Bøker av A. H. Almaas

A passionate and deep exploration of how love is essential to our spiritual growth and development, from beloved author and teacher A. H. Almaas. Love is a universal energy--and a primary force that powers our movement toward spiritual illumination. All the ways we need love are simply reflections of our need for spiritual growth. In Love Unveiled, A. H. Almaas explores three dimensions of love: appreciative love--the true liking of somebody or something; merging or connecting love--a force that melts away separateness; and passionate, ecstatic love--capable of consuming us from inside. In their own way, each reveals the beauty and exquisiteness of our spiritual heart, which is the heart of the divine. However, the path of spiritual love is not without challenges. Almaas explores the barriers that tend to block our experience of loving awakening and provides experiential exercises throughout the book to help readers along their path. The exercises focus on the obstacles or misunderstandings that commonly arise for each quality or dimension of love. Presented in the form of writing or monologuing prompts, readers can work independently or in small groups to confront the emotional obstacles on their spiritual path. Regardless of where you are on your path, Love Unveiled will help you explore love in three essential dimensions and gain a deeper connection to yourself.

The opening installment in a five-volume series on the Diamond Approach-a path to greater self- and spiritual realization-presented by its founder Founded by spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas, the Diamond Approach presents a unique path to enlightenment that borrows from modern psychology and therapy. Through the method's core practice of inquiry, practitioners engage with their inner world-the very qualities and experiences that make them human-as a means of unlocking their potential and discovering the true power of their spiritual nature. This five-volume series is a collection of Almaas' lectures on the Diamond Approach. In Elements of the Real Man, he covers topics such as faith, commitment, nobility and suffering, truth and compassion, allowing, and growing up. Through these talks, Almaas offers valuable guidance and advice for those on a spiritual path, and he explores the challenges and psychological barriers faced by those seeking self-realization.

Facets of Unity presents the Enneagram of Holy Ideas as a crystal clear window on the true reality experienced in enlightened consciousness. Here we are not directed toward the psychological types but the higher spiritual realities they reflect. We discover how the disconnection from each Holy Idea leads to the development of its corresponding fixation, thus recognizing each types deeper psychological core. Understanding this core brings each Holy Idea within reach, so its spiritual perspective can serve as a key for unlocking the fixation and freeing us from its limitations.

Over the past twenty-five years A. H. Almaas-widely recognized as a leader in integrating spirituality and psychology-has been developing and teaching the Diamond Approach, a spiritual path that integrates the insights of Sufism, Buddhism, Gurdjieff, and other wisdom traditions with modern psychology. In this new work, Almaas uses the metaphor of a "spacecruiser" to describe a method of exploring the immediacy of personal experience-a way of investigating our moment-by-moment feelings, thoughts, reactions, and behaviors through a process of open-ended questioning. The method is called the practice of inquiry, and Spacecruiser Inquiry reveals what it means to engage with this practice as a spiritual path: its principles, challenges, and rewards. The author explores basic elements of inquiry, including the open-ended attitude, the focus on direct knowledge, the experience of not-knowing, and the process of questioning. He describes the experience of "Diamond Guidance"-the inner wisdom that emerges from our true nature-and how it can be realized and applied. In this process Almaas looks at many of the essential forms of Diamond Guidance, including knowing, clarity, truth, love, intelligence, compassion, curiosity, courage, and determination. Also included are exercises and questions and answers from the original talks by Almaas on which the book is based.

The keys to self-knowledge and deep contentment  are right here before us in this very moment—if we can simply learn to live with open awareness. In The Unfolding Now, A. H. Almaas presents a marvelously effective practice for developing the transformative quality of presence. Through a particular method of self-observation and contemplative exploration that he calls inquiry, we learn to live in the relaxed condition  of simply "being ourselves," without interference from feelings of inadequacy, drivenness toward goals, struggling to figure things out, and rejecting experiences we don''t want. Almaas explores the many obstacles  that keep us from being present—including defensiveness, ignorance, desire, aggression, and self-hatred—and shows us how to welcome with curiosity and compassion whatever we are experiencing.

More than just a tool to diagnose your personality type, the Enneagram was originally developed to help people find the ultimate freedom of consciousness and achieve spiritual liberation. A. H. Almaas brings us back to this original mission as he shares the essential keys that will help readers break free from the limitations and distortions of each type’s fixation—and to express their true spiritual nature in everyday life.

In this book Almaas demonstrates that healthy ego development is part of the continuum of spiritual development. He also establishes the possibility of attaining inner realization and developing our essential being-"the pearl beyond price"-in the context of living a normal human life.

"Love is a transformative aspect of the spiritual path-and in fact, it is our very nature. A. H. Almaas takes us on a journey beyond a narrow, individual understanding of love to an exploration of what he calls the boundless dimension of divine love. This divine love is not the kind of love that we feel toward somebody else; it is nondual, a love without boundaries. Or put another way, it is nondual true nature experienced as love. By shifting our focus beyond the individual human experience to the experience of the wholeness of existence, we are able to see the true richness of the universe. When we are open to the dimension of divine love, we begin to experience our true nature, free from limitations-a sense of complete release, freedom, and delight, free of conflict, fear, insecurity, and worry. Almaas discusses the obstacles and obscurations that make it difficult to awaken to true nature in this way, such as our belief in a separate self and our past condition. Each chapter includes an inquiry or practice to explore the themes further"--

Well-known spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas uses the metaphor of the mysterious philosopher's stone to discuss a tremendous liberating power that leads to endless enlightenment. For millennia alchemists sought the philosophers' stone, the miracle substance believed to be the key to all the secrets of existence. The quest was fueled by some of the prime questions of human existence: What am I? Why am I here? How has this world come to be?A. H. Almaas shows that the tremendous liberating power of the mysterious philosophers' stone is closer to us than we realize. In fact, it is the true nature of all reality-in all times and all places, without being limited to being anything in particular. Through the philosophers' stone, real transformation can happen, our consciousness can become free, and we can open to all the possibilities of reality. Almaas discusses the factors that are involved in igniting the catalytic property of the philosophers' stone and then begins to unpack the properties of true nature when it is free of constraints. Finally, we are left with the revelation that true nature is endlessly knowable, and yet nothing we can know or say about it exhausts its mystery and power. The result is a new understanding of what liberation and practice are-and a view of what it's like when seeking ceases and life becomes a process of continual discovery. We begin to appreciate that the freedom of reality expressed in the complete and fulfilled life all human beings seek-and few find-is actually the simplicity of the ordinary.

Liebe ist eine universelle Energie - und eine primäre Kraft, die unsere Bewegung hin zur spirituellen Erleuchtung antreibt. Jedes unserer Bedürfnisse nach Liebe ist einfach eine Widerspiegelung unseres Bedürfnisses nach spirituellem Wachstum. A. H. Almaas erforscht drei Dimensionen der Liebe: die wertschätzende Liebe - die wahrhaftige Liebe für jemanden oder etwas; die verschmelzende oder verbindende Liebe - die Kraft, die das Getrenntsein wegschmilzt; und die leidenschaftliche, ekstatische Liebe - die in der Lage ist, uns von innen heraus zu verzehren. Jede von ihnen offenbart auf ihre Weise die Schönheit und Erlesenheit unseres spirituellen Herzens, das das Herz des Göttlichen ist. Er untersucht auch, was uns daran hindert, uns mit der Liebe zu verbinden. Praktiken, die sich durch das ganze Buch ziehen, helfen den Leserinnen und Lesern, die Gegenwart der Liebe zu erfahren und die Hindernisse und Missverständnisse zu überwinden, die ihrer Verwirklichung im Wege stehen.

In this book Almaas brings together concepts and experiences drawn from contemporary object relations theory, Freudian-based ego psychology, case studies from his own spiritual practice, and teaching from the highest levels of Buddhist and other Eastern practices. He challenges us to look not only at the personality and the content of the mind, but also at the underlying nature of the mind itself.