THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES

“Really? That’s not what most people would say about heart surgery.”

“I know. But it woke me up. I’d spent 33 years thinking I was this calm, caring physician. Turns out, all that calm was a mask. Underneath, I was running on fear – fear of not being good enough, fear that if I stopped doing and fixing and earning my worth through work, nobody would love me. My heart had been trying to tell me for years. It finally had to shut down to get my attention.”

“So the surgery changed everything?”

“It started the change. But the real turning point came shortly after, when my niece Maryn was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She asked for my help, and something unexpected happened – words came through me that I’d never spoken in 33 years of medicine. Instead of telling her to fight the cancer, I told her to focus on loving. Loving everything. The body heals best in a loving environment, not a fearful one.”

“Did that work?”

“Maryn passed away. But those words – loving to heal – became the foundation of my first book and the beginning of everything I teach now. Her life and death showed me that fighting to cure feels very different from loving to heal. And the loving way doesn’t just feel better – it actually works better.”

“I’m sorry about your niece. So that’s where the Love Game comes from?”

“That’s where the journey starts. After I retired – at 66, exactly twice the age I started practice, which felt like the universe winking at me – I kept following what my heart was telling me. I moved to Arizona, learned to create bronze sculptures, started doing home health assessments. And somewhere in all of that, the Love Game crystallized. It’s this simple practice: in any moment, with any person, you can choose to see the Divine Love that’s already there. Not fix anything. Not earn anything. Just see it.”

“That sounds beautiful, David, but honestly – what does that look like on a Tuesday afternoon when you’re stressed and your kids are yelling and nothing feels divine?”

“That’s the best question you could ask, because that’s exactly where the Love Game is played. Not on a mountaintop. Not in meditation. Right there in the chaos. It’s the practice of noticing that your stress is fear talking – fear that you’re not enough, that things should be different, that you need to control the situation – and choosing, even for a few seconds, to see love instead. It doesn’t mean the kids stop yelling. It means you stop suffering while they do.”

“So your books teach people how to do this?”

“Each one opens a different door. Loving to Heal is my origin story – how a doctor who gave everything to his patients nearly killed himself in the process, and what woke him up. Then there’s the Love Game trilogy. See Love ~ Know God introduces the practice. See Love ~ Know Yourself is a novel that shows what happens when real people start playing the Love Game – a psychiatrist, a mother escaping abuse, an eleven-year-old who sees what the adults can’t. And I’m writing the third one now, See Love ~ Know Perfection, which is about trust – and how to see love in the uncontrollable.”

“That’s a lot of books. Where should someone start?”

“Depends on where you are. If you see yourself as a caregiver who’s exhausted and wondering why you can’t stop giving even when it’s destroying you – start with Loving to Heal. If you’re on a spiritual path and you want the practice itself – start with See Love ~ Know God. Either way, you’ll end up in the same place.”

“And what place is that?”

“Playing the Love Game. Seeing that the love you’ve been trying to earn was never missing in the first place.”

“I’m looking forward to exploring. Thanks for sharing your story, David.”

“Thank you for asking the hard questions, Angela. That’s how the game starts – by being willing to look.”