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Diamond Heart: Elements of the Real in Man
by A. H. AlmaasThis five-volume series presents a collection of talks given by Almaas on topics such as faith, commitment, nobility and suffering, truth and compassion, allowing, and growing up. Through these talks, Almaas offers valuable guidance and advice for those on a spiritual path, and he explores the challenges and psychological barriers faced by those seeking self-realization.
Diamond Heart: Indestructible Innocence
by A. H. AlmaasWe live in a world of mystery, wonder, and beauty. But most of us seldom participate in this real world, being focused rather on the parts that are mostly strife, suffering, or meaninglessness. The situation is basically due to our not realizing and living our full human potential. This potential can be actualized by the realization and development of human essence. The human essence is the part of us that is innate and real, and which can participate in the real world. The series of books Diamond Heart are transcriptions of talks given by A. H. Almaas to inner work groups in Colorado and California.
Diamond Heart: Inexhaustible Mystery
by A. H. AlmaasFrom one perspective, we can see ourselves merely as human beings struggling in a crowded and chaotic world of suffering. This book opens our eyes to a different reality, one that turns our familiar world inside out. We need only explore--with curiosity and love--our true potential as human beings in order to discover infinite depth and creativity in our lives as we act and interact in the world. When time and space expand their meaning, we come to know ourselves as having infinite dimensions of being and qualities of spirit, and uncover new mysteries about ourselves, one another, and the reality we live in. This is the last of the five-volume Diamond Heart series of transcribed and edited talks given by A. H. Almaas to inner-work groups in California and Colorado.
Diamond Heart: The Freedom to Be
by A. H. AlmaasWe live in a world of mystery, wonder, and beauty. But most of us seldom participate in this real world, being focused rather on the parts that are mostly strife, suffering, or meaninglessness. The situation is basically due to our not realizing and living our full human potential. This potential can be actualized by the realization and development of human essence. The human essence is the part of us that is innate and real, and which can participate in the real world. The series of books Diamond Heart are transcriptions of talks given by A. H. Almaas to inner work groups in Colorado and California.
Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization
by A. H. Almaas“The revolutionary” book of “Western and Eastern approaches to psychological and spiritual development” is combined with a text on overcoming challenges (Yoga Journal).Essence, H. A. Almaas’s groundbreaking book weaving together modern psychology and ancient spiritual teaching is offered in this special edition with an introduction addressing contemporary obstacles on the journey to enlightenment. The Elixir of Enlightenment is directed toward students on the path who are frustrated by either the spiritual or psychological barriers that Western life can present. Almaasdiscusses the values and shortcomings of spiritual training, and explores why an impasse may occur. Then he reveals how a precise understanding of your own personality can free your inner resources so that your essential being can lead you toward enlightenment.
Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas
by A. H. AlmaasFacets of Unity presents the Enneagram of Holy Ideas as a crystal clear window on the true reality experienced in enlightened consciousness. Here we are not directed toward the psychological types but the higher spiritual realities they reflect. We discover how the disconnection from each Holy Idea leads to the development of its corresponding fixation, thus recognizing each types deeper psychological core. Understanding this core brings each Holy Idea within reach, so its spiritual perspective can serve as a key for unlocking the fixation and freeing us from its limitations.
Love Unveiled: Discovering the Essence of the Awakened Heart
by A. H. AlmaasA passionate and deep exploration of how love is essential to our spiritual growth and development, from beloved author and teacher A. H. Almaas.Love is a universal energy--and a primary force that powers our movement toward spiritual illumination. All the ways we need love are simply reflections of our need for spiritual growth. In The Power of Spiritual Love, A. H. Almaas explores three dimensions of love: appreciative love--the true liking of somebody or something; merging or connecting love--a force that melts away separateness; and passionate, ecstatic love--capable of consuming us from inside. In their own way, each reveals the beauty and exquisiteness of our spiritual heart, which is the heart of the divine.However, the path of spiritual love is not without challenges. Almaas explores the barriers that tend to block our experience of loving awakening and provides experiential exercises throughout the book to help readers along their path. The exercises focus on the obstacles or misunderstandings that commonly arise for each quality or dimension of love. Presented in the form of writing or monologuing prompts, readers can work independently or in small groups to confront the emotional obstacles on their spiritual path. Regardless of where you are on your path, The Power of Spiritual Love will help you explore love in three essential dimensions and gain a deeper connection to yourself.
Luminous Night's Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment
by A. H. AlmaasIn Luminous Night's Journey, Almaas shares excerpts from his personal journal, which describe a certain thread in his own journey of realization and the processes involved in integrating that realization. This publication marks a fortunate development in our knowledge of how Being is realized in and through the human soul: The process of realization and integration of true nature described in the voice of one who articulates precisely and vividly the psychological and epistemological barriers which confront the individual consciousness as realization is integrated in the context of personal life. Almaas describes how his participation in the unfolding manifestation of Being ushers him into realms that expose and transform increasingly deep ego structures and attachments. Luminous Night's Journey clarifies how the unveiling of Being and the exposure of ego structures constitute one process, leading to the soul's integrated realization of absolute nature and the manifestation of the human being as a personal embodiment of that nature.
Nondual Love: Awakening to the Loving Nature of Reality
by A. H. AlmaasFrom beloved author and teacher A. H. Almaas, an exploration of love beyond the boundaries of the individual self, revealing that nondual love is the nature of everything, including ourselves.Love is a transformative aspect of the spiritual path—and, in fact, it is our very nature. A. H. Almaas takes us on a journey beyond a narrow, individual understanding of love to an exploration of what he calls the boundless dimension of Divine Love. This is not the kind of love that we feel toward somebody else; it is nondual, a love without boundaries. Or put another way, it is universal true nature experienced as love.By shifting our focus beyond our individual human experience to the experience of the whole of existence, we are able to see the true richness of the universe. All of reality takes on a quality of inner light, of softness and ease, of sweetness and holding. When we are open to the dimension of nondual love, we can relax and trust our inner ground that is also the ground of everything: our true nature, free from limitations—a sense of complete release, freedom, and delight, that is free of conflict, fear, insecurity, and worry. Almaas discusses the obstacles that make it difficult to awaken to true nature in this form, such as our belief in a separate self and our past conditioning. Each chapter includes an inquiry or practice, such as explorations of attachments and worldly desires as well as inquiries into union, surrender, and grace.
Spacecruiser Inquiry
by A. H. AlmaasOver the past twenty-five years A. H. Almaas--widely recognized as a leader in integrating spirituality and psychology--has been developing and teaching the Diamond Approach, a spiritual path that integrates the insights of Sufism, Buddhism, Gurdjieff, and other wisdom traditions with modern psychology. In this new work, Almaas uses the metaphor of a "spacecruiser" to describe a method of exploring the immediacy of personal experience--a way of investigating our moment-by-moment feelings, thoughts, reactions, and behaviors through a process of open-ended questioning. The method is called the practice of inquiry, and Spacecruiser Inquiry reveals what it means to engage with this practice as a spiritual path: its principles, challenges, and rewards. The author explores basic elements of inquiry, including the open-ended attitude, the focus on direct knowledge, the experience of not-knowing, and the process of questioning. He describes the experience of "Diamond Guidance"--the inner wisdom that emerges from our true nature--and how it can be realized and applied. In this process Almaas looks at many of the essential forms of Diamond Guidance, including knowing, clarity, truth, love, intelligence, compassion, curiosity, courage, and determination. Also included are exercises and questions and answers from the original talks by Almaas on which the book is based.
The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers' Stone and the Secrets of Existence
by A. H. AlmaasWell-known spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas uses the metaphor of the mysterious philosopher's stone to discuss a tremendous liberating power that leads to endless enlightenment. For millennia alchemists sought the philosophers’ stone, the miracle substance believed to be the key to all the secrets of existence. The quest was fueled by some of the prime questions of human existence: What am I? Why am I here? How has this world come to be?A. H. Almaas shows that the tremendous liberating power of the mysterious philosophers’ stone is closer to us than we realize. In fact, it is the true nature of all reality—in all times and all places, without being limited to being anything in particular. Through the philosophers’ stone, real transformation can happen, our consciousness can become free, and we can open to all the possibilities of reality. Almaas discusses the factors that are involved in igniting the catalytic property of the philosophers’ stone and then begins to unpack the properties of true nature when it is free of constraints. Finally, we are left with the revelation that true nature is endlessly knowable, and yet nothing we can know or say about it exhausts its mystery and power. The result is a new understanding of what liberation and practice are—and a view of what it’s like when seeking ceases and life becomes a process of continual discovery. We begin to appreciate that the freedom of reality expressed in the complete and fulfilled life all human beings seek—and few find—is actually the simplicity of the ordinary.
The Diamond Approach
by John Davis A. H. AlmaasThe Diamond Approach has been developed and taught over the last twenty-five years by Hameed Ali (known chiefly by his pen name, A. H. Almaas), who is widely recognized as a leader in the integration of spirituality and psychology. This is the first book to introduce the complete spectrum of his teachings to a general audience.
The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas
by John Davis A. H. AlmaasThe Diamond Approach has been developed and taught over the last twenty-five years by Hameed Ali (known chiefly by his pen name, A. H. Almaas), who is widely recognized as a leader in the integration of spirituality and psychology. This is the first book to introduce the complete spectrum of his teachings to a general audience.
The Inner Journey Home: The Soul's Realization of the Unity of Reality
by A. H. AlmaasWhat is the soul, and how do we come to know it? What is its journey in life, and what stages and obstacles are encountered along the way? These questions are explored here in detail according to the Diamond Approach, a spiritual path that combines systematic inquiry into personal experience, the practice of traditional spiritual methods, and the application of modern psychological research. The Inner Journey Home is the centerpiece of the Diamond Approach literature, providing a complete overview of the teaching with references to the author's other books for more details on certain topics.
The Jeweled Path: The Biography of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization
by A. H. Almaas Karen JohnsonAn intimate account of the development of a spiritual tradition and a biography of its creators--told by one of the Diamond Approach cofounders. The Jeweled Path invites you to enter into the story of how the modern spiritual path of the Diamond Approach emerged. With humor and intimacy, Karen Johnson, cofounder with A. H. Almaas, reveals the personal experiences that birthed the teaching and furthered its development. These profound awakenings—occurring amidst ordinary life—became the building blocks of a remarkable new approach to human nature and to our understanding of reality.
The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being, an Object Relations Approach
by A. H. AlmaasIn this book Almaas demonstrates that healthy ego development is part of the continuum of spiritual development. He also establishes the possibility of attaining inner realization and developing our essential being--"the pearl beyond price"--in the context of living a normal human life.
The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization
by A. H. AlmaasIn this book, the author explores the underlying spiritual understanding of narcissism. He presents a detailed map of the steps involved in working through barriers that prevent us from recognizing the most essential nature of our true identity.
The Power of Divine Eros: The Illuminating Force of Love in Everyday Life
by A. H. Almaas Karen JohnsonWhat do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it. Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path--that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential. The authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.
The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence
by A. H. AlmaasThe keys to self-knowledge and deep contentment are right here before us in this very moment--if we can simply learn to live with open awareness. In The Unfolding Now, A. H. Almaas presents a marvelously effective practice for developing the transformative quality of presence. Through a particular method of self-observation and contemplative exploration that he calls inquiry, we learn to live in the relaxed condition of simply "being ourselves," without interference from feelings of inadequacy, drivenness toward goals, struggling to figure things out, and rejecting experiences we don't want. Almaas explores the many obstacles that keep us from being present--including defensiveness, ignorance, desire, aggression, and self-hatred--and shows us how to welcome with curiosity and compassion whatever we are experiencing.
The Void: Inner Spaciousness and Ego Structure
by A. H. AlmaasIn this book Almaas brings together concepts and experiences drawn from contemporary object relations theory, Freudian-based ego psychology, case studies from his own spiritual practice, and teaching from the highest levels of Buddhist and other Eastern practices. He challenges us to look not only at the personality and the content of the mind, but also at the underlying nature of the mind itself.
Undrunk: A Skeptics Guide to AA
by A. J. AdamsA candid, often hilarious guide for anyone who "just doesn't get" Alcoholics Anonymous.In this unprecedented book, A. J. Adams uses self-deprecating humor, entertaining anecdotes, and frank descriptions to introduce anyone who "just doesn't get" Alcoholics Anonymous to the complete "Undrunk" lifestyle.My eyes wandered around the room, taking in the strange collection of humanity seeking to claim me as a fellow sufferer. If variety is the spice of life, this crowd was the jambalaya of affliction.Beginning with the story of his first AA meeting, he takes the mystery out what goes on behind closed doors, dispelling misconceptions of AA as cultlike, secretive, campy, or lowbrow. He then presents a user-friendly history and introduction to AA, explaining the Steps, Traditions, terms, and sayings--all punctuated by honest, often hilarious descriptions of his own struggles and eventual transformation to "getting" the program.
'74 and Sunny
by A. J. BenzaA surprisingly tender coming-of-age story of a close-knit yet tough Sicilian-American family that accepts and welcomes a young boy struggling to understand himself--by the former Daily News (New York) gossip columnist and E! television host.A.J. Benza's distinctive blend of wit, dry humor, and genuine tenderness shines through this candid, compelling memoir about the summer of 1974 when his shy, effeminate cousin comes to live with A.J.'s family, which is dominated by his short-tempered, outspoken, hyper-masculine father. At its core, A.J.'s story is about learning that "being exactly who you were meant to be is the only thing that matters." Through anecdotes of fishing with his father, playing tackle football, and conquering neighborhood bullies, he tells a story of triumph and acceptance, of a loving but rough around the edges family that puts aside its prejudices to welcome with open arms a young boy struggling to understand his sexuality and ultimately accept himself. In a sometimes raw and always endearing voice, '74 and Sunny is a revelatory account of a life-defining summer on Long Island, when tolerance wins over ignorance, family neutralizes fear, and love triumphs over all. For anyone who's navigated the choppy seas of adolescence, this story about redefining what it means to be a man, and learning to accept those whom we might fail to understand will surely resonate.
My True Type: Clarifying Your Personality Type, Preferences and Functions
by A. J. DrenthWho am I? What is my purpose? What should I be doing with my life? These are important questions that we all must wrestle with. Further complicating matters is the fact that we live in a world where firm answers are increasingly hard to come by. While the options available to us continue to expand exponentially, there seem to be fewer reliable standards for guiding and informing our decisions. This can leave us feeling lost and overwhelmed, unsure of where to turn for answers to our most pressing questions. More specifically, we come to typology seeking a more objective understanding of who we are. We want to know where we fit into the bigger picture of humanity. Given these high hopes and expectations, it is unfortunate that so many people encounter an unexpected hurdle at the very outset of their typological journey--type confusion. Although they may have been furnished a type (e.g., INFJ) after taking a personality assessment, upon further investigation, they may come to doubt its accuracy. This may prompt them to retake the test.
The 16 Personality Types: Profiles, Theory, and Type Development
by A. J. DrenthThis book offers in-depth descriptions and analyses of each of the 16 personality types. Each personality profile contains an introduction, an examination of type development over the lifespan, and detailed explorations of the type’s personality functions and inner struggles.
You're on Your Own: A Mother's Letters on Life to Her Sons
by A. J. DrewieThe most important job in the world is one of being a great mother. In order to do this, a mother needs to know herself inside and out. This book of letters to her sons on life focuses on just that. Delving into her heart, spirit, soul, and mind, A. J. Drewie has beautifully written 32 letters about knowledge and wisdom that she experienced as she watched the growth and development of her two sons. The process took 25 years. Drewie faced the stigmas of being a divorced single parent and having bipolar illness. Today, she is living a very spiritual life, is happily remarried and is now a grandparent. This small book is a must read for all mothers, those trying to dig their way out of the negative shame of divorce, those suffering from mental illnesses and anyone else who is interested. A. J. Drewie has been through it all.