Articles on Creativity - Dr. John Diamond

Dr. Diamond’s books on Creativity

Dr. Diamond has published many book on many aspects of creativity, including music, art, photography, and poetry, always with a focus on using these activities for healing and meditation.

The Diamond Method for Creativity

An unique approach to using creativity for well-being.

“On Aesthetic Empathy”

Empathy: identification with another’s feelings. (From the Greek pathos, feeling). The German philosopher Theodor Lipps propounded a theory of aesthetic empathy: “Art appreciation depends on the viewer’s ability to project his personality into the object.”

“Hakuin Ekaku: Meditation in the Midst”

Hakuin Ekaku, the great Zen master made his life statement with his final piece of calligraphy: “a giant character for ‘midst,’ with the inscription, ‘Meditation in the MIDST of action is a billion times superior to meditation in stillness.’”*

Action Meditation: the Soul at work.

* Ed. Sushila Blackman, Graceful Exits (New York: Weatherhill, 1997), p.

“Aesthetic Experience as Quickening”

The quickening: the mother’s first awareness of the baby within. And by capitalizing – Quickening – I am referring to the mother’s first awareness of the baby as spirit within her.

“All Acts of Creativity”

All acts of Creativity are giving back

“The Basic Intention of All Artistic Endeavors”

Wordsworth “believed with Coleridge that All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame."

“An Emissary of the Spirit World”

Every artist, whether he knows it or not, is an emissary of the Spirit World.

“For the True Artist, Spirit Everywhere”

The power of art is that it attracts – but first the subject must attract the artist.

“What If…?”

What if all Schools of Art insisted on all their students undergoing the five years’ training as did Keats to be what was then called an apothecary?