Dying to Be Me (23 page)

D
URING MY
NDE,
THERE WAS NOTHING
outside of my greater awareness because I was one with the entirety of Universal energy. It felt as though I encompassed totality. In that state, there was total clarity and all became known. I seemed to become everything, and I existed in everything.

The ability to see my own magnificence and to realize that the universe and I are one and the same caused my healing. I became conscious that there isn’t an external creation separate from me—because the word
external
suggests separation and duality. Living with this awareness allows me to continue to interact in the physical world with strength, love, and courage.

To explain this from another perspective, although I’ve been using the words
Universal energy,
know that I can just as easily say
chi
,
prana
, or
ki
. These words mean “life-force energy” in Mandarin, Hindi, and Japanese respectively. This is the
chi
in Tai Chi and Chi Gong, and it’s the
ki
in Reiki. In a nutshell, it’s the Source of life, and it runs through every living thing. In fact, it fills the entire universe and is inseparable from it.

Chi has no judgment and doesn’t discriminate. It flows through us whether we’re an elevated guru or a sea slug. It’s useful to think about this, because once we describe the energy with a different word—such as
Source, God, Krishna, Buddha,
or whatever—it can be difficult for some of us to see beyond the name. These terms mean different things to different people, and also seem to impose form upon the infinite. There are often certain expectations attached to these labels, and many of them keep us locked in duality so that we view this energy as an entity separate from us. But Universal energy, like our pure state of consciousness, needs to remain limitless and formless so that it can become one with us and create healing, magic, and miracles.

I felt strongly during my NDE that we’re all connected to this Universal energy; we’re all One with it. Each of us has this magnificent, magical life force coursing through every single cell. It’s not some external entity, but rather a state of being—an internal phenomenon. It’s inside, outside, and all around. It doesn’t matter what race, religion, culture, or belief system we belong to. We’re connected to it just because we’re alive—in fact, we
are
this universal current. We don’t have to do anything, be anything, or prove anything to access it. We’re all magnificent, powerful beings, and we all have access to it because it and we are one and the same.

The only thing that can keep me from being aware of this energy is my mind—that is, my thoughts, particularly my self-limiting beliefs about myself. The deep release I mentioned earlier that took me to the NDE was actually my intellect completely letting go, taking my self-limiting beliefs with it and allowing universal energy to take over. Once my mind got out of the way, the floodgates opened. Instead of fighting against the nature of the universe in order to heal, I allowed chi to flow on its own terms.

It can be tricky at first to distinguish what’s motivating us. The difference is that the mind is more about
doing,
and the soul is more about
being.
The infinite self is our essence. It’s who we truly are, as I described in the last chapter when I explained the importance of being love. The intellect is just a tool for navigating through this life. It figures out how to make enough money to put food on the table and make the rent, while the soul only wants to express itself.

The infinite self is where we have our instincts and intuition. If we’re buying a house, the mind will narrow down the options by choosing a practical location, setting a budget, and so on. The final decision on a specific place to live, however, may be made purely by gut feeling. We just get a good sense about a certain place, and there’s no logical reason that we can explain. That’s the infinite self.

Sometimes our complicated lives make us forget that we’re connected to Universal energy and that we have these natural abilities. We stop listening to ourselves and start to give our power away to external forces such as bosses, teachers, and friends. Blocking our feelings also breaks down our awareness of our own magnificence because emotions are a doorway into the soul. But we’re complex beings, and we try to control how we feel.

When we live completely from the mind over a period of time, we lose touch with the infinite self, and then we begin to feel lost. This happens when we’re in
doing
mode all the time, rather than
being.
The latter means living from the soul and is a state of allowing. It means letting ourselves be who and what we are without judgment.
Being
doesn’t mean that we don’t do anything. It’s just that our actions stem from following our emotions and feelings while staying present in the moment.
Doing,
on the other hand, is future focused, with the mind creating a series of tasks that take us from here to there in order to achieve a particular outcome, regardless of our current emotional state.

I have discovered that to determine whether my actions stem from “doing” or “being,” I only need to look at the emotion behind my everyday decisions. Is it fear, or is it passion? If everything I do each day is driven by passion and a zest for living, then I’m “being,” but if my actions are a result of fear, then I’m in “doing” mode.

When we feel off track, we think there’s something wrong with us—something we have to do or get in order to right ourselves—so we go searching outside for answers. We look to others in the hope that they’ll fix us. We may feel better for a little while, but it’s usually short-lived, and we eventually end up feeling worse. However, when we really start to tune in to who life intended us to be—and we’re attuned to the emotions that motivate us—we connect with the soul of our magnificence. We feel clarity when we allow this connection and take our power back, and our lives start to work.

When we come from this place of
being
who we are, we can choose to learn from external gurus, teachers, books, or spiritual philosophies. We become aware of our own inner magnificence and truth, instead of believing that others have power that we don’t. In fact, when we realize our magnificence and live in our true nature of love, we’ll synchronistically attract the right teacher, book, or spiritual philosophy at the right time!

U
NFORTUNATELY, BEING UNAWARE OF OUR OWN
magnificence can have effects that seem far greater than simply feeling lost, although it’s all of the same essence. During my NDE, it felt to me that all judgment, hatred, jealousy, and fear stem from people not realizing their true greatness. Lacking awareness of our perfection keeps us feeling small and insignificant, and this goes
against
the natural flow of life-force energy—that which we really are. We go against ourselves.

The way I see it, if we were encouraged to express who we truly are, we’d all be very loving beings, each bringing our uniqueness to the world. Problems and strife come as a result of our
not knowing
who we are and not being able to show our inner beauty. We’ve created so much judgment about what’s “perfect,” which leads to doubt and competitiveness. Since we feel as though we’re not good enough, we go around acting out. However, if each of us became aware of our magnificence and felt good about ourselves, it seems to me the only thing we’d have to share is our unique nature, expressed outwardly in a loving manner that reflects our self-care.

It follows that the problems we see in the world aren’t from the judgment or hatred we have for
others
but for
ourselves.
Just as the key to my healing was unconditional self-love that eliminated fear, the key to a better world is for everyone to care for themselves the same way, realizing their true worth. If we stopped judging ourselves, we’d automatically find less and less need to condemn others. We’d begin to notice their true perfection. The universe is contained within us, and what we experience externally is only a reflection.

I believe that at the core, no one is truly bad—that evil is only a product of our fears, the same way my cancer was. From the magnificent perspective, even criminals are victims of their own limitations, fear, and pain. If they’d had true self-awareness to begin with, they never would have caused any harm. A different mind-set—for example, a complete state of trust instead of fright—can turn around even the most depraved person, the same way that I reversed the extreme disease of my cancer.

Because most people don’t live in that clarity of self-awareness, laws, judgment, rewards, and punishments are required to keep folks from harming each other. If everyone were aware of their own magnificence, then we’d no longer be driven by fear. We wouldn’t need rules and jails…or hospitals.

I
F EVERY SINGLE PERSON SUDDENLY BECAME
aware of their true perfection and magnificence—let’s say that everyone on the planet had a spiritually transformative experience—our manifest world would change to reflect that new state. People would be more self-empowered and far less fearful and competitive, which would lead to more tolerance for each other. Crime rates would drop dramatically. Our immune systems would be stronger from less stress and fear, so there would be fewer illnesses. Priorities would change because we’d no longer be driven by greed, which is another facet of fear. Children would grow up
being love
—being stronger, healthier, and more trusting. They’d live on a planet that naturally supports this way of life rather than in a place that’s hostile to it.

Despite this vision, I don’t feel the need to change anyone else, let alone the world. Going out and altering things suggests I judge them to be wrong, therefore I need to fix them to match my own vision or ideology. Instead, everything is as it should be at this point in time. I know my only work is to
be
. My job here is to be myself—an expression of the love that I am—and to see the perfection in myself, others, and the world around me as I continue to live in the physical plane. That’s all that any of us needs to be.

I understand the roles that everyone in my family and my larger circle play in my life and I in theirs. If I’m not true to myself, then others around me aren’t able to be themselves either. Only by being my unique self can I allow others to interact with me on the level of their own infinite selves.

As long as I have this awareness, I feel at one with Universal energy as it flows through my life, unfolding in miraculous and synchronistic ways. I become energized instead of drained—lifted up by
being
instead of brought down by
doing,
working
with
universal energy rather than
against
it. As I continue in this manner, my life takes on a Zen-like quality, in that I’m present to the point that everything has an almost surreal, guided feeling. It’s not always easy, but it’s certainly made life more fun! I’m definitely still a work in progress, but this is pretty much all I have to do—just be the love I am, be
who
I am. My external universe will fall into place as a result of that, and the same is true on a grand scale.

Just as we each create our own lives moment by moment with our thoughts and emotions, we’ve also collectively decided what’s humanly possible and what isn’t. Similarly, we also think our morals and values are absolute, but actually they’re just a bunch of thoughts and beliefs that we’ve adopted over time as being true. They’re a construct of our minds and a product of our cultures, just like all the gender expectations that shaped my thinking during my early years. Because I believed these values to be absolutely true, they affected who I was. As a whole, the reality we’ve created reflects this unawareness. If everyone’s thoughts and beliefs were different, then we’d have created a different planet.

It seems to me that this world is always a culmination of all our collective thoughts and beliefs where they currently stand. We only expand at the rate we’re capable of handling at any given point, individually or collectively. We still judge perpetrators of crime as exactly that—criminals who deserve to be condemned, not only in this life but in the afterlife as well! We’re still unable to see them as victims of fear, creations of a reality that we, as a whole, have built.

When each of us is able to look into the eyes of even our worst enemies and see our own eyes looking back, then we’ll see true transformation of the human race. One by one, each one of us can focus on creating reality for ourselves based on our own truths, rather than blindly following what has been set up by our collective beliefs and thoughts. By expanding our awareness on an individual level, we’ll be effecting change on a universal level.

Each one of us is like a single thread in a huge tapestry, woven in a complex and colorful pattern. We may be only one strand, yet we’re all integral to the finished image. We affect the lives of others just by choosing whether or not to be our true selves. Our only obligation to others, our only purpose, is to express our uniqueness and allow others to do the same.

Realizing that the Light, the magnificent Universal energy is within us and
is us
, changes us as individuals because we’re open and ready. In this way, a slower, deeper shift can take place in the world. In the next chapter, I’ll explore even more of what I’ve come to understand about living in this plane.