Be yourself and live Fearlessly- Message from the other side

                   I am been thinking a lot about the special message received by Anita Moorjani, Author of Dying to be Me, after she died and came back to life. The message she received was simple and beautiful. but certainly much more complicated than I am about to describe. Essentially, the meaning of life as she was told is to 'always be yourself and live fearlessly'. She was also told during this near-death-experience that her cancer was due to having lived a life of 'fear'. Fear of disappointing, fear of fitting in, fear of dying, fear of not being enough.
   
                    Live fearlessly. As an art teacher who loves her job and who works daily to encourage not only her students, but everyone around her to just to be the very best versions of themselves, I think I am on the right track. In reflecting further though, I think it's only recently that I started living fearlessly. Only a few years back I sensed in me remaining lots of 'worth' issues, and this constant need to be what others felt I should be, rather than what I wanted myself to be. I could have easily gone along life like so many and never reflect on these big questions. Like a great friend said to me yesterday, "You can easily be 70 and have never dealt with any of your issues."

                    My self-reflective journey began with a small little seed of ideas planted in a TV show. It began by watching episodes of Kung Fu in the early 80s. Much to my family's unknowing I was slowly being trained into the basic tenets of Eastern religion and to some really valuable and life-changing concepts that would shape the rest of my life. The ideas embedded in these shows were those of having this inner knowing, the ideas of your external actions reflecting your inner self, the idea of 'working on yourself', and last, the idea that you already have all you need to be perfect. As I grew I always navigated towards authors and books that reflected those early ideas that always made so much sense to me, they spoke to my soul. I read and navigated towards books and authors that described god as love and rejected all books and religions that maintained a dysfunctional humanistic and angry versions of our god. Dysfunction, hatred, anger are all imperfect qualities and I knew deep in my hart that god was love. In love there is no room for these lesser human-made frequencies. Books became my teacher, these authors were my role models. To this day, I read books that help me change my life, make me improve my ideas and make me a better version of who I already am. To me it was never enough to just read the big name books of major religions, such as the Bible, The Torah, The Koran. I always felt that these do not have to be one's only or one's primary source of inner-reflection books. There are literally hundreds of amazing sources of inspiration out there that can be transformative and life-changing. Which one has changed your life?