Diamond Heart: History, Traditions, and Practices

The following is a part of my paper about Diamond Heart.  This article shows mainly the beliefs of Diamond Heart.

Beliefs

First, to put it simply, the purpose of the Diamond Heart is to live consciously and mindfully.  In other words, the goal of the Diamond Heart “is the full development and realization of Being expressing itself in and through an individual human life” (Davis, 1999, p. 8).  Although there are a lot of spiritual practices which pursue love, wisdom, serenity, peace, or emptiness, the Diamond Heart does not necessarily seek for them.  In the Diamond Heart, all of them are regarded as constrictions or distortions of our reality.  Without distorting our reality, the Diamond Heart approaches to the presence moment and our true nature.  

Second, as for the aspect of the Diamond Heart as a spiritual path, the Diamond Heart provides us a psychologically elaborate spiritual system.  This system includes various ancient wisdoms and modern psychological knowledge.  Regarding to this point, I had a following question: Why did Ali integrate ancient spiritual wisdoms with the modern psychological insights?  About my question, Davis (1999) explains that “psychological growth is an aspect of spiritual growth, inseparable from it” (p. 7).  However, I also questioned “Why psychological growth is inseparable from spiritual growth?”  In my view, the ultimate goal of both psychological growth and spiritual growth is similar in that both of them aim to transcend human ego and attain true self-realization.  That is why Ali may have not separated ancient spiritual wisdoms from modern psychological insights.

Third, the Diamond Heart has three key concepts: Being, Soul, and Essence. As for the first key concept of Being, in the Diamond Heart, the true nature of existence is referred to as Being.  So, I had one question “What is the true nature?”  Ali (2002) replied to this question in the following way: “true nature is our innate essence, but we can perceive it only when we see through the particular forms, which is possible only when we experience without any veils or distortions” (p. 31). In other words, the true nature is an undistorted perception from anything such as our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and experiences.  Moreover, Davis (1999) defines Being as “the fundamental nature of all manifestation; it is the ground and the expression of the exquisite diversity of all that is.  Being reveals itself as both diversity and unity.  From this ground of Being arise awareness, presence, flow, and emptiness” (p. 11).  After all, Being is embodiment of our true nature and it is like a spiritual journey to seek for who I am. 

              Regarding to the second key concept of the Soul, Ali (2002) states that “our experience of ourselves in our totality and our tangibility is what in the Diamond Approach we mean by the term soul” (p. 5).  In other words, the term of the Soul expresses all which we experience in every moment.  In addition to that, the Soul is the consciousness itself in our inner world, and it is created and affected by our all experiences. (Davis,1999). inner world, and it is created and affected by our all experiences. (Davis,1999). 

              As to the last key concept of Essence, Essence is the true nature emerged from the soul. Ali (2002) emphasizes that “Essence is not an object we find within ourselves; it is the true nature of who we are when we are relaxed and authentic, when we are not pretending to be one way or another, consciously or unconsciously” (p. 8).  In other words, Essence can never be objectified and it is our “Self” itself, which is not identified with all experiences such as feelings, emotions, sensations, and thoughts.  From the psychological perspective, Essence is a close meaning “I (Self)” and as Firman and Gila (2002) point out, “‘I’ is not any particular experience but the experiencer” (p. 100).  “I” can not be identified with anything and separated from everything which we can objectify.  When I noticed that the term of Essence was very close to the psychological term of “I (Self)”, I also found that there were a lot of terms close to Essence in the world religions.  For example, Buddhism calls it “Buddha-nature (bussho)” (p. 122), Taoism calls it “Tao” (p. 198), Christianity, Judaism, and Islam call it “Spirit”, and Hinduism calls it “Atman or Brahman” (Occhiogrosso, 1994, p. 76).  As above exemplified, Essence stems from various ancient wisdoms.  That is why Essence may be the center of the Diamond Heart.

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

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