And now Richard Bartlett ...

What is going on?

Richard Bartlett is the fourth teacher of energy healing to have died in less than a year, following Zdenko Domancic, Zoran Hochstatter, and, most recently, Bill Bengston. Except for Zdenko, they were all my teachers. They were all charismatic, energetic (at least when I knew them), and in some ways larger than life.

Of all of them, the one closest to my heart was Richard. I went to several of his Matrix Energetics workshops, in Toronto, in Phoenix, in Fort Lauderdale. Richard back in the day was truly a force of nature -- a wild and crazy guy! He was a rock star manqué: he would come into the workshop on the first day, dancing to loud rock music, strumming an air guitar, wearing the loudest Hawaiian shirt you can imagine. Then he would sit on a massage table on the stage and condition the room, waving his fingers in a weird way, and suddenly everyone who was tuned in would begin to feel amazing. And I mean really amazing, light as air and full of joy. Then he would begin his stream of consciousness patter to "keep your left brain busy" so your right brain would be free to participate in the magic he would unleash.

At the Fort Lauderdale workshop, I spent about five minutes on the floor feeling like pure light. It was mind-blowing. I didn't want to reconstitute into a body. And the most amazing thing was that Richard didn't do that: my practice partner did. At another workshop we spent two days learning techniques and on the third day Richard said "you don't need any of that." What he next taught was the ME technique I use the most. You put one hand over the (t)issue you are working on, hold the other hand out to the universe, and say "what needs to happen here?," shifting your attention outward and getting out of the way. If you hit the sweet spot, crazy things can happen.

Recently I re-watched a Matrix Energetics promo DVD I had hanging around. Something that I never got before suddenly caught my attention. Richard, talking about his chiropractic training, explained that all techniques worked on someone the first time, less so the second time, and not at all the third time. "Your conditions are the Borg," he said. "They adapt." He said that he was not teaching a technique but creating a state of consciousness in which Matrix would work. That's why he conditioned the room, and that's why people were often not able to reproduce their experiences once they got home: they couldn't reproduce the state. What made it especially hard was that trying doesn't help -- in fact, trying makes it worse. It's all about letting go. Drop the pebble in the pond and watch the ripples.

BTW, Matrix Energetics peeps out there, did anybody anywhere ever get the "two point"?

Godspeed, Richard. You were crazy, wild, complicated, amazing. Earth will miss you. May your next life be one of peace and contentment.