The anatomy of the human essence
What constitutes the core of your being? And how can you return to it?
Hi there! We’re currently doing a series on the power of music which this article is related to. Music helps us connect with our essence but what exactly is our essence? That’s what we’ll explore today. You’ll find a guided music practice at the end of this e-mail. Enjoy 🎶
I have this weird obsession. I don’t want to grow old, I want to grow young. It’s not about aging — I can’t wait to turn all soft and wrinkly and grow a shimmering grey mermaid mane. This is a matter of spirit. When I’m all wrinkly and shimmering, I aspire to have the spirit of a ten year old.
This obsession originated a couple of years ago, when I stayed at a Buddhist monastery in Nepal for a few weeks. Every day, I sat in front of the monks, wrapped up in their burgundy robes, effortlessly cross-legged, practically levitating, as they delivered teachings on human happiness on the luscious grounds nestled into the hills of Kathmandu.
Every day, I sat in front of them, freshly imported from New York (and very unhappy), cross-legged (and very uncomfortable). And whether I believed in reincarnation and dharma and nirvana or not, I knew one thing: They were speaking truth. Not because I immediately understood everything they were saying, but because their spirit conveyed it. They were the living embodiment of human essence.
These monks were the happiest, most uninhibited people I’d ever met. Giggling, cracking jokes in simple english, not taking themselves too seriously. This child-like demeanor is something I’ve since observed in many mature spiritual teachers.
These monks were old but they’d grown young.
In my last essay I claimed that music helps us connect with our essence. A bold claim, but one which I stand by. Which begs the question, what is the human essence?
The essence of something is its fundamental nature. A set of core qualities that make it what it is, distilling it down to its most vital and enduring qualities. It's the irreducible truth at the heart of a thing. So what constitutes the human essence?
To answer this question, we could look to wisdom traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, or Sufism — but the most complete teachings on the human essence come from a contemporary teacher called A. Hameed Ali (more well-known under his pen name, A.H. Almaas).
Almaas bridges Eastern spirituality with Western depth psychology through his method The Diamond Approach, a contemporary path for spiritual awakening. This approach relies not on peak experiences of ego dissolution but on matters of everyday life. This is the arena of this work — the immediate experience of the mundane.
Almaas provides us with a succinct framework of the human essence, and so below I will share his concepts drawing from two main books about his teachings.
The first and most important thing to understand about the human essence is that it doesn’t reside in the mind but in the body.
It has substance; it can be touched. Because of its nature as a felt experience, it is often mistaken for a feeling. But essence lies beyond the dimension of emotions, which Almaas calls “discharged processes of our nervous system”. He offers a koan, paradoxical riddles from the Zen tradition, to illustrate this.
What is the part of you that you can feel but is not a part of your body and is not a feeling?
We can imagine emotions as the motion of the water, but they are not the water. Water can be still without motion. When you experience true presence, the part of you that experiences presence is essence. In essence, you are conscious of existence, not conceptually but experientially.
The human essence is composed of the following core qualities: love, compassion, joy, will, strength, peace, and clarity. Of course these are just words, and as such, they are only representations of the real thing, the felt experience. What all of these have in common is that they are qualities we cannot learn, only remember.
The life of essence is in direct contrast to the life that most of us live: the life of personality. Personality is always in pursuit of positive states believing them to be our true nature. It is this search for positive emotions that prevents us from realizing essence, which transcends all positive and negative emotions.
There is an inherent tension between personality and essence. We come into this world as pure, embodied essence. But throughout childhood, loss of essence occurs. This happens for everyone (to varying degrees), because our environment isn’t loving or supportive enough or doesn’t respond to us appropriately.
The real problem here is not the lack of love or support but the loss of essence, which leaves a void. Personality then grows in an attempt to fill this void, developing qualities that mask as essence.
Almaas’ “theory of holes” describes this loss of essence during ego development. As qualities of essence split off during early childhood, we sense a lack. A part of us feels empty and deficient. Ego structures and personality develop in an attempt to avoid feeling this deficient emptiness. Yet they can never fill it, because what we lack is not self-image but essence.
These defensive personality structures serve a critical function: they alleviate the pain of being disconnected from the essential quality. As adults, we may turn to modern psychotherapy to confront the void, but therapy simply becomes a tool to strengthen the personality and fill the holes more effectively. It does not help us retrieve essence.
In this process of filling the holes, our personality develops counterfeit versions of the lost essential quality. For example, if essential will is lost — because circumstances took away our agency — the personality will develop stubbornness to compensate. Essential compassion is replaced with pity, and so on.
On a larger scale, the disconnection from the boundless nature of essence results in the “more is more” mentality that drives modern culture. It is a counterfeit version of the essential abundance within that we’ve lost touch with.
Luckily, what is lost is not essence itself but only our experience of it. As our true nature, essence is indestructible.
Essence retrieval then primarily lies in the wrestling with personality until it relinquishes its hold and surrenders its position to the “true master”, the human essence. The guiding principle for this process is to make the unconscious conscious.
While many spiritual traditions dismiss the ego, it becomes critical in this work because it provides “the keys to its riddles”. The ego always points to essence by revealing where we’ve disconnected from it.
This process requires a strong and stable personality, flexible enough to allow for temporary dissolution. If we can allow this temporary melting of the ego (which is very different from the full-blown psychedelic-induced ego dissolution), personality can gradually step into its role as servant to the real master (essence). This is a life-long endeavor that becomes the most important work of our life.
This process involves three steps:
We must become aware of patterns of compulsive emotions, behaviors, and thoughts. (Psychedelics are excellent helpers for this — but not a requirement!)
Once identified, we must find ways to explore these patterns more deeply. This can happen through mindfulness and somatic practices and/or with the help of teachers (or plants!). During this step, personality begins to soften and dissolve.
As the ego is increasingly “metabolized”, essence begins to emerge. This is a profound and ineffable experience that needs integration and space to mature and ripen. To recognize it, we must expand our awareness and deepen our sensitivity.
Throughout this process, we process specific defense structures related to the essential quality we’re working to retrieve. For example, if we’re working to retrieve essential strength, we’ll first have to experience anger and frustration. If we’re retrieving essential compassion, we must first grieve and hold our own pain.
Many of these processes are somatic in nature, which demands we work not just with the mind but with the body to prompt the energetic releases that can set us free. We first move through freedom from the tensions of personality and later into freedom to experience our essential nature.
The more you experience essence, the more adept you become at recognizing it. It’s a profound aliveness and fullness — the antidote to the numbness and emptiness that restricts our consciousness. It is why we’re here: to experience our essence.
A 6-minute music journey to embody essential compassion
As we’ve explored, essence is not a cerebral but felt experience. This is why music is so potent — it has the power to elicit a felt experience in your body (even if your mind doesn’t fully grasp its nature).
Let’s take compassion for example. Many compassion practices remain intellectual and as such never touch our true capacity for compassion. Essential compassion doesn’t happen in the mind but in the body. It is as a felt state.
Below is a guided practice to help you experience this. The instructions are simple:
Make sure you’re in a quiet, comfortable spot. Close your eyes and listen with headphones (a must!).
For this piece, simply listen with open awareness and allow your attention to drift to the various melodies and instruments. Stay present with what’s emerging, and pay close attention to any body sensations you may observe.
Dive deeper
Two excellent books to explore these teachings deeper: “Essence: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization”, by A.H. Almaas and “The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas”, by John Davis
I’ve previously explored soul loss from the perspective of shamanism which shares similarities with the concept of essence
"We know that Essence is something we learn about by somehow remembering it. So when did we forget that which we are now trying to remember?" — A.H. Almaas
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This is definitely the most important work of our lives - observing our own ego at work (behaviors, responses, reactions that are predictable) and recognizing that it is the false self rather than the true self. The true self (essence) has nothing to prove, is always at peace, and is more interested in others than itself. When we embody our true self, our God-given identity, we can truly love. ❤️ 🙏🏼
I really appreciate this exploration, Julia. What strikes me is that “essence”could as well be describing “soul.”
And, in fact, in reading your words, substituting “soul” for “essence” offers an opening to embracing that part of us that floats on a cloud of ineffability.
So …. “The more you experience essence [soul], the more adept you become at recognizing it… the antidote to the numbness and emptiness that restricts our consciousness.”
I find personally, and in my work, the portal to recognizing and embracing our essence (soul) is through our difficult emotions. That is, learning (and it is a practice!) to familiarize ourselves with the distressing thoughts that often make us miserable - so that we can come to hear their guidance - our sacred inner voice. Asking and hearing why they’re here and what we have to do to appease them results in processing and releasing these feelings. In this way, I see our unruly emotions as a bridge to our soul (essence).