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Searching for
fellow travellers?
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Searching for
fellow travellers?
“The journey into the absolute heart of reality and its integration into our daily life is fundamental to waking up and to continuing to wake up in novel and unexpected ways.”
Diamond Approach Australia is a centre for advancing education in spiritual development through inner work. We support the teaching of the Diamond Approach in Australia.
As a centre for adult spiritual education, we offer opportunities for people to experience the Diamond Approach path and learn its immense and precise body of knowledge about the nature of reality and the process of spiritual self-realisation.
We are a dynamic learning community that provides space for students to practice Inquiry. This practice supports the development of students and guides them towards attaining spiritual maturity and completeness. And, as students learn how to live their realisation in their daily life, the teaching of the Diamond Approach contributes to spiritual development in the world and the evolution of humanity.
Diamond Approach Australia is committed to making this path widely accessible to spiritually oriented people who are interested in engaging with its evolving teaching and accessing the depth of human potential through its focus on life-long learning about ongoing inner work, continual practice, and endless realisation.
We are an inclusive spiritual community that values, supports and expresses love of truth for its own sake, respect for the sacred land Australia, curiosity in the unfolding nature of reality, and care for the freedom of humanity
Our story
In the beginning…
The Diamond Approach Australia story started when a well-known spiritual teacher in Australia discovered the books of A.H. Almaas and requested a teacher through the Diamond Approach office in Berkeley, California. Through word of mouth in Australia, interest spread and two separate groups from a school in the Blue Mountains made the trek to Colorado for month long intensives with teachers Jean Berwick and Deane Shank. These visits later led to the invitation for the first of several workshops to be taught in Australia.What happened next…
Looking back, subtle forces were at work drawing dedicated students and Jean in, to support establishing the teaching of the Diamond Approach in Australia. In 1992 Jean founded Diamond Approach Australia, initially called Diamond Essence Australia, after feeling a deep affinity with the sacred territory of our ancient Australian land and the Diamond Approach path. Jean travelled widely in these first years, attuning to the spirit of the land, and with her love of dance and music pioneered a deeply embodied way of bringing this path of self-discovery to life in her students.
Highlights along the way…
Over nearly 30 years Diamond Approach Australia has grown into a vibrant spiritual community with a distinctive Australian feel. New ongoing retreat groups have opened every few years supported by an increasing number of dedicated teachers travelling from the USA and Australia. In 2016 the Founders of the Diamond Approach path Hameed Ali and Karen Johnson visited Australia for the first time to teach a public retreat with an audience of 250 people from Asia, New Zealand, Europe and Australia who expressed a deep interest in the Diamond Approach. Every few years, all the ongoing Diamond Approach Australia groups meet as one for a longer retreat that provides an opportunity to build our community of spirit through our doing and being together.Supporting our community
A student association emerged from an interest to support students of the Diamond Approach Australia Community. This initiative has been a catalyst for creating a culture of gratitude and responsibility expressing our value of service.
Our logo reflects our story
The Diamond Approach Australia logo embraces the vibrant colours of the interior of our ancient land. Increasing in transparency and luminosity to emulate the development of our soul on this path toward awareness, each textured letter is an acknowledgement of the distinctive art and culture of Australia’s First Nations People. Linked letters reflecting our individual journey of self-discovery evoke an impression of a path while also conveying the interconnected nature of everything. And from a distance these links mirror the profile of the landscape – mountains, valleys and plains. These impressions of the land, unified with the Southern Cross of the night sky, call to mind the unique unfoldment of Diamond Approach Australia as a meaningful expression of our relationship to Country, which in conjunction with the teaching of this path are our ground.
And now…
Currently around 200 students from many parts of Australia and neighbouring countries participate in our ongoing retreat groups. Australian students are completing the teacher formation process. The core and emerging Diamond Approach Australia teaching team is now becoming a mix of home grown and international teachers. Many generous and talented students through their service and collaboration with the teachers and the international school community, help to grow Diamond Approach Australia and support the establishment of the teaching in this part of the world.Diamond Approach Australia is a community organisation that has responsibility for the day-to-day functioning of a collective of Diamond Approach groups in Australia. We also provide care and support to the students and the teaching team of these ongoing groups.
Diamond Approach Australia is an integral part of the international network of teachings, organisations and people known as the Ridhwan School. While we operate as an affiliated organisation with the Ridhwan Foundation, the umbrella organisation of the Diamond Approach, we are independent in our everyday functioning
Photography on our website
“Country is a kind of memory, it is memory laid down by the lives of one’s family, by the events of one’s childhood, by the journeys of one’s ancestors and by the tensions and conflicts of a changing world. Historical, mythological, familial and personal narratives are all layered, sedimented in places where they happened, they are not separated out into different moments in time or categories of reality.”
John Carty – Australian Anthropologist
This description of Country is aligned with our understanding of the nature of our individual soul. We are patterned from the impressions of our personal history, in much the same way as the passing of time shapes the landscape on which we stand.
The multi award-winning Tasmanian photographer Paul Hoelen has vividly and evocatively captured the beauty of this patterning of the land in his images taken from a vantage point above that inspires us to see beyond. All the images on our website are photographs of the Australian landscape taken by Paul, and reveal a rarely seen perspective of the true nature of our land and its connection to Country and Soul.
An invitation to join us on this path
What feels most true to me is that the Land of Australia called me to her, not in the usual sense, but in the sense that the two of us were drawn together like friends who find themselves as like souls. That relationship has grown and been nurtured over these nearly 30 years of sharing the wisdom of the Diamond Approach with the land of Australia and her people. Together, along with an experienced team of teachers, we have cultivated the teaching of the Diamond Approach in Australia, a song, a dance, a story, a path of spiritual depth and understanding
Jean Berwick - Founder of Diamond Approach Australia
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