On New Years Day of 2004, I checked into the hospital with what I thought was the flu, but got diagnosed instead with anemia, pneumonia, pancreatitis, giardia, kidney failure, and AIDS.  Then, doctors gave me seven days to live.  

Once the doctors left me alone in the hospital room, I had a life review, where my entire life flashed before my eyes, and I was able to see all I had done, and not done, with my life.  During that life review, several questions arose:  “Had I been happy with my life?” “Had I ever been my true self?” “Did I feel like I had lived my purpose for being here?” “Did I let the people in my life know how I truly felt about them?”  “Did I feel good about who I was?”

When the life review ended, I realized all the answers to those questions was NO.  

I hadn’t been happy.  I felt very frustrated and like I was a failure. 

I hadn’t ever been my true self.  For most of my life, I suppressed my sexuality and my intuitive gifts, for fear people would reject or ridicule me.

I didn’t feel like I had lived my purpose.  I wasn't pursuing what I felt was my true calling, or my life’s dreams. 

I hadn’t expressed how I truly felt to the people I cared about. I never really shared how much I loved and appreciated the people in my life.  

And I didn’t feel good about myself, either.   I felt a lot of shame around my sexuality, around my looks, and around my accomplishments.  

As I realized all of this, I began to feel a deep sense of regret, and fear.  Not fear of death, because I truly believed I was a soul, so  death wasn’t going to be the end for me.  But fear that came from the realization that at 24 years old, I was about to die not having truly lived my life.  That I was dying never truly having been Jerome, expressing Jerome’s heart, feeling good about Jerome, or living the life Jerome really wanted.  

And I didn’t want to die like that.

So on my deathbed, I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to die.  

That I was going to live, so that when I truly died, I could answer YES to all of those questions that came up in my life review.

I had been on a spiritual path and studied the Law of Attraction for several years prior to this point, and believed that we could create our own reality.  But I had used all of that before to create a parking space at the mall when I was late to the movies, or money to buy food, or get a date on Saturday night.  

Now, if I could truly create what my reality, I needed to create a miracle.  I needed to heal.

So I threw EVERYTHING I knew about the Law of Attraction and healing, at my situation.  

I did visualizations of my kidneys healing, I said affirmations while lying in my hospital bed, I ate a vegan diet (very hard to do in the hospital back then), I created a gratitude journal, I only would allow positive things to be said within six feet of me, etc.

I was in the hospital for month, and was placed on dialysis.  And even though I had passed the projection of the doctors seven days, they never thought I was truly getting better.

After a month, I was sent home to continue dialysis treatments.  Two months after I got home, I fully healed.  

My kidneys came back, they took me off dialysis, they couldn’t find HIV in my system anymore, and all the other illnesses had disappeared.  I was healed!

I was being called a miracle by the doctors, and I thought I knew EVERYTHING about what it took to heal, and to manifest what we want.

UNTIL I found myself back in that same hospital, with THE EXACT SAME DIAGNOSIS (to the t-cell count). 

But this time, doctors gave me 48-hour to live. 

On my deathbed this time I didn’t have a life review, but a knowing, and a question.

I suddenly KNEW that if I was back in the hospital with the exact same diagnosis, this wasn’t a coincidence, but a message from my very soul.  That my soul had been trying to get my attention for a long time, and I had been ignoring it, so this was its last ditch effort. 

My question was:  "What is your message for me?  What is it you really want me to know? And how do I truly heal myself, and live a well life.  I really, really want to be well, and live very well...what is it I’m missing?”

That’s when I began to have a Near Death Experience. 

I began to lose sense of where my body ended, and the rest of the room began.  It all began to feel like part of me, one with me.  And I began to see the brightest light I’ve ever seen, and the darkest dark i’ve ever seen, all at the same time. 

And then, I felt an immense sense of wellbeing.  Like I was deeply held, and loved, and welcomed.  And that all was OK.

And then I felt the presence of a Voice.  It was a feeling, more than it was something audible; I felt the words.

And as I felt the presence of this Voice, I knew this Voice was God. 

Except, it sounded and felt just like me.  

But not the neurotic and suffering me - the me that was ultimate well-being, and Love.  

The Voice told me that:  “The key you’ve been looking for to truly heal yourself, and to finally live a truly healthy and well life, is to come back home to your soul through the way of self-love.  You’ve been disconnected from your soul for a long time.  Now it’s time to come home.”

It also said:  “You’ve learned alot about how to force, and push, and make Life be good to you.  But you don’t know shit about how to let Life be good to you.  And it really, really wants to.  You don’t know how to do that yet, but you’re going to learn.”

It was after these last words that I began to come back into my body, and gain a sense of the hospital room again.

And as I was coming back, I felt a download into my body.  It was a knowing that what I was going to learn in this journey about self-love and healing, I was going to teach others.  That teaching others about healing through self-love was going to become part of my life’s purpose.  

I knew that I had just been given the BIG WAKE-UP MOMENT - the red or blue pill moment.  

Either I was going to take this journey with self-love, or I was going to die.  Those were my only two choices.  And I didn’t want to die.  But I could feel that somehow, choosing the journey with self-love meant I had to die, too.  But while I was still living.  That everything I thought I was, and everything I thought I was holding onto, I was going to have to lose.

And this realization terrified me.  

The uncertainty of dying to everything I knew to let a newer version of myself I didn't know be born was very frightening, even though I knew it was the right path.

But my will to live was greater, so I made a commitment right then that I was going to let the old me die, and follow the path of self-love.  

And that I wanted to journey deeply, not just quickly, because quickly landed me in the hospital.  

From that moment, my life became a masterclass in self-healing and receiving.  

And self-love became my master teacher. 

And what I learned (and am still learning) has healed me in ways previously thought impossible, and helped me manifest a life more delicious than I previously imagined possible.  A life that feels like heaven on earth.