So you want to be a wizard? Say this, which is alleged to be an Aramaic word meaning “I create as I speak.”

My client called me a wizard this past Sunday.  He’d had severe pain for the past week that felt better and better while he and I were talking. 

He couldn’t believe it.  He has an advanced degree in exercise physiology.  He understands how the body works, and he understands how the body heals.  And here we were, casually chatting away, while the intense pain in his lower spine slowly lessened.

I never laid a hand on him.  I never gave him medication.  I did with him what I do with my other clients.  I sensed the pain he was carrying and quietly did my own version of abracadabra.  It may not have made sense to him, but it helped.  To him, I’m now a wizard.

My first teacher of wizardry passed away a few hours before my client gave me the compliment.  I’m one of many who will continue to do what he did.  My first teacher did it through music.  I do it through love.  How am I a wizard?  There’s no sleight of hand in my wizardry.  I am fully present, I listen deeply, I send healing energy, and I do what I can do to help another human being who is suffering.  My client thanked me for caring.  He said that he felt it.

I had a great first teacher.  Maybe you’ve heard of him.  His name was Leon Russell.

I first saw Leon Russell in concert when I was an extremely messed up eighteen year old.  I was two thirds of the way through a series of sudden and shocking family deaths that had drastically changed my college plans and what I thought would be my life’s direction.  My college friends included traumatized Vietnam vets, a boy who’d watched his father commit suicide, and a sixty two year old nun.  I’d gotten my first taste of people using my devastation as a way to drain my energy.    It seemed like I couldn’t truly connect with anyone who was willing to consistently give me the love and support I needed.  I looked like a teenager, but I’d become prematurely old.

And then I attended my first Leon Russell concert.  I was alone as I walked into the concert hall.  I felt emotionally dead.  Not long after the concert began, I noticed I was dancing in my seat.  My body was suddenly having reactions that made no sense to my brain.  Leon didn’t stop between songs.  He pounded away at his piano, passionately singing his amazing if unintelligible lyrics, raising the energy higher and higher until I’d shifted into another reality. 

In this new reality, I wasn’t emotionally devastated.  In this new reality, I was joyous and alive once more.  I didn’t understand what had happened for many years, but I now know it was my first experience with the magic of energy healing, the work I now do.  It was my first experience with wizardry.

I had the great privilege of seeing Leon in concert two more times.  He was now in his seventies, mobility issues had made it necessary for him to be very slowly escorted by a pretty young woman to take his place at the piano, he didn’t look healthy, and he was mostly deaf.  None of that mattered when the music started.  He was still Leon Russell The Wizard.  His music once more helped me shift into another reality, post stroke.  In this new reality, I still had purpose, I still could dance, and I still could feel joyous and alive.

If you read the obituaries, you’ll see that Leon Russell was called a shaman, not a wizard.  Shamans and wizards do some similar things.  Shamans walk between the worlds to help others.   I’ve learned to walk between the worlds to help myself and others.  I believe that walking between the worlds helped to save my life after I experienced a life-altering stroke, I believe that walking between the worlds helped to save my dog’s life after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I believe that walking between the worlds is key to transforming through love.

I sent Leon Russell an appreciative email back in 2013.  As I said in the email, the last time I’d done that was in 1967, and I was still waiting for Micky Dolenz to respond.  I explained how his music had changed my life.  I never heard back from him, but I noticed an interesting synchronicity between my website stats and the cities he was playing.   The last time I saw him in concert, I’d told the venue manager my story; he volunteered to arrange a meeting.  Leon was notoriously reclusive while on tour in order to conserve his energy, and I wasn’t surprised when the meeting didn’t happen.  

Today was the first day I realized I’ll never see my teacher again in concert.  The pain hit me hard until something I cannot identify motivated me to do a little research.

Do you know the Lao Tzu quote, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear?”  Turns out it’s only a partial quote.  Here’s the full quote:

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  When the student is truly ready…..the teacher will disappear.”

Godspeed, Leon.

“I love you in a place where there’s no space or time
I love you for my life ’cause you’re a friend of mine.”  Leon Russell