Lessons of Healing from Anita Moorjani
I finished up a beautiful book recently by Anita Moorjani called Dying To Be Me. It is the story of a young woman who falls prey to cancer that spreads throughout her lymphatic system. Eventually this sickness eats up her body so she can no longer walk, nor function without pain, before the cancer sends her nearly lifeless body into a coma.
While she is in this coma she has a powerful near death experience filled with a strong understanding of an overwhelming presence of love on the “other side” — an experience that she describes so vividly in her book.
While in this state she makes a decision to return to her life and when she awakens from her coma her cancer is miraculously healed.
This second chance granted her new understandings about life that she generously shares in her book. Her story taught me several important lessons that I feel pertinent to share with you today my lovely reader 🙂
The First Lesson is FEAR.
I related very much to Anita’s story of her upbringing. She was born into a strongly religious family that she didn’t quite fit into. She struggled to find full acceptance from her family or her community.
Her life was full of FEAR: fear of failing, fear of being disliked, fear of letting people down, of not being good enough. She feared disapproval. In turn, she lost her self. She became disconnected from who she was or what she truly wanted.
She believes that this FEAR is ultimately what caused her cancer.
Anita’s relations with cancer and fear resonated with me…. Have my own similar fears attributed to endometriosis?
I think the pain that comes along with endometriosis (both physically and emotionally) has in and of itself been a cause of fear for me. The pain clearly wrecks havoc. I’d go as far to say that it is traumatic.
I’ve lived my life worrying about the arrival of my period, especially when its possible arrival falls during a time when a big event is planned. How many times I have spent long, painful hours trying to put on a happy face while my insides screamed!
Once I discovered the connection with food and my pain levels things changed dramatically, but it also spurred up a strong desire to keep the pain away.
I started to study and learn about different ways of eating for healing. If you have ever done nutritional research you’ll understand how many theories contradict with each other, and how the process of eating and healing can get quite confusing and frustrating. And when the pain strikes it makes me all the more desperate to find something that works.
I related with Anita further when she discusses her route of flighting her cancer. She did many things to try and prevent it from spreading, visited many doctors and healers while paying close attention to everything she ate.
In Anita’s words:
I became very stressed about food and was afraid of eating almost anything. I didn’t know what was good for me and what wasn’t because each system of healing espoused a different truth, and they all conflicted with each other. This confusion only added to my already overwhelming fears. And as the terror tightly gripped me in its vice once more, I watch helplessly as my health rapidly deteriorated.
– Anita Moorjani
I wonder sometimes if my own fears of pending pain and stressing about what to eat have done more harm than good. I wonder if my constant focus on finding something that works for me has caused me more pain.
I’ve found it very easy to obsess about all the toxicity in our environment. When you really start to pay attention and work to avoid all of them, it gets quite overwhelming. And stress does nothing good for healing.
Lesson Two: Letting Go….
To true healing to occur, I must let go of the need to be healed and just enjoy and trust in the ride that is life.
– Anita Moorjani
These words are very wise and spoke right to my heart. Letting go of fear and surrendering is not an easy thing to do, but I think when it is achieved, as Anita so beautifully writes about, then miraculous things do happen.
She believes that her own healing happened because in her time in this other space beyond — her damaging thoughts were out of the way. She was not in a state of thinking, but a state of pure consciousness. This state encompasses a strong self awareness with no judgement.
So often we are caught up in doing, pursuing, achieving that it is easy to lose connection with ourselves. We let the love within us slip away in lieu of external, alternative motives. In the process we not only lose the connection with ourselves, we also miss out on all the beauty around — external messages beckoning to us.
Anita relates the experiences in the external world as a mirror to what we feel about ourselves. When we let go of negative judgement, we allow our world to transform and we feel greater and greater trust.
The more we’re able to trust, the more we’re able to let go of trying to control the outcome.
– Anita Moorjani
Ah yes — CONTROL. Another lesson in and of itself. I am the first to admit that I have huge control issues. This comes in direct conflict with endometriosis — a disease that is ultimately out of my control. This is a hard lesson to accept, but definitely plays into the important lesson of letting go…
The Place of Pure Allowing
Anita writes extensively about this place of “pure allowing”. In this place you can truly be yourself, embracing anything that makes you feel alive. In this place most positive change can occur.
In this place of pure allowing negative thoughts still invade, but rather than trying to shove them away with forced positivity, Anita suggests allowing them to pass with acceptance… without judgement.
For when we try to suppress or force these negative thoughts out the more they push back in. Instead, allow these feelings to flow through, knowing that these thoughts and emotions will pass.
The feelings we have about ourselves reflect the condition of our life. Anita writes that being true to ourselves is more important than just trying to stay positive.
To access this state of allowing, the only thing I had to do was be myself. I realized that all those years all I ever had to do was be myself, without judgement or feeling that I was flawed.
– Anita Moorjani
If things got challenging in her life, instead of seeking to CONTROL them physically, she instead turned internally. For here is where all the answers lie.
By following our internal guidance system we find what is right for us, including the methodology to look for it. We know we are on the right track when we feel ourselves at the center of our love — without judgement.
Anita learned a very important lesson about self love and self acceptance. By loving herself, going inward and following her heart she was able to find true, eternal love and peace.
On the Positive Side?
I love reading stories about near death experiences because I think it provides some insight to the unknown. This is the second case I’ve read that expresses a similar experience with the connectivity to a higher realm of pure love that is within every single one of us — and in every single living thing.
Anita’s story is awesome. She speaks truth that I feel like every endo warrior should hear:
I absolutely do strongly believe that we all have the capability 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.
– Anita Moorjani
The place within where we are whole….. Have you visited that place recently? Have you asked yourself the powerful question — What do I need for my body to truly heal?
Endometriosis is centered around the pelvic area — the second chakra. While I won’t get into this too deeply (this is a whole other blog post 🙂 ) I will say that this chakra is related to suppressed emotions — self-confidence, sexuality, courage, creativity….
I know for me tapping into these emotions is like opening up a big box of…. Oh No 🙂 What about you? Is something holding you back from true healing?
I know that true healing is so much more than the physicalities in front of us and that our true spirit is so much more than the broken body so many of us live in. By re-centering and re-enganging with that “place within where we are whole” then true healing can happen.
I love that Anita proved this by returning to life without a speck of cancer in her body 🙂
With much love, light and healing,
