Do you believe in the presence of the heavens among us? Do you think heaven is a matter of going beyond our reality? Heaven is present, but I also believe that we can live in heaven here and now when we truly and freely love one another. The keyword of the heavens is always love.
Eben Alexander shares his near-death experience for about one week in his book, “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife.” As a highly trained neurosurgeon at Harvard University, he lay in a coma because of a brain infection and experienced a spiritual breakthrough at the age of 54.
Along his journey, he encountered spiritual reality. The core truth he realized is that ``You are loved and cherished dearly. You have nothing to fear." This recognition of “being loved and cherished” led him to utmost freedom and healing.
Nobody will deny that love is the most important and primary virtue in our lives. Everybody wants to love and to be loved. We are not fully and deeply satisfied, content, or happy unless we experience unconditional love.
Eben led quite a successful life, but the inner hurt still lingered in his subconscious. He was not fully free from the origins of his birth. More or less, being an orphan deserted by his own parents and becoming an adopted son cast a shadow over his life.
His seven days' of near-death experience touched his unconscious memory and created a turning point in his life; his “earthworm vision” has been transformed into broad-minded perspectives leading to the true reality of being loved from the very beginning of creation.
Almost for a week, his family and friends held him tightly by the hands, and that warm-hearted and ardent union brought him back out of his coma.
His near-death experience led me to ponder my childhood experiences as well. Even the slight thought of abortion can affect our whole life unless it is fully healed and purified.
I didn't know the reason why I was so gloomy and melancholy when I was a child, and that mood went on up to adolescent age. Only when I was spiritually trained to be a nun during the Novitiate of the Convent did I discover that, long ago, my mother was reluctant to give birth to me. She thought she was too old and tired to have a baby.
Nevertheless, I was born because my father advised her not to think of abortion at all. He said that every human being is born naturally with blessings. It took a considerable amount of time for me to feel and recognize that I have been loved and cherished from the very beginning of my being. I still remember I shed many tears during the Novitiate.
Nowadays, I notice so many people are struggling with depression. The exact causes of depression might differ from one to another, but the issue of depression has become a common noun. In many cases, the basic cause of our unhappiness is rooted in the lack of unconditional love.
As Eben and many others have experienced, the most effective remedy or medicine is the unconditional and compassionate love of God. Our basic need to love and to be loved is inherent deeply in the heart of everybody. Sincerely, each of us wants to be detached and transcend the fundamental desire to love and to be loved, but it instinctively exists and moves around in our subconscious.
Only by experiencing unconditional love can we truly be happy and free. But human love only cannot free and liberate us to the fullest. Much more than that, through reading the Bible, living the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and praying constantly can we become free to love others unconditionally.
The Korea Times/ Thoughts of the Times/ 17 June 2014
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2014/06/162_159203.html
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