Latest / Deep Transformation / Midwifing the Diamond Approach: How the Teaching Found and Transformed Hameed Ali & Karen Johnson
Transcript
- 0:25I'm delighted to welcome you to the first episode of the Jeweleded Path series with Karen Johnson and A.
- 0:31H.
- 0:31Almaas, AKA Hameed Ali, co founders of the Diamond Approach and the Ridwan School.
- 0:37These conversations are drawn from Karen's autobiography, the Jeweled Path, which covers the beginnings of a spiritual school and what it was like to be a part of the birthing of the Diamond Approach Spiritual Path.
- 0:51Welcome to Deep Transformation, Self, Society, Spirit, Life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr.
- 1:02Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.
- 1:07I'm Roger Walsh and we have the pleasure of having with us two guests today.
- 1:13Over the last year we've been dialoguing with Hameed Ali, who was a founder of the Diamond Approach work and we have gone through.
- 1:22Hameed has presented an overview of this school, this spiritual path.
- 1:29And today we have the extraordinary privilege of also having Karen Johnson, a co founder of this remarkable path.
- 1:37And Karen is the author of an amazing book, the Jeweleded Path, subtitled the Biography of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization.
- 1:49It's an amazing book in many ways.
- 1:52It's part biographical, it's part autobiographical, and it's part of biography of the revelations that led to the Diamond Approach.
- 2:02So it's many things and it's very rich.
- 2:06As John and I got into it, the more we got into it, the more we realized just how much there was in this book.
- 2:11And so today we are just delighted to have Karen with us.
- 2:16And let me say that in asking a first question, Karen, your description is unique in at least two ways in spiritual literature, as far as I can see.
- 2:27First, because most accounts of the founding of a spiritual tradition are written often generations later by followers.
- 2:40So it's unique that you're giving us a contemporary account of the birth of a new tradition.
- 2:47And second, it's remarkable and unique in that this path was birthed by two people working together who resonated with and facilitated each other's openings and discoveries.
- 3:01So perhaps we could begin by you saying something about, in retrospect, what do you think it was about your individual qualities and the quality of the relationship you held that allowed you to be the vessels for this new
- 3:16transmission.
- 3:17That's a very big question.
- 3:19But I'll begin with saying that I think the actual initiate was Hameed, that he was the one that actually began to have the experiences, the insights and waiting and simmering with it, and then began to share those.
- 3:42And that's when me and friends and so on started to get engaged.
- 3:49And I just stayed as a close member of that little tribe.
- 3:56But Hameed was really this.
- 3:58I kept seeing him as this diamond spearhead into the world.
- 4:03And.
- 4:04And as we got closer and as time went on, I became more and more engaged, involved, and participating.
- 4:12And I think you'll read in the book when that took hold and when it started to elaborate itself through me as well.
- 4:21And then the interaction and communication began to be more and more mutual as time went on.
- 4:31But he was really the instrument at first.
- 4:35But it's hard to say, you know, who is, who's not.
- 4:39Hameed never owned it as his own.
- 4:41He took it as the teachings coming through.
- 4:45And it's needing voice, it's needing awareness and consciousness to articulate, systematize, synthesize, you know, bring it into some kind of a clarity to be able to be spoken and transmitted.
- 5:02But he never and still doesn't see it as his.
- 5:06And I feel the same that there's instruments for this to come through, there's vessels, and there's many now that are really being able to live and hold and articulate the teaching.
- 5:19So that's the beauty of it.
- 5:21But the relationship I feel we have with was really a beautiful beginning.
- 5:29Just as we met, there was something there that I knew.
- 5:35So whatever that was, feels like that was the spark of the teaching that was recognized in each other.
- 5:42I never would have thought it then.
- 5:44I never would have said it that way.
- 5:47I just saw that smile, and my heart opened, and it was lovely.
- 5:53And I didn't see him again for several years.
- 5:56Yeah.
- 5:57That one meeting in your place in Oakland.
- 5:58You write about the book.
- 6:00Yeah.
- 6:01So that was a moment that was like, unlike any other moment in my life.
- 6:07And at the time, I was very shy.
- 6:11I didn't make eye contact with people.
- 6:13I just was hiding behind a curtain of hair.
- 6:18But he walked in.
- 6:20I heard that kerplunking of the crutch.
- 6:23I looked up, and he was standing right above me.
- 6:26I was on the ground, on the floor, on the rug in our living room, my living room at the time.
- 6:33And I looked up, and there was just this skinny guy with straggly black hair, with a smile that reached beyond his face, just gleaming.
- 6:45So kind of innocent and open, and no one had ever felt that way.
- 6:52To me, it was the beginning of a lot of things.
- 6:55So you could look at the way the roles had changed and evolved and all of that.
- 7:02But there was something that was precious and present from the start.
- 7:07I asked Hameed early on in our conversations, why you, Hameed?
- 7:11Why did this stuff come from you?
- 7:12And he said, I had loving parents I was like, what a beautiful answer.
- 7:15It really stuck with me.
- 7:17I think that's a level of humility that he has.
- 7:21I mean, I think a lot of people have loving parents and therefore have healthy structures and are open and have more of the goodness coming through and all of that.
- 7:31I think there was a need for the teaching to find its way.
- 7:37And sometimes I see it like the way there's water under the earth and it finds its way through the correct dirt and the correct path upward and starts to have a stream and it just finds its way.
- 7:53And I feel like the teaching does that, that it found him not as a chosen or something very.
- 8:03He had somehow the right soul, the right openness, the right timing.
- 8:10Something was available and it found its way.
- 8:15I mean, who knows?
- 8:15The why questions are difficult ones to answer.
- 8:19The fact that it happened that way is the blessing.
- 8:23And it happened not just through Hameed, but as it's evolved through your mutual facilitation.
- 8:32So there was something.
- 8:34Something going on there between you and with you.
- 8:37And part of it is clearly, is that both of you had a profound dedication to inner work and to truth, to exploring, to opening, to awakening.
- 8:49And that, as you describe in the book, endless hours of conversation and co exploration.
- 8:55So maybe you could say something about that.
- 8:58That was effortless.
- 8:59There was a draw.
- 9:00And that's part of the feeling that was there at that first meeting was a draw.
- 9:06And it wasn't like I pondered it for years and wondered if I'd ever meet this person again.
- 9:11But when I saw him again after a couple of years, there was a feeling of draw, of an energy.
- 9:19So as we got to know each other and as life went on and we ended up living together in Colorado, we just wanted to be together as friends, as whatever it was.
- 9:32I'd go off to my house, cleaning jobs, and I couldn't wait to get back.
- 9:36So there was just this draw.
- 9:38It was effortless and there was curiosity and interest and learning about each other, our histories, but also find just curious about what we were experiencing, things that he was looking at and thinking about.
- 9:52And I was just fascinated.
- 9:55It was effortless.
- 9:56It wasn't like a discipline that we had to try to sit and.
- 10:01Okay, now we're going to inquire.
- 10:03No, it was like natural.
- 10:05It was easy.
- 10:06It was effortless.
- 10:07And as experiences started to show up, they were just compelling us to understand them.
- 10:14It was like being drawn into a vortex.
- 10:18It felt like an effortless move, like moving down a stream and getting into the rapids and just letting it take us wherever it took us.
- 10:27And this has both a personal and significance and a significance for the tradition here.
- 10:33But then there's also a larger cultural significance in that.
- 10:37There's a lot of talk these days about relationship as a spiritual path.
- 10:41But you did it, and you did it in a way.
- 10:44The two of you did it in a way which allowed this new teaching to come forth.
- 10:51And in some ways, you are both, as you describe.
- 10:54You're both instruments or receptacles for this transmission.
- 11:01There's clearly something about both your own inner readiness and your dedication.
- 11:07Plus this chemistry, spiritual chemistry, that just allowed it to flow through you.
- 11:14I was thinking about that, Ann, a great Beatles fan.
- 11:18And you know, the Beatles, these four lads from Liverpool just came together.
- 11:22And there was this incredible explosion of creativity.
- 11:26You know, these four, you know, working class guys.
- 11:29And seven years they did their whole opus.
- 11:32And it reminded me, when I was listening to you guys, when you started in that deep exploration.
- 11:37I mean, the lights were going on and all these revelations were coming through.
- 11:41It's just, you know, sometimes the right people get together in history.
- 11:45You have 5th century Athens.
- 11:46You have the Golden Age of Islamic 800, 1100 in Baghdad, where all these amazing things happened.
- 11:53And then Paris and London and even the 60s and the 70s too, in the Bay Area.
- 11:59These things just came together.
- 12:01The stars were in alignment.
- 12:03To me, it's very, very exciting to see, you know, to have you guys here and just talk about it.
- 12:08Well, one of the important things I think that you bring up, too, is about this path that does bring out the possibilities of relationship.
- 12:18That it has a personal element.
- 12:21And that personal element is a true person.
- 12:25Not the person of history, not the person of ego structure.
- 12:30But also not dismissing ego structure, but seeing that as really the first step in the development of what a person can be.
- 12:41And to bring presence and the light to that.
- 12:45But it takes rubbing up against your issues and difficulties and each other and working things out.
- 12:54And Hameed and I had plenty of that, too.
- 12:58It wasn't like, oh, this is a relationship made in heaven and everything is just dandy.
- 13:03No, there were times of conflict and anger and difficulties and misunderstandings and all kinds of things.
- 13:13But it meant really being devoted to the truth, not to one another.
- 13:19And that's another thing.
- 13:22We never took what each other said as truth.
- 13:25It had to be verifiable.
- 13:27It had to be, you know, well, that's not my experience.
- 13:31And some of our experiences differed.
- 13:34And we needed to find, well, what's the common ground to that?
- 13:36What's the truth?
- 13:37What's the Zen diagram here.
- 13:40Where does it overlap?
- 13:41And starting to see that there's different angles to different ways of experiencing things.
- 13:48So the personal element in our path is one of the things that actually, I feel is a major contribution for our work.
- 13:58It's not just the individual consciousness and understanding our soul.
- 14:03But how that soul matures and develops to appreciate the uniqueness that's inseparable from the expanse of our nature.
- 14:14And that means working it out.
- 14:17It means dealing with the nasty stuff, the difficulties, history, all of the relationships you ever had that come into it.
- 14:26And that is also the positive, the idealizing of things.
- 14:30The idealizing of a relationship and not having to have that in a way, to be yourself.
- 14:37So these are all different ways in which Hameed and I got into the grit and the difficult bits.
- 14:43And the admitting to not having our full now ness forefront at those times.
- 14:52So that's what brought about more and more understanding of what it means to have a real relationship that evolves and continues and develops into areas that we never knew.
- 15:05I mean, things that you can't even call a relationship.
- 15:09When you have certain kinds of unity and certain ways in which that overlap actually produces that third element that a relationship can bring.
- 15:21And that third element is like a.
- 15:24It's beyond merging.
- 15:25It's like a whole universe of possibilities that can come about.
- 15:30That one person alone does not have that potential for.
- 15:36So I have no doubt that Hameed's bringing the teaching in.
- 15:40And was kind of the first initiate, the first guinea pig, he calls it.
- 15:44The teaching would have happened regardless of who he was around.
- 15:49But because there were others.
- 15:51And because of our relationship developing the way it did.
- 15:56It has brought out things that I think we both agree couldn't have happened without someone else.
- 16:02Another being who has a certain mutuality and synergy.
- 16:07I think one thing too important to see here.
- 16:11Is that in the beginning we were talking like friends about normal, ordinary thing.
- 16:16Little by little, the teachings started emerging as part of the discussion tazzle.
- 16:23Talking about ordinary things most of the time.
- 16:26So we're friends, we were roommates and stuff, talking about normal life thing.
- 16:31And then the experiences will come in.
- 16:34But the point I want to make is that the fact that there was dialogue about the experiences and discussion and exchange.
- 16:44That developed later in the teaching as what we call the practice of inquiry.
- 16:49Because our conversation turned more and more into inquiry into experience.
- 16:55Which would start as social conversation became inquiry into experience.
- 17:00Which then translated in the teaching.
- 17:03As a teacher working with a student as an inquiry.
- 17:08That's why we have personal you know, each student have a personal teacher where they do inquiry with them.
- 17:14You know, as Karen was saying, that's one of the things that distinguishes the diamond approach is that emphasis on the personal as well as the ultimate ground of being.
- 17:24I mean, the pearl of great price.
- 17:25You emphasize that.
- 17:27And you can really see in this book how you guys were growing psychologically and spiritually and going through your things together.
- 17:34And you had Faisal in there, very important part of it.
- 17:37And then like the Beatles, you know, they broke up along the way, and things continued to flow.
- 17:41But I was also fascinated about Hameed's beginnings.
- 17:44He was born in Kuwait, and this was before the oil boom, and it was still a British colony.
- 17:49And he was the oldest of eight children.
- 17:52I mean, that's a big deal in a family order.
- 17:54And very loving parents.
- 17:56And I don't think they had television and telephones or any of that stuff back then.
- 18:00It was a very.
- 18:01Compared to our experience in the west at that time.
- 18:04Very simple, simplified life.
- 18:06And later on, I think through 62.
- 18:08Was it 62, that Kuwait, it was a British colony and broke away.
- 18:12And the oil started coming, money came in, and they started investing in their people, I suppose.
- 18:18And I mean, you got to come over to the United States and you went through.
- 18:22I don't know how many years at Berkeley studying physics.
- 18:25And you were already were teaching and you had your own office and you were working on your dissertation.
- 18:32And just the inner call.
- 18:35I mean, there's a lot of it.
- 18:36Everybody, apparently, you're very popular.
- 18:38They wanted to keep the.
- 18:39You wanted to become a professor.
- 18:41And you said, no, I can't do this.
- 18:42You said, you're actually falling asleep when you're writing your dissertation.
- 18:45And you started.
- 18:46And then you went off and went through a period of incredible heroic exploration and working on yourself and therapy and meditation and yoga.
- 18:56And there were so many kind of amazing teachers floating around in the Bay Area at that time.
- 19:01And that was just like.
- 19:02I mean, you work your ass off to have the grace of mastery, I guess.
- 19:06You know, you really, really were dedicated.
- 19:09And it was very courageous just to drop what you're doing and say this destiny or mission that was calling you, and you went with it.
- 19:16That's true.
- 19:17That's how it went.
- 19:18And Karen, at that time, she was an artist.
- 19:21She was studying art.
- 19:22So that's.
- 19:23Her background is more in the arts.
- 19:25Later on, she studied psychology.
- 19:27But what's funny about the story of Hameed is that that story has come up several times, how he made the switch.
- 19:35But one of the really interesting moments where he recognized this is not for me, is when he went into the cafeteria and saw the guys sitting around and they were all these brilliant heads without much going on anywhere
- 19:51else.
- 19:51And he said, I don't want to be like that.
- 19:54And I think that story is so great.
- 19:56I mean, I could just see him looking, going, what is that what I'm going to turn into?
- 20:02And that was a moment of recognition that this was not for him.
- 20:07But I do have to say that the training of becoming a scientist and working the way he did gave him the kind of discernment and capacity for synthesis that enabled him to really systematize experience, which is really an
- 20:29important part of a spiritual path.
- 20:33That there's a system.
- 20:34It isn't the experience or the actual realization, but it is the step by step process of how things evolved and grew and developed.
- 20:47And the very specific and clear ways in which our path moved through various hurdles and opened up to experience is so instrumental in what we do.
- 21:04And he had that kind of training to do that.
- 21:08So it was useful and it was important and it was great that he recognized, nope, this isn't the direction.
- 21:14I need another way.
- 21:16Since you've raised this, Karen, it brings up the question initially, Hameed, and then both of you resonated through the.
- 21:25A remarkable array of profound openings and states of consciousness and insights.
- 21:30To what extent was the coherence of these experiences apparent and lend itself easily to formulating a path for others?
- 21:43And to what extent did you have to kind of go back and reflect and synthesize?
- 21:49There's two vantage points to look at this from.
- 21:52As we were moving through things, it was these amazing wisdom vehicles, we call them, were coming through.
- 22:01And we experienced every single nuance of each one.
- 22:08And we started to see the patterns of these presences showing up and the issues that were barriers to them.
- 22:18And there was kind of a.
- 22:19We started to see that there was a.
- 22:21A pretty systematic way they were coming through and developing at some point.
- 22:27But also as things went on, Hameed kept journals that really indicated every single thing that was happening.
- 22:37Every day he would make entries.
- 22:39Mine were less elaborate and more based on the issues that I was looking at things that were coming through, but they weren't as disciplined, which is what made me go back to school.
- 22:51I realized I had to get more discipline in terms of my mind and getting a little bit more capable of articulation and so on.
- 22:59But he kept great journals and notes and that helped to look back on.
- 23:04These are things that are very.
- 23:07They follow each other In a very particular linear way, Even though experientially they weren't so linear.
- 23:15But also there'd be explosions at various times for Hameed, he'd get an entire vehicle of wisdom, and then each nuance would come.
- 23:27Each part of it would start to show up for me.
- 23:32I would go through one and the other, and issues would follow, and then I'd have an explosion at the end.
- 23:41So it was very, very, very different kind of process.
- 23:45But in writing the book, I realized that the journals were a very important part of keeping track, of being able to track the experiences and make sense of them along the way.
- 23:59But it was a very long while before we realized that this was a teaching that would actually outlive the founders or anybody here now who's actually becoming a vessel.
- 24:12And that's when we realized, well, this is a teaching.
- 24:15It's got all the earmarks of a teaching.
- 24:17It's got a cosmology.
- 24:19There's a relationship of the individual to the greater whole.
- 24:24There's ways in which these things are coming through.
- 24:27And that other people were beginning to get the transmissions without talking about them.
- 24:34And that's a really important thing.
- 24:36When Hameed was first working with people, he was just inquiring with them through various.
- 24:44The issues that would come up in their life.
- 24:46And they would start to talk about them, and the inquiry would lead to kinds of openings that would bring out spirit in various ways, bring in the essential qualities.
- 25:00And this was prior to any teaching that had been done.
- 25:05And then he began to teach about them.
- 25:07So that's when we recognized this isn't just about what we're going through.
- 25:13This is something that other people are catching, that other people are part of.
- 25:19And that's when you realize that there was a teaching, a new teaching.
- 25:22Something new was emerging from all this.
- 25:25Yes.
- 25:26Yeah.
- 25:27That was one stage when recognition.
- 25:30It's a teaching.
- 25:31It's not just for me or for me and Karen.
- 25:35And one important thing I wanted to say here is that the way the teaching was arriving is not like I had an awakening.
- 25:44Many teachers talk about it.
- 25:45I had this awakening, and then I started teaching.
- 25:47It's not like I had this big, explosive awakening.
- 25:50And then from then I became a teacher.
- 25:53It was a stream of experience, stream of awakenings that was emerging spontaneously.
- 26:00I mean, it's true.
- 26:01I was meditating regularly.
- 26:03It wasn't like I was spending my day meditating.
- 26:06I only meditate, like, half an hour in the morning.
- 26:08That's about it.
- 26:10And then the experiences will happen at any time.
- 26:13And then like the emergence of eruptions of experiences and realization and insights and sentences that were happening in, you know, in spite of me and Karen.
- 26:27And they were just.
- 26:29It's like, that's why we say it's a teaching.
- 26:31That using us was just emerging, exploding into the scene, and it was revealing more and more of itself until it became clear to us that it is really a teaching not just for us and just personal experience.
- 26:49It wasn't just transforming my experience, it is for others.
- 26:52Especially because I was getting things that I myself didn't need.
- 26:56I said, why am I getting those?
- 26:59And then I realized some of the student I was working with needed them.
- 27:02So it sounds as though the recognition that you were receiving a path for more than yourselves was a conclusion you reached rather than a kind of transmission itself.
- 27:14Is that correct?
- 27:15Yeah, it was like an understanding or some recognition.
- 27:19Well, also the fact that it was functioning similarly for others as we investigated things, that same kind of awareness would start to happen.
- 27:31So it was a slow moving thing.
- 27:33But I remember it took several years of that occurring before there was actually a recognition that this is something different, this is something new.
- 27:45And it was also after visiting many, many teachers and seeing that what we were doing and what was happening to us was different from what was happening to others.
- 27:55Although there were overlaps, there were similarities, but we kept searching for others who would be able to impart some kind of wisdom about what was going on with us.
- 28:06We didn't find it.
- 28:07We found some things, but we did not find that.
- 28:11And that turned us back to ourselves and what was happening as something that was just coming.
- 28:17It wasn't like, oh, we need to follow this, we need to come up with a system.
- 28:22We did not come up with the system.
- 28:25The system came up with us.
- 28:29We, in fact, I don't know who called us founders because I feel like that isn't exactly right.
- 28:35We didn't find anything.
- 28:37It found a way and it came.
- 28:41And that's really the miracle of it.
- 28:43And we don't know why, but we know that it is.
- 28:48So that's part of it.
- 28:50That's amazing.
- 28:51There's no answer to that.
- 28:53I think the bulk details of the, especially the first few years was like a torrent of experiences and realization.
- 29:01They were emerging on their own, unbidden, unexpected and frequently unknown.
- 29:07Not known for the first time.
- 29:10We weren't doing it.
- 29:11I wasn't doing it.
- 29:12I wasn't trying to make it happen.
- 29:13I wasn't expecting it to happen.
- 29:15Things will just emerge.
- 29:17Like every day there's something new Emerging and exploding into consciousness.
- 29:22And I will talk with Karen about it, and she will corroborate it because she was very receptive to my, you know, communication.
- 29:32If I talk to her about certain states, she started experiencing it different from talking to other students.
- 29:38You know, it takes a while for others to get it.
- 29:40She was very receptive that way.
- 29:43That was part of that feeling at that very first meeting was an openness between us, an openness and a certain kind of innocence in that openness that just continued through time.
- 29:57But the other thing is that I want to say that I think is really important is I was.
- 30:03It was easy for me to have the experiences.
- 30:06It was easy for me to get into them.
- 30:09However, that did not mean that the stream was realized yet for me.
- 30:16When Hameed actually poured that substance into my hand and I felt lit up, that's when it took hold and never left.
- 30:27Experiences came and went before then.
- 30:30I felt depth, I felt presence.
- 30:33I felt all kinds of things, but they were coming and going.
- 30:36When that happened, that's when it seemed like something took hold.
- 30:41And that's when that stream started to push forward and the energy of it started to continue to elaborate itself.
- 30:53So experience versus awakening, two really different things.
- 30:59Yeah, and thank you for bringing that up.
- 31:01And, Karen, that's such a remarkable story of transmission and of stabilization.
- 31:08So it'd be beautiful if you'd tell listeners what actually happened for you.
- 31:13At what point?
- 31:14Well, either you give an account of just what you said, but you gave a more detailed account in the book of an actual moment in which Hameed transmits.
- 31:23Poured it into your hand, basically.
- 31:25Yeah.
- 31:25Yeah.
- 31:26I mean, we were discussing something.
- 31:28We were inquiring and looking at stuff, and I had had experiences.
- 31:34I knew what presence was.
- 31:35But the interesting thing about presence is if you talk about it when it's not there, it's just an idea, because presence is only now.
- 31:43So we were talking about it, but it became obvious that I wasn't in it at that moment.
- 31:49To me, it was obvious, and I was talking about it as a memory.
- 31:52Now, that can bring it back.
- 31:54We were sitting in my living room in Denver, and something inspired Hameed to have me reach my hand out.
- 32:04I don't know what that was.
- 32:05I can't remember at this moment.
- 32:07I didn't read that part of the book lately.
- 32:12But it was as if he was swirling his hand in the air, drawing and distilling something.
- 32:21And I could almost see his hand becoming weighty.
- 32:26And he said, put your hand out.
- 32:27And he poured this substance into my hand and this was after years of conversation and experiences, mind you.
- 32:39And I felt immediately a weighty fullness that felt like a glowing.
- 32:47I could see it in my mind's eye, but I also could feel it like a glow, a warmth, but a fullness that began to penetrate throughout my body.
- 33:01It was almost like liquid light mixed with tapioca pudding.
- 33:08I can't even explain the kind of fullness.
- 33:10And it just went through me entirely, all the way.
- 33:15And I felt overtaken by it.
- 33:19And it was a very full bodied, complete sense of things waking up in a fullness that felt beyond fleshy.
- 33:29It wasn't my body anymore.
- 33:33It felt like I was a body of light, of fullness, of presence.
- 33:38I mean, I couldn't call it anything else, but it was complete nowness embodied.
- 33:44So that moment was the time that I felt like my consciousness.
- 33:48And that became in union, I felt united with it.
- 33:54And Karen, I want to say that there's something doubly powerful about that experience.
- 34:01And that not only did it give you this incredible sense of wakefulness, but that it lasted.
- 34:07It became what I guess the Sufis would call a station, a permanent way of being for you.
- 34:14And that transmission comes through both in the book and in your description.
- 34:20I mean, I'm just right now so incredibly alert and awake in resonance with you.
- 34:27Unfortunately, when I read the book, it didn't stay become a station for me, but at least I got a temporary transmission.
- 34:35Well, it is a kind of clarity, vibrancy, fullness, settledness, all at once.
- 34:43But I do have to say that there were times of what I mean by it stayed with me.
- 34:49There were times when I wasn't attending to it, or forgetfulness of it, or a barrier or an issue would come.
- 34:55And it wasn't dominate.
- 34:57But if I really settled and felt in that was there, you had access to it in some fashion.
- 35:04The access was something that remained constant.
- 35:09So that fullness itself wasn't what stayed.
- 35:14What stayed was its core of me.
- 35:17And it felt like it had then an intelligence and a force that was pushing everything out for me to see that was in its way.
- 35:29And that's what amplified my process and brought me much more into really confronting and dealing with what those barriers and difficulties were.
- 35:40Parts of myself that I didn't want to see.
- 35:42Things that weren't spiritual, things that weren't nice, but that was there.
- 35:50And I felt that as a pressure to.
- 35:54To look, to see, to be curious about the things I didn't want to be interested in.
- 35:59That it made me look.
- 36:01Sounds like you're giving a beautiful example of what seems like more of a general principle, that when there is some kind of opening or awakening, it kind of flushes out into awareness the blocks and barriers to the full
- 36:16expression of that.
- 36:17I think it can.
- 36:18I don't think it always does.
- 36:20I think for some people, you can go into the awakening and there's practices of how to not attend to these other things.
- 36:30But that doesn't enable one to become a full human being.
- 36:34It enables one to be transcendent and beyond this world, which I think is fine.
- 36:41That isn't how this happened.
- 36:43To really become that pearl beyond price means looking at the gritty bits.
- 36:49And that's what makes a pearl shiny.
- 36:53That's what brings out its luminosity, is looking at the sand, the stuff in your sunburned bed, that makes you want to move away from it.
- 37:03You know, it's really what brings out that luminosity to being a human being in the world, being present, being now, being personal and naked to what it is to be fully there.
- 37:18Hameed, I wanted to ask, what was it like when Karen's describing her experience?
- 37:24Do you remember when this happened and what.
- 37:26What were you experiencing when this transmission happened?
- 37:30And you poured this into her hand and it was this.
- 37:32Do you remember what that was like or how that was for you?
- 37:36Yeah, I remember the time, and we were talking about it, and I wanted her to know from experience, not just we're talking about it.
- 37:43At that time, I had the capacity to be able to collect presents in my hand and give it away, you know, So, I mean, Karen's one of the few people where I actually poured it into her hand, her
- 37:57palm, her hand.
- 37:59And she was receptive enough not only to feel in her hand, but for it to penetrate, to go in, to go other people.
- 38:07I gave it differently.
- 38:08Sometime I throw it to somebody's head.
- 38:12What's interesting to me, though, about that moment wasn't that it was transmission, that it was some big spiritual thing.
- 38:19He was making a point at the moment that wasn't verbal.
- 38:24He was bringing something into the conversation that wasn't about.
- 38:28Talking about was something of.
- 38:33For some reason, it felt like just the right exclamation point upon which I needed to sit.
- 38:41I needed to get that.
- 38:43This experience isn't just an experience.
- 38:45This is what you are.
- 38:48That was the feeling.
- 38:50And so it wasn't like, okay, hold on, I'm going to transmit.
- 38:55I'm going to do this.
- 38:56Really important.
- 38:58No, it wasn't like it was in the spirit of a loving friendship And a good conversation.
- 39:06And it was part of the conversation, so it felt normal and completely out of this world at the same time.
- 39:14And that's what that time was like.
- 39:18Our conversations happened in the grocery store.
- 39:21They happened in the living room.
- 39:22They happened on the way to work.
- 39:25You remember when we had those amazing revelations in the bars, in the bar.
- 39:30We're having drinks and there's a new state arises.
- 39:35In Potter's Bar in downtown Boulder.
- 39:40We're sitting there having a drink after one of his meetings down there, and I was ferrying him back and forth from Denver.
- 39:48And we're sitting there, and all of a sudden our whole vantage point changed.
- 39:55And we got this sense of pure awareness as this little bubble of awareness in the middle of the bar.
- 40:03And everything receded.
- 40:05And we were this clear bubble of perception.
- 40:09Now, mind you, this was not when we were in what we call the second turning of boundlessness.
- 40:16This was within our individual consciousness where this whole, what we call the first turning happened with all of these incredible spiritual experiences.
- 40:27But they were in the midst of life, and this was in the middle of Potter's Bar.
- 40:32That's where we recognized what we call the bubble of perception, which I think is the way that pure awareness shows up within the individual consciousness, that you don't have to be in the expanse to have that experience.
- 40:47So that was really.
- 40:48Remember that meal?
- 40:49That was.
- 40:50It was breathtaking.
- 40:51That was fun.
- 40:52I mean, we were.
- 40:57That's our.
- 40:58Was our biggest fun was having those kind of experiences and talking about them and exchanging them.
- 41:03And we're looking around going, I don't think anybody knows what's going on over here.
- 41:09Well, next time I'm in town, I'm going to be heading for Potter's Bar.
- 41:13It's not there anymore, actually.
- 41:19I don't know.
- 41:20It was the bar or.
- 41:21No, but I mean, can you say more about what allowed you to do this?
- 41:28Because transmission is, in some traditions, very important part of the path.
- 41:34And yet it's even.
- 41:36Well, the Dalai Lama was asked about transmission once because people have these transmission experiences around him.
- 41:42And his response was, it's a mystery which is not terribly satisfying.
- 41:48But could you say more about it?
- 41:50What do you have a sense of what allowed you to do this?
- 41:53Well, at that time, like when I gave Cannon the transmission, I didn't know I could do it.
- 42:00I didn't do it before.
- 42:01It was the first time.
- 42:02So just occurred to me.
- 42:04Well, I was feeling it.
- 42:06I was the fullness of it.
- 42:07And I could feel it like something substantial there and filling Me filling my asshole.
- 42:14And I was able to twirl my hand and collects it in my hand.
- 42:19And.
- 42:20And I felt I could pour it.
- 42:22And I did, and it worked.
- 42:23So you just felt spontaneous guidance?
- 42:26Yeah.
- 42:27I didn't even know that would have worked, but I.
- 42:29But I had confidence somehow that something would happen.
- 42:33So had confidence that I could give it to her.
- 42:37I was telling her, basically, that is what I am experiencing.
- 42:42Yeah.
- 42:42Apparently the conversation wasn't working, so we tried something else.
- 42:48But also I could say something about transmission that I've learned.
- 42:52Which is that transmission isn't always a substance being given.
- 43:00Or something being targeting someone or a crowd.
- 43:04It isn't really something going from somewhere to something.
- 43:09I see it more as being some kind of.
- 43:14I guess you could look at it as a vibration that hits a tuning fork.
- 43:19That presence, really in the expanse or whatever it is you're experiencing.
- 43:25Is something that is really beyond time and space.
- 43:30So when you are that and someone is receptive.
- 43:34That is something that they can feel.
- 43:39And it's immediate.
- 43:41And it doesn't mean it's going from you to someone.
- 43:44It's not a gift you give.
- 43:46It's a resonance with what is there.
- 43:51And so it's not exactly something that you're offering, giving, whatever.
- 43:56Although, in that case, there was actually substance that he wanted to convey.
- 44:02Because we deal with substance, not just space, not just spaciousness.
- 44:08But actually the palpable sense of presence.
- 44:11But transmission has many ways that it could be looked at.
- 44:15But this is one that I've understood for some time.
- 44:18And just being in dialogue can be a transmission.
- 44:22That energetic interaction.
- 44:24When you walk into a room and someone's been mad, you feel it.
- 44:29I mean, you're transmitting all kinds of stuff all the time.
- 44:36Everybody's a transmitter and a receiver.
- 44:39So the spiritual transmission is when somebody's actually in touch with that which is beyond time and space.
- 44:46And someone else resonates with that.
- 44:49That's deeper than these other areas of their psyche or consciousness, I think.
- 44:55You know, these days when people talk about transmission.
- 44:59They think of the Tibetan way of doing it.
- 45:01Or the Indian way of doing it.
- 45:03Where the teacher sit and does some kind of practice, some kind of ritual.
- 45:08And the students are there and to get that transmission.
- 45:12But, you know, other traditions, like, you know, Christian and Sufi.
- 45:17You know, the teacher hugs the student, for instance.
- 45:20And the hug makes the transmission, for instance, just giving an embrace, you know, instead of doing a ritual.
- 45:26In our teaching, we don't do rituals at the present time.
- 45:30We do it is.
- 45:31We talk about the state we describe it.
- 45:34As we describe it, it gets activated.
- 45:37And the student consciousness, they're open.
- 45:40It activates that part in them that is similar.
- 45:43So it's not something given to another.
- 45:46It's more like an activation.
- 45:48It is sort of a communication with the energy present in it that will light up something in the student.
- 45:56It will emerge within them.
- 45:58So you're both using two main ideas here.
- 46:02One is resonance, and the other is a kind of evocation.
- 46:05And both of you are implying necessity for certain receptivity and the recipient.
- 46:11And, Karen, what you.
- 46:13It's clear from your writing that you had an extraordinary resonance.
- 46:19That, as you described, you know, Hameed would describe a new experience and you'd.
- 46:24Have it most of the time.
- 46:25That's how our communication works.
- 46:28We talk with each other, and whatever we talk about become mutual experience.
- 46:33Hameed, I wanted to go back to an important point in the book, and we've discussed this a little bit, but maybe your awakening experiences when you.
- 46:42Impactful, I might said, pun intended.
- 46:44You were walking in Berkeley, and I think you were still in grad school there studying physics, and a motorcycle slammed into you.
- 46:52And you go flying through the air, and you think you might have died, you know, actually physically.
- 46:57And people are surrounding you, and you're seeing yourself from above and seeing what's going on.
- 47:02And then you're in a hospital.
- 47:03And I think that's where you talked about the first time you had experience with Diamond.
- 47:06And presence became very important.
- 47:09So it was like a very powerful experience.
- 47:11And where normally we think of it as a disaster to get slammed into a motorcycle, it turned into an incredible, you know, blessing and seems like a very powerful move forward in your evolution and growth.
- 47:23Yeah, I would say that could be one of the big transitions in my life where I experienced something that began the process without me knowing it.
- 47:32It began something because afterward I was mostly in the hospital dealing with pain and stuff like that.
- 47:40But I think that's probably that experience is what made me at some point recognize in that cafeteria that those brilliant people there were mostly living from their heads and there was something else missing.
- 47:54Yeah.
- 47:55Yeah.
- 47:55I think, actually I'd like to insert something here, too, which is that both of us and others who've been engaged in the teaching all along the way have had many kinds of spiritual experiences.
- 48:07From expanse to various ways presence might have emerged.
- 48:12But the way that our teaching evolved was really going back to square one and dealing with different kinds of issues and difficulties and so on, when actually we had had many.
- 48:29I mean, Hameed had Felt expanses of all kinds in his work with other teachers.
- 48:35Many of our students come from traditions that have had many kinds of awakenings in the transcendent.
- 48:43But following this path is its very own kind of approach that brings out one's own unwinding in a way that really deals with the particulars of one's experience.
- 49:01And you go back into it, understanding it in a very different way.
- 49:06So like Hameed had had experiences of the absolute or this or that, all kinds of things we could name.
- 49:13But this experience was of the motorcycle accident and the diamond.
- 49:19This diamond structure actually brought in the way in which this path was refracting true nature in a very specific way.
- 49:32And that's what makes it different from other paths that we didn't recognize right away, but had to along the way.
- 49:41So this is actually what we call the guidance, diamond guidance.
- 49:49And the diamond guidance is the main vehicle that brought about the understanding and the method of inquiry.
- 50:01But also that we're a path of understanding.
- 50:04And that understanding is a full heart, belly mind, discerning affect and feeling of understanding.
- 50:15Not just an intellectual understanding, it's a complete kind of experiential understanding, but the ability to use mind and its discerning capacity and the precision of understanding and knowing.
- 50:32So that's also another important part of understanding this as a spiritual path.
- 50:38Like all paths have a lot of knowledge and that knowledge is very particular to those paths.
- 50:47So this is what I call the spearhead.
- 50:51That Hameed actually had that and brought that in.
- 50:57And that's what started the whole.
- 51:00The whole game rolling.
- 51:02It's very dramatic, powerful.
- 51:04Yeah.
- 51:05And one of the things you're implying here or pointing to is the inclusiveness of the diamond approach path.
- 51:12That one of the things that stands out in studying your both your work is that every experience, the nitty gritty of life, the transcendent, it's all fuel for the path and the practice.
- 51:28And there's not a.
- 51:29It's non dual in a very extremely encompassing way.
- 51:33Yeah.
- 51:34And non dual not just in terms of the expanse and everything's arising.
- 51:38No, it's like being the individual consciousness and all that goes with it and back to transmission.
- 51:47You are transmitting everything.
- 51:48You are a teacher isn't just transmitting all the goodies, they're also transmitting all the grit.
- 51:55And that as you realize as a teacher, you have a responsibility to look at that darkness and find out what it is and what's hiding there and what needs to come out.
- 52:06And also appreciating the darkness when it becomes luminous.
- 52:13Darkness isn't always about darkness.
- 52:16But if teachers don't do that, don't take the responsibility of working through their stuff, negative stuff that can really hurt the transmission and hurt their students.
- 52:23And they pass it on when it hasn't been processed well, it's bound to.
- 52:27Come out in relationship with their students, and it's bound to show up.
- 52:32And I know along the way I learned a lot, but by the difficulty students were having with me.
- 52:38And I had to look at my side of it and work it and then come in with helping them more to see, well, what got touched for them, but also to learn how to work the relationship in such
- 52:52a way where I was able to go, all.
- 52:55Right, yeah, I talk about the transmission, how of the transmits everything.
- 53:02It reminds me of the experience of receiving transmission of the karmape the 16th, the black hat ceremony, which, you know, gave me a headache for a year or so for a while.
- 53:14And when finally opened up, I recognized I wasn't just getting the state he was transmitting, which is, you know, what most people get.
- 53:23I got the whole path.
- 53:25I realized I would be talking with Kara.
- 53:28They were exploring that.
- 53:29What was emerging in me was the whole Kagyu karma, Kagyu lineage, the whole teaching as it developed, was emerging.
- 53:37He was transmitting all of that because that was all in him.
- 53:40And most people probably are not aware of that.
- 53:43They're just aware of the state they get right then.
- 53:46But usually, if you really are open to a transmission, he gets a lot more.
- 53:51But that did not mean that you ended up as a Kagyo Rinpoche or something like that.
- 53:57We remember as that was happening, we're also seeing how that is different from the stream we were into.
- 54:03Right.
- 54:04But that's part of the precision and clarity that mind offers is the ability to differentiate the different streams of teaching while being completely affected by them.
- 54:16So you learn, but for Hameed in particular, he could learn and bring it in and see the value of the perspective, but also what it meant in relationship to the particular path that we were on.
- 54:33And that began to happen for me as well as we began to study different teachings and different teachers, that I could feel that and begin to understand the differences, but also how that elaborated itself within our own path.
- 54:51So the second turning and getting into the great Expanse was a way in which many of those teachings actually brought about certain understandings that we might not have had without that influence and understanding.
- 55:04You know, I remember those discussions those years.
- 55:08For a long time, we didn't know that this path has anything different from other paths.
- 55:16We're always looking in other paths to find out where is it that they discuss or explore what we are experiencing.
- 55:24Because we believe other teachings must have.
- 55:27It must have the kind of experiences we have.
- 55:31Can't be just here.
- 55:32And took us many years to realize, yes, some were known by other teaching, but some we could never find in other teachings.
- 55:40We were looking for years, probably decades.
- 55:43Finally we sort of.
- 55:44We gave up.
- 55:45We said, well, that's what we know.
- 55:47Maybe it exists somewhere else, but we don't see it.
- 55:50So there's something unique about this teaching which makes it a new teaching that is emerging, that is seem to be appropriate for the times.
- 56:00Yeah, I remember those times.
- 56:01And it was sort of like standing on a hill going, hello, anybody else out there who knows what this is?
- 56:08Can you help us out?
- 56:09I mean, it was really kind of really uncharted territory in many respects.
- 56:14And it was like really wanting to find some way to talk about it or somebody who knew something, you know, a little support, it'd be nice.
- 56:24How about a little guidance over here?
- 56:26And we realized more and more that no, this is.
- 56:30We need to rely on ourselves and really be true to our experience.
- 56:34And it made us actually become more responsible about it also.
- 56:39It feels a little lonely sometimes, actually, to be honest.
- 56:44Yeah, you brought in comparison with other traditions and the way you looked for commonalities.
- 56:50And this brings in invites a comparison about your roles in bringing through new teaching and the extent to which two people working together have done that before.
- 57:02And I just don't know a lot of examples.
- 57:05The ones that come to mind are Aurobindo, the great Indian sage, and so called the Mother, as she was called.
- 57:13But I think she came in later, after Aurobindo had produced a lot of his teachings.
- 57:18And a more contemporary example is from a curiously titled path, the Course in Miracles, which was a channeled production.
- 57:30It's a Christian contemplative teaching.
- 57:32It also seems to be a whole path.
- 57:36And it came through an atheist Jewish professor of psychology who was supported very closely by her chairman at Columbia University.
- 57:49And between the two of them, they brought through over a period of several years.
- 57:53She was the transmitter and he was the supporter.
- 57:57And yeah, support I think, is the best word of this major body of work, which came through over a period of six years.
- 58:07But those are the only examples I know of.
- 58:10How about Rumi and Shams?
- 58:12Would that be something to look at?
- 58:13Yes, definitely, but I think there are others.
- 58:16But I think for a long time the female counterpart wasn't addressed much.
- 58:22And I Think that was sad.
- 58:24I think there are others.
- 58:26I think even Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.
- 58:29I think Mary Magdalene had a great deal to do with some of the things that came down there.
- 58:34The Gnostics provide us with some information about that.
- 58:39But I think there are others, and not just male, female, but like Shams and Rumi, that same kind of draw to one another.
- 58:49The kind of love they experienced was a spiritual camaraderie, was a way that they had spiritual conversation, a spiritual union amongst them.
- 59:00So I don't think it's unique to Hameed and I, but I think it isn't really given a lot of airtime or hasn't.
- 59:08And as we come towards the end of this dialogue, and I'm very happy to say we're going to have more, is there anything both of you would like to add?
- 59:19I just feel touched to be able to speak of these times.
- 59:24They were so rich and so beautiful and just.
- 59:28Your interest is heartening and lovely.
- 59:32I just appreciate the two of you very much and all of the voices that you bring in of people being able to experience so many lovely things.
- 59:43So thank you.
- 59:45Thank you.
- 59:46Anit, I would say one thing is that, you know, the book the Jeweleded Path is a kind of biography.
- 59:55So it has a lot of stories and.
- 59:57Yeah.
- 59:59So maybe we talked in general this time.
- 1:00:03So maybe next time you can pick on certain parts of it, certain entries from journals or things like that so you could bring out more of the history, more specific history about how things happened and developed.
- 1:00:18Might be instructive.
- 1:00:20Absolutely.
- 1:00:21I love that stuff.
- 1:00:22We'd love to.
- 1:00:23And I want to say that this book, the Jeweleded Path, the biography of the diamond approach to inner realization, is a.
- 1:00:31Yes, it's a book, and yes, it has stories and conceptual ideas, but it is also a transmission.
- 1:00:36I do want to say, Karen, that thank you very much for all your work in creating this amazing path and for writing this book and also for your time today.
- 1:00:46But I do want to say that I'm happy to report that the transition that occurred as you described, the transmission you received from Hameed is still with me.
- 1:00:56So I'm very grateful.
- 1:01:00So we'll see how long it lasts this time.
- 1:01:02I'm very happy.
- 1:01:03It is not mine to give, it is yours to be.
- 1:01:07And, Hameed, I just wanted.
- 1:01:08I didn't get to say this earlier, but I wanted to thank you for keeping these disciplined journals.
- 1:01:14You know, that's such a treasure and, you know, you use them in this really exciting book.
- 1:01:19I mean, excitement is palpable in this book.
- 1:01:22I mean, this unrolling of creativity and new path.
- 1:01:26Anyway, so thank you for that.
- 1:01:27It's deeply appreciated.
- 1:01:29Actually, this book is the only place you could find parts of my journal.
- 1:01:33So if anybody want to read parts of my journal, it's in this book.
- 1:01:36There's nowhere else written.
- 1:01:38Well, what about your memoir, Hameed?
- 1:01:40You did a little memoir?
- 1:01:42I'm trying to remember the name.
- 1:01:44Yeah, the midnight something.
- 1:01:46That one.
- 1:01:46Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 1:01:47That's what I.
- 1:01:49But that wasn't my journal.
- 1:01:50That's something I wrote.
- 1:01:51Ah, okay.
- 1:01:52All right.
- 1:01:53Yeah.
- 1:01:53To get into some of the specifics of the teaching and taking the spotlight off of us, because it's really about the teaching.
- 1:02:00Sure.
- 1:02:01That's the important piece.
- 1:02:03It's not the people.
- 1:02:04It's that I think you guys are important, and I would love to get more into it.
- 1:02:10You really have fascinating stories and.
- 1:02:12Yeah, I think you are important.
- 1:02:14You matter.
- 1:02:15We're in the matter.
- 1:02:16Anyway,.
- 1:02:18Thank you both very much indeed.
- 1:02:20Thank you so much.
- 1:02:22Good spending time.
- 1:02:24Take care.
- 1:02:25Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation.
- 1:02:28We hope that you were moved, as we are moved, being part of it ourselves.
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- 1:03:01Thank you for your presence, and thank you for all you are and all you do.
- 1:03:04We love you.