What is the Diamond Approach?
The Diamond Approach is a dynamic, evolving teaching that leads to openness, freedom, and realization of the many dimensions of our human potential—especially the amazing secrets of our spiritual nature. There are no beliefs to accept or ideology to embrace—you simply need a sincere desire to know what is true about yourself. Combining time-honored spiritual practices with modern psychological understanding, our methods help you skillfully penetrate obscurations to your inner richness and luminous depth. As you engage the teaching and its practices, your experience and life transform through many liberating awakenings while your personal embodiment comes to express the beauty, grandeur, and hidden potentials of who you truly are.
What is the Diamond Approach?
The Diamond Approach is a dynamic, evolving teaching that leads to openness, freedom, and realization of the many dimensions of our human potential—especially the amazing secrets of our spiritual nature. There are no beliefs to accept or ideology to embrace—you simply need a sincere desire to know what is true about yourself.
Combining time-honored spiritual practices with modern psychological understanding, our methods help you skillfully penetrate obscurations to your inner richness and luminous depth. As you engage the teaching and its practices, your experience and life transform through many liberating awakenings while your personal embodiment comes to express the beauty, grandeur, and hidden potentials of who you truly are.
In the World, but Not of It
The Diamond Path is designed for human beings that wish to realize their true potential whilst living in the world
Growth
Evolve and develop your capacities to live life fully
Expansion
Discover the wonders and mysteries of human existence
Community
Commune with other souls on the path of self-realization
Meet the Founder
A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali) was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the US to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his PhD in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him to inquire into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature rather than the physical nature of the universe.
He left the academic world to pursue an in-depth journey of inner discovery, applying his scientific precision and discipline to personal, experiential research. This included training with teachers, extensive reading, and continuous study of his own consciousness in an effort to understand the essential nature of human experience and qualitative aspects and dimensions of reality that can be embodied by human beings, such as compassion, strength, will, joy, and peace. Hameed’s process of exploration led to the creation of the Ridhwan School and, with his colleague Karen Johnson, resulted in the founding and unfoldment of the Diamond Approach.
Meet the Founder
A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali) was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the US to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his PhD in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him to inquire into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature rather than the physical nature of the universe.
He left the academic world to pursue an in-depth journey of inner discovery, applying his scientific precision and discipline to personal, experiential research. This included training with teachers, extensive reading, and continuous study of his own consciousness in an effort to understand the essential nature of human experience and qualitative aspects and dimensions of reality that can be embodied by human beings, such as compassion, strength, will, joy, and peace. Hameed’s process of exploration led to the creation of the Ridhwan School and, with his colleague Karen Johnson, resulted in the founding and unfoldment of the Diamond Approach.
Pillars of the Teaching
A Transformative and Robust Pathway to Actualizing Your True Self
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Presence
Presence is our spiritual freedom liquefied, condensed. Presence is an actual sense of hereness—beyond our emotions, beyond the mind, beyond our ideas. In presence, we can know ourselves in a way that is authentic, which means that we are knowing what is real in us. When we feel presence, we are experiencing our underlying reality. It feels more real than the physical, the emotional, or the mental realms of experience
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Essential Aspects
Spiritual reality is seen to have many qualities important for us as human beings. These essential aspects of our nature include love, compassion, will, peace, strength, joy, and clarity. Each aspect has a unique flavor and particular function for the human soul and the realization of its ground. This ground includes boundless love, universal consciousness, transparent awareness, profound emptiness, nonlocal truth—unities of many kinds.
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Inquiry
Our central practice of Diamond Inquiry™ engages and explores our inner world such that each experience deepens and reveals its meaning. Over time, our experience is increasingly informed by innate qualities of our Being—love, joy, strength, will, compassion, and peace, among others—that have been hidden by unconscious beliefs and attitudes.
”Almaas is one of the most significant voices for a new and remarkably integrated spiritual vision. His work connects the personal, the universal, the psychological and the spiritual not as pieces put together, but as the inseparable mandala of the sacred that we are. I respect his work to the highest degree and commend it to anyone interested in living the life of the spirit.
Jack Kornfield
What is the Ridhwan School?
The Ridhwan School is home to the Diamond Approach, a contemporary spiritual path and a community of individuals engaged in inner development. The school comprises all members of Diamond Approach groups and students working individually with a Diamond Approach teacher. Our work is taught in groups committed to long-term inquiry, guided by teachers with extensive seminary training. Students learn to ground, sensitize, recognize, and trust the inherent guidance of Being. The school community manifests a field of presence and deep learning based on the continuous years of each group’s shared personal inquiry and practices, rooted in sincerity, trust, and dedication.
What is the Ridhwan School?
The Ridhwan School is home to the Diamond Approach, a contemporary spiritual path and a community of individuals engaged in inner development. The school comprises all members of Diamond Approach groups and students working individually with a Diamond Approach teacher.
Our work is taught in groups committed to long-term inquiry, guided by teachers with extensive seminary training. Students learn to ground, sensitize, recognize, and trust the inherent guidance of Being. The school community manifests a field of presence and deep learning based on the continuous years of each group’s shared personal inquiry and practices, rooted in sincerity, trust, and dedication.
What is a modern day spiritual path?
Resources
General Diamond Approach
Diamond Approach (main site)
Diamond Approach Online (online courses, webinars, inquiry groups)
Articles • Books • Glossary • Videos
Explore the Foundational Teachings
Lightness of Being is a 6-part online course that is both an excellent introduction to the core teachings of the Diamond Approach – as well as an opportunity for seasoned spiritual seekers to experience the transformative power of this path.
Lightness of Being Introductory Course
Learn Inquiry in a Group
Online Inquiry Groups are open to the public, a unique way to learn the practice of inquiry, and designed to give those new to the path a taste of the small group experience with a teacher.
Online Inquiry Groups
Engage in a more personalized way with a certified Diamond Approach Teacher
Private sessions are one-on-one meetings with a Diamond Approach teacher. Your teacher will work closely with you to explore barriers you are facing in your personal life, help you get underneath those limitations to reconnect you with your true nature, and support you in integrating that deeper nature into your day-to-day life.
Find a Teacher
Join an In-Person Group
These ongoing, long-term groups meet on weekends or for longer retreats with a core Diamond Approach teaching team. Students in these groups often work together over the course of many years, getting to know one another deeply, and growing together spiritually and as human beings.
There are thousands of committed students on this path today with groups meeting regularly across Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Asia, Africa, and North America. Many students travel from around the world to study and be with their companions in these deeply supportive spaces for transformation.
Find a Group
For any questions or more information please contact outreach@ridhwan.org
The Ridhwan Foundation, P.O. Box 2747, Berkeley CA 94702-0747, USA, U.S. 501 (c) (3) corporation #84-0949115
