A.H. Almaas and Henry Shukman: “The Many Faces of Awakening”

December 16, 2025

A.H. Almaas and Henry Shukman: “The Many Faces of Awakening”

A.H. Almaas & Henry Shukman — December 16, 2025

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What if awakening isn’t a single destination but an endless unfolding of reality’s many faces? This week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon facilitates a groundbreaking conversation between two of the most profound spiritual teachers of our time: A.H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of the Diamond Approach, and Zen teacher Henry Shukman.

In this rare dialogue, these teachers—meeting for the first time—explore how different wisdom traditions point to distinct dimensions of awakened experience. Rather than claiming all paths lead to the same mountaintop, they celebrate the unique territory each tradition reveals: from the “blazing forth” of creative emptiness to experiences where consciousness itself dissolves, from the recognition that each point contains the entire universe to the discovery that everything is made of love.

Join Tami, Hameed, and Henry to discover:

Why awakening is an endless process rather than a final arrival
The profound difference between thinking and heart-knowing
How to navigate the fear that arises at the threshold of ego dissolution
The role of trust, compassion, and basic trust in profound transformation
What happens when individual consciousness completely ceases
Why nothingness and being are inseparable faces of reality
How grief and catastrophic loss can become doorways to awakening
The Zen teaching of uni-locality—experiencing that one point is everything
Why love may be the most fundamental nature of reality itself

This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.

A.H. Almaas is the pen name of A. Hameed Ali who has written more than 14 books including his most recent The Unfolding Now. In 1976, he founded the Ridhwan School, an organization with members in North America, Europe, and Australia that is dedicated to promoting the Diamond Approach®. Almaas resides in the San Francisco Bay area.

Author photo © Hameed Qabazard

Henry Shukman is an authenticated Zen master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, Spiritual Director Emeritus of Mountain Cloud Zen Center, and co-founder of The Way meditation app. He is also an award-winning author and poet. Henry’s traumatic experiences as a youth, combined with a spontaneous awakening experience at 19, paved the way for his development of a well-rounded approach to spirituality and meditation – one that includes love for self and the world as its foundation. For more, see henryshukman.com and thewayapp.com.

Posted December 16, 2025

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A.H. Almaas and Henry Shukman: “The Many Faces of Aw...

A.H. Almaas
Henry Shukman — December 16, 2025

Join Tami, Hameed, and Henry to discover:

Why awakening is an endless process rather than a final arrival
The profound difference between thinking and heart-knowing
How to navigate the fear that arises at the threshold of ego dissolution
The role of trust, compassion, and basic trust in profound transformation
What happens when individual consciousness completely ceases
Why nothingness and being are inseparable faces of reality
How grief and catastrophic loss can become doorways to awakening
The Zen teaching of uni-locality—experiencing that one point is everything
Why love may be the most fundamental nature of reality itself

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Post Views: 11,266

A.H. Almaas: Love in Its Boundless Dimension

A.H. Almaas — July 25, 2023

We come into this world with a basic trust in the goodness of life. And our trials, tribulations, and traumas cover up that trust, or shatter it completely. In this discussion of his new book, Nondual Love, Tami Simon speaks with author and teacher A.H. Almaas about spiritual self-inquiry and the path toward reclaiming our sense of the boundless benevolence of the universe.

Take a deep, relaxing breath in a quiet, comfortable place and dive in to this inspiring, expansive conversation exploring: the Diamond Approach to spiritual realization; inner work as the quest to understand the content of consciousness; how truth is a continuum; the nature of experience and knowing; satchitananda; the Buddhist concept of selflessness; universal love and Sufism’s “ocean with no shores”; permanent realization; the ego and the inner Jabba the Hutt; “living daylight” and the overcoming of fear; how full embodiment frees us from our “diamond issues”; relaxation as the first step in experiencing nondual reality; asking yourself, “what’s in the way?”; and more.

To learn more about the Diamond Approach, visit https://www.diamondapproach.org/

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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A.H. Almaas: Presence: The Elixir of Enlightenment

A.H. Almaas — March 26, 2019

A.H. Almaas is the pen name of A. Hameed Ali, a veteran spiritual teacher who founded The Ridhwan School in 1976 to spread The Diamond Approach®, his particular path of spiritual inquiry. He has written many books, including The Pearl Beyond Price, The Unfolding Now, and The Alchemy of Freedom. With Sounds True, he will soon be launching Presence—an eight-week online course devoted to exploring the always-available consciousness underlying all of reality. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Almaas about approaching Presence as “the elixir of enlightenment”—the central key to understanding our spiritual nature. Almaas explains the experiential feeling of touching Presence and provides examples of other teachers who have attempted to explain it. Tami and Almaas discuss the possible meaning of enlightenment and why body-based practices are essential to discovering Presence. Finally, they consider why the spiritual path is essentially endless and what it means to be a “complete human being.” (64 minutes)

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And there’s so much more. Listen to the entire conversation from this Insights At the Edge episode, “Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean?”

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Please note: this episode includes candid discussion of sexual abuse and sexual wounding, including Kimberly Ann Johnson’s own experience.

Listen now, and meet your body as the path. →

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

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This is a shorter, solo reflection from Tami—released once a month on the Insights at the Edge feed—on where our deepest wounds and our clearest purpose meet.

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Find the original Insights at the Edge episodes here: “Seane Corn: Your Pain Is Your Purpose“

A.H. Almaas and Henry Shukman: “The Many Faces of Awakening”

A.H. Almaas and Henry Shukman: “The Many Faces of Awakening”

A.H. Almaas & Henry Shukman — December 16, 2025

900 Episodes and Counting…

Meet Your Host: Tami Simon

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A.H. Almaas: Love in Its Boundless Dimension

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