I do believe the truth is out there; it's just lost on most of us. Forgive me, I am a huge "X-Files" fan.

This is strange, but after I went through the trauma of chemotherapy, my senses were heightened. Not my vision or hearing, for sure, which are as bad as ever, but my sense of smell and taste. Perhaps it has something to do with all the chemicals that passed through me, thereby altering my system, because I now notice faint odors and flavors that I didn't before.

Even weirder, my sixth sense is enhanced. I've had uncanny feelings of dejà vu or ESP in the past; since finishing treatments, I now have more certainty attached to my intuitive feelings.

It sounds crazy, but it's almost as if the experience of being so sick, and the emotional turmoil and awareness of being much too close to death, somehow diminished the barrier to perceiving events yet to be. I now KNOW things. Little things, just once in a while, like knowing how a conflict will be resolved.

I imagine the following possibilities: Did I catch a glimpse of the future in my sickly state? Is it that we all have the ability to see beyond the present if we allow ourselves to be in tune with the universe? Or can we actually influence the happenings around us just by thinking and hoping it is so? Maybe I should just chalk it up to improved instinct. My memory is worse and my mind is less sharp since chemo, yet I'm more sensitive to the world and people around me.

This leads to mentioning my belief that our souls are all intertwined. Now, whether you believe in God or not, in Creationism or evolution or some combination of the two, you have to admit that we are all connected. That's the essence of life itself - the multiplying of cells and the reliance of all living things on other living things. And because of this bond with one another, we naturally share more than we even realize.

Haven't you ever been thinking about someone at the same time they call you on the phone? Or noticed how the full moon affects people's behavior? Blame our connection to each other and to nature.

Furthermore, I can't imagine that when we die, we would just cease to exist. So yes, I believe in an afterlife, one more complex than we mere humans can understand. Somehow when we pass on, we are in a different dimension unlike our earthly time and physical being, but our energy remains and can be witnessed by the still living if hearts, minds and eyes are open to it.

I think young children see what we adults have tuned out. By the time they are old enough to verbalize what they have noticed through their sixth sense, they no longer are as in tune because it was a sense that was never nurtured or even acknowledged by the adults around them.

Let me offer some personal experiences with signs of the world beyond. Signs I choose to believe, the first of which happened over twenty years ago. The morning my mother died in our family home, our wall clock stopped. Three days later, we returned home from her funeral only to notice that the clock had inexplicably started up again.

After my father-in-law died 13 years ago, my daughter began crying each night at approximately the same time. Upon finding her standing in her crib, I'd notice one of her wall hangings - an elephant too high up for her to reach - pulled down. This scenario repeated several times, and my husband and I attributed it to her grandfather visiting in the middle of the night.

Even our pet hamster, Sparky, who loved to escape and hide in the wall unit that houses our TV, made his spirit known to us. Soon after he died, the very same TV acted up while our family was watching the Red Sox, which had been a favorite pastime with Sparky. For no apparent reason, the TV became full of static for several moments, something that never happened before nor ever since.

I've had other people share similar stories with me about the unexpected, unseen and unexplained. There is so much more "out there" than we can comprehend. That's the truth as I see it.

Lori Brown is chronicling her life after a breast cancer diagnosis. She lives in North Attleboro. E-mail her at brown11861@yahoo.com.