Raging Voice Work

An Article by Mr. LTC

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
-- Henry David Thoreau

We arrive as infants "trailing clouds of glory," but many of us are at war with ourselves by the time we are teenagers. For most, as the responsibilities of our lives increase, and the demands of the marketplace intensify, the war expands.

Many look in the mirror and see the image of someone we dislike, distrust and feel unworthy of the gifts life freely offers us.

Self-contempt drills down deep into the psyche; we cover the wound with a patch: money, romance, power, notoriety. But the patch never holds and we start to hemorrhage again.

Many will repeat the cycle until their last breath, "leading lives of quiet desperation."

The good news? You can reverse this process at any age.

There is a slow, natural, gradual technique that will heal the wound permanently and help the psyche regain its equilibrium.

I call it Raging Voice WorkT RVW.

Each of us has a dominant inner voice - it comes with being human and having an ego.

That voice "speaks" to us thousands of times a day; for some, the tone is generous, supportive and playful; for most, however, the conversation invariably turns ugly:

"You're not living up to your potential, you could be doing more," and "you should feel ashamed or embarrassed about ______," or "why can't you be more like ______?"

When you hear someone use the expression, "If you only knew the real me...," they are almost always referring to their Raging Voice.

And so, for 20, 30, or 90 years we play a game with ourselves. We pretend to ignore the voice. We fill every waking, conscious moment of our lives with noise and motion. We drive our cars with the radio on; we eat our lunch or make the bed with the TV on. Anything to avoid coming to a stop in silence.

For it is there, in the silence of non-movement, that we are left alone with our voice. And the thought of being alone with that Raging Voice terrifies us.

I smile now as I write these words, but thirty years ago - as a Soto Zen Buddhist monk - I would quickly make my way to the Zendo each morning at 5 AM to join the rest of the community for what turned out to be my first introduction to the Raging Voice. Through the practice of zazen - a form of meditation where the monk sits mindfully in front of a wall - you set aside all distractions and opinions. It's just you and "your stuff," your Raging Voice.

The years at the monastery were invaluable - I could now easily identify the Raging Voice - but that's as far as I got.

It took another fifteen years for me to realize that, despite using every weapon imaginable, defeating the Raging Voice was impossible.

It was at that point I gave up. To be more precise I surrendered. To be exact, I asked the Raging Voice to join me at a Peace Summit. To my utter astonishment, He agreed.

That first Peace Summit was the most gratifying moment of my life.

If you've wondered why I've capitalized the words "Raging Voice," it's because my discovery of Who and What the voice was, turned out to be the most remarkable part of the entire process.

That which I had feared the most, was actually my connection to the Divine. Put another way, it was only when I finally learned to embrace the best and worst parts of me equally, did the Kingdom open fully. And the actual "voice" itself? - a collage of childhood personas that simply wanted attention and recognition, like any child. Once I recognized that these schoolyard bullies were as confused and vulnerable (and afraid!) as I was, it was like meeting old friends after a 45-year sabbatical.

When you practice RVW, you live fully in the moment with no regrets. It has allowed me to continue moving forward with my dreams and ambitions despite advanced Parkinson's Disease.

RVW is not a form of psychotherapy, nor is it modeled after any "12-step" program or religious or theological dogma.

So what is RVW? It is a series of techniques to help you once again become your own best friend.

In short, RVW is about finally finding your true Soul Mate - you.

Raging Voice WorkT is a one year program consisting of 52 personal weekly telephone workshops with me that are sixty minutes each. The cost of the program is $5,000, payable in advance, and I only accept ten clients per year. For information call me @ 518-383-5989.