Student: I was thinking more in terms of not taking chances, or not taking risks. Choosing to be more comfortable.

Almaas: That’s part of it, to let go of comfort starts with things like taking risks, allowing yourself to be in the cold wind, getting lost. So, in the beginning it feels like that. You might have to do it physically, to work on not having so much comfort, to minimize your need for comfort and pleasure. To minimize your need for love and company and entertainment. Everything will have to be minimized. It does not have to be completely eliminated, but all of these need to be balanced in some way—there needs to be no excess in these realms. To not have excess means there is a detachment about these things. You have them and you like them but you are not attached. You might have comfort, but you are not really attached, you do not feel that you are going to die if you do not have it. Compulsion and attachment indicate preferences in the mind; they mean you are living in the realm of the past. That’s why some paths utilize the fact that a practical way to work on yourself or to seek reality is to find balance, to learn not to have excess in anything—neither for nor against anything. 

Some other kinds of processes in our Work can lead you to feel full because of the presence of a certain real fullness that gets you in touch with your own fullness. After a week when you’re not in touch with it as deeply, you may question it. That’s a different process. Maybe you felt full without understanding what happened, or perhaps there are other issues that must be exposed and worked through for you to keep the fullness. The fullness of the Work is not the same as the fullness people experience by filling holes. The experience of filling a hole is not usually experienced as a fullness, really. When somebody is filling your holes, it feels shaky and not really satisfying. It feels like a temporary kind of relief. There is a sense of grabbiness, of holding; you don’t want the other person to leave. You don’t want them to change the way they behave towards you. At a deep level, it’s actually a blockage, not an openness. The fullness of the Work is the absence of blockage. Sometimes a lot of holes come up at once, so it’s a little confusing. Usually, when somebody first comes to do the Work in the group, many holes are experienced at the same time. The purpose of the Work is to expose holes and let the person deal with these holes from within. We’re not trying to fill holes from outside.

As you sense yourself, you experience all these sensations inside you now, and the less you use words to describe them the less the demarcation will be there. The form is not as solid, not as definite. This means that the solidity of your knowledge is decreasing, becoming thinner, as you separate your concepts from the experience, because we want to know what the experience is without your ideas about it. You believe you know this world; I am saying, let’s find out. What do you really know about it if you do not use your words? What do you know directly? What is the direct, fresh experience without the past? To say that you know that what you are experiencing now feels like tension, means you are using past knowledge. Your mind is in the past. You are not completely here now; your experience is not completely direct. You are looking at experience through the filter of a concept you learned in the past. What do you really know right now? 

The other person is seen either as an image, one pole of a past object relation, or through a structure of images. The other person is not truly seen or related to. The fact that ego cannot make real contact is lamentable, and indicates a terrible waste of human potential. We cannot see each other when we are identifying with self-images from the past. We are strangers to each other, merely relating to projected images, to parts of our own minds. This is the normal, everyday life of most us, not only the emotionally disturbed. We are confronted occasionally by a student who reports with astonishment and disappointment how his husband, wife, friend or lover is really a stranger. When a student achieves some distance from ego identifications, he realizes suddenly that he does not really know who the other is. The other feels like a stranger when stripped of the projected images. This usually can be very frightening, for it leaves the individual in a state of utter aloneness. 

The state of the personality based on hope is composed of identifications that give one the hope for various gratifications. One is then a hopeful individual. This is a very subtle boundary, for hope is rarely questioned. Almost all people believe they cannot exist without hope; this is definitely true for the ego individuality. When this sense of boundary is experienced, it feels somewhat clear, although thick. It feels like a kind of thin film, the way Penny reported it. However, although it does not necessarily feel uncomfortable, it does make one feel that he is superficial and fake. It makes one feel he is a fake person, living a fake, plastic life. This is difficult to perceive directly, and even more difficult to let go of. The moment one feels he wants to let go of hope or work on it, or tries to do anything to get rid of it, he only reinforces and hardens it. For any movement toward doing anything about it implies the hope that something can be changed. 

In other words, real time is the life of the soul, the unfoldment of the soul. Each period of it is a period of growth and development, not just a temporal space in which events take place. In fact, it is possible to see in this experience that a person’s true maturity, the real measure of the soul’s actualization of her potential, depends on the length of the period this person lives the unfolding flow of the soul. This is because this life is a life of steady unfoldment, a ceaseless manifestation of potential. Real time does not necessarily feel like expanded time, or slow time, or anything like that. The flow can be slow or fast, but it’s more like full time, rich time. We are really living, and not a second is wasted, but is completely and fully metabolized. Every minute is fulfilled, so time is completely there; all time is there in the experience of the soul. The flow of the presence of consciousness itself feels like time. The sensation of a rate of flow changes, in the sense that experience is going faster or slower. But the flow is always happening, and it does not really make sense to give it velocity. It is more like fullness of time, intensity of time. 

Coinciding with this understanding, and more directly as a result of contemplating the developing courageousness of the heart, a certain essential structure begins to manifest. A clear crystalline presence appears in the chest, filling the whole thoracic cavity. It first appears as a tall dome-like structure, sitting in a large lotus. The presence feels hard like a crystal, but there is also the sensation of clarity pervading the chest cavity. This clarity imbues the crystalline solidity with such lightness that it feels empty. But it is not merely an emptiness, or a solid emptiness. The emptiness is so light it feels like total absence. In other words, the crystalline presence, although it seems solid and substantial, simultaneously feels as absolutely nonexistent. In fact, it feels like a solid clarity that is so clear that it is paradoxically absent. More particularly, it feels like the absence of anything in the chest. The chest cavity feels so empty and clear that I can only describe it as a total absence of anything that can be felt. The chest is a totally clear window. It is as if the consciousness is so clear, so free from impediments and obstruction that there is nothing for it to sense or see. The sense of absence brings a sense of total freedom and release, and a lightness that transcends the concepts of lightness and heaviness. 

The self that emerges in the transformation of oral narcissism is a presence that feels whole and total. It feels like the presence of a total completeness of being ourselves. We feel a sense of purity, of clarity and lightness, that seems to exclude nothing. We feel as if all of what we are is present, but all comprising one indivisible whole. There are no parts; all of our feelings, thoughts, and movements appear as colorful manifestations within, and inseparable from, this pure and innocent presence. At the same time this presence has a deep sense of dynamism, as if it is in constant flow and transformation. This flow and transformation is the appearance of the changes in the manifestation of this presence. The self realized through the transformation of oral narcissism is a dynamic wholeness. It is the integrity of oneself that includes all of one’s qualities and dimensions of experience. The life of this presence is the flow of qualities of Essence, which emerge according to the demands of the situation, without being separate from the presence of wholeness. The wholeness of the primordial self implicitly includes all aspects of Essence, present in an undifferentiated way. The aspects differentiate sometimes in response to situations, but even when an aspect is manifesting explicitly, we feel whole and complete. 

The nonconceptual positivity that is Holy Love is not just a feeling. It is how reality looks, how it feels, how it smells, what touching it feels like. In terms of seeing, it is beauty. In terms of hearing, it is harmony. In terms of tasting, it is sweet. In terms of smelling, it has a quality of perfume. In terms of feeling, it is positive affect. It is what truly turns on all your senses, what stimulates and is pure pleasure to them, making you feel happy and loving. So Holy Love invokes descriptions like positive, blissful, ecstatic, pleasurable, uplifting, wonderful, delicious, enjoyable, warm, delightful, and so on. To understand what we mean by Holy Love and to not restrict it to one conceptual quality or another, it might be helpful to see how it manifests in some of the essential aspects; or to put it another way, to see what the Holy Love is in them. Holy Love is a clear and distinct quality of the very substance and consciousness of each essential aspect. Holy Love is seen in the positive, uplifting, and blissful affect and effect of each aspect. It is the sweetness and softness in Love. It is the lightness and playfulness in Joy. It is the preciousness and the exquisiteness of Intelligence and Brilliancy. It is the purity and the confidence of Will. It is the aliveness, excitement, and glamour of the Red or Strength aspect. It is the mysteriousness and silkiness in the Black or Peace aspect. It is the wholeness and integrity in the Pearl or Personal Essence. It is the freshness and the newness of Space. It is the depth, the deep warmth, and the satisfying realness of Truth. 

Our relationship to time and space changes as we discover the boundless dimensions of Being, which are what we are and what reality is. This is the entry into the classic or standard mystical experience. In our teaching, the story of the boundless dimensions is a long story and many stories. It encompasses the entire range of nondual realization. One characteristic of experiencing the boundlessness of true nature, especially when we are realized in it, is that our center of gravity moves into the vastness, and we begin to perceive things from that place. The recognition then is that everything is included in that expanse of vastness because everything is a manifestation of it. It feels like a unified totality. We can experience this unified totality as love, as knowledge, as awareness, as nonbeing, as dynamism. Recognizing everything as love is the easiest way to go beyond the boundaries of the self, because that process is scary and can feel like some kind of death or annihilation. It is much easier for the boundaries of the self to dissolve if there is love everywhere.  

With this discussion we are approaching the experience of the process of manifestation as universal thinking. We experience the whole unfoldment and flow of phenomena and events as thinking, as rational thought. This may sound like a dry intellectual experience, but in fact it is a powerful and beautiful perception. The whole universe appears luminous and transparent, composed of luminous forms of variegated colors, qualities, and flavors. This whole amazing and enchantingly beautiful panorama is unfolding with intelligence that imbues the flow with a glittering brilliance. At the same time, it flows in patterns that are clear, precise, and discernable. The clarity and precision give the experience an exquisite aesthetic sense that is inseparable from the amazing insights that constitute the basic knowing of the forms. The forms are like words, discernible concepts, and the process of flow feels like thinking. This thinking is rational thought, for it is the orderly flow of knowledge, a knowledge inseparable from the intimate directness and richness of presence. The experience is that God/Being is creating the world by thinking it. The thinking occurs in all the sense modalities, for each concept is a noetic form in the multidimensional manifold of the logos. 

Being is such a wondrous reality. It manifests to our perception as the universe we find ourselves in, and it also manifests its pure qualities in our experience of ourselves, as the deep treasures within our souls. We call these pure qualities of Being the aspects of Essence. Each is a perfect manifestation of Being. Our universe, in its totality, is the way Being presents itself to our experience. In this retreat, we will be working with and exploring an essential aspect that is one of the wonderful possibilities that human beings can experience and be. We will investigate a particular manifestation of this universe, which also is a particular manifestation of ourselves, of who we are. In itself, this aspect is a wonder, with its own beauty; but when it is realized, it also adds beauty and radiance to everything in our world. For me, talking about and working with this aspect feels like the universe having fun. This quality of Being is an amazing thing to talk about and delve into. So for us to work hard to get enlightened or get free as we move into this exploration would be laborious and miss the point. What we will be doing instead is participating with the universe in the universe enjoying its own beauty. Why not? When the manifestations of the universe are seen as essential aspects, each is perceived on its own as magnificent. Each is seen to have both profound and practical value. Being beautiful and being useful go together. And part of the beauty is the recognition of the practical functions of the universe. We can see that the universe functions in a way that is precise and aesthetically appealing. 

The first step of this process in dealing with any sector of the ego has two parts. The first is becoming aware of—actually perceiving and experiencing—the particular belief or identification that constitutes the structure. The second is the dissolution of that facet of the ego structure. The latter is the most difficult one in the process of transformation, since it means letting go of part of one’s identity, and this surrendering can be experienced as a dissolution, a disintegration, a fragmentation, or a sense that you are falling apart. This juncture can be very painful or frightening because the old sense of your identity is crumbling and falling away and you don’t know what—if anything —will take its place. What you’ve held on to has felt real to you, and now you’re letting it go and heading into what feels like unknown and uncharted territory. It feels like jumping into an abyss and it can be terrifying. If this jumping into the abyss is easy, one’s transformation tends to happen easily. But if this letting go of past identities is difficult—very painful or excessively fraught with fear—one will tend to hold on to the old, staying aligned with one’s ego. What makes the difference is the presence of a certain kind of trust that we call basic trust. It is an unspoken, implicit trust that what is optimal will happen, the sense that whatever happens will ultimately be fine.  

The fifth major characteristic of true nature is that it is not only awareness, oneness, dynamism, and openness, but also knowingness. This is similar to the Buddhist notion of the “wisdom of discrimination,” or the discriminating awareness of the Buddha. It is inherent to essential presence that it is not only awareness of presence but simultaneously the discrimination of the particular quality of presence, such as Compassion or Peace. This knowingness is inherent to presence, inherent to the awareness of presence. It is not that presence arises and a separate awareness knows it as Compassion. In fact, sometimes a quality arises that you are not familiar with, but the presence itself tells you what it is. Many people, for instance, do not know there is such a thing as the presence of Value. But if they pay attention when it arises, they recognize, “Oh yeah, this feels like value. I feel worthy, I have worth.” So presence has in it—intrinsic to it—knowingness. At the beginning of the inner journey, we usually experience Essence in one of three ways: as a presence that arises inside us, or that appears outside us, or that comes into us from the outside. These forms of experience, though real, are due to limitations in our perception, and can become veils if taken to be final. These experiences can be seen as an intermediate stage between normal experience and the objective experience of reality. When we experience true nature objectively, without veils, we recognize that it is neither inside nor outside. It’s everywhere—outside, inside, and in between. The field of awareness has no boundaries. This presence is an infinite field of awareness, which means that true nature is not the true nature of the human soul only, but the true nature of everything. True nature is nothing but presence, which is at the same time awareness, oneness, and knowingness. 

Or perhaps I am able to see that there are differences between elements of my experience, but I don’t know what those differences are. Once again I have no possibility of discovering the truth of my experience. However, if I know that there is space, and that the space has in it a warmth, and the warmth is wrapped around some kind of hurt, then I’m aware of three discriminated elements and can see each one for what it is. If I continue to be aware of these three elements that I have discriminated—in other words, to follow this inquiry—I begin to see how they are related. Experiencing the hurt without doing anything to it allows an emptiness to appear; this becomes the space for a warmth to arise, a warmth that feels like kindness. I begin to see that if I don’t fight the hurt, kindness arises to heal the hurt. That’s an insight. That’s an understanding. In this example, I recognized some kind of truth, but how did I recognize it? By discriminating what was happening through recognizing the already existing discrimination. In other words, our experience always contains differentiation and discrimination. It is always discriminated. And if I recognize the discrimination for what it is, I’m aware not only that I, as the knowing consciousness, am here, but that there is content to experience, and that I know what the specifics of that content are. 

This state of helplessness, which feels like we do not know what to do to be ourselves, is precisely the feeling of missing our own inner support. The greatest barrier against understanding and resolving this situation is the judgment of ourselves as inadequate based on the conviction that we can, and ought to, know. That is why I suggested to Julia to be completely open to her experience, to see whether she could remain with her experience without the judgment, and without any idea or position regarding whether she can or ought to know what to do. Basically, I supported her to inquire into this state of helplessness with an open, nonjudgmental mind. It took Julia some time, and some working through issues about trusting me and herself, before she was able to stay with her experience of helplessness with an unbiased attitude. As she managed to let go of her bias and judgment, she realized that the terror subsided, that her state became more neutral, even pleasant. She was quite surprised to find out that she was feeling more and more present. She felt simple and free, and quite clear. I asked her about her state, and she said she felt she was being herself. She experienced her state as simple presence, free and unencumbered. She kept saying, “It is not that I am present, but I am presence.” This was the first time she experienced presence in this nondual way. She became clear about the difference between experiencing presence, as she had been for few years, and experiencing herself as the presence. 

Experience alone will not transform who and what we are. How we see the truth of the experience—what it is and what it points to and what its relevance to other things is—is also important. People frequently have insights without the presence of this discriminating intelligence, but that sort of intuitive insight or realization is isolated and short-lived. When we have integrated the penetrating intelligence of true nature, we have this capacity of understanding at our command. This means that whenever we want to explore something, that capacity is available. But being at our command does not mean we own it. It means that there is a selflessness that allows it to operate freely. It is actually at the command of true nature. Even though we cannot appropriate it, it nevertheless functions as our capacity. It feels like what we are, and with no self to hinder it or appropriate it, it can function with the entirety of what we are. It doesn’t belong to the individual, but it has at its disposal all the capacities of the individual. In this sense, the discriminating intelligence is the functioning of our higher intellect, our divine intellect. Imbued by the discerning capacity of true nature, this intelligence can operate on all dimensions at the same time. 

This is actually a reflection of two desires, both important, but often experienced by the child as antithetical: the desire for merging and the desire for autonomy. Autonomy is seen here as the capacity to assert his will, by having his own way. On the essential level, this manifests as a conflict between the Merging and the Will aspects of Essence. The Will Essence is very important for separation and individuation, as important as the Strength Essence. Strength gives the individual energy and the initiative capacity. Will, on the other hand, is a kind’ of strength, but it is the strength of persistence, of being able to stay with a task till the end. It is the capacity for endurance, persistence and carrying through. It feels like a sense of solidity, of inner support, of determination and confidence. If the Personal Essence feels like “I am” and the Strength Essence feels like “I can,” then the Will Essence feels like “I will.” It is confidence in one’s abilities. Its loss leads primarily to a state of castration and ego inadequacy. The individual then feels no confidence in himself or his capacities. He feels no inner support or fortitude, no backbone, nothing to fall back on. 

There are many different kinds of love. One is an aspect of love which has a melting quality, which we call merging love. It has to do with the loss of the boundaries between you and your environment; you experience merging with your environment. Your boundaries melt away, and you have no shields around you. You experience yourself as a delicateness, an exquisiteness that does not feel itself separate from anything else. This experience brings about a sense of contentment, and a deep letting go, a deep satisfaction. It feels like you are your own nourishment, and actually that you and the nourishment are the same. This is the kind of love people want when they desire closeness or oneness with someone else. Dreams about togetherness, about community, about being One, about being inseparable lovers, are actually desires and hopes for this kind of love. This kind of love makes you feel merged with yourself and with everything else. There is an innate feeling of togetherness with everything in a sweet way. The sweetness of the feeling is like honey, but lighter and more delicate. 

What I mean is that true nature doesn’t have only one way of presenting itself. You can experience it as a crystal or a stone, which is how the alchemists talked about it. And you can experience this stone as either outside of you or inside of you. When outside of you as the ground that contains you, the stone seems to be the magical divine hermaphrodite—creating all possibilities—that carries the secrets of all existence. Inside you, the stone feels like you awakened to yourself. But true nature can also manifest as warm compassion—tenderness that affects you, impacts you in such a way that you are aware of other people and feel inclined to do what you can to be of service. It can manifest compassion with an emerald-green hue or with no color at all. True nature can expand, appearing as compassion of the heart or compassion that pervades everything. True nature can also appear as a diamond-like form in the center of your forehead that allows you to perceive and understand everything clearly and precisely. Or true nature can appear along your spine as a platinum column that supports you to be yourself. And true nature can even appear as an apple in the hand of a Zen Master. 

And then my experience of this reality, of me and the world, begins to lose its sense of significance. I begin to experience myself—especially my body—and the whole of physical reality, as empty and insubstantial. It’s strange to see physical objects having no substance, no density. They’re the same objects as before, but their physical reality seems different. They’ve lost reality and substance. They’ve become empty and flat. There’s a flatness, a lack of color or vitality, which makes everything feel less real.  So this is what happens as we experience our essential nature; we recognize that who we usually are is just an empty shell, devoid of fullness, devoid of substance, devoid of significance. Just like a bubble. Before that, before your personality is challenged by essential presence, it feels real, right? It feels like there’s you, and there’s the reality of your body, your feelings and your emotions, and you have substance. It’s not essential, but it feels real and significant. Then, as essential presence expands and you start to recognize that your personality is all about images and identifications, you start to feel the insubstantiality of it—it becomes this empty shell, a bubble with nothing inside. This is what always happens when you recognize that something is just a mental construct.