Tag: Mary Neal

The Ripple Effect of Your Life – Choosing What Effect You Will Have

Authors who have reported research into near-death experiences (NDE’s) invariably describe the “life review” as an integral part of the experience, along with many other elements.  While researchers and writers in the area of NDE’s confirm that every near-death experience is different in its dimensions and intensity for everyone (no two are exactly the same), they consistently report on the high level of incidences of people experiencing a life review during their NDE.  The character of the life review is typically individualised also.

The nature of the life review is richly described by Jeff Janssen, author of Your Life’s Ripple Effect: Discover How and Why Your Life Really Matters.  Jeff has researched more than 3,500 NDE cases and reported in depth on their nature and their impact on the individual involved.   He discusses his research findings and his book in a video podcast interview with Kirsty Salisbury.  Jeff explains the nature of life reviews along a number of dimensions and provides illustrations of each dimension from actual near-death experiences.  The dimensions include microscopic focus, panoramic view of the ripple effect of a person’s life and the resultant profound understanding experienced by the individual involved:

  • Microscopic focus: Jeff describes the level of detail experienced by many people undergoing a life review during their near-death experience.  He explains that the life review can encompass a person’s life from birth to the present day (or periods within) and entail highlighting every thought, word, action and feeling experienced by the individual involved over the span of the review.  Not only does this involve vivid recall but what is also exposed is person’s reasons for acting (or re-acting) in the way they did.  This microscopic view means that the individual involved cannot hide the real reasons through self-justifications, lack of self-insight or unfounded assumptions – the underpinning motivations and precursors are in the spotlight.
  • Ripple effects: Not only are the individual’s words, actions and reasons exposed but also the impact that these have on individuals who are directly impacted by them.  This is experienced in high definition – feeling the physical impact of a slap or punch, experiencing the pain, anguish, frustration and anger of another resulting from the focal individual’s words and actions.  So not only do you experience your own thoughts and feelings but also those of people directly impacted.  The ripple effect is disclosed through being able to observe what the impacted individual does as a result of the interaction with you – passing on their anger, resentment or other feelings to family members, co-workers and anyone else they interact with.  Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr. Mary Neal in her book chapter, Death on the River,  discusses her life review during her near death experience and explains that no event or words in her life were seen in isolation but starkly in terms of their “unseen ripple effects”.  She saw the impact of her words and actions on others “dozens of times removed” from the immediate situation and understood that “every human interaction” has a far more significant effect than we can possibly imagine with our limited vision and insight.  The effects of words and actions that express love and kindness towards another person appear in the life review as amplified feelings of joy, gratitude and appreciation by the recipients and others.
  • Profound understanding: people who report having a life review during their near-death experience also report that if there are witnesses present who can see the life review (in all its high definition visuals, e.g. in shared death experiences), they do not judge the person having the review.  Jeff confirms that this is true also of other beings who are seen by some people to be present, including the Supreme Being (or “God” for some people).  There is no external judgment as the life review proceeds, only one’s own evaluation based on full information, understanding and insight that is engendered by the life review process.  Kirsty and Jeff suggest that the life review serves to identify areas for learning and development – what they describe as “soul purpose”, e.g. to develop greater patience or empathy.  The life review can also throw light on one’s life purpose and may even show the way forward by identifying a unique way to contribute to the welfare of the broader community and the world at large.

Choosing the effect you will have

There is little we can do about our past words, actions and omissions other than seek and/or give forgiveness – a forgiveness meditation can be helpful here.  Research into life after a NDE and life review indicates that people affected by the experience tend to change their words and actions so that they will have a positive ripple effect in their interactions.  Jeff describes these changes on his website and I have summarised them here:

More of:

  • Focus on living a life of contribution and personal meaning
  • Courage and fearlessness to live authentically
  • Offering unconditional love
  • Purposely living life to the full
  • Peace, patience and joy.

Less of:

  • Being a victim and passive in the face of challenges
  • Focus on materialistic values
  • Hatred and envy of others
  • Being stressed and overwhelmed
  • Concern about what others think about them.

As a result of this changed orientation to a positive ripple effect in their lives, people left soul-destroying jobs, increased their connectedness with others (family, friends, colleagues) and ceased to gossip about or bad-mouth others. Some even chose to work with the dying in a hospice setting.

In his earlier book, 10 Life Changing Lessons from Heaven, Jeff identifies how we can increase the positive ripple effect from our words and actions – we can choose what kind of ripple effect we will have in the rest of our life.  The lessons include learning, loving, trusting, and appreciating without limit while fearlessly pursuing a purposeful life in the service of others.  These lessons from near-death experiences resonate strongly with what Frank Ostaseski describes as the “lessons from death and dying” – gleaned from providing end-of-life care to over a thousand people who have died in a hospice environment.

Reflection

Throughout his book on the 10 lessons, Jeff offers exercises to make us think about what we need to change in our lives.  He also offers a series of questions on his website that address each of the 10 lessons, including “accept non-judgmentally” and “appreciate regularly”.  He encourages us to explore these with our friends or a community of care.

Even small acts of kindness have a positive flow on effect and cause ripples that may improve the quality of other peoples’ lives.  One small example of this is the daily ritual of the “waving man”, Peter Van Beek,  who waved to everyone who passed him in a car as he stood near a roundabout with a broad and welcoming smile – the positive ripple effect of this small action was reported recently on his death.

The challenge as Kirsty points out is to avoid being obsessed with our past life and things that we cannot change but to look ahead and change our words and actions while pursuing a life of purpose, meaning and contribution.  As we grow in mindfulness through reflection, meditation and other mindfulness activities, we can develop the necessary self-awareness, insight, courage and fearlessness to make our life matter for others.

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Image by Peter H from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

 

Dealing with Your Feelings of Hurt and Resentment

When someone says or does something that hurts you or upsets you, you can jump to hasty judgments about the person – one hurtful event can precipitate your judgment that the person is superficial, thoughtless, vengeful, or any other derogatory assessment. Maintaining these thoughts enables you to justify your continual resentment about the individual.

In the previous post, I discussed how to overcome your hasty judgments through conscious breathing and noticing your thought stream. Here I want to explore meditation approaches to deal with the residual feelings of resentment, resulting from the hurtful words or actions of another person.

Noticing your thoughts and associated judgments

Building on the guided meditation provided in the previous post, it can be helpful to more fully explore your thoughts and associated judgments about a particular individual – basically, focusing more fully on your stream of thoughts about an individual which may be precipitating your negative feelings such as hurt, anxiety, anger or resentment. You can then follow your thought stream in relation to this person, e.g. “he is an attention seeker”, “a lazy person trading on his family’s influence”, “a troublemaker out to make life difficult” or “she is just another narcissistic person”. Having observed your thinking in relation to this “difficult” individual, you can explore the stereotype that you are accessing and note what limited information is shaping your hasty judgment.

Focusing on your feelings of hurt and resentment

The next step is to focus in on the feelings generated by your thoughts and judgments about the “difficult” individual. These feelings may be associated with an adverse interaction or a series of interactions. You need to name the feeling so that you can tame its intensity and its influence over your emotional state and your interactions with the individual (or your complaints to others about the individual). The challenge is to stay with the feeling and experience its intensity, while treating yourself with self-compassion, not negative judgment. What might be useful here is to use the R.A.I.N. meditation approach (recognise, accept, investigate, nurture).

Investigating your sensitivity

You might say by way of justification of your sustained resentment, that anyone in your position would have felt hurt. However, to maintain resentment towards an individual suggests a deep hurt born out of a specific sensitivity – such as feeling abandoned, abused, neglected or belittled in your past life (including in your childhood). As you identify and stay with the feeling of resentment, you can explore what in your past has given rise to your present emotions – what events or circumstances have increased your sensitivity in regard to the “difficult” individual’s words and actions. This requires a lot of personal honesty and what Brian Shiers describes as “granularity” in relation to your inner awareness. It is taking your meta awareness to another depth of self-understanding. Recognising these earlier influences on your reactivity will help you to understand your resentment and to sustain your self-compassion.

Exploring the other person’s perspective

In the heat of the moment of an adverse interaction, it is very difficult for you to see a conflict from the other person’s perspective. However, while you are developing your self-understanding through exploring your own sensitivities, you can explore the potential perspective of the other person and attempt to identify and understand the influences that may have shaped their perspective.

The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) provides a three-step analysis of a conflict based on what is involved in any conflict, i.e. content, feelings, personal identity. Looking at the other person’s perspective from this angle creates the opportunity for understanding, tolerance and compassion. Mary Neal, in her book on her near death experience, makes the point that true compassion for another person flows from fully understanding the individual and the multiple influences that shaped that person’s perspective and behaviour. Some of these influences are socially constructed perspectives.

Understanding the ingrained impact of social conditioning

For example, Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist specialising in cognitive neuroimaging, maintains that there is no innate difference between a male and a female brain. In her book, The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience That Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain, she provides a compelling case that influences at play (such as family, society, work and education) create a “gendered world” which, in turn, shapes gendered brains through the process of brain plasticity which continuously creates and modifies our neural pathways. So our responses to stimuli are deeply wired in our brain and these embodied neural pathways can lead to unconscious, automatic reactivity. So, it is necessary to “know yourself” as well as to know the other, in order to clear away resentment and replace it with self-compassion and compassion for the other person.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation on our thoughts, judgments, feelings and the influences shaping our reactivity (and that of other individuals), we can achieve a level of inner awareness and understanding that can reduce feelings of resentment and engender self-compassion and compassion for others.

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Image by Andi Graf from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.