I've been meaning to post some things regarding Sufism/Diamond Approach/The Work and here it is.

Before you read, drop all of your opinions and just pretend for the time being that whatever text is posted here is the absolute truth. You need to have more of an open mind than you would normally have and the only way to achieve that is to just believe that what is being said here is true until you are done reading it.

Essence

There is something called your "Essence" that is within every living being. Essence is not something that is alive, it is aliveness. It is not aware, it is awareness (if that makes any sense). It is not a self image or something we identify ourselves with, it is consciousness and awareness. Everything that you do from writing a note to painting a landscape to watching TV are all expressions of Essence coming out from you. Even things like murder are expressions of Essence, however, how distorted it is is another matter.

Essence is not something that can be grasped by the mind or communicated with directly, yet it is what is sustaining everyones lives.

In short, Essence is sort of like a 'soul' except that souls are identified and single, distinct entities and Essence is not.


The Theory of Holes

When you are an infant, you do not recognize anything as part of anything else. In fact ,you are not even aware that you are a separate person. You do not have any concepts or ideas of the world, you are just aware. This is when Essence is most pure in humans.

As time goes by, you experience traumas. An exaggerated example: At the age of 2, a mother abandons her child, leaving him with an abusive father. When he lost contact with his mother, the personality that is developing around this child cannot tolerate the emotional pain of losing her, so the notion is simply pushed out of consciousness. When we lose consciousness of a certain aspect of ourselves, it is called a hole or a deficiency in your essence; a part of your essential self that has been cut off from your consciousness.

The hole mentioned above would later result in feelings that this child cannot be loved, so he tries to fill this gap by having lots of sex later in life.

The hole is father created by beating him would result in maybe trying to fight a lot to prove that he can defend himself or verbally attack others. Behaviors like this are attempts to cover up the hole in a really cheap and un-authentic way.

Nearly everyone in the world has many holes in their Essence. They are reflected all the time in things like senseless violence, gluttony, the need for superiority/power, reclusiveness, needing attention, suicide, being a work-addict, dressing strangely, taking drugs recklessly, complaining, and countless other behaviors.

In fact, most of our emotional and mental pain, discomfort and disconent are a result of hole in our Essence.



The Personality

The personality is something that is constructed around people that gives the mind a way to identify itself through things like achievements or knowledge of the world. The personality, or ego, does all that it can to stay away from situations that may cause anxiety.

To fill a hole - and I mean to fill it completely and forever - means experiencing the deficiency fully without pushing it away or wishing you weren't feeling a certain way or having any of those preferences or relations to past experiences.

Once your personality stops trying to keep away from holes and trying to defend itself against them, only then can it experience the deficiency completely.

The ego thinks that experiencing a hole means that it will experience severe anxiety, sadness, godknowswhat, but what happens is that there is just nothing, a very welcomed spaciousness and a quieting of a part of your mind.

When that opening is available, your Essence heals the hole completely and that deficiency is no longer a deficiency, but a part of your Essence that has been regained.


- - - - - - - - -


You are welcome to give critisism or praise, I don't really have much of a preference. This is (part of) what I believe is true. I am posting this mostly to see if it interests people. If it does, I'll post more related topics.

Comments are appreciated