We express our deepest, essential nature, not alone, as strangers, but as a luminous hologram of love, creativity, and generosity.

Discovering you have cancer. Disbelief, bewilderment. The limbo of not knowing. Am I in the last few months of my life? Has The Story of Me ended? Or, will I recover? And, if I recover, who will I be, who will my body be? Compromised? Fragile? Renewed? Transformed? The limbo of not-knowing. Cancer is so much about the limbo of not-knowing. Answers are few and they come at a snail’s pace. What did that test say? What direction is that number going in? The words echo… “metastasized… stage IV… What is it like to die? My organs invaded by a stranger. Lungs, bones, lymph. “My organs, my body”. Not so anymore… a shared body, shared with a stranger, unrecognizable. My body, but distorted by edema, limited, invaded. Limbo…not knowing…cancer…not comprehensible. So then, since the whole thing makes no sense at all, you start making your own sense of what is happening to you. You wonder if you will be able to fight it, if you have the will and strength to oppose something that huge, that strong, that experienced in destruction. In my case, I had not decided. Not because I wanted to die, but because of the huge response and amount of strength I would have to muster in order to live. Even if I wanted to fight, how could I be successful against such an opponent, one with such a hunger for destruction, such a capacity for damage. The words kept recurring… stage IV, metastasized, compromised. Was the fight even possible at this point. Was it too late. At that point, a bearded, barrel-chested, 150 year old Sufi teacher, long dead, appeared and took my hand and said, “Here is what we are going to do.” He led me into a garden in his home in France and sat me on a stone seat and we talked. He explained what I had to do. What I had to give up. What I had to examine, where I had to transform. That there would be many steps, many changes and challenges. But he didn’t give me a choice. He didn’t say, “Now, do you want to do it?” He said, “This is what we are going to do.” I do not know why he loves me. But I know that he does. Suddenly, I became surrounded by the most amazing Caravan of Lovers. Lovers of Life, Lovers of Light, Lovers of the fact that we can choose to love. And that we can choose how we will live. It started with my students. Then old friends heard what was happening. Then former employers. Then Sufi groups. Then people I had never seen or met from Facebook. They joined with other friends forming groups to support me. Prayer groups. Sufi teachers. People who sometimes couldn’t afford enough food for themselves giving their money to our go-fund-me to support my healing. People I knew long ago and people I had never seen before. And the waters changed. I did my part. I listened to Murshid and changed the things that sheltered a low vibration in my being, and that fostered ignorance and carelessness. I listened to what I had to do, and changed what I needed to change, and took in the healing avalanche of support that was offered to me and allowed it to transform my way of being, and my body. The tests came back - tumors reduced by half in the first two months of therapy. Integrity of lung tissue restored. The direction of death has been reversed. The organs are listening, taking in strength, cooperating with the healers. The body is taking on a new integrity. The decision has been made to make a fight of it, and to learn what needs to happen in that process. I will be able to transform what needs to be transformed so that this body, so ravaged by a killer and destroyer, can shine with a new integrity of love and wisdom and emanate the light of awareness with those of my protectors and supporters and all of us who live from the hologram of inter- connectedness that we create together. This is not the story of a journey of one person in the battle against her cancer. This is the story of circle upon circle of individuals with love in their heart, with an active will to join with others to build and create, with a love of wisdom and harmony, of beauty and a desire to move and change and foster the good and possible, and to believe in the sea of potential and the magic of life. It is the story of how, out of the generosity of spirit and pure goodness of heart, people come together to offer what they have to those who need it. Then, the miracles begin. So, thank you all. You are my miracle. You are my Lifters-Up. You are my beautiful soul friends that surround and nourish and strengthen my yearning to return to life as a new and simplified being. My response to your presence is a gratitude so deep you can’t imagine.

Dear Beloved Friends… My name is Alani, and for many years I have taught Subtle Energy Readings and Healings. Recently, I was diagnosed with cancer. With this word, everything stopped. I became aware of how precious every moment was. I wanted to live from Awareness and Presence and Love. I felt the need to learn as much as I could about how to harness my run- away mind so that it could become my helper instead of my antagonist. I wrote a series of letters to my Friends talking about the journey with cancer and how it had impacted and changed me, and want to continue those communications here, in this blog. These Friends are very special. They came to me with such love and total support. Many I had never met. Many I had known for years. But they all gave so much of themselves so that my journey could be one of healing and transforming. I am so grateful. And I want to expand our conversations here. I will include excerpts from my classes; and also from the book I am writing, “In Light of Awareness: How Consciousness Becomes Form”. I will continue to include the letters talking about the unique moments in my dance with cancer. And, because I think they are powerful and transformative, I will also offer the techniques for Subtle Energy Readings and Healings that I taught in my classes. I hope you will join us and tell us about your own journey with this amazing mystery we call a human life.

Letters from Alani