In the winter of 1989 (I was 13), the filters that were on our furnace became clogged and carbon monoxide from the natural gas began leaking back into the house. I became very sick from the fumes because I stayed home from school “sick”, but my brother and mother/father both kept going to work/school, so they did not get as sick as I did.
Anyway, doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, and kept referring my mother to psychiatrists. We saw allergists during this time, and I was tested for food allergies (showed up to wheat and citrus and a few others), but this did not explain why I was sleeping 16-20 hours a day. Even at Christmas that year I was only able to sit with my family an hour before being too exhausted to stay awake any longer. These months were a dark, grey time where I remember very little except for this.
One night I awoke and found myself down the street, floating about 50 feet off the ground. I was standing upright, and it felt like there was a thin thread attached to the skin of my heart that was pulling me forward. I looked to my right and saw other people at different heights drifting forward in this same fashion. The direction I was going was eastward, toward a massive, beautiful mountain whose peak was obscured by a brilliant white/gold light. I had the impression that this mountain lay just beyond the edge of our world, not within it.
At this moment, I looked down and saw the road and Park beneath my feet and said to myself “I can’t be flying” and suddenly I dropped from the sky into the snow. I looked up at the mountain again and thought “I can’t get there if I can’t fly.” I was suddenly very concerned about not being able to reach the mountain. Then, I thought “hey, I was just flying, maybe if I re-create that feeling in my heart, I will be able to fly again.” So I concentrated on my heart and focused, creating a sense of buoyancy. I rose up and moved toward the mountain again, much faster this time.
I came to rest about 100 feet from the summit, right on the edge of a cliff that faced the world. Soft green grass with tiny flowers grew here, and curled over the cliff edge a little. There was also a grove of trees loosely spaced around. If you can imagine the most perfect spring day, where the breeze is blowing and the world is waking up from a winters rest, growing. It was so beautiful that even thinking about it still brings me peace and happiness.
I looked up towards the summit and there seemed to be snow there, but emanating from the summit was this blinding white/gold light. It did not hurt to look upon it, and it seemed to have form (light being solid — hard to describe).
This light then pulsed at me, and the meaning pulsed through my whole being: “Do You Want To Stay Here?” I could not answer. I looked off the cliff edge back to earth. I could see the curvature of the earth, and clouds covering the landscape. I could see the individual street that my family lived on, and my house. If you were to look at a faraway hill, it would be like being able to see individual grains of sand and blades of grass.
I felt a concern for my parents, what they would feel like if I stayed here. I wasn’t sure of what to decide, because I felt inadequate to make a decision. Suddenly, I rushed off the mountain and woke up in my bed, feeling so energized. The weakness in my body was still there, but it didn’t seem as heavy anymore.
Within a few weeks, we saw another Allergist. She tested us for various kinds of chemicals. My Ethanol reaction was off the charts. She asked us if we had natural gas heating our home, my mother said yes, and the doctor said “you should get it checked.”
We got home and called the heating and air guy and he came out. His comment “boy am I sure glad you called me, the filters on your furnace were so clogged, another couple of weeks and you would have been dead.”
I took several years to digest the experience. The last ten or so, I have been living with severe environmental illness. I am so allergic to petroleum products and various chemicals (not to mention wood dust and indoor molds) that having a job or a home that does not have something in it that makes me sick has been an impossibility. There have only been a handful of days this decade where I felt “healthty” like I did before my sickness.
I am not afraid of death, I only fear to forget love/peace/beauty so much that it changes me away from being able to feel joy/happiness/hope. It has been hard, my illness changes my moods to negative very often, but I have come to see these feelings as chemicals in my body, the “real” me is separate from my body.
It allows me to operate to a degree even with severe pains shooting though my head and other parts of my body. Soon I hope to be able to build a home that will not make me sick.
Sorry to ramble on like that, I hope there is some information for someone in here. Reading near death experiences has been very good for my soul over the years. Please do not be afraid to share yours if you feel in your heart that the listener can benefit from it.
M.R.
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