heart opening

May All Our Ceilings Become Floors

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Hi Loves,

I was lucky enough to be in San Jose this weekend for the last stop of the Life You Want Tour and I gotta say; it was a privilege to breathe the same air as Oprah and all the great teachers that spoke, told stories and brought us to tears…every time.
I’m still processing. I’m sure I’ll write some take-aways soon.

Below is what Elizabeth Gilbert (my new BFF) wrote about her incredible journey. I’m sure if you’d have told this author a few years ago that she would be giving 45 minute inspirational talks to auditoriums of over 10,000 people in 8 different cites across the US she would have thought you were crazy!
Yet, that’s become her latest accomplishment – touring with Oprah.

Dream big, then surrender, because the Universe has even bigger dreams for you than you could ever imagine.
xoxJ

*Thank you to my beloved sister Susan for making this weekend happen and keeping me laughing the ENTIRE time…even through tears. I love you.

Take it away Liz-

DON’T WASTE THE TEACHINGS…

Dear Ones –

Well, it’s FINISHED. The incredible ride of Oprah’s The Life You Want Tour has come to an end.

8 cities, 8 arenas, 8 dresses (ah, the dresses!), and 8 chances for me to soak in the lessons of some of the wisest teachers alive.

I feel so changed by this experience, in ways I didn’t even know needed changing. Somebody asked me yesterday what my next quest will be, and I can honestly say that all my questing is going to be internal for a while — working on OPENING even more. Opening to more grace, to more compassion, to more spirit, to more empathy, to more love, to more joy. I just feel like knocking down whatever walls and ceilings and doors I have built up in my soul over the years..knocking it down and letting all the light in — all the light there ever was.

It’s good to have a goal, and mine is clear now: MAKE (EVEN) MORE ROOM FOR GRACE.

Last night I had the opportunity to thank Oprah in person. It was so important to me to get it right, to communicate not only my gratitude, but what I am taking away from this incredible encounter. I told her that when Nelson Mandela died, the most moving tribute I read to him was a simple line somebody put on Twitter:

“If you were lucky enough to live in the time of Mandela, do not waste the teachings he had to offer you.”

Well. I consider myself very lucky to have lived in the time of Oprah Winfrey, and I consider myself insanely lucky to have witnessed her goodness in person. (As I was able to tell her last night: I’ve never seen a moment where she lets her greatness interfere with her goodness…which is a beautiful lesson in and of itself.) And the only gift I could think to give her for all that she has offered to me is my sincere promise that I will not waste her teachings.

Gonna carry it forward.

Gonna let in all the light I can reach for.

I’m talking about some next-level spiritual business here, my loves! (As one of the other teachers said on stage yesterday: “The ceiling you walked in here with is the floor you are walking out on.” Cuz we are moving UP, UP, UP.)

May all our ceilings become floors.

May we never waste each others’s greatest teachings.

Thank you all for coming on this unforgettable journey with me!

ONWARD!
LG

Another God wink
My sister took this picture of Liz and me in the lobby of our hotel on Friday afternoon while everyone was milling around waiting for the event to start. I, as usual, was foraging for food…and then there she was. We hugged – a lot (she’s a hugger) and talked, and I must say, she is as incredibly kind and down to earth a person as you will EVER meet.

xox

Heaven Is For Real, But Sometimes They Send You Back

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We first met on December 18, 2000. Then he died. On this, the nineteenth anniversary of our first blind date here’s a recounting of just what happened from back in 2014. This is our very personal Christmas miracle.


“Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.” – Chinese proverb

He died for a minute and 56 seconds. His heart stopped and his breathing ceased. I’d just say 2 minutes, but hospitals and doctors are exact. They are to-the-second precise. So, when he tells the tale; he died for a minute and 56 seconds, because four seconds more would be way too long.
Just writing this makes my eyes well up.

He…is my husband.

In December of 2000 he contracted bacterial spinal meningitis on an airplane. Or as I now call them, flying, metallic, germ delivery systems.
He’s a car guy, often referred to as a gear head. That second week of December he took a one-way flight from LA to Houston to look at a car, which he then purchased and drove back with a buddy. Trouble was, he boarded that flight with a bad head cold. It was mid-December, everyone’s sick with something around the holidays. Right?
As luck would have it, that was just the route an opportunistic virus used to infect him. The meningitis rode in, like a sinister villain in a spaghetti western, on the back of streptococcus pneumonia. Once the pneumonia had chewed up his lungs, to the point where they resembled snowflakes, all the meningitis had to do was dismount, and stroll on in.

Meningitis is a jerk.

He’s a fragile, lazy, coward of a virus. If everything isn’t just so, he takes his badass self and leaves town. But pneumonia is efficient and the path had been prepared, so he set up camp in my husband’s lungs.

Three days after he got back to LA, as pneumonia went about doing its dirty work, he felt pretty lousy. Meanwhile, meningitis was still lurking in the shadows. He felt lethargic. By then he was probably running a fever, but men don’t check that stuff. He just got out of bed, showered and dressed. He had plans that night.
He had arranged a blind date with someone who was recommended by a friend’s girlfriend. She sounded…intriguing. And she had big boobs. Yep, he was just that shallow.

That someone was me.

The blind date story is epic and meant for another day. We got married nine months later, so I’m gonna say it went pretty well.

I’ve always been fascinated by near-death experiences (NDE’s.) Now I live with someone who’s had one and he’d be the first to tell you, it profoundly changed him, it set him free.

Two days after our first date, he drove the new car up to San Jose, with his dog, to celebrate the Christmas holidays with his younger brother, his wife and their two young kids.
He was driving five hours to cook the Christmas bird.

If a turkey is involved you drop everything and call my husband. He is the turkey Whisperer. THE turkey cooker extraordinaire. The next morning he did all the prep, in between long stints in bed. He was trashed, feeling sicker with each passing hour and had developed the headache from hell. Now, he figured, he had a hell of a bad flu bug.

I will remind you, my husband is a BIG guy. He’s 6’3″ 230 lbs of big handsome, and that helped save his life.
When he makes a promise, he keeps it. It’s one of the things I admire about him, and damn it, he cooked that turkey. From his sickbed, even though he never had a bite.

The next day he got out of bed once and collapsed. The paramedics were called and he was rushed to a local teaching hospital that was affiliated with Stanford.

During transport, the paramedics called him Ralph. “Stay with us Ralph. Any pain Ralph?” My husband’s name is Raphael. I’ve been told they do that to piss you off and keep you conscious and talking. It worked. “My name is Raphael” he kept correcting them.
Genius.
But it was short-lived.
His brother told the doctor all he knew, that Raphael had complained of a terrible headache and the flu. He used to have migraines but this was different. The ER was about to send him home with migraine meds, but his brother refused. He’d never seen Raphael that ill. HE really saved his brother’s life.

Just about that time, it ceased to matter. His blood test came back with an astronomical white cell count, and he had gone into a coma. Now suspecting meningitis, they did a spinal tap. So normally our spinal fluid is clear and under pressure. Normal is: 70 – 180 mm H20, his reading was over 400 and the fluid was thick and black, like oil. As the story goes, it was right about this point in the evening where he flat-lined. After they brought him back, they wrote TERMINAL on his chart, pumped him full of morphine and wheeled him into a room to die.

It was during this time that Raphael remembers a foggy, all-white environment, no walls, ceiling or floor. He could see all sides at once. The best thing was, he was out of pain, his head no longer hurt.

He was looking at three beds which contained three Raphael’s.

The Raphael on the right was saying: I am suffering, why would I stay in this bed, I want to go where it’s peaceful. Where there’s no pain. Pointing at a bright white tunnel.
He represented the physical self.

The Raphael in the bed on the left said: Go ahead and go! Quit complaining. That’s fine, it really affects no one except those that are left behind. He represented the intellectual self.

The Raphael in the middle was the observer. He just listened to the two others arguing. He just WAS. No attachment. He represented the soul.

That white tunnel was the path home. It was a silent, pain-free, deliciously peaceful place where he wanted to stay forever.
But they started his heart and he came back.

That night a female doctor very much like Dr. House from TV, took a look at his chart. She specialized in ONLY terminal cases. Since it was a teaching hospital, she was allowed to literally throw everything in her extensive medical arsenal at these patients, searching for a cure. It was equal parts medicine, alchemy, and wishful thinking. She did everything she could, then she just handed it over to a higher power. Her success rate was 3%. I know, calm down, they were terminal after all.

It was the fight of his life and he was on the ropes. At that point, his size was the only thing saving him.

By that time the hospital had reported their diagnosis of bacterial meningitis to the CDC. Thirteen people from his flight to Houston had come down with it, four had died. Raphael’s brother was told to get his whole young family tested. It was a stressful, scary time.

I remember hearing it on the news. It struck me because one of the women who died was my age at the time, 43. Shit. I have to get on a plane in five days, I worried.

Since he was away, I had no idea he was even sick. We only had our one blind date, with a promise of a second on December 28th. He never showed. I called twice, which was only mildly desperate, and both times his cellphone went right to message. So I left for New Year’s Eve in Miami. When I didn’t hear from him by the end of the first week of January I told my friends, “He better be abducted by aliens or dead by the side of the road, because those are the only two excuses I’ll accept.”

Yikes! We still laugh about that.

His medical file is as thick as a phone book with the lists of drugs and scans his doctor administered that first night. There is even a straight jacket included. She did say he put up a hell of a fight to live. Apparently so.
By the middle of the second day of her treatment, he was slightly improved. She determined he would live, but he’d be a vegetable from the cerebral fluid pressure and its horrible condition.
No brain could never recover from that.

His family, his siblings, who were all now at the hospital, looked at each other to determine who would care for him and for how many months.

A couple of days later, with the determined doctor holding one hand, one of his sisters holding the other, he woke up. Just like that.

Startled, the doctor shooed everyone out of the room and started asking him questions, which he answered…perfectly…in detail. Not just, What’s your name? But since he’s an architect, and French, she quizzed him on the architectural intricacies of the Pompidou Centre, even speaking French with him. It was evident he could see her, he could hear her, and he was still his whip-smart self. THAT she could never explain. She considered him a miracle. Everyone at the hospital did. Honestly.

Finally, he asked what day it was. When he found out it was January, he said: I have to call Janet. For those standing around him, some doubt set in, because no one had heard of any Janet. They thought he had an imaginary friend. Uh oh, brain damage.

Nope, apparently, infatuation survives near death. I love that part of the story. It’s like a movie.

He remembers dying as easy, with nothing to fear.
He recalls that he had a decision to make, and either way everything was going to be okay.
Afterword, all the outpouring of love, together with the morphine, broke open his heart—and he was a changed man.

Luckily, he decided to stay and give me a second date, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Happy nineteen years baby! I love you.

Carry on,
Xox

The Symptoms of a Heart Attack

The Symptoms of a Heart Attack

Okay! Now that I’ve got your attention!
In this month of the heart.
I’m not talking about the symptoms of a broken heart, or a dis-eased
heart, but rather an attack of another kind, that of an open heart.

What are the symptoms of a heart opening attack?
Can you guess?
Do you think you’ve felt them?
Let’s see…

Unprovoked crying.
You know the kind, sentimental commercials, cute babies, puppies. And for the brave few that can walk the earth this way; any exchange with another human being. A smile, a nod, just looking into another’s eyes, can cause tears. These are tears of recognition. You see the Divine in that person, and it touches you with its ET finger. and goes straight to your heart,

Grace.
Your life is dry without it. Your heart must be open to attract it. May be mistaken for luck or some innate ability. Don’t be fooled. Grace, true grace, helps you navigate a heart opening.

Generosity. 
When in the midst of a heart opening attack, you may feel unusually generous. You’re thinking money, and it can be about giving money away.
Dr. Wayne Dyer tells the story, that on one of his recent birthdays, he gave away cash all day. He was compelled to do it, and reported that it was his best birthday EVER!
But generosity has many faces Time is a precious commodity these days and we can all get pretty stingy with doling it out. How about sharing time with your spouse, your kids or a friend. Really being present, listening and laughing together can go a LONGGGGGG way!
It also assists in opening their hearts.

Bliss.
Un warranted bliss. Now THAT’S an advanced symptom.
Feeling blissfully happy…for no apparent reason. Giddy, slap happy, giggly, with a silly grin on your face…like the Dali Lama.
Yep. All symptoms of a heart opening.

Touch.
A kind of secondary symptom is wanting to touch people. In a good way, in a kind way, in a loving way.
Hugging, hands on shoulders, holding their hand, even touching someone’s face, which is sort of social taboo. Have you ever marveled at how soft another person’s skin is?? Even a man’s? That’s crazy, isn’t it?…And pretty wonderful.
A shaman once told me that it was important to be touched by another human being every day if possible. Otherwise your skin does not remain soft, it starts to harden.
Touching people in a kind way, is a sign you’ve really turned critical.
Your heart opening attack is in full swing!

Vulnerability.
SO great that this way of being is getting the respect it deserves these days.
Thanks to the daring Brene Brown and others, it is becoming okay, and even desirable to show vulnerability. The ability to do so, shows you are in the advanced stages of your heart opening. It is not to be taken lightly, and is not recommended for the faint of heart (ha!). Once you commit, you can’t go back. You won’t want to.

It is a far better thing, to feel these symptoms of a heart expansion, rather than the constriction that leads to the other serious kind of heart attack. They can actually feel just as scary and uncomfortable to the uninitiated, but take the ride, it is well worth it.

There are more.
Will you share some of your symptoms?
XoxJanet 

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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