Diamond Heart: History, Traditions, and Practices

The following post is a part of my final paper in World Religions class.  My topic is Diamond Heart.  While I was researching this psychological and spiritual practice, I became more and more interest in it.  So, I will take a Diamond Heart class next fall quarter!!

This paper illustrates the history, beliefs, traditions and practices, and my personal experience of the Diamond Heart.  The Diamond Heart is a psychological and spiritual practice, which Hameed Ali (A. H. Almass) developed, based on various psychological and spiritual wisdoms, for example, ego psychology, depth psychology, humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, object relations theory, Sufism, Buddhism, and the Gurdjieff work (Davis, 1999).  As I study various psychological schools and world spiritual practices at John. F. Kennedy University, I become intrigued by the Diamond Heart, because it includes a lot of wisdoms such as modern psychologies and ancient spiritual practices.

Brief History

This section demonstrates the history of the Diamond Heart.  First, Ali was born in Kuwait in 1944 and he moved to America to study at University of California in Berkeley when he was 18 years old.  As he studied physics, he became more and more interest in the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature.  Ali’s interest in the truth of human nature and the true nature of reality led to the establishment of the Diamond Heart.

As Davis (1999) explains, the Diamond Heart was developed by Ali more than thirty years ago.  Ali studied not only physics but also bioenergetics, depth psychology, and various spiritual works such as Sufism, Buddhism, and the Gredjieff work.  Thus, the Diamond Heart is affected a lot by such his backgrounds. 

After Ali taught a few students directly for some years, he founded the Ridhwan School in 1977.  As of today, there are two main centers in California and Colorado and a lot of branches, for example, in Vancouver, Seattle, Hawaii, Texas, New York, Boston, various Europe countries, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Nowadays, as Cortright points out, the Diamond Approach is acknowledged as “transpersonal psychotherapy” (cited in Davis, 1999, p. xiv) and acknowledged as a new academic area. Therefore, the Diamond Heart is taught in some graduate schools, for instance, at The Naropa Institute in Boulder and the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco.  

 Reference
1 Spacecruiser Inquiry (Diamond Body Series)
2 The Diamond Approach: An Introduction to the Teachings of A. H. Almaas
3 Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)
4 Joy of Sects, The: A Spirited Guide to the World's Religions