Despite feeling better and better and being able to do more things physically, like sitting, walking more, and 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 and surrrender, that I wasn’t dwelling on what the MRI result might be. I went to my MRI appt. as if I were just going to the dentist. Unlike all the past MRI’s, I had zero anxiety, expectations or thoughts about it. 

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. When I opened the email, it was the Give to Give Foundation telling me that I had won the scholarship to the 7-day Joe Dispenza retreat! 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 shrunk. By a lot.”

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. It had shrunk by about 30%. 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

Two nights later, I woke up at 3am, sitting straight up with a powerful thought that hit me suddenly, 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 this 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 or a random coincidence. 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 or fear and anxiety that blocked my healing.

I have always known that disease is more than just a physical process, that it stems from our emotions and 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. 

Divine Interventions

About a year later, chills would run up and down my spine when I heard Paralympian 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6XjLyeDcKY

Whether these not-so-random strangers are angels simply or humans with divine messages, these types of stories convince me that we’re not alone in our journeys. You may have also heard 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 even went back to work part-time, teaching ESL classes at UCSD in June of that year. 

Continue to My Story: Part Eight