CONTENTS
1 Close to the Bone: Illness and the Soul
2 The Ground Gives Way Under Us
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My Thanks and Appreciation
To Jan Adrian, who co-founded and for the past sixteen years has sustained the Healing Journeys: Cancer as a Turning Point conferences that have helped cancer patients survive. Her conviction that my way of telling myths of descent of the soul into the underworld would be meaningful to cancer patients was the reason she asked me to speak at these conferences. Doing so inspired me to write Close to the Bone.
To Angelica Theriot, who founded the Planetree Hospital Model in 1985 after her own near-death experience in a hospital, and who invited me to talk about soul connections with the nursing staffs who were the heart of her vision. Twenty years later, there were fifty-five patient-centered Planetree hospitals.
To William Stewart, M.D., who brought the Institute for Health and Healing at California Pacific Medical Center into national prominence and Barbara St. Andrews who seeded the idea. Gratitude, also, for the honor of receiving from IHH their Pioneer in the Art and Science of Healing Award.
To Lawrence LeShan for Cancer as a Turning Point and Caryle Hirshberg and Marc Ian Barasch for Remarakable Recovery; two books that provide hope and insight into recovering from cancer when odds are against getting well, both of which I quote from liberally.
To healers, teachers, researchers, and authors—colleagues and friends whose heart and soul are in what they do: Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D.; Grace Damman, M.D.; Larry Dossey, M.D.; Stephen Levine; Dwight McKee, M.D.; Candace Pert, Ph.D.; O. Carl Simonton, M.D.; and Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
To those named and unnamed individuals whose stories and struggles are in Close to the Bone, especially Patricia Ellerd Demetrios, Anthea Francine, my son Andre Bolen, and parents, Joseph Shinoda and Megumi Y. Shinoda, M.D.
To Leigh Haber and Susan Moldow at Scribner, where this book was born; Katinka Matson, my literary agent; and Jan Johnson, publisher of Conari Press, for giving it a new life.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
In the decade that Close to the Bone has been in print, it has remained so mainly by word of mouth. I heard from people who said it affected them deeply, it was most helpful, and even, “it saved my life.” These were comments from a select audience of people: those impacted by a life-threatening illness and those who applied it to other life-altering situations. Very little has gone out of date because the perspective will never be outdated. A diagnosis such as cancer, or waking up in an Intensive Care Unit after a heart attack, or any other close call brings home the reality that life is a terminal condition. Most of the time, people don't give much thought to the big question about the meaning of life and the shortness of time left before we die. Most people don't see a connection between what ails the body and their soul's need for authenticity, love, and purpose. Or know that the mind has a powerful effect on getting well. Most people think that doctors have the final word about length of time remaining and might think differently if they met people like themselves who once were given months to live and years later are thriving. Medical journals educate physicians with statistical information and are not interested in stories about unexpected remissions and recovery. Yet stories can change beliefs and beliefs affect us at the cellular level.
Once we take soul seriously, a whole different premise opens up. If we have a soul—and this is one of the innate beliefs that human beings do have—then we are spiritual beings on a human path rather than human beings who may or may not be on a spiritual path. If so, what did we come to do or to learn? Who or what did we come to love? What might we be here for? These are questions that only each individual can answer for herself or himself. Answers are what we know “in our bones.” A life-threatening illness can be a wake-up call, or a turning point, or the beginning of a downhill spiral, as a midlife psychological crisis also can be. In either case, the outcome depends upon paying attention, becoming conscious of what truly matters to us, and acting upon what we know to save our life or heal our soul and our relationships. To be out of touch with soul makes living an authentic, creative, interdependent, meaningful life impossible, and if we are susceptible to expressing spiritual isolation and emotional pain through physical symptoms, we shall likely get sick.
Medical advances are remarkable and yet they also can create complacency about soul questions. A decade ago, AIDS was a fatal disease. Now that there are medicines for it, it can become an underlying chronic condition much like diabetes and heart and pulmonary disease. Before there were antibiotics, many bacterial infectious diseases were also fatal; the patient who survived often went through a crisis in which the temperature could break and the person would live. Medical advances extend life for those privileged to have access to them, but they also make it easier to take life for granted and not question why we are here.
In this revised edition, I made four significant additions to the original text and numerous minor changes. “Psyche's Journey” replaced “Harbinger of Truth” as a chapter title after I had more to say about the meaning of the four tasks in the myth of Eros and Psyche and the analogous difficulties that follow a diagnosis of a life-threatening
