Reality Shines: The Diamond Approach—Enneagram Point 5

This article is part of a series called The Illuminating Enneagram.

In one sense, all of life is a deep exploration, a dance of knowing and not-knowing. Every perception, every taste, touch, sound, thought, feeling, arises in awareness and is known by awareness. I know the taste of water on my tongue, for instance, or the feeling of breathing air into my lungs. In this way everything we experience is knowledge. At the same time, all of these perceptions are inherently lacking in any description or concept. The direct experience becomes overlaid with the concepts, so instead of directly knowing the experiences of cool, wet, liquid, it’s conceptualized as “drinking water.” In this way we become estranged from our direct knowing of life and prisoner to a second-hand version of life mediated by words and ideas.

Not-knowing is liberating, at least as much as great insight. This paradox of the freedom of both not-knowing and knowing is woven throughout The Diamond Approach, a spiritual path which (as we’ll see) is congruent with the style of Enneagram point 5. Point 5, home of “The Investigator,” is about wanting to know the truth about things, often about the area of interest that has captured a 5 person’s fascination. In their commitment to finding out the truth, whereas other personalities might be content with a simple, albeit low-resolution understanding of something, 5’s generally approach their area of interest very analytically and with a high tolerance for complexity, nuance, and the counterintuitive. Their mental bandwidth for these things and sheer curiosity to “get to the bottom” of whatever draws their interest can make them great excavators of insight, and sometimes brilliant innovators and geniuses. This curious, deep-diving, analytical style is the modus operandi of The Diamond Approach.

If there’s a tell-tale sign that the Diamond Approach (DA) fits the style of Type 5, it’s that the central practice of the DA is “Inquiry,” which is a way of exploring one’s experience deeply, in its totality, to discover the truth about it. In other words, the DA is one great investigation. However, what makes DA Inquiry distinct from the kind of investigation and analysis that 5’s normally do is that 5’s normally research and probe into some area of interest in which information can be gathered through books, articles, online sources, lab results, etc. All of these mediums are a step removed from one’s immediate experience; they engage the mind, but don’t necessarily draw on the faculties of mindful awareness and presence that enable us to plumb our direct experience. The DA uses the mind — and that’s one of the hallmarks that makes it unique as a path, as well as in keeping with its type 5 style — but it’s rooted and established in that which is beyond the mind. And so, the DA tends to attract people who perceive the usefulness of the mind, but who are also drawn towards the realities that are beyond it. The DA paradoxically uses the mind to get free of the mind.

Sensed in a general way, the energy of the DA may be perceived as cool, clear, crisp or sharp, and lucid. There are other dimensions as well, and the way it’s sensed depends on which aspects of it we are focussing on; but sensing it as cool and clear points to the cool-headedness and clarity that are prized in this approach and sought after in the investigative process. The desire for truth is inseparable from the desire to know reality with the qualities of clarity, lucidity, and deep understanding. One of the images that’s used in the teachings of the DA is the diamond, which carries different meanings. It suggests the multi-faceted nature of our true nature, it evokes a sense of the sharpness of mind that’s so valuable for penetrating into the secrets of one’s experience, but it also acts as a metaphor for the objects of Inquiry — the phenomena of our ordinary experience. If you imagine taking any aspect of your experience — the breath, a bodily sensation, an emotion — and holding it up to your awareness, as if you were examining a diamond, as you’d “turn” that part of experience and look at it more closely, it would reveal its multiple facets, each one slightly gleaming in the light of your awareness. This image of examining a diamond under a light gives the feel for the DA’s way of methodically, patiently “turning over” each aspect of experience, “looking under each rock,” so to speak, all the while embodying some of point 5’s highest attributes: extraordinary concentration, perceptiveness, open-mindedness, and illumination.

In the same way that people don’t just have one Enneatype but contain all of the points within them, while being fixated on one, genuine spiritual paths emphasize and embody one Enneagram point while containing elements of all the points. The DA is no exception. While best described as having a type 5 style, not mentioning the heart and gut aspects of the DA creates an imbalanced view of this path. At the deepest level, the heart of the DA is the love of the ultimate reality, the truth, or “the Beloved” as it’s called in some traditions. Hameed Ali, the co-founder of the DA, writes, “The Absolute is the true Beloved of the heart, whether we are conscious of it or not” (Diamond Heart book 5, p. 32). Ultimately, the deeper spiritual motivation present in the DA — to know reality — is not just a curiosity or a desire to understand, it’s not just a head thing, but a deeply felt longing in the heart. That’s one way the heart is present in this path.

The gut center is also present in many ways, such as in the practice of the “Kath” meditation, which is a belly-centered meditation that strengthens the power of concentration and supports the main practice of Inquiry. Moreover, the belly center is simply present in the DA’s great emphasis on practice. Despite having such a large body of knowledge and specialization in type 5 aspects, the DA is not an intellectual body of work — it’s a path. As is true in all genuine spiritual paths, the teachers of the DA know that intellectual knowledge is not true realization and not transformation. For that, diligent practice is required.

We could also say that a significant way the gut center is embodied in the DA is in the attention and importance placed on experience, itself, which overlaps a great deal with the emphasis on practice. The gut symbolically represents the domain of experience (as opposed to thought and feeling), and it’s by grounding our inquiry in experience that our cognitive processes remain connected to something real, substantial. Otherwise, we float off into abstractions and airy mental processes divorced from the roots, the ground of reality. Reconnecting with their experience, rather than their thoughts about experience, is in many ways a saving grace for 5’s, which can be seen as another reason why experience has such a premier place in the DA. Hameed writes of the risk of failing to connect the mind with direct experience (also called basic knowledge) in these terms: “It is important to realize that logic and reason are not contrary to direct experience; they arise from and reflect its inherent patterns. The difficulty tends to arise when they become estranged from their source and ground, and are applied in an abstracted and rigid way. When the patterns of our thought are not informed by basic knowledge, they can stray from Reality” (Inner Journey Home, p. 60).

Shifting gears for a moment, I chose to begin this article series, The Enneagram of Paths, with an article about the Diamond Approach, since it seemed natural to do so in light of the fact that the DA is one of the only paths that incorporates knowledge of the Enneagram as part of its teaching. Partly that speaks to the fact that it offers, as George Gurdjieff said, inexhaustible knowledge. If we can decipher it, the Enneagram is greatly illuminating. It’s no surprise that the DA weaves it in to its flow. Likewise, my intention with these articles is one of illumination. I’m particularly interested in dispelling the confusion that we have collectively around spiritual teachings. Spiritual teachings are shaped, to a large degree, by the energies that inspire and inform them. The energy comes first, the teachings second. The Enneagram provides us with a way to see, classify and understand these energies such that differences of expression among spiritual teachings are not a mystery to us.

DA Inquiry makes use of the Enneagram as a map and a helpful tool. On one level, it can be seen as a map of the different angles from which non-dual reality can be perceived (which Hameed elucidates in his book, Facets of Unity). This “high altitude” level of applying the Enneagram challenges the core delusions and defence mechanisms underpinning one’s Enneatype. At another level, the Enneagram can be worked with as a tool for highlighting the core structure and patterns of one’s Enneatype and the way those patterns constellate. Those patterns can then become the focus of one’s Inquiry, while the Enneagram provides a context or framework for the investigation at hand. Russ Hudson, a teacher of the Enneagram with personality type 5, has given the example of how he was able to see his own type 5 pattern of withdrawing from life and retreating into the mind as part of the Enneagram type 5 structure; knowing that, he was able to more completely dis-identify from that pattern and mindfully explore the origins and underpinnings of it, allowing transformation to occur.

In the DA, the Enneagram is an empowering tool to be used in conjunct with the practice of Inquiry and other supporting practices. In the same way that a book doesn’t impart the experience of a story without being read, the Enneagram doesn’t produce transformation without being applied. It must be allied to a practice. In the DA this is accomplished through taking the psychological material of one’s personality type as the object of Inquiry. This is the raw material to be worked with. It’s as if, going within ourselves, we are thrown into a dark cavern where we can see what is just in front of us while being blind to our surroundings. We can see one piece or one pattern, but not how it’s connected to everything else in our psyche. The Enneagram, when it’s deciphered by a strong mind, functions as a map showing us where we are in relation to the surrounding landscape. It has the power of illumination. In the DA, it’s not that the Enneagram sets up a goal of somewhere to get to — Inquiry is not goal-driven — but rather reveals how the surface of our psyche is connected to the depths, how the manifestations of our Enneagram types are reflections of essential aspects of our true nature.

In his book, The Alchemy of Freedom, Hameed uses the concept of the philosophers’ stone as a metaphor for our true nature. He writes, “Whoever holds the philosophers’ stone can unlock the secrets of reality” (Alchemy, p. 177). The Diamond Approach gives the gift of a way to reconnect with our true, spiritual nature and unlock the transformation and revelation that flow from there. The teaching is also a gift from true nature since, from the DA perspective, nothing else exists. In this larger view, everything is both arising from and made up of the radiant presence of true nature. It’s here, intimate with the secrets of the universe, that our soul finds the clarity she’s been looking for and the home of her source and origin.