One of these days you’re gonna wake up transformed
Willoughby Britton, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Arizona, is using EEGs—electroencephalograms—to attempt to quantify the changes in perspective that seem to result from out-of-body experiences reported during near-death experiences. She hopes that measuring brain waves may let her see whether the frequently reported alterations in priorities and values that follow near-death experiences relate to an area of the brain referred to as the "God module." Patterns of brain waves in this area have already been associated with altered mental states experienced during meditation and psychic episodes. The hope of science, of course, is that such research will lead to a way to stimulate on demand the psychological growth that is the outcome of near death experiences.
Britton observes that, "Near-death experiencers look the way we in psychology hope our clients would look like after 20 years of therapy." The list of positive qualities includes increased tolerance of others, lack of defensiveness, more spiritual and less materialistic values, a more service-oriented life, and less fear of dying. "Whatever they experienced, it’s real to them, and it changed their lives. And it changed their lives more permanently than Prozac," she reports.
Want to change your life more permanently than Prozac? Make the transformative decision to feel good all of the time. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times: how you feel is a choice. How you feel is also a habit and the result of your beliefs about the benefits of feeling bad and the dangers of feeling good.
Feeling good all the time doesn’t mean feeling constantly high or happy. It doesn’t mean an enforced program of "positive thinking." It means feeling free. That’s what those near-death experiencers gained: a perspective that freed them from their old fearful, limiting assumptions. They got a glimpse of the big picture—which seems to be, from all reports, that all is well. They recognized on a deep level that their old beliefs about the benefits of feeling bad were erroneous.
People who have spontaneous remissions from cancer—which is a kind of near-death experience—report changing their perspectives on life in ways similar to those who have come back after dying. They deliberately create new habits of feeling and thinking because that’s what is required for them to heal. They commit to the ongoing choice to feel good, becoming more independent, more committed to being true to themselves, more focused on cultivating their inner values and less focused on the importance of appearances.
If you don’t think a near death experience is in your immediate future, you can transform yourself by using the principles of cognitive therapy to learn a more optimistic, tolerant, and flexible thinking style. You can also gain some of the benefits of the big picture perspective that seems to be part of near-death experiences by reading about it—try Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, Ph.D..
Whether you come back from the dead, escape terminal cancer, or simply choose to change your mind about life, the process of personal transformation is never as swift or dramatic as we imagine it to be. Even those who return from death’s door must choose to apply their new view of reality to each moment. They don’t come back as saints; they just come back with a radically changed point of view, one available to anyone bold enough to embrace it.
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