Ep. 202 (Part 1 of 2) | In this rich, delightful, and profound conversation, integralist Father David McCallum, SJ, currently serving the Vatican as executive director of the Program for Discerning Leadership, leads us into a world filled with mission, purpose, and service, foundational to which is the practice of discernment. David describes discernment as the capacity to exercise good judgment, hold complexity, and wait for clarity. This is not only a practice for individuals, he explains, but also a communal one, providing a way for communities to discern and design together the future they want to create—through listening, dialoguing, participating. Discernment is a way of knowing and making sense of reality, David continues, and especially important now in this era of changes and choices to be made.

David enlightens us as to the beautiful and far-sighted reforms proposed by the late Pope Francis, who was all for changing the balance of authority and participation in the Church; for people to have direct experience of Presence and the capacity to practice discernment; who also advocated for taking swift action on behalf of our planet, even calling out the part in the Bible that says man has dominion over the Earth. From David’s description of “the journey worth making”—surrendering, opening, accepting divine grace and love—to using Otto Scharmer’s U Process to help find the courage to change and simplify our lives for the benefit of all, to the Church’s relationship with A.I., David provides us with an extraordinarily mind-broadening, motivating, and spiritually fulfilling perspective. Recorded July 10, 2025.

“No secular, material, and empirical path is going to satisfy the longing we have for a transcendent purpose, for meaning, for existential belonging, in the ways that a healthy spirituality can.”

• Introducing Fr. David McCallum, integrally informed Jesuit priest currently serving the Vatican as the executive director of the Program for Discerning Leadership (00:48)
• How did David come to devote his life to the Catholic Church? (01:48)
• The journey worth making: surrendering, opening, accepting grace (09:42)
• So many are disconnected from the deeper wellspring of spirituality (13:07)
• Pope Francis was a reformer, focused on changing the balance of authority and participation (16:46)
• Pope Francis also focused on the process of synodality, real dialogue, the importance of discernment & following where the spirit wants to lead us (19:31)
• Pope Leo XIV, self-effacing, generous, hard working, introspective, bringing balance and discipline (22:27)
• How does David’s understanding of developmental stages inform his work? (25:28)
• Using metatheories as a map to make sense of the change in era we are living through now (28:09)
• The rise of secularism; also burgeoning fundamentalism (31:26)
• Without faith, how can we make sense of suffering? (33:25)
• The temptation of ideology in these anxiety-producing times (36:07)
• What is discernment?
• Communal discernment: What is the future we want to create together? (40:39)

• Father David McCallum, SJ, The Program for Discerning Leadership
• Graham Greene,...

Ep. 201 (Part 2 of 2) | In the thirteenth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali delves into the subject of knowing, or basic knowledge, at the deepest level of awareness. Different from ordinary knowledge, basic knowledge is inherent and immediate, an important feature of reality. You can know Being by being Being, he says; know consciousness by being consciousness, know peace by being peace. Being and knowing are the same thing, he explains, two sides of a coin. Some of what Hameed shares here is unique to his Diamond Approach teaching, and not found in other spiritual teachings, such as what he imparts about the origin of mind and the distinction he makes between pure being and pure awareness.

Hameed explains that we need our conceptual mind (to do our taxes, he laughs), but that reification—treating concepts as if they were real things—creates obstacles and alienates us from our true nature. The aim of all spiritual practice is to go beyond reification to immediate experience, he says. When Hameed describes the difference between pure presence and pure awareness, John wonders, how does Hameed remember the state of pure awareness when there’s no knowing in that state? And what does it feel like to experience no ground of being? Hameed answers in his usual enlightening, gently humorous way, leaving listeners in a state of open-minded wonder. Vastly illuminating, this conversation goes directly to the heart of being and the heart of knowing at the very foundation of true nature. Recorded July 17, 2025.

“Mind is not an obstacle. Not an enemy. The obstacle is the reified representation of mind. If we take the knowledge of that mind to be reality, that is the obstacle.”

• How does Hameed remember the state of pure awareness when there’s no knowing in that state? (00:32)
• Most spiritual teachings have pure awareness and pure presence as inseparable, but in this teaching they can be distinguished (03:26)
• The experience of pure awareness: transparency, translucence, freedom (04:02)
• The world is not an illusion; it is the face of God (06:13)
• The logos is what makes things manifest (09:48)
• Connecting the dimensions of pure being and pure awareness: mind is not an obstacle (11:46)
• Gurdjieff’s “stupid saints” (13:14)
• Mind is not the enemy; it’s the reification of knowing that is the obstacle (14:07)
• Pure awareness is more fundamental than pure being because there are no concepts; freedom is more palpable in pure awareness (17:14)
• Hameed’s multiple kinds of freedom; freedom independent from the ground of being (22:10)
• What does it feel like to realize there is no ground? (25:02)
• Transcending conceptual dichotomies: in spiritual liberation dichotomies can be stumbling blocks, like being vs nonbeing (25:20)
• Will science start to accept the ground of being? (29:38)
• Is math, the Euclidean theorem, a property of reality? (32:42)
• Consciousness and quantum theory (34:27)
• Knowing is fundamental to the universe; it’s inherent to our true nature (38:41)
• There’s no reason to have to choose between knowing and being, they’re two sides of the same thing (39:51)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of

Ep. 200 (Part 1 of 2) | In the thirteenth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali delves into the subject of knowing, or basic knowledge, at the deepest level of awareness. Different from ordinary knowledge, basic knowledge is inherent and immediate, an important feature of reality. You can know Being by being Being, he says; know consciousness by being consciousness, know peace by being peace. Being and knowing are the same thing, he explains, two sides of a coin. Some of what Hameed shares here is unique to his Diamond Approach teaching, and not found in other spiritual teachings, such as what he imparts about the origin of mind and the distinction he makes between pure being and pure awareness.

Hameed explains that we need our conceptual mind (to do our taxes, he laughs), but that reification—treating concepts as if they were real things—creates obstacles and alienates us from our true nature. The aim of all spiritual practice is to go beyond reification to immediate experience, he says. When Hameed describes the difference between pure presence and pure awareness, John wonders, how does Hameed remember the state of pure awareness when there’s no knowing in that state? And what does it feel like to experience no ground of being? Hameed answers in his usual enlightening, gently humorous way, leaving listeners in a state of open-minded wonder. Vastly illuminating, this conversation goes directly to the heart of being and the heart of knowing at the very foundation of true nature. Recorded July 17, 2025.

“Being is the origin of mind.”

• Introducing the 13th dialogue in the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, focusing on the basic knowing at the foundation of our awareness & the reified way we see reality (00:46)
• The work is to recognize that reification is happening (02:55)
• We need to understand there are two kinds of knowing: ordinary knowing and basic knowing (04:12)
• There are degrees of how immediate our knowing is (07:55)
• Where does mind come from? (09:52)
• The recognition of Being and the knowing of Being are the same thing; this is a basic nondual understanding (11:45)
• The ground of mind is knowing: without knowing there is no mind (15:20)
• To know implies a concept: the concept of being (17:25)
• Reification is a developmental achievement (23:14)
• The story of Maharishi and the Senate committee (26:50)
• The aim of all spiritual practice is to go beyond reification to immediate experience (27:43)
• For the realized individual, basic knowing is primary (29:58)
• Knowing always means concept (31:56)
• We can get to an awareness that is free of knowing; what Hameed calls nonconceptual, pure awareness (35:41)

• A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of The Ridhwan School, home of The Diamond...