Welcome to part one of our second conversation in our new Path of Love series with Hameed Ali, aka A. H. Almaas, where we dig into Hameed's latest book, the Inner Beloved. This conversation and work is extremely challenging, but takes us all the way to the realization of our true nature, which is love. Welcome to deep transformation, Self, Society, Spirit, life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists, Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

I'm Roger Walsh and our co host is John Dupuy. And today we begin the second dialogue in the H. Almaas Path of Love series. And this is a series in which we are working through Hameed... A. H. Almaas is the pen name Hameed Ali is the name. We are working our way through Hameed's third book in his love trilogy, which is a beautiful profound reflection, examination of the path of love. And it begins with the book Love Unveiled, which explores the different kinds of love that we experience in our usual lives and how these loves can open us to a deeper and divine love. The second book in the trilogy is Non Dual Love and that explores surprise, surprise, non dual love, boundless experience of divine love. And this is where personal boundaries dissolve. And finally the culminating volume of the trilogy is titled the Inner Beloved. And this is what we're exploring today. It's a really profound exploration of the depths of the more than just love, the path of love, the fundamental depths of our human nature. And this book is. And you say Hameed, actually you say this final book quotes is not simply about love, it's actually more about the way of the heart, the path that leads to the realization of the mystery, the ultimate nature of everything and the source of all that we experience, which is what you call the absolute. So maybe that's a great, a great. He didn't let you take off from there.

Did you get a copy of the book yet?

Not a physical copy.

We have PDF so I have a physical copy here.

Oh, wonderful. We have the PDF.

I just got it yesterday.

Oh, great. Congratulations.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I mean the kind of cover that (indiscernible) makes, a simple cover.

Well, Hameed, maybe, maybe I can say something. I found this, this is not an easy book, especially the middle part. We used to say in Christianity is a hard saying. I mean it's like it's not just, you know, all you need is love and all it's. You gotta go through a lot. And you talked about using the metaphor of the Kaaba in, in Mecca, which is this ancient holy place that was long before Muhammad, but when he got there it was full of all these different idols and different things from these multiple gods and religions and whatnot. And he had to clean all that out before it made room for Allah, I suppose. And so that's something. What it's. It's a light our hearts in this journey, we have to get beyond all our exterior loves and idols, if you will, and things that we really, you know, care about deeply in order to empty ourselves, to be able to receive this experience, this relationship with the inner beloved.

That's a good rendition of the. Yeah, a major part of the path of love. You know, most of the paths that have to do with discovering the inner nature has to do with emptying the consciousness or the mind, whatever. Here is the path of heart. So emptying the heart of all that fills it, occupies it until it becomes solely focus. And it's love for the inner truth, for the inner beloved. The heart knows that it loves something deep within itself and doesn't know exactly what it is, but has a feeling that there is something there. It loves, it longs for, yearns for, and it pins it that it's not, it's separate from it. So the whole path has to, with separation and alienation, the discontent and then the yearning, the longing and the love for the return to the origin and to the true beloved that the heart really wants. And of course, at the beginning we look for it outside, you know, and different thing, different people. And at some point we. We wise up, we realize, no, it's not outside. So then becomes the process of emptying the heart of everything that fills it. It's attachments, it's preferences, all the things that occupy it make it more externally oriented. Instead of looking for the love or looking for the beloved as inward as within. And that is usually. I mean, most of the path of love has to do with emptying of the heart, with love and yearning at the same time. Deep yearning, passion and love combined together to burn through all the idols which are basically what stands for the beloved that is not the beloved. And all people have a lot of things that stand that they love. It's normal, natural. People love many things and they love some people. They think it's the beloved for them that they want to live the rest of their life they love more than anything else. The path of love shows that it's not against that. It just said that's not going to give you the final contentment, that there is another, bigger, deeper, more profound beloved that lies deep, deep, deep within the heart. So it's not exactly the Search appears more like a yearning and love and emptying of the heart. So just like we can empty our mind, empty our consciousness to find the truth, here, emptying the heart to find the truth of the heart.

What you said in the beginning, I thought was helpful in our normal meditation, at least. As I've been practicing. We attempt to still the mind, reach the emptiness of the mind, just pure awareness. But in this practice, it's not the mind we're clearing, it's the heart. And that's kind of an aha moment for me.

Yeah.

I mean, it is known there is a path of love on the path of the heart. And many tradition have it. The bhakti, you know, path, like in India, and from tradition, based on the love. Path of love, like the Sufi path pretty much is path of love. Christianity. A large part of it is a path of love. So this one here shows how the path of love appears in this teaching. How it appeared to me, for instance. You know, I was also engaged in all the other ways of experiencing the truth. But there was this thread of the heart with all of them that at some point took center stage and revealed its secrets at different stages.

You begin, Hameed, by pointing out that doing a kind of reframe on our usual emotional love life, which is, you use the term fickle, polygamous. We love you. We're attracted to many things and many people. And as you point out that inevitably there's a sense of dissatisfaction that goes with all of them. None of them are complete or permanently satisfying or whole. And you do the useful reframe of pointing out that this is actually a lesson about the limitation of any phenomenon or external object, and it's inherent inability to fully satisfy.

Yeah. Hameed, does it sometimes happen that we. Maybe we get a taste of the inner beloved at an early age, and then it kind of goes away, but that keeps us yearning and looking for that for the rest of our lives.

That happens to many people. Yes.

Yeah, that's. That's me, too.

And yeah, yeah, of course, you know, some people have a taste or a glimpse, you know, and then they can't forget it. And then that becomes the kernel of their inner search and longing. So, you know, in terms of the mind or the general. Many of the paths of, you know, man, the mind or knowledge is like one thing to find out, one thing to understand, one thing to discover, awakening to the inner truth. This one is wanting to find, wanting to become one with the inner beloved. Feeling something you love more than anything else, something that you love. And also Loves you back. Yes, mutual love that attracts the two and work through all what's in between.

Is it possible? Maybe this is more integral thinking. But it came up for me, as you were saying, to have a second person relationship with the inner beloved. Like I love you, inner beloved or I love you God or however you say that in your mind. It's not just totally being it, but it's you're in relation to it.

Most of the path is like that, okay? It begins like that in the middle of it. Only in the end of it there is the union which I call non dual experience of the beloved. But that's the end of the path. But for most of the path it's. As you know, the Bhakti path has longing and yearning for the beloved. If we read the poetry of Kabir or Rumi and many of the Christian mystics, it's all really the lover and beloved. And that is how what forms the path? There's a lover and beloved. And lover doesn't know where the beloved is. What's it like, what it feel like and wants to know. It wants to be behold, it wants to be with it wants to unite with it. I mean Christian tradition wanting to be one with. You know, unite with the inner beloved. Most of the path of love is that there is a lover yearning for the beloved and not finding it. So all the heartache, all the separation, all the pain, all the insufficiency, all the meaninglessness, all of that that people experience in the spiritual path here is seen in terms of the beloved. Where is the beloved? I want to be one with the beloved. I want to see the beloved behold the beloved, be one with the beloved, as close to the beloved. And that's why the path of love has to do with nearing and distant feeling. Near getting nearer. I mean some tradition even have words for nearness and different degrees of nearness. But still it's true. Nearness means there's one near another. And then nearness of course alternates with distance. Things that make us farther away. We get busy with the world, busy with other loves and forget. And our passion wanes. And till our passion fires up again and we're on the search again, you know, and yearning and loving and

one

thing, and I mean all the sentiments of the heart come into it and to really clarification of the emptying and a clarification of the heart and to become completely pure.

And I imagine that's a process. It doesn't just happen all at once. The purification of the heart, I mean, is That a gradual thing. As we get closer to this inner beloved, does our inner idols, our inner projections, our reifications, as you say, begin to dissolve through the work itself? Or is it something we've got to get to this point of complete emptiness of the heart before we can experience the inner beloved?

It is a process. You know, for me, I've already known the absolute been experiencing for a while, but I didn't know it was in our beloved. I experienced the nature of everything and the vast expanse, the nature of non dual reality. But then the path of the heart was another thread that starts happening. The heart itself wanted something and they know. I mean, I didn't know that is the inner beloved. And had to go through the whole journey of the heart, which is a whole process, took years. I mean, I was on it since I was younger without knowing. But it took years and long. You know, it goes up and down because it was all for me, it was some people, path of the heart is all their path. For me, path of the heart is part of my path. So it was alternating with other ways of experiencing the truth. So the path of the heart at some point dominated until it became this deep, deep love and wanting that. The Tuvi is called the shok, Shaukh or Ishq. Both words, shaukh mean wanting an uncontrollable work. Eshk means totally and loved and raptured,

you know, And Amita, just listening. There's a curiosity in or an apparent paradox between the fact of your realization with its fullness and complete satisfaction and at the same time experiencing this longing inherent in the path of. Aha.

Yeah, it's interesting. It surprised me. You think if I already know it,

everything would be fixed?

What I call the absolute truth and real I am it. But then the heart still the heart wasn't completely cooked, which is true by many people who experience the absolute or non dual truth. That doesn't mean their heart is completely emptied, completely open.

I could be called a quarter baked or half baked.

Yeah, I mean, that's not unusual. That's normal. I mean, that's what I found myself in. But then I pursued it. I mean, or it made me pursue it. It was like a natural, spontaneous process of engaging the movement of the heart. The anglasia of the heart, the, let's say, the cooking of the heart.

And as you say it in Rumi's poetry, we see both of those things. We see the time parts where he's just in deep yearning for the beloved and other times he's Right there. And it just kind of goes back and forth on his journey. And he expresses it so beautifully.

Yes. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, with Rumi and his poetry, sometimes you need to differentiate between his love with his teacher, the shams, or the inner beloved. And sometimes for him, they're both the same, you see?

I mean, coming back to the paradox of your experience of the realization, the fullness, the complete satisfaction of that. The paradox with that longing is something analogous I'm trying to feel into in my own experience. Not having, of course, your depth of realization, but still having practiced long enough so that the usual way of being is much more, in the this these days, much more relaxed, more of a flow than a kind of push or dramatic pull as it was in previous years. So as I. As I've been studying Dinner Beloved and reading of the intensity of this longing. Somehow it feels like there's less of that kind of passionate longing than there was before being practiced.

What do you attribute that to?

Well, the practice feels like it's being brought about a greater degree of peace, a greater degree of just trust, of allowing more of a flow than a driven. Any driven, compulsive sense of motivation. Less need. It feels a lot easier, more flowing. As opposed to the kind of intense fall that we describe in the path of love.

Well, I mean, the more we are in touch with our true nature or true self, the less there is that strong drive. At some point, the drive stops completely because we have arrived. However, the path of love is a specific path. It is not necessarily the path for everybody. Some people have that as important for them. Some people, not some people. Other paths. Many paths don't include the path of love at all, you know, I mean, the Buddhist, for instance, in general, it's not really path of love. It's a path of. The mind is about awareness. So for them, that doesn't necessarily occur in the path of love. Path of love is a particular dynamic that happens in the consciousness then that some people have it more than others. Some people have it, some other people don't have. So for you, you don't know. That's your dominant thing, you see, might not be your dominant. That's why you don't feel it as much. You see, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong. But not just not where your soul is going.

That feels right. And that reminds me of something I wanted to bring up in this book. There's not only an exposition and laying out of the path of love, but there are a series of exercises that are Offered primarily centered around a repetitive questioning or description of some facet of the path or the various experiences that go with that or the blocks or barriers. Personally, I have to say that doing one around the blocks to Venice of the Beloved was absolutely transformative. It got me in touch. I've long been aware I have difficulty with the path of love. But I'm not a devotional type. Blocks to it. And doing that exercise broke through in a way nothing else has to. A release of stuff going back to, of course, childhood relationship with an aggressive alcoholic father, et cetera, et cetera. You know, a defensive boarding up and. And refusal to be impacted. Which, you know, like all defenses served its purpose at the time, but has in problematic sense. And so all this is just to say that the exercises in the book have for me been really powerful.

Remember this book come from a teaching I did to my group. And so the exercise come because I gave the students to do. And you notice in the book that the way the prose in it, the way the chapter were written is different from the other book. We're exploring the journey home. That one, as I wrote this one, I talked. You could see the difference between my writing and talking. This one is more discursive. I go more detail, a different kind, not as dense. So yes, I mean, maybe for some people, their path, they're not devotional. But that might be either its nature is not devotional. I mean, that's nothing to do with their development. Or maybe that something is in the heart need to be worked out, need some obstructions that need to be opened up. And maybe, who knows, might become parti. The end of your life.

Anyway, there's hope.

Might you find yourself singing to God at the top of your voice, those Indian song devotions. And all that, you know, into this.

I was one of those kids who were in school who was told to mouth the words in singing lessons. So. So, you know, let's hope I'm not singing.

Yeah, I'm not good at singing. I never got to sing. I wrote poetry and I, you know, this book, I use poetry from different people because the path of love poetry that natural to it. Because, you know, the heart speaks in poetry usually because it's not the clear delineation as much as the expression of certain sentiments and states that pass through. But the interesting thing about the path of love is seeing that the soul really has heart. That heart is an important part of being a human being. And the heart is a big organ. I mean inner subtle organs. Not just like the mind. Mind is A subtle organ, too, has all dimensions, but the heart, too, is like that. It can be very deep, and it goes all the way, all the way. Just like the path of the mind. So this book really shows how the path of the heart goes all the way through to the ultimate beloved, which is the ultimate nature anyway, that could find through any path.

Yeah, Hameed, Interestingly enough, I'm going to be going into the studio shortly. And the song that I'm going to record, I wrote it a while back, but it's called in the Heart of Me. And it talks about the pain of lost love and then the commitment to keep on looking in the heart of me. And then the last part is about the magnificence of when it's found. So I think I'm on the right path in the recording studio.

Well, you notice in all cultures, most of the singing and the music has do love. Either how much you love somebody or how you feel after losing somebody. Somebody doesn't want you. It's always about the dynamics of the heart in relation to a beloved. So for human being, they're preoccupied with love. Love is actually is a much bigger force for human being than any other thing. Much more than, you know, knowledge or wanting to understand things. Only some people, some members of humanity, but love, everybody get love of their life. I mean, it's not an inner love for the divine. It is love for somebody, for a friend, for family. So love is always there. But it turns out that that comes from someplace, that there's an organ in the soul, that the soul appears as an organ of love that has its own dynamic, its own laws. It's not matter of detachment and discrimination. It's matter of yearning and love and intensity and passion that penetrates through the barriers and dissolves them.

I love that. Thank you.

And, Amit, one of the questions that came up for me as I was reading your opening chapters about the fickleness of the heart. You call it the polyamory, the longing for this and that and many things. And people you talk out, point out that it's inherent inherently, inevitably there's a dissatisfaction there. And that this. That satisfaction can be the goad and the guide to the whole path of the heart. Looking, beginning to look within, but doesn't seem like that's a very common recognition. And in fact, I was even thinking. Abraham Maslow brought in the idea of meta motives, a higher order motives in which love was part of it. But he also spoke of meta pathologies, the pathologies that arose when the meta motives weren't recognized and fulfilled. So two questions here. One is how many people actually recognize the deeper nature of this call and make the turn inward? And what kind of suffering and pathologies do people go through when they don't?

Well, the suffering and pathology that people go through and they don't in the majority of humankind, that the ordinary suffering human beings had various degrees of depth and intensity. And it has always been the wisdom and the understanding of all spiritual teaching that there will be suffering unless we really find the inner truth, that there is no true contentment, there is no true final peace and rest unless we find the deepest truth in us, the truth of our spirit. And doesn't have to be the path of the heart. Could be any path. They all have discontent as a beginning. Suffering, discontent or meaninglessness, you know, and the heart's the same way here. The discontent is felt in terms of love. That's the only difference that makes it the path of the heart. And discontent is that feeling, recognizing that what I love in life, whether it's sport or a person or an object or something, regardless how much I love it, there'll still be something missing someplace. And most people don't get there. Most people think the more they do the other thing, they probably will get enough. And some people get old and recognize that no didn't happen. Or some people get old, recognized, didn't happen, but they reconcile to it. If immature, it's okay, they can live with it as incompleteness. Few people, as we know throughout history, actually pursued the spiritual pathway to its final stages. And that when we experience true contentment, true settling through the path of the heart leads us to see that the inner beloved is our inner home, our repose. Repose the soul, basically, by finding the inner beloved, by being. Not only finding it, by being one with it, it's relieved of all its searching, all its yearning, all its discontent. And there is a contentment of fulfillment and the love and delight and love and joy that comes out of that, that the soul looks out from within. The bosom of the beloved looks on the world. So it's eyes, the eyes of the soul are the eyes that the beloved uses.

And there's fear too. That's part of this fear of losing what we love, fear of losing ourselves, fear of death as the end of the story. Fear of finding God and losing him or her again.

The different stages of the path have different kind of fears, you're right. Some of them much more tense, much more, you know, scary than others. Some of the fears are in terror. I Mean, but that is again, similar to other paths. The path of the mind has fear and terrible path of the heart as it's felt more emotionally. You feel the terror, the shaking and trembling. Well, first, fear is the fear of the heart is being purified of all other beloved is the fear of losing people we love. Fear of losing our love for them. Fear of losing the world. Fear of losing. I mean, there's a lot. That's a lot. And I mentioned in the book, especially the last few chapters, how much we love the world and that why, you know, one of the final things we're afraid of losing is the world as a whole, which at a deep level represent our good mother. The good mother and the world we call in the beginning. What's the world? It's our mother. And that stays imprinted deep in the soul and unconscious. So there's the inner mother or the world are the same thing. And there's a fear of losing that and some form, also a fear of losing oneself. You're gonna be all gone. You're consumed by the love for the beloved. And the love of the beloved for the soul can be intense and consuming and powerful. That the soul will be incinerated, will be absorbed, you know, become no more as an individual.

Yeah. Habib. Jesus said In Luke chapter 14, he says, he that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple. In other places he names it, you know, your family, your children, your wife, you know, the world, even hate your own self. You can't follow me. So there's a real sense of the. It runs throughout at least the Gospels, this sense of what you're talking about, of just completely.

Obviously, his path was the path of love.

Yeah.

What he taught, really.

That's right.

Yeah. Jesus is very well known as the path of love.

Yeah. He said it was all boiled down, all the law, the Old Testament, all the this, Thou that and the other. Bottle down to two things, is to love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your being and your neighbor as yourself. He said that's the whole thing right there.

I think. I mean, from the perspective of the path of the heart, that is the whole thing.

And there's a sense in undertaking the spiritual path that we usually we're looking for some consolation and relief and our various pains and fears and insecurities. Yet you point out that, in fact, you say very explicitly, there's no safety in the path of love. That it really requires a vulnerability and openness that is extreme.

Yeah, vulnerability, openness. And dealing with all the woundings of the heart, human soul. Human beings have a lot of woundings that happened along their life from earlier on. Have to do with love. Loved or not loved. Losing love betrayed all of that deep wounding. And so we encounter those on the path of love. To empty the heart means we have to feel what's in the heart. And much of it is. Of course, we have the hatred and the anger and this and that. But also the woundings and the terror too, that can arise. There's a lot that we go through on the path of love. And it's not an easy path. But the thing is, you know, the path of love. The other thing about it is not methodical and it is not intentional. You cannot make it happen. You cannot practice happens. That's how I know it. It happens. I wasn't trying to go through the path of love. I wasn't practicing the path of love. Different, like meditation, you sit and meditate. I know in some bhakti path they chant and this and that. And you know, that mavlavi. They do their whirling and all that. But that doesn't really. Whirling doesn't activate the heart. It just takes you to a state of stillness, you know. And the heart. The path of the heart is like something happened in the heart. That comes from. Like a blessing from beyond the person. Like the beloved works on the heart, works on the soul. And throws it nearer and throws it nearer. The soul feels it is getting nearer or wanting to get nearer. But in that nearness, it encounters all the obstacles, all the difficulties, all the pain, all the suffering that is filling the heart. For most human beings, their hearts are full of stuff. I mean, look at the human beings, what they do with each other. Why is that? Because their heart is full of garbage. Full of wounding and hatred and envy. And I mean, so love is really sorely needed these days on earth, you know, especially these days. But it's always love. The path of love is a way that. That's one thing I said for me, the way I know it, I teach it. I don't see everybody going through it. People go through different degrees. But for it to actually happen to completion. It has to be its own natural, spontaneous unfolding.

And there is. I don't want to jump ahead in the book. But there is a resolution to this suffering and fear and these different things that get in the way of our opening of our heart up to the inner beloved. And at some point, the love becomes so great that all that fear goes away. In other words, even the loss of self is not there because you simply want to dissolve and you want to be one with the inner beloved. And your little ego self or little individual self seems pretty irrelevant at that point. So there's not a fear of loss. There's just an attraction to wanting to be that the beloved.

True. I mean, the more. The closer. The nearer we are to the beloved, the more we feel its effect. And one thing I want to add to the path we're talking about the difficulties and the burnings and fear, but also the path of love includes many kind of joys and meltings and love and feeling, you know, overwhelmed and flooded with love and feeling passionate, deep love and feeling the joy, feeling nearer. You're getting closer, and that fills us with joy. The sun comes, that's coming out. And so it has a mixture of both the heartache and the melting love, the sweetness, because there's love. Love has all kinds of sweetness. Many kind of love, many levels of love that goes through the whole path. So it's only suffering. And most people won't do it.

Stay tuned for part two of this deep dive into the ultimate with this extraordinary teacher. Ah, Almaas, 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 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. We love you.