The Unfolding Now

“This seems to be the central dilemma of human life—that it is easier to desire what is over there than to appreciate what is right here. In fact, what is here seems to be so fundamentally inferior, less than, or inadequate compared to what is apparently over there, that it hardly seems worth the effort to look here. Why not just go over there? Why, indeed? All spiritual paths, traditions, and schools have been attempting to answer that question for us for thousands of years. Each in their own way teaches that your spirit or your soul—your original unconditioned consciousness—exists only in you, so going elsewhere can never give you access to your essential nature, to who you really are. And the essence that is you is purported to be something quite magnificent: Your true spiritual nature is said to be full of love, peace, strength, beauty, joy, compassion, wisdom, and intelligence.

But even imagining yourself with this spiritual nature immediately conjures up the belief that you can only find these qualities somewhere else. After all, it is not what you experience in yourself now, right? You’re not there . . . yet. Spiritual paths and techniques thus become ways of getting there—to the place where you feel real, where you will become all these wonderful things. So you meditate, attempting to empty your mind or calm yourself or focus on an image or let go of all attachment. Or you chant and dance to invoke your spirit. Or you say prayers and go on vision quests. Yet all these techniques of finding your deeper self subtly imply that where you are now in yourself is not where you need to be. 

You are seeking some ideal of the spiritual self and using these methods to attempt to reach that. The result is that the spiritual search can evoke the same dilemma that all other aspects of your life do... 

What if you found a spiritual method that focused completely on being right here? What if it did not require you to change yourself in any way in order to find yourself?”

Transformation unfolds when you take your hands off your experience – stop fixing, transcending, or judging, and meet each moment for the gift that it is.

The Unfolding Now is A.H. Almaas' foundational teaching on the practice of presence within the Diamond Approach, a contemporary spiritual path he innovated from paths as diverse as Sufism, Buddhism, Vedanta, contemplative Judaism and Christianity, Greek philosophy, depth psychology, and the inner work of G.I. Gurdjieff. Written from retreat transcripts, this work presents an effective method called inquiry – a particular way of self-observation and contemplative exploration that allows us to “be where we are” without interference. Almaas systematically reveals the obstacles keeping us from presence – defensiveness, desire, aggression, comparative judgment, self-hatred, ignorance, and identification – and shows how to welcome each with curiosity and compassion. Unlike approaches seeking sudden awakening, this is a gradual unfoldment: transformation happens not through effort to change ourselves but through “hands off your experience.” Each chapter includes guided exploration sessions, making this both a foundational teaching and a practical manual for discovering your True Nature through simply being yourself.

The central practice of A.H. Almaas’ Diamond Approach is deceptively simple: the focus is “bringing awareness to the present moment, every moment, moment by moment” – whether sitting in meditation, eating a meal, feeling bored, or experiencing ecstatic excitement. The pathway begins with recognising our constant inner activity and the ways we meddle through judgment, resistance, striving, and manipulation. Almaas teaches that, as we practise being where we are, we encounter defensiveness – “a barrier against our unconscious, but also against much of our potential.” As defences dissolve through recognition, we discover vulnerability – not weakness but openness that becomes the door to True Nature.  

A major obstacle to awareness is comparative judgment, where we constantly measure our experience against ideals or others. Almaas distinguishes neutral comparison (which reveals truth) from moral judgment (which rejects what arises). The antidote to comparative judgment is recognising experience as a gift: “What I am experiencing now is the only thing that the universe is giving me, and in fact, it fits me one hundred percent.” This includes becoming aware of self-hatred – the internalised voice attacking our experience – which requires compassion, strength, and courage.

Almaas also draws our attention to ignorance at two levels. Learned ignorance is accumulated knowledge that is actually false – our beliefs about reality, self, and how things work. Innate ignorance is more fundamental: “the ignorance of our True Nature.” As ignorance dissolves through inquiry, direct knowing emerges. Identification – defining ourselves through content – keeps us separate from what we truly are: “If I am being my True Nature, it is not an identification; it is just simply being... I am it.”

A distinctive element of the Diamond Approach is its work with the superego – the internalised voice that attacks our experience through judgment, criticism, shame, and guilt. Expanding upon traditional psychoanalytic approaches that rely primarily on understanding, Almaas teaches a three-stage process for dismantling superego attacks. Initially, practitioners learn to defend themselves with conscious strength and energy: "Who cares what you think? Go to hell.” This bold disengagement creates space to recognise where we actually are. As awareness strengthens in the second stage, simply recognising an attack and understanding how it works can dissolve it. In the third stage of nondual presence, merely recognising that an attack is in progress is sufficient to stop it. This ego and personality work is essential to embodying Almaas’ teaching: without addressing the superego's interference, we remain blocked from our True Nature by internal aggression masquerading as helpful guidance. 

Throughout The Unfolding Now, Almaas emphasises that each moment itself is the teaching: “True Nature is the teacher, the Supreme Teacher. It is always teaching about its truth.” The promise is both simple and profound: as you develop capacity to witness yourself without judgment or comparison and instead with compassion and love, your awareness becomes “less obscured and more luminous as it reveals to us the preciousness of what we truly are.” When you stop trying to change, presence reveals the inherent value and meaning already here in each moment.

For those who wish to go deeper, a global community and school exists to put the Diamond Approach into lived practice; Almass founded the Ridhwan School, through which you can connect with Diamond Heart groups in person and online.

“We begin to recognize that we are all children of the moment, which means we are all children of True Nature… If we don't recognize that each moment has nutrition, has truth that helps us grow, we won't be able to let ourselves be where we are.”