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Dvorah Adler

Dvorah has an M.A. in Human Development and a B.A. in Early Childhood Education. She was a featured parenting columnist for the Chicago Tribune Women News, and has authored several books, her most recent, "Shut UP! An Ancient Mantra for Complete Happiness! The Simple Truth Your Guru, Therapist and Grandmother Forgot To Tell You."

Her parenting book “Moms Come First! Three Steps to Enlightened Parenting” was sold and distributed through National Head Start Conventions, where she was regular featured speaker.

Presently Dvorah is making a series of music videos and comedy skits on radical topics in the field human development, i.e. “Life is Awesomely Meaningless” and “Shut Up and Be Happy!” featuring Ojai locals in her videos.

Dvorah has been teaching meditation, talking about personal freedom and causing trouble all over the “Spiritual” United States for the past 33 years. To see Dvorah’s fun videos & skits visit YouTube or go to www.dvorahji.com.

Dvorah is part of the Art of Living foundation - one of the world's largest volunteer-based NGO (non-governmental organizations). They are dedicated to service in the form of food, shelter, medicine, clothing, trauma relief (New Orleans, Tsunami, disaster, earthquake in India, Pakistan, New York etc.)

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder and Spiritual Leader of the Foundation, was up for the Nobel Peace prize last year for his service to Humanity. The Art of Living Foundation has been around for 25 years and helped over 20 million people in 152 countries. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has personally traveled all over the world providing these services with the help of volunteers from the International Association of Human Values.

Art of Living also teaches yoga, breathing and has special programs in colleges, prisons and hospitals all over the world. Dvorah has taught meditation and yoga in women's prisons, and offered yoga classes in daycare centers for children ages 3-8, senior citizen facilities, and hospitals.

Entries by this author:
April 20, 2008 - Shut Up and Be Happy! Music Video is a Finalist In The International Student Film Festival
March 29, 2008 - What happened to the Natural Ice-Cream Cone in Ojai?
March 21, 2008 - The Starfish - Making a Difference
March 07, 2008 - Moms Come First! Enlightened Parenting
February 19, 2008 - HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A DISCIPLINED NON-CONFORMIST! UNLIKELY!
February 18, 2008 - Celibacy VS. Desire
February 16, 2008 - When Will We "Increase The Joy of Living?"
February 15, 2008 - Where is My Soul Mate???
February 08, 2008 - THEY’RE YOUNG, THEY’RE COOL, AND THEY SERVE!
February 04, 2008 - Yes “YOU” Can! It is POSSIBLE!
February 03, 2008 - YES WE CAN! A Music Video
January 30, 2008 - I'LL SHOW YOU MINE - IF YOU SHOW ME YOURS!
January 24, 2008 - Are you a Dyslexic Anorexic with a touch of Dysmorphia - Living Right Here in Ojai??
January 23, 2008 - Life is so Awesomely, Adorably, Fantastically, Holy/Sacredly, Lovingly Meaningless!!!

more from Dvorah...

I came to the United States on the General Moore, a ship that landed in New York Harbor 57 years ago. My father held me on his shoulders so I could see the Statue of Liberty holding her torch of hope and welcome. We were refugees from Nazi Germany, spared from the ovens and on our way to a distant uncle in Los Angeles, who was willing to take us in and offer us citizenship. I still remember the cheers when we finally hit shore. America! We were safe.

My mother ended up working as a line-man in a Cheetos factory, and my father, a tailor made clothes for Lucille Ball. On Saturdays my Mom and I would go downtown to get colored blouses to match the skirts my Dad made, so I’d look well-dressed for school.

I remember being 8 years old, sitting alone on the grass at Queen Anne Park in South Los Angeles (we lived in a ghetto), eating my lunch, when I notice that a dozen young black boys coming my way, first walking, then running and then shouting. I froze. They encircled me, I couldn’t move. I tried to get up and one of them pushed me down again. Suddenly, a huge black man came running up shouting at the young boys, “Leave her alone! You punks, get outta here!” They scattered, I ran home. Saved again, but for what?

One morning, my father wakes me up, “Get up Dvorah, You’re Mother’s in the hospital”. We rush to the hospital, my mother’s dead – a heart attack at 40. One day she’s making me breakfast for school, the next day she’s gone. I looked for her in the streets of Los Angeles for years, only to discover she was really gone. But where did she go? That’s a question that stayed with me. How can someone be here one second, and gone the next? It was all like a dream. And then the eternal questions began. What’s it all about? Why am I here? How is it possible that a person, my mother could just disappear?

Years went by, I rocked n rolled on the Dick Clark show, graduated high school still a virgin; and at nineteen married the first good-looking guy that resembled Elvis. It was the 60’s. I remember riding my bike through Griffith Park listening to a hot local band called, “the Doors”. I fell in love with Van Morrison.

Then the LA riots came! I was huddled in my apartment pregnant at 20 with my first child. What was happening in “my America”. From that day on, I got involved. I marched for Civil Rights, singing “We shall Over Come” at rallies until my throat was raw. I taught parents and pre-schoolers in East LA and Watts, while gunshots were firing outside. I felt part of Martin Luther King’s vision - I had a Dream, and I was dedicated to making this a better world – my parents and I were not saved so we could eat apple pie and watch television. It had to be for a greater purpose.

One day, at a picnic with my husband and 3-year-old son, I had a strong urge to leave immediately. “Come on, let’s pack up and go! It’s time to go home!” I was so insistent that he got up immediately, and we all started walking towards the car. We heard a loud noise and looked up to see a car careening off the road and landing up-side-down exactly where we’d been sitting. Crazy! Unbelievable. And saved again. Why?

I went to San Francisco, left my son and husband for a couple of months and marched against the war. I hung out with the underground freedom fighters, hoping to change the world – it was in a mess, AGAIN! I had never done drugs, but one day a guy handed me a joint. “Go ahead, try it. It won’t hurt you.” Why not, I thought. I took a couple of drags and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning – and everything looked different. I walked to Haight- Ashbury Park, looked up at the trees and sky – and they were vibrating, sparkling, as was everything and everyone, including me. Things were not as they appeared to be. We were not solid. Everything blended. The Trees, the rocks, the people, my hand, we were all vibrating in unison. We were all ONE.

I went back to the apartment I was staying, and noticed a book on table. It was by Allan Watts called, “This Is It!” I took the next plane home to Los Angeles and learned to meditate. Dope was not my path – meditation was. I became a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. I wanted to know what was real and fair in a world that seemed so unreal and so unfair. For me the ticket was looking inside this body and mind – where else could I go for answers?

I meditated for 30 years, teaching meditation all over the world. I Studied with some of the greatest Masters and Madmen – and still knew nothing. I talked the Advaita talk and cried the Bhakti prayer and had the usual spiritual answers about past lives, energy, consciousness etc. I had the rhetoric down. But I “knew” nothing. This may have been “It” according to Allan Watts, but I wasn’t IT!

And then, one day, a rainbow shinning through a window landed on top of my hand. I looked at all the colors - mesmerized in amazement. “How could something so unreal, look so real?” It looked as if true colors were painted on my hand, and yet it was only a reflection. I felt a switch go off in my brain. This world is not as it appears to be. The ONENESS I’d experienced in Haight-Ashbury came flooding back. This division, this unhappiness in myself and others, was like a mass hypnosis, an illusion, like the rainbow shinning on my hand.

All I can say, is there is deep peace in the middle of this world that appears to be so chaotic, uncaring and random. There is deep knowledge that you can ONLY BE, and sounds so ridiculous and trite when you talk about it. Anyone Can Wake Up to their True Peaceful Enlightened Nature in the midst of heartbreak and confusion. That Possibility, that Invitation exists for Everyone.