So much of psychology is superficial and so much of what spiritual traditions teach is misleading and impractical to incorporate into our daily lives...

The self-realized Almaas puts into words what others before him could not. This book cuts right through ignorance/narcissism and slowly brings to surface realizations that change forever, what one believes to be reality.

Almaas cross correlates metaphysics with psychology in a mind numbing fashion, throwing deep unconscious process at the rational mind for contemplation, dredging up our childhood experiences, and our relationships with the enviornment. He cuts open the shell that has hereto hidden what is real and jangles the core of our identities.

His approach is to clarify that which is misunderstood, avoiding nothing in the process. The Diamond Approach, as taught by Almaas, is a very sophisticated path toward self-realization that seeks to understand the essential qualities that are behind our everyday lives and determine our reactions to experience. By understanding these essential qualities, which have hereto been unconscious, as they arrise within our daily lives by disidentifying with there representations, we can come to realize our true nature, our essence. This book describes these essential qualities and the representations that obscure them bringing a lucid clarity to the personality, making it receptive.

"The point of existence" gradually inserts important insights into the mind in a very heart warming fashion, making it a book that not only brings understanding with its clarity, but also touches the heart.

This book has helped me in ineffable ways. I ended up buying the whole seires. It is highly recommended.

(Some very insightful and interesting excerts from the Diamond Heart series, by Almaas, is available free through a search on the net - if you are not already convinced.)

Much like a major symphonic work, A. H. Almaas' work slowly develops several theme that ultimately converge to reveal incredible beauty and meaning. The initial chapters of the work are somewhat difficult in the extremely fine discriminations that the author makes in setting the ground work for his main arguments. In brief, for Almaas, narcissism is the identification with anything other than one's Essential Identity, whether it be one's body, looks, fame, thoughts, or emotions. Essential Identity is that aspect of our own true nature that give us a sense of who we are at the deepest Being- level of existence. Self-realization involves the movement from the former to the latter--moving from identifying with the ordinary experience of our personality to identifying and becoming one with Being and its essential qualities such as love, compassion, strength, clarity and identity.
For the first time ever, Almaas, presents a rich and psychologically informed phenomenology of the dissolution of the egoic self in the process of self-realization. If the first movement of the work is slow and methodical in setting up the major themes, the second movement, is a detailed, experience near description of how during the course of spiritual development we move from ordinary experience to the depths of Being. Almaas suggests that our idealizations of others, institutions, and ideas has to do with our search for internal support which can only ultimately found in the security of Being. Our need for mirroring, is explored as stemming from Being's need for mirroring, for its uniqueness, specialness and exquisiteness. Most moving in this all, is the exploration of how the very hurts that result from lapses in idealization and mirroring, can be doorways to much deeper understanding. Through a very detailed, and careful assessment of the way in which hurt opens to love and depth, Almaas makes clear how the support of a loving teacher and community make it possible to slowly penetrate our defensive posture, to tolerate pain. He sensitively describes how practitioners gradually move into experiences of deficient emptiness that very naturally can open up to the spaciousness of Being and the realization of our most profound inner identity.
There is so much in this work that is suitable for repetitive consideration and contemplation. It clearly presents in a concise way the modern psychotherapeutic insights on the development of narcissism and then carefully identifies similarities and differences between the therapeutic and spiritual work with narcissism. Almaas identifies and makes psychological sense of those cases of teachers whose behavior does not seem to match their realization. Using the predominant psychological metaphor of our time, Almaas has sympathetically illuminated as no one before, the ways in which every pitfall on the path is also a potential movement closer to our true nature. If the reader will take the patience to move through the slow, sometime painstaking development of the theoretical frame of Book One, they will in Book Two be privileged to experience a most meaningful descriptive and explanatory map of spiritual development that takes account of both the reality and depth of our psychological needs and experiences, and the delicacy, profundity and riches of spiritual reality.

Harvey Aronson, LMSW, Ph.D., is currently directory of Dawn Mountain Buddhist Temple, and a psychotherapist in private practice in Houston, Texas. He is author of Love and Sympathy in Theravada Buddhism, and Couch or Cushion: Buddhisst Practice on Western Groun (forthcoming).

Todays Psychology finally needed someone who has the capacity
to look forward, beyond Freud into future potential of mankind
and to build a bridge between the two. With delightful intelligence and a considerable attention to detail A.H.Almaas can take even the "weathered searchers"
into the obscure corners of their past to set them free.
People who are not "burdened" with a heavy intellect should probably stay within the Heart Series side of the work of this
pioneer.

An Excellent Book.. A Must For All The Managers In Any Organistaion.

"Communion" is the better alternative title for this thoroughly enjoyable horror film. Don't expect to see much of the character of Brooke Shields, as she doesn't survive for very long! That's all I 'm saying about the plot, as this is a real whodunnit that should be enjoyed without prior warning. The real star of this movie is Paula Sheppard as the disturbed youngster Alice, who appears to be at the center of some very gruesome murders. It doesn't help that she likes to wander around in a bright yellow raincoat and spooky smiling mask, but that's just scratching the surface of this movie's weirdness..Gore highlights include a horrific stabbing through a staircase bannister which will make you wince, as well as a painful scene in which the murderer has to bash in the teeth of a victim who is biting down on a vital piece of incriminating evidence..ouch! All the acting is superb, including Linda Miller as the agonised mother, and Jane Lowry, I think as the bitchy aunt. The film really stands out because of the stylish direction and many twists, I really recommend a viewing. It has been compared to "Don't Look Now", but it reminds me more of Michael Winner's "The Sentinel", only better.

ALICE (played beautifully by Obscure Cult Film Actress Paula Shepard) is a really odd child, truly demented...BUT...is she actually capable of these gruesome murders?

KAREN (played by the ever lovely Brooke Shields) is the family Favorite...and greatly grieved after her grisly death.

WATCH THIS FAB FLICK WITH THE LIGHTS ON!

When I was about 14 I saw this on tv I was fascinated by it. I later bought it on video and had to keep it hidden under my bed covered with clothes so it couldn't get me. The years have past and I watch it 2 or 3 times a year I think it's a brilliant psychological thriller. If they made a poster for it I'd hang it up in my room .

This poet seems to crave an overly detached vision of poetic narrative. If there were real toads in real gardens, Ms. Roberts' poems would create real toad sounds. Persistently annoying sentences

Poet Kim Roberts first full-length book of poems is an excellent addition to the outpouring of noteworthy poetry and fiction from our nation's capital. This uncommonly original and spirited book of poems is as bountiful as the universe itself. This book is an astronomical debut. The next time you look up at the stars, the one shining brightest might be a poet named Kim Roberts.