Month: April 2016

After-Death Communications

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 10 Comments

 

dad

Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.  Part of my memoir discusses some of my after-death communications with my father.

Love is the Link:  Dr. Pamela M. Kircher has a section in her book Love is the Link about after-death communications, and she encourages others to talk about dreams or other communications with relatives as a way to comfort those who may not have had communications with deceased relatives but want this communication.  Like Kircher, I don’t understand why some people receive messages from deceased relatives and others do not, but I want to tell others who have lost someone close to them to believe in the possibility and to be patient.  There might be a moment in your life when you need comfort or protection in a profound way, and your loved one might come to you then.  Also, telling yourself each night that you are open to communication in a dream or otherwise might open up the channels of communication.

Preparing for a Loved One’s Death:  In 2008, my father was diagnosed with a large, grapefruit-sized Glioblastoma brain tumor.  He opted not to have brain surgery and to live out his remaining time as coherently as possible.  We joked around as we often did, watched television together, and ate a lot of Chinese food that first week.  Dad didn’t take morphine because he wanted to be able to talk with me when I showed up after teaching classes.  That semester was one of the hardest teaching semesters of my life.  I was scheduled to teach nine different college classes at three different campuses.  Luckily, I found a nursing home for dad near one of my campuses, so I saw him every evening and between classes when possible.  There were many days, I ran out of class early to cry, overwhelmed by loss but also grateful that that I had experience with death and could help my dad by reminding him of what I knew from the other side.  We talked about my near-death experience a few times, and he believed my stories of the light, assuring me that he had no fears about the dying process.

The Transition:  When Dad was moved to hospice and the chaplain preformed the last rites, Dad could barely lift his arm, but he made his best attempt to pretend to conduct an orchestra.  The chaplain seemed annoyed, but I knew Dad was trying to make the moment lighter for me.  He wanted me to remember his sense of humor and how little he feared death. When I left to get some sleep, I hoped I might see him the next morning.  Something about the look in his eyes told me that I might not see him alive again.  I kept my phone ringer on as loud as possible, hoping to be informed if the end was near.

Around midnight I fell asleep and almost immediately had a dream where my grandparents talked with me in calming, comforting ways, hovering somewhere above the ceiling.  They told me that they were with Dad and had been with him for the last two days, waiting for him.  They said they would be the ones to welcome him to the other side and would take good care of him and that I had done all I could for him.  I woke up feeling more peaceful than I had felt in a while and looked down at my phone.  I had three missed calls from hospice, and I realized immediately what this meant.  I wanted to be there at his time of passing, but I felt comforted that his parents were with him.  Their presence was warm and loving in the dream as it had been in life.

First Dream:  A few nights later, dad came to me in a dream with the light behind him.  He said he was given only a moment where he could tell me that he understood I did all I could do within my time constraints at work.  He assured me that he slept and rested most of the hours I could not be with him so that he could be alert when I showed up for visits.  This relieved my guilt about how little time I had with him on some days.  Dad didn’t have siblings or any family members that I knew about at the time, so there was no one else besides a few of his friends and neighbors who stopped by to be with him when I was not with him.

Life Review Differences:  In Pamela Kircher’s book Love is the Link she discusses the differences between the NDEs experienced by those in traumatic situations versus those who are terminal.  A life review is usually not part of the NDE for terminal patients; rather, they are comforted about the dying process and sometimes met by relatives.  A few months after his death, Dad came to me in another dream and assured me that he had a lot more still to learn and that he was busy understanding his role on earth and the implications of his life.  He made it evident that he would wait and watch out for me, even though he preferred to return and give this life another shot.  I wondered if the life review process is more intense after death.  Perhaps, in terminal patients the life review is saved for a more intensive examination after the completion of their life.  During my life review, I was shown how to be more loving and open while in this life.  Perhaps, given more time on the other side, I would have extensively examined my life and actions.  Mainly, I saw that helping others, being kind, being connected to the light/source were important elements in returning.

The idea that dad wanted to return and live out another life puzzled me.  I hadn’t given reincarnation much thought, other than remembering dreams I had of a possible past life when I was a child.  In those dreams, I lived in Boston and supported several of struggling artists in my later years of life.  That life set me up to encourage creativity in others.  In that previous life, I felt sadness that I didn’t pursue my own art.  One of the lessons in my current life seems to be how to balance supporting other creative young people while also working on my own writing.

When I moved to Boston for a travelling job teaching SAT prep courses and later for a year with my first husband, the city felt so familiar that I rarely needed to look at maps. I have other theories about why the city might have seemed familiar, but on some level it seems that reincarnation or memories of various lives are possible.

Specific Communications from the Beyond:  As time has gone on, I realize there is a lot that I do not understand about after death communications with my father.  On a couple of occasions, he has been right and warned me about various people, telling me that their actions will not match their words.  I don’t want to go into detail about these particular situations, but maybe as time goes on I will have a better understanding of how these after death communications are meant to be used in my life.   He has made it clear that others who have tried to tap into communications with him are not as clear as I am in my communications with him.  I realize that I can largely trust these communications, but my rational mind does occasionally wonder if these moments are only wishful thinking. However, certain specifics make me think that the communications are more than wishful thinking.

Testing the Information:  I know that I have been comforted and protected in a couple of instances by after death communications with dad.  I haven’t yet tried out these communications at the race track to see if Dad can give me winning horses.  During the last years of his life, dad enjoyed betting on horses and wasn’t bad at it either.  I’ll let you know if I have some luck with that or not.

Recommendations:  I recommend Dr. Kircher’s book, Love is the Link, especially if you are interested in the ways others have been comforted at the time of their deaths or stories of those who have received messages from loved ones after their deaths.  Part II of her book focuses on her work as a hospice physician.  This section includes stories of agnostics visited by Jesus, angry young people with terminal illness who experienced NDEs which helped them cope with their deaths, and many other interesting stories of people in hospice settings.  Dr. Pamela Kircher has the unique perspective of having experienced a NDE as a young child and living her life informed by this moment at a very young age.  I found her personal journey in Part I fascinating as well.

If you want to read my next post about after-death communications, click here.

National Poetry Month and Other Reflections

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 14 Comments

rilke

Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

National Poetry Month:  To celebrate National Poetry Month, I’m posting “After the Wreck,” a poem published by the Binnacle in 2007 which is inspired from moments during my near death experience.  I’m also including a poem by Rilke from Book of Hours:  Love Poems to God which I adore.

Writing on Morphine:  I wanted to document my NDE as soon as I possibly could.  I stayed in ICU for a few days after surgery, but once I was moved to a hospital room, I asked for a pen and paper. My surgeon confirmed that I had died, but she didn’t feel inclined to talk about the spiritual experience with me.  The nurses were a bit more willing to listen to my experience but most seemed busy and hurried.  Some people only nodded and looked at me strangely when I wanted to talk about the powerful experience of being in God’s presence.

While in the hospital bed and hooked up to a morphine drip, my greatest fear was that I might forget those beautiful moments outside my body. The pain and disorientation made it difficult to write in a straight line, and the words bled down the page.  I persisted in the hope that a few lines would be salvageable and used later. The lines about the angels in this poem were lines I wrote days after the experience.

Memory:  To this day, I remember the vividness of the angels, the light, and the love from the divine intensely.  I’ve never forgotten the experience and the images.  What faded a bit were the direct messages given to me by light.  I remember a lot of what was communicated, but the information flowed into my spirit body so quickly that it was difficult to slow down the information and remember it as specific words.  Mainly, I knew that I had immediately and forever changed in that moment.

Outside of my body, I remember feeling slightly worried for my body as I looked down at the operating table, wondering if I would walk or run again.  The angels assured me that I would have complete healing.  In fact, they assisted in that healing, and my questions were answered not only with information but with demonstration.

Trauma and Forgetting the Beauty of the Light:  I have not forgotten the NDE in the way some dreams are forgotten, but there are times in life when the material world, when trauma, or when stress has overwhelmed me.  When overwhelmed and burdened by life, I can forget the beauty of that moment.  The memory though remains incredibly vivid.

Certainly, the actions of others have startled me, shocked me, and sometimes horrified me.  In my memoir, Healed, I write about being harassed by friend in a writer’s group, raped while living overseas, and beaten up by my first husband.  I thought my life after experiencing an NDE would be pure bliss, and I would live a protected, purely pleasurable life.  This was not my experience, and I wasn’t prepared to write about these traumatic moments until years later. Though I had greater moments of intuition after the NDE, I didn’t always know how to trust or use this intuition.  In those first years after the experience, I also had an almost child-like openness, trust, and belief in others and that trust sometimes put me in close contact with desperate people.

Service and Healing:  When I examine all my experiences together, these experiences sometimes seem like more than one person should have to endure.  However, I have survived and thrived, and I realize others have endured far worse events. Perhaps part of my legacy is to experience the horrors that many women have experienced and to report that what remains after harm has taken its best shot at me is light and hope.  I heard Matt Kahn say something similar about harm in his latest video, and this idea seems accurate to me.  What also remains after the harm is a deep desire to heal myself and to help others heal.  At certain times, I certainly forgot the light and its message.  At other times, I became angry at God on this journey, but I always came back to the belief that I should help others and should remind others of their connection to a loving, forgiving source.

Self-absorption and all too human wishes and desires vanish the moment I ask my students about their lives or when I am of service to others somewhere in this world.  There is no greater way to make the world a better place than to offer help or kindness.  We are freed of ourselves in those moments.  Who knew that freedom from the self would feel so wonderful?  It does though.

AFTER THE WRECK

How could I know that the world would have compassion

and that at the moment of impact my back would crack,

 

but I would retain the sensation of this body, first floating

away from it, then returning, silvered and open-mouthed

 

like a fish caught on the hook of a reoccurring dream,

struggling, flapping about, and jerked up to the surface

 

of a room full of florescence, tiny desires to survive

pulsing through my body in rivulets?

 

How could I know that the angels I recalled from paintings

would become bright, intelligent companions at the end of my bed

 

and that the torrential light from their eyes would answer my questions instantly?

How could I know that this peace would disintegrate like ice chips

 

in my mouth and this calming knowledge would drown in refills of morphine.

How could I know that I would forget specifics in the way we forget dreams?

—Tricia Barker

In these bodies, we are often anxious, but I love how Rilke reminds us that God is around us and in us from the beginning.  Certainly, the light on the other side of this life felt familiar. This light is the same light we have in our eyes as infants, and the same light that comes for us at the time of our death.

I am, You Anxious One

I am, you anxious one.

Don’t you sense me, ready to break

into being at your touch?

My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

Can’t you see me standing before you

cloaked in stillness?

Hasn’t my longing ripened in you

from the beginning

as fruit ripens on a branch?

 

I am the dream you are dreaming.

When you want to awaken, I am waiting.

I grow strong in the beauty you behold.

And with the silence of stars I enfold

your cities made by time.

–R.M. Rilke

Healing to Transform Anxiety, Physical Pain, and Heart Pain

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 4 Comments

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Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

Addressing Anxiety:  In class today, one of my students decided to focus his research paper on connections between technology and anxiety.  Many other students chimed in, talking about how anxiety is one of their biggest struggles.  I assured them that I understood completely, and I know that anxiety plagues countless people.  Research has taught me that students perform better on tests and write better essays when they are confident and not anxious.  I encourage my students to get plenty of rest and to try to have fun writing their essays.  There is always a way to make the writing process more enjoyable.

In general, we perform better in our lives with less anxiety and more belief in ourselves.  We talked about all the common ways to address anxiety such as exercise, eating well, and taking care of the body.  Since I felt no fear or anxiety during my NDE, I believe that being more in touch with our inner self and believing in angelic assistance/the divine is a way to expel anxiety from our lives.  The closer we are to our source, the less there is to worry about.

Research also shows that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety. There are many ways to meditate, and if you like to focus on an image or a statement while meditating here is an image that I find helpful for dispelling anxiety.

Dispelling Anxiety Meditation:  Take several deep breaths and imagine becoming stronger and more grounded with each out-breath.  All the many directions that your mind can take, slow down into one moment with each breath.

After several calming breaths, imagine a white, loving light above your head.  As you breathe out, imagine that a very large feather is sweeping out all the debris from your mind and body.  All text messages, all thoughts, all plans, all the things you think you must do are swept away.  You do not have to worry about the future or mourn the past in this moment.  You are completely pure and clean.  There is nothing to fear.

There is no room for anxiety, just expansiveness.  If negativity or anxiety continue to pop into your mind, keep imagining the large feather sweeping away all fears and troubles.  Keep breathing until you are relaxed, and know that you are free and safe.

Addressing Physical Pain:  For many years after my accident I was lucky and ran races and felt little or no physical back pain. The last five years, I have dealt with neck and lower back pain.  The journey to find a way out of pain has been a long one, but one component that has helped a lot is my own belief in the power of angels to heal us.  I saw the angels work on my back while outside of my body, and I know I can call on them to continue to work on me.  Each person is different, and there may not be one way that works for everyone.  No matter if you find eventual relief from pain through traditional medicine, functional medicine, alternative healers, prayer, or your own healing power, deep breathing and meditation can be a great added component to your healing journey.

Healing the Cause of Physical Pain Meditation:  Take several long breaths to ground yourself.  With each out breath, picture your body as a receptive vessel, empty and ready to be filled with the intelligent, healing light of the angels.  Let every breath immediately transform your body, healing you in ways you didn’t know you needed healing.  Believe in instant healing, even if the completion of this healing takes months to fully manifest.  Believe healing begins now by loving yourself enough to open yourself to this possibility.

You might repeat the line, “I inhale and open completely to the healing light of angels” if this helps you focus on being completely receptive to healing.  Even if relief is only found with each in-breath, know that you are making progress toward healing.  The key is being completely empty with a very long out-breath.  At the end of that breath, you are completely empty and completely ready to be filled with the healing light of angels.

Side note: Because I am American and a rebel, I don’t always meditate in traditional ways.  For this meditation, I lie on my stomach and try to duplicate a massage table with pillows.  Since I was positioned face down during back surgery, it is easier for me to experience profound healing from angels while in this position.  Maybe you must decide what position is best for your healing.  There is nothing wrong with sitting in a traditional pose, but when it comes to pain creative measures sometimes take precedence over traditions.

Healing Heart Pain:  Over the years, many of my students have written narrative essays in English 1301 about a first heartbreak.  Usually, the story is one of a first love who cheated or broke their trust with unexpected violence.  People feel a need to share the ways they have been hurt and wronged in the hopes of someone understanding their pain and lessening this pain somehow.  I see these students as becoming more beautiful because of their stories of heartbreak.  My stories of heartbreak allow me to empathize with my students, and they are able to care for one another because of their experiences.

I have discovered a meditation/writing exercise that can help heal some of this pain rather quickly.  Switching to a place of hope and joy is an easy way out of pain.  What is lost is lost, but there is still a world to gain—a world of great possibilities.

Meditation or Writing Exercise to Help Heal Heart Pain:  The heart needs a home, so imagine a perfect home for your heart.  Maybe your heart’s home is a crystal palace or a warm cabin with a fireplace.  Imagine a home that is the best possible home for your heart.  Your heart can never be trampled or disappointed in this place.  Your heart is protected.  You can either imagine this perfect home for your heart and reside there for several breaths, or you can write about a home for your heart.

This is not the time to invite anyone into the home for your heart.  This is a time to simply be safe and imagine who is worthy of being invited in later.  No one can take this home away from your heart.  You are safe.

For the Future:  I would like to make a few meditation videos with Solfeggio frequencies to address anxiety, physical pain, and emotional pain in deeper ways.  I hope that the ideas or images might be of benefit to anyone who tries the exercises.  Here is a meditation video with unknown angels.

 

Human Trafficking: Loving This Child in Mumbai

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 5 Comments

boy in india

Love is All That Matters:  After my NDE, I think about love a lot because one of the central messages from the light was that love is all that matters.  How does a person choose to love the world in each moment?  Maybe love is not being jaded to the pain of this world.  We see so many images, so many percentages about people suffering that sometimes we feel a certain resistance to feeling or doing anything about their suffering.  Love is caring enough to do something about a problem, and any contribution toward a solution is better than doing nothing.

Human Trafficking:  While traveling through Mumbai, India a few years ago, I saw a child I wanted to rescue from the streets.  Honestly, I wanted to rescue them all, but this particular young boy came up to my window in the backseat, and I could see that he had a cold.  His nose was running.  I thought about all the kids who have mothers who take their temperatures, tuck them in bed, and read them a story.  I thought about the children who don’t have mothers, but have fathers or grandparents who do this for them.  I knew this child most likely had to give his cash to the mafia who controlled him, but the shock of coming face to face with a beautiful, abandoned child hit me with palpable force.  I’m not a photographer, but I snapped this young boy’s picture and then handed him most of the rupees in my wallet.  The locals in the car with me assured me that he would not get any of that money, but I didn’t care.  Maybe someone would be nice to him that night and give him more rice for bringing in a good haul.  Maybe they would at least give him a smile.  I could forgo one day of shopping in the markets for lovely jewelry, handbags, and scarves.

Donating:  The child reminds me that status, pleasure, worldliness means very little when children and adults are treated this way.  I am not free when millions of people are enslaved in human trafficking around the world.  I look at his picture from time to time, so that I can pray for him and remember his eyes, his need, and his sadness.  Praying for him (though important) isn’t enough, so I donate to organizations focused on liberating people from human trafficking like Polaris, UNICEF, and others.   My rule with donating is to donate to the point it hurts a little, but not to the point where it comprises saving money, taking care of myself, or working on my goals so that I can donate more in the future.

Educating Others:  Help does not always have to be monetary help though.  For me, returning to the love I had for the world as a child helps me to prioritize my energy.   For every good meal I eat, I think about how that boy goes hungry and consider what I can do to help with the energy I have from this meal.  For starters, I educate my students about human trafficking, even if it is only the occasional article or Ted Talk video.  Many students choose this topic as their research topic.  Great books like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks have been inspired by a moment in a lecture at a community college.  I have faith that one or more of my community college students might do amazing work to help end human trafficking.   My energy can be multiplied if I can convince others to care about this issue.

Become Like the Little Children:  Another lesson from the light during my NDE was that I should remember the purity of my soul during childhood and return to that place.  As a child, I was moved by commercials about starving children in Africa.  Though I grew up rather poor myself and was rather skinny, I wasn’t starving.  When I made mud pies in my backyard, I always made a lot of them and imagined that I was feeding chicken pot pies (one of my favorites) to all the starving children.  I cared.  I wanted to help.  I always included these children in my prayers, and sometimes at night I had beautiful dreams where I met with a few of them in the heavens and talked about how we could teach people in the world to love more and care more for others.

Be Open to the Suffering of Others:  I remember years later when parodies about these type commercials came out, I didn’t laugh.  I laugh at most satire and most silly skits from Saturday Night Live, but I preferred the mindset of the young girl who desired to help others.  Children feel for others, but as adults we put up barriers to feeling because to look at someone’s suffering changes us.  We know that we can help, but giving monetarily rubs up against our own worldly goals of accumulations things, enjoying services, and fine food.  We tell ourselves we work hard for our lifestyles and deserve fine things, and to some degree we do.  However, where does the accumulation end?  When do we have enough when others have nothing?

Legacy:  I wonder how many people who have been taken to the cleaners in divorce court because of a greedy spouse wish that they could transfer some of that money to starving children. I’m sure many people want the money back for themselves, but given the choice of not having it or helping children, I wonder if they would chose helping children.  I hope so.   I hope they can see the futility of amassing great wealth but not helping others.  Having wealth without helping others leaves their souls sad and poor.   In the end, what we take with us is the good we have done in the world.  That is our reward.  We don’t take our accumulations of wealth with us.  We take memories of love and kindness with us.  We relive these memories and know we have reached a place of transcendence when the majority of our time was spent helping others.

Foreign Adoptions:  For me, love is saying a prayer of thanks to all the people with the money and ability to adopt children from countries around the world.  I don’t make fun of Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Sandra Bullock, Mary-Louise Parker, Julie Andrews, Meg Ryan, Katherine Heigl, Charlize Theron, or Jillian Michaels.  I say a prayer of thanks for their kindness, for having a calling to rescue a child from a foreign land, and for their ability to do what I would do given their resources.  An image of dinner at their homes makes me smile.  I say a prayer for all the other families who are not in the media and who donate their time and energy to help others or who have adopted a child domestically or from a foreign country.

Love for that child in Mumbai is never forgetting him and writing down these thoughts.  I hope others read my blog, contact me, and educate me about ways I can help in the movement to end human trafficking.  Love always wins.  It is the light that illuminates the darkness.

Takeaways from Anita Moorjani’s TED Talk

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 3 Comments

 

fearless-wallpaper-anita-moorjani

Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

Anita Moorjani’s amazing near-death experience is described in her book Dying to be Me.  If you want a preview of what she describes in her book, check out this Ted Talk.

In the video, Moorjani leaves her audience with five brief lessons from her NDE.  I’ve quoted her main points below and added some of my ideas to each of her topics below.

  1. Love should be the most important focus in life. You must love yourself and value yourself.  We teach others how to treat us.  You should not allow others to bully or control you.  The more you love yourself, the more love you have to give to others.
  2. Live life fearlessly. Love keeps you safe, not fear.
  3. Humor, laughter, and joy  are vital. Kids laugh and enjoy life all the time, but these states of being get conditioned out of us.  Joy is more important than any other spiritual power.  If our politicians learned to laugh, we’d have a different political climate.
  4. Life is a gift, not a chore.
  5. Always be yourself. Be as you as you can be.  Shine your light as bright as you can.  Embrace being you.

Love More:  Definitely choose love over fear but realize when something you are calling love is not really love. Love is never manipulation, and manipulation can come in many forms.  Someone can even tell you that you aren’t that spiritual for choosing not to be with them and love them.  You might only be choosing to love yourself and choosing a love and life situation that fits your desires more than that person and situation fits what you need.  This is o.k.  You get to make all kinds of loving choices for yourself.  You don’t have to do what others want you to do and call this love.  You get to do what you want to do and know that it is love.  Life works better this way.

I think of love as kind gestures and moments when we simply choose to be our best self with someone.  Being your best even when others are at their worst is difficult but loving. Love is something we do for ourselves and for others.  We respect the boundaries of others, and this is a form of love as well.  Other people do not have to take care of all our needs.  We can take care of ourselves and cutting down on our neediness can be a way of being more loving.

Love is wishing the best for everyone, even when they have wronged us.  Love is hoping others can always be their best selves.  Love is expanding someone’s understanding, not letting them live in fear.    Love is many things, and I’m still learning about it.  I do know that love is the opposite of fear. Love will be the subject of many more posts because most NDErs come back knowing that love is the most important thing we can do while in these bodies; love deserves lots of radio, television, and blog time.

Live Fearlessly:  We mistakenly think that if we spend time fearing something we might come up with strategies which might prevent this thing we fear from occurring.  Love is your greatest protector, and even when life happens—when the thing you fear most happens—keep loving yourself through it.  This will help you heal faster.

When I’ve had the most success manifesting, I have clearly seen an image or outcome that I want and worked hard towards achieving that goal without letting negative ideas interfere with my progress.  Then, I stayed the course, never doubting the inevitable positive outcome.  Fear doesn’t play into the equation, not even a flicker of it.  When I have failed at something, fears are always there multiplying and breeding in my mind and in my life.

When I think of living fearlessly, I think of never shrinking away from a challenge, but diving in, willing to learn, grow, and succeed.  I think of small moments as well—moments when we choose to talk with others around us instead of being silent and looking at our phones, moments when we make connections, share our thoughts and feelings, and allow our hearts to expand and include more people.

Laughter as Medicine:   I wish I was funnier than I am.  I can be goofy, and occasionally funny, but I wish I was hilarious.  Luckily, I have friends who make me howl with laughter.  May you find these people and talk with them often, and when you can’t find funny friends, watch funny videos and comedies.  Years ago, I saw the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, and the clip about the woman who cured herself of cancer by watching funny movies resonated with me.

Laughter is literally healing.  Surround yourself with people who make you laugh, and you will be happier and healthier.  I’ve always thought that silliness is a form of soulfulness, an ability to not take one’s self or life too seriously.  When all else fails, laugh at people who take themselves too seriously.  They are so funny!

Life is a Gift:     Though I’ve had moments when I felt tired or discouraged after my NDE, I usually remember that life is a gift.  Whenever I feel bored, I think about how to make a certain “boring” task more enjoyable or meaningful.  Washing dishes becomes a moment where I meditate on all the ways that I need to clean certain negative ideas and images from my mind.  Taking out the trash becomes a moment when I think of dumping all of my juvenile and immature behaviors in a dumpster and being done with them.

I take time to savor my food.  Though I remember being overwhelmed at how amazing all food tasted after my NDE, I quickly realized that awareness helped me slow down and enjoy each meal instead of greedily rushing through it.  Greediness in any area of life isn’t all that sexy.  Your share can be wonderful and special without having to want everyone else’s share for yourself.  Life is indeed a gift.  The more you take time to realize it in certain moments, the longer and more beautiful the journey seems.

Be Yourself: I’ve learned the hard way that it isn’t any fun to diminish who I am to please others.  In other posts, I’ve written about family member’s righteousness and insistence on being “right.”  I’m not here to make them wrong.  I’m here to express myself and who I am.  I do this effortlessly in some areas of my life, and those areas of my life work well.  The areas where I dim my light and become less of who I am are not the best areas of my life.  I’m working on being more whole, more me, more true to what I believe and living aligned with these beliefs.  I hope you do the same.

I hope you love your original, wonderful self, chase your dreams and goals fearlessly, laugh even when it is at yourself, and never forget that every moment here on earth is a gift, not a chore.  Make your moments enjoyable.