind, to disengage from its cobwebs, its matrix, and know its nature – and then you’re free. You are not trapped any more in those pigeonholes and when they open up, you can disengage from them. And you can even transform those pigeonholes into essential states. This is the path of liberation.
The path of salvation is about, “OK, now that I am free, how am I to navigate? What is the walk? How can I walk my walk?”
Like the Indians say, “When an eagle flies it leaves no trace behind.”
So there is a path that we overlooked, which is the path of salvation. The lineage of The Prophet was in charge of this path of salvation. Islam, Christianity… so many religions are about how to walk the walk: thou shalt not kill – the Ten Commandments – this, this and this… [gesturing to make a list] It’s all there, as if there is God telling his children: “Behave, don’t do this, don’t do that!” It’s not about reaching enlightenment, it’s about walking a walk.
If you walk it, the soul will evolve into virtuousness, into Grace, into richness, into maturation. We’ll land in the Absolute and we’ll know how to utilize and engage with the Absolute.
That's it.
Your friend!
Chris