Healed by a Dying Woman

As I face the challenges coming up lately, it is very easy to go directly into a negative reaction. Yet around the corner keeps coming a greater desire to love. As I let it in, I feel soothed and calmed. It helps me understand where others are coming from without getting emotionally involved. I can choose my stance in the situation with greater strength and even-mindedness. And it reminds me of when I first discovered how helpful it is for me to love and feel my love received.

I had just spent over two months in an isolated and tense situation in the foothills of Assisi, Italy with the man I was dating who was a leader and minister in our spiritual community. Just about everything that could be wrong with a relationship was wrong with ours. No matter how much I tried to communicate my feelings and desires they were met with righteous reasons why they should not be tended to. With his position as a leader and minister I felt I was supposed to trust his word over my feelings. Later I was to realize those were just excuses to cover his weaknesses.

I did not have any close friends in the community and did not want to do a thing that could taint his name as a leader. I had no car, internet, nor phone. I felt very disconnected. I was alone. I was left to myself to handle the struggles going on inside me. Towards the end of my time in Italy these feelings peaked with me crying so hard my nose started bleeding. His berating and manipulating me did not stop.

Now it was time for India! I was sitting in the living room in this foreign country of a family my partner worked with. The conversation revolved around complaints about politics I knew nothing about. I had no interest in engaging. I also had a growing headache.

I did not have a headache for a long time but used to get them frequently. Headaches were always a sign something was really off in myself. When they discussed going to the office to do some work soon I announced I had a headache and would take a taxi back to my hotel.

While all of this was happening the grandmother of the family was stuck in her bed in the other room. The day before my visit to their home she had fallen ill all of a sudden losing her ability to communicate or take care of herself. They were worried she was going to die.

A couple minutes later I felt as if I heard an angel’s voice in my head telling me to visit the grandma. It seemed like an odd thing to do with an elderly woman I did not know. Yet I decided to listen to the voice and asked where the grandma’s room was.

As I walked into the tiny simple room, one of the grandma’s daughters was sitting on the bed crying. Something drew me to hold one of the grandma’s hands and send her healing love. The whole time I was holding her hand she was talking to me. Between her accent and her illness, it sounded more like babbling to my ears.

Her babbling seemed like it was filled with joy and as if she was communicating a message for me from God. It brings me to tears just thinking about this as I write this story. Out of all the people who had been around me, it was this older woman, whom I had never met before and who was sick, who connected with me. We were caught in this trance of sharing love for nearly fifteen minutes.

I started to head for the door but the daughter caught me first. She asked me if her mother would survive. I told her I did not know but whatever happens it seemed her mother was happy.

I returned to the living room and sat in my spot without thinking about what had just happened. A few minutes later one of the family members asked me how I was feeling. I checked in on myself and realized my headache was completely gone.

The next day we found out she had made it through the night. They had an astrologer visit who said that night was a critical night and she may have died. They expressed gratitude towards me for helping heal her even though she probably helped me more.

I felt completely different inside. All that time I just needed to be able to offer my love and have it be received. And it was so healing to offer it and not bottle it.

For most of the rest of the trip, even as tensions rose around me in the situation I was in, I was able to hold myself in peace. In the book Affirmations for Self-Healing, Swami Kriyananda shared, “One finds love not by being loved, but by loving…The more we love as channels for God’s love, the more we can understand that His is the one love in all the universe.”

Tools to help you expand your heart:

Practice the yoga posture Ardha Matsyendrasana and affirm “I radiate love and goodwill to soul friends everywhere.” For instructions on how to do this posture, I recommend the book Spiritual Yoga by Gyandev McCord.

From the book Affirmations for Self-Healing by Swami Kriyananda on love affirm, “I will love others as extensions of my own Self, and of the love I feel from God,” and pray, “O Infinite One, make me a channel for Thy love! Through me, reach out to sow seeds of love in barren hearts everywhere.”