Dying to be me

Recently, I re-read Anita Moorjani’s book  “Dying to be me” published in 2012. Her book really made an impression on me.

In 2006, the author suffered a near-death experience that made her see life in a totally different perspective. The doctors had basically written her off, feeling certain she would never make it out of the coma she was in, after suffering with severe lymphatic cancer for over three years. Her lymph nodes were large as lemons, and her vital organs were closing down fast. Anita describes her experience as being in another dimension where she has the unique experience of being offered the choice to return to life or not. She saw the clarity, insight and purpose of her life. She decided to return when she felt that “heaven” is not somewhere – but a state. This led to a remarkable healing.

 

With fear as a driving force

Anita grew up in Hong Kong as a child of Indian parents with deep religious roots in Hinduism, and a strict English Christian school where it was drummed into her that going to church every Sunday churching was necessary to get a place in heaven. There were many opposing dogmas and convictions, including arranged marriages, in contrast to the well-educated and liberated woman she became. From an early age Anita decided to try not to cause conflict for her parents or other people. She lived in fear of not being able to live up to the expectations of others. Because of this she sacrificed her vitality again and again and making herself a victim of her circumstance instead of “creating” her own life.

For Anita, her life changed dramatically after her near-death experience, where she was confronted with her own life force and connected with the universal energy. She describes her insight like walking around in a dark supermarket and looking for the goods with a torch.

If the lights come on you can see everything, but when they go off again you can only see what is lit up in the beam of the torch-light, but the difference is, you know what else is there, although you are unable to see it. In other words, we are conscious of the entire picture, although what we can see in a given moment is very limited. Life will never again be the same.

The authors epiphany made her realise that is was only her fear that was stopping her from healing; the fear was manifested in the form of her cancer. Before she had seen it as a punishment that was being dealt to her and out of her control, but her realization was that in fact it was she own self-condemning from within, that was causing her sickness.

She now saw that she didn’t need to “deserve” to be loved – the very fact that she existed was reason enough for her to love herself and to be true to her own inner vitality and in fact she felt stronger when she did not resist it.

For her it had become clear that illness often starts on an emotional level before it becomes physical. Therefore healing consists of a “clean-up” both mentally and physically. After she had made her decision to return to her life and embrace it, her body healed remarkably quickly. After a few weeks, the flummoxed doctors could not find more cancer. She was convinced that healing occurred when she connected to her own vitality and was one with the healing powers of the universe. In Chinese medicine, life force is called chi, and it runs through all living things. Life force does not judge or discriminate, it flows through us no matter who we are.

The important thing is to be self-aware in the present moment and notice if our decisions are based on fear or passion. It is about how you choose to live your life that really matters.

 

“Release your limiting beliefs that prevent you from loving yourself”

In 2016, Anita Moorjani Wrote her follow up book, “What If this is heaven?”. Here she dives deeper into what she learned from her near-death experience, looking into the limiting beliefs that we all suffer to a greater or lesser extent, preventing us from self-love. We become victims of our own life.  What we do is never enough and that it is selfish to love ourselves. We do not fit in, woman is the weak gender etc. Moorjani calls these beliefs, myths that most of us have just accepted as true, and she shows how they are often invisible to us, despite actually hugely impacting our lives. We therefore need to become aware of destructive patterns and consequently reveal both myths and lies, which form the basis of our thinking.

In the book she delivers many fine examples from both her own and others’ lives, as well as effective methods of overcoming learned habits so that we can find our own inner strength and wisdom once more and begin to live on our own truth.

Both books are for everyone who wants change and transformation. If we truly want to change our lives we need to begin by looking inwards. It’s fun to experience how the world “change”, when we begin to approach life according to our own essence.

 

“Your only work is to love yourself, value yourself, and embody this truth of self-worth and self-love so that you can be love in action. That is true service, to yourself and to those who surround you.” Anita Moorjani

 

Read more at www.anintamoorjani.com.