From the Streets by Rosalie M.
My near death experience happened five years ago. In order for me to communicate how incredible that was, I should tell you a little bit about my life.
I did not come from a functional place at all. I lived in a part of LA that a lot of people never see or can’t imagine, that they may only see on TV. When I went to LA about a year ago, I saw all these people living on the streets. They had little 13, 14 year old girls with big boils on their faces, and they were deformed from so much crack use. Their mothers would only come out at night because the sun would burn their skin. They would sell their daughters on the street corners. These little children would be destroyed. By the time they were 16, they’d die. Whores get shot in alleys all the time.
I came from a very dysfunctional family. People were feeding me drugs when I was six years old just to watch me run around the room loaded, and then laughing at me because it was funny to see a loaded child running around. It was around that time that I was raped by a drunk. Between the ages of six and ten year I lived in an abandoned building with my mother and younger brother.
I was a street person. My mother used to panhandle on the streets with me and my little brother. I didn’t go to school much. I dropped out in the first month of seventh grade. I’d been drinking since the time I was about seven and 1/2, and by the time I was ten I was a drug addict. Because of my life I was in a lot of pain, and I was using a lot of drugs all the time. I became a whore when I was eleven years old, and started working the streets.
Before my near death experience I didn’t care about anybody but myself. You would never have let me into your house if it had had anything expensive in it. I was a tough street girl, cold, mean, hateful…just a hard core, way out there type of person. If a woman had tried to approach me, it could easily become a “let’s fight” type of thing. If you had seen me, you would never have said hello. You would have crossed the street if you saw me coming, because I didn’t care. I’d carry a bottle down the street. Sometimes at Hollywood, California, I wouldn’t shower for a long time, and I’d sit on some corner somewhere with a bottle in my hand, just like an 80 year old wino. That’s the kind of person I was. I didn’t care about anyone or anything; just getting high, turning tricks and getting drunk. I was a street person, and I was not in my right mind.
I never went to church, and nobody ever told me about God. If they did, I don’t remember. But I never believed in God. If there was a God, I hated Him, because of what had happened to me all my life.
I don’t like to say the word “victim”, but maybe I was a victim at a certain age. But I was also a product, a product of society, a product of the forgotten, the people that have been forgotten. Because we see it on TV. We listen to the pretty songs. Maybe we cry once in a while and donate to a charity. But it’s still there.
When I was fifteen years old I was hitchhiking around the country. I wanted to be a hippy, but I also wanted to die. When I was hitchhiking back across the country, coming over here, I was in the process of doing that. I was killing myself. I had been up for three days, doing cocaine, and I had done more than the average amount. I’d done too much. But I didn’t care about life anymore. I didn’t care about anything.
I was riding in a semi. I remember feeling really shaky, like I was going to snap. I had never felt that way before, and I had been doing drugs for a long time. All of a sudden I felt a snap. It felt like a crack in my body, and I went into the back of the truck. There’s a sleeper on these big semi’s. The guy driving was going about 90 miles an hour, and he didn’t even know I was there. He was busy talking to himself. I went in the back, took a pillow and put it over my stomach. I don’t know why I did that, but it felt like I had to cover my middle part with something, or else my guts were going to seep out. I laid there curled up.
I was afraid. I knew I was going to die. I knew I was going to die that minute. It was going to end, and I was afraid, because I didn’t want it to end. I curled up into a fetal position, and closed my eyes. I went, then, into what seemed like a little bit of a sleep. I remember thinking at the time that it wasn’t right that I was sleeping, because I was on so many drugs, so much speed. And I remember feeling a panicky feeling. Then I felt the life slip out of my hands, and out of feet into my center. Those are the only words I can use to explain it. It just slipped into my center.
All of a sudden I was in darkness, this pitch black darkness. I was light, my body was light. It had light emanating from it. But I was in darkness, the kind where if you open your eyes really wide you don’t see one little shred of light. I remember doing that, looking like that with what I thought were my eyes, and I was afraid. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone down to the basement when you were six years old to get something for your parents, and it’s so dark down there? Then you come running up the stairs really fast because you feel like something’s going to reach out and grab you? That’s the kind of fear I had, and it seemed like the fear was building.
I cried out. I cried out to something, and I didn’t know what I was calling out to. I didn’t care. It’s kind of like when you just call out for your mom, or your dad, or whoever is there, “Somebody help me!” Before I left the darkness I heard words audibly in my ears. The words were “Do not fear, my child.”
Then a bright light came at me really quick, and I saw a being, a beautiful being. A man. He was laughing, he was laughing beautiful laughter. He had very thick reddish brown, auburn hair. His eyes were beautiful, eyes that had a color I can’t explain. You can mix paints. You can go and look at color crayons. You can do anything you want. You’ll never be able…I could never explain the color of His eyes. The closest thing that would come to their color would be a newborn baby’s. And he was roaring with laughter, joyously, a laughter that just gets you in your heart.
Then we spoke to each other. We didn’t speak with words, with our mouths. That was really intense for me. I just remember looking at him and wondering how he could be doing that, how we could be communicating and actually hearing each other somewhere inside of our minds, but not using our mouths to speak with. That just didn’t make any sense! I could never understand that.
Then I asked him who he was, because I had never had any church background. I was a lost soul. I know I was. He said, “I am the Christ,” or “I am Jesus Christ.” And He took me by my hand. And He flew with me.
We flew with our arms spread out, kind of like Superman in a way. It was so amazing! And He was talking to me the whole time, talking to me without His mouth! I remember thinking to myself, “Why isn’t He using His mouth! Why aren’t we using our mouths to talk! This is really insane, man!” I just remember thinking that.
And we were flying. He had this beautiful clothing on that wasn’t really clothing, but He wasn’t naked. I remember looking around, and there’s an air there, but not really air. You don’t breath, or anything. I remember that I was beautiful too. I remember that. I felt so beautiful, like I was perfect. I’d never felt beautiful like that before.
And there was no time there! No time at all. I couldn’t tell if five days had passed or if two seconds had passed. I would never know. And I remember thinking that, too. I knew that. I don’t know why. It’s as though we were frozen in time, flying through these folds, through the dimensions. I had weird kind of eyesight. I could see far away, very far away. It was just different. But I saw that there are different dimensions throughout the universe. As far as you could see they folded into each other in a way.
As we were flying through these dimensions, I thought He was holding my hand, because I did have hands. I did have a body. I looked to my left at Him and His arm was molded into my arm! But He wasn’t sucking me into Him, or anything. I was just becoming a part of Him, and He was becoming a part of me. It just wigged me out!
What we were in was like forever. We were in forever. It just went on and on, for eternity, where we were. And He was talking to me, that way without His lips. He was so beautiful, and gorgeous. He was everything in one, everything you could ever want in one. I remember just freaking out, just going “Oh, my God! What is happening to me! This can’t be happening to me!”, and I asked Him all these questions. I wanted to know who He was, and I wanted to know what the ____ I was doing there, because I didn’t understand! I asked Him “Why did all those things happen to me when I was little.” “Why did all those things happen to my mother?” and “Why is the world the way it is?”
He told me that the reason that all that stuff had happened to me was because everybody was running around with free will, and nobody had asked Him. He’s so kind and loving and giving, and He cannot invade a situation. That’s why He had waited until I became old enough for Him to introduce Himself to me. But He would have done it sooner if someone had asked Him. Things happened as they had because of the way we used our free will. And I had just gotten caught up in everybody else’s free will. We talked a lot. Most of all there came an overwhelming feeling of understanding. He gave me this knowledge of every answer to every question there ever was. So I didn’t need to ask any more. I just understood.
We came out of the dimensions and He took me back to a time when He was in a human body. I was there on the earth, and He was above me, not in a human body, just a presence there, while He showed me. I watched Him being dragged on His cross, and then they were carrying Him. Then He had it himself, just holding it there. And they were spitting on Him, like He was a piece of shit or something, like they didn’t even care! They didn’t even want to care! They didn’t even want to know anything! They were just spitting and hating Him, and beating Him. They were scourging Him, and I didn’t even know the word “scourge”! The first time I had ever known that word was when He told me that word. And I wanted no more part of that. I didn’t want to see any more of it.
I didn’t say “Take me away.” It was just a knowing thing, that I didn’t want to see that, them doing that to Him, because I knew that it was Him they were doing it to when I was looking at it. As soon as I decided that, He took me out of there, even though I knew He would have showed me more there, in that place. I went up through Him! I felt myself go up through the Him that had died! He took me above and showed me a time line with colors, instead, so I could see who He was, because I had asked Him. He didn’t want to tell me who He was. He wanted to show me, because I had never known any of that before.
The time line had blue, green, purple, red and other colors. He told me that that was the earth, that that was our time, and that that was the beginning and that that was the end. He showed me that the red was like an intervention, when He died on the cross, to bridge the chasm between the two times, so that we could go on. I didn’t really understand that until He let me know that He shed his blood for my sins. And that was like “Wow!” It just blew me away! It did! And I didn’t know why it did. It just blew me away.
Then, all of a sudden we were flying again, through the dimensions, where there was no time at all. And it was kind of strange, because He would just swish His hand and He would create something, an object of some sort of matter. I don’t know what that matter was that He created, but it was beautiful. And as He created He would laugh, joyously. It was weird, because you knew He’d been doing this all along. But every time He did it, it was like he was doing it for the first time.
All of a sudden I was aware I felt so free! It was like you didn’t have to do anything to be that way. You were just there doing it. It seemed like we were doing that for a long time, flying and creating as we went. And He was so beautiful, laughing. His smile would just make your heart melt, and His eyes were this color, this beautiful color. You could just stare at Him forever.
I remember there was a point where we stopped, and I was tempted. To explain this part I should tell you that Jesus and I would play this game where I would run towards Him, and He would lift me up. And I would twirl into the air, and stay there and float! Then I would fall back down into His arms. We played stuff like that. Now some negative entity physically manifested itself in the form of Jesus, and came near me. I looked over, thought it was Jesus, and ran towards who I thought was Jesus. It picked me up and seduced me with its hands. Then I was tempted. I would have to make a choice. I remember I was excited…that feeling where your nostrils open up with excitement. I looked at what was holding me, then I looked at Jesus. I remember feeling that I didn’t want what was happening to me, so I ran towards Jesus. He picked me up and hugged me and loved me, just loved me.
Then we were back, flying through the dimensions, when I saw the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in my entire life, with colors that don’t exist in this world. Beautiful colors. There was a big bright light in the middle of them. It was like a sunset.
All of a sudden I felt a separation. From the time our arms had joined and throughout our journey we had been together. Now I felt the jolt of Him separating from me and going up next to the Light. I remember feeling really heartbroken, because I missed the connection with Him, and because I didn’t ever want to go back to this messed up world!
I was in the sky and He was standing next to the Light with His arms raised in the air, roaring with laughter, the most beautiful laughter. I turned around and looked behind me. As far as my eyes could see there were billions and billions of people, and my eyes could see a long way, because I had this weird kind of eyesight. There were babies and grandpas, and grandmas, and mothers, and fathers, every age. And there were babies with wings! It was beautiful! And they were all flying and laughing and dancing and moving upwards, over me, into this Light in the sky. And they would come together in the Light and then separate on the other side into forms or bodies. I knew they were going into their new bodies, newer bodies even than what I had at that time when I was with Him flying. Newer than that. They were becoming golden as they went through the Light.
And He was laughing. They were all going as fast as they could, into the Light. And there was music there in the air. It wasn’t as though somebody was playing it, but it was musical. He was looking right at me with his eyes. Then I looked to my left, and to my right, and from the expressions on the faces of those around me I knew that He was looking right at every single one of those people individually as well. He was smiling at them with that same smile of love, and they were running towards Him.
But I wasn’t. I was just standing there. And I wanted to run towards Him so bad. I remember that feeling. I wanted to go with Him. I wanted to go there. I wanted to be as we had been, flying together, creating as we flew. I don’t think anyone can imagine what that was, not in their wildest dreams.
I stood there. I just looked at Him. He never stopped smiling at me, and He loved me. No one had ever loved me like that before in my life.
Then He said something to me without moving his mouth. It wasn’t anything like “It’s not your time, yet”, just something that I can’t really remember. Then all of a sudden I was back in my body.
I was back in the truck. I remember getting out of that fetal position. My eyes. I reached up and peeled my eyes open. They had sealed themselves shut. My hands were pure white. I felt totally insane, completely nuts, because I had no idea what had happened to me. “This is just not happening to me!” was my reaction. “What’s going on?!”
I went up to the front of the truck and and tapped the driver on the shoulder. He looked at me and screamed “Who the ____ are you!” He either didn’t remember me or he didn’t recognize me. I told him I had to get out. At that time I remember looking up into his rear view mirror. My face was pure white, and my lips had turned blue. I know that I had died. I know that my body had died. I scared the ____ out of my self. I had let loose in my pants. I had urinated all over myself. I was insane.
I jumped out of the truck when he came to the off ramp. I jumped out of the truck and I started running down the freeway with no shoes on, with nothing. Everything I had owned was in his truck. And I ran down the freeway, speaking in a language I didn’t know. I climbed up underneath an overramp, one of those overpasses, and I sat up underneath there, and I cried. I kind of went crazy for a little while. I had no idea what I had been through, no idea what I had done. “Why? Why did He do this to me? Why did He bring me back?” How could I even be thinking that? Maybe I was just high. Maybe those were the drugs. Maybe it was just a hallucination.
I don’t remember much after that, for about a year, until I found myself pregnant with my son. I was just so traumatized by what I’d gone through that everything seemed in a haze. I mean, what happened to me blew my mind! I never would have thought anything like that! I never would have ever cared before about some sort of God, or, even some sort of higher understanding. All I wanted to do was get high. All I wanted everybody to do was to leave me alone, because I had been through so much. Then He did that to me. He introduced Himself to me.
Sometimes that causes me to get really mad at God. I find myself getting angry because I couldn’t go with Jesus then. He’s kind of like a lover that died, and I can’t see Him again until I die. Then my lover tells me, “Just have faith. It’s okay. I’ll be here.” But meanwhile, there’s the pain here. Like if you were about to get married to someone, and you both planned your lives together and then that someone suddenly died. That’s the feeling I have about not being with Jesus now, an emptyness. And this has caused me problems in some of my relationships. I’m always expecting way too much. I want a man that looks like Him and acts like Him.
That’s the most beauty I’ve ever had in my whole life! That’s the only thing anybody ever gave me that was worth anything, the most beautiful gift I’ve ever received, and sometimes I feel like that was taken away from me. More recently I’ve tried to forget that near death experience. The loss has caused me so much pain. Besides, I can’t live in that world out there. I live here where the rules are different. I saw my mother fly off into fantasy land and she never returned. Now she’s a homeless person who lives in fantasies.
But where I draw my strength from is that near death experience. It’s like an opening, and any time I go through something difficult, I can reach back with my mind and draw stength from the place I went to. When I put up my kids for adoption and picked out their families, I was able to plug the energy of that experience into my life. And those kids are good to go for the rest of their lives. I mean, they have clothes, and a family, and food and all that kind of stuff.
Knowing Jesus is there is a source of strength for me. I know He’s there. I know in my heart, and that’s something a lot of people don’t have! People walk around this earth, endlessly wandering, endlessly wondering. They don’t know! Now I can close my eyes anytime and see His face. That never happened to me before. When I just say His name, “Jesus”, it makes me feel really good. And the most important thing is that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Because I know in my heart.
I know that my experience really happened, that it wasn’t a hallucination, that it wasn’t any figment of my imagination. I couldn’t imagine anything like that! Especially after what I’ve been through. You’d have to have said Jesus Christ’s name four times for me to even have recognized it, and the only reason I might have recognized it is because I’d seen preachers talking on the streets. But I never paid any attention to them. I hated my life and I hated God. It was as though no one cared about me, and there was no place to go. Because I would sit on the corner and drink, and the cops would go right by me because there was nowhere they could put me, because I had left every shelter they had put me in. So it wasn’t just the fear in the darkness that I was asking to be saved from. It was the pain of my life. In the darkness I didn’t ask for Jesus Christ. I didn’t know what was out there that might care about me, whether it was Buddha, Jesus or what. Deep down inside of myself I wondered if there was ever anyone to love me, and I cried out to whatever god there might be, “Help me! Whatever is there, get me out of this pain!” And He did.
But one of the problems I have with Christianity is the intolerance I find practiced by some who claim to be Christians. They’ll come at me with an attitude of “My church is the best church. Believe what we believe.” They’ll tell you special things a person has to do to receive salvation. Christ is available for anyone, anytime! I know that! I wasn’t “saved”. I was probably as far away from “saved” as you can be, but it didn’t matter. I cried out for help, and He came.
Non-Christians have asked me about the importance of His blood covering our sin. What I saw during my experience was that the sin of earth was so awful, that we were so imperfect, that His blood covered it, like a bridge, so we could go on. It’s kind of like on a rainy day where a lady is walking and is about to step in the mud. A guy takes off his jacket and covers the mud for her so she can walk across. That’s kind of what He did for us, in a way.
I am not the same person I was. That is the most overwhelming feeling I have. I am not the same person that I was before. My body died, and something happened. I could never and would never compose a poem before my near death experience. I’ve composed lots of them since. Before, I couldn’t spell two plus two. That’s changed. Before, I thought only of myself, of my own survival. Now I help people in a lot of ways in my life. I try to all the time, in ways I don’t want to describe because then it would kind of defeat the purpose of doing it really. Before, I wanted to die. Now I want to enjoy life in all sorts of ways, not run from it.
I feel like a lot of my purpose is maybe not to speak in front of a lot of people, but to go out there in the world, and wherever I go to share this. Not necessarily the near death experience, but to give strength to people. I’ll go to a coffee shop, or whatever, and God will bring people into my life that I can sit down with and help. They may start depressed, but by the end of our conversation they’re feeling a lot better.
My purpose is to spread love around and not to judge people, even if they’re a whore, or a successful businessman. I mean, one person walking around this world not judging is a big addition. Because if you notice every time you walk into a room, those little thoughts go across your mind about what she’s wearing, or what he’s doing. And they don’t mean to go through your mind. They just happen because that’s the way the world is. That’s why I find it so hard for myself. But if I can go into a room and attempt every time not to do that, or to say “Okay…that’s not right. It’s not my place. He put me in my place! I am not the judge.”, then I’m more understanding, I’m more tolerant. So every time I go into a room I try to put myself back in my place. And I try to love people, no matter what, because I have so much of it to give. We all do. We just haven’t discovered it yet.
A Seattle IANDS Near-Death Experience Story.
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