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Part 2: How A Near Death Experience Freed me to Live

Some Afterthoughts

By Amanda WidemanPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
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Part One can be found here: https://vocal.media/motivation/how-a-near-death-experience-freed-me-to-live

In the last couple years following this car accident, I've had sudden bursts of interest in learning about other people's stories of near-death experiences or out-of-body experiences.

It was such an unusual and bizarre happening for me. As I tried to describe in Part One, the feeling of my perception being outside of my sluggish heavy body was amazing.

You know when you are extremely happy and see someone you love whom you havn't seen for a long time? And, say, the sun is out, your holding an ice cream cone in your favourite flavor, you just got paid and also received a bonus, you just finished a long run and have showered and put on your favourite clothes, you've just checked into a 5 star resort and have dinner reservations at your favourite restaurant? All at the same time? And times 10? And without any pain, tiredness, or heaviness or sluggishness of a body?

I'm not so much talking about the physical feeling of all these great things but the inner joy, inner warmth, inner gratitude of all these things combined. Add to that feeling and seeing what seems like a glimpse of heaven, and you are welcome there. In fact, they've been waiting for you to show up even more than you've anticipated going! Massive sense of belonging and welcome. Where huge peace washes over you and there's no to-do list, no alarm to wake up to tomorrow.

That's my best way to describe the space or dimension of my near death experience.

I tried not to focus on it too much and just get on with my life as usual but the impact of it was immense. Nothing I had experienced in life up until then had been so otherworldly, and this made it really tough to ignore. I longed to meet and chat with others who had also come face to face with what I had, or their own way of experiencing it. Perhaps I could make more sense of my own.

Some Stories from the Other Side

I had heard that people who are terminally ill and very close to death sometimes go back and forth between this world and the next during their final days. I signed up for hospice volunteer training, in order to spend some time connecting with others who might also be showing up in that light filled place, that next world.

My first client was a gentleman in a nursing home. He had cancer but was sound of mind. He would often be speaking to me and then also glance over to the corner of his room as though paying attention to someone else. Once he asked me to tell "those people" to be quiet. I realized there was the possibility he was seeing into the next world, and it was so real to him that he assumed I could also see who he saw. He was otherwise lucid and witty. In fact, I had met him several years earlier in the community and he was perfectly sane.

Around that time, when I was employed as a paramedic and one night I woke up suddenly at 3am at the ambulance station. It wasnt a groggily waking up- one moment I was dead asleep and the next I was fully alert. I lay a wake for a minute, then got up to go to the bathroom, then lay down again. At 3:06 am the phone rang to the station and we got a call to confirm an expected death. At the house, we were met by 2 Italian ladies who said they think their mother just died. One daughter had been sleeping in the same bedroom as her terminally ill mother. At 3:00 am the mother, who had been more or less sleeping on and off for about a week, sat up quickly and tried to get out of bed. The daughter went over and tried to calm her and tuck her back in. About 2 minutes later the old woman shot up again, reaching her arms into the air and yelled "madre sto arrivando, madre sto arrivando". This translates to "mother I am coming." The daughter calmed her and lay her down again and went to check on her a few moments later, and she wasnt breathing, and had no pulse.

My curiosity also led me to online articles and books, where I would read multiple accounts of people leaving their body.

  • Maria was a migrant worker who, while visiting friends in Seattle, had a severe heart attack. A few days later she had a cardiac arrest and an unusual out-of-body experience. At one point in this experience, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a single tennis shoe sitting on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. Maria not only was able to indicate the whereabouts of this oddly situated object, but was able to provide precise details concerning its appearance, such as that its little toe was worn and one of its laces was stuck underneath its heel. Upon hearing Maria's story, the social worker, with some considerable degree of skepticism and metaphysical misgiving, went to the location described to see whether any such shoe could be found. Indeed it was, just where and precisely as Maria had described it, except that from the window through which Clark was able to see it, the details of its appearance that Maria had specified could not be discerned. Clark concluded: The only way she could have had such a perspective was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me. (Clark, 1984, p. 243)
  • Kathy Milne was working as a nurse and described an account of her patient's near death experience: she told me how she floated up over her body, viewed the resuscitation effort for a short time and then felt herself being pulled up through several floors of the hospital. She then found herself above the roof and realized she was looking at the skyline of Hartford. She marvelled at how interesting this view was and out of the corner of her eye she saw a red object. It turned out to be a shoe ... [S]he thought about the shoe..., and suddenly, she felt "sucked up" a blackened hole. The rest of her NDE was fairly typical, as I remember. I was relating this to a [skeptical] resident who in a mocking manner left. Apparently, he got a janitor to get him onto the roof. When I saw him later that day, he had a red shoe and became a believer, too. (K. Milne, personal communication, October 19, 1992)
  • In a another book- I can't remember the name of it- a woman clinically died and before "coming back", was met on the "other side" by deceased relatives. She also was met by an aunt and became confused as this aunt was still alive. When she returned from her NDE she told her family about what happened and who she saw. It turned out that this aunt had recently died over in China, but the woman had not been informed about the aunt's death; the family had not wanted to upset her in her fragile state of health.

There are lots of other stories to read about this sort of thing. Researchers have coined the phenomenon "veridical NDE".

Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information which they could not have obtained by any normal means. Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital. If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have taken place. (https://www.near-death.com/science/evidence/people-see-verified-events-while-obe.html)

This reading helped me in the sense that what happened was an experience that many other people report. Although specific circumstances differ for those who have taken their perception beyond this physical reality, in an out-of-body experience, there are some commonalities in the after effects.

What has become more important to me than the fascinating dynamic itself is the various ways it can integrate and "bear fruit" in the physical world. What's the point of having a divine, life altering encounter in the inner world if some type alteration doesn't manifest in the outer world?

What has gone from abstract to concrete in my life- or a least a little more concrete- are some of the common "regrets of the dying":

  • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
  • I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
  • I wish that I had let myself be happier
  • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
  • I wish I cared less what others think
  • I wish I didnt worry so much

Every person who carefully faces such questions can find themself in a couple of these. These regrets are powerful because of their universality and because of their power. Without truly facing them, we are allowing them to rule us. We are allowing them to hold us back from our full expression of ourself. Each one represents a prison of sorts.

It's not popular to talk about death or afterlife preparation in Western society. But my brief glimpse into hospice volunteering showed me that in general people facing their time to transitional are mostly unprepared for it. Specifically, they were suddenly face to face with their unfinished business: their regrets, such as the ones listed above, especially the part about expressing feelings to loved ones and living a life true to them self and not what others expected. The anguish I witnessed was great from people who wanted to apologize to so-and-so but didn't, who wanted to tell so-and-so how much they loved them, who wanted to tell so-and-so how their harmful behaviour made them feel but never had the courage to.

It doesn't scare me or upset me. It motivates me to really be myself, be imperfect but well-meaning, take an exciting intuitive risk, as much as possible. If today is my last day here, I'd like to know I smiled a stranger, spoke up at an injustice, spent some time appreciating nature, made sure to leave a generous tip for a good restaurant meal etc.

My near death experience- although incredibly blissful and life-changing in nature- has forced me into a place where I don't only "logically" know I will be on a deathbed one day, I experientially know it. The knowledge isn't just up there in my head, its like a faithful old dog that follows me around. I am aware of my mortality every single day since. I KNOW and FEEL I could go tomorrow.

Further reading around afterlife preparation and avoiding these common regrets of the dying that I found useful:

https://www.earlytorise.com/gain-a-sense-of-your-own-mortality/

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  • P D2 years ago

    Wow that was quiet a violent event. Sorry about your crash. Hope the person is ok……..

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