1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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. All the ways that true nature manifests itself are one thing. And we can think this is odd or paradoxical or mysterious: How can all this variety be the same thing? We might say they are all qualities of light or presence and that this light or presence has many different aspects that it can manifest. This is a good way of seeing it, and I sometimes talk about it in this way.
4. True nature, however, can also manifest as total spaciousness, total emptiness, no presence or light, nothing at all. The question then remains, “What is it?” Is true nature something? Is it something that is manifesting different things, or is it something that changes into different shapes? And if it is something, how can it appear in so many places in so many different ways? Are there many true natures or are all these manifestations the same true nature? And if it is the same true nature, how can one thing appear differently in different people at the same time? Or is this difference simply people’s subjective, relative experience? And if there actually is the experience of awakening to reality, what does it mean, then, if this awakening is subjective experience? Is subjective, relative experience even related to reality? And if awakening is waking up to reality, waking up to how things are, how can there be so many kinds of awakening, so many different possibilities?
5. It confounds the mind when we try to find out what True Nature is.  

But the way I have been discussing true nature, from both the hierarchical and the nonhierarchical views, indicates that true nature is not a thing. It is a mysterious kind of truth that is continuously changing while also being a single truth. True nature is energetic, alive, and dynamic, always manifesting new forms, experiences, and insights. We can think of this as true nature always evolving or always developing or always maturing our souls. This is true and is a good way of seeing what is happening. But we might see that what we consider evolution, development, and maturation from the perspective of the individual can also be, from the perspective of realization, simply that true nature is manifesting whatever is needed in that moment. Evolution, development, and maturation imply a hierarchy of better and worse, of higher and lower realization. But the dynamism of true nature simply manifests whatever is needed, whatever is possible, and whatever somebody is ready for and capable of experiencing. True nature isn’t thinking that this possibility is better or more evolved than what came before. Rather, it is simply what is possible, and so it reveals itself in that way. True nature constantly transforms itself to reveal what is possible at each point in each moment.  

Our view of time and space changes all along the journey, but as our realization of the absolute stabilizes and matures and as the creative discrimination of being functions, we encounter further mysteries of time and space. We have already explored some of the ways in which our understanding of time and space can expand beyond nondual experiences of timelessness and spacelessness. So, for example, when our view is free from the constraints of the concept of time, the concept of time can still be present; we can be aware of the passage of time, we can be aware of the presence of eternity and timelessness, but none of these patterns our perception and our experience. Our sense of being and of what we are includes it all; we recognize that we are the timelessness and we are also all of time. We see that true nature is more than the nowness of experience; it is also a mysterious truth and reality that includes all times. This shows that what we experience as the now is only one manifestation or one way of experiencing Being or true nature. There is a subtler experience that has nothing to do with now, since now still contains a subtle reference to time. When the concept of time is truly not influencing how we experience ourselves and reality, then both our experience and our view open and we see another degree of freedom.  

One of the things that we learn in the fourth turning of the teaching wheel is the importance of particulars. Any particular form, any particular event, any particular experience is completely itself and also a complete expression of reality. The same holds true for true nature: Regardless of how formless or indefinable it is, it is particular among particulars. That is to say, it is different from the other particulars that we experience, and it is important to recognize this difference. True nature is a particular, and it is a particular that is different from all other particulars. One major way it is different is that it is a particular that is an absolutely pervasive particular. Being absolutely pervasive means that true nature pervades all particulars absolutely, consuming them completely—without exception and without leaving anything behind. True nature does not leave any place or any thing outside of itself.   

If true nature is something, it seems that either there are many of them or this something is not like other somethings. We’ve already seen that true nature is a particular, in the sense that when we experience will, for example, its solidity and purity are obviously different from thoughts and feelings. True nature is a particular in its distinctness from ordinary experience. But it is not a particular like our body, because if we further explore the particular that is appearing as will, we see that even though it is solid, there is nothing there. When we experience that nothing is there, then we realize that will is everywhere; it is not only appearing in our belly. In this boundless experience of will, we see that will appears in all locations. It can appear as a local phenomenon and it can appear everywhere. And it can appear these different ways in different people at the same time.  

From the perspective of the view of totality, both views are correct. Both convey truths about the manifestation of reality, and freedom means that we have an option. We can hold either view, we can hold both views, we can alternate between views, or we can have no view at all. We begin to see that reality cannot be completely encapsulated in either view. For instance, we can recognize that true nature is a particular radically different from other particulars and also that part of its difference is that it pervades all particulars. This understanding combines the dual and nondual views. It reveals that this particular, although it is a particular, is also everything because it pervades everything, for it is the nature of everything and constitutes everything.  

We see that true nature can be both existence and nonexistence at once. And many teachings agree that it is inseparably both being and nonbeing, both presence and absence. And more than simple presence or absence, we can experience true nature as boundless love or awareness or dynamism. It can be all of these and also empty. So even though true nature is what makes everything exist, we cannot say that it exists. And although true nature does not exist as an object, we can nevertheless experience it more palpably than any of the forms of the material or spiritual world. So the question “What is it?” is itself in question. Who said true nature is an it? Philosophers tend to use the word “it” to try to refer to true nature. Most spiritual practitioners prefer the word “I”: “I am reality . . . I am truth . . . I am love.” But does “I” apply to it? “I am reality” means I is something being something else called reality. So even though true nature is a particular, it appears as the particular that pervades everything and that is everything. It is something, in the sense that it is a particular that is different from all other particulars and yet, at the same time, it is all other particulars. It is a particular that pervades all particulars, transcending them as it appears as them. How can it be a particular something that, at the same time, is everything? How can it be everything and still nothing?  

True Nature is a pure research scientist. What does a pure scientist do? He or she explores to find out the truth of a situation. Pure scientists know that as they explore something, they should not interfere with it, should not add to or subtract from it, should not manipulate it one way or another. They just want to know what they are studying as it is, in its bare, naked condition. They don’t desire anything from it; they just want to behold it and discover the truth of what it is. As we have seen, our meddling mind never acts in the way that a pure scientist does. But True Nature, in its infinite kindness, will respond impeccably according to our meddling. It will bring out whatever wisdom or quality or insight is needed in relation to whatever meddling we are doing. That is why True Nature has many qualities—because we engage in many kinds of meddling!  

But getting out of the way is not something we do. This is what I call the paradox of nondoing. How do we not do when we are doing? We are once again at the fulcrum of the path, the dynamic interaction of apparent opposites. How can the practice of inquiry, where we are doing something—inquiring—be a practice of nondoing? In this stage of maturation of practice, inquiry becomes a matter of riding the razor’s edge of our responsibility and our openness to revelation. This capacity develops by truly recognizing that true nature is a self-revealing potentiality, a self-manifesting reality, a self-realizing truth. So the practice of inquiry combines nondoing with an active engagement. We are actively questioning, we are actively investigating, inquiring, and experimenting while, at the same time, we are inquiring in such a way that we are not interfering with our experience, we are not trying to change it, and we are not attempting to move it in any particular direction. Not interfering with and not trying to change our experience is a nondoing and, at the same time, there is an active engagement of exploring, questioning, and challenging. 

Our true nature is a sense of presence, the quality of immediacy, of beingness. That is why I frequently call true nature “Being”— it only exists in the direct present-time experience of being here now. I use the term “Being” in a general way, to refer to the whole range of subtlety in how presence manifests. The purest experience of that presence is true nature. True nature is the absolute purity of Being. When we recognize that true nature is presence, we also see that this presence has many properties that let us approach our beingness in various ways. Each spiritual method can be seen as reflecting certain of those properties. The practice of being present is a method that comes from the recognition of presence as the fundamental nature of reality. The practice of inquiry, which incorporates the practice of presence, reflects other properties of true nature as well.  

What we learn in the fourth turning, the insight that arises, is that however we experience true nature—whether as personal presence or absolute nonbeing—it is a single truth, one truth appearing in different guises. We recognize that true nature is strength and compassion, clarity and intelligence; it is truth and it is love. True nature is equally will and presence, being and nonbeing, spaciousness and awareness. True nature is the inseparability of emptiness and presence. All of these are simply faces of one truth, manifestations and appearances of one reality. When we have enough discernment, when our being is activated, we can see that each includes all the others. In any one, all are implicit. This is different from the experience of the oneness and unity of nonduality, which is based on the principles of sameness and pervasiveness. The oneness and singleness of the fourth turning does not come at the expense of particularity and difference. And it addresses a different matter, a different question—one that points to an omnidirectional unity, where directionality does not suggest extension in time and space.  

We began the journey of our spacecruiser by exploring inquiry as a dynamic activity of the soul that expresses the characteristics of our true nature. And we have seen how our true nature is a spacious translucence that is constantly displaying the world, including our experience. Inquiry is a specific approach to recognizing the truth of this display. It invites reality to manifest in its fullness, which coincides with its openness. This open translucence has a dynamism, a creativity rooted in total openness, freedom, and spontaneity. This dynamism in its purity is an unhindered, unconditioned, unencumbered, unattached celebratory display of all that is possible to experience. 

The primary affect in the unitary consciousness is an appreciation of the interconnectedness of everything. The quality of love is implicit and pervasive in the oneness of true nature; it is the inherent goodness and positivity of reality. When we are no longer conscious of the fact that true nature is a unitary field, the feeling of connectedness—or at least the possibility of connection—is all that remains. In our normal consciousness, we experience this as the feelings we have for other people and objects in our world— including the feelings of disconnection, such as longing, sadness, envy, and hatred. The fact that we can feel, that we are sensitive to what we interact with, is the way the underlying unity appears in our experience. The capacity to feel is ultimately based on the capacity to love; and love unifies—it is an expression of oneness. The basis of the heart is love and love is the expression of the unity of Being.  

True nature is absolute being, but also absolute nonbeing. It is both presence and absence of presence. It is both but not exactly, because these are conceptual elaborations of which true nature is innocent. We say it is both being and nonbeing, or neither, only because these are fundamental concerns for the soul. Being is the last thing the soul needs to surrender as she opens up to her true nature. As she does this she learns about nonbeing. She experiences the emptiness and ontological absence of her existence, and everything else in manifestation. So she may believe that true nature is total emptiness, absolute nothingness, complete absence of existence. The experience of true nature as nonbeing or emptiness does not mean that there is no reality, no soul or manifestation. This is a nihilistic perspective that experience and understanding do not support. The wisdom of emptiness or nonbeing is an attempt to understand the final ontological mode of things. We normally believe that things exist when we perceive them. This belief is accompanied by a subtle underlying feeling or sense of what existence is. Things feel real in a substantial way. We consciously or unconsciously feel that the existence of things is a substantial solid quality. Existence becomes the existence of substance and solidity, which becomes opaqueness if we continue in this direction. In other words, we not only perceive that things appear to our perception, and not only believe that this appearance is objective and independent of our imagination and mental construction, but feel at the same time a sense of substance to this appearance, a sense of solidity. Existence for us then is not only the true appearance of things in perception but the imbuing of what appears with a quality we call Being.  

It confounds our mind when we try to find out what true nature is. The question “What is it?” implies both the what and the that: that true nature is a what—a something—and that it is. It assumes that true nature is a something that exists. But is it something that exists? We know that true nature can appear as pure existence—solid, complete, and certain, like molybdenum. This pure existence—immense, powerful, and the nature of all and everything in the universe—is absolute is-ness, more solid than anything else in the whole material world. But we can also experience true nature as pure nonexistence, as pure nonbeing. And the truth that appeared as much more solid than the physical universe can suddenly appear ephemeral and phantasmagoric because its nature is nonbeing. When we experience this nonbeingness, it is spacious, open and transparent to everything. The transparency can become fluid like air or it can appear crystalline, faceted, and precise.  

When we move from necessary awakening to primary awakening, true nature shifts from being radically other to becoming absolutely non-other. We recognize that true nature is not only not other, but that it is the opposite of other. It is what we are—fundamentally, essentially, and absolutely—through and through. The truth is that true nature is absolutely other and absolutely non-other. It is absolutely different from the perspective of the conventional constructed reality most people inhabit and it is absolutely what we are. True nature is the very marrow of our being, but also its bone, its flesh, and its skin.  

So when we are established in the understanding and the certainty that we are not in control of our process, that Being or true nature is actually in charge, then our unfoldment becomes a runaway unfoldment, which means that everything happens on its own. When we recognize that everything happens on its own, reality begins to unfold consciously on its own, which further intensifies the process. Our process flows from one quality to another, one dimension to another, one insight to another, intensifying and deepening all the time. This is an important juncture in the Diamond Approach. We call it runaway unfoldment, meaning that unfoldment is unstoppable. Our unfoldment is no longer dependent on our practice—rather, it makes our practice happen.  

Since true nature is also beyond time, it will appear in manifestation to fill the totality of time. All time appears in true nature, inseparable from it; hence, true nature is all time. However, true nature is timeless, and this timelessness will appear as no time. The experience of true nature as no time, in manifestation, is that of nowness, the present of presence. True nature is always in the present, even when it is in the past or future. In other words, true nature extends through all time, yet it extends as the present of all time. In reality, we can only experience the present of time. Past and future cannot be experienced as such. To go to the past is to go to the present of the past, and going to the future is going to the present of the future.  

Total Being is everything at all times and all places because true nature is outside of time, not patterned by time even though it does not negate time. Being outside of time and space means that true nature is all time and is all space while also being beyond all time and all space. And because true nature is what we are, we are all time, all space, and beyond time and space. The meaning of Total Being expands as our experience of true nature reveals more and more of itself. Total Being can shift from being the totality of the individual to the total being of the whole universe to the mysterious total being beyond time and space. True nature allows us to perceive everything in a new light. We recognize that where we are in the moment is not other than anything else. Everything else is within us, and not only everything else but everything else at all other times and places. When we are not experiencing ourselves this way, then we are experiencing ourselves only as the individual and not the unilocal nature of the individual. It’s true that as an individual, we are in time and space. But we are also the true nature of the individual that interpenetrates all time and all space, bringing everything in time and space to one singular point.  

Now, as I said, true nature is also dynamic, and its dynamism is creative. It is always creating new forms, and this creation of new forms is a development, a change. So the Diamond Guidance implies a dynamism, a creativity. With this creativity, what is known is an evolving, changing knowingness. You do not just know something and that’s it: “Oh, I’m sad, and nothing more. You can relate to a feeling in that way, but not much will happen out of that. Acknowledging the feeling is only the beginning of the real process. 

We can be contented with our present understanding of true nature as fundamental awareness where clear presence is coemergent with emptiness, or of true nature as a self-aware coemergence of being and nonbeing. Many wisdom traditions do just that, for this is one valid way of viewing the situation. Yet, we can also easily see that true nature possesses other inherent properties. Recognizing that true nature is always inseparable from the forms it displays points to another perpetual characteristic, that of dynamic creativity. Since there are always forms manifesting, manifestation or display of forms is an ongoing characteristic of Reality, and also since all forms are a display of true nature itself, it is easy to see that in the nondual view true nature is inherently dynamic, endlessly displaying forms. In other words, true nature is not only coemergent awareness but also dynamism itself. True nature is, then, awareness inseparable from dynamism, just as it is inseparable from potential.  

Plus, it has to be understood that an emotion is not just a simple reaction to whatever is happening in the present situation. Usually the emotion has an entire history. If you just let that emotion be, it begins to reveal that history and its implications. So, although True Nature is always present, the infinitesimally thin barrier that separates emotional reality from True Nature may contain a hundred layers of history that are obscuring the truth. So, realization of True Nature is a gradual process. 

Without careful attention, we will begin to manipulate without even knowing it. By the time we wake up to the situation, we have already tied ourselves up in knots. But even then, if we are aware, we can catch ourselves trying to hold on or trying to push away or trying to control. As soon as we feel the impulse to go after something, to orient ourselves one way or another, we recognize that and simply do not engage it. We cease and desist. True Nature is always steadfast in its non-manipulation, its noninterference. And it doesn’t cheat. It always refrains from interfering. We learn that as well in our practice. We learn how not to interfere and to be steadfast in our noninterference. And because True Nature just is, it will simply unfold— manifesting and revealing whatever needs to be revealed to us. 

Thinking that realization happens because “I am stepping aside” is the same thing as thinking that realization happens because “I am meditating.” Both positions take awakening and illumination to be a result of something we are doing. This becomes problematic because it prevents reality from revealing the fact that true nature is always the illuminator. It is the light that illuminates. It is the awareness that discerns. It is the knowledge that knows. The self or the individual or the practitioner doesn’t have these powers, doesn’t have these capacities. And when we use the ordinary style of language—where the subject doing the action is always an “I” or a self—we are appropriating the capacities of true nature. As I said, from the nonhierarchical view, we see that reality does appear this way sometimes, but if we assume that this is the only way that reality is, we limit our experience of reality and miss all kinds of freedom and fun.  

It is in the first turning that we recognize and experience true nature as a particular, different from other particulars and outside the known world of particulars. The radical otherness of true nature points to the fact that it is outside the purview of the world of conventional experience. The second turning of the wheel reveals the other side of true nature: that it is not only a particular but an absolutely pervasive particular. It pervades and constitutes everything, in a way that makes apparent the oneness, unity, and nonduality that is the hallmark of mystical experience. From the perspective of nondual experience, the encounter of the third kind with true nature is still dualistic because, even though in that encounter we recognize the radical otherness of spirit or God or whatever, there is still an “I” experiencing a true nature, regardless of whether we experience it as inside or outside of the self.  

Although the self is always being itself, the experience of the self is incomplete until a certain development occurs: self-recognition. In self-realization, the soul recognizes its own nature, the presence of Being. It is this immediate, intrinsic self-recognition that gives the state of self-realization the sense of exquisite intimacy. What is presence? What is Essence? The self can experience itself either purely and immediately, or through memories and structures created by past experience. When it is seeing itself directly, it is aware of itself in its primordial purity, without veils, without obscurations. It recognizes this pure condition as its ontological nature. This primordial purity or ontological nature is recognized as the self’s ultimate truth. So we say the self has an essence. The central property of this Essence, or true nature, is that it is an actual ontological presence. Presence is the essence of the self, just as protoplasm is the essence of the body. 

The sense of oneself as a separate individual, which as we have seen depends upon the development of a cohesive self-image, can be seen as composed of memories, and in fact cannot exist without its connection to memories, to personal history. But the memory of a person is not the same as a person. The memory is of something that supposedly existed at some point in the past. This is another reason traditional teachings say that the individual or ego does not exist. A memory exists as an idea, but not as a presence independent of the mind. In other words, the separate individual has no beingness, no substance and no true existence. Our true nature is an existence which is not based on memory or on time at all. Being is eternal and timeless. We are not referring here to what people call “being in the present,” but are pointing out that we are timeless presence, that our nature is not time bound, as ego is. “Timeless” means that the sense of time is irrelevant to our true nature. “Eternal” means that there is no sense of memory or future in it. There is no concept of time, so there is no sense of present time. When the mind is still, there is just presence, just Being, unqualified by ideas or concepts of time or individuality. Thus when we cease to construct entities in the mind, we see that the ego does not exist. We then simply are. 

The absolute in its absoluteness, meaning the absolute understood independently from the constraints of manifestation, is beyond time and space. We experience its emptiness as space, but the absolute is not spatial. Space is characterized by dimensionality, which is basically extension. In other words, space creates the concept of distance, or in fact it is the concept of distance. In inner experience space appears as spaciousness, as infinite extension, as unlimited expanse. This sense of expanse provides for shape and size, which gives us the impression that true nature is an infinite expanse, a space that extends endlessly. In the experience of contact and communication we feel closer and more intimate with others, especially when there is psychological openness. But why does psychological openness mean more closeness and contact, more possibility of intimacy and coming together? We usually believe this happens because openness means there are no barriers. Yet why cannot we experience distance when there are no barriers, why does it automatically mean greater closeness and intimacy?  

One of the functions of the discriminating intelligence of true nature is that it operates as an inner teacher. I don’t mean that there is something sitting inside of us teaching us something all the time. It’s more that this penetrating intelligence gives us the capacity to research our experience, to investigate it and inquire into it in a way that allows the experience to unfold and become an expression of the freedom of true nature. It is as if we had at our fingertips all the discerning capacities—the telescopes and microscopes and MRIs—of true nature with which to investigate our experience and the situation at hand. And the more input, the more data and experience there is, the more comprehensive is the insight and understanding, which then guides and transforms the situation. The bigger the field of perceptions, the greater the scope and the power of the synthesis.  

Inquiry into these intense feelings reveals their origins in the oral stage; this clarifies the oral nature of the soul’s need in this ego structure. One may then move to dealing with the absence of adequate holding in early childhood, the fear and terror of disintegration and annihilation, and how distrust developed. The process leads to deep hurt and abandonment and the understanding of the origins of the Beast, or hatred of the good, in the early oral frustrations and deprivations. One of the steps in this process of working through is the recognition of how this issue depends partly on the reification of universal or divine Being. Being is personified; the soul’s relationship to it assumes the form of an object relation between a separate individual soul and a separate powerful entity one may call God. The resolution is the integration of the black aspect of power in a diamond dimension, and the wisdom of how true nature does not operate like an individual entity. This deepens one’s understanding and appreciation of the boundlessness, omnipresence, and omnipotence of true nature, and its divine and loving features. One sees that true nature is an ocean of love, that is always present regardless of the experience of the soul, and that there are universal principles through which it operates, different from the functioning of separate entities. 

The perfect coemergence includes all manifestation, not only the boundless dimensions of true nature and its essential aspects. Any manifest form is nothing but a form taken by true nature with its five dimensions. Each manifest form is a differentiation of the coemergent true nature, patterned by the creative display of its logos. There is only true nature that continually changes its appearance as the changing forms of the world. A tree, for example, is nothing but true nature manifesting itself as a tree. The tree is simply the local changing manifestation of a particular region in the five-dimensional manifold of true nature. To see it from the perspective of coemergent true nature is to see a dynamic upwelling that continually manifests the particular tree as a form that possesses a five-dimensional ground. The tree appears to us transparent; we can see through its appearance to a multidimensional vastness. We see luminosity, presence, color, but also the deep darkness of the absolute.  

This recognition is an explosive insight, a momentous awakening. Pure presence is now revealed, felt, and known as the very presence of awakened awareness, the very reality of awakeness. Soul awakens to her true nature, and experiences her presence as the presence of awakened awareness. She is now awake, bright, clear, lucent, and transparent. She is also full of bliss and delight, beyond mind and reflection. She is drunk with awakeness, delighted with lucidity, and free beyond bounds. The primary awakening is the recognition of her ordinary awareness, which has always been familiar to her, as her true nature. Such recognition intensifies ordinary awareness to a phenomenological and psychological experience of awakeness. Ordinary awareness becomes awakened awareness, which now reveals itself to be the true nature of all phenomenal appearance. She recognizes that her ordinary awareness is actually both presence and openness, fullness and nothingness, inseparable and undifferentiated. She also wakes up to the fact that she has never lost her true nature, that her nature has always been with her, in all her conscious experiences, and that she can never lose it. True nature is so near to her that it does not make sense to lose it, an insight that intensifies her joy and delight, and shows her that she has always been free, always herself. She can lose touch with many of the differentiated qualities of her true nature; but its undifferentiated ground is always what she is.  

The personal and impersonal are in a living dialectic. The impersonal expresses itself personally through an individual life. Although we think of this as living our realization, it is also true nature expressing its realization. And yet, even though it is clear that true nature expresses itself by manifesting everything, this does not negate or eliminate the fact that true nature is aware of itself through the individual consciousness. Our experience might not feel individual or personal; we can feel that we are everything, as if everything is expressing itself as one totality. But this awareness is made possible through the individual consciousness. We can view reality from both sides—the personal or the impersonal—and both are useful as long as we don’t become fixed in either perspective.