Winter Into Spring: A Journey of Healing and Transformation Fireword, Inc, 2000. $14.95 Order this book This is the story of one woman's experience, working through the gut-wrenching pain of incest and childhood betrayal to reach beyond the self, into the boundless. The context is a modern spiritual training referred to as The Diamond Approach, best known through the writings of A.H. Almaas. It is this context that transforms the work of healing into a path of liberation. Here is a rare and penetrating look into the unfoldment of Essence in a human life. Fresh. Raw. Hopeful.

This is an inspiring account of one woman's spiritual journey and, beyond that, a gift and a teaching to us all. Deeply personal, ruthlessly courageous, it reveals a path of self-realization in which our harshest wounds and most ordinary experiences become doorways to the sacred.

John Davis, Ph.D. author of The Diamond Approach.

A superbly written travelogue of the journey of a soul. It describes the paths, the efforts, the perils, and the rewards....not a book that can be read quickly. It has to be taken in small sips, like good wine, to be tasted and appreciated.

Evie McClintock, Ph.D., author of Room for Change  

Excerpt

Note: Here is a sequence of passages taken from year 5. (The book takes place over 9 years.) Carol is a teacher in The Diamond Approach.

Each opening exposes further barriers that must be worked through for the unfoldment to continue. I am not yet free to be my loving self. I was exploring this with Carol when I suddenly blurt out, "I just want to be loving. Get off my back! "

With the outburst comes a rush of feelings and a memory of my father behind me, his penis between my legs. I tell him to get away. Twice I rage with the bat, until finally I am free. Carol wonders if I blamed myself for the abuse, thinking it was because of my loving nature. It's not true I am to blame.

I feel a membrane that covers my heart. Suddenly it is punctured, resulting in a great flood. I am immersed in a liquid that feels like love.

The differences between things begin to blur. I see discrete objects, but they all seem to be made of the same thing. I look out the window and the grass is made of love, the flowers of love, the clouds and buildings and even the cars! All one substance truer than the physical distinc-tions I see with my eyes. And I, too, am this love.

It seems like my personality grows thinner and thinner. Maybe I just am less identified with it. I yearn to leave the surface structures and know myself more truly.

I must discover that I am the leaves on the branches, the roots in the ground. I rest in love, like a baby in its parents' arms. I am loved by God through all time. I want not only to be loved, but to love through all time. There are not even separate objects to love. There is just love. One heart.

It strikes me that God loves not just those who are sufficiently admiring. God loves because it is God's nature to love. Taking that as my model, it means I would love even those who have hurt me. What a relief to not have to measure and weigh! What a relief to simply be one's nature.

There are times when my longing is too much to bear. It brings me to a hole where the pain crushes me and makes me want to die. I see an image of a heart beaten to a bloody pulp. I am that heart; I don't know how I will survive.

Going this far into the hole allows essence to reach through to me. I feel a fine mist all around that strengthens me. I try to hold onto it, not trusting it to stay on its own. Mommy didn't. It feels so desperate and urgent and absolutely necessary to hold on.

Then my grasp slips. I am falling through the dark-ness, desiccating, becoming a cinder. A cold, black cinder that, quite to my surprise, turns into a magnificent sparkling diamond.

There are so many ways I must let go. I have let go of my concepts, my identity, my holding back, my mind. Letting go of mind is something I do over and over again. Not that I can let go. But I can long to let go, and sometimes it happens.

It was a spring evening, and I was looking out the window, longing for freedom. I had a glimpse that it is possible to let go of the smaller self and open into a totally different existence. It is the letting go that is the challenge. It reminds me of the parachutist who is afraid to jump. We do not trust falling through space, do not trust God's safety net. We do not know that the sky itself would catch us-could not help but catch us-its very substance such that it holds us.

Thinking of the sky, I feel a thick presence that reminds me of prior experiences of Being. It is Being that will catch us, Being we fall into, once we let go of the flimsy self.