Experience at The Almaasary • A Glossary of Key Passages from the Work of A.H. Almaas

Significance of Any 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.
Diamond Heart Book III, p. 14 • discuss »

Experience is a Kind of Knowledge

If you look at your experience at any moment, you will see that it is a kind of knowledge. Experience is inseparable from knowledge, and is in fact, completely knowledge. Experience is so intertwined with knowledge that you cannot say, for example, “My knee hurts,” without the knowledge that you have a knee, what a knee is, what hurt is, and the various other pieces of information that constitute your experience of the knee hurting. All of this is knowledge.
Spacecruiser Inquiry, p. 63 • discuss »

Letting Yourself Be

Of course, when you let yourself be, as you let yourself sink into reality, you might experience unpleasant things; but these are simply the barriers that stop you from being. In time, with Presence, they will dissolve. You might experience discomfort, fear, hurt, various negative feelings. These are the things that you are trying to avoid by not being here. But they are just accumulations of what has been swept under the rug of unconsciousness; they are not you. They are what you confront, on the way to beingness. When we acknowledge and understand these feelings while being present, they dissolve, because the idea of ourselves that they are based on is not real.
Diamond Heart Book III, p. 15 • discuss »

Being with Our Experience

We end up being paranoid in some sense and afraid of our own experience. So, if we are scared of our experience and even of the possibilities that might arise in our experience, how are we going to learn to be real, to be ourselves? How are we going to learn to see exactly where we are and be there—abide where we are—when that might include experiencing danger or perhaps a condition that we think will invite danger? “If I let myself be where I am, what will happen to me? I will be jumped on.” That’s why we automatically defend ourselves. You don’t have to be walking around in an unsafe neighborhood to be afraid for your own safety. You could be in your own room and still not feel safe. What I am saying is that you are defending yourself there, too.
Inner Journey Home, p. 50 • discuss »

Primary and Secondary Components of Experience

Let’s take a look at how the nature of the primary and secondary components of our experience differ according to what stage of the journey we are in. In the first stage, the primary component and the secondary component tend to be similar. The primary component might be an emotion, such as fear or terror or happiness, or it could be a sense of deficiency or a particular pattern or self-image. The secondary components might include fear or rejection of the sense of deficiency, judgment or shame about a particular self-image, or commentaries and plans about whatever else might be arising. We learn through the process of inquiry how to discern the two components and distinguish them from one another. First, we need to recognize a reaction as a secondary component and not as the primary event. The recognition of any secondary component makes clear what the primary component is. That’s why we always want to include both in our inquiry. Because if we don’t see our reactions, we’ll never know what the primary component is.
The Unfolding Now, p. 60 • discuss »

History Colors Experience

In making this kind of connection, we recognize something common to all our experiences—that they are not truly of the moment; they are colored by our past. We can see the veil, the wrapping that our consciousness has put around itself, which has become an interference. We recognize that the dynamism of our Being is not completely free; the total openness that invites experience to arise freshly, just as it is, is missing. We sense that our experience is occurring through old, musty filters that create a dullness and a darkness. We often talk about being here in our ordinary experience. And of course, we are being here in some sense. But what does it mean to be here in the first stage of self-discovery, when there is no direct sense of essential presence? All it means is that I am feeling what I am feeling and I am not overtly trying to change it. But I am not being there yet! How can I be there if it is just an idea of me who is there? All I can do is to be aware of what is happening, to feel it, to recognize it and not fight it.
The Unfolding Now, p. 132 • discuss »

Orientation Toward Experience

We need to remember and be aware that it’s not simply the experience that matters, but how we relate to it. If we approach our experience with an attitude of greed, the experience will likely be used to feed an endless emptiness that can never be filled. But if we approach our experience with a balanced attitude, the experience could expose that bottomless chasm without indulging it. So our orientation toward experience needs to be one of learning. No matter how painful, pure, or wonderful the experience is, all experiences are good when approached with a correct attitude. Approaching an experience with the attitude of learning is an ultimate attunement to reality. Learning this attunement to reality is a difficult process that requires us to approach our difficulties with humility and detachment.
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 348 • discuss »

The Almaasary

Experience

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