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Sent to Chi Flows Naturally elist:
Life and death are one thread,
the same flowing line seen from different sides.
——————
All things come into being, then return to their original state.
Plants flourish, then return to their root.
Returning to root is called tranquility;
Tranquility may be called fulfilling ones natural end.
This fulfillment we may call the unchanging way.
– Lao TzuDear Lovers of the Natural Way,
Its a time for laughter through tears.
In my last email, I chronicled Ron Diana’s struggle with an asbestos-caused cancer that had suddenly become active in the last year. As a powerful healer and Taoist cultivator through qigong and meditation, he bravely attempted to heal himself of this “incurable” cancer.
Many of you responded to my request to support him by sending laughter and loving chi. I forwarded all the emails you sent, and they were printed out and read to him. He deeply appreciated the emails with a big smile.
On Friday, July 1, 2005, Ron consciously surrendered his weakened physical body and gracefully continued his journey as a wandering Taoist, this time in the immortal realm.
At Dao Mountain on Friday night, we had a wonderful candlelit circle of 35 people in a deep send-off meditation for Ron, punctuated by funny stories, a guitar song, and touching moments of grief. If you knew Ron, I urge you to have your own private memorial, and open your heart to him while he is still near.
I wish to share his partner Karin Sorviks description of his rebirthing:
“Ron is at peace, and I’m at peace too. I had a wonderful time with Ron until the very last minute with tons of love and kisses. I did finally let him go, to free him to find out what the next step of his journey is. That was the big question on his mind. I felt a powerful transmission come into my hand as he shifted into deep silence, and passed to the other side.
Ron’s wish in this life was to be a Taoist wanderer, traveling and teaching and enjoying life. He wanted to raise the consciousness of the planet.
He wanted to be remembered with laughter, for all the good things that
people were touched by, not to cry at how we are going to miss him.
Because each moment that we think of him, he is always here with us.”Easier said than done. Karins simple and elegant words made me cry. I am overjoyed that Ron is flying free from the limitations of his body. I know that death is illusory, that Ron is in the process of joyfully rebirthing his unique essence within the formless planes. Like Karin, I support him to fly as freely in spirit as he did in earthly life. I am confident he will continue mediating human individual existence with the Supreme Mystery (wuji).
Yet all this cannot instantly dissolve my deep grief over his departure. He was for decades one of my closest friends, and we shared many spiritual adventures together along the Way. I miss his wonderful smile, his enlightened belly laugh, his rootedness in the earth, his direct simplicity as a teacher and healer.
I did tai chi this morning, and invited Rons spirit to flow with me inside my bodily form. We had a wonderful communion. I remembered doing tai chi with Ron atop the Acropolis in Greece, and the great laugh we had when the guards stopped us, telling us that no strange religious practices are allowed here. Ah, the perils of being a Taoist.
Ive been tuning in to Ron and holding open a portal of clear light from my kan & li meditations. Just in case there were any aspects of his soul team that wanted to stray.
I also let Ron know that I was going to be really pissed at him if he didnt reveal to me the punch line to the cosmic joke from his new perspective in the formless. Ron let me know its easier to grin when youre in human form, and to enjoy it while it lasts….Ron’s departure may appear as a great loss to the thousands of people whose lives he lovingly touched. If we invest in loss, a Taoist term for surrender to the inevitable flow of chi, we can temper our deep sorrow. From loss opens up a new vulnerability, it deepens our inner space. In it can grow the joy and bliss available from maintaining inner contact with Ron’s soul in the next week.
Let Rons death, like every death in our lives, be a teaching on embracing change. Eventually Rons heart-mind (the five vital organ body spirits) will dissolve and merge into dimensions of collective consciousness that may be a bit distant for individual human contact. So send him all love on his new journey NOW, and be open to receiving a glimpse of where you are someday headed.
Many will wonder at the unexpected turn of events, and it may cause some to question the value of cultivation practice or the dangers of healing work. Many high spiritual teachers have died from illness; few of us will totally master the forces that control the portal of death and rebirth. But our practice tempers these forces, and allows us to gracefully flow with them. It is important to remember that Taoists of the inner alchemy tradition seek spiritual immortality, not physical immortality. Longevity is cultivated only to allow us more time to integrate the alchemical golden light of our original self.
We cannot know all the mysteries of Rons soul journey, and best not to judge or surmise. It may be Ron’s illness came at this point as part of a soul impulse to take him into working from the other side as a spirit healer. Or it may have been Ron was pulled by other forces. I spoke with Juan Li in Barcelona, Spain. He is another of Rons close friends, who illustrated all the early Healing Tao books.
Juan Li wondered whether a spirit flyer had hooked Ron on his visit to a hospital a year ago, when Ron had gone to see a friend dying of cancer. Ron was emotionally vulnerable at that moment, the asbestos irritation was lying in wait for 35 years, and hospitals are filled with spirits eager to escort souls to into the formless. That makes hospitals into a kind of portal that can hook unconscious forces within us. Perhaps that is one lesson here: stay conscious and centered when you enter such a portal space. We cannot really know.
But we can know that Ron Diana cultivated a unique awareness here on earth whose essence is immortal. He is still vibrating here. I invite you to tune in and listen to Rons newly cosmic belly-laugh. Let go of your tears and your fear of death. Enjoy the free flow of consciousness that pulses between the form and formless realms in each moment.
Rons wish was to have his body be cremated, and his ashes returned to the earth. He asked they be scattered on a mountain by the Seven Lakes near his home, with a simple Taoist ceremony. Details will be announced, if family decides to make it an open event. IRons instructions: send no flowers, lovingly plant a seed, support new life.
Wishing you the deep peace of the Tao
that arises from beyond life and beyond death,Michael Winn
“Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change – is a Sage.”
— Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”– Taoist Sage, 200 B.C
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Click to Unsubscribe <http://www.healingdao.com/cgi-bin/unsubscribe_hd.pl?c=7365&n=1>Michael, I am touched by your connection to your friend and even though I do not know Ron, his death moved me to visit a cemetery and commune with death, communication between the worlds, and the thin veil between the two.
I am very interested in how to work with spirit and am glad you shared a boundaried approach of opening your Kan and Li cauldron, inviting stray pieces of his shen to process.
I was a bit concerned and curious about this “spirits eager to escort souls into the formless”. What is the reasoning as you understand it behind this phenomenon?
Be well, babaThe low astral plane is filled with parasitical types of entities looking to seize on any weakness they can find, even if in a strong person in a weak moment
Or someone with latent cancer, held in abeyance, but vulnerable to resonance with a dying friend.Since so many people die in hospitals, they tend to gather there, like scavengers. There is less food in cemeteries for them, many souls have already dissipated by time they arrive there.
According to Juan Li, they enter from the back of the neck.
I have known Taoists who use a special mudra while entering hospitals.
Bend middle two fingers over to lao gong point in center of palm, and place thumb over those two bent fingers. Do it on both hands.From nature’s point of view, they are serving a function of speeding up creation-destruction cycles which are built into everyone’s soul structure.
michael
The way I learned it, you take the thumb and touch it to the first joint (where finger connects to palm)of the ring finger and make a fist.
I used it when I visited my mom in the hospital since I really dislike hospitals.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been involved in healing sessions using himalyan singing bowls combined with energy work. Two of the women we work with are very gifted and able to percieve energy and see astral entities. We’ve had at least three people I can think of who had what they call “hithchikers” attached to the back of the neck and occiput area. Use of the tingshas and/or the singing bell combined with intention drives them off. I’m told once they atttach, they send tendrils out to other energy centers of the body. Some take a good while to get them to let go.
“Truly! To GOD we belong and truly, to GOD we shall return.” 2:156
May God give Peace and blessings to Ron Diana’s soul. And patience to his family.
I had the pleasure of taking an Iron Shirt class with Ron at dao mountain a few years back, and then hanging out with him a bunch the next year when I was there for other classes. All the nice things Michael says about him are true, but (like all I am about to say) really dont do the man justice.
When I talked about him to friends (as I did on occasion — he had that much of an effect on me), I’d say that he was what I always imagined a daoist to be: grounded, earthy, humane, curious, and funny but, above all, supremely human.
During the Iron Shirt class he had taught us to hit ourselves with the wire tool to vibrate our bones. And at the end of the week he taught us a form of chanting.
He said: The skull is kind of interesting. Its a bone, and you want to vibrate it, but its delicate, so hitting it becomes a bit of a problem. But if you chant, you can vibrate it and other parts of your body from the inside.
Then he taught us this form of chanting he had learned that the Tibetans used to vibrate their skulls. He said: you start nnnnnnn. . . and then go to ooooooo . . . and then into . . . rrrrrrr . . ., stringing it all together very nasal . . . nnnnnnnoooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrr . . . nnnnnnnooooooorrrrrrrr. . . nnnnnnnooooorrrrr. . ..
Ron said that when you get a whole room full of people together doing it, it can be very powerful. (We did and it was). He told us he knew a guy who would go into the lava caves in Hawaii with his buddies and chant like that for hours. The caves were pitch black and cold. But if you get a bunch of people who are really good at it, the vibration can start generating heat and then, not only heat, but light.
We listened in awe. With all wed been through that week it was somehow perfectly believable that somewhere deep in the lava caves of Hawaii a group of meditators were glowing in the dark.
We all started chanting again, deeper, richer, and more profound. It actually got a bit freaky in there for a second or two.
We stopped chanting and Ron wrote the chant on the blackboard for us: N O R. Just remember he said, N O R, thats all you need to do.
And then someone in the back raised their hand and said: Uh, Ron, can it be anybodys name spelled backwards or just yours?
And we all burst out laughing, Ron probably more than any of us, with that huge laugh of his. It was a joke he might have told, just a funny observation about a serious topic with a big laugh at the end.
And that was the kind of teacher Ron was and the kind of environment he promoted: moving from the profound to the irreverent and back again — with humor and grace always close by, popping in whenever needed.
Sometimes I think that I may have learned a bit more from that class than the proper way to do the horse stance. That perhaps just by seeing him in action I learned a little something about being truly alive.
So I will chant tonight chant Rons name backwards in the darkness and both mourn and rejoice his passing. He was a great man, and the world will be a lesser place without him.
spyrelx
Hello Mike,
Bonnie Diana here.I have been following the Daoist Discussion. I have tried twice to register and log in. Seems to be some trouble there with logging me on.
I have some very strong feelings about what is being said about Ron,
along with our daughter, Kate. But for right now, We would like to respond to a “Spyrelx” who I feel as well as Kate feels, has made some accurate observations about Ron that rang with the chord of truthful recognition of who Ron Diana was/is and what he really was “about” so to speak.So whoever that person is would you kindly give him or her our warm “thank yous” for appreciating and highlighting that important side of him and what he wanted to TEACH. This “Spyrelx” is sensitive, and in tune with who Ron was or at least has posted something that speaks with a ring of truth and seem to really see what Ron was about.
We don’t mean to be disrespectful but much of what else is posted is simply misses the true mark of what Ron was about and who he was.
We do have a memorial service set in place for July 17.
Bonnie Diana, Ron’s wife, and Kate, his daughter.
Bonnie and Kate,
Thanks for your kind words. I knew Ron a very little bit, and Im glad I conveyed something true about him.
Although I havent mentioned it on the forum, my father died some three weeks ago. We were quite close and I loved him dearly. So although all sorrow is personal and unique I also know something of loss. And my heart goes out to you.
If the memorial service is open to acquaintances please let me know the details.
My thoughts are with you,
spyrelx
I worked in hospitals for 10 years as a nurse. Being young and strong there was no harm, seemingly. I loved my job and I gave my heart and energy to help the weak and the sick. But one day I walked in the corridor to start my shift and suddenly I felt how I weakened and realized that despite all my good intention this was a immense black hole. I gave my energy and it would never be sufficiant to heal this monster of ignorance, pain and despair. I felt ‘sucked’ and suddenly realized the negative energy that was draining me every day.
That day I decided to stop being a nurse and use my energy in time and space on my terms. Even so it took another couple of years and some deep experiences to realize that fully.Today I decide who I work with, when and how. Very often I get people who are hooked by entities. It is very important to take care of your own health and energy. It is a very tricky ‘job’, being a healer. I only take a couple a week. Money can never be the motor, I teach to earn my money, I never use the healing for my income, too tricky for my health.
Big change that Ron was tricked and triggered. He had a lot of energy, and was able to interact with the giants amongst the astral garbage.
My energy is much lower and I really have to take care of myself. I am in the mountains of Spain during July just doing nothing. Absorbing sun, taking care of my body and stay away from other people other than my family.
I don’t have abundance of energy and I have to live my life accordingly.There is a lot of astral garbage, the more sensitive you are the more you have to realize your personal responsability and it is very important to understand that the astral is a reality that interacts with the physical dimension. It is not a fairy tale but around and amongst us 24hours
I connected with Ron every day as soon as I knew about his illness. During the midsummer meditation I knew there was no turning back for him. I was in the mountains of France when I received a message of his death on my cell phone by a mutual friend.
I felt grieve for his passing as well it felt like he was much stronger being overthere. And I still feel he is ‘accesible’ to everyone who needs help or support. His death already gave me a couple of deep insights, he is still outthere, not bounded by time and space.Being in a little town internet cafe somewhere in Spain I cry for him because that is how I feel and I don’t mind at all.
My tears are as well for Karen, his family and friends. I don’t feel like laughing other than a little smile and warm tears, tears are okay…
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