Richard
Dance
After earning his BS degree in Business,
Richard spent twenty years in the oil exploration and
commercial real estate industries, with six years' residence
in the Middle East and travel to over twenty countries
on six continents. He then completed his graduate study
in the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism,
and Taoism, along with the Classical Greek, Hermetic,
Gnostic, and Neoplatonic philosophies of the early West.
Richard discovered within this broad range of ancient
philosophy the surprisingly similar theme of non-attachment.
Great world teachers as diverse as Plato and The Buddha
agreed, that to evolve, one must fully participate in
life's complexity, taking on all it has to offer, while
concurrently remaining unattached to the various outcomes.
This is the key to effortless living, yet non-attachment
is not to be mistaken for complacency or numbness. Rather,
by consciously exposing the body/mind/personality (which
is by nature attached) to the dual world of pain and pleasure,
gain and loss, one begins to discover the mysterious "Other"
aspect of one's being, which cannot be attached. This
"Other" goes by many names: The Buddha's No-Self,
Jesus' Kingdom of Heaven, Lao Tzu's Tao, Plato's Spherical
Soul, Hinduism's Brahman, Plotinus' Freedom, or Heraclitus'
Logos. Today we might call it "The Zone."
When we witness the athleticism
of a Michael Jordan or the musical virtuosity of a Yo
Yo Ma, we get a glimpse of the detached, Observing Self
in full career. This is the real director of the show,
able to guide an individual or group through any challenge
life has to offer. Richard's graduate thesis on non-attachment
resulted in a philosophical novel, The
Education of Adam Speaker, the story of a young man who
gets a devastating dose of life's pairs of opposites.
Adam is then led through a penetrating dialogue with nine
Classical philosophers who reveal the larger purpose of
his unexpected experiences. The book is a colorful, entertaining
journey through which Adam comes to realize non-attachment
as the true power source and ground of all potential ability.
After graduate school, Richard
developed his thesis into a variety of counseling methods,
helping clients make conscious life choices. He has been
published in Plato Not Prozac! by APPA founder Lou Marinoff,
and teaches individuals and couples how leave behind childhood
programming, pop psychology, cultural expectation, and
other herd instinct behaviors, in favor of three new vivifying
groups of life action which collectively help develop
non-attachment. You must:
1) Take risks, putting yourself
on the edge, over the edge. This could be anything from
confronting a family member on an old issue, to taking
on a business venture, to entering into the emotional
complexity of a beloved relationship.
2) Read regularly from the
timeless texts on non-attachment. The impetus is, "You
are what you eat," and by immersing yourself in the
writing genius of the ancient teachers, some element of
their high degree of consciousness intuitively transfers
to you, the reader.
3) Regularly practice some
form of meditation or prayer to allow your Observing Self,
which has been buried under thick layers of ego and programming,
to emerge, to come forth and begin running the show.
In short, Risk, Read, Meditate.
If you desire individual
or couples counseling for profound life change, better
relationships, midlife crisis, making transitions, or
learning specific meditations, contact Richard to schedule
a private session in-person or long distance:
Phone (480) 945-6525
Fax (480) 429-0737
Email address: rdance@swlink.net
Regular counseling rate is $80/hr. Sliding fee scale
available.
Copies of his book, The Education of Adam Speaker, are
$20 each including postage.
Make check payable to:
Richard Dance
6632 E. Palm Lane
Scottsdale, AZ 85257
Ongoing classes and men's discussion groups also available.
