Dying to Live: The Heart of Paradox

"Willing to die,
you give up your will,
keep still
until moved by what moves all else,
you move."

Life has taught me that something very profound happens around death, be the death literal or metaphorical. This article is an exploration of what I have learned and am learning about dying, as a means to be truly alive. During this process, at the very core of my healership, a larger vessel has emerged. I refer to this vessel as the "heart of paradox". It is here that as healers, we rest in peace and wholeness. I know of no better place to weave this web of wholeness than through the paradox of death as a gateway to life. At the center of all the religions, all the mystery schools, and all the initiation rites of indigenous peoples is this focus on "learning to die." It is the most important thing a soul can learn. In the words of Goethe:

This journey requires a fierceness of commitment to meet oneself. A willingness to live an examined life. To meet the unknown parts of self that desperately need to surface, to be explored and embraced. So even as I reach towards that which is unknown, that which is unknown reaches back towards me. It is necessary to continue to honor this unfolding process as containing it's own innate wisdom. Much like the bud of a flower that cannot be pushed to open, so it is that each of us must arise and unfold in our own uniqueness. My experiences translate into wisdom which cultivates my movement towards embracing the fullness of who I am.

The Buddhist tradition teaches that our lives can be used as a preparation for death. In this approach life and death are seen as one whole, where the meaning and quality of my life are reflected in my death and where my death becomes my doorway into life. In the words of Sogyal Rinpoche from his extraordinary The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: "...we find the whole of life and death presented together as a series of constantly changing transitional realities known as bardos. The word bardo is commonly used to denote the intermediate state between death and rebirth, but in reality bardos are occurring continuously throughout both life and death, and are junctures when the possibility of liberation, or enlightenment, is heightened." (Rinpoche, p.11) The word bardo literally means "between". Robert Thurman in his translation of The Tibetan Book of The Dead says that the book's title is inaccurate. The publisher asked him to keep the title because of it's popularity and name recognition. The Tibetans do not believe that there is such a thing as "the dead". The more accurate translation is The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding In The Between. (Thurman, preface xx) This in-between which houses the paradox between what is known and unknown is at the heart of dying, and also at the heart of living.

Joshua David Stone, in The Complete Ascension Manual, calls the bardo experience "a spiritual test and an opportunity for greater spiritual initiation." (Stone, p. 83) It is therefore imperative, in the interest of my soul's evolution, to cultivate the awareness that the bardos demand. That I might accept and embrace in life the knowledge that transition, change, and impermanence are the only laws in the universe that never change.

I am fascinated by this intermediate state. A bardo is like a gap out of which future realities manifest based upon the choices that are made. This transitional state joins what at first glance might appear oppositional: life and death, death and rebirth. This mutable state is also the bridge between what I may complacently refer to as my waking life and ultimately what I might refer to as my awakened life. How might I more fully awaken to this bardo experience in this lifetime? Sogyal Rinpoche says, "If we refuse to accept death now, while we are still alive, we will pay dearly throughout our lives, at the moment of death, and thereafter." (Rinpoche, p.14) I believe therein lies my answer. I need to continue to awaken my acceptance and ability to embrace death.

My healing journey was catalyzed 20 years ago with the death of my sister following a long and painful illness. I witnessed great pain in my family and paradoxically the aliveness which sprang forth through authenticity, love and honesty, brought color and clarity unlike anything I had experienced in my adult life. Dr. Joan Halifax, a hospice pioneer, said it this way: "Being with a dying person can be a very inspiring process. Dying calls for truth in a more fundamental way than any other experience we humans can have." (Halifax, p.69.) This aliveness overshadowed and assuaged my own grief as it included a sense of unity and connectedness that extended beyond the waking reality that I had been accustomed to. I found myself in a state of consciousness that allowed me to have a foot in this world as well as a foot in the next; a place where synchronicity was just a way of explaining how life really was. (Carl Jung defined synchronicities as "where the mind and matter are not yet differentiated.")

I had been awakened to many insights and also left with many questions. This lead me into Hospice Work, working with the dying and their families before, during, and after death. I was intrigued and motivated by the experience of death as a means to aliveness. I had externalized a process that I now know lives within me. This process where as I consciously choose to die, I find what it is to be alive.

During my 20's when I began to feel the imminence of death all around me. Oddly enough, what terrified me was not so much dying, but that I would not be awake at the time of my death. I was afraid that I would miss the moment. This was frightening. I made a commitment to be more "fully" awake, that I might die consciously. Self-destructive habits changed. I began taking responsibility for living a life that would include a vigilance around death, that I would meet it with my eyes open. Out of this I began to open more fully to life.

Excerpted from the Pathwork: "Initially it is not death and suffering that you run from, but from your fear of both. This is what you have to uncover first. You may not be aware of this fear, but deep down it may still be there, if only to a small extent. Face that element in you where you still fear. Then you can learn to die--and live! As you learn to become aware of your real fear of death in any form, be it physical death or any negative occurrence, you free the life force in you which will invigorate you as you meet that which you fear." Lecture #82: The Conquest of Duality

I am astonished at the powerful teacher fear is in my life. As a sign post that marks the direction of my soul's journey. As I am able to meet my fear consciously, I allow for the
possibility of regaining forgotten parts of myself. The Chinese symbol for crisis, which means both danger and opportunity, supports this belief. This process of moving through the eye of the needle and recovering more of myself, reinforces this as a path of self-revelation.

Throughout my sister's illness, I recognized that those who came to visit her and brought with them love, and a sense of their own wholeness, left her feeling more whole. There were also those who came to visit her out of a sense of what seemed to be obligation. They brought with them their own unacknowledged fear and left her feeling drained. At her funeral this split became even more clear. In the midst of my own grief, it became readily apparent who embodied compassion and connectedness. In contrast, others had been overtaken by their own fear, or grief that seemed to reflect mourning for themselves rather than for her. I know in myself the feeling of compassion and connection; I also know the painful feeling of separation.

In my years with Hospice, I have become aware of many things. Our culture as a whole has a very dysfunctional relationship with death. What we fear is best left alone. We need look no further than the social institution of conventional medicine to observe this. The war cry in our hospitals has been "life at all costs, to be prolonged as long as is 'humanly' possible!" Oftentimes this credo is carried out without concern for the individual's dignity and certainly without awareness of the care or purpose of their soul. Requests to halt aggressive treatment often go unheard. At times, amidst the machines and noise, it is hard to get the family close enough to hold the patient's hand! Death is seen as failure, to be avoided, and then somehow forgotten as quickly as possible. We have participated in the creation of our institutions. They are a reflection of our own relationship with death. Ultimately, my sister died, after visiting hours, without family members around her. I am aware that at the time there was a great deal of denial in our family as to the closeness of death. And also, perhaps, for the need of my sister to let go on her own terms while those around her were holding on. In subsequent years, conversing with my mother, I experience her sadness alongside her resolve that if she had it to do over again, she would never have left her side. Those of us who remain alive go about the task of living. Unless, of course, it is our loved one who has died. Then we are left with a wound for which there is no social salve, where we must bear the pain and matriculate our own understandings. I must consider for a moment my own experiences, both positive and negative ones. What have I found lacking? What have I found fulfilling? Where have I embraced death and where have I fearfully pushed it away? I need to disarm death through an increased willingness to embrace it.

In the powerful words of Michel de Montaigne: "To begin depriving death of it's greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of it's strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it ; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.....We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave." (p. 95)

As a hospice volunteer, I have often been amazed when, upon entering the home of a dying person for the first time, the family tries to figure out what I am going to do or what they're going to do with me. It seems as if we are not very good at just being. What happens next is very unpredictable. Either the hospice worker is given tasks, has an opportunity to enter into deeper relationship with the family, or perhaps both. Frequently, something extraordinary begins to happen. The hospice volunteer is perceived as someone who "knows", and is therefore an "expert" on dying. S/he is able to constellate this state of beingness, calmness, and unconditional love. This elicits a sense of safety and creates a vessel in which the family is able to receive support. A larger container emerges to hold this phenomenal place, where life and living meet death and dying. The hospice providers become a repository for needs and explorations within the family. A means is thereby created by which deepening and wholeness may descend, and the possibilities for the dying and their families are increased and supported. The volunteer holds the place of the unknown, of the transition between life and death. When it unfolds in this way, the volunteer assumes a very privileged role within the family during the most powerful of times.

In the words of Dr. Halifax: “Death is not an individual act. The dying person is a performer in a drama that will be observed by others and participated in by others. Often we concentrate on our work with dying people, yet those who care for the dying are actually working with many of the same issues themselves. It has become clear to me that the issue of one's own death stands at the center of the work." (Halifax, p. 69)

I concur with this assessment. I have gained so much through being in the presence of this mystery. Humbled by life's fragility and uncertainty. What I have experienced and what ultimately remains unknown to me.

A universal sentiment uttered by hospice workers is what an honor and privilege it is to work with the dying as well as how much more is received than given. What follows typifies this, as well as the experience of synchronicity, in a very powerful way:

Joyce was a healing client who I had the privilege of working with at the end stages of cancer. Although she was not openly ready to admit she was dying, it became clear as we worked that she was visiting a place in preparation for this transition from life to death. I received a call from her eldest daughter, early one Saturday morning, telling me that Joyce had slipped into a coma several hours earlier. The daughter requested that I be there.

I arrived two hours later and entered into her bedroom where she was in the presence of her husband, her best friend, her two daughters and one of her daughter's boyfriend. They proceeded to fill me in on what they had been talking about in her presence; including family vacations and special memories, she had always said the sound of their voices comforted her. After about 20 minutes the husband and boyfriend went outside to split wood, while her best friend went out into the kitchen to make calls for a scheduled prayer vigil for Joyce that evening in the home.

The moment that the others had left the room, leaving her two daughters and myself, she began the active process of dying. Her breathing changed, her eldest daughter said "it's time isn't it?", We consciously filled the room with love as a sense of grace descended, her eldest said "look for the light, go to the light." Joyce opened her eyes for the last time, looked at me sitting at her feet, squeezed her youngest daughter's hand, her eyes fluttered like hummingbird wings, and a tear rolled down her cheek as she left her body through the crown of her head and through her eldest daughter's chest upon which her head rested. At that very moment the "crack" of the first log being split was heard and we sat in awe-filled sanctity and sacredness of the moment, at the gift that had been given. There was a knowing that Joyce had orchestrated her moment, had chosen it precisely, there was no separation, the veil between this world and the next had been lifted.

That night at the prayer vigil, many of us, unbeknownst to one another, brought cherry blossoms, a card had a painting of it, and another was inscribed with "love the cherry blossom of her land." As friends and family spoke, the eldest daughter read a letter that she had written to her mother from South America, describing a vision she had while floating on her back in an idyllic sea. She envisioned her mother wrapped in a cocoon of golden light and told her in this letter that that is how she now held her. As her mother died, the daughter felt her mother's essence move through her chest and it was as if these bands of golden light were releasing and breaking up; this letter was found under her mother's pillow.

Something happens and continues to unfold during these important life events that brings vitality, meaning, and poetry to our very existence. It is common to be flooded by knowings and understandings that continue to unfold as long as one remains in this stream of larger reality. I believe it is important to nurture this sense of awe and wonder in everyday practice. To recognize the miracle inherent in each moment of life. That I might live in ever increasing periods of synchronicity

Our culture misses the possibilities of these experiences by choosing life and avoiding death, choosing light and avoiding dark. These are our wake-up calls to authenticity and truth, to passion and creativity, to vitality and aliveness. Our opportunity to embrace paradox. In doing so, the way becomes clear and crystal, we know the road and we take it, there is no question as to what needs to be done. Victor Frankl (1959-Man's Search for Meaning) said that "every situation is distinguished by it's uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand." (p. 99) In the Hindu and Buddhist way of no-choice, the will of God is always singular. When grace has descended into my life, when I experience myself as the fullness of compassion, I know the experience of singularity, of alignment with life and my place in it.

I had an experience in my early 20's while backpacking in the Big Sur Mountains of California. In a deeply forested area my friend and I had a strong desire to move up into the sunshine. My friend chose a ridge route and I decided to climb a rocky face. As I continued my climb it became increasingly difficult as the moist mossy covering of the rocks began to give way as I attempted to go higher. I could go no further, nor could I climb down as I had challenged myself to reach this height. I held motionless caught between the proverbial rock and a hard spot. I could hold on until I could no longer grip the mountainside, or I could let go into my fate. With these as my only options I consciously let go, surrendering into the unknown. What happened next was quite astounding; my fall was broken as I crashed into a tree and was held by it's branches. As I climbed out, unharmed, I positioned myself in the crotch of another tree to reflect on my experience. At this moment my consciousness expanded out into light, I felt held in the lap of God and moved fluidly and freely in a state of divine omniscience. I do not know how long I remained in this state, for time had no relevance.

I am reminded of the Zen parable about the man, running from the tiger, who has no path of escape. As he clings to the side of the cliff he notices a deliciously ripened strawberry which he takes a bite of and exclaims "what an exquisite strawberry". He has truly let go in that moment. I do not know if I would have taken that moment to enjoy the strawberry. I do know I had "actively surrendered" into the moment. I ask for that in my life as my way home.

Many years later I came across the following: In Ken Carey's Return of the Bird Tribes, Hiawatha was perched in an old dead oak overhanging a deep gorge when he was confronted by Mohawk warriors whose intention it was to chop down the tree upon which he sat. Hiawatha commanded that it would be he that would "cut away this tree and fall with it into the gorge" and then "like all who are attuned to the Great Spirit, my timing was in perfect harmony with the natural world" (Carey, p.91-92) and finally"there was a tremendous crack as the twisted oak broke loose from the cliff and tumbled with me clinging to it's branches end over end through empty space....as it happened, the falling tree landed in the upper branches of several closely growing trees in the gorge below...it seemed to me these branches were the hands of the Great Spirit. Catching me in his love." (Carey p. 93)

In being true to the nature of paradox, I am aware that we often look to “peak experiences” in our lives to validate an unseen God. The fabric of my life reminds me of the miraculous which is also contained within the most subtle and simple. Honored in William Blake's "World in a grain of sand”..." or in the words of Paul Williams: “Thinking of awakening as an enormous dramatic event might be the biggest barrier to being awake. Instead of quietly opening our eyes and hearts, we sit here waiting for something big to happen."

Every now and again, something big happens.

About 15 years ago I had an experience that has continued to be thematic in my life. I do not know how much I understand to this day and yet it's importance to me is of inexpressible magnitude. I had been invited to participate in a Native American sweat lodge. Something I had always wanted to do and this was my first opportunity. In this purification ceremony, which honors wholeness through the four directions and the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water, the lodge is symbolic of the womb of mother earth. The rite is focused on purification through fire.

I went to the gathering with 3 other people, one of whom was a young man who had experienced a lodge before that he was unable to complete due to it's intensity for him. He was bound and determined to avoid "failure" again. I, on the other hand, albeit nervous with anticipation, had a plan. I would be the humblest of the humble, refusing what was offered me (most importantly water) to show my piety and austerity. Well, I was humbled alright.

I fought the pain of the lodge, I mustered all of my strength with a determined ego that was sure to see me through this experience as it had captained me through countless experiences in my life. On the third round of a four round lodge, a pipe was being passed which each person had an opportunity to smoke and to offer spoken prayer to the circle. If I could only wait my turn, complete my prayer, then I would feel "worthy" and leave the lodge. My resolve stiffened. The young man who I had accompanied was seated to my right and received the pipe before me. I was weak, dizzy, and in pain. He began speaking in tongue and his diatribe went on and on inexhaustibly. I had depleted the reserves of my resolve. Now it had become a matter of survival, fear set in. As I rose in desperation to leave, he placed a hand on my shoulder and lightly pushed me to the ground. I lost consciousness and moved into an experience of hell. I was a primitive man face to face with my mirror image. We passed a stone monotonously back and forth accompanied by monosyllabic utterances through what embraced me like eternity; it was unchanging, repetitive, wrought with stagnated suffering.

My next awareness was outside of the lodge as a water hose was being held over my head. The Indian asked if I was OK and, when I mumbled something, he left me to return urgently to the lodge. Something was happening there, it turns out the young man had injured himself, and I was left alone. I was flooded with the karma of all of my lifetimes, I was overwhelmed. Then I was flooded with the awareness that I needed to live everyone else's karma as well and the feeling of oppression was indescribable.*

*Tibetan Buddhist teachings tell us that the bardo separating death and rebirth is also called the "karmic" bardo of becoming. It is here, as is also reported by those have had near death experiences, where we undergo a life review. It is said we can experience all the suffering we have been directly or indirectly responsible for. The intensity of clarity or confusion is magnified by a factor of 7. All of my thoughts, feelings, and actions are re-experienced. This is the judgment day, I am the judge and also the judged. For who knows me better than myself and, ultimately, it is I that am responsible.

Next to the lodge was a wig wam, what I've come to learn symbolizes the womb of the human mother. I knew that there lay my salvation (my birth into this life?) if I could only reach it. As the strength gathered within me for what were few yet monumentous steps, my earthly identity began to dissolve. To identify myself with my profession, as somebody's son, as somebody's brother, was ludicrous. Death was something to be celebrated, not feared or seen as tragic.* Cultural images were not only in question, my experience was 180 degrees in opposition. I had entered the world of paradox. I was homeless between, and yet of, both worlds.

I made it to the wig wam. Once inside, time moved at a nearly imperceptible rate. My awareness rolled slowly backwards towards what I was to experience as the origination of all things, towards what I perceived as the moment of creation.** I experienced the big bang from inside-out, and yet inside and outside were the same. I have wondered if I had experienced the beginning of the universe, my own creation, or at that instant, perhaps there is no difference.

I was filled with a fierce primal energy. I was naked as two Indians appeared in the doorway. Upon seeing them I snapped a branch from the wall of the Wig Wam into my hand. They looked at me and one of them cried out; "this guy's crazy, let's get out of here!" I was alone in my madness, I was also completely alive. The energy thrust me into my physicality. When I breathed I was my breath, when I swallowed I was my swallow, when I noticed my knee I was my knee, when I laughed I was my laugh. I was my awareness. Time began to speed up, experience and awareness whistled through me, faster and faster. I knew all there was to know, and yet I was in a very unintegrated state as far as conventional 20th century reality goes. I had entered through the death of my ego a doorway into living; if I were able to embrace it, paradox was lighting my way home.

*The Tibetans celebrate the anniversaries of a lama's death, not their birthdays. Also from the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes, chapter vii. verse 1: "The day of death (is better) than the day of one's birth."

**Einstein said "the more momentum radiant energy has, the more time slows down for it."

Robert Johnson, in Owning Your Own Shadow, says this:

"To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego. (p. 94) To stay loyal to paradox is to earn the right to unity. (p. 88) Heroism could be redefined for our time as the ability to stand paradox." (p.92)

I have the utmost respect for the lodge ceremony and have returned several times since. It is a place of prayer, it is a place of purification, it is a place to honor creation and my place in it.

And from the Pathwork: “Suffering and joy, pleasure and pain, these dualities in the last analysis are nothing but subdivisions of the great duality: life and death--never life or death. If you accept death in it's naked stripped form, without running from it, then and only then can you truly live; and only then will you find out that there is no death; there is no duality. You will not cling to this as a consolation out of weakness and fear. You will experience it to be true. And you can only experience this in the great and ultimate issues when you learn to experience it in your" everyday little dying." Whenever your will is not done, whenever you cringe from suffering in the wrong, unhealthy way, you increase the tragic duality. You reject death and, therefore, in the ultimate sense, you reject life."

Lecture #82, The Conquest of Duality

Following spiritual training program a group of us gathered for a few days of rest, relaxation and integration. During this time I was given and received an incredible gift. Spontaneously, I moved into this place of synchronicity, where life has no walls. Existence and my place in it were once again clear. For me it was a time of healing and loving, for myself and others. I knew that your successes and failures were my successes and failures. My heart was open, we were indeed one. I was being offered the gift of discernment; when I moved out of this experience I could very quickly invite myself back to it. This was truly a blessed time.

On my flight home to the West Coast, something very dramatic happened. I was flying home with a friend who had changed his flight so we might continue our journey together. The seat between us was empty and he asked who I would like to fly home with today. I responded, "Christ". He very neatly constructed a symbol of Christ out of the white paper motion sickness bag taken from the seat jacket and placed Him in the seat between us. I had never consciously taken Christ into my life with this level of awareness. As we prepared for take-off, I "knew" that our plane was going to crash. I had known with certainty many things over the course of the previous days, that had been true, and this felt like one of them. I believed I was being given choice. I could stand up and say "excuse me, I think I'll wait for the next plane", or scream out hysterically, "we're going to crash!"; or, since Christ was on this plane, I could ride with Him. I chose to stay on the plane knowing that if this had been my life, my destiny, and what I would die for, then so be it. There was much I would miss, much life unlived. Yet it seemed to me that I was choosing life in death, as well as love over fear.

As Jesus said in Revelation, chapter 2, verse 10 :"Be ye faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."

We took-off, there was fear, there was excitement, there was love. Our plane did not crash! My awareness remained expanded for days following and has returned to this experience of Grace intermittently. For I do believe that this gift of compassion and awareness was indeed Grace, and my conscious journey has become the cultivation of this awareness.

In the words of Stephen Levine from Healing Into Life and Death: "Grace is the experience of our true nature. Grace is the experience of the effusive peace of unbounded being. And though one cannot create Grace with the snap of the fingers, it is potential in each moment. Though Grace cannot be created, it can always be invited by preparing for the present. Karma is Grace. Grace is Karmic." (pp.34-35)

The healer's personal journey is of the utmost importance in determining his/her ability to be of assistance to those who have come for care. In my own life, I must be able to hold increasingly boundless states of being while simultaneously being willing and able to penetrate the very depths of my own individuation, what is unknown to me. This is what is meant in the shamanic traditions as "having a foot in both worlds." In bringing the very essence of that expansion and connection with larger realities to my physical incarnation, I allow for the ongoing spiritualization of matter. This is a continual process whereby increasing levels of vital energy are retrieved from their hiding places. The reward for this retrieval is the manifestation of greater aliveness and wholeness. This is made possible by continuing to "die my little deaths" and opening to the bardos of daily living; those places where as I die, I grow.

From Stephen Levine:"The optimum preparation for death is a wholehearted opening to life." (p. 3)

As a healer, I must continue to open fully to life, including my own pain, in order to be willing to experience the pain of another. This is made possible by an open heart in the absence of fear, or a heart that remains open in the presence of fear. Healing becomes an art where the client's safety, exploration, unfoldment, and transformation lie at the very center.

In the healing room the client is accompanied into their depths, into their unknown, into their dying. The healer holds the lifeline from the higher spiritual worlds, allowing the client greater access to their personal work and the work of their soul.

Again from Stephen Levine: "Healing is what happens when we come to our edge, to the unexplored areas of mind and body, and take a single step beyond into the unknown, the space in which all growth occurs." (p. 4)

The first step is to assist the client in being with the unknown rather than in conflict with it. Rather than analyzing experience and "bouncing off of it", the client is encouraged to join with it on a deeper level, to actually move inside of it. Hands-on-healing provides the means for connecting, clearing, balancing, energizing, and creating coherency in the client's field. This energetic support allows for the replacement of the client's identification to their dis-ease with the perspective and possibility for healing. Additionally, the healer maintains presence along the vertical axis of "as above, so below"; balancing and strengthening his/her field while being in relationship with the client. As this occurs, the client is able to open their heart to themselves, creating space and connectedness for an exploration into the unknown.

These are the critical moments of healing, when the healer's awareness of his, and the client's, wholeness is crucial. The healer must exercise care in order to avoid utilizing a technique out of the "need" to take away the pain of another. This "need" may be due to the healer's inability to bear the presence of pain. Additionally, if the healer identifies solely with the healer archetype (that he or she is the reason for the healing), the inner healer of the client may remain out of reach. Again, the healer needs to remain aware of what belongs to him, his own ground of being, therefore allowing the client the opportunity to access his own healing journey. David Abram in his brilliant book The Spell of the Sensuous explores the necessity of indigenous healers to maintain connection with the natural world. What in our culture tends to be termed supernatural, is in actuality being connected to the powers inherent in nature, and being able to utilize those powers. Abram says this, "Any healer who was not simultaneously attending to the intertwined relation between the human community and the larger, more-than-human field, would likely dispel an illness from one person only to have the same problem arise (perhaps in a new guise) somewhere else in the community." (p. 8) The healer functions as an "intermediary between human and nonhuman worlds." From this dance of connectedness, the healer knows what is necessary, techniques and awarenesses present themselves, to support the client's movement towards wholeness. Following and moving with the energy as it presents itself, is the role that the healer is being asked to fill.