Understanding Diamond Inquiry™
Diamond InquiryTM is the primary practice of the Diamond Approach. A holistic process guided by curiosity and pure love of the truth, Diamond Inquiry uses all facets of our being to delve into a deeper experiential understanding of reality. The text of this article is extrapolated and adapted from a talk A.H. Almaas addressed to students of the Diamond Approach in 1983.
What Is Inquiry?
Why are we here? Where are we going? These are profound existential questions we can spend a lifetime pursuing. But they are not questions we can answer solely with our mind. When we answer them with our mind, and we think we know, the question is gone. The questions are like a flame. If you answer them with your mind, you put out the flame.
How Do We Know Something is True?
Inquiry begins by questioning our assumptions about what we know. Do we know just because somebody said the path should be this way or that way? Most of the time, knowledge comes from your early childhood, from what happened. Some of it comes from hearing things, reading things. Some of it comes from some past experience. The conditioned part is completely useless in terms of knowing why we are here because that conditioned part is just a mechanism for survival. It has done its job.
The knowledge you got from others – teachers, school, reading, listening, hearing – even if it has been said by the great philosophers and the great teachers, how do you know that’s the truth? We comfort ourselves by believing that others know how we can use their knowledge. But you can’t truly “know” through these limited ways. You don’t really know until you know yourself, personally, experientially. Before that, it is belief, faith.
Your situation, your life, your mind are yours. They are you, and nobody can answer your questions for you, nobody can give it to you. Whatever answer comes from the outside, it is still an answer that belongs to the outside. You can try it on for size, but you have to make your own inquiry.
Operating from Openness and Curiosity
Once we question what we know, we open our view wider to let more possibilities arise in our consciousness, and it’s in that openness that our inquiry can truly unfold. Can you allow the question to be if you don’t know that there is going to be an answer? Can you be that genuine with yourself? Can you be that sincere with yourself?
Allowing questions to remain open-ended begins to reveal that our usual assumptions only produce more questions and answer none. For example, we might believe we are here because we understand that we can get something here, experience something here, have some freedom here. But do we really know that? The great masters say we need to love ourselves and love others. We need to be selfless. Sounds good.
But for us, it is just hearsay unless we feel those answers resonate deeply in our bodies and our souls. And answering the question is not what is always most important. Can we allow our inquiry to stay in us? Can we let that flame burn in us without needing to put it out with an answer? Can we just allow our curiosity?
Is a search that is not dependent on any idea of what you’re looking for possible? It’s not directed anywhere, but it’s a flame that is still burning. To let it burn, to let it be, not to cover it up, not to put it out, but to let it deepen, to let it go, to let it consume you, to let it burn away all your ideas and beliefs of how things should be, to let it burn away all our concepts of what is good, what is bad…That is inquiry.
Without truly genuine and sincere questioning, without this motiveless search, without this burning flame of inquiry, the work cannot be done because if it is done without it, it is done according to an idea, a concept, a belief.
The truest reason why you can be here is because of that inner flame, that inquiry. If it is for any other reason, then you’re lying to yourself. You’re starting on the wrong foot.
Inquiry is not Theoretical, not Philosophical
Inquiry is at the root, and the heart of all of your life, relevant for every moment of your life. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, these questions are relevant. It’s not a matter of trying to be good. No, we want to see the truth. We want to see all the ways that we snuff out the flame and all the ways we silence the question.
The flame must continue, you see. The fire of inquiry needs to be fed. It needs to grow, intensify, deepen, and get bigger. That attempt is not trying to reduce it, but to let it go. The final inquiry needs to go and go and go, until it answers itself, by becoming the fulfillment.
There’s guidance here. But the guidance and the help are not to give us formulaic answers. The guidance is ultimately to help us inquire, to help us stay alone with that inquiry within the intimacy of our own heart.