I just finished reading this amazing book from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross that I picked up from the library and I came across this timely quote:
“My wish is that you pass on to many people a little more love. Think about the fact that those people for whom you select the most costly Christmas presents are often those people you fear the most, and for whom your feelings are the most negative ones. I doubt if it is truly necessary for you to give someone a big present – unconditional love would have been more appropriate.”
For those who don’t know who Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is, she is the woman who created the now-familiar stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). At the end of WWII, the allied forces were freeing the concentration camps and were badly in need of medical staff. So at 14 she ran away from her home in Switzerland and joined the Red Cross. When she entered Auschwitz she saw that people had carved butterflies into the walls of the concentration camp shortly before they died. This symbol of the butterfly stuck with her her whole life. This idea that the body is just the cocoon and we shed it when we die.
Kubler-Ross went on to become a physician and then a psychiatrist, working exclusively with the dying. After her own near-death experience, she focused her research on NDEs, which is the subject of this book. The book itself is a quick read and I highly recommend it. If you enjoy reading the mystical experiences I’ve posted on this blog, then you’ll REALLY enjoy the book. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross writes about a myriad of mystical experiences she had that are a little out there even by MY standards. I found myself riveted the whole time I was reading!
Honestly, the courage she shows in this book really inspires me. This was a woman with a professional reputation and she freely put it all on the line in order to speak the truth about the things she had experienced. I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to do all that yet, but I hope I will be one day. I do have frequent worries that I have done irreparable damage to my career, but I also temper that with the fact that having a voice in this way has been so healing for me that I can’t deny it’s been completely worth it.