Welcome to part two of our second Path of Love conversation with teacher and sage A. H. Almaas where we continue to immerse ourselves in his latest book, the Inner Beloved. Welcome to Deep Self, Society, Spirit, life enhancing paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

So it's only suffering. And most people won't do it has many rewards along the path.

I get to suffering whether I want it or not, Hameed. I don't try to manufacture it. It comes pretty naturally.

Yeah, it's kind of because we all have stuff we have to burn through. But part of burning through is sometimes there's love. There is a melting, there's a flooding, there's, you know, encounters with different feeling of the love itself. Not just yearning, but love. And sometimes the passion is so. It's called ish, which means intense, passionate, ecstatic love before we meet the beloved.

And that's one of the striking things you point out amid that there can be this intense longing for the beloved. But there's not a clarity for a long time about exactly what it is one is secret or longing for.

No, no clarity about what it is until that sometimes we have glimpses, but because there are glimpses, we're not sure that whether that's it. I mean, I mean for me I had experience with absolute fullness realization of it. But it didn't come through the heart, didn't come from within the heart. So I didn't know it was beloved. And then there was process of wanting the end up beloved. And I don't know why I was wanting this. It was happening. It's recognizing that the heart has its own beloved and it wasn't going to be happy until it met it face to face.

You were probably too smart, Hameed. And your big beautiful brain was getting in the way of your heart until you had no choice and it was just there.

It was habit all the way through, but at some point took the center place. And it's interesting how in this book we come toward the end into meeting the knowing the beloved, becoming one beloved and experiencing it and experiencing the universe throughout. The condition of the beloved, the vastness and the beauty, the inner darkness that's called and that is so similar to the experience of the absolute through the other path. However, here the love component is an important part of it. The world appears as made out of love and an expression of the love of the absolute.

So there's a flavor to it that is distinct in the path of love.

Yeah, there is A distinctness and the experience of the absolute is different, distinct. The beauty and the majesty are much more obvious there.

Well, don't all the paths take us there eventually? I mean, Buddhist is much more. Seemed like more of a mind thing. But eventually you get to the point of the Bodhisattva where it seems to be all about love again. And I'm not an expert on Buddhism, but just my take.

Well, I mean, I remember when Raja was talking about Longchampa. Here is Lakshmang Pa, one of the main writer in Dzogchen. And he has many writings and poems about the deepest truth. He rarely mentions love in it, if you notice. He doesn't talk about love, he rarely talks about beauty. They do appear, you find them. However, if you read Rumi, it's all about love and beauty. It's a very different kind of poetry, you know, so the emphasis is different. And they're both true. That's the thing, they're both true. They're both complete and their own.

And maybe down the line sometime we'll get to it. You emphasize that each teaching and each path has its own what you call logos. It's inherent nature. And here we're talking about the logos of the path of the heart being very distinct on the path of. Well, say contrast with long temper, awareness or even to some extent, not completely more the inquiry. I mean, as you point out, there's inquiry at the heart of the diamond approach. Yeah, different emphasis here. It feels like.

Yeah, so the path of love in the diamond approach is a little different than for instance Ramakrishna path, you know, love. Because in the diamond approach it's intertwined with inquiry. There's inquiry, there's an understanding of the obstacle that arise. They don't just get burnt away. They're understood, they're recognized for what they are and that what burns them and the love comes with it. So there's a combination of both understanding and love at the same time. In the way of the path of the heart and the Dhyana approach. You know, Ramakrishna, if you read Ramakrishna, he was an ecstatic kind of mystic. And he was Advaita Vedanta. I mean, he was non dual, but at the same time he was about love. But he loved some goddess, I don't remember which one it is. It wasn't like loving the ultimate. He had a goddess representing the ultimate. And he was always raptured in love with the guys.

Yes, I seem to remember him sometimes going into the formless and ecstatic. And then the love for the Goddess would draw him back down into form. It's like you got to pray. You're alternating between two types of ecstasy.

Yeah. So in Diamond Approach, there's no God. There's no God. The ultimate truth is the same one. The path of the heart, the path of the mind, the path of the token being.

And I just want to emphasize something, you pointed that the distinction between most paths of the love that I'm aware of, the Bhakti path, Ramakrishna. You mentioned the degree of inquiry you bring to the path of love in your diamond approach is as far as I can tell, quite distinctive. And you mentioned that love purifies or dissolves box and barriers. But you've also said that in the Diamond Approach part of path of love, that the inquiry also serves to dissolve the block of values. Yeah.

And it's true. So, I mean, I don't know if there's any other path that does the same thing. Maybe some of the Sufi lineages do something somewhat similar. I don't think as completely as we do the Darren approach. For some reason, the way Darren Approach developed that inquiry was from the beginning an important part of it. So as I was undergoing through the path of love, the inquiry was there. It was already part of me. So it was happening and it helped into penetrating the obstacles in the way of the heart. The obstacle of the heart got the inquiry help. It might have taken me longer if it wasn't for inquiry.

And there's also, it seems like in both paths, in the Diamond Approach, there is at bottom a profound trust in being. In the inquiry centered approach, it's there's the trust that simply being with experience, it will unfold in beneficial healing, actualizing, transcending ways. And in the path of love, it feels like there's this inherent trust in love itself will take us wherever we need to go.

Yes, there is trust in all the path. And trust is needed generally to go through the inner path through any modality and path of love, however, it's more like you're pulled and pushed. There's no choice. You can't say, oh, I'm scared or I don't trust. I mean, the force comes and pulls you, it melts you, it overwhelms you, you know, and sometimes it overwhelms you with a lot of wounding. Sometimes it overwhelms you with ecstasy. And the difference between the path of love and that one is how the obstacles melt. And the path of love, they tend to not just dissipate, they melt in love, they melt in a puddle of sweetness. So there is recurrence of ecstasy and joy and melting kind of honey kind of.

And Hameed, can we take things that. I mean, most of us have beings that we love deeply. Love our parents, our dog, our wife, our lovers, our best friends. And those are all temporary, at least in the body. And that can bring on great pain of loss when that happens. And can that be used as fuel to work through, to get through that deep sense of loss and love, to get to the inner love and the inner beloved?

I mean. And that happens for some people for losing a loved one. A wife or husband, for instance, can actually begin their inner path of love because they lose the outer love has been so consuming feeling most of their heart and mind. And when that's gone, there's nothing but to move inward. The inward move. And then they find possibility to find the inner beloved. That can happen. Yes.

You've made the point that our usual fickleness and many loves. Or and you and John pointing out now even the loss of love can be the stimulus for going deeper and recognizing the inner beloved. I'm thinking of the only past I know that uses peer relationships and love in peer relationships as its central focus is a curiously titled path. A course in miracles, contemporary teaching. And it very explicitly focuses on relationship as its way, as its path. And clearly a path of love and also somewhat of awakening. But I don't know. Another path that explicitly uses some skill for making fully.

Yeah. I think a relationship by itself can be a path on its own.

Yeah.

Which is not necessarily the path of love. It has love in it. But the path of love is seeing that all relationships are in the way except relationship with the inner beloved. So the outer relationship are not thrown away, but disengaged from. Seen as not what will bring fulfillment. It's not like I had to divorce my wife to engage, you know, bad love. I didn't. I was still loving her. However, when I was by myself. I forget all of those. My wife, everybody, my friends is the only inner movement and deep longing for a beloved. I still don't see until.

That's very difficult.

Yeah. And. Yeah, that's different. Yeah. It's not just relationship. Relationship is a large part of the path of love is a relationship to the inner beloved, not the outer people. That's a different kind of path. Yeah.

And certainly this. The path of love as you're describing is very different from the more it's becoming quite popular. It's called a popular approach to both relationships and spirituality. Relationships as path. You're Drawing quite a distinction there. Yeah.

And I'm not saying that isn't true. It's possible. It can be a path, you know, I think it can be a powerful path. But the devotional path is a different thing. Devotional path, inward movement is emptying the heart of all that it loves. So that is not the inner beloved forgetting all about them until the heart goes through complete darkness, complete emptiness, which we call mystical poverty, which is, you know, mystical poverty means of the heart, that the heart has nothing left in it, you know, and has to be completely empty. And so to have another beloved be there in the heart. And our beloved said, no way. I want Shah.

Well, with Rumi, Sham had to leave, right? He disappeared for that breakthrough that seemed to change his whole story.

Well, I mean, the way Suvi say that the inner beloved is very jealous lover.

That's true.

Completely jealous. It can't have any other beloved there. Not a trace, another beloved. The heart has to be completely empty and pure and only love. Z?

Yeah. The Old Testament says that I am a jealous God and thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. But we need to remember when we meet the inner beloved, we become one with the inner beloved. And we recognize that the inner beloved, the inner nature of the heart, which become the inner nature of the whole universe. We recognize then we love everything. The love is the nature of the beloved. The beloved loves everything. And then we recognize that it's okay to love others. And then not in competition, but as an expression of loving the beloved. Because they all are expression and are beloved. They're all, you know, the visualization of the inner beloved. And that in fact the path or legend can succeed if it get to that point of seeing that the other really stands for the inner truth. Not just an other than me, but really an expression of the deepest truth. If we see that way, the relational path can work because that's what happens in fulfillment or the path of love. When we finally behold then our beloved, it's. For me, it was. I remember what happens. It was like I was looking, I mean, I was going through all that process at some point, looked inside and it was like thunder, lightning. And it was like a big storm and a big storm, thunder, lightning. And turned out the lightning and thunder was the outer emanation of this inner beloved appeared and took his place in the heart and occupied it fully completely and felt it's just right what should be there that the true owner of the heart, the true only dweller of the heart. And that and we realized. I realized that it was always like that, but I just didn't know it. That all the things I loved because they were somehow expression of the inner beloved, but I didn't know it.

Well, that was as you described that experience to me, that was a very powerful transmission. It's like I'm still vibrating from your description.

Well, for me, powerful experience too. I was surprised to see, I mean, thunder lighting just like outside in a big storm. It was within the heart. The heart was big. Like I had no limit how big it felt. And it was like a dark night with lightning. And the lightning told me the inner beloved like lightning. That light that revealed. Oh yeah. This is this mystery, this beautiful mystery. The luminous darkness. Ooh, numbness. And it turned out it's the same thing and emptiness that the Buddhas talk about. The inner beloved is the empty awareness, the movie that the doctor talks about, except now it is the inner beloved and the source of love and the source of the universe.

Yeah, you talk about it being the inner beloved is beyond being. It's beyond God, it's beyond non duality. It seems to be something. So just as you just said, the source of the universe. All of it.

Yeah. As a non duality is an outer expression of it. When we. The inner beloved has nothing to do with duality. Non duality is a mystery. And it is a kind of an ecstatic annihilating mystery. And call it emptiness. You call it nothingness, you call it like complete effacement of everything. And from there its radiance becomes the world that we know. And that world is non dual.

So non duality follows this experience of the inner beloved. Then it becomes not just annihilation, but becomes a connection, a relationship from the heart to the everything.

Yeah. So the inner beloved, the inner beautiful, luminous emptiness becomes inseparable from the world as its outer expression, as its role. Its body, like the universe becomes the outer body, the outer skin of the inner beloved. So it's made out of light, made out of love. A loving light, loving awareness. Transparent, beautiful. Luminous. And nothing is separate from anything else. The whole world is not separate from the beloved. Nothing in the world is separate from anything else. It's all one tapestry. One, you could say one manifold.

I think you're. There's hope for me. This last several minutes as you've described, your experience has been so impactful and beautiful. I'm teary. So even someone who are non bio.

Bringing out the love in your heart, I can see it. Yeah, well, I mean you always had love.

You know, I was just watching.

It's getting activated. Coming out.

All right.

Yeah.

No, but I do want to emphasize just what you. We spoke in our previous conversation about the power of transmission and how it happens and a couple of conversations back, and you said that, you know, in real transmission, you speak and you embodying. Embody the experience realization state you're speaking about. And that it offers an opportunity for someone who's open to resonate and also to open to that. And I think you're just giving us nice respect. A significant number of our listeners that experience. It's just truly touching. I'm glitchling, tearing.

I'm glad to hear it. And I hope many of our listeners are having similar.

Yeah, may it be so. Indeed.

I want people to feel touched, to recognize that their heart can't resonate with the truth of the truth with the inner beloved.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because the inner beloved of everybody is not just my inner beloved.

Yeah. And there's. There's powerful healing on this path. I've found that in studying this book, it hasn't. Some of it was kind of hard and other parts have just been very, very good.

No, it's hard, painful, and as you said, conflictful, frustrating and all. But a lot of it is also sweet sweetness and fullness and love and a sense of attract. Sometime there's a yearning. Sometimes there's an attraction, like a magnetic force pulling you in deeper and deeper, you know, as it melts you. Because love has a magnetic component to it. As, you know, if you love somebody, you want to be close, that is the fact that it's magnetism of love. You know, I remember talking with my Tibetan teachers and I was asking, why doesn't Buddhism talk about love? He said, well, the reason. Because love brings attachment. We don't talk about love. And I was not true. But the ways of love have found a way to deal with that. You know, the attachment is incinerated, you know, is melted away through love. The more the love is get bigger and deeper and more profound, which also, as I said, you cannot make it happen.

Yeah.

You can be open to it. You can be open to it. It feels like we're yearning, we're. But it is really the inner beloved work in our heart without us knowing it. It is drawing it nearer because it wants us to be one with it, because we are. It is. It's eyes and legs.

Yeah. That's also very, very healing. Just to. And of course you've read that before, but just to hear you say It. And speaking it out of your direct experience that we are desired so profoundly by the beloved. Yeah, very touching.

I mean, why were we here? The beloved didn't want this.

I give up.

I mean, are you just gonna listen to Darwin? It doesn't matter. Of evolution.

Somehow we ended up here and I. This part of.

Typically we could say life developed, but even then. So why is there life? Why is there evolution? What for?

You know, then some, like Ken Wilbur would say, well, Eros Falls, heros underlies it all. Yeah, well, this has been very beautiful. And I'm. I'm torn. I'm wanting to make sure. Not wanting to leave this beautiful experience. And I am wanting also to ask a little more about the. What you call the mystical poverty which allows this. And you describe the mystical poverty as a relinquishment of all the loves which. All the competing loves. And could we. So two questions here. First one, could we substitute here effectively. Could we also talk about the relinquishment of attachments of any kind?

Yeah, I mean, when we love, there's attachment to it. So the Buddha is correct about that. Love brings attachment, but the love is what melts the attachment by intensifying, by the love getting greater. It melts the attachment. That's one way. You could also work with attachment by understanding it and dissolving it. But love can also feel the attachment because the greater love for the beloved melts the attachment to other smaller beloved.

Then it makes them less relevant. I mean, you know, your love of your ego becomes like, okay, so what, you know, it's about the love is much greater.

It feels like they feel like an impediment, like a competition for the movement of the heart. I'm going there. I'm going there strongly. So some other love here is like distraction, like is weakening the power of the love that is coming through that pouring toward direction of its own that we don't know, we don't have a compass for.

In your description of mystical poverty, you emphasize the relinquishment of all other loves just leaving this open space. If I understand some of the Christian teachings correctly, the spiritual poverty also implies a recognition of our utter dependence on the divine, that we can't do anything independent of the divine. Is that also implied in your description of mystical poverty?

You see, there is mystical poverty and there is mystical poverty of the heart. Not exactly the same thing. Mystical poverty, at the same time the cross talks about is the poverty of the soul. The soul does not own anything of its own. It's all given to it. And when it recognizes all its possession in the world, all its inner capacities, all in experience, all are not its own given to it. That's called mystical poverty. But here is the heart itself, because it's not the totality of the soul. But the heart doesn't have anything of its own, does it really? So it's a mystical poverty of the heart, which means it's empties of its attachment, of its preferences, but mostly of all other things that it loves. Can be a big thing, like a wife or a husband or friend or a teacher or. Or it could be a little thing like ice cream or, you know, like some kind of cake or like some kind of sport or like some kind of movie star or all of these things can become competition to them. And the inner poverty is all of those dissolve. So the heart experiences own poverty and it empties all these things.

Yeah, I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention St. Francis of Assisi. To me, he's very much the embodiment of that. He took the poverty literally. Of course, he wanted to be completely poor physically, but he was actually going for the inner poverty. And he went through a really hard time getting there in the dark cave, left everything. And finally when it came out, this recognition of the God, the inner beloved, became so great that it spilled out to all creatures and the world and people recognized it and it was very healing.

He's a great example of that. Yes, yes. He loved all life, then everything. Yeah. And that's what happens when the inner beloved takes its place at the center of the heart. I mean, everything becomes. We can't love one thing in life, and there is love for everything. It's just love. And there is awareness of everything, just like in the path of the mind. But with the awareness, there's love, there's loving. What we're aware of, and loving is not by an individual, is by the beloved itself. The vastness of the beloved. The vastness of the beloved, the depth, the inner infinite depth and vastness and mystery. Also need to remember, the mystery of the beloved is the source of love. It is what loves everything.

And so the individual soul would become a channel of that love, that greater.

Love, because there's no experience with that individual soul. You don't see or perceive anything. You know, the inner beloved, or the inner truth, has no way of seeing, hearing, perceiving, without a perceiver. So the soul is like a lens, perceptual, an experiential lens, or the inner truth. And that's why I don't like people who dismiss the soul. Because without the soul, you know, the inner truth has no way to know itself.

Yeah. You emphasize so often that we are the organs of perception and action. For the. The beloved or absolute have a function.

Yeah. As individuals, we are the organs. But our true self, our true beingness is the beloved itself, is the fundamental Tasanda truth. That is what we are. And we see through the individual because we perceive only locally. You notice, you don't. I mean, you're not perceiving Calcutta, you're perceiving. You're in your office, regardless how realized you are.

Yes. Let's see. It feels like that we've come to perhaps a stopping place for today because there's a kind of jump to the next topic here. But is there anything you'd like to add amid.

Well, I mean, just a reminder for all who are listening. And when you feel love, that's the beginning. That can be the beginning of the path of love, any love. So we can take the love itself instead of the object of love. Let it get bigger, let it get deeper, see where it takes us. Because love is a powerful, most powerful force actually in the spiritual universe, which being the most powerful force in the universe.

Beautiful. Well, well, Hameed, as usual, thank you so very much. I will be listening. I listen to all our. All your dialogues once they come out. But I will be listening to this one very eagerly because I really received. Felt like I received a transmission today.

And I mean, you must be feeling love, that sweetness. The heart must be more open.

Yeah. Yes. I have hope. Yeah.

We don't just hope. You do. No.

John.

How about you, John?

I'm doing. I'm. I'm just feeling extremely grateful. I think I'm much more of a bhakti than I am, you know, a mind. Although I worked on it for years.

Yeah.

This makes. It just validates a lot of my life, a lot of the suffering, a lot of experiences, a lot of my current struggles. And I find myself so, so grateful that we've had this opportunity to be with you here and how kind you've been sharing it in our audience and our growing community.

And in gratitude is a kind of love that because it is one of the expression of the heart. You don't feel gratitude in your head, you feel it in.

That's true. I don't.

Yeah. Feel gratitude. It's a sweet nectar.

It is. Indeed it is.

Yeah, it is.

I try to make the first thought of the day as I'm just Waking up. Thank you for. And then it's a long list.

I think you know the idea that because this new book just coming out and we want people to know not only about the book, what's in it.

Yeah, the book.

I don't care about the book. I care what the book embodies, what has in it the message it wants to give. That's what matters. And informing people of the message. Of course, they could read the book and get more details, but we give. Telling them what. What is about.

Yeah. And also just the transmission you're offering. And again, to emphasize how powerful the exercises in this book are, certainly have had their impact on me. So thank you very much, Hameed. Really deeply grateful. Thank you also to Vanessa Santos, who is a production editor, and to our manager, Heidi Mitchell. And if you have been enjoying this series and other series with Hameed, then please subscribe. Perhaps you'd like to leave a review. It helps us get this. These ideas out to more people. So thank you, Hameed. Thank you so much. And hopefully we get to continue.

See you in a few weeks.

Thanks so much, Hameed. That was.

Thank you, Hameed.

Yeah. Very touching.

Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved as we are moved, being part of it ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets. So if you would like to help us to. Mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have. Which is steadily growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do, the more positive effect we can have on the world. So we've done that a couple of ways, but we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee. Very simple. And I do that with podcasts that I support and I find it's very satisfying. So thank you for your help. Thank you for your presence and thank you for all you are and all you do.