Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Michael and I have never actually met in person, but regardless he has made a deep impact on my life and my path back toward healing. I feel privileged and grateful to have been introduced to him through a mutual friend and, over the course of the last 18 months or so, I have come to know and to love Michael as a dear friend and mentor - and all of this sight unseen. No matter… our physical distance of thousands of miles vanishes each time we pick up the phone and find connection.

Michael has always been a steady hand on the rudder - kind and compassionate at all times, but never shrinking from challenging assumptions and pushing me in positive (although often difficult and uncomfortable, perhaps even unwanted) ways to look, feel and investigate and to go deep into that innate, timeless sense of truth and love and connection to everything that we all have… without exception. My relationship with Michael has never been one based on the presumption that he will simply passively sit on the end of the line and provide comfort. While our relationship has grown to a place where I feel deeply present in his friendship and guidance, that has been arrived at through probing and always, always a clear-eyed and open understanding that he ain’t going to just “sit” with me commiserating and simply listening to what I have to say and joining me in adding fuel to my own pain. Quite the opposite - he is the kind of mentor and friend who will challenge and prod and poke (always with a sincerely loving heart) to have me look inward and keep working to break through and break out of my self-created, mind-made prison.

I feel fortunate to have met Michael and to count him amongst my relatively small cadre of friends and teachers who have the courage to love enough to tell me not what I want to hear, but what I need to hear, explore and ultimately to find out and experience directly for myself. Michael can’t do the work for you. He isn’t magic, but he has a caring and loving (and, yes, tough enough) approach to keep me moving and believing that the only true way is, and has always been, inside my own heart and body and that there is no way around the work - it simply has to be worked through; however long that takes and painful that might be.

Indeed, the only way ‘round is through and the best of teachers, of mentors and of friends never let you off the hook about that fact. If you’re serious about doing the work, there are few people I have come across who are as tough and loving a guide as Michael Dunphy. I am lucky and proud to know him and be walking this great path with him at my side. Thank you Michael, my friend. May we someday meet face to face to add to the great and good fortune of having met heart to heart and soul to soul.