Who is allan lokos

Chaplaincy — Visionary two-year program to serve individuals, communities, the environment, and the world. Nomads Clinic — Annual month-long pilgrimage to Nepal providing medical and humanitarian aid. Prison Outreach Project — Teaching meditation as a means of ending the cycle of addiction and violence. Meditation and meals included. Varela Symposium — Formerly "Zen Brain" Core faculty of neuroscientists, philosophers, and contemplatives explore timely topics at personal and global levels.

Earlier in this life Allan enjoyed a successful career as a professional singer. He was in the original Broadway companies of Oliver! On Christmas day, , Allan and his wife Susanna were in a horrific plane crash in Burma. Doctors in four countries said that Allan could not possibly survive his injuries. Start Reading. In Through the Flames , Allan Lokos tells the terrifying story of being on board a plane on Christmas Day with his wife, Susanna, when it crashed and exploded in flames.

His understanding, clarity, and open-heartedness move us from theory to action as we navigate through our lives.

But how to put it into practice? Allan Lokos hands us a guidebook. It does so with a winning warmth and with altogether unpretentious wisdom. If we let him show us the way down into everyday spirituality, we may find ourselves raised higher up than we ever dared to hope. No matter what religious stance you come from, if you work with these practices they will work for you. Hurdle with joy with Pocket Peace in your purse.

The evening of December 24, there was a big party at our hotel in Mandalay, with lots of people, food, music, and gaiety. Then, the morning of December 25, Christmas Day, we, along with some sixty-nine others, boarded Air Bagan flight number W for Heho Airport near Inle Lake, an area popular with tourists for its floating markets and unique method of fishing.

There were some patchy low clouds outside as Susanna and I took seats a little more than halfway back on the left side of the plane. The twenty-five minute flight left at A. About a mile before the airport, we crashed.

The plane went dark right away as we skidded, swirled, and bounced on the ground for five hundred or so feet. The cabin immediately began to fill with a dense, noxious, black smoke and the smell of jet fuel. We had torn through electrical wires as we came down and we could see outside our window that the plane was already ferociously on fire. We were in real and imminent danger. The passengers started pushing toward the front of the plane.

I pulled Susanna in front of me intending that we also exit through the front of the plane. There was tremendous chaos and we were making no progress moving forward.

Susanna turned back to me and said she did not think we could make it to the front exit, as she already could not breathe. We were near the emergency exit and although it was engulfed in roaring fire, we would have to jump out through the flames.

With a nod of consent from Susanna, I gave her a push and out she plunged through the flaming doorway to the ground below. In retrospect I now realize that I had no idea what I was pushing her into or how far she would be jumping. There was no choice. It was all instinct. Jump or be scorched. As I made my move to follow Susanna, there was what proved to be a disastrous moment.

My foot caught on something and I was stuck. I was not just surrounded by fire, I was now in it, and I could not move. I called out for help but no one responded. I was frightened. Perhaps more accurately, I was terrified. I could feel my heart pumping in my throat yet, at the same time I was fully present to the situation and quite calm. I worked quickly to release my leg and after a ferocious battle which later Susanna told me took close to a minute , I freed myself.

I also learned later that such was my effort to survive, that I tore through the leather of my left shoe trying to free my leg. I jumped through the flames to the ground, but I was already severely injured. On the ground Susanna immediately grasped my arm and began to drag me away from the plane. I could not move my legs but we gave it all we had until we could no longer move. She also did not know that she had suffered four broken vertebrae in the crash not that anything would have stopped her from trying to carry me.

A crowd was gathering and two teenage boys ran down and tried to help drag us up the slope where the plane had crashed. If I looked straight ahead, I saw the faces of the gathering spectators, who, as they stared at me, looked truly horrified. If I looked down, I saw large sheets of skin hanging from my hands and legs.

That skin and those faces should have scared me, but I think I was simply too numb, too dazed, or too deeply in shock to realize the seriousness of my condition. As Susanna and my new friends dragged me up the hill through the throng of stunned spectators, a middle-aged woman with a serene face and an equanimous demeanor leaned out of the crowd and looked directly at me.

Surely there is no such thing as a stranger in this world. How many times in my moments of deepest despair have her words come back to me? I will be all right. A moment of kindness, a compassionate smile, can not only uplift another being, it can save a life. This book is a compelling and beautiful invitation to pause and arrive fully in our life. Author of Radical Acceptance. The author explores the nature of anger and impatience and offers in-depth practices for developing true patience to the point where it becomes part of who we are.

A wise and, yes, patient guide, Lokos leads his readers through the benefits of patience with, first, ourselves and then with others in our personal and professional relationships. He offers the inspiration of notable exemplars, and includes not only the words of wisdom of great teachers in the Buddhist tradition, but also simple, do-able exercises and practices to help us along the way. Patience is a thoughtful and always interesting book, and one that engages our attention.

It challenges many of the assumptions and misconceptions we have about ourselves and the world we live in, reminding us that there is always another side to every view. It invites us to do the hard work of continuous mindfulness, and offers us the means to find release from self-inflicted and other-inflicted pain.

His mother died when he was sixteen and his father suffered from a serious bi-polar illness that led to him being violent and abusive. Solace for Allan came in the form of great music that he discovered in his mid-teens. It also turned out that Allan could sing.

With his first professional audition he became a member of the renowned American Savoyards with whom he performed all thirteen Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in front of New York audiences. His love of travel may have been born at this time as the pre-Broadway tryout went to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Toronto, long treks for the Brooklyn-born boy. The Oliver! For twenty-eight years Allan enjoyed performing professionally in musicals, opera, operetta, recitals, and concerts. He ventured out and produced and directed his own companies sometimes necessitated by a lack of other offers.