My first meeting with meditation was when I learned TM at age 16. I then transitioned into Buddhism, had brief encounters with Sufism and Christian mysticism and ventured into different body-oriented practices and meditations on chakras and so on. On a trip to Nepal in 1993 I met a master in Dzogchen Buddhism, and this became my practice until in 1998 I had a revelation showing me a new path. However, I did not know whether this path existed in my time or not. Two years later, while studying Psychosynthesis, I came across an article about the superego and the essential states of the soul. I immediately recognized that this was the path I had been shown. The author behind the text was A. H. Almaas (the pen name for A. Hameed Ali). He had founded the Ridhwan school in the US several decades before and then founded the Diamond Approach together with Karen Johnson. It took some years before I became a member of a group. After having met Sandra Maitri, a profound teacher of the Diamond Approach, I joined her group in England in 2005.
Initially, what pulled me towards this teaching was its focus on both the body centre (belly), the feeling centre (heart) and the mind centre (head). The use of modern psychology in a spiritual context was also interesting for me. The teaching and the school seemed very open and open-ended in its dynamic unfolding, with a structure that naturally unfolded with it. The students were of different faiths, including no faith, different nationalities and gender identifications. While the focus was on self-realisation, the direction was towards developing as human beings functioning in the world in a responsible and mature way.
Since I joined the Diamond Approach my life has unfolded in ways I could never have known. Honestly, it is not an easy path, in the sense that it is not a «quick fix». You need to cultivate a love for the truth, however it shows up. So, this is not a path for you if you are motivated by the wish to fulfil specific desires, like feeling more safe, get love, be more satisfied and happy and so on. You might come to a place where that actually happens, but not as you initially imagined.