Diamond Approach Articles

The Theory Of Holes: Abandoning & Recovering Essence

from The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas (Shambhala Pub) by John Davis

Although essence is our true nature, we live virtually all of our lives out of touch with it.

Abandonment Of Essence

In the beginning of your life, your soul is pure and open. Essential states arise as they are needed. For instance, the Strength Essence came when, as an infant, you needed food, and the Merging Essence came when your needs were fulfilled in a satisfying way. Of course, you didn't know or understand these experiences. Neither were they integrated into your soul in a mature way. They simply arose in a natural and spontaneous way.

The earliest experiences will be a mix of support and nonsupport. Support allows the unfolding and development of the soul in a way that is open to Essence. The Essential states that arise begin to be integrated into the soul, and the soul develops accordingly. Nonsupport, in the form of abandonment or punishment, constricts the soul's flow and arrests its development. Insults or wounds to your Being cause pain, and the natural instinct is to close off to that pain. This can occur when parents are out of touch with some aspect of their own being and get defensive when that aspect is present in you.

Consequently, aspects of Essence are gradually lost to consciousness and the functioning of the soul. The various intrinsic qualities of our Being are split off. As this happens, we lose both awareness of these qualities and access to them. Of course, Essence itself is always present in the infant and in the adult, whether it is experienced or not. Essence is not lost; it is abandoned. In adults, this abandonment is experienced as a hole or an emptiness, both psychologically and energetically.

If the Essential aspect of Will is blocked, you may experience anxiety or lack of support

If Essential Compassion is blocked, the hole may feel like an emptiness in your heart and a lack of kindness either toward yourself or toward others. The hole of Essential Strength can result in a feeling of weakness, lack of capacity, or an absence of vigor and passion. The complex psychodynamics involved in splitting painful experiences from pleasurable ones are a central cause of the development of personality structures.

Yet much of the personality structure serves to (1) defend against painful experiences and (2) compensate for lost qualities of Being. The resulting personality or ego is defensive and inauthentic, out of touch with its nature. It is rooted in a sense of deficient emptiness and separation from its source.

As I have said, a soul separated from Essence develops structures and defenses to compensate for the lost aspects of Essence. These compensations mimic the qualities of Essence, but they are ultimately rooted in a defensive avoidance. For instance, out of touch with Essential Will, you may develop a stubborn or willful exterior in order to avoid the anxiety of feeling no support or confidence.

Out of touch with authentic Compassion, you may experience the hole of Compassion as hurt and attempt to "fix" the hurt by becoming loving in a desperate and solicitous way.

There is a tendency in spiritual circles to judge the ego as bad. While seeing ego as a source of suffering and a false substitute for your true nature, the Diamond Approach also recognizes a wisdom in the ego. The ego is, in a sense, the best we could do in the difficult situation of a childhood that did not recognize our Essence.

...it is not the ego per se that is problematic, but the identification with it. More important, the ego serves as a pointer to Essence. Because the ego exists as an attempt to replace or compensate for the loss of Essence, there is a close correspondence between ego and Essence. The qualities of the shell imitate Essence. By exploring a particular experience of the egoshell, the issues underlying it are revealed, and the quality of Essence that had been lost is recovered. The personality is thus a gateway as well as an obstacle. Ego points to the life of Essence.

Recovery Of Essence

Once you understand the condition of being out of touch with Being, two things need to happen.

First, the ego structures need to be softened, melted, and seen through so that Being can be more fully experienced.

Since the real wounds are the abandonment of Essence, experiencing them reveals Essence. This is the work of self- realization. Second, these same aspects of Being that were repressed need to be integrated into your life and allowed to mature. This is the work of self-development.

Relating to the childhood wounds makes it seem as if you were "going back" to recover something that was lost. Instead, the recovery of Essence is a matter of realizing its presence and influence here and now and integrating it into your soul. Essence is the ground under your feet, always there but forgotten, longing for you as you long for it.

Individual work on the recovery of Essence includes three broad steps. In the first step, you become aware of a pattern of compulsive emotions, behaviors, and thoughts. This may be felt as a continuing hurt, difficulty, wound, compulsion, or inauthenticity in your life. The second step explores these issues more deeply, often with the use of awareness and mindfulness practices, bodywork, and the guidance and support of a teacher. The ego-shell begins to soften or dissolve. Here, you contact the emptiness or deficiency that lies at the root of the emotional issues or compulsive behavior. This deficiency is the lack of Essence and, if experienced deeply, leads to an experience of space. Space indicates the melting or deconstruction of some part of the personality structure. If you stay with the experience of space, the third step occurs, the manifestation of Essence. Essence may initially be felt as a presence. The particular aspect or quality of Essence that manifests depends on your needs in a particular situation.

This kind of open and sincere exploration of your experience (the first step) is common in psychotherapy and personal growth work. It naturally leads to the experience of space. However, many of these explorations stop here with the discharge or release of the difficulties that brought you to therapy.

To summarize, the experience of Being is abandoned, lost to consciousness, or suppressed when Essence is rejected by the child's environment. This loss leaves a hole. The ego attempts to defend against this hole by blocking it from awareness, filling it with a compensatory quality or behavior pattern. These compensations form important parts of the personality structure. Those interested in realizing their full potential can use this knowledge in recovering Essence. Exploring a difficult issue or an unsatisfactory experience thoroughly can lead to an experience of the absence of Essence, a hole. Exploring this hole leads first to a sense of emptiness and then to an experience of space. The experience of space, in turn, allows for an aspect of Essence to manifest. The particular aspect of Essence that manifests is the specific aspect that was missing from the hole.

In the first passage here, Ali applies the Theory of Holes to the loss and recovery of Essence using the Essential aspect of Value as an example. This passage also illuminates some of the connections between the Diamond Approach as a spiritual path and the knowledge and practice of psychotherapy. In the second passage, he reminds us that our work on our holes is not merely to overcome our sense of deficiency and suffering. The purpose of working with our holes is to realize Essence, and it is always and only Essence that fulfills us.

The Theory of Holes (The rest of the chapter below is quoted from A. H. Almaas)

We know that Essence is something we learn about by somehow remembering it, and that it has many different qualities. Everyone is born with Essence, and as you grow, your physical body develops and your Essence also develops, according to a certain pattern.

The newborn baby is mainly in the state we call the Essence of the Essence, a non- differentiated state of unity. At about three months, the baby is in a "merged" state, which is necessary for the development of the relationship with the mother. After the merged state, strength develops, then value, joy, the Personal Essence, and so on. But, of course, because of interference from and conflict with the environment, this development is only partial.

When a quality of Essence is finally blocked from a person's experience, what is left in place of that quality is a sense of emptiness, a deficiency, a hole.

So there is created in a person the sense that something is lacking, and therefore, something is wrong. When we feel such a deficiency, we try to fill the hole we feel in ourselves. Because the Essence has been cut off in that place, we cannot fill the hole with Essence. So we try to fill it with similar, false qualities, or we try to fill it from the outside.

Suppose, for instance, that our love for our mother is rejected, not valued. Then that love in us is hurt, wounded. To avoid experiencing the hurt, we deaden a certain part of our body, and in that way we are cut off from that sweet quality of love in ourselves. Where that love should be, we have an emptiness, a hole. What we do then, to get that love which we feel lacking, is to try to get it from outside ourselves. We think that we lost something from outside, so we try to get it back from outside.

Connected with the "hole" are the memories of the situations that brought the hurt, and of the quality that was lost. It is all there, but repressed. We do not remember what happened or what we lost; we are left simply with a sense of emptiness, and with the false quality or idea with which we are trying to fill it. In time, these "holes" accumulate, and as they are filled by various emotions and beliefs, the material filling them becomes the content of our identity, our personality. We think we are those things. And the personality is structured around the strongest deficiencies.

You learn first to sense yourself, to pay attention to yourself, so that the necessary information is available to you. So you learn to be aware of yourself, and you begin to look at your personality.

The work begins by seeing that the difficulties come from inside us, and sensing that the fulfillment we are seeking will also come from inside.

Then, we use various forms of the old techniques, such as meditations, to strengthen different parts of the Essence. We also use various psychological techniques to understand the blocks against the issues around the different aspects of Essence.

.. you will observe that you're behaving in those ways to fill a certain deficiency or "hole."

Psychotherapists deal with the issues, but in general they go back only as far as the deficiency, by seeing the original issues and understanding or resolving them. They don't see that the emptiness is there because of lack of Essence.

We are not interested here in just going back through your childhood, understanding your conditioning and your conflicts. We are interested in going back to the original "hole" and simply experiencing it without trying to fill it. In therapy, if you deal with the conflict that you wanted your father and your father was emotionally unavailable to you, you feel deep hurt and you feel castrated. You see that you can't get your father in the present, so the resolution is that you relate to another man (sometimes the therapist himself) to fill those "holes," and this is the therapeutic resolution.

It doesn't work. You can try to fill the deficiency of the loss of love with the love of another man. But since it is your own love, your own will, for which you ultimately long, you will feel dissatisfied with the love and support from the father substitute, whoever it is you are using to fill the deficiency.

The presence in you of the quality of love will finally eliminate the problem of love for you.

And by remembering it, you will have it. Everything you have lost you can regain by working like this. Everything.

There is no separation between psychological issues and Essence; they are intertwined, woven together. This is why you cannot just set to work eliminating the false personality and, when that's done and taken care of, start experiencing and developing Essence. Without the retrieval of that which personality was created to replace, personality simply cannot be dissolved.

The reason the Diamond Approach can be precise is that we know that each aspect of Essence is connected with certain psychological/emotional conflicts.

Essence Is the Teacher

Essence is a relentless teacher.

This process of Essential development continues as personality is clarified and worked through.

The personality slowly loses its grip. The conditioning is gradually shaken loose, and the ego is exposed in its bankruptcy. Ego cannot but shatter at the recognition of the sheer beauty of Essence and all of existence. It cannot but melt in the experience of the overwhelming precision and delicacy of Essence."

from The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas (Shambhala Pub) by John Davis


The Holding Environment – from: FACETS of UNITY by A.H. Almaas

We will focus now on the primary barrier to fully experiencing basic trust – we want to understand what it was that scared the Living Daylight out of you! As we have described in detail in earlier books (Essence, The Pearl Beyond Price, Diamond Heart Books 1, 2, 3), each differentiated quality of Being, or essential aspect, becomes disconnected from our experience and arrested in its development as we move through the various developmental phases and subphases of early childhood. Whatever environmental factors were problematic in these stages contribute to the psychodynamic issues related to the particular aspects that predominate in each stage. The essential quality of Strength, for example, becomes more or less lost to our experience depending on what transpired during the period when we were separating from mother. Issues related to merging, associated with the essential aspect of Merging Love, are shaped largely by what happened during the symbiotic phase, when we felt united with mother. So the psychodynamic issues that we have in relation to any aspect of Being are determined by what we experienced during the associated developmental period. However, when it comes to the essential quality of Living Daylight, which gives the soul basic trust, the situation is different. The specific issue associated with this quality has more to do with the overall container for the whole of our childhood development, rather than with one particular period. Our connection with Living Daylight is affected by the overall ground or background for the entire process of maturation and development.

The actual experience of Living Daylight can help us understand this ground and the issues associated with it. When you become aware of the quality of Living Daylight that gives rise to the sense of basic trust, the feeling is that everything is okay in a deep, intrinsic way – not that there aren't difficulties or pain, but that things are workable. You have the sense of being taken care of and of being held, as we have said, and if this experience deepens, you will feel that you are enveloped and comforted by a soft, loving, gentle presence. It feels as though the environment around you is soft, supportive, protective, and understanding. You might experience it literally as the sense of being held by a wonderful light love. You might also have the sense that all parts of you are held together so that they can grow and develop to become all that they can.

Basic Trust and Holding

From the direct experience of Living Daylight, we can see that the situation in childhood that contributes to the sense of basic trust is what is referred to in the psychological literature as the "holding environment." The person most responsible for this concept of holding is D.W. Winnicott, an important figure in the British object relations school. What he calls the holding environment is the environment during the first year or so of life, the period of infancy before the child begins to develop a separate sense of self. Initially, the environment is the womb; later on it is the arms that held you, mother's lap, perhaps father and other people, the environment of your crib, your bedroom, your house – the whole situation. So "holding environment" here means the totality of the surroundings and the general feel of it through the formative years. Mother is central to this environment but it isn't limited to her.

The child can experience the environment as more or less holding. If the environment is a good holding environment, it makes you feel taken care of, protected, understood, loved, and held in such a way that your consciousness – which at the beginning is unformed, fluid, and changeable – can grow spontaneously and naturally on its own. The soul in this respect is like a seedling. A seedling needs a particular holding environment in order to develop into a tree: the right soil, enough water, the right nutrients, the right amounts of light and shade. If it doesn't have the proper holding environment, it won't grow steadily and healthily, and it might not grow at all.

A good holding environment, then, is the environment that is needed for the human soul to grow and develop into what she can become. It needs to provide a sense of safety and security, the sense that you are, and can count on, being taken care of. Your soul needs an environment that is dependable, consistent, attuned to your needs, and that provides for you in a way that is empathic to those needs. This is the ideal environment for human growth. If the environment has a good sense of holding, you will experience basic trust. When there is no extreme disruption and no intense unresolved frustrations or problems, insecurity is not generated and you rest in a fundamental sense of well-being. Your world feels secure, safe, continuous, and dependable in a loving way, so you develop with a fundamental trust and confidence in reality. You feel supported in your sense of connection with the universe, and your inherent trust in it is strengthened by a good holding environment. Your trust in reality has not been challenged, so it doesn't even come into consciousness; the holding environment is integrated into your sense of the world.

Basic trust is inherent in the sense that if everything is going well with respect to the holding of the environment, the child doesn't even think of trust or confidence. Quoting Winnicott,

It is axiomatic in these matters of maternal care of the holding variety that when things go well the infant has no means of knowing what is being properly provided and what is being prevented. On the other hand it is when things do not go well that the infant becomes aware, not of the failure of maternal care, but of the results, whatever they may be, of that failure; that is to say, the infant becomes aware of reacting to some impingement. (Winnicott, 1965, p. 52)

It is only when there is some disruption in the holding that the lack of trust or confidence begins to be experienced. In other words, before things feel like they are going wrong, the child doesn't register that things are going okay. If there is some disruption and then it ends, the child forgets about it and goes back to taking the holding environment for granted. However, if some lack of holding remains constant, or consistently intermittent, the child will not take the holding for granted, will become apprehensive, and will begin to lose the sense of basic trust in reality.

Holding

The sense of the holding environment is an overall experience. Winnicott describes it as follows:

Holding: Protects from physiological insult. Takes account of the infant's skin sensitivity – touch, temperature, auditory sensitivity, visual sensitivity, sensitivity to falling (action of gravity) and of the infant's lack of knowledge of the existence of anything other than the self. It includes the whole routine of care throughout the day and night, and is not the same with any two infants because it is part of the infant, and no two infants are alike. Also it follows the minute day-to-day changes belonging to the infant's growth and development, both physical and psychological. (Winnicott, 1965, p. 49)

Physical holding is the most obvious instance of the holding environment. Infants like being held by the mother or father, but they need to be held in the right way. Anyone can carry a baby, but not everyone can hold a baby in such a way that the child senses that it is loved, it is being communicated with, it is understood, it is merged with, it is secure, its body is molded with. As Winnicott says,

It should be noted that mothers who have it in them to provide good-enough care can be enabled to do better by being cared for themselves in a way that acknowledges the essential nature of their task. Mothers who do not have it in them to provide good-enough care cannot be made good enough by mere instruction.

Holding includes especially the physical holding of the infant, which is a form of loving. It is perhaps the only way in which a mother can show the infant her love. There are those who can hold an infant and those who cannot; the latter quickly produce in the infant a sense of insecurity, and distressed crying. (Winnicott, 1965, p. 49)

When a baby is held in a way that is holding, it feels held in a way similar to how it was held inside the womb, and there is less discontinuity in the holding from its life inside mother's body to outside of it. This sense of holding will not disrupt the child's sense of basic trust, and the effect will be that Living Daylight – the loving and supportive dimension of Being – remains an intrinsic part of its sense of reality. The holding becomes integrated into the depths of its consciousness, and the result is a sense of basic trust in reality. The child's sense of basic trust will begin in relationship to mother and the holding environment, and will extend to the world and the whole universe. This will allow the child to grow and develop into its full potential.

A good holding environment is not just a matter of the mother loving and providing physically for her child; the emotional climate in the family is a part of the holding of the environment as well. If there is tension between the parents, for example, the child will feel it and the sense of holding will be somewhat disrupted. The presence or absence of other siblings and their interrelationships also affects the holding of the environment, as do the environment's actual physical qualities. Whether it is chaotic or dreary, too noisy or lacking in stimulation for the child, all affect the amount of holding he or she experiences. What the family as a whole is going through will affect it. If the family is going through a difficult financial period and there is a sense of fear and insecurity in the parents, this will not only affect the parents' relationship to the child directly, but will also create an anxiousenvironment full of expectations of difficulty or danger. If the child grows up during war-time, the holding will also be compromised. Physical traumas, such as the child getting sick, or one or both parents becoming ill, will be experienced as disruptions in the sense of being held and therefore in the sense of basic trust. The effect of whatever disruptions occur will be cushioned and mitigated to the degree that the environment is generally holding.

The holding environment includes the psychological, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual – the totality of the world the child lives in. To the extent that the environment holds the various manifestations of the soul, the soul feels supported by the environment and therefore, intrinsically connected to the universe. The soul can then experience its Beingness in a continuous way, without disruptions from the environment, and that sense of Beingness can develop and mature. The child feels himself to be an inherent part of the universe as a unique expression of it.

Although his concept of the continuity of being is slightly different from ours, Winnicott's understanding is close:

With 'the care that it receives from its mother' each infant is able to have a personal existence, and so begins to build up what might be called a continuity of /being. On the basis of this continuity of being the inherited potential gradually develops into an individual infant. If maternal care is not good enough then the infant does not really come into existence, since there is no continuity of being; instead the personality becomes built on the basis of reactions to environmental impingement. (Winnicott, 1965, p. 54)

The holding environment, then, is fundamentally important for the infant's continuity of Being, for his sense of isness. This continuity allows the child to develop into a mature human being; this is what we call the process of individuation. When the environment is not holding enough, not providing enough of what is needed by the child, there ~s a disruption in the child continuing to be himself. This disruption appears as an actual disintegration of the sense of Beingness, and that then manifests as a reaction to the disruption in the environment. As Winnicott puts it,

As a result of success in maternal care there is built up in the infant a continuity of teeing which is the basis of ego-strength; whereas the result of each failure in maternal care is that the continuity of being is interrupted by reactions to the consequences of that failure, with resultant ego-weakening. Such interruptions constitute annihilation, and are evidently associated with pain of psychotic quality and intensity. In the extreme case the infant exists only on the basis of continuity of reactions to impingement and of recoveries from such reactions. This is in great contrast to the continuity of being which is my conception of ego-strength. (Winnicott, 1965, p. 52)

The Loss of Holding

When the child does not have the support to be herself, she reacts in such a way as to try to establish or reestablish the holding environment. If impingements continue, the child will keep reacting in an attempt to deal with the situation, trying to make things work such that she feels held. The reactivity in response to the impingements or disruptions in the environment is the child's attempt to bring about what she needs so that she can survive and develop. If the holding isn't there or isn't dependable, the child will try to manipulate herself, her parents, and/or the environment to bring it about. The child might develop all kinds of ways to please the parents by doing things for them, entertaining them, or hiding her needs. On the other hand, she might try to distract them from their problems, throw tantrums to get attention, or become manipulative or even deceitful to try to get the holding to return.

By having to react to the loss of holding, the child is no longer simply being, and the spontaneous and natural unfoldment of the soul has been disrupted. If this reactivity becomes predominant, the child's development will be based on that reactivity rather than on the continuity of Beingness. If her development is based on reactivity to an unsafe environment, the child will develop in disconnection from Being and therefore, her ego will be what becomes most developed. If her development unfolds out of the continuity of being, the child's consciousness will remain to some extent centered in her essential nature, and her development will be the maturation and expression of that nature.

The less holding there is in the environment, the more the child's development will be based on this reactivity, which is essentially an attempt to deal with an undependable environment. The child will develop mechanisms for dealing with an environment that is not trustworthy, and these mechanisms form the basis of the developing sense of self, or ego. This development of the child's consciousness is then founded on distrust, and so distrust is part of the basis of ego development. The child's consciousness – her soul – internalizes the environment it is growing up in and then projects that environment back onto the world.

Ego Development and Basic Distrust

Implicit in the ego, then, is a fundamental distrust of reality. The failure of the holding environment leads to the absence of basic trust, which then becomes disconnection from Being, which leads to reactivity, which is ego activity. The Enneagram maps the various ways the ego develops to deal with the absence, disruptions, ruptures, and discontinuities of holding. The reaction for Point One is to try to make the holding happen by improving oneself. For Point Two, it is to deny the need for holding but, nonetheless, be manipulating and seducing the environment to provide it. For Point Three, it is to deny the need for it but pretend to oneself, "I can do it on my own. I know how reality can be and how I'm going to develop and I'll make it happen." For Point Four, the loss or absence of holding is counteracted by denying that there is a disconnection from Being, while at the same time trying to make the environment be holding through attempting to control it and oneself. For Point Five, the reaction is to not deal with the actual sense of loss and not feel the impingement directly through withdrawing and isolating oneself, avoiding the whole situation. For Point Six, the strategy is to be more in touch with the fear and distrust, being defensive and paranoid about the environment. For Point Seven, it is by planning how to make it good, and fantasizing what it will feel like, rather than feeling the pain of the loss of holding. For Point Eight, it is to get angry about the loss of holding and to fight the environment to get it back, to try to get justice, and to get revenge for the hurt. For Point Nine, the reaction is to smooth the whole thing over and act as though everything is fine, living one's life in a mechanical and dead way. This is how the nine ennea-types develop: out of reaction to the loss of basic trust.

To the extent that the environment provides adequate holding, the child can develop in the context of a continuity of being which allows and supports the individuation of the soul – one's unique embodiment of Being. Because there are degrees of holding and of impingement, and because no holding environment is without failures, we typically develop a real (essential) and a false (egoic) self in varying proportions. Basic trust is usually not totally missing, but it is seldom complete. To have absolute basic trust is to be completely realized.

The more we are identified with the false self, the personality, the more we are identified with the absence of basic trust. In order to develop basic trust, and consequently more contact and identification with Being, we need to experience the lack of holding imprinted on our souls. As with any other aspect or dimension of Being, we must first work through the resistance to experiencing the absence or "hole" of it, and then when we fully experience this hole, the missing quality will arise. The effect of the hole of Living Daylight in early childhood is experienced in adulthood in many ways. Emotionally, it will be felt as the need for holding and the sense that no one and nothing is holding you. The feeling of the need itself might be defended against by a lack of trust that anyone will be there for you. This need for holding might be experienced as the desire to be taken care of, the need to be actually physically held, the need for someone to see you and support you. This can lead to the physical sense that there is a kind of emptiness in the belly which makes you feel as if you are suspended in a cold and inhospitable space. This emptiness carries with it the sense that you want to be held, but nobody and nothing is holding you. As we have seen, the central element of the holding in infancy was physical holding and care, but the sense of holding is also global, including the sense of being held emotionally and mentally. Ultimately, it is the sense that your soul is being held.

Allowing ourselves to experience the hole of holding is a crucial step in reclaiming contact with the holding dimension of Being, Living Daylight. Your sense of basic trust is also increased each time you experience the environment responding to you in a supportive way and each time you experience yourself being held in one way or another. In the process of spiritual work, each time you move beyond your usual sense of reality and of who you are – each time you jump into the abyss with its sense of disintegration or fragmentation and accompanying fear – and you experience Being coming through, giving you a sense of support, a sense of relief, of satisfaction, of meaning, your basic trust is strengthened. The more experiences you have that involve dealing with painful states and memories, and resolving them, allowing you to connect with various aspects of your fundamental nature, the more that sense of trust is created. The more your soul is held and the more basic trust is developed, the more you will unfold. Providing this holding for who you really are is one of the functions of a spiritual teaching and a teacher. So the whole of the Work ultimately builds basic trust.

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