Ken Keyes Jr.
| Date of Birth | : | 19 Jan, 1921 |
| Date of Death | : | 20 Dec, 1995 |
| Place of Birth | : | United States |
| Profession | : | Author |
| Nationality | : | American |
Ken Keyes Jr. was an American personal growth author and lecturer, and the creator of the Living Love method, a self-help system. Keyes wrote fifteen books on personal growth and social consciousness issues, representing about four million copies distributed overall.
Early life
Keyes was born an only child to an affluent family in Atlanta. Throughout their lives, he was close to his father and especially to his mother, despite her eventual abuse of alcohol. He suffered from chronic bronchitis and croup in his infant years, and in 1925 his family moved to Miami Beach, Florida, in hopes of his benefiting from its sunny climate. His father, Kenneth Keyes Sr., became successful in real estate development there and active in the conservative evangelical wing of the Presbyterian Church. Keyes was not very athletic as a child, but excelled in academics and developed hobbies, such as photography. When he was in high school, his father bought him a small boat, which began his lifelong interest in sailing.
Keyes attributed the seeds of the personal growth system he would later develop to an experience he had with a stern English teacher in ninth grade. Despite her reputation as a strict teacher and hard grader, he made an effort to be personally caring toward her, which led to her giving him a slight break in grading. He took the lesson from this experience to be "that when I express caring and friendliness, they are reflected back to me in life."
Final years
Keyes and Penny eventually were divorced and the Ken Keyes College closed. In 1990, Keyes began studying inner-child healing and the rapid-eye-movement therapy developed by Francine Shapiro. He established the Caring Rapid Healing Center in Coos Bay to do private multi-day counseling workshops in this area, and wrote his final book, Your Road Map to Lifelong Happiness, on these topics.
Keyes married a fourth wife, Lydia, who survived him. He died of kidney failure in 1995. He was also survived by his children, Ken Keyes III and Clara Hardin.
Quotes
Think of the world as a loving place that is designed to give you everything that you need.
Conscious people always have a choice of whether to try to modify the actions of people around them or to change their response to the incoming stimuli.
Upgrade your addictions to the status of preferences. Here's the distinction between an addiction and a preference.
Watch your own body and mind, and the people and things surrounding you, from the deep, calm place inside of you. When you do that you'll have insights as to what you need to do in order to flow with the river of life around you.
You should always be aware that your head creates your world.
Life goes by rapidly. Don't delay. Don't put it off. Don't wait until you have some spare time. Don't wait until the time's 'right'.
We see things not as they are, but as we are. Your addictions distort how you process the enormous flow of information that is constantly flooding in through all of your sensory inputs.
Be aware that the difference between heaven and earth is not so much altitude but attitude.
Lots of people look for happiness through sensations, whether it's through sex, the taste of food, the sound of music, the sensations of movies and plays, creating a certain environment in their home, and so on. Looking for happiness through sensations keeps you constantly searching for the next "fix" and for more varied sensations. Sensations become addictions, and nothing is ever enough.
Acceptance doesn't mean that you've resigned yourself to live the rest of your life with a particular person, or in a particular situation. It just means that you won't cause yourself emotional discomfort because of the way things are in this moment.
