Diamond Approach Inquiry: Discovering Inner Freedom
The Diamond Approach® is a path for spiritual realization offering a way into a sphere of consciousness that we often don’t perceive as accessible. Hameed Ali (who writes under the pen name AH Almaas) birthed the teaching with co-founder Karen Johnson starting in the mid-1970s. I first joined a Diamond Approach group in 1989 (when I was in my early 30s) and have been benefiting ever since. As a committed student, I’ve found:
- A deeply enriching way to deepen and expand my capacity for love, healing, and inner transformation
- A coherent map of the many kinds of spiritual experiences people have
- Spiritual guidance by highly trained teachers, who themselves have achieved some level of realization
- A caring, cohesive, and engaging community of fellow seekers
- A wonderful, never-ending inner adventure
The Diamond Approach addresses aspects of the conditioned self, spiritual experience, and realization with precision and depth that are far beyond what I can include in this short piece. So, here I will attempt to give a taste of the core practice of inquiry along with highlighting how practicing inquiry has impacted me and my work in the world.
Personality constrains being. To me, one of the great strengths of the Diamond Approach is in utilizing developmental psychology to free ourselves from ego and to spark spiritual awakenings. By ego, I mean the fixed personality structures we all have — including automatic beliefs about ourselves, habitual ways of thinking, and repetitive reactions to life.
We can temporarily push our ego away or try to rearrange our personality to be happier, freer, or more realized. But ego comes back. And that’s where Diamond Approach inquiry comes in. We all have awareness and inquiry helps us harness awareness to dissolve ego instead of pushing it away.
Inquiry as a spiritual practice
Start your inquiry with kindness for and curiosity about your inner experience. These essential qualities will help you be receptive to what is happening in you right now — with whatever is foreground. That could be a cluster of thoughts, an emotion, or something else — perhaps awareness itself.
As you inquire, you allow your experience to naturally unfold in an open-ended way. That’s easiest to do if you can embody your inquiry. As thoughts arise — go slowly — notice your heart and your feelings, what’s going on in your body and any sensations.
If you inquire only on the level of typical or anxious thoughts, then most likely your experience will be limited to those particular kinds of thoughts. So inquiry as a spiritual practice includes heart, mind, and body to help support opening to deeper levels of self-knowing.
There’s a natural intelligence at play when we engage in inquiry. But as natural as inquiry is, fully engaging means experience won’t always be easy. Directly experiencing our weak spots is tough, yet necessary to grow.
If we can stay with a sense of lack, in time it will resolve. The way deficient places in our ego resolve can be almost miraculous. Because whatever essential aspect (like love, intelligence, contactfulness, courage, or will) we were cut off from opens up again, in response to sincere inquiry. The qualities that open again will be attuned to helping us let go of that particular lack we were inquiring into.
Through intimately understanding our personality structures, they naturally dissolve and essential aspects of our humanness suffuse us more and more. The more we release ego, the more we can grow into a life of heart, dignity, and freedom. And the more freed up we are, the easier it is to release ego. So letting go of ego patterns and developing our humanness mutually support each other.
Our teachers in the Diamond Approach embody the spiritual realization or essential qualities they are teaching us about. In this way, we students get infused with light or clarity or compassion — whatever is being taught along with learning about the typical blockages we might encounter. After such a talk, a teacher gives us a related inquiry exercise. That way we can explore on our own, have our own insights, all with the support of the group.
Diamond Approach teachers also continue being students. As a community, we’re all growing together in support of each other’s unique expression of being in the world. And as part of a community, along with the individual ego, we inquire into collective-level issues including culture, oppression and privilege, gender, and the environment.
There are different formats for inquiry — including solo and with others. One of my favorites is “repeating question”, where we break out into pairs. One partner asks the question, the other answers, and then we switch. For example, a repeating question inquiry might be: “What’s right about having a position?”
Naturally, to have an ego, a personality, a separate sense of self equates to having positions. I could pretend to myself that I don’t have a position, but ultimately that only tends to make my position more entrenched. So the Diamond Approach says, let’s embrace the truth about ego, get curious about these positions, see what they really are trying to do.
Some sample positions could be: Dark chocolate is best. Anti-abortion laws are bad. I’m right. You’re wrong.
Positions may be true in one moment and then in another context, no longer apply or lack nuance. Ego isn’t always capable of nuance and we humans easily get stuck in our positions. Inquiry helps us develop the capacity to shift positions, as needed.
Embracing the unknown
Part of inquiry is being truly open to what happens next without preconceived ideas — in other words embracing the unknown. Right now, while you’re reading, you could ask yourself, “What’s right about having a position?”
As you let the question sink in, feel free to accept any answer that comes — whether assumed or unexpected, sensible or not. Maybe you say, Well, then I know where I stand.
And then, you’d ask again: What’s right about having a position?
I can tell where I belong… I can speak more clearly if I know what my position is… I can tell you where I am… So you know me.
And so on. If you keep going for ten or fifteen minutes, allowing your own answers, you might notice something shifting. Perhaps your thought cloud starts to thin out. Try it now on your own, if you like — writing in your journal or speaking aloud.
In my experience, with these repeating questions, after a while, I often find my mind dissolving, which can be quite refreshing. My thought cloud dissipates and instead, I’m experiencing light, delightful effervescent space. Or sometimes, my sense of self disappears altogether and I become spacious, effervescent being.
But then, even after having many of these experiences, for most of us, we seem to go back to our habitual self. In the Diamond Approach, that’s not seen as surprising, rather as normal.
Beyond ego to a life of freedom
Ego is a natural and needed developmental stage. How else would we learn to function in the world? Growing out of a rigid ego structure into a more flexible, fluid, alive, awake being is not easy. But the amazing thing is we have the potential — if we’re willing to apply ourselves, we can live with more and more inner space and freedom, becoming ever more fully ourselves.
For many years, my inquiry was filled with old hurts. I learned by touching into the wounds, which would yield more understanding, and more ease, as I revisited these inquiries many times. Essential qualities of being supported my inquiries. I would be infused with compassion or the will to appropriately stand up for myself with dignity and integrity. Eventually, major hurts healed and released.
After many years in the Diamond Approach, many repeating questions and other kinds of inquiries, movement exercises, and meditations, my ego has softened considerably.
When my normal sense of self is simply gone, that leaves a lot of space — space that at first, I found as scary as it was liberating. But over time, by inquiring into my fears of freedom, I’ve discovered pleasure with releasing my ego. And deepening receptivity to what might arise when I do. There’s a confidence in being and so I’m freed up to take in new insights.
I’ve discovered depths of self-love I hadn’t believed possible. Where normally there would have been thoughts in my head, now, quite often, there is spacious awareness.
How I am in my outer life has changed as well. I used to be much more driven and competitive, always trying to surpass my own or others’ accomplishments. Through my inquiries, I saw the history behind my need to succeed. But it was awareness, understanding, compassion, and many other essential qualities of being that released me — not an idea that I should be different.
I have a lot more equanimity, more generosity, and kindness of spirit toward myself and others. My work in the world has always had an element of service, now more than ever. I love to incorporate inquiry into my work with counseling and coaching clients and they tell me how much they appreciate the flow and openness, richness, precision, and potential of inquiry.
An inquiry into spaciousness
Earlier, I posed a repeating question inquiry: What’s right about having a position? In that inquiry, maybe you saw something of how your positions support your egoic sense of self. And perhaps in seeing some of your positions from a more neutral place, more space freed up inside you or something else has shifted.
Here’s another inquiry, focused more directly on the inner experience of space and awareness. You could do the inquiry as a reflection or by journaling. Total time: 10–20 minutes.
Part 1: If you like, in this moment, take a pause to notice your body, your breath, your feet (or whatever helps you feel grounded and present).
Part 2: Notice your experience of being alive and aware right now. Can you sense your body boundaries? Your skin against your clothes, the air along your cheek? How else do you notice your body boundaries?
And what’s inside? The texture of thoughts? Any stress or tension patterns? No need to change them — simply notice what the content of your experience is.
Allow compassion for yourself, if you can. Allow yourself to embrace your experience fully in the now. Do this for 5–10 minutes.
Part 3: Now switch from noticing the content of your experience to your sense of space, awareness, or emptiness. How do you experience spaciousness? More within? Or permeating? Constricted? Or vast? Clear? Or dense? Again simply noticing, this time qualities of space in your awareness. No need to analyze, just simply noticing. Do this for about the same amount of time as you did the first parts.
Part 4: Reflect back on your whole experience in the inquiry. Do you feel grounded? Check your feet, breathe. How’s your heart? Your body? Your mind?
Inquiry is unique to each person. And inquiry is unique each time we engage. You can return to these questions as often as you like.
Here are some books about Diamond Inquiry: Diving in the Inner Ocean: An Introduction to Personal Transformation through Diamond Inquiry by Dominic Liber (Sept 2021). The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence by AH Almaas and Soul without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within by Byron Brown
For an easy way to support your inquiry practice, check out my: Simple Benefits of Practicing Breath and Meditation: with How-to Videos. You might also enjoy my posts about family constellations (as seen on Netflix, Sex, Love & goop, ep. 5), nature constellations and a new and powerful hybrid of inquiry and constellations to confront our collective shadow.
