While You Were Out (Part Two) the abridged version

…..and then, there was light. It was faint at first but it quickly got brighter, and it wasn’t like any light I had ever seen. It was glowing, yellow gold, and it seemed to have life to it, in a way that things do when you look at them under a microscope. There were flickers inside it, motion. Then I could see individual silhouettes, so I started to think that this was something that I could relate to instead of just light.

I still felt like myself and that surprised me. I had thought of people who had died as people that I couldn’t really relate to anymore. I didn’t imagine myself to be the exact same person dead that I had been while I was alive.

There were lots of different silhouettes, leading me to think that there were lots of “people” standing in front of me. At this point, I was starting to think about things, and I received answers to them. Not audibly, but through some kind of transfer of thoughts and feelings. It was a really comfortable and surprising feeling. Much like when you say something to an animal, or to a baby, that they shouldn’t understand and they actually do. You can see their recognition, even though it can’t be verbally expressed.

Hundreds of the silhouettes were “talking” to me. I understood all of their “words” as though I were talking only to one person. And I could somehow discern what each particular one was saying. I understood all of it as well as if it were a one on one conversation.

Which led to a lot of information, a lot of information, being shared.

More on that later.

Afterwards, the light stood behind me, and we could see my life in front of us. Different times and instances, other people and how we had interacted. And I remember and feel the following as though it happened only a moment ago:

I started to turn around to face them, to give them more of an explanation of a particular moment that we had just seen. Before I had completed the motion, they sent to me the thought and feeling that they were me. That not only did they understand the situation from my point of view, they felt the same way that I had felt when that particular event had taken place.

They were capable of feeling exactly as I felt, and yet had more, and it did not take away from how much they were able to be with me. It was a complete acknowledgment of me, from my perspective, felt as I felt it. We are WITH you, not observing you, but with you, feeling everything exactly as you feel it. Since they were doing this completely with me, I in turn was able to be completely with them, with their knowledge and view. Since they were the same as me, well I also got to be the same as them.

The impact this had and the view that it gave me!

I had several small strokes and they explained (this is the brief version) that my brain had thought in certain ways and now those ways were blocked by the strokes. I wouldn’t be able to think in those negative ways again unless I really tried to. I had a new vehicle with which to see things. A reconstructed brain.

This made me committed to not add anything of here that would take me far from there.

They showed me how the events in my life had specifically affected me. This caused me to want to be ok with EVERYTHING. To forgive everyone and anyone. To know that there’s nothing to forgive.

I didn’t want to leave there. I died and was revived several times over the course of several days. I had an awareness of what was going on physically (on earth) while I was having all of this death adventure, and maybe, according to the physical world of things, I would go too far (or was there for too long?) and I would die and they would resuscitate me. And right when they “got me back” I would then be fully present here and not really there. So I would focus out again and go back.

They then showed me some things that would happen or not occur, if didn’t go back, letting me know that I could stay there if I wanted to. As you know, I decided to come back. They brought me back to my body, to the room in the ICU, gave me some explanations of the people around me and what it would be like over time, and then……

I woke up.

While You Were Out (Part One)

I knew that I was dying and I felt so goooooood despite the physical picture. The doctor in the emergency room was hitting my chest with his closed fist in a failed attempt to jolt my heart into beating; blood was coming out of my ears, no one would think that I was feeling good by looking at me.
Afterwards I thought that it was a really important thing to remember, that how I looked was not how I felt. It made me think about how we judge people’s pain. How often does that happen, that we think someone’s wonderful moment is horrible, because it looks horrible?

Despite the commotion in the room around me, I was certain that I was more than ok. Before I took off to where I was going, I wanted to check in on my family. It’s at this point that people always ask me if I was hovering above my body, or if I could see the doctors working on me. This question always gives me pause, frankly it makes me impatient. Of course I could see my body. Later, when I woke up, I thanked one of the nurses for what she was saying over and over again in her head. Yes, I could see them working on me, more so, I could hear their thoughts. But I always think….who cares? I look at myself everyday of my life, why would I care to look now that I was free? Why would I hang out in the room, when that’s all we do here, hang out in rooms. I wasn’t interested in any of that.

I could see my family members in our house (this was before anyone was called to the hospital) and once I had checked in with each of them, I was ready to go. It was a sensation of getting ready to go on a fabulous vacation. Like I could barely stand to check in with my family, ‘cause I wanted to catch that train! I knew that it wasn’t going anywhere, but I wanted to hurry up and go.

At that point there was a terrific sound. The THX “vvvvvvvvv” sound before a movie begins is the closest thing to it that I have heard here, and that's still pretty far off.

(See Video Bar Below)

I had a sense I was moving, and here is where it gets tricky to explain-

On earth you can feel your body moving through space. You hear sounds arising from somewhere else, with your ear. The THX sound was inside me, I could feel the vibration of it inside my body. The sound was emanating from me. The moving forward was not my body moving, but I was pulling everything towards me. If you’re on a roller coaster, your body is being pulled by the car attached to the track and what you see is because you are being moved. This was like me getting in the car and not being pulled by the track, but staying where I was and pulling the track under me. It was like seeing all the sights you would see if you were moving on the track, the trees, the car in front of you, but I was pulling it to me. It definitely felt like I was in a different place, but because I had pulled it.

The sound was occurring as the “pulling’ was going on, and then I had arrived somewhere. (or the somewhere had come to me) The sound and the sensation of pulling stopped. It was completely black at first. It was a thick blackness, like it was alive. Like when you can feel that a television is on. As though if I took a step forward I would bump into someone. In a dark room you can’t see what is in front of you, but somehow I could see through this. Light was cast wherever I looked, as though I had flashlight eyes, but at first it was just more black.

And then……

I'm Back!

This post has a theme song:

(Click on "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" under the Audio Clips Section on the homepage footer)

People have asked me about my death. I usually skip over it to avoid being caught up in the physical drama because there was so much more going on than that!
Especially since my experience goes so far beyond the “hovering above my body” or “seeing a relative that has passed on.” There was so much more going on than what the monitors said and the importance is in all of us having an opportunity to be liberated from a fear of death and all of the amazing information therein, not really in the bruises I sustained in being revived.
And yet, in leaving the beginning out, maybe the miracle (doctors word, not mine) that I am even here is being left out?
I was given a methamphetamine at a party at the university that I attended. I was lying in my bed and had an awareness that I was fading away. I was taken to the hospital off campus where my roommate who had followed the ambulance was screaming at me to keep my eyes open. I did until I just couldn’t anymore. I died at around four am. I was air lifted to a hospital better equipped to “save my life.”
I had a heart attack and several small strokes. My brain was swelling. I was not breathing on my own. My family was told to make arrangements for my funeral. If I were to survive they didn’t think I would be cognizant or possibly walk.

I woke up and they asked me who people were. My first thought was “how rude of them to have me do all the introductions when my throat hurts so badly from the respirator.”
It didn’t occur to me that they thought I wouldn’t know who anyone was.
Afterwards I went back to the original hospital to get my records. A nurse that I didn’t recognize ushered me into the ICU to show the other nurses. One of them started crying and said “when we put you on the helicopter I didn’t think you would live through the ride.”

It is a phenomenon to have not been here and to be here now.
I am constantly amazed.

Before I felt as though my life was something I was doing because…I was here. Now I feel like it’s something I’m very consciously doing because there was a time out in the time line of my life. A time when I wasn’t doing it. Wasn’t breathing on my own, not here, but kept alive. A place to come back to. Or an opportunity to not return. Of course it’s the same options as anyone, it’s just in this specific way. And I’m a little bit in awe that I’m even here. Truly. I am constantly surprised that I am even here. I look at myself and I look at you, I look around me, and I think “ok, let’s go”!!!!
I so deeply remember what it was like to not be here. To stand next to someone that can’t see me. To try to move or touch an object and be unable to do so.
So now, when I pick something up in my hands, I feel it. I’m amazed that I am doing so. When someone sees me, just in their using their basic ocular function, I smile inwardly. Certainly they are not doing anything extraordinary, but extraordinary is exactly what it is to me.

It is such a thrill to be here.

It’s really really hard to care about anything other than how happy I am to exist. I try very hard to be serious, or to distract myself with something pertinent to everyday life. But how happy I am to hug those I couldn’t reach when dead, how happy I am that they can see me, how happy I am to just be here always wins out!

Next up…..what happened while I was gone…….