Dying to be me

Though I am largely agnostic about reincarnation and near-death experiences (NDE), I was quite intrigued by Anita Moorjani’s story. My friend Madhura introduced me to her story few months ago. Anita Moorjani’s genuineness about her own experience is more than evident. Besides, her insights are very valuable and thought-provoking indeed.

I have also read her book Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing and I am again speechless to see how wisdom shines through your being as you experience death closely.  You can sense this in Steve Job’s famous speech “Your time is limited” and I had written about it in Candy Chang’s talk as well. Anita Moorjani writes from her heart and her experiences are powerful enough to make you seriously think about what she is saying.

Anita Moorjani is an Indian who grew up in Hong Kong. As a child she grew up in confusion due to difference of  cultures at her home and in her adopted country. She was diagnosed with Stage IV Lymphoma and was literally on her death-bed. She was miraculously cured from this and her healing took place rapidly.  I am not going to discuss her near-fatal disease, her cure and her healing but I’d request you to focus on her insights from her unusual but powerful experience (NDE) that I have listed down after her TEDx video.

You can watch her TEDx talk here –

These are the invaluable insights that she shares in her talk and explains them in more details in her book.

  1. The most important thing we have here to focus our awareness on, is love. It is important to love yourself as well. The more you love yourself, the more love you have to give other people.
  2. Live life fearlessly.
  3. Humour, laughter & joy – we are born knowing this stuff.
  4. Life is a gift
  5. The most important thing for you is to always be yourself. Be as you as you can be, shine your light as brightly as you can.

I would like to combine some of them to make up this one as the crux of her talk:

Be yourself and live life fearlessly with love & laughter.

I think we often get short-sighted thinking in terms of what job/career might allow us to earn X amount of  money that we want for whatever we desire. However, when we meditate about death or experience it closely, we perhaps realize what matters more: our relations and truly becoming who we are.  I think we don’t really need to suffer from a fatal disease to realize & reorganize our priorities. I can share two questions that helped me and few others that I have talked to –

  1. If you know that you are going to die in the next 6 months or 1 year, what would you prefer to do?
  2. If you’re not doing it currently, when would you do it? What is keeping you away from doing it?

If these questions disturb you, I’d request you to stay with these questions for a longer time and see what insights they could bring.

You can also search for Anita Moorjani’s interviews and other discussions on the Internet or YouTube if you are curious. I am including one of her interviews here where she talks about death, her experiences and her book.

The featured image along with Anita Moorjani’s quote is used with gratitude from AnitaMoorjani.com.

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