Simone Marie Lorenz

On May 27, 2015, my beloved and incredibly resilient wife Simone transitioned from her body. Too many near death experiences and years of unrelenting severe pain and illness from Lyme Disease and mold-biotoxin exposure took their final toll. She was one of the great wonders of the world for many people. I share my love for her here.

27 years together. My life's most amazing and precious gift — far beyond what I had ever hoped for. I am whole, and yet paradoxically, she completed me.

There was a purity, an innocence, a sweetness alive in her that magically caused love to swell within me day after day. Just watching her write, breathe, sleep would bring about an overwhelming experience of joy.

Simone was a gifted writer (dubbed famed writer "Anaïs Nin's granddaughter" by Anaïs' husband and her inner circle). She had a way of powerfully expressing feeling with great depth in few words and other forms of art.

Her photography captured the soul and essence of her animal and flower friends. Her one rule: natural and organic — only cropping allowed. All flower, animal and art pieces on this website are Simone's photography.

A seer, wise-woman and my evolutionary driver, teacher, catalyst, muse and editor, she was my best friend — the strongest, most courageous and honorable being I have ever known.

Simone was brilliant and had unfathomable depth, yet always preferred to be behind the scenes, never in the spotlight. When I would do events, she'd sit in the back of the room, holding a space for wisdom to arise throughout the evening. Once in a while, upon noticing that I had missed an important thread in a response to a question, she would softly share that wisdom moving through her.

For me it was a great joy to have her share her insightful and unique expression — always a breath of fresh air. Though surrendered that it wasn't likely to happen, I always longed for her to take her "rightful place," our chairs side-by-side, sharing with those in attendance. But that wasn't how she was wired, so her voice spoke through me. And still does.

Simone once said she was no poster child for the awakening process, or shouldn't be as it would scare too many people away. She faced a lifetime of physical frailty and intense pain — a "canary in the coal mine" of the 21st century — and it was all so hard on her physical and emotional bodies.

But it made her immensely aware of the life-threatening impact of the toxins that human ignorance, desire and unconsciousness has let loose in the air, the water, the ground, the food supply.

On dozens of occasions she literally rose from near death like a phoenix — an indomitable will and an unwavering love for life, this planet, and all its creatures, beings, and life forms.

Simone's path was to be witness to the beauty in existence here on Earth, as well as to the madness of our human world. It was also to learn how to respond to it, consciously, from love.

She saw things most of us don't. Sensed so deeply and broadly. Connected dots I never conceived as related, and when she did, it was at once a revelation and so damn obvious.

Simone felt the pain of the world as she was designed to live without the self-protective filters of denial and avoidance that most people get to use as buffers throughout life. She would not turn her back, choosing to face things most of us do not want to contemplate — willing to be in reality regardless of what was confronting her.

That was not an easy path because as an awake witness she was often moved to sound a clarion call to help us wake up to what was taking place. She didn't want others to suffer as she did, now or in future generations. The offering of important inconvenient truths was rarely welcomed, and was often pathologized.

I would sit and watch her, falling into love over and over, awed, feeling what a great privilege and honor it was to get to share this life with her. I melted before her beauty, wisdom, sweetness, courage and love, and always will.

In partnerships come great gifts. Challenges too. I'm a pretty aware guy, but certainly not omniscient. Simone coined a phrase years ago that we were each other's "side-view mirrors." Together, we saw/knew so much more than either of us could alone.

She also served, as author and teacher Sam Keen once said, as my "bullshit detector." If she ever noticed that I was "off" or in some way out of alignment, she was able to gently (most of the time) reflect that back to me. This served so well, for in surfacing any unconscious patterns that may not yet have been cleared, it allowed me to process them and not act them out with friends, family, and most importantly, those with whom I do consciousness work. It has allowed the work to be clean, unpolluted.

Simone was such a great teacher for me through her willingness to face and take responsibility for her shadow aspects. She set a high bar for herself, one I've found quite worth aspiring to reach. And her determination to learn from, clean up, and course-correct her "mis-takes" to the best of her ability was remarkable.

Several luminaries on the world stage valued her and her ability to see deeply. They sought her out to hear not only what she was seeing in the world, but for what she was seeing in their own words, actions and lives. This was when she was most fully alive, conversing and collaborating with others who too would dare to face the unfaceable. Her "partners" could be spacious enough to handle what she saw, welcome it, and together they could be with it all.

In 2001, Simone was among those called to further bridge the split between spiritual concepts and fully living those values and realizations in our daily lives. For her, it was imperative to work with both personal and societal transformation.

She felt so deeply, and was never one to sit on the sidelines. Upon seeing unconscious perpetration of harm on others — especially children — or animals or nature, or...well, everything, she was always moved to respond. And she learned over the years just how challenging it was to effectively engage in activism from a truly awake state, especially when emotional pain bodies would get triggered.

Prior to her illness taking its dramatic toll, Simone was in the process of working with her literary agent to complete and publish her book on "Conscious Activism."

It features dialogues between Simone and some of our time's great consciousness teachers and agents of transformation: Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, Andrew Harvey, Gangaji, Byron Katie, Shariff Abdullah, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marshall Rosenberg, Mary O'Malley, Cheri Huber, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Don Beck, Catherine Ingram, and Gary Altrichter.

The dialogues that arose out of their meetings together are rich, illuminating, and empowering — guiding us toward new ways of taking action in the world to end unnecessary suffering.

On her behalf, I am in the process of preparing to release the dialogues (consciousactivism.com) to fulfill that part of her legacy and contribution to the world which so dearly needs more conscious ways to engage in social and societal change efforts.

Forever grateful she lives on within me,
Bodhi