A. H. Almaas (Part 2) - Nondual Love: Awakening to the Fundamental Benevolence of Reality

Ep. 86 (Part 2 of 2) | Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas), founder of the contemporary spiritual path the Diamond Approach, beloved teacher, and author of many outstanding spiritual classics, has written a trilogy on the subject of love, and in this conversation the focus is on the recently published second book, Nondual Love. Hameed explains that most wisdom traditions target various ultimates: pure emptiness, pure consciousness, nondual awareness, being, non-being—each of which is sufficient for liberation, but fails to include the qualities of nondual love: goodness, sweetness, abundance, benevolence. Hameed brings these dimensions of love to the table, asking what does divine love feel like, look like, what is it made of? Listening to Hameed is a beautiful, rich experience, due to his extraordinary lucidity, gentle humor, and the profound understanding and assurance that pervade his words from his long experience swimming in the waters of which he speaks. He tells us we all have the potential to experience nondual love, although there are significant obstacles along the path that are inherent to being human. Hameed describes the different stages of opening to nondual love, from the first glimmerings of “unearthly sweetness” to the realization that we ourselves are love. And he outlines the nature of the barriers we face, like the beast of anger and hatred that arises in us when we perceive that reality has abandoned us. Hameed explains that by re-establishing basic trust, and feeling the presence of benevolent love, we can regain the sense that things will be okay and unfold ultimately for the good. Recorded April 12, 2023.“Our true nature has infinite potential of how it can be.”(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2The personal nature of God is responsive; the closer you are, the happier you are (01:24)The personal is a spiritual quality of presence that comes from pure being or source, as an expression of it (03:59)Practicing surrender and recognizing our true helplessness completely (06:01)The practice of awakening: how do we put practice (doing) together with the importance of non doing? (08:58)In a dualistic way, we have responsibility, free will, intention, and effort and we have to apply these to awaken; in time this shows us we are helpless: when we truly give up doing, then things can open up (11:35)It is inherent to the ego consciousness that we can’t do it—it’s an objective helplessness, not the fault of any one individual (13:31)Obstacles on the way to divine love: settling for substitute gratifications, the separate ego self (14:32) The beast arises when people have suffered and reality has left them hurt and feeling abandoned—then you hate God, you hate good (17:43) Transformation is through understanding; we have to be nonjudgmental about everything that arises in our experience (23:28)Jabba the Hutt, archetypal symbol of attachment, desire, greed, is disconnected from abundance, from divine love—to heal this in yourself, you welcome it (29:56)The main barrier to all nondual experience is believing we are separate entities—we feel the shape of our bodies, and we have to work through this central construct of our ego (33:51)Ego is a stage the soul goes through; to believe this stage is the only and final stage, that is the error...