Death, A Life Changing Moment

March 3, 2008 – Another stroke.  This one hit hard enough to send me across the veil and into an eternal peace that was so profound that I spent the following weeks wondering why I came back.

They say there’s a choice somehow between being here and being “there.”  The moment didn’t feel like a choice but more as a gift that got taken back for the time being.

I was headed to an appointment with my osteopath who happens to be at my office, (see www.crossingshealing.com ) when my legs began to get weak and my head began to lose touch with reality.  I was aware that something was happening but somehow peaceful about it.  Some colleagues got me onto a treatment table and my acupuncturist rushed in from home.  It seemed an emergency to everyone but me.  I just wanted quiet.

Speaking and sound became too loud and jarring.  My right side gave way to a weakness I cannot describe- as if it were disappearing from me.  My face felt as if a line were drawn down the middle and my right cheek was pulling my mouth down.  My speech was slurring as I couldn’t get my tongue to sharpen up and work right.

In a short while I felt myself suddenly very far away and the room became silent.  Jane, my practitioner needled points to keep me here while Christina, my doctor kept a vigilant presence in the room.  My partner, Barbara, stood beside me and held my hand but I couldn’t see her.  I could only feel her pain and detect her tears.  If there was a choice point, that would have been it.  I did not want to return from such a sublime and effortless place.

There are no words to describe the leaving, the being there and the return.  I am told that the whole office complex got quiet even though no one knew what was going on.  Many thoughts went through me in slow motion.  I was astounded at the silence and wanted to stay there forever.  I knew I was having a stroke and yet could not bear the thought of the chaos of an emergency room.  I declined that option.  I felt a strange feeling deep in the back of my head just as I was “being returned” to the room.

Suddenly, we all knew that it was over and I was here again.  Someone was there to sit with me for the next several hours as I lay in a peaceful slumber.  My mother, long dead, came to visit me in that time.  She made me feel very happy and said, “Soon you will be coming home.”  All I wanted was to go back home.

It is taking me several weeks to recover as I gradually regain my senses, my right side, my memory, and my routine.  During this time I am plagued on and off with the desire to go back home.  For the first few weeks, I fell into a deep depression at having to be here and to work so hard to recover.  I couldn’t understand why anyone would fight for their lives if they had any idea what awaited them beyond the veil.  ( I say “beyond the veil” because it is such a thin veil that separates here from there.)   Now, I don’t fight for my life, but choose to keep going because I have made promises to those I love and because it seems I haven’t finished what I came here to do.

It’s not a fight.  It’s a dance.  It’s a fragile dance that has me making all sorts of awkward steps as I make my way again.  It’s not unusual to mess up and over step either.  The consequence is that I have to sleep more to recover. 

So what do I learn from this process?  Most of my colleagues are saying that this is about learning to take care of myself.  That’s not what is resonant to me.  I am frankly unconcerned about taking care of myself.  It’s just a given that I do what I can to recover enough to have a full and happy life.  I don’t even do that as well as I “should” but I continue to press on.

No, what resonates is that I am on a spirit path that gets narrower as I get older.  I can no longer choose to avoid this path by taking another detour (like bus driving, book selling, and a whole host of other endeavors).  I am a healer.  I know what that means.  I know I am afraid of that.  I know I need to work through my fear and just do it.  My lesson is to calm down and just be who I am called to be.

It has been promised to me (by my relationship to God or Spirit or whatever fits for you) that I will have everything I need should I follow my path with integrity and confidence.  I have been reluctant for 17 years.  I have been afraid for all of that time.  I have avoided the pure essence of what it means for me to be a healer and it’s time to get over myself and move on.

Fear can arise from ego as mine has for so long- fear of what others may think, of being successful or unsuccessful, of be effective or ineffective, of being poor, fear of the outcome, fear of every other possibility I can think of.  It’s ego- plain and simple.  There is an arrogance to this fear as well.  I am blocking any possibility for Spirit to work through me creatively and effectively because I’m just too noisy and think I have to control everything.

If I should follow my calling with integrity, the antidote to this fear is humility.  If I open my heart and trust with the purity of the calling itself, then I have nothing to fear.  The worst that could happen?  There really is no “worst.”  Even death doesn’t scare me now.  In fact, I am looking forward to it!

Humility for me is the acknowledgement of the smallness of my place and of my being here. It’s the capacity to allow God to be God through me, without interference and with the kind of fear that is more about awe and wonder than about actual terror.  My responsibility is to acknowledge myself as a vessel of Spirit and to practice surrendering to the holiness in the moment.  It is effortless, actually- as effortless as dying.  It is liberating and joyful and sublime.