For 60 years I have lived on this beautiful planet called Earth. For over 35 years I have been a healer, which positions me in shared intimate emotional spaces with others. Additionally, I meet and talk to thousands of people out on the road while teaching and counseling, giving me societal perspectives. Personally, I have faced a death call during a ten-year healing journey from neurological Lyme disease and misdiagnosed autoimmune illnesses. At the harrowing threshold where I looked death in the eye, I chose to live, but it meant I had to embrace a daunting, arduous passage of personal transformation. It was frightening and yet, I had a little boy to still raise with no husband or family at my side.

I felt a Spiritual presence as I hovered outside my very own sick body and I said ‘yes’ to the god-force near me. Honoring my intuition and the words I heard the angel of mercy beside me communicate, I accepted that I needed to create an entirely new grid to live from, if I was to heal and recover. This meant letting go of all my American emblems of success; my prolific career, income, savings, home, marriage, and identity, and surrender to an inner faith that I would be guided and somehow survive. This was frightening and surreal, but with so little left in my life to be hopeful about, I let go and surrendered to the angel and the message he communicated to me and lived simply and in humility.

I do not regret my choices and my return from ‘the other side’. I healed fully and moved forward in the world from bedridden and wheelchair bound, to touch the lives of millions. Yes, I was guided, and I listened to what I felt from my intuition. That is how I was healed and how I got here.

The books I birthed, the skyrocketing ‘Lyme Light Radio Show’ I launched, the thousands of hours traveling to speak at support groups and teach at higher education institutions were a far cry from the small New England hamlet I housed my homeopathic practice in for decades. I never dreamed a decimating illness would propel me on a mission to help a world in crisis, nor guide me to become a spiritual healer and leader. Many miracles are born to us. Our job is to remain open and receive. Not to push and over achieve. But I did not learn all this until I was 50 years old. In other words, it is never too late.

My lessons learned on the journey of personal transformation have been the most profound discoveries of my lifetime. What I discovered about the resiliency of the body, the mind, the spirit and our innate powers within, plus the access to the divine conduit to eternal love, changed me forever and put me on a path as a messenger and spiritual teacher. When I returned from the near-death experience, I was gifted with more healing energy than I even embodied before and the clarity of deeper perception and desire to live beyond my ego.

What I also know from my many years in healing work, is that as a society we are in a state of spiritual need. Many of us, no matter our age bracket, are confused or a bit ‘lost’ on how to feel more harmonious within our relationships, personal self, and life work. Basically, many of us feel ‘burnt out’ or not at peace.

What I suggest is that society’s pace of living has ramped up so fast in the past few decades that we are living ahead of the human being’s natural tempo, which is supposed to be in sync with nature and a slower vibration rhythm in tune with the seasons, tides and the celestial bodies. We are also very over extended and dependent on outside ‘fixes’ to soothe us when stressed or ill or unhappy. Life does not have to be this way. We each have much more control and personal resource within than we fathom. The time has come for us each to become conscious about our daily lives. That is why I wrote this small but instructive book.

What I share in these pages are some of the essential ‘lessons’ life brings to us on the road we each walk toward our personal evolution. A significant portion of this writing came through me one winter, when in a very steady and deep meditation practice. For many years after meditating in silence each morning, I have been writing. Some of my musings are personal realizations or poetic passages. But, one season deep messages came through me so cleanly on the page. I never knew what to do about them until I was teaching Mind-Body-Spirit Medicine at the Omega Institute one summer and needed a passage to illustrate the meaning of Intention to my students. When combing through my leather-bound journals I realized that these ‘life lessons’ lay there so succinctly. They were meant to be delivered to others, not just me, for they are teachings, and we never stop learning.

We all need guidance and resource in life. We are not designed to go it alone. Yet, we do need alone time. Only by being with our self can we find out who we are and what we need. And, most importantly, our greatest revelations happen on the inside, when we distill our thoughts and feelings. Not in the middle of a run-on sentence or a texting flurry. It is in the pause that we find meaning. It is the ‘in-betweens’ that are most important. Those moments of reflection bring awareness and attunement, and actually are the first steps on our pathway of enlightenment.

In many cases the process of enlightenment is guided through journeys of sickness, divorce, bankruptcy or deep loss. These crises are actually pivot points that bring us in concert with our truest self and kinship to our heart’s calling. For we are meant to grow until it is time to die. And, the in-between spaces, the pauses, are where we assimilate and learn. So, I encourage you to embrace the pauses. To catch your breath. To listen within. To cultivate stillness. To feed your spirit. To not be so driven by the external world, but to instead value the inner realms. We bear great wisdoms. But it is your job to claim them.

These passages in these pages are here for all of us, of all ages, whether in crisis or merely those of us curious about how to proceed towards your own growth and personal empowerment. I highlight these teachings as helpmates to you. They are star points of guidance in the disoriented nights of your life.

Read them slowly, maybe even more than once. Give some thought to these concepts. They are hard earned lessons I too faced. I share them with love and ask that you embrace willingness, faith and courage as your grounding rods. These are universal messages that stand the test of time and most cultures of the world. They are my gifts I bring to others and were delivered to me for the sake of all.

In sharing pieces of my life story, woven within these pages, I hope to show the practical side of these lessons. We need to embrace the stillness of contemplation or find a meditative moment, to shift the runaway overthinking of the critical mind, towards the more peaceful “knowings” of the intuitive mind. When we find this internal balance, this translates to our comportment and process in the outer world and daily ways, including our relationships and brings us to a centered still point.

We are all one and none simultaneously. Like a butterfly in flight or a sunbeam dancing on the water, life brings us endless metaphors and sign points of guidance. Be open to your future, it is unfolding before you and you must stay alert. Do not fear change. You are being called upon, please answer.

Namaste
Katina I. Makris, CCH, CIH