Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self Hardcover – January 22, 2013

This is a wonderful book, and the seller did a great job!

I liked this book a lot. I took a lot of quotes down. The hard part is how to apply it. It is one of those reads that you wish you could just assimilate all of the teachings, but at the same time you don't know where to even start.The ideas were compelling, but distant for me. Father Roar both inspires me and also makes me wonder if I even understand what he is saying. He is a mystic and I struggle with silence. My mind races, well more like jogs, and it is hard to make it take a seat. Contemplation asks you to take a seat while life is rushing around you.Anyway...about that book. It's basic premise is that you are a piece of God in a way. Yes, you are you, but you are also divine. Religion tends to ask its adherents to find God out there, but God is really in you...once you get rid of your "false self." As he says, "That God is both utterly beyond me and yet totally within me at the same time is the exquisite balance that most religion seldom achieves..."A good portion of the book takes shots, with good reason in my opinion, of the way religion is done today."The religious False Self can even justify racism, slavery, war, and total denial or deception and feel no guilt whatsoever, because “they think they are doing a holy duty for God” (John 16:2). The ego has found its cover, so be quite careful about being religious. If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more a part of the problem than any solution."He is open to truth from wherever it comes from, which I find very appealing. I really like this analogy of finding the Way without being a "true believer.""I also know that being a Christian today does not demand that you walk this map or recognize this deep pattern to reality. It is too often just a club to join. Indeed, many non-Christians see it, honor it, and live it much better than those who claim to be true believers. You have not been to Russia just because you have a correct map of Russia, and you can fully experience Russia without ever owning the map."Anyway, read it if you are a seeker. Rohr will intrigue you if nothing else.

Fr. Richard Rohr does it again, this time with a beautiful and brilliant meditation on our true nature. The book is a treasure trove of wisdom, and the kind of insight that leads to peace. At the core of our being is our true self, the identity we all have in sharing being with the ground of all being, namely God. This shy, elusive truth at our core hides from falsity, arrogance, violence, and cluelessness. You can't find the immortal diamond through the lens of ego consciousness. Our egos, useful and necessary to define our identity boundaries, especially in the first half of our lives, become, over time, burdensome encrustations of inauthenticity and irresponsibility the longer we hold onto them. Most of us make the crucial mistake of equating our ego with our true self, our identity. But the ego is the false self, the mask of personality and selfishness we present to the world to protect and project what we think is "us." Rohr leads the reader through all this deep material, and then suggests the ways we might practice "letting go" of all pretense and neediness through contemplative prayer and practices of selflessness, truth, authenticity, and responsible learning and growth. The casual reader won't make it very far with anything written by Fr. Rohr, so be prepared to think and ponder and practice the incredible wisdom he serves up. Since first becoming aware of his works, I personally have grown tremendously, and have benefited from a more peaceful, purposeful, and joyful life. Those around me have, too!

Love his books

I LOVE this book! It contains so much Spiritual wisdom. It is the stuff that you wish someone had said so many times. Yet no one talks about this stuff. While this is written by a Catholic Priest the book itself is not about being Catholic, it is about being HUMAN! It isn't about any specific religion, it is about finding and saving yourself within a sea of dogma. I recommend it to all of my clients. As a Spiritual Coach /Counselor I have spend years helping people find them-self when religion is not serving their needs and yet they know there is something more out there for them. That journey is highly personal, that each person who chooses the venture must go on alone. But this book helps explain the confusion that so many feel surrounding the search for their True Self. Finding their True Self is a human's biggest mission, yet it is hardly ever discussed in today's religion. It is the greatest gift I have witnessed each client find for them-self, and I highly encourage everyone to go on their own personal journey, with this book in hand. At Academy of Spirit, my counseling center, it is required reading, and while some find it somewhat complicated everyone finds the effort made in reading and implementing this book's teachings to be a life changing experience.

I have become enamored with the writings of Father Richard and those other authors he references and those who participate at the Center for Action and Contemplation. My regret is that I found this path so late in my Christian journey.

Richard Rohr does it again in this well polished (diamond sic.) book in which he links the journey of self-development to the journey into he mysteries of the Christian and authentic life. I particularly was nourished by his juxta positioning of the resurrection alongside the process of evolution: the positive direction which creation takes, the divine allurement which is calling the universe forward to a truly cosmic Christ (de Chardin). He pushed my boundaries forward with his ideas on “force fields” (See page 144). “Spirit and spirituality have a material component and we all ride the embodied waves of both life and death”. Here we see once again that Rohr is a sage for our times who is not afraid to gentle challenge and face head on the quests of modern humanity. Be prepared for personal transformation if you take seriously the words between the two covers of this gem.

Richard knows though person experience and study what it's going to take to compress, refine and polish the 'immortal stone' that we are. He demonstrates that not only does God want and need the uniqueness of what he designed for us to offer the universe but declares his intention to secure it in his deep love for us on Calvary. The power of the Resurrection is the purest of diamond of all and he freely shares it with us so that we can add our own unique facet and then pass it on in the same manner in which we freely received it. This book was a crystal clear synopsis of that eternal joy that comes from the dynamic transforming of our being when we open up to others in genuine brotherly love and friendship. So important, so timely for today!

Changed my life. Bought Christianity and awakening together - the latter which most Christians think as weird and devilish. We are all divine and Christ was our best example of what we are capable of. Love it and read it multiple times.

If you are interested in Christian mysticism, you will love this. A Christian version of what the Sufis call fana (the fading of the False Self) into baqa (beginning to live as God, in the True Self, as Rohr calls it).

The delivery was in good time and I am enjoying this book. I have read this author's other book 'The Divine Dance' which I found very uplifting. This book is about finding one's True Self and I am only half way through it but it is interesting and worth a read.