It’s important to admit that I’m not the same person at sixty-four as when first diagnosed at thirty-six. In my thirties, I was a driven artist, obedient to a relentless muse, while addicted to working in the world for approval. I was a dedicated and loyal friend but mostly inflamed with a vision I couldn’t quite articulate. My understanding of life was way ahead of my ability to live life. So cancer stopped me, humbled me, frightened me, threw me off course, turned me upside down and inside out. I was suddenly on God’s anvil, being hammered and reshaped. And everything that had worked to that point—my dedication, my attention to detail, my perseverance, my certainty in my muse—all of that was shattered and of no use. I was terrified and lost.

During that time, I endured a horribly botched first chemo treatment in New York City that left me squatting on the floor of a Holiday Inn with my former wife Ann and my dear old friend Paul. It was three weeks after having a rib removed from my back, and I was throwing up every twenty minutes till I began to cough up blood. It was at that moment in the weak grey before dawn that Ann, in her fear and pain, cried out, “Where is God?” Slouched in a corner, I somehow whispered, “Here, right here.” I don’t know where such an understanding came from. In truth, all the books I’ve written over the years and all the teaching circles I’ve convened have been an endless attempt to understand what came to me in that moment. This book tries to gather some of what I’ve learned along the way.

As coal is pressed into a diamond, experience presses us into the clear jewel that we are. Difficult as this is, this is the hard-earned way that wisdom appears in the world. And though what’s unearthed here comes from the heat of my journey, the lessons are for everyday living. It’s a law of spiritual nature: that the press of crisis, illness, heartbreak, and grief make visible what’s essential to live. Somehow, our life-giving lessons are more easily seen through the press of difficulty. So much of what we learn and pass on is the residue of more heated times. This is how we preserve what matters. This is how we create medicine out of our suffering.

THE JOURNEY