Jeru Kabbal – His Story

His Life and Death

Jeru Kabbal was a 20th century spiritual teacher and guide.

He rarely spoke of his past.  He was a private person, and lived his teachings of being in the present. It is known that he was born in 1930 in the United States as Richard Dorin Shoulders. He studied traditional western psychology in his younger years and found it very limited.  
However, he was irrevocably committed and passionate about understanding and going beyond the mind.  He became devoted to investigating how one could improve one’s quality of life and relationships.
His detailed biography and an analysis of the ClarityProcess has been published in german in this book: Springer Verlag “Jeru Kabbals ClarityProcess von Lothar Nishkam Koch”

The early years

Jeru served as an aerial photographer in the Korean War. He was assigned to planes that flew behind enemy lines to shoot pictures to gain intelligence data. After his service he worked as a National Park Ranger. He always loved nature.
As a young psychologist, he signed on for a well paid job in a big American company. Soon he realized that he achieved rather quickly a high standard of living and could easily make his living by doing this job for a lifetime. But he considered this perspective as rather boring and left that job to travel Europe. By the end of the 1960s, he spent some years in Germany and started to give individual sessions with the basics tools of what he later called Dehypnotherapy. People in Frankfurt knew him as Dick Shoulders and he learned the German language.

Exploring outer and inner world

Attracted by the adventures and mystics of the East, Jeru then began traveling widely, especially in Asia, seeking out and testing numerous methods of self realization he came across. He studied with several spiritual teachers, including Osho for several years, and became particularly drawn to the teachings of Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharishi and mystical elements in Christianity. However he was always an independent spiritual thinker. For several years he conducted workshops called Dehypnotherapy, because his “tools” were able to pull people out of the hypnosis of their stories, their thinking and dreaming mind. He experimented a great deal with breathwork and music and gave extended retreats in Holland, some of which were more than three months long.

Retreats and teachings

In 1990, after a prolonged solitary retreat, he he was inspired to take the new name, Jeru Kabbal. He founded the Institute for Accelerated Personal Transformation (Apt Institute) in California and designed the breathing process “Quantum Light Breath Meditation” which is available and soon became quite popular as a very efficient way to clarify one’s mind and reach expanded consciousness experiences in less than an hour.
He made clear that working with the subconscious mind is only half way to Clarity or Self Realization. Tools and practical awareness experiences to give people a taste of the here and now were added and he condensed his former work into a workshop series he called “The ClarityProcess®. ” Thus, he combined his knowledge as a Western psychologist with the wisdom of the East in a unique, practical, and efficient way.
Since he loved traveling, he conducted the ClarityProcess® during the 1990ies mainly in retreat centers in California, Germany, Holland, Spain and Bali.

Leaving the Body

Since birth, Jeru Kabbal suffered from a genetic kidney disease. A kidney transplant had been successful for several years, but Jeru left his body following a second transplant in 2000. One of his last requests was to have a wooden Buddha given to forty of his closest friends and students, each containing some of his ashes.
He left his incomparable work in written and audio material and in his students, who share the ClarityProcess® today in Europe (Germany, Netherland, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland).

His Poem

WILD AND WONDERFUL

I did not come to plant seeds of the body.

I did not come to do what has already been done millions of times, even by me.

I am here that others may peer into the stone and see light. I am here to sing a wordless song, confusing, entrancing, prickling – until each hears his own inner song.

Until each hears the magnificent roar of divinity in a single blade of grass.
Oh how wondrous is the mundane. Each of the trillions of leaves is a masterpiece.

The everyday is a tapestry of miracle evolving out of miracle evolving out of miracle.

I am here to delight in life, to allow my smile of satisfaction to tantalize others so that they too will want to try the bread I am eating.

I have preached all of my life and no one has heard. But now I myself begin to hear.

I am my only audience when I sing and dance. How wild and wonderful.

My fragrance tickles the nostrils when I am gone.

Jeru Kabbal