The following article was first published in the Shift Network’s online magazine on April 5, 2018. To see the article in all its glory, with photos and a sweet layout, you can go to The Catalyst. During 2018, I offered a workshop called “Laughing Matters: What Laughter Teaches Us about Living & Dying” to over 150 people in California, Oregon, Vermont and Maine. What a treat!

In a future article, I will share some of the lessons from the classes and what we discovered together. For now, here is why the class came about to begin with . . .

Laughing Matters

I never expected to laugh for a living. Nor did I expect my primary focus to be death and dying. But a funny thing happened on my way to my current life: after some twists and turns, these two paths became the same road.

For most of my life, I allowed my mind to dictate what made me laugh. We each have different funny bones, of course, and my sense of humor used to be fairly sarcastic. As an economic and social justice activist, I tended to laugh primarily at witty political satire. I thought there was too much pain and suffering in the world for frivolous amusement.

My life-partner Kate, on the other hand, could laugh for ten minutes nonstop with a friend while I wondered what was so hilarious. When I asked, she’d say “nothing” in between snorts. She laughed easily, for no apparent reason. So when we decided to take our first laugher yoga class, one of us was clearly more enthusiastic. And the other was a bit more anxious (hint, that was me).

Needless to say, I was quite surprised when we both became Certified Laughter Yoga Teachers a few months later. I did the weeklong certification for personal development, not as a career move. Yet soon thereafter, I left my job at a non-profit and Kate and I began offering laughter trainings on the west and east coasts as our main work in the world. And guess what? I loved it!

The momentum built quickly. We created a laughter CD. We were invited to conferences. We hosted free weekly classes in Mt. Shasta, CA and locals referred to us as “the laughing girls.” Laughter became our life.

Then a few years later, when life was unfolding beautifully, a more dramatic and unexpected shift turned everything upside-down: Kate was diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer at age forty-one. She died twelve weeks later. Suddenly, the woman I called my soul mate was dead. That’s when death became my life.

I knew that according to conventional wisdom, I would likely be devastated. We are taught that grief is proportional to the depth of our love for someone. But early on, I discovered there isn’t a “grief to love” ratio. Instead, I mostly experienced gratitude and deep inner peace. I celebrated that Kate had been promoted to her “next assignment.”

And it was time for me to begin my next assignment too.

I spent the next five years asking myself what contributed to my experience of connection and happiness even after the love of my life died. I knew I wasn’t sugar-coating my emotional well-being. I was truly feeling centered and in awe of life. What influenced such a positive response to Kate’s death? At the top of my list was my spiritual practice, which included unconditional laughter.

I’d like to share a story of mine that Marilyn Schlitz included in her book Death Makes Life Possible:

“After Kate died, I was faced with the true test of what we both taught—using laughter as a way to cope with challenges and shift energy. I remember one day when I was driving home, I felt the heaviness of missing Kate and knowing I wouldn’t see her when I walked in the door. I thought, ‘Well, Jen, here’s your chance to practice what you preach!’

As I drove down Mount Shasta Boulevard, I decided to experiment. First I just told myself to smile. Then I faked a soft laugh. I certainly wasn’t feeling happy in that moment. But I decided I would laugh for at least ten seconds. Laughter yoga is a body-mind practice, and so I simply asked my body to laugh. All it takes is willingness. Before I knew it, the laughter grew and became more genuine. I could feel my whole mood change. I wasn’t focused on the future I’d never have with Kate. Instead, I was enjoying the present moment.”

The “yoga” of laughter yoga is the breathing and the natural deep exhale, as well as the yoga of inner alignment. Learning to laugh for no reason, simply deciding to laugh and allowing my body to join in, taught me lessons that could be applied to anything in my life.

I could no longer pretend my inner joy depended on external circumstances. I couldn’t even use death as a reason to be sad or heartbroken. I knew if I was willing, I could choose to tap into the energy of joy and playfulness, no matter what. I knew I could redirect the downward spiral of grief, without repressing it. I could choose to allow emotions to flow, and I could choose where I focused my attention at the same time.

For me, the most important lessons are about willingness and choice. When Kate was diagnosed with advanced cancer, she was willing to acknowledge she was dying and to have open conversations about this reality. She was willing to choose to be engaged and honest about her experience.

In this process, we both learned to let go of the person we knew as “Kate Asch.” One of the first laughter exercises I ever did was to say my name in front of a group, and then to laugh. Something about that deeply resonated inside of me. Who am I? Who is Kate? Am I my name? Am I my mind? Am I my body? Unconditional laughter points me in the direction of greater truths, without providing the answers. Together, we can embrace the mystery.

One of my favorite things I learned is that giving myself permission to enjoy life is one of the best ways I can honor loved ones who have died. Kate showed me again and again that joy is a courageous act, especially in challenging times.

A few weeks after she was diagnosed, one of Kate’s brothers and his family came from Vermont to spend the weekend with us. When it was time for them to go, we stood on our front steps as they all got into the rental car to go to the airport. As they began to drive away, Kate quickly turned toward the house. She promptly pulled down her sweatpants, exposed her skinny bare ass, and “mooned” them in the afternoon sun. I could see our teenage nieces laughing, tears streaming down their faces, as they waved from the backseat. The point wasn’t to make them laugh or diminish the pain of this final goodbye. Kate’s bold move was to remind them to not take life too seriously, and to remember how to find lightness in even the most difficult moments.

They still talk about their last view of Aunt Kate, with smiles on their faces. The lessons of laughter and playfulness inform not only how we choose to live and how we choose to die, but also how we choose to respond to just about everything.

Try unconditional laughter yourself with this simple exercise: Begin by giving yourself a deep breath. Exhale. Then give yourself another deep breath, smile (even if you don’t feel like it), and let out a big sigh with your exhale. Give yourself one more deep breath, smile, and laugh it out on the exhale! Laugh it out gently, enthusiastically, quietly, audibly, whatever you’d like. Notice how you feel inside. Repeat throughout the day. Enjoy!

I recently reread an essay I wrote a number of years ago, published as “A Girl Who Believed” in the book Held in Love: Life Stories to Inspire Us Through Times of Change, (2009, Molly Brown and Carolyn Treadway). I want to share it with you because it is the physical foundation for how I see death. And it is the spiritual foundation for how I see life.

Mystical experiences – both our own and that of others – can play a significant role in how we navigate death and dying. They allow us to take a quantum leap toward the spirit of who we really are. Though I had adventures with the non-physical world when I was much younger, this specific one was the most transformative because I experienced myself as pure energy for the first time.

The gift of certainty

The perspective I share in this story about my mom’s death is still true for me today.

In fact, the outlook I had during and after that time influenced how I looked at life, death and life-after-death when my partner Kate received an unexpected diagnosis of advanced cancer in 2011. She died twelve weeks later (which, as I mention in my story, was the exact prognosis my mom had been given).

There were many parallels in their journeys and many parallels in the spiritual beliefs that allowed me to embrace the deaths of these two women I loved dearly. I still believed wholeheartedly that the spirit survives physical death. I still believed I have direct access to the unseen world. I still believed that . . .

Wait a minute.

I actually don’t believe these things anymore.

I am no longer “the girl who believed.”

I am now a woman who knows.

I know these things to be true.

For years I have been hesitant to declare my inner knowing. I have been unsteady about my first-hand experiences, unable to prove them or logically explain them. I have been uncertain about whether they are enough to support me, let alone others.

But today I know they are more than enough. Today I know all that matters is the embodiment of my true nature, of life-force energy running through me and beyond me. Indeed, this is the miracle of both life and death.

While my writing style has changed over the years, the message is the same today. I share my most vulnerable story with you – from the book Held in Love – in hopes that it offers a glimmer of hope and a glimpse of truth.

The Girl Who Believed

After a silent walk down the longest hallway of my life, the surgeon brought us into a small room with no windows. He sat us down. His slow, robotic voice echoed off the sterile walls:

We can’t operate. It’s everywhere. Cancer. Stage IV. Everywhere. 

I had just driven into town from Vermont, intending to stay a week or so to help my mom recover from an unexpected medical procedure. At age sixty-one and recently retired, she lived an active life: tennis twice a week, photography, travel.

In shock, I asked the unavoidable question. “Twelve weeks,” replied the surgeon, “is average.”

The following day, I left Buffalo General Hospital to keep an appointment I had made prior to my mom’s diagnosis. As I walked into the room, I started crying and laughing – Anugana’s Shamanic Dream was playing, the same music I had listened to every night for almost a year to help me fall asleep. The session began with a much needed massage. My body craved relaxation after the long drive home and the emotions of the past twenty-four hours. As I lay on my stomach, Trish working my back, my hands began tingling as if they were falling asleep.

As I wiggled my fingers and focused on my breath, a clear internal voice began repeating to me, “You are ready. You are ready. This is what you’ve been waiting for since you were 13 years old. This is it.”

I found myself responding immediately, “Yes, I’m ready. I am ready.” I felt incredibly open and willing to surrender to whatever came next. Now lying on my back, I was holding back tears. It seemed too exhausting to cry any more. “Let it go,” Trish encouraged. “You’re in a safe space.” And so I did. I cried hard, my chest shaking with sobs and my ears filling with tears. Trish shifted the massage into a Reiki energy session, standing at my side, and then at my feet.

As the session progressed, as I released and breathed heavily into my body, my palms began to buzz even more. Gentle currents of energy began racing up from my toes and simultaneously down my torso. My arms, feet, and upper thighs felt weighted as if they were being held down; I literally couldn’t move them. My breathing became rapid and euphoric as if I was making love. The sensations in my hands intensified, like holding two electrically charged metal balls.

Later I would come to learn the language of chakras and meridians, but at the time I felt like I was in a science fiction film. As the intensity of the vibrations grew even stronger, I repeated, “thank you, thank you, thank you” in recognition of the gift I was experiencing.

Yes, this was what I had been waiting for – the undeniable certainty that an unseen world exists and that I can access it directly.

I reconnected with the 13 year-old girl in me who prayed desperately to witness miracles and make objects move across tables using only her mind. The girl who believed in reincarnation despite modern Catholic teachings; the girl who knew the spirit world is as real as the physical. I had learned from physics that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, and now I was being shown that my own essence was energy. This confirmed what I had been taught in religion classes all along, that we are eternal beings who live on after death.

After the session was over, Trish left the room and I experimented with the energy for a few minutes. Lying on my back, I slowly extended my arms over my head, up and down my sides. I noticed that moving my hands farther away from my body created less sensation; as I brought them closer, the fire swirled in my palms again. When I finally got off the massage table, I stood up slowly. My ears popped hard, reminding me of a friend’s description of his return to the earthly world after a shamanic journey.

I went back to my mom’s house where I had spent my teenage years before moving to Vermont for college. I sat alone in the sunshine of the backyard, my senses heightened. The colors of the petunias and the grass were brighter, the birds’ songs were louder. Everything was crisp and still. It felt surreal. I was so grateful for this deep sense of calm, needed now more than ever as I stepped into the challenges of being my mother’s primary caregiver for the next sixteen weeks.

Going back to the hospital the following morning, I remember feeling genuine acceptance of my mom’s diagnosis. I think many people, including my family, assumed I was in denial. Wasn’t I supposed to be depressed or fearful? Wasn’t I supposed to be furious with God?

But instead I felt more connected than ever. I even felt hopeful. Not hopeful that my mom’s body would survive advanced stages of cancer, but that she – her spirit, her true Being – would.

I feel blessed to have been given the gift of knowing myself in my true form – pure positive energy. Before this time, my spiritual highs were ethereal, never so embodied. No one ever mentioned things like Reiki or Kundalini energy at St. Mary’s Catholic School. But at age thirty-one, I fully allowed myself to have a physical spiritual experience.

That is what this awakening was about for me: the embodiment of the universal life force, of Love. I was ready to reconnect with that part of me that believed anything is possible, and in doing so, I realized the potential is within me, that I can co-create the miraculous.

(“A Girl Who Believed,” 2008, by Jennifer Mathews)

Photo credit: istockphoto.com/radiomoscow 

The sky was a smooth, consistent shade of grey. I couldn’t see the sun’s circle of light through the grey, nor could I see individual clouds. The air was still. And like water running over my hands at just the right temperature, I could barely sense the air on my skin.

Time somehow evaporated, and I didn’t know when it would become tangible again.

Of course, the sky had been grey before. The air temperature had matched my skin before too. This wasn’t the first time I imagined what it would be like if the sun didn’t rise and set, if we didn’t gauge our lives by hours and days.

It wasn’t the first time I wondered how my life would change if humans didn’t need sleep and we were awake all the time.

The difference this time was the focus of my awareness. In that moment – regardless of how long the moment lasted – I allowed myself to experience a moment out of time.

How eternity influences my daily life

Needless to say, that elusive glimpse of eternity was fleeting.

Yes, I realize how ironic that is. How can something so short-lived be everlasting?

But perhaps a moment of eternity is all you need to taste the spirit of who you are – beyond your body, beyond perceived time.

Pondering eternity began in my childhood and early teens. I’ve often imagined what life would be like without Time. And I’ve tended to feel pressure that “there isn’t enough time” or that I would “run out of time.” For decades, I’ve wrestled with this dichotomy: the contrast between being aware that I’m a human being in a body AND being aware than I’m an expansive spiritual being at the same time.

I was raised Catholic, and the idea of “eternal life” was familiar and common. But then reading that energy exists with no beginning and no end changed everything . . .

When I was thirteen, Shirley MacLaine’s book Out on a Limb introduced me to the idea that “energy is not created nor destroyed.” That concept deeply resonated with me, even at a young age. If my energy would go on forever, I decided it would be better to find my way to inner peace and happiness than to struggle.

In this way, spiritual eternity made a profound impact on my earthly life.

Though I couldn’t explain the concept of eternity as a thirteen year old, and I can’t explain it now, I can somehow still have moments of basking in it. That’s the best way I can express it.

In the late 1990s, I saw a French documentary called “The Gleaners and I.” In the film, the woman narrating collects clocks and removes their hands. Soon after seeing the film, my partner and I bought an old wooden clock at a thrift store, removed its hands, and hung it on the wall in the kitchen. It was a reminder to slow down and to be present in the moment.

To not worry so much about Time.

To get in touch with the sensation of No Time and remember my essence.

Eternity is not just about the afterlife

In the film Death Makes Life Possible, Deepak Chopra asks where we were before we were born.

That day at Lake Siskiyou, I could somehow “feel” my way into that. If the sun didn’t appear to move through the sky, if there was no way to gauge the passage of time – no sunrise, no sunset, no night time – would life on earth feel like one long extended moment?

Or perhaps a better question: Why does it even matter to me to contemplate eternity?

Because I believe we are more than our bodies.

Because if I focus only on physicality, I will experience only loss when someone’s body dies.

Because if I know all bodies will perish someday, and I allow myself to both deal with that physical reality of physical loss, and remember that energy is not created nor destroyed, then I can put “loss” in a whole new perspective.

I can be curious and open to what that is like, to be without a body. And to what it means to connect to someone who no longer has a body. THIS is why eternity matters to me. Because is it an opportunity for connection. The physical body is gone, but what about the life energy? The spirit? Where is that?

In his 1952 bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale said this:

“Eternity does not start with death. We are in eternity now.”

To me, this perspective shifts the conversation about an afterlife. Why? Because there is no “after.” There is only LIFE.

For some, imagining already being in eternity may cause panic. It may conjure the idea that we can’t escape suffering or get a fresh start. But being in eternity now means that I can change my focus in any and every moment, that I don’t have to wait for something in the future. And it summons me to LIVE.

Because when eternity is here, complacency is a luxury. When eternity is NOW, I have the opportunity to make choices. Do I focus on my unhappiness? Or do I focus on my inner peace and joy, no matter what’s happening in my life?

So, the next time it is a grey overcast day, or the next time you are on hold for a seemingly endless time waiting for customer service or tech support, let go of your awareness of time.

Take the opportunity to feel into the part of YOU that never dies. The part of you that is already living in eternity . . . now.

Photo credit: iStockphoto.com/liseykina