Feel Good Guru

He who binds himself to joy, does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity’s sunrise. William Blake

When the high-pitched shrill of an ambulance’s siren blares past me on the road, I usually recoil; startled, concerned. But on the evening the siren blared for me, I neither saw the flashing lights, the stretcher, the oxygen mask, nor heard the gasping of the surrounding crowd. In fact the anxiety that had been building within me for days was curiously gone. There was no more reason for concern… I had floated up.

Read more of Kelly Sullivan Walden’s inspirational story:

Life as I knew it was over.

That morning my husband and I found ourselves doing something I never dreamed we would; packing up our Los Angeles home, to move to Santa Fe, New Mexico. As I wrapped my cherished belongings in newspaper, my grief was overwhelming. Can you imagine moving from the Hollywood Hills, just a few houses from the Sunset Strip, to a yurt in the middle of the high desert? It is beautiful in Santa Fe…don’t get me wrong. But, let’s face it….it’s not Hollywood.

Being a native LA girl, I grew up believing that the beauty of nature was something to be enjoyed on a vacation, as a novelty, a departure from “normal” life- not something to wake up to everyday. Won’t all that clean air kill a person? As I packed, grieving the loss of what had been my hometown for the past 40 years, I sobbed an ocean or two. And, if my anguish wasn’t enough I was also famished; unable to eat due to an appointment with my dentist, that afternoon.

A few hours and a face full of Novocain later, my husband and I joined our friends at our favorite Indian restaurant for a farewell dinner. By the time we were all seated around the table, my blood sugar was at an all time low and I was ravenous.

The dinner and the company were both delicious, and I savored every decadent bite of the conversation. But all too soon, as our plates emptied and the button on my pants was threatening to pop…the room began to spin. The restaurant’s orange and yellow sequined tapestry became bright and splotchy, and the spicy scent of curry became particularly potent. The swirl of words and laughter about me shifted into a slow motion surround-sound. ‘…Am I having an anxiety attack? Am I fainting?… Dying?’ Closing my eyes, I leaned – actually dropped – onto my husband’s shoulder.

A parade of activity overwhelmed my brain, more than I could track. The floodgates were open, and I couldn’t keep up. Just beneath the flurry of mental activity, a thousand butterflies were flapping their wings inside my chest. All I could do was surrender. And when I did, I began to slip away.

It was as if I was being squeezed through a cosmic birth canal. Everything went suddenly black, like a velvet curtain veiling a kaleidoscope of color. Then, I felt an inner ‘snap’ and I took off like a pebble from a slingshot. …I began floating up.

On the other side of the birth canal, I felt suddenly light, free, blissful – expansive! Just moments before I’d been confined to ego prison inside an earth-bound body. Now, I felt liberated, like I had just become the entire sky!

I soared through inner space like a bird, weightless, timeless, enormous…I didn’t feel love – I was Love; an entire universe of Love. All separation began to dissolve and intermingle; the way an ocean wave topples over a sand castle, blending everything into oneness. Rising from glory to greater glory, I realized that there was no end to love; no ceiling, no walls. And just when I thought it couldn’t possibly feel any better, there was more…eternities more; like thick honey pouring itself through my awareness, in an never-ending expanse of bliss.

Through veil after veil I moved, realizing this is the way Life should be lived; dancing gracefully from one experience to the next. Never clinging to the encounter or building an entire ego-universe around it. But rather, living with a lightness of being that allowed me to be in this world- apart of each experience, but not of it – any of it.

As if watching a Technicolor movie, I could see that the building anxiety I experienced earlier that day was ridiculous. In fact, from this new perspective it was obvious that all suffering was based on our attachment to forms; whatever we see as slipping away, not ours to have, or hasn’t come …yet (i.e. a relationship, status, a car, house, friendship, or even a state of being).

From my sky-high point of view, I scanned through all the ways a human being might suffer: Auschwitz, the death of a love, gridlock traffic on the 405; and I saw that every struggle, be it physical, emotional, or psychological, was a choice. We each possess the ability to be bound by our attachments to something, someone, or somewhere – (like my stubborn connection to L.A.) – or be boundless, like the sky.

We need not be limited by our struggles; for we are more than our little teacup container. In the great expanse of things we are one with God, limitless. From my Big Picture perspective I saw that it is possible to live Life as a great adventure; savoring every delicious moment, every relationship, every sunset, kiss and accomplishment. Then, when the time is right, let it all go; freely moving on, without grief toward the next adventure, just over the horizon.

As this knowledge touched me, I felt a tremendous relief, a graduation from this world’s silly game of attachment. I was off the hook… free. But, in the midst of this elation I became aware of the turmoil taking place in the restaurant around me. I could hear distant worried voices urging me to, ‘Come back!’

Sensing that the top half of my body was slumped into my husband’s lap, I tried to open my eyes. That failing, I attempted to reassure everyone that I wasn’t dead, but all I could muster was a strangely disembodied voice. “I’m not in my body now. Don’t worry about me. I am really ok.”

Eventually my eyelids responded to my brain’s commands and I looked up into my husband’s worried face. “No matter what happens, don’t be sad for me. I am so happy and better than I’ve ever been. Don’t worry.”

A team of paramedics appeared, bustling around me. “Hey guys, stop all the fuss. I’m really alright. I’m sure there are other places you need to be right now.”

No one seemed reassured by my words.

“Kelly, you’ve got to get back into your body.” I heard a friend at the table declare. “Nobody will stop worrying until you come back. Maybe if we were in a different place it would be ok, but we are in a restaurant in Santa Monica…your lips are blue and your face is ice cold. You’ve really got to come back in your body.”

It may have been a combination of her pleading voice and my co-dependence, but I realized I couldn’t continue to play in infinity. My loved ones were suffering; it didn’t feel fair. So with a conscious effort I squeezed the sky back into the teacup that was my body. I willed myself back; with all my might I pushed the universe through the needle’s eye and back into this small, chilly, fleshy container called ‘Kelly’. That’s when I realized the simplest, yet most profound observation of all…

I am NOT my body.

As I maneuvered myself back into my flesh bag, like diving off a cliff into a thimble, in slow motion—I thought about all the patients I’d seen in hospitals drooling with a distant stare. I once felt sorry for them, but no more. For now I know that when someone checks out of their human frame, they’re not gone. They have merely checked in to a different reality; one that is infinitely more peaceful and beautiful than this three-dimensional ‘attachment’ we humans struggle to cling to.

Life as I knew it was over. I had seen the Big Picture. And with that ‘boundless’ knowledge, I returned…

As my stretcher was being loaded into the ambulance I abruptly sat up, startling everyone. “I’m fine,” I announced with a matter-of fact nonchalance, “Just had a low-blood sugar drop. No need to occupy a perfectly good ambulance.”

After the dumbfounded paramedic regained his composure, he checked my pulse again. And scratching his head in disbelief, he agreed that my blood pressure and nearly flat-line state had indeed returned to normal. I successfully willed the sky into a teacup…whew!

***

A few weeks after we moved to New Mexico (without any kicking and screaming from me,
thank you) I ran into Dannion Brinkley; the New York Times bestselling author of “Saved By The Light.” He has died three times, come back to tell the tale, and is known affectionately as ‘Dr. Death’. Asking his opinion about what happened to me, Dannion’s perspective was illuminating.

“…Your guides must have needed to show you something. They are opportunistic little
buggers. They found a window of opportunity and they nabbed you. It wasn’t your time to go, so they let you come back. If you’re smart, you’ll take in the message you received, share it and integrate it into your life. It is a gift when they do that…it can change your life.”

These days I’m enjoying the adventure of being here in Santa Fe, though the transition has not been entirely without struggle. Still, overall, there’s been a marked improvement in my ability to glow with the flow. At least now when I start feeling those familiar pangs of attachment, I think about the day I “floated up” and I’m reminded that I may be in this world, but I am not of it.

And lately, I’ve noticed that when I hear the high-pitched shrill of an ambulance’s siren, I no longer recoil, but actually catch myself smiling; for I know some human who thinks they are the size of a teacup is about to discover they are really… the sky.

Kelly Sullivan Walden is a dream therapist and author of “I Had The Strangest Dream”. She is also the  founder/creator of The Dream Project, a grade 6-12 educational program that empowers students to discover and invent solutions to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).