Despite feeling better and better and being able to do more things physically, like driving short distances, I didn’t expect there to be any changes with the MRI. In fact, I don’t think I had expectations either way. I was somehow in such a state of inner calm, that I wasn’t dwelling on what the MRI result might be. I had my MRI as if I were just going to the dentist. Unlike all the past MRI’s, I had zero anxiety, expectations or thoughts about it. I was told my results would be in 5 to 7 business days.

A Day I’ll Never Forget

On May 2nd, 2019, the very next day after my MRI, I had just finished doing my morning meditation when I heard my phone ding from a new email. I could have sworn I put my phone on silent, but OK, maybe not. When I opened the email, it was the Give to Give Foundation telling me that I had won the scholarship! I couldn’t believe it. I was so elated!

Less than one hour later, I came home to and just as I walked into the house my mother blurted out the words that I have wanted to hear for so long.

“The oncologist called with your MRI results. Your tumor has shrunk. Significantly.”

What? I couldn’t believe it! I quickly beelined to my computer to look up the report, and finally, saw the words written “a decrease in size from the previous study” and sure enough the tumor had shrunk quite a bit. Instead of being the size of a honeydew melon or a cantaloupe, it was now about the size of an orange. No wonder I had been feeling so much better.

What a relief! I celebrated the good news with my family. I figured, along with almost everyone else, that the proton beam radiation was finally doing its thing. A delayed response. (And I still think that’s somewhat true.)

Divine Downloads

But two nights later, I woke up at 3am, sitting straight up with a powerful thought that did not come from me, what I now call a divine download. The thought was this: You’re healing because of the meditations. Don’t you see why the two things happened at the same time? On the same day? (The scholarship award and the news that my tumor had shrunk) There’s a connection! I had previously thought this was a coincidence, but later I would learn it was a synchronicity.

The term synchronicity was first coined by psychologist Carl Jung “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.” In other words, a synchronicity is not mere happenstance. Many believe that a synchronicity is a sign from above that you’re on the right path.

Wow. So meditation was doing way more for me that I had thought. I won’t insist that meditation alone was responsible for the shrinkage, but I do believe (at the minimum) it was a powerful facilitator in getting my tumor to respond to the treatment. Perhaps, it cleared away the negative thought patterns that blocked my healing.

I have always known that disease is more than just a physical process, that it stems from our emotions, our repressed emotions, subconscious thought patterns which we may or may not be aware of. Meditations taps into that, disrupting our subconscious programming.

The Role of Meditation

In the meantime, everyone wanted to take responsibility for the success on the last MRI. The oncologists at the Oasis of Hope cancer clinic, the radiologist, the naturopathic, even my chiropractor. “You see? It’s just a delayed response to the treatment.” I didn’t argue with any of them; I’m sure all of those aspects played a part.

I allow people to come to their own conclusions, but the undeniable facts are that the tumor was growing and growing and growing and did not start to shrink until I started meditating. I had started meditating with Dr. Joe’s meditations in February of 2019 and three months later (May 2) had my first positive MRI, along with the synchronicity that occurred.

And I cannot forget Paul, the random stranger on the beach who “randomly” came up to me on the beach weeks before I would find out that I, myself, had cancer and told me he’d healed himself from cancer with meditation. Sometimes I think he was an angel sent from above to give me a hint on how I could heal myself.

Divine Interventions

About a year later, chills would run up and down my spine when I heard Amy Purdy’s interview with Oprah when she describes a man who, two weeks before her near-death experience in which she would lose both her legs to a meningitis infection, told her “not to be afraid when she crossed over to the other side.” Watch the three-minute clip below.

Whether these not-so-random strangers are angels, or humans with divine messages, these types of stories convince me that we’re not alone in our journeys. Like me, you’ve probably also heard plenty of stories in which a random stranger saved someone’s life, yet they could never find this person; they just disappeared.

Soon enough, July rolled around and I was ready to head to the 7-day Joe Dispenza meditation retreat. By this time, I was still on my pain medications: morphine and Gabapentin. But I had finally kicked the steroids and the other supplemental pain medications.

Reducing the morphine little by little, I was able to sit long enough to go out to eat in restaurants, stand long enough to cook and make my own meals and take long walks in the hills behind my parents’ house though I still walked with a limp due to nerve damage in my left leg. I was starting to put my normal life back together, looking to move back out on my own again. I had even gone back to work part-time, teaching ESL classes at UCSD.

Continue to My Story: Part Eight