Tara Brach - Realizing True Nature: A conversation with Hameed Ali and Tara Brach

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Realizing True Nature: A conversation with Hameed Ali and Tara Brach - Hameed Ali is an author, spiritual teacher and founder of the Diamond Approach to Self-Realization. In this interview we explore ways of approaching awakening to who we are, and look at the importance of befriending the experience of separate self, and actively investigating the blocks - our contracted sense of identity - that obscure the goodness and love of our true nature. Our time weaves in the inspiration of Hameed's most recent book, Nondual Love, (his pen name A.H. Almaas is listed as author.)

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste friends, welcome. So I'm here today with Hamid Ali, who's an author and spiritual teacher and I want to just tell you a little about him and then we're going to be talking. But maybe to start with that this is one of those, you, interviews or conversations I've been really, really excited about because of the impact Hamid has had on my own practice. So you'll hear more about that. He's the founder of the diamond approach to self-realization. And this emerged in the context of ancient spiritual teachings and modern depth psychology theories. So I'll be asking him to tell you about the diamond approach.

And for now, I just want to kind of say that in reading his most recent book, Non-Dual Love, so much inspiration. I'll show it to you. This is what it looks like. And you'll see the little post-its because, you know, just so many parts of it that I just sat with and found really touched something deep. So I want to write from the get-go let you know about his latest book. again, it's non-dual love.

And just to say that I've only had a few encounters at retreats with Hamid where we were in the same place, but it's been incredibly nourishing to my path. So I'm delighted to share them with you today and welcome to you. Thank you for being with us. I thought maybe I'd start in kind of as promised with a broad stroke question. which is to tell us a little about the diamond approach, you know, for listeners who are either Buddhist or more generally exploring mindfulness and compassion

and have had no exposure, can you just give us a bit of a feeling for what this approach is? Well, that's all the diamond approach in the beginning. First I want to say, I'm glad to be here with everybody and share, and they're not. everybody and think that'll be useful for all of us. And that's what the diamond approach is really is something to be useful for people who come in contact with it.

I started with my own personal experience in the 70s and 60s, 70s and 80s. And at some point, I was having certain experiences, certain awakenings, you know, there's different kinds. And at some point, I recognize this is not just for me. Other people can't benefit from it because some of the truth arising were universal. They were true about other people, both in terms of the spiritual condition that arise and the particular obstacles, a psychological thing that's come up. So I start working with people from that perspective, and then after a while, I recognize this is really how I'll teach.

that is emerging. Like there are so many parts of it, so many dimensions and facets to it, address different parts of the human consciousness and human life. So it don't mean, I didn't set out to do a teaching, develop a teaching, anything like that. It developed itself. And I happen to be the vehicle, you know.

So that's the thing about spiritual reality. Spiritual reality does us think. We're not in control. We're not the pilot. The spiritual reality comes through. And for a volume, I think we're doing it, but at some point it shows itself, no, I'm no one of who's here.

I just want to say that one of the things you said at some point that most impacted me is that reality is meditating, so that I sit down to meditate, and I think of your words, well, it's reality that's meditating. and it helps to immediately dissolve that sense of being the meditator trying to do something. Yeah, I mean, that goes to the very hard of non-duality, because that's what non-dual means,

mean the spiritual nature, the awareness of the country is not separate from the individual who is practicing. They are two sides of the same thing. So when we are separate, we think we are meditating, we are doing this, we are doing that. When we recognize separateness is not true, we are one with our nature, and our nature pervades everything, including all of our mind and body and consciousness. Well, who's meditating then? It's only one. And you say more how you describe our nature. You know, you talk about true nature a lot. I mean, it's kind of recognizing that is right at the center.

What are the ways it manifests and, you know, what are the flavors? Just speaking a little bit to that. Yeah. I use the word true nature, so parallel to the Buddhist concept, the Buddha nature, to the Garba. And the Buddhist concept of Buddha nature, I don't use it because it's used the word Buddha, I mean it's, it's people think of it. of it as a particular Buddha, while it's not what is really meant, but it's similar. However, and the, so I call it true nature, the true nature of our consciousness, true nature of reality, through nature of what we are. And the thing that this teaching has shown, that true nature

manifests appears in many ways, not just one way. And, and, and, it takes us on many journeys. So it can manifest as pure awareness, luminous, transparent, pure awareness that is filling our consciousness, that is composing our consciousness and body and everything, or it can manifest as presence, as pure presence, but also manifests as pure love. And so love and awareness are two sides of the same thing in that case. But also manifest many qualities that I call essential qualities of our true nature, which are closer to the human, conscious human, like, for instance, you know, strength, courage, power, power.

fulfillment, peace, you know, will, these are qualities through nature. When they emerge, they're not just emotion. They're not just thoughts. They are really through nature itself, and it's very presence and conscious and manifesting in this quality and impuging our individual consciousness for us to feel, experience that these are part of what we are, part of the, part of the, a treasure that is available to human beings. And that has been really very useful for many people, because many people, they don't long for awareness or for emptiness, but they long for love.

They know they need courage and they need a sense of capacity and they need a ability to relate to other human being. I mean, the stuff of life. And so these qualities are part of what's needed in the stuff of life, but they're really needed for the inner path, for the practice. We need a lot of courage and perseverance and commitment and all of that to be able to continue practicing. But these are not just our mind deciding to do these things these are qualities of our being or through nature that we when they manifest when we can access them they're naturally present and then part of what we are which makes both our life and our practice much easier you know more manageable and that in time takes us to more

the transcendent qualities like awareness and emptiness i mean it is the same nature and just reveals itself, if we access, if we become in touch, we recognize ourselves as that. It just keep revealing, keep showing, keep manifesting, unfolding. They show not only many qualities, there are many realization. For instance, you know, I talk in this book is about non-dual realization, but there are other realization that the true nature shows us at some point, I don't mention this book. I don't think this is a topic of today, but the idea is that reality is really mysterious and full of surprises. And what I learn is not to take any state and condition to be that's it. That's the final thing. And every time I did that, it changes me to something else.

You know, I love what you're saying right now. A few things I want to just highlight. One is that we have sometimes a static notion about true nature or what we're trying to get to or experience. And by exploring it more as a range of essence qualities that come out through these body minds in different ways actually helps us trust what we belong to more, you know, and we can sense it more readily and that it keeps on changing, frees us from holding onto anything, and keeps us open and

curious about whatever else is coming. So I love that. It creates an attitude that actually makes us more available. And it makes it not become fixated or attached. I mean, if we're attached one thing, we get clobbered. You know, we feel the obstruction, we feel the tension, and we open up and things flow and become easy again, you know. So then a question, this is a little bit coming right into this moment. Are you in your own way of being aware of the essence qualities that are arising in any given moment? myself, yes, that's how I practiced, is to be aware of what's arising and not just to be aware of it to become curious about it and delve into it and explore it and as much depth and much breath as possible. both what it is and how does it impact my usual or the consciousness on mind, how it affects my life.

It's an interesting journey, you know. So, yes, I mean, and that's what everybody who learns the teaching has to do. They need to become aware of them. So, and does that include, what's the quality of consciousness when you're engaged? for instance, right now as we're speaking, is there some witnessing or some noticing of the essence qualities or what's going on that's happening as part of this? Yeah, witnessing or awareness is always, of course, constant. And that's why in some sense, mindfulness is a basis for the exploration that,

engage in without being aware of what's there. I don't know what to explore. So it says there is, you know, from the beginning, I mean, I learned, you know, a pass over many years ago, myself, but was there already present. So but I teach many of my students, awareness, to be aware of body and mind.

And then to become aware, what arises in it. And for the beginning, many people are aware most of their sensation, emotions, thoughts and all of that. And that is fine, how to approach them in a way that is not judgmental and to learn to work with the judgments and the criticism of our mind bring is it, it's not good enough, whatever. All these arise that are much of the pain at the beginning. to learn how to work with these things so that experience can be there on its own without reaction to it. When experience is there without reaction, whether judgment or rejection or whatever, then it is possible to explore.

Explore doesn't mean I do anything to it. I don't poke it or stuff like that. It's more like, I'm curious. I'm interested to know what is its truth. What is it? Why is it arising? What's it about? What is connected to?

How is it relevant to what's happening right now? And that curiosity is to me one of the most powerful, useful, leading kind of attitudes that comes across, Hamid. It's like no matter what's going on, if you can be interested in it, there's some possibility to not be as identified and to really wake up through. it. And you use inquiry a lot in the Diamond approach. And I was hoping you could share some about it because it's, you know, it's such an amazing technique. Well, inquiry is the main practice, central practice, the Diamond approach. It's basically an investigation and exploration of our present experience. Not something happened in the past, no, what's happening right now.

to really feel it, sense it, taste it, and as completely as possible. And if there are any obstructions to experience it completely, to explore that, what's that? So that become to melt away and dissolve. And then if the experience was arising is some presence, then there's a discovery, it's not. And then, but okay, but then I say, what is the presence? what that feel like, what's that about. Or sometimes what's arising is sadness, for instance.

You know, explore sadness. What's the sadness about? It cannot be something, might be something about the present or something about the past. And so exploring it, finding out the meaning of it. What is the meaning of the sadness? How is it related to what? And that is an ongoing exploration then, because there's, always content and experience. So it's not matter of just being aware of the content and letting it be.

It's really getting interested, especially in the content that seemed to be foreground, that seem to be impacting experience. That is really important for experience in life at the present time. That's what I call the burning question. The question that has to, that's something that I need to know. and there's a sense of passion about this is something I got to understand, I got to experience. So the inquiry, of course, curiosity is an important part of it, but it has many other capacities of conscious and necessary, like I mentioned, awareness and curiosity, But love, well, the love is more loving to know what is the truth. So the motive is not I want to be, get someplace.

It's not I want to change it to experience some transcendence or something. It's more like, I don't want to know what is the truth of this. Whatever it is, I want to know it's truth. And if we follow the truth of what is happening, it is connection. It just connected to other truth in our experience and because everything in us is interconnect with everything else and things in the world too. So if you follow the thread of truth,

it could take us to deeper and more profound truth until we get to the truth of true nature and its qualities. So there is awareness, there is curiosity, There's also need to be compassion, kindness, because a lot of other eyes is pain and suffering. And we cannot deal with that if we're not kind to ourselves. If we judge ourselves or we try to change there. So kindness means I'm able to welcome the pain and suffering and hold it tenderly so that it's revealed its truth.

You know, what's it about? And that can deepen both the compassion and the experience. So compassion or kindness is important for inquiry. And there's also a need for courage because sometimes it's difficult. It's difficult. Sometimes we encounter anger or rejection or abandonment and might be scary. Sometimes we encounter emptiness or or fears.

So there need to be courage. And courage is one of the qualities also of our true nature. And we need perseverance. We need to persevereous. We're not just, okay, I'm with it for a while, but then forget about something else to strike me. Even if I'm living my life, I have to do other thing. The thread remains and then me and I come back to it.

I mean, it sounds like basically we need the quality, that are essence expressions in order to come back to realizing essence. In other words, the very qualities for inquiry are essence qualities themselves. Yeah. At the beginning, we have them on some level, like a sort of shadow of them and our emotions and mind and all that. We use those until we get to the actual real qualities, then that empowers the inquiry to become much stronger and more profound.

And you often teach about how no matter what the emotion is, how much painful, how squeezing, that there's naturally a kind of a transformation to something that's really a beautiful quality, an essence quality. Could you speak a little more to that, how emotions get transformed? Yeah, because every really, all of our experience is an expression of something about us, something about our true nature. But it is appearing in a way as a reaction or as a distortion or as a historical overlay or something conditioning from outside. And so if we understand those things, they will unveil, they will part, like avail that part and reveal what's underlying them, what's really behind.

I mean, for instance, you know, there is hatred because there is love. There is anger because there is strength. You know, there is fear because there is just fearless awareness. So all of these human emotion are really a reflection of something more real. By understanding them, we'll get to what's real, and that's how they transform. So instead of being scared, what fears about is to protect us, you know. But if we're really aware and conscious, what's there, that's really what's needed. You know, fear basically gets us to be more alert.

well, when it is a real natural fear, not when it's neurotic fear, then to close us down. I sometimes think of it as every emotion is life-loving life, but there's a torque because there's a perception of separation, and that torques them in some way. And when you start inquiring, it's as you say, you kind of dissolve that sense of separateness and then the basic intention of the energy can express itself in a natural, more pure way.

That is exactly the case, that, or it says anger, when people feel anger, anger has a sense of intensity, aggression, but a sense of sort of inner heat. Like it's hot, anger's hot when you really feel it. If you just feel the heat, not the effect of aggression, the heat will lead you to something hot, it's warm in the consciousness, and that heat turn out to be one of the main characteristic of the inner essential quality, that when you experience it as pure strength, pure strength and energy and courage and assertive, you know. So there's no need for anger. I'm strong and courageous and I said I could say what I want, you know. That's such a cool example because you said when you really feel the heat rather than the

other elements, it's the narrative around anger. You know, you did this. He shouldn't have done that. I couldn't. It's the narrative that keeps the perception of separate self there as soon as you let go of the narrative and just feel the energetic qualities, then they're free to express themselves in that, that, you know, wholesome, empowered way. Exactly. And we need to not push away the narrative. We need to acknowledge us to have some understanding of it so that will ease, it will relax. And to show that what's anger is about energetically. I think that's really important that you're saying that.

And in a way, this is kind of an extension. You work with a lot of Buddhist practitioners have come to different Ridwan or Diamond Heart. And a lot of the Buddhist meditation practices have to do with step out of your thoughts, step out of your thoughts, come into presence. And what I'm hearing you say is that you don't want to get entangled and lost. in believing your thoughts. But if you don't have some awareness of the narrative, you can't untangle, and you talk about the object relations, the different underlying kind of snags that actually keep us identified.

So maybe you could speak more to that. Yeah, object relation in the way that our sense of self gets structured from early childhood, by our relationship with our important people in our life, they become internalized and become impressed in our consciousness as some kind of structures of consciousness that will appear in the self as patterns of relationship and interaction and character. And we need to recognize those because you can't drop the self just by saying it's a self, I don't want it. The self is composed of so many layers of years of development, and it's natural for it to develop.

It's not a mistake. You know, it was a mistake, and there'll be people around the world who grow up without yourself. Everybody grow up with itself, with the ego self, because that's part of the development of the human consciousness. And it has all the history, when we're little kids, we're very impressionable, everything is done, or we experience, leave an impression. It's not just a memory, an impression, and consciousness, like, forms us, it forms our sense of, of what we are. And that becomes a self, and that need to be unpacked, really.

So for me, I had experiences when I stepped out of the self. I wasn't in the self, I was something else. But that didn't really liberate me. Liberation happens by really getting into the self and its content. And not being afraid of that. That's our history.

That's what we want to be experienced. and if it hasn't been understood completely, you know, understood and in a way that there's no rejection of it, no fear of it, it won't go away, it will stay there. So as I understanding, it means it has come, it's welcomed, light is shed on it. it is, and I call it metabolism. It's metabolized. You know, metabolism of our history. As we, as I metabolize my history, it becomes what leaves a certain account of truth. You know, some of it is true.

Some of it is love stuff around it. And it reveals truth, the truth we're talking about, like courage and well, like some, sometimes somebody's experience. their will get thwarted. They felt they couldn't do anything, they didn't have it and all that. By working through the history around it, the world arises. And one got thwarted because it is part of what we are.

It's our part of being human is that we have this treasure of true nature, as our nature. So it arises as some kind of solidity, and no solidity and grounding and confidence. which is natural to us. And I think it's natural for all human being. And I wish as many human beings as possible to access those qualities themselves because they'll be more human. I'm with you. And I feel like what you're getting at is something that's really important for people that are involved with practices, with the intention to wake up to who they really are, but have a program in their brain that says, that means I have to get, dissolve the self, get beyond the self, and it turns in a subtle

way into a self trying to dissolve itself. And that creates attention in people. And some it's more conscious and some it's not conscious. But I think there's a message sometimes that it's a mistake or bad to have an identification with the self. And then what's needed is what you're describing is a willingness not to be at odds with but really just get interested and willing to explore, well, how did this identification form? What is truth? And that takes a lot of tenderness, takes a lot of love. And I was just hoping you could speak some. I mean, this book is on non-dual love. And you also talk about bringing love to the different processes going on. You talk about the relationship between awareness and love. So just to invite you to speak more of it.

Yeah, I mean, the more we are actually open, the more we explore the sense of self, and it is sort of entangled and understood and sort of, the more we understand, the more tend to dissolve, tends to sort of recede, it tend to be less powerful. And it's, hold on our consciousness, the more the heart opens naturally. The heart is not open for money or restricted because a lot of the identification and the history of the trauma or abandonment or pain, whatever, that's closed the house. So the heart opens at some point and then the qualities of love begin to come through as some of the qualities of our true nature.

And love there are many kinds, and none do a love is one particular kind, but it's more like a dimension and an ocean of love where all kind of love emerged. And I wrote a book before this one, which is love unveiled, where I discuss different qualities of love, like passionate love or appreciative love or connection love. All these are love that are important for human being. Here I'm talking about something that underlies, what is love? Love and its fundamental ground as a boundless, infinite, infinite, when we experience it, I think you probably read my experience there in the book about it.

It's like suffuses everything, it's everything. It's just like awareness, you know, when you're aware, when you recognize the nature of awareness, it's everywhere. It's not like just in my mind. Awareness pervades everything. Find out that love actually can, you can experience it as pervading everything. And it is a characteristic or a dimension of our fundamental spiritual nature that is inherently there, you know, inherent to our, to nature that has loved, has goodness. people know that through that spiritual nature is good in general, but human being understand good to be loving.

When we say good, what does good mean? You know, very much associated with love because goodness means love means to love somebody means I want them to be happy. I love them in such a way. I like them in a way that I want them to be as happy as they are, as they can be and as fulfilled as possible. That's what love is. And so self-love is important that way and loving others. And then recognizing where love come from. So that really we have love, we have human hearts because the universe has hearts

as one of its dimensions. Awareness is basic ground, but that awareness can become loving. Can become golden or pink or whatever and beautiful and sweet, melty and soft and caressing. And so I call it divine love sometimes, that's not a divine love, meaning it's pure and has no self in it. and it's a wonderful thing for a human being to recognize that love is not only come through my heart with my heart the instruments the eye through which can be aware that love is unbounded that is everywhere comes through everybody's heart it's the same love when it comes through people's hearts and the main characteristic of it is And not selfish, not self-centered, and not self-seeking. It's completely giving, effulgent, generous.

And if it comes through a human heart, there is a feeling of recognizing that love and other people and appreciating their preciousness because they are really a being of both, awareness and love. This brings up two questions. And the first one is, if love is an essence expression of awareness, is it any different qualitatively from the other essence expressions,

whether it's faith or strength or whatever? There's a number of them. Is there any difference in terms of primordial or more basic? Are they all expressions of awareness? Well, and the path I follow, the teaching that has developed show there are many qualities of essence, like will and strength and power and compassion and clarity, intelligence, all of that.

And these are many, I don't know how many. I know probably 30 or 40 of them. I'm sure they're more, right? Like fulfillment and satisfaction and, you know, joy and all of these things. And then there are, these are things closer to the human mind can relate to them. Even if they don't know about true nature or essential nature, you know, most people love, make sense to them. compassion makes sense to them, strength makes sense to them, courage makes sense to them. But when it comes to, there are other dimension, the other thing about true nature,

which are not the quality of what I call dimensions, more basic, the ground of all these qualities. And the ground is more transcendent, is not individual, and it is unbounded, not within one skin, one heart or one body. And these are basics, and many teaching have emphasized some or another. So one of them is emptiness, one sense, pure emptiness, emptiness of non-existence or non-being. But also a being is a dimension, pure presence. That is everywhere.

Everything is a pure presence of, you know, you know, feel like it has awareness, has fullness, has substantiality, like a full. You know, when you say somebody has presence, what do we mean, you know, something comes through that is present, it's not like their body is present, not just like their awareness, they're present. Presence is its own thing. And it's a whole feel, it's a whole dimension that's I call pure being, a pure being, a pure presence. And there is a dimension of pure love. And there's a dimension pure awareness. And the pure awareness is just the capacity to have experience, capacity to perceive. So pure awareness for me is non-conceptual. It is not necessarily knowing what I'm aware of. I'm just

aware. And the knowingness come from the presence has the cognitive capacity that is added to the awareness. And then there is a dynamic creative dimension, which is make things happen, make things change. How do things change in this bond, this expanse of non-duality? Because people talk about non-dual, everything is not separate from each other. It's true. They're not separate, but they change and they move. The car is not separate from the road, but it moves on the road from one block to another. What makes it move? Right?

There is a dynamic dimension that is always creating and changing things. And then there is a dimension of emptiness. So I usually work with five of those transcendent dimensions. I'm sure there are more, but there's five I find very useful. to have because their account for thing in our experience, like emptiness account for the fact that there's space, awareness account that we have experience, love account we have heart,

pure presence has knowing his account for the fact that there's knowing, and the dynamism account for the fact that there's life, there's movement, there's growth, the development. But these have basic, ground that are responsible for them, then make those are possible. So that's going from the particular qualities to fundamental grounds. You know, many teaching, they take just one ground and stick with it.

Like, David, I talk about consciousness, pure consciousness, right? In Buddhism, I think it's either emptiness or awareness or empty awareness as the ground, which are true. there are ground, fundamentally. There's nothing wrong with that, you know. You know, in this teaching, those I can all know them out of the ground. But I also see love as a ground.

In the sense we can see everything made out of love. Just like we can see everything made out of pure, translucent awareness. You can see everything made out of the synonymous, golden, sweet lovingness. And that's, so this leads to, because I think what I'm hoping to kind of drop into a little more now is what helps awaken us to that. I mean, what are the ways of intentionally opening? Let's say we're starting

off from a sense of separateness where there's some ego perceptions, but we want to open more to the love that's already there, but we're feeling blocked from. What are ways of opening to love intentionally. Yeah, first we need to be somewhat, our heart need to be open. I mean, we need to be able to feel love, at least the qualities of love, like liking and appreciation and compassion, all of that. And then after that, we need to see through the main non-doal obstacle, which is the separateness, which is here, they believe I'm a separate entity.

I'm an independent, separate entity in my own, with my own will and choice and all of that. We recognize that as actually a structure in the mind. It's a mental belief that's not really, if we feel into our presence, there isn't anything like that. It is something in the mind that puts over us. If we see that, we understand that it will relieve us from the boundaries, the separateness, and then the heart it become unbounded. And when the heart becomes unbounded,

it become this divine non-dual love, which is, you know, it brings in love to non-duality, which is, you know, many tradition talk about non-dual teaching. Here I'm trying to say, yes, there is a non-dual experience, which is important,

but that non-dual experience can also be based on love. For some of us, it's not so easy to just see, oh, here are the blocks, here's how I'm creating separation, and then in the seeing there's a releasing and then the love fills up. For some, it's being with the pain of the separation. And, you know, I've seen for myself so many times that by bringing attention to that pain, And it's not the realization, oh, I'm creating separation. It's not that, which is almost mental at that time.

It would be there, but it would be mental. It's more the being with an opening to, you know, I'm thinking of times I have felt deficient, ashamed, in pain at that. And then getting to a place of powerlessness, helplessness, helplessness, like just please love me, universe, please love me. And if my plea and my prayer and the longing to feel loved is strong enough, there's a kind of porousness that allows for me to feel the love. And then in that feeling the love, feeling bathed, there's a dissolving of that separateness and I realize, oh, it's not love out there,

it's just the love of this universe that's living through. But I have to go through the portal of the presence with pain. It doesn't come because I realize, oh, I'm creating separation. You're correct. I had to do the same thing.

I went through years of feeling not exactly separate. I wasn't trying to get to non-separateness because I didn't assume that there is such a thing. I was just feeling construction like I was bounded by some walls, you know, and they were made out of tension, you know, around my body and made me feel constructed, small, and all the history that wall, which is I call ego boundaries. The world is made out of all the images we have of ourselves that in time include the images of our body.

So we take the contours of our body as our boundaries of what we are. That becomes very deeply instilled in our consciousness. And it takes a great deal of attention to that and understanding it. And so it's first chipped away by. understanding the values thing I talked about about different things about abandonment or fear or you know aggression and all of these things because those are involved with the images that form the boundaries and at some point become just the fact the experience is bounded and feels constricted like my presence there and feels it's hemmed in and that and then i explore that and exploring that

that you see the same way with kind nation and allowing it to be there until there is a recognition at some point that it is really a mental concept in my mind when that recognition happens it tend to lose its power and begin to peter out and that as it peters out the lovingness not only emerges from within, from everywhere. But you know, love has something different from other dimension in the sense it brings in longing. Because when we are away from what we love, our heart is somewhat constricted, that a constriction appears as longing for the true love, longing for that openness of the heart. Like people rarely are are longing for awareness, for instance, or emptiness. They don't long people, most people don't long for these things, you know, unless they

learned about enlightenment, read about it, they don't want it. But the actual heart longing, I want to be loved, I want to love myself, or I'm longing for love, you know. So basically longing for a different kind of thing. The longing and the yearning and the teeth and all the, you know, poetry, spiritual poverty throughout history is about love and yearning and longing like Kabir and Rumi and others. So longing is a big part of how love manifests when love is constricted. When in some sense, yearning and longing, the expression of the fact that there is love. There was no love there'll be no yearning i i i long for this why do i long for it because i love it so so the longing can lead us to them love but it's good you brought in the question of longing because our longing

is a messenger really is not something to be together rid of as a messenger of the heart or something deep in the heart well what one of the things that i feel like i'm so grateful for Hamid in reading, was you help me understand better how sometimes when we're caught in that identity as a separate self, the feeling of longing, which as you say, I think of it as love calling me home, if we embody it, if we open to it, that openness actually allows the love that's always already there to come. And it's similar with prayer that. there's a way, a wise way of prayer that, you know, when I'm praying in some way, metaphorically, my head is bowed. It's like this recognition that this ego self can't do it,

you know, and it's into letting go of that notion of a, you know, doing self. And then that makes room for what's again here. But you brought in how it can be really useful, given we hang out a lot in that separate self-state to be able to go these pathways, but also that there's limitations that we can then get stuck in always feeling like we're turning to something larger. And so I was just hoping you could speak to that, to that amazing chapter, you know, personal God, because just discerning between religious and spiritual, you know, just the personal relationship, how it can be valuable, how it can be limiting with a sense of the

sacred? Yeah, I remember an experience I had. I don't know. It was in this book where it was a prayer. I was praying. And the prayer was basically asking for forgiveness. And the prayer I recognized, I can't get out of my way. As I was praying, I recognized, you know, I couldn't completely ask for forgiveness because there's some things in me that didn't, that were in the way. And little by little in the prayer, I recognized the utter helplessness I was in. Like, I couldn't do anything. Whatever I say, it comes out from ego, whatever, even my prayer was coming out for ego. you know, the ego was there as part of my identity. And recognizing that, I thought, it's hopeless.

I can't do anything. It is recognizing that complete utter helplessness, which was not just about me, but it is objective through helplessness. It's not like helpless because something is stopping me and helpless because that's the nature of this consciousness. such suburbid individuals, helpless, can't do, cannot liberate itself.

Recognizing that helplessness, then when I recognize it and let it be, helpless, can't do anything, not in my hand. That's when it was a descent that happens, of like I got showered with honey, very thick, sweet, honey that melted body, melted the boundary, all the way to completely,

cessation of consciousness. Melted everything, including my consciousness. And when I woke up from that cessation, it was complete clarity. It's a beautiful illustration. There's something about helplessness that has such truth to it. That it's that realizing the truth itself dissolves. And then there's the space that can fill with the loving. and you, in several, and I'll just say to everyone listening, there are several ways that Hamid describes

his own experience in an amazingly vivid way that give you a sense of how things can happen. And in one of those, you described it was a different example, but of the helplessness and then grace, you know, the unfolding of the love. And I'm just wondering if you can speak more to how we are caught in thinking we have to make an effort. And we do have to make an effort to a certain degree, but it's not until we kind of give up the efforting that that full grace can happen. That's very true. I thought that's very, you know, right on.

You know, as long as we take ourselves to be a separate individual, we have to make an effort. We have to assume we have will. We have free will. Ultimately, we don't. But on that level of identification, we can't choose. We have a choice to go one way or another. And we need to apply our choice and we need to apply our efforts all the way to recognizing that the effort doesn't work. But in the effort, like, you know, at the beginning, people when they learn to meditate, they have to put an effort. They have to tell themselves, yes, I want to sit and meditate. And it's not easy for many people to come and sit and meditate for half an hour, an hour every morning. It takes loud discipline. And at the beginning, it's effort.

Before it becomes easy and we like it and become something we love to do. But for a while, it takes effort. So effort is the work of the separate self that takes it to the level of recognizing its effort is in the way. And then it can naturally drop the effort. And as you were saying before, what lets that all work is that what's really behind the effort is there's something in us that loves truth and loves love. So it's mingled in with a sense of a self trying to get somewhere, but there's that pure love for waking up that is in some way, you know, moving it all. I think you're right.

It's natural for a human being who arise in them at some point, what's called the thought of enlightenment or the enlightenment drive, which is a drive. That's like there's three and six show drive. the actual spiritual drive at some point that wakes up and emerges to want to move expand to open up to recognize what i see in life is not all there is there's something more where i am is not it i'm not happy i'm not isn't what i'm doing is not going to do it so there is a natural recognition And that drive is powerful.

And not all human beings. It's a potential for all human being. But it needs a certain level of maturity and opportunity for it to wake up and to exert its power. And it's powerful. And the more powerful it is, the more powerful is our practice. And it's really ultimately what helps the practice make it effective. It is a true nature in some sense moving to reveal itself and appears in us as the desire or the drive or the wanting to wake up or to be more free, to be free of suffering, or to be more real or have more meaning, whatever it is, it appears that way.

It totally resonates. I mean, there's some ways of framing it that whatever suffering we seem to be experiencing is awareness waking up through us, kind of calling our attention to recognize the block, recognize the twerk of thinking we're separate, and in that recognizing, you know, come back into wholeness. One of the blocks, it seems really big for most people to loving is that there's early pain and then dissociating from the body and so that it becomes an abstraction, that the heart loves is an abstraction. And I'm wondering, because I know that you really invite people right into the nitty-gritty

of feeling where things are, felt sense. You speak a little to embodiment as kind of... essential part of waking up through the blocks. Yeah, that's why one of the practices I teach is a kind of embodiment has to do with the body and being able to sense the body, be aware of the body to be grounded in the body. The body becomes, in some sense, the outer skin of consciousness. It is sensitive too. And so that's, I use breathing techniques and things like that to awaken.

The body is not only need to be aware of it. It needs to be awakened. It's sort of deadened and muted because of all the identification and the construction. Ego structure, the ego identity doesn't just make the mind be dull. It makes the body be dull. Exactly. The body becomes need to be vivified and alive. And that is how our spiritual nature awakens partly through the body and the heart and the mind.

So being aware of the body and freedom of the body is a very important part, at least of this path. I know some teaching there is so push away the body like the Greek. So the body was a problem. You can't be free by the other body. I don't have that view. I think the body is part of what we are. In fact, the Buddhism has that, that you have to be born in a human body

to have an opportunity for enlightenment, right? And I think that is very true. We need to be human, which means to have a human body for us to wake up to what we are, but also for our consciousness to learn things it couldn't land without the body. The body here, we're here in the physical plane, not just to be liberated,

but to be liberated and live a liberated life. To live life fully. And we need to be liberated to see what life is. What does it offer? What are opportunities of learning and discovery and experience? And so the body is significant. that way and having a human life is really important, it's really precious. And it's good for us to know ourselves as completely as possible so that our life become a real life. It's us, it is me,

what I truly am, my true present, I weren't living my life, not my identity from the past, not a shadow of myself, living my life. It's me completely, directly, immediately, living like life and going through it and expressing the qualities that I have learned in this life. And so life becomes both an opportunity and arena to give too. It's the easiest area to forget that in any moments that we're really caught in virtual or conceptual, we're not in that intimate, creative, dynamic aliveness. And I know for myself I have to keep coming back. And so you teach different ways of deepening attention to where the blocks are in the body

and in the emotional body. I wanted to ask you, like I, for myself, those bodies have been critical domains to untangle. The biggest, one of the biggest for me in the last decade has been the cultural body, the conditioning of our society and examining how the society's beliefs, of course, our caregivers or messengers, but beliefs in hierarchy, beliefs in who's better than who, racial bias, how much, if that's unseen, there's still energetic blocks that keep me separate from a true sense of that the same love, light, energy is flowing through everybody. Like it's an idea and it's a felt sense when I'm meditating.

But as I interact in the world, all those old structures from the cultural conditioning, especially racism, are there. And I'm wondering in Diamond Heart if there's some emphasis on examining those blocks as part of truly freeing ourselves. Well, our true nature doesn't have those things. It's a timeless truth. Timeless truth has no gender, it has no nationality, has no particularly, you know, cultural identification, whatever.

But, you know, culture is natural. Some was good to grow up in culture and say it in cuisine and say, you know. But, you know, if we identified with it, the culture that can color our consciousness and we can become a constriction that is not inherent or true nature. So anything that's not inherent to our true nature will become a barrier. So yes, in the path, we do work with cultural conditioning because of conditioning. You know, and the same thing about, I mean, through nature, racist, how can it be? I mean, it's the true nature of the nature of everybody and everything as the same nature. So if I see somebody being

racist, I just say they're ignorant. That's not reality. You know, they don't know themselves, basically. But pretty much everybody you work with probably has basic, has worked on in some way addressing basic trust issues. I mean, there's different basic issues. most of us encounter that are not true nature. There are expressions of that torqu twisted true nature that they need to untork. And I guess what I was sharing with you is that for me, the racial conditioning has been a torque that until I examined it, I had no idea how much it was actually compartmentalizing my experiences of true nature. and if I wanted to live more from a realized place, how specifically important it was to examine that. So that's why I'm particularly bringing up racism, because I don't think it's just certain people who are ignorant.

I think it's part of the air that we breathe. Yeah, the whole culture can be racist, sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, racism is also, I mean, ancient thing is not new. Yeah. It's not just particular to our cultures and most cultures and it's been throughout history. Racism, slavery and subjugation and, you know, inequality. These are part of the human conditioning and part of the ego life, you know, inherent to ego life, actually. Because if you are an ego, you're a separate, you want to have support of people like you,

like you grew up with, and other people will sort of alien sometimes. Well, that takes us back to primitive times, sort of, when, you know, you don't know the other tribe, they're probably dangerous to you know them, right? So it goes all the way back. It's very primitive in the human consciousness, but regardless of how old and primitive it is, it is not true in our spiritual nature. spiritual nature totally open, totally non-judgmental and tolerant. It's not only tolerance.

It sees the same nature in everybody. Not just other people, animals and beings and all of that. I mean, they're all at nature itself. You know, it has the same true nature. We need to take care of our earth. Our earth is our mother. Exactly. Our bodies grew up and our bodies grew up and it couldn't do without it.

You described the kind of waking up to boundarylessness. It's in a beautiful way. You said, you know, I am experiencing light and love. And then it expands to I am light and love. And then it goes to everything is light and love. Right. And I just wanted to invite you because I know we're closing in here. that boundarylessness, you know, of really getting it's not the light and love that's in here.

There's no in, there's no out, that it is the source and essence of everything. Just what helps us to open and relax into that one. Yeah. I mean, it is potential for all human beings because it is deep in us, but we have to be open to it. We have to, it doesn't just come by itself most of the time. Most people don't have access, unfortunately. It doesn't just, you know, forcefully come through every human being and just Satan age.

Everybody knows about it. It doesn't work that way. There doesn't need to, maturation and learning and interest in freedom and interest in liberation and knowing the truth of, what the reality is what a human being is and a human being is through a human being race is not an issue completely i mean i mean for instance you know i grew up in a different culture different country you know my most of my i'm considered a colored person actually and brown right most of my students don't talk to me as of our color they don't know that i mean it's like

They know it, but I don't talk from that perspective. I never did. You know, for me, I'm just a human being. A human being that embodies and expresses what is true to all human beings. So I'm not white and not black or dark or this or that. But our bodies have those expressions, have those things. and that's our external, our vehicle in Earth comes with a different kind of colors and genders and all of that, which is the variety that through nature expresses itself.

I see it as variety and richness, you know, instead of a problem, you know. I wish that we all did, the challenge, I won't frame it as problem, because it's just reality playing itself out, is that when there's, difference and then there's added to that something's bad and there's aversion, then humans violate each other. So there are many people who are people of color who would like to just say, oh, everybody's got a different appearance, but they're living with trauma in their bodies that are just like you described. Those are layers that are, that need attention and unblocking in order to come home.

And some people more than other, you know, hold on to it for identity. We could become part of the identity. And we're not only mistreat each other because of color and race, but also power dynamics. Yes. Gender. I mean, our society is full of troubles like that. It's true. I mean, hierarchy seems to be built into the human predicament. Our brain's architecture is to compare and seek to have, you know, a one-upmanship and so on. I mean, if it wasn't for our true nature, we're hopeless.

Oh, gosh, that's a great problem. I think all the people and the reformers who are trying to do things outside, it's not going to work if it wasn't for our true nature. Well, I would say that our true nature is what's calling them to do the work. And it's an expression of reality that that caring would manifest in that way. It is, yeah. But I think the issues you're bringing up are deep and profound and it's going to take a while. I don't think like in another 10 years or century these things are going to be all gone. It will be like the Star Trek universe, you know, where everybody. is equal and nobody else.

Just their own excellence would make them do one thing or another. That's a kind of thing, unfortunately. I mean, human race been living like this for millennium. You know, goes up and down, states in areas. There's more tolerance, more enlightenment than others, but the rest of the world is still in darkness. And we are sort of like this, you know, There's a mixture of lightness and dark.

And it's good that there's light, this is the light is spreading in many places, you know, because of our global communication, so we know about that and many teaching are going everywhere. But I think the human identification, when the sub itself is so profound. And many people are so busy making a living You know, they don't have time to meditate or even question what their life about.

Not, you know, because, you know, lack of opportunity, all kind of stuff. So it's going to take time, but it's bound to happen at some point because it's our nature. Our nature is the most powerful thing there is. It's what we are. And so maybe a final question for you. And thank you for this time. Yeah. You, at the end of your book, you talk about grace, and you talk about grace when you're describing your own experiences, that when there's a seeing of the selfing, of the separate self, it's grace, that spontaneous expression of loving, of that honey pouring in or whatever it is.

Can you say more because I feel like it's such a power. powerful and deep thing to attend to, the potential of grace in our lives. Yeah, I mean, I remember that chapter. So grace appears in people's life in different ways. You know, appears like in having a good life, for instance, having a good opportunity and being born in good circumstances, having loving parents, and encountering positive influences,

encountering teaching and teachers, that is grace. That is the function of grace of our true nature. It is not just haphazard. It's not just, you know, accident. But the specific grace sometimes we talk about is that we experience an actual energetic arising or a descent or downpour of a presence or quality of awareness that has a sense of goodness,

a sense of generosity and it is an expression of love, really, the love of the true nation, but it appears as grace and it appears in different ways for different people and different circumstances can arise within, within us, within the heart, or can arise sort of outside us and touches us and sort of melts us. And these are specific grace when, but also grace, you know, if it wasn't for grace, we won't practice. For instance, it's a grace that makes us practice really, because it's true nature calling us, calling our outer self to wake up, here I am.

I'm not at the door, go, practice. That is grace too. But there could be very specifically grace in the sense of actual spiritual experience, some kind of almost range, in the room that sort of make everything beautiful that melts the boundaries and melts the self and we just aware presence. Thank you for that.

It feels like what you're sharing is as we can deepen trust that grace is. Grace is part of the expression of, you know, true awareness. of love really calling us home, carrying us home. And it's, and it arises exactly when the selfing starts to drop away. It's like it clears the way for grace. There's no liberation without grace. Grace is what does it. The ego doesn't do it. Remember, we talked about it's helpless, can't really do it. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So much. that you've just brought in. So I want to thank you, really, for sharing with our community. And I want to let those listening again know, this is not the only book. There are others.

But it's the most recent. And you got some little flavors of it through what we talked about. I want to thank you, Tara, for this opportunity. I feel my heart and my sweetness, sort of suffusing the field, you know, which is sort of what's in the book. So it's really appearing, and I'm hoping some of the people, at least some, listening can taste that, can feel it. That's the grace. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you, my friend. Yeah, thank you. Goodbye, everybody.