Inner Work for Our Times

THE DIAMOND APPROACH - A Wisdom Path to Awaken Truth and Presence

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We want to live fully, with meaningful relationships, satisfying work, and rich individual expression, yet we often sense there should be something more than where we find ourselves now. We may get glimpses of a deeper and more alive reality while on a forest hike, gazing at a starry sky, or witnessing the portals of birth and death. But how do we open this more? How do we live meaningfully in the world and also come to know the mysteries that spiritual traditions say hide behind it and within us?

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The Diamond Approach is a nondogmatic spiritual path that arose in our times. It brings insight and zest to the exploration and development of our personal lives while also guiding us into our deepest inner nature. The teachings hold a vast map of both spiritual reality and the psychological (egoic) dilemmas that obscure it. Our methodologies include meditations that awaken presence and awareness, open-ended inquiry that invites personal exploration of the truth of your experience, tools and understanding that defang the inner critic, and practices that invite our spiritual nature into embodied experience. In walking this path and looking within, we find keys to inner freedom and greater aliveness.

 

For the past 50 years, individuals have traveled the Diamond Approach path through inner work groups reminiscent of the old mystery schools. From time to time a new group forms, just as a camel caravan would gather before beginning the journey across a desert. We are at one of those junctures. A new Diamond Approach group for the US Pacific Northwest and Western Canada is now forming and will be open for a limited time. This group, Cascadia 5, is the first open group in the region since 2017. The Cascadia 5 teaching team includes lead teachers Anne Hoff and Jamie Baldwin, as well as Candace Harris, Jane Hill-Daigle, and Renie Hope. We’ve walked – and worked – this path ourselves: our cumulative time as students is around 150 years, and together we share around 60 years of experience teaching and guiding students.

 

Joining Cascadia 5 means attending regularly scheduled retreats that include teachings and experiential practices; attending small group inquiry meetings; and engaging in one-on-one sessions with a private teacher. Our retreats will be primarily in person, with an option for online attendance when travel is not possible. Our retreat location(s) and schedule will be determined as we engage more with interested students. With the wisdom of the teaching, the support of teachers, and a community of fellow students, there is the potential for a deeply transformative journey. Please feel free to contact us if you’d like to find out more.