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This month, we have selected Talk of the Month #15: The Diamond Talk. For the many of you who subscribed to this wonderful monthly publication - edited transcripts of talks given by E.J. Gold - these talks were a lifeline to the school, and provided a rich source of work material which could not be found elsewhere, as well as conveying the invocational atmosphere and intensity of a teacher working with his students. Talks of the Months are now available on CD from IDHHB or through Gateways.

This Symposium focuses on a portion of Talk of the Month #15: The Diamond Talk, an interesting description of how a teacher creates Work conditions to help us perfect ourselves as Beings who can be useful to the Work. We invite you to read the following talk and work with the ideas presented in the coming week. On Sunday we can talk together and share any questions, experiences or thoughts we may have about it.

The Diamond Talk
THE DIAMOND TALK We can think of the essential self as a diamond, which can be cut and polished. We normally think of diamonds as too hard to cut, but a diamond can be cut with another diamond.

Of course, if the stone had a flaw, and it were up to the flaw, the flaw would be in the center of the stone. But a diamond cutter cannot think like this; the flaw must be sacrificed. We may lose some weight in the diamond, but it will be more valuable as a smaller but better diamond. But first, before we can even cut the diamond, we must remove the raw stone from its matrix, composed of dirt and much softer rock.

To remove the matrix, we use what we call friction - a preparatory technique - to reveal the stone in the rough, applying a variety of techniques.

People in the mainstream of human life commonly confuse schools with psychological communities, because essentially the same techniques are used to remove the matrix and reveal the rough stone within. But then - and this is where ordinary psychology and philosophy fails - they feel that once the rough stone is revealed and the diamond is free from the matrix, it is perfect; or, to obtain additional fees from their clients, they may stubbornly continue cutting the matrix long after the rough diamond is revealed.

Only if the diamond is free from the matrix can the abrasive process take place. Once the stone is revealed, we are no longer interested in the matrix, so we discontinue our grinding process with the matrix.

For the matrix we had used much softer tools, but if we expect to cut a diamond we must use something equally hard; for this purpose we will use other diamonds as a polishing medium.

If we are like diamonds in our essence and the diamond can be recut, then the great diamond of the Absolute, in whose image we know our essential selves to be made, can also be recut. If we can think of the Absolute as a diamond, we can also think of the work community as a diamond.

But what if we noticed a flaw in the community? If we obstruct others in our work community, we - the flaw in the community - must be cut away from the larger stone for the sake of the stone, even though it reduces the size of the stone, because a stone without flaws is increased in value. Of course, small flaws need not be cut from the community. The flaw would have to be very serious.

Only seven possible serious flaws could appear in our community diamond. Of these flaws we probably know anger the best; another serious flaw is hatred, and another flaw is uncontrolled lust. Most of us are already familiar with the seven deadly flaws. If we cut those flaws out of our own diamond by abrasion with other diamonds, we are not so seriously flawed that we must be cut out of a community. But if any of those flaws exists in us - resentment, hatred, anger, revulsion, disgust - to the extent that we actually interfere with the work of others - if conditions are still able to evoke in us wild and dangerous reflexes of negative emotion, then we are subject to removal from the larger stone, and it is neither our choice, nor the choice of a teacher.

We use the word matrix both in its lapidary sense, which is to say, that stone which encases a harder stone, and also in the sense of mother. If we realize that a community is composed of those who have little or no matrix remaining around the stone - just raw, rough diamonds - we can easily understand the difference between ourselves and those in the larger community, who still have a great deal of matrix and are concerned with the things of the matrix, with changing the matrix, polishing the matrix and enhancing the matrix. Our stone has been exposed, and we are in the raw, ready for cutting and polishing.

The Great Work, the cutting of the Great Diamond, with our own diamond-like essential selves, is called the process of Redemption. It will require more than just we ourselves to accomplish this work, and to become a part of this work we must surrender ourselves to the work community. If we hope to take part seriously in this work, we must, once and for all, give up the things of the matrix and reconcile ourselves to the seemingly endless grinding process, the cutting of the diamond.

In a work community, our diamond may be severely criticized; if we became upset at this we would realize at once that the stone has not yet been freed from the matrix, because only the matrix could become upset by criticism. In the diamond industry, another word for criticism is appraisal. All serious flaws must be removed, and the more objective and ruthless the appraisal, the better, because the best cutter will appraise the diamond absolutely ruthlessly, without consideration for the feelings of the flaws in the stone, seeing objectively and impartially what would be best to bring the stone to its fullest possible potential.

Let us try to experience what it will be like to polish the diamond once the psychological and emotional matrix has been removed....
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