Like many of you, I experienced a massive shift in my psyche last week. I have experienced something like this before. Although it was more personal than global, I’m sharing it today in case there are any parallels that would help you, too.

I recognized the feeling as very similar to the day I received my cancer diagnosis. I had known that cancer was a possibility but I had been told that it was unlikely. When I heard the definite news, my life instantly divided into a Before and an After. I would never be able to go back to my life before cancer. There would only be my new world with cancer.

There is a saying in the cancer community that cancer does not make life uncertain, it only exposes the uncertainty that was already there. We may not be aware of it, but our life is an illusion held in place by the belief of a stable reality.

Rapper billy woods said, “I think it’s human to assume that the reality you know is going to perpetuate itself, even though change, innovation, and destruction all come without warning sometimes.” The greater our illusion, the greater our level of trauma when it that illusion bursts. If this is the first time we have experienced such a profound shift, we can count ourselves privileged to have come this far with our illusion intact.

Of course, my day to day life didn’t change instantly with a diagnosis. First there was the shock of my shifted reality. Then the erasure of nearly every area of my previous life gradually unfolded. First came a barrage of medical insults including amputations, poisoning, and a brain injury. Then the financial dominoes started falling––the loss of my job, my career, my income, and eventually my home. Socially, I was thrust into a world which few of my friends could relate to. There was a lot of loss.

But, amazingly, there were also gains. I learned skills like slowing down, asking for help, and making do with what I had. I moved to a rustic studio in the woods, a home where I now feel nurtured by Nature every day. Without the mouse-wheel of a job, I could focus more on my writing and related activities. I never saw any of that coming. Some days now I hear myself saying “thank you, cancer” for these changes.

The greatest gift of all was learning how to live in the moment. Every time I had a test or a treatment, I had the opportunity to decide how I would order my energy while in the limbo of waiting for a result. I realized that if I spent my time feeling anxious and afraid, and the outcome was positive, I would have wasted all that time feeling bad for nothing. And if I spent my waiting time feeling anxious and afraid and the outcome was not positive, I would have wasted what little time I had to feel good before that arrived!

Through practice, I learned to turn my attention away from fear and anxiety and toward joy and gratitude. Not just with my head, but with my entire being. I learned that every day on this planet is a gift. When I practice that, I am helping to raise the energy vibration. Not just for myself, but for humanity.

“Every day, think as you wake up,
today I am fortunate to have woken up.
I am alive, I have a precious human life
and I’m not going to waste it.”
––HH the XIV Dalai Lama