Category: Soul journey

Breast Cancer & Beyond— Book Excerpt

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In my new book Breast Cancer & Beyond: An Unexpected Soul Path, I describe my recent experience with breast cancer in 2021–22. A cancer diagnosis can be daunting as well as frightening, but I wanted to write about how, in spite of that, for me, it turned out to be a deeply spiritual and often peaceful journey. Below is a short excerpt from the Introduction to the book. Both the print and ebook versions of the book can be ordered at https://amzn.to/4aka0eu.

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I am a breast cancer survivor. After the diagnosis, my surgery and treatment proceeded over several months. It took me a while to assimilate the medical information, as well as my emotional reaction to it. Coming to peace with it all is the essence of my journey. Since I am a writer, my first impulse was to write about my experience—what was occurring in my body, my emotions, my mind, and my soul. I wrote about everything as it happened, week by week. Gradually I came to see that it was part of my life plan, what I had chosen (pre-birth) to experience in this lifetime. We each have unique soul paths within which we grow and evolve, and this was mine. That inner awareness steadied and uplifted me every day as I moved forward.

What you will read in this book is what it was like for me to live with a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment over a period of seven months, and then the months of integration after that. There are some sections where I don’t mention cancer specifically, but everything here took place within that framework. Each part can be read separately or in sequence.  I wrote from my soul’s perspective because that is mostly how I experienced it, and that is what centered me in peace and acceptance. In the very beginning, my hand seemed somehow guided to find the lump myself just two weeks after a “normal” mammogram. I believed it must be part of my soul’s journey on Earth, what I (and God) had designed for my physical life and spiritual evolution. Within that context, there are no mistakes, and I am flowing with each day’s experience.

In the last part of the book, I write about the wider view of life (and eternity) that I received as I journeyed along the unexpected path of cancer and how it affected me going forward. With each week, the universe seemed to expand, and my sense of my place within it also expanded. That expansion has not ended, and I do not foresee an ending because that is the nature of human life as we grow gradually beyond the confines of our physical form and open to infinity. Every experience becomes an initiation into something greater. A blessed gift, all of it.

Worry and Its Antidotes

Our minds often seem to be looking for something to worry about: “Who will be elected?” “Why is that person coughing?” “What’s that noise?” If we go online, we are continually bombarded with potential fears: a new COVID variant, rising costs, droughts, floods, shootings…. These stories feed right into the part of our brain that is a problem-solver. A useful attribute, but if the brain can’t find a solution to a problem, it gets diverted to the worry channel. The “What if” station, which seems to become particularly active at night when we are tired. Worries about yourself, your loved ones, and the whole world can take over your life if you let them. So don’t let them…..

What’s the antidote? you ask. Well, I find that there are many, and I have to remember to be open to them all. Remembering is key. In fact, that’s the number 1 step: Recognizing that you are caught in worrying. That puts a brake on and allows you to step sideways into another frame of mind (and heart). I say “heart” because often it’s the heart’s perspective that unlocks the closed door to the room where you are trapped with your worries running wild.

The heart is an optimist. It sees flowers when you might see poison ivy. It sees love when you are caught in fear or anger. How to connect to the heart? Take a walk outside in a park or anywhere else where you can see trees, hear birds, look up at the sky. Nature is a major heart connector. I take daily walks to keep myself centered in a positive frame of mind, to live from my heart and not from mental fears. If something difficult does arise, my heart’s spirit guides me through.

Friends and family can also be antidotes. Anyone close to you who is a good listener and can help you realize that your worries are not necessarily destined to materialize. In fact, most of the time they don’t. Mark Twain had a great saying, which I used to keep posted above my desk: “I have known a great many troubles in my life, most of which never happened.” Perfect description of how our minds make our worries seem real, when they aren’t. They are passing thoughts, which may or may not take form. Why waste time (and your life) focusing on them?

I’ve learned over the years (and keep learning) to find ways to divert my mind when it goes into worry overdrive. Music and poetry* help. Walking helps. Nature helps. Meditation** and yoga. A favorite sitcom rerun on TV. Eating healthy food I love (e.g., cherries, grapes, avocados). The kindness of those close to me who listen and reassure me with simple words like “Yes, I understand.” (My partner is very good at this.) There are countless ways to find positivity in your daily life and open your heart in the process. Because when your heart is open and really connected to life’s wonders and beauty, worries fade to the background and may disappear entirely.

And if they return tomorrow in different guises, you and I always have effective antidotes at hand. As the wise tell us, “Love is stronger than fear.” I’ve found that to be true, again and again.
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*This song always lifts my heart: “I Am Light” by India.Arie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2E3dBtTtBw. And Mary Oliver’s poem “I Worried” is the perfect antidote: https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/words-of-wonder/i-worried-mary-oliver/.
**Every morning I listen to Panache Desai’s free online meditation Call to Calm: https://www.panachedesai.com/.

From the Heart

In her recent DNC speech, Michelle Obama urged listeners not to complain but rather to “do something!” Yes, and to that I would add “Be in your heart as you do.” Because being is as important as doing in this world, maybe more so. How you go about “doing” infuses your life energy into what you do. If you complain or criticize, you may negate all that you do. If you are optimistic and hopeful, you amplify your doing with positive energy and inspire everyone around you. The power of open-hearted human connection.

Another word for life energy is soul, who you are at your core. Your soul doesn’t have opinions; it is pure peace, pure love. That energy can break through walls. As Amanda Gorman wrote in her poem “This Sacred Scene”: “While we all love freedom, it is love that frees us all….empathy emancipates.” The loving compassion in your words and actions frees the love in the hearts of those you encounter on your life’s path. One seemingly small expression of love can have a huge effect. For example, Tim Walz’s teenage son Gus, who tearfully said “ I love you, Dad! That’s my dad!” from the audience as Walz accepted the Vice Presidential nomination at the DNC. Gus’s image on video opened hearts around the globe when it went viral on social media.

But you don’t have to be famous or in the public eye to touch the lives of friends and strangers alike in your life. Telling those close to you that you love them is the most precious gift you could give them, which they can then pass on. One smile and kind words to a bus driver or cashier can make their day and ripple through person after person as they share their uplifted spirits with others. Does that sound like a Disney film—too good to be real? Well, try living in that awareness for one day and see how it affects not only others’ feelings but your own. The proverb about the movement of a butterfly’s wings in China affecting weather in North America is not as far-fetched as you may think!

Whatever you feel called to do in your life—volunteering at a Food Bank or animal shelter; activism for human rights or environmental awareness; voting; recycling; donating food or funds; creating art, music, writing; helping a neighbor or family member—is a pathway to active being as well. True soul-to-soul connections. When you consciously live from the heart, you are creating waves of loving-kindness and generosity of spirit wherever you go. You are being and doing simultaneously, and your full human potential is shining out into the world—from your heart.

Rewriting the Lyrics of Our Lives

Songwriters sometimes rewrite their lyrics to expand or change perspective. Today, we are all called to rewrite how we see ourselves and our lives in the 21st century, to be more truthful, more inclusive, more expansive, more heart-centered. Not only in the U.S. but everywhere in the world. We think we belong to countries, to nationalities, to races, to religions, to belief systems. In truth, we are none of those. We are immigrants on this planet, traveling here from somewhere in the cosmos to sing our human songs. We think we have identities as we move from place to place. Those identities arrive at birth and depart at death. What is left is a soul, traveling light. In a rewrite of the lyrics of our lives, the words will fall way and there will be nothing but that light.

The longer I live, the less I hang onto. Even the language I use to describe my own feelings and thoughts flows through me but doesn’t really stick. It is spirit speaking in the mother tongue of my soul, and I am just a vessel through which it pours. Each of us is. We are souls passing through. We speak and listen, but it is our hearts that discover the deepest wisdom, in silence, in love. Human/soul connection beyond lifetimes.

When those we love pass from this dimension to another, life can take on a limitless, ethereal quality. Memories are both close and distant, bright and dim. Everything merges into one somehow. I miss my parents and friends who have died, but they are also with me. Life on Earth is what we shared, but there is something larger than those lives that holds us together in ways that are outside of language or description. Infinite consciousness.

In recent years, I find myself floating in the intangible: something as fleetingly beautiful as a morning sky or a summer’s sunset. And it is not just one thing. It is everything. I walk but really I am carried. Music carries me. Birdsong carries me. Poetry carries me. Love carries me. I speak but I am speechless. The lyrics of my life rewrite themselves without any effort on my part. They are both vivid and neutral. They shift with the changes in light and sound and being.

In the end, it is grace that carries us. We are part of something we can only sense but not fully articulate. Early in life, we are immersed in the wonders of living. Death is distant. Then it comes closer, perhaps touches us in a sudden unexpected way. It is then that we begin to see a wider view. The lyrics we have written to describe our lives no longer entirely fit. We realize that at the deepest level, all of us, no matter our background, race, or beliefs, share a common destiny and are woven from common threads. The tapestry of life on Earth enfolds us in its wondrous complexity. When we finally see that fully, “lyrics” fall away, and there is nothing left but the grace of being and interbeing.


What’s the Rush?

Why are we often hurrying from one place to another, from one experience to another? Where are we going, really? Your life span and the ultimate finish line (what we think of as death) will remain exactly the same no matter how fast you go. There is so much more at play here, like an entire universe. You and I perceive ourselves moving through time, but time is only a human-created concept. It’s as if we are on a treadmill at the gym watching a TV screen that shows scene after scene of unfolding events, some mesmerizing, some boring, some happy, some sad. We think we are moving with the events, but we are actually running in place. We believe we are participants with choice and control, but we are observers at the soul level. And we have a larger destiny within Spirit.

This is life, and there is no hurry about any of it. Our souls came to Earth for the experience. God experiences human life through us, and we experience God through human life. We are colorful pieces of glass in a giant divine kaleidoscope of light and sound. Magical, beautiful, fathomless. No reason to speed up or slow down. It’s all unfolding with absolute synchronicity, beyond your ability to make adjustments to what is occurring…or to pinpoint a destination. If you relax and let go, you experience each moment without any need to either rush it or make it last. It is perfect just as is.

Labyrinths, which wind circularly from a beginning point towards a center and then back out again to the start, have been viewed historically as life paths that people symbolically walk for insight and awareness. From one’s Source back again to one’s Source. Or Spirit taking form, journeying through life, and then returning to Spirit once more. I have walked several labyrinths in different locations, and there is definitely a deeper sense of moving and yet remaining in one place. The beginning is the same as the end. That is, birth is the same as death. We travel in time while remaining timeless. We are both finite and infinite. Mortal yet eternal.

Difficult to describe what is essentially beyond description. This is the landscape within which I continually find myself these days. I am moving while standing still. And trying to find language for the indescribable motionless motion of my life, of all of our lives. Poets and songwriters come the closest to capturing the feeling. In the musical flow of poetry and song, listeners often experience moments of touching the intangible, inhaling the transcendent.

It is also possible in the simplicity of daily life, through slow, conscious breathing. With each breath, you and I encounter God in all we see as well as in each other. If we are in no hurry, we can meet within the timeless. Rushing, we miss each other…and everything else. In one single moment is life, death, and eternity. Pause, breathe, and that awareness opens up inside you and all around you.