The Almaasary

(ahl • mahs • uh • ry)
1. A glossary of key passages from the works of A.H. Almaas.
2. A collection of diamonds (from Arabic "almaas" meaning diamond, and Latin "-ary", a collection).

Glossary: E

• Effort
  

  Another important factor in the ego activity is that the self is always striving to be a particular way, in order to achieve support. The primary image patterning this activity is the ego ideal. The self tries to approximate a certain ideal, in the hope that if she succeeds, she... more »

• Ego
  

  Object relations theory has become the dominant psychoanalytic theory of ego development. Its main insight is that the ego develops, primarily through the integration of early experiences, into organized mental structures. These mental structures, termed ego structures, are systems of memories that have become organized through the processes of assimilation... more »

• Ego "I"
  

  Of course, the ego identity, the "I", is still not truly who you are. You can identify a certain interaction between the true self and the false self, and this will help you to see what is really you and what is not you, what is your personality... Here, then,... more »

• Ego Activity
  

  But it's a vicious cycle, as you can see. The more you reject, the more there is contraction, the more frustrated you become. Then you want to do something that will release the frustration. But you do this by hoping for something in the future and rejecting the present, which... more »

• Ego Alien
  

  Let's consider a person who is habitually critical and judgmental of other people... The criticalness is seen as "ego syntonic" for this individual; that is, it is in accord with his personality and does not feel alien or undesirable to him. It goes along with, and is part of, the... more »

• Ego Death
  

  It is clear here that the ego or self which is annihilated in ego death is not the ego of depth psychology and it is not the actual self. It is specifically the self-identity. The death of this identity merely means that there is no barrier or resistance to the... more »

• Ego Defense
  

  As long as an ego structure is used for defense it acts as a barrier against the experience of the Personal Essence. This point brings us closer to understanding what might be the factor contributing to maturity. It has to do with the fact that when ego becomes more developed... more »

• Ego Deficiency
  

  The experience of expansion involves delight, beauty and the sense of adventure. But sooner or later one does come upon one's personal limitations. When an individual is experiencing expansion in a certain realm, a part of him that feels he cannot do it, that the expansion is too much, comes... more »

• Ego Development
  

  At birth the human infant has no sense of self. He is Being. He is his being without knowledge or self-consciousness. There is no mental functioning yet. Slowly, through experiences of pleasure and pain, memory traces are retained, forming the first self-impressions (self-representations). As the infant starts taking himself to... more »

• Ego Functions
  

  Ego functions, described by Hartmann as the inborn apparatuses of autonomy in the beginning of life, are those of synthesis, integration, regulation, organization, anticipation, tension, decision making, delay, drive taming, identification, intelligence, intention, judgment, language, memory, motility, neutralization, object comprehension, object relations, perception, productivity, reality testing, self-preservation, speech, symbolization, thinking... more »

• Ego Ideal
  

  People often decide on certain goals very early in childhood. These goals are largely determined by what we call the "ego ideal". For the normal personality, the ultimate goal is the realization of the ego ideal - to become your ideal, whatever it might be. The problem is that when... more »

• Ego Identity
  

  So the self-representation (ego identity) depends on a particular structuring of all realms of experience into a cohesive whole. This implies the structuring of the contents of the mind, heart and body experience into a specific, very stable, rigid organization … The resultant sense of psychological identity is very much... more »

• Ego Life
  

  We see that egoic life basically does not respect the autopoietic nature of the soul; it tends to make the open, living system that is the soul into a closed and isolated one, more like a machine. The difference between the egoic and the essential life is not absolute, for... more »

• Ego Metabolism
  

  Since the Personal Essence is the true individuality, it is closely related to the capacities of primary autonomy, which are usually referred to as the ego functions. We have seen that the development and integration of these capacities is intertwined with the development of object relations. Thus we might wonder... more »

• Ego Structures
  

  The sense of a separate self develops gradually in early childhood, within the interaction with the environment, particularly with the mother. The self develops through the creation of internalized images of oneself and the other. These images, or more accurately, representations, become integrated into overall structures that finally give the... more »

• Embodiment
  

  The understanding that is arising here is that ego development is part of the process of embodiment of Being. It is part of the process of Being finally learning to manifest and live in embodied existence. At birth the infant lives as Being, in a state of undifferentiation that is... more »

• Emotional States
  

  The main difference between emotional states and Essence is that the former are discharged processes of our nervous systems, whereas the latter is definitely not. Emotional states are primarily physiological processes accompanied by some ideational content… Essence is independent of the nervous system, transcends physiological processes, and can, in fact,... more »

• Emotions
  

  It might take time for you to understand what the non-expression of automatic emotions entails, and that is fine. What is entailed in not indulging in your automatic emotions is being conscious all the time. We are not talking about suppressing the emotions; we’re talking about not expressing them. To... more »

• Emptiness
  

  At this point the person might go on to experience himself as empty space, devoid of fullness or quality. If he deals with the associations he has to this emptiness - such as those of dependency and need - and the fears produced by them - probably the fears of... more »

• Energies
  

  The chakras work with the energy that is the raw material for emotional states… Prana is the energy connected with breathing and hence with vitality… Kundalini is the main energy that fuels the chakra system. It is connected with sexual energy, but it is sexual energy only when operating in... more »

• Enlightenment
  

  Enlightenment does not involve simply the perception that the person is only a concept. It means that all conceptualization is ended; all images and representations in the mind, whether conscious, preconscious or unconscious, are eliminated, or at least not identified with. When this profound stillness of the mind is achieved,... more »

• Enlightenment Factors
  

  First of all, you need energy, energy to work on yourself and work through the personality and its patterns. Energy is the sense that you have the capacity, the strength, the courage to do something about it, about yourself, about your life... Another factor is determination. Without determination, the energy... more »

• Enneagram and the Diamond Approach
  

  As we have noted, the present work expands on the understanding of the Holy Ideas as it has unfolded in the context of the development of the Diamond Approach. At the same time, the perspective of the Holy Ideas actually provides a context for understanding some of the underlying basis... more »

• Enneagram of Holy Ideas
  

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• Enneagram of Specific Delusions
  

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• Enneagram of Specific Difficulties
  

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• Enneagram of Specific Reactions
  

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• Entityhood
  

  The belief in entityhood is so powerfully entrenched in the human mind that if we look at our thoughts, we see that we can’t think without that concept in our mind. Without believing the assumption that one is a separate person, it is difficult for a human being to do... more »

• Essence
  

  Essence is not alive; it is aliveness. It is not aware; it is awareness. It does not have the quality of existence; it is existence. It does not love; it is love. It is not joyful; it is joy. It is not true; it is truth. more »

• Essential Development
  

  The process of essential development takes the soul from her initial condition at the completion of ego development, in which she is dissociated from her true nature and living mostly as the animal soul with a civilized veneer of ego structures, to the station of the human soul. In other... more »

• Essential Experience
  

  In essential experience the identity is definite and singular, with a sense of freedom, lightness, joy, and the like. There is a sense of excitement, playfulness, and adventure. We feel interested in ourselves, excited about life, wanting to live and enjoy it. We feel our preciousness and specialness and the... more »

• Essential Identity
  

  The essential identity is a simple, pure sense of Presence which feels like self, like "I." It is so simple that it is a subtle matter to differentiate it from other feelings. It is what gives the self the capacity for self-recognition in the essential dimension. It is not the... more »

• Essential Love
  

  The essential aspect of love can be present sometimes without overt action. Action might certainly result and very often does, but it is not necessary for the experience. When essential love is present, then it is our nature. We are present. It is the presence of a certain aspect or... more »

• Essential Qualities
  

  We discover an important truth when we begin to experience our essence, or true nature. We find out that Essence manifests in many different qualities – what we have called the essential aspects. In other words, not only is Essence the pure and authentic presence of our Being, the ontological... more »

• Essential Realization
  

  In the process of essential realization, as in human development in general, when a certain stage is experienced completely and fully, a deeper and more expanded one begins to manifest. The complete realization of any aspect or dimension of Being or Essence is a complete metabolism, which leads to further... more »

• Essential Retrieval
  

  The process of essential retrieval and development does not require complete and permanent dissolution of the personality. Rather, it needs a personality strong enough and flexible enough to allow a temporary dissolution and regrouping, so that the relation between the personality and the Essence will change. What really needs to... more »

• Essential Self
  

  The Essential Self is a central aspect of Essence, distinct from the Personal Essence. The Personal Essence feels like an individuality, a person, while the Essential Self feels like an identity, a feeling of self. The Personal Essence feels like "I am," while the Essential Self feels like "I." The... more »

• Essential Truth
  

  At some point, however, you come to the recognition of what we call “essential truth.” Essential truth is not an insight about something but the apprehending of the immediate reality of the moment. This immediate reality is presence – the quality of beingness – as when one is experiencing an... more »

• Evil
  

  Seeing things from this perspective, we see that there is no one who is really bad. No one is evil in an absolute way. Everyone does what he thinks is good. There is no bad person, there is no evil person; there is only the ignorant person. more »

• Evolutionary Force
  

  Recognizing that Presence manifests itself in various qualities and forms which are constantly changing, reveals that Essence is not static, but is in constant transformation. Being is dynamic. This dynamism manifests the richness of Being, inherent in us as the potentialities of ourselves, and because of this nature is our... more »

• Existence
  

  We see that the nature of the absolute is really the absence of being, the annihilation of presence. This discovery is actually not surprising, for all presence is nothing but the being of the manifest world. Presence emerges as the flow of the logos, as the outflow of being, whose... more »

• Experience
  

  But the significance of any experience is our mere presence, nothing else. The content of any experience is simply an external manifestation of that central Presence. more »