This book arises, inevitably, out of my own lifelong journey into the reality of sacred relationship. Without such a journey it could not have been written. It is the outcome also of years of counselling and of working beside people whose physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing has deteriorated markedly as a result of the trauma of dysfunctional relationship. These people know that they are ‘dying’ at all levels of their being, they know that the old games are not healthy, yet they cannot see an alternative, a new way of relationship that will bring them and all they touch dynamically to life. They know that their ways of relating must change, yet in moments of crisis they revert to the same negative patterns which continue to destroy them and their world.

Dreams are powerful indicators of where we’re at and what needs to happen. In that context I want to share the finale of a recent dream.

A princess and two princes, all of whom have authority vested in them through their royal ancestry, have died. The people I am with are terrified that their deaths will become public knowledge, so they have taken the bodies in secret to a room, where they are attempting to make it appear that they are alive, even though heads, arms and legs have become separated from torsos. As I watch these people working with quiet desperation I am aware that there is a crowd outside the door looking in. I cannot see how anyone is going to be able to pass the dead prince and princesses off as alive, because all the onlookers can see very clearly they are not, and will inform everyone else.

How many of us go on trying with quiet desperation to pretend that the old ways of relating have authority and life, when in reality their time has gone and that fact has become very obvious to anyone who cares to really look?