by Anita Moorjani on 22 April, 2012

‘I feel incredible! I’m so free and light. No more pain. My surroundings are moving away from me. I don’t feel fear any more …’

After fighting cancer for four years, my body was overwhelmed by the malignant cells and my organs began shutting down. Although I was in a coma I was acutely aware of everything happening around me, including the sense of emergency and emotional frenzy of my family as they rushed me to hospital.

‘It’s too late to save her.’

‘Who is the doctor talking about?’ I thought. ‘I’ve never felt better in my life!’

I wanted to hug my mother and comfort her. ‘Don’t cry, I’m fine. Look, I can move around without my wheelchair. After four agonising years, I’m healed! I feel so beautifully peaceful and calm.’

I then understood that even if my physical body stopped, everything is still perfect in the greater tapestry of life, for we never truly die.

Fear of dying

During my Near Death Experience I experienced so much clarity. It may come across sounding as though those who don’t recover or who still have cancer or other illness are in some way lesser than those who heal. This is not true! Anyone who hasn’t healed is a magnificent person. The reasons for their illness lie in their personal journey.

We come into this life knowing our magnificence but this gets eroded (in some of us).

This starts subtly with little anxieties about not being liked or not being good enough. I feared disapproval. I was a people pleaser; and in the process I lost myself. I was completely disconnected from who I was or what I wanted, because everything I did was to win approval. If anyone had asked me what I wanted in life I would not have known.

The most frequent question people ask me is why I think I got cancer. The answer in one word is: fear. I was afraid of failing, being disliked, letting people down, not being good enough. I feared illness, cancer and treatment for cancer. I was afraid of living, and I was afraid of dying. Then I was diagnosed with cancer.

Faith healing and forgiveness

I went through the motions of doing everything I could, but in the back of my mind I believed I wasn’t going to make it. Even though I seemed to be fighting my disease, I believed that cancer was a death sentence. I opted for alternative healing because I felt with conventional medicine I was doomed.

I tried faith healing, praying, meditation on mountain tops, yoga, ayurveda, chakra balancing, energy healing, and I worked on forgiveness therapy. I travelled through India and China meeting Buddhist monks, Indian yogis and enlightened masters, hoping they would help me find answers that would lead to healing. I tried a vegan diet and I read every book I could about cancer.

Despite all this my cancer got worse. My mind was in total confusion; I continued to lose myself, trying everything to stay alive while my body continued to disintegrate. My body stopped absorbing nutrients and my muscles wasted away until I couldn’t walk any more; a wheelchair was my only form of mobility.

I attended spiritual healing groups and was told that this was my choice. I can’t begin to describe the terror I was experiencing day after day. I’d been trying so hard to do all the forgiving, cleansing, healing, praying, and meditating that I could.

After cancer had ravaged my body for four years I was too weak to hold on. The next step was death. That’s when I went into a coma, my organs shut down and I began plunging towards death.

Coming back – coming home

I didn’t feel I needed to do anything in particular to enter the other realm, pray, chant, use mantras or forgiveness. Moving on was closer to doing absolutely nothing.

The realm I experienced allowed me to see my own power and magnificence, undistorted by fear. I became aware of greater power I had access to.

I understood I was dying because of all my fears. I understood that cancer wasn’t a punishment. It was just my own energy manifesting as cancer because my fears weren’t allowing me to express myself as the magnificent force I was meant to be. This understanding made me realise I no longer had anything to fear. I made a powerful choice – to come back.

I came back with the understanding that heaven truly is a state and not a place, and I’ve found that bliss has followed me here to Earth. I know this sounds really strange, but I even feel that our ‘true home’ is also only a way of being and not a location. Right now, I feel that I’m home. I have no desire to be anywhere else. It makes no difference to me now whether I’m here or in the other realm. It’s all just different parts of the experience of our greater, expanded, infinite, magnificent self. Our real home is within each of us and follows us wherever we go.

Why we are here

If 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 ideaology. 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.

My most important message

If there were one message or lesson from my NDE that I wish everyone could know and understand, something that I wish I could shout out from the rooftops, it would be this: I would want you to know that every part of you is magnificent – your ego, intellect, body and spirit.

It’s who you are – a beautiful product of this Universe’s creation. Every aspect of you is perfect. There’s nothing to let go, nothing to forgive, nothing to attain. You already are everything you need to be. It can seem so complicated, but it’s not.

If a religion makes you feel lesser than its deities, then you’ve either misinterpreted it or it’s not doing a good job of teaching you the truth. If a guru, teacher or master makes you feel that you aren’t ‘yet’ enlightened and still have more to ‘learn’, ‘release’, or ‘let go of’ before getting there, then they’re not doing a good job of teaching you who you truly are, or you’re misunderstanding them.

Remind everyone close to you to be themselves, and tell them that you love them just the way they are! They’re perfect and so are you. There’s nothing not to love. Most suffering stems from feeling ‘less than’. You aren’t less than anything or anyone! You are complete.

The only thing you need to learn is that you already are what you’re seeking to attain. Just experess your uniqueness fearlessly, with abandon! That’s why you’re made the way you are, and that’s why you’re here in the physical world.

From Dying to be Me, © 2012 by Anita Moorjani, published by Hay House.

DYING TO BE ME

In this inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for four years, her body was overwhelmed and began shutting down. As her organs failed, she went into an extraordinary near-death experience, where she realised her inherent worth… and the actual cause of her disease. On regaining consciousness, Anita’s condition improved so rapidly that she was released from hospital within weeks, without a trace of cancer in her body, defying medical knowledge.

She had the realisation that there are miracles in the Universe that she had never even imagined. In Dying to Be Me, Anita shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, being love, and the true magnificence of each and every human being. This book sings that we are spiritual beings having a human experience … and that we are all One.