Up and coming author Anita Moorjani's debut book Dying To Be Me is undoubtedly one of the most important books of 2012. It is one of the most inspiring memoirs I have ever read. In these pages Anita shares in the most touching and heart felt of ways her personal history, growing up different, the tension cultural expectations created within her and the events leading up to her getting cancer and experiencing the most magnificent of near death experiences at the time her organs began to shut down in the final hours of advanced stage Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
During her NDE Anita awakened to a heightened state of awareness which allowed her to understand why she had cancer (among many other things) and accessed a state of unconditional loving energy that allowed her to gain full recovery of her health.
I need not elaborate on Anita's story any further, as it can be read in her NDE account at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website, and there are also many different interviews available online for those who are unfamiliar with her story. However, if you are looking for a cliché NDE book with tunnels, white lights, angels and God you will be disappointed. This NDE transcends all cultures and all religions.
I would like to emphasize that despite being a book about a near death experience, it has a much broader appeal than most other NDE books and is in my opinion multi-disciplinary. It is of huge value to anyone interested in the areas of near death experiences, death, dying and bereavement, cancer, spontaneous remission, the mind-body relationship, mind-body and energy medicine, reincarnation, or to anyone who simply wishes to examine how the universe and life works in general. It even makes a compelling case for the skeptics of spiritual phenomena, as her spontaneous remission so close to death is one of a kind and medically documented and verified. In addition to Anita's wonderful message, I would hope that her views on cancer provide food for thought for oncologists around the world, and change the way the world and in particular the medical profession thinks about, views and treats cancer.
What impresses me most about this book and about Anita's message is that her NDE pertains much more to life and living than it does to death and what we can expect in the afterlife (although this topic is also covered in the book). It helps us eliminate the clutter in our lives and to focus more on what makes us happy and brings us joy in life, as well as eliminating any existential phobias we may have stemming from the relatively unknown realm of death.
Often spiritual books can create more existential fears and tensions rather than alleviate them with mention of concepts of sin, karma, pre-life planning of car accidents and illnesses, "soul lessons", soul levels, hell, punishment etc. These books usually have some sort of agenda to push, but luckily this is not the case with Anita Moorjani, she is a breath of fresh air, something I am eternally grateful for.
Anita doesn't claim to be a spiritual guru, she doesn't peddle any sort of agenda as many other spiritual authors do. She has no dogma to force onto the reader. Instead she has an amazing story to tell (which she does with amazing dexterity in the English language), and shares from her NDE the many insights she gained into her own life, her own cancer and life and living in general, insights that anyone can benefit from.
For me Anita's NDE and the insight she gained from it tremendously helped me overcome much cognitive dissonance which came from reading various New Age spiritual, self help type books, and put life into a much clearer and more logical perspective. At the same time Anita offers an outlook on life that is relatively easy to implement-DO WHAT FEELS RIGHT FOR YOU, DON'T DO WHAT DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT FOR YOU, everything else in life is secondary.
If you are embarking on a quest for spiritual knowledge or if you have been on one for many years, don't buy 30 New Age books on soul mates, twin flames, soul lessons, law of attraction, indigo children, soul progression, karma etc, such books have little to do with the greater cosmic reality and in my opinion, for the most part, the concepts discussed in them are misconceptions at best, in other cases just plain lies. Such books can create quite a destructive and toxic belief system and can make living life more difficult and complicated than it needs to be.
Instead, just buy this book. It will help you remove the clutter from your mind, your way of thinking and from your life as well. The biggest myth that Dying To Be Me dismisses is that being spiritual or living life needs to be hard work, that we need to work hard for a favoured position in the afterlife, that we need to suffer and make sacrifices for spiritual advancement, enlightenment and perfection (such beliefs are the foundation of all religions and New Age thought). In the absence of such ideas Anita provides us with a much lighter and fulfilling perspective on life, allowing us to become more effective at being ourselves.
In Anita's own words "If you think you need to work hard at being spiritual then you haven't got it yet."
Dying To Be Me is undoubtedly a ten star book, a book with universal appeal and with a message that will never lose its relevance to spirituality and to living a happy and fulfilled life.
