Dying To Be Me Read online

  I really didn’t want to get bogged down with all the mundane, minor problems and issues such as worrying about the future, money, work, or household and domestic issues. All these things seemed so minor somehow, especially because I trusted in the process that I could feel was unfolding before me.

  It seemed important to have fun and laugh. I felt a lightness that was completely new, and I laughed easily. I enjoyed the company of those who wanted to do the same.

  WHENEVER I HAD CONVERSATIONS about illness, politics, or death, my views were so radically different because of my experience that I simply couldn’t involve myself in the topics. I began to realize that my ability to judge and discern had become “impaired.” I was no longer able to draw definite distinctions between what was good or bad, right or wrong, because I wasn’t judged for anything during my NDE. There was only compassion, and the love was unconditional. I still felt that way toward myself and everyone around me.

  So I found myself with nothing but compassion for all the criminals and terrorists in the world, as well as their victims. I understood in a way I never had before that for people to commit such acts, they must really be full of confusion, frustration, pain, and self-hatred. A self-actualized and happy individual would never carry out such deeds! People who cherish themselves are a joy to be around, and they only share their love unconditionally. In order to be capable of such crimes, someone had to be (emotionally) diseased—in fact, much like having cancer.

  However, I saw that those who have this particular type of “mental” cancer are treated with contempt in our society, with little chance of receiving any practical help for their condition, which only reinforces their condition. By treating them in this way, we only allow the “cancer” in our society to grow. I could see that we haven’t created a society that promotes both mental and physical healing.

  This all meant that I was no longer able to view the world in terms of “us” and “them”—that is, victims and perpetrators. There’s no “them”; it’s all “us.” We’re all One, products of our own creation, of all our thoughts, actions, and beliefs. Even perpetrators are victims of their own self-hatred and pain.

  I no longer viewed death in the same way as others did, either, so it was very hard for me to mourn anyone. Of course, if someone close to me passed on, I was sad because I missed them. But I no longer mourned for the deceased, because I knew they’d transcended to another realm, and I knew that they were happy! It’s not possible to be sad there. At the same time, I also knew that even their death was perfect, and everything would unfold in the way it was meant to in the greater tapestry.

  Because of my radically changed views, I became cautious about expressing my opinions, as I didn’t want to be misunderstood. I knew it would be hard for others to understand concepts such as there being no judgment after we die, even for the worst of terrorists. Even for them, I perceived only compassion, total understanding, and clarity for why they acted out in the way they did. On a more mundane and down-to-earth level, I also knew that there wasn’t going to be any judgment waiting for me in the afterlife if I chose not to follow religious or cultural dogma that didn’t feel right for me.

  So, slowly, I found myself seeking mainly my own company, unless I was with Danny. I felt safe with him. I knew he wouldn’t judge me. My husband had been with me through my entire journey, and he was one of the very few who understood me. He listened patiently as I talked about my feelings and thoughts, and he helped me figure out all the new emotions.

  I constantly felt a need to talk about my experience, to try to make sense of what happened, to unravel it, so Danny encouraged me to write in order to get my feelings out. I began writing and kept at it continually. I wrote on forums and blogs, and I found it to be very therapeutic as I moved forward in this new world.

  CHAPTER 13

  Finding My Path

  I now held a view of life that very few, if any, in my social circle shared or even related to. And I was no longer afraid of anything. I didn’t fear illness, aging, death, loss of money, or anything. When death holds no horror, there isn’t much else left to be afraid of because it’s always considered the worst-case scenario. And if the worst doesn’t faze you, then what else is left?

  I was also finding it challenging to integrate back into life because this world still didn’t seem real to me. The other realm felt more genuine. And as I’ve described, I found myself grappling with how seriously everyone was taking everything—for example, how stressed out everyone was about money and finances, even though they had a lot of other beautiful things to enjoy and be thankful for. I also couldn’t understand how much people neglected everything else—including love, relationships, talent, creativity, individuality, and so on—for the sake of money, and how much time they spent working at jobs they didn’t enjoy. The way everyone viewed life seemed all wrong to me. Priorities and values were misaligned, and everything seemed back to front. I realized that I probably used to think that way, too, yet I couldn’t imagine going back to it ever again.

  I know I’ll never again take on a job I don’t enjoy just for the money, I found myself thinking. My criteria for work and for doing things in general are so different now. My life and my time here are much more valuable to me.

  Danny found that after the intensity of seeing me through cancer and nearly dying, things weren’t the same for him, either. Before my illness, he’d been working in sales and marketing for a multinational organization, and was responsible for Asian distribution. Going to work now felt uninspiring and monotonous after everything we’d been through together. We’d both grown, changed, and learned so much!

  Danny had always dreamed of running his own business, and it was at this point that I told him to do it. I encouraged him to live his dream. Before my NDE, I would have been too afraid to encourage him, thinking only that it was a big risk; and if we failed, then how would we support ourselves?

  But my views had changed, and fulfilling his dream seemed more important, as well as not living a life of regrets. So I encouraged him to set up the business he’d always wanted, developing and providing career assessment tools for students and corporations.

  As things worked out, the shift from working for someone else to working for himself was made even easier when he was let go from his job for being away from work so much while he tended to me during my illness. In the past, this would have been a major upset. But after my NDE, it was just another way of seeing the universe working on our behalf. It was an opportunity to do something more exciting!

  To pull off this new adventure, we had to downsize dramatically. We moved to a smaller home and cut back on a lot of our personal expenses. We ended up in a very humble neighborhood located a fair distance away from Hong Kong’s bustling urban areas. Our home was in a remote village close to the China border, where we were isolated from our community, and this gave us an opportunity to regroup and reevaluate our lives. It was a drastic change from what we were used to, and it felt as though we were starting life afresh—a new beginning.

  ONCE, I WOULD HAVE VIEWED THE LOSS of Danny’s job or our needing to downsize dramatically and move out of the city as something negative or adverse. It would have caused a lot of fear because it threatened my security. However, because the words Go back and live your life fearlessly! kept reverberating in my head, I knew that everything was going to be fine. Out of the many messages I brought back from my NDE—we are all one, we are love at our core, we are magnificent—this was the strongest one and kept reverberating within me. Because it seemed to come from both my father and my best friend, Soni, whenever I hear it in my head, I hear it in the voice of either one or the other, depending on the situation. In this case, I saw the events all as part of a greater adventure that was unfolding, which gave me the feeling of starting life with a clean slate.

  In addition, because of my NDE, I went from an outside-in view of reality to an inside-out view. That is, I used to think that the external world was real and that I
had to work within its confines. This is pretty much how most people think. With this view, I gave my power to the world outside, and external events had the ability to control me—my behavior, moods, and thinking. Emotional reactions and feelings weren’t considered real because they weren’t tangible. They’re thought to be merely reactions to external events. In that model, I was a victim of circumstances rather than the creator of my life. Even illness was an external event that just “happened” to me randomly.

  However, after my NDE, I began to see myself as a divine and integral part of the greater Whole. This includes everything in the entire universe, everything that has ever existed and ever will, and it’s all connected. I realized that I was at the center of this universe, and knew that we all express from our perspective, as we’re each at the center of this great cosmic web.

  Over time, as Danny and I built this new phase of our lives together, I understood these truths even more concretely. Although everything exists within this web of interconnection and we have access to it all, my world at any point in time is a tapestry made up of all my thoughts, feelings, experiences, relationships, emotions, and events up to that point. Nothing exists for me until it’s brought into my tapestry. And I can increase or limit it by expanding my experiences and awareness or restricting them. I feel as though I have a certain amount of choice about what I allow into my observation.

  When something comes into my awareness, it becomes a part of my tapestry. To refer back to the warehouse analogy, I’ve shone my flashlight on it. This means that it becomes part of my belief system—my truth.

  I knew that the purpose of my life was to expand my tapestry and allow more and greater experiences into my life. So I found myself trying to stretch the limits of what was considered possible in all the areas where I’d previously perceived limitations. I started to question what things we all presumed to be true but were, in fact, just socially determined beliefs. I looked at everything I judged to be negative or impossible in the past and questioned it, particularly beliefs that triggered feelings of fear or inadequacy within me.

  Why do I believe this? I asked myself. Is it purely cultural and social conditioning? It might have applied to me at some point, but does it still hold true? Does it serve me to continue to believe a lot of what I was brought up and taught to think?

  In some situations, maybe, but in a lot of cases, the answer was a definite no.

  I was brought up to believe that women should be submissive. There was always a level of judgment toward those who were overly assertive or forceful or who held high position, because a woman’s primary role was to be a supportive wife and mother. I never met this standard.

  I’d spent a lifetime judging myself, beating myself up for not meeting these expectations. I always felt inadequate. But following my NDE, I understood that these were a false set of socially determined standards.

  I also used to believe that I wasn’t spiritual enough and needed to work harder in that area. Then I discovered that we’re all spiritual, regardless of what we do or believe. We can’t be anything else, because that’s who we are—spiritual beings. We just don’t always realize it, that’s all.

  I understood that true joy and happiness could only be found by loving myself, going inward, following my heart, and doing what brought me joy. I discovered that when my life seems directionless and I feel lost (which still happens to me frequently), what it really means is that I’ve lost my sense of self. I’m not connected with who I truly am and what I’ve come here to be. This has tended to happen when I stop listening to my own internal voice and give my power away to external sources, such as TV commercials, newspapers, big drug companies, my peers, cultural and societal beliefs, and the like.

  Previously when I felt lost, one of the first things I did was to search outside for answers. I looked to books, teachers, and gurus, in the hope that they’d provide me with the ever-elusive solution. That’s exactly what I did when I was first diagnosed with cancer. But I only ended up feeling even more adrift because I was giving my own power away again and again.

  I FOUND THAT HAVING AN INSIDE-OUT VIEW MEANS being able to fully trust my inner guidance. It’s as though what I feel has an impact on my entire universe. In other words, because I’m at the center of my cosmic web, the Whole is affected by me. So as far as I’m concerned, if I’m happy, the universe is happy. If I love myself, everyone else will love me. If I’m at peace, all of creation is peaceful, and so on.

  If things seemed challenging, instead of trying to change them physically (which is what I did pre-NDE), I began checking in with my internal world. If I’m stressed, anxious, unhappy, or something similar, I go inward and tend to that first. I sit with myself, walk in nature, or listen to music until I get to a centered place where I feel calm and collected. I noticed that when I do so, my external world also changes, and many of the obstacles just fall away without my actually doing anything.

  What I mean by being “centered” is experiencing being at the center of my cosmic web, being aware of my position. This is really the only place any of us ever are, and it’s important to feel our centrality at the core of it.

  But from time to time, I forgot my central place in the cosmos. I got caught up in all the dramas, contradictions, angst, and pain of the physical world and couldn’t see myself as one of the expanded, magnificent, infinite beings we all truly are.

  Luckily, I realized at those times that we never really become disconnected from the center. Rather, we temporarily lose sight of it and don’t feel the sense of peace and joy that comes from it. We get caught up in the illusion of separation and can’t see that happiness and sadness go hand in hand—like light and dark, yin and yang. Our sense of disconnection is simply part of the illusion of duality that makes it difficult to see oneness forming out of perceived separation. But getting centered means seeing through this and once again feeling our infinite place at the center of it all…at the center of oneness.

  I still had the visceral knowledge that we’re all one with the universe. Therefore, I knew that even while I’m in my physical body, whether I’m aware of it or not, I am at the center of the great cosmic web that is the universe! This is the same as realizing my magnificence and my connection to the Infinite.

  AS THE MONTHS TURNED INTO YEARS, I’VE PUT ALL THIS AWARENESS into practice more and more. Sometimes, when I had a lot to do and things were stressful, I was accused of wasting time if I took a break to get centered. But if I tried to resolve things purely on the physical level, I knew it would be slow going. To this day, it still feels like walking through molasses, and dealing with issues only in this way causes me great frustration and increases my stress levels.

  However, I discovered that if I take time out and reclaim my center, regardless of what people around me think, many of the primary stumbling blocks disappear once I’m aware of my connection to the Whole and feeling calm and happy. I receive a lot of clarity during those sessions, and purely by staying centered, many of the remaining challenges just fall away. I’ve found this to be a much more effective way of dealing with my life than solely dealing with it from the external. This is a direct result of my NDE and comes from knowing that I’m a part of a great cosmic tapestry, and that I’m at the center of it and can get in touch with the whole universe by turning inward.

  Over the years since my NDE, I’ve experienced changes in my external requirements, too. I’ve discovered that I need to be near nature, particularly the sea, in order to feel my best. Similar to the wonder I felt in my first days out of the hospital, I find that I can instantly connect with my NDE state by looking at the waves and listening to the ocean.

  I’ve watched in delight as the friends I’ve become close to and my immediate family members have made shifts of their own. And this may sound unusual, but since my NDE, many people have told me that they feel an energy change when they’re around me. I rarely speak about this publicly because I believe that such things come from within the self. I may b
e merely reflecting to them what they were ready to experience.

  Because of my experience, I absolutely do strongly believe that we all have the capacity to heal ourselves as well as facilitate the healing of others. When we get in touch with that infinite place within us where we are Whole, then illness can’t remain in the body. And because we’re all connected, there’s no reason why one person’s state of wellness can’t touch others, elevating them and triggering their recovery. And when we heal others, we also heal ourselves and the planet. There’s no separation except in our own minds.

  MY LIFE HAS HAD ITS UPS AND DOWNS, and there are times when I feel I have to really work hard at being centered. I have to handle mundane things such as household chores and paying the bills, and since my NDE, I have trouble focusing down on those details. However, I’m never far away from finding my place in the universe again and feeling those words in my soul: Go out and live your life fearlessly!

  I’ve also found that although I have made some new friends—including one in particular who’s really helped me understand and process my experience—I seem to have difficulty reconnecting with many of my old ones. I’m not as social as I was in the past, and I don’t enjoy the same things. I had a lot of friends before, but now I only let a very, very few people into my private life, many of whom I met through an NDE group over the last few years. A handful of us have become very close, and some of them have had similar experiences of their own.

  I’m also still devoted to my immediate family members—my husband, mother, and brother. They were with me right through my crisis and my hours of need, and I feel very attached to them. It’s become difficult for me to feel that close to others.