My Greatest and Worst Night.
Ok, here goes nothing. The first thing I would like to make clear is that I make no claims to being a writer. I just hope I am given the skill to get through this and hopefully have the experience come across as clear as possible. The most reassuring aspect of this is that those who read this will have a basic understanding of what this experience was like and the difficulties of trying to put it into words. I hope that you will also understand the fear I am now feeling while putting this down for others to see for the first time. This narrative may seem to have no rhyme or reason; I am just "putting it to paper" as it comes.I would like to make it very clear, in the year 1986, the year I turned 19 -- I was not a very good person. Saying that never seems to convey the full extent of the matter. I was lost. I have spent many years trying to make up for the harm that young man caused. Many years hiding what I was from others. I am not now able to go into details, nor do I wish to. I would hope that I would not have to. Just so long as I can get the point across, I was not a good person.
The night of my NDE was the greatest and worst of my life. I suffer from hypoglycemia, low blood sugar. The bad news is I have to eat many small meals all the time or face passing out or worst. The good news is I stay thin. During this period, I had fallen into unconsciousness three or four times because of not watching my diet. My lifestyle did not help things either. I really did not care. I did not care about many things.
On this night I did not just pass out, I fell into a diabetic coma, extreme low blood sugar - and died. At least that is what my "escort" told me. No one found me; I have no outside verification. I always wished I had.
I found myself alone in a place with my escort. I find it interesting how I tried to give shape and sound to things that had none. My mind was constantly trying to make the place into a room, and my escort - just an entity - into a person with a voice. I was there forever. The next thing I learned after realizing my brain would attempt to put a physical aspect to everything, was that when you are no longer of the body, time has no concept. As a "human" I still find that one hard to grasp. Moreover, harder still to explain.
My escort was not happy to be there. I could feel it, I knew. I felt like an annoyance, this was just something he (you will find the defining gender for this entity will change) had to do. He just wanted to get it over with; he had better things to do. He did not like me. This was his job, this was just something he had to do. I knew all this in an instant and I was trapped there with him forever.
After an eternity, I could not take it any longer and asked where we were. He flatly told me I was dead. I figured I was in hell, being stuck in a room I could not get out of (I had tried) with someone who felt nothing but justifiable disdain for me for all of eternity -- was hell. He felt this and, in the most condescending manner, told me this was not hell. I thought if this is heaven this is a real disappointment (not the words I used at the time). Again he knew my thoughts and continuing to talk as if speaking to a child he told me this was not heaven either. This was just a temporary place, it was not my time, and it was my fault we were there. We would just wait here until it was time for me to go back. He was sent to watch over me until that time.
Well I was one happy camper. I was dead, which was nifty since it was not my time, and I was not in hell. All I had to do was wait until it was time to go back - cool, I could do that.
After another eternity, I got bored and my escort was not the most fun person to be around. Therefore, I began to complain. How much longer were we going to be here? To this, he answered -- a little while (insert reminder that time has no concept when out of body). After another eternity, I continued to complain. This sucks, I had seen movies about people who had died and come back, they said they had more fun than I was having. What was the point? Why was I not doing the "out of body" thing at least? That would be cool, cooler than hanging out with this guy. To this he answered - you're too human. What did that mean? I am too human. Of course, I am human. What does that have to do with it? He answered that my sins grounded me, kept me away from my full potential (this was a universal truth, not meant just for me). They held me down; each one was like a brick in a wall I built between myself and what I was meant to be. With them, I was limited to stay in this room with him. At least he was starting to warm up to me. He seamed to enjoy "enlightening" me, as an adult enjoys teaching a child.
I knew what I was told was true, I never felt the need to question. The answers were just truths, truths I felt I should have known. Maybe I did know them once, but not then, not the person I was then.
Ok, so what you're telling me is, I am just out of luck. I am just stuck here with you for "a little while".
"No," was the reply, you can do something about it. Now he was really warming up to me.
Seriously? What? What do I have to do?
Well, he said, you have to "pay for your sins".
What the heck does that mean, "pay for my sins"? What are you talking about?
You have to face what you have done wrong in your life, I was told, truly face it. Then you will no longer be grounded; you will no longer be "human" (he always used that term as if it were a cuss word).
Ok, I replied, what is the big deal. How bad a person could I have been? I am only nineteen and the first like twelve or thirteen years don't count, right. So what is the big deal? Let's do this.
Are you sure? He answered. You do not have to do this; it is not your time.
Yes I was sure; anything had to be better than "a little while longer" with this guy.
All right, he said, it is your choice.
I would like to interrupt my story for a moment. I hope you can get an idea of what kind of fool I was then by my dialogue with this entity.
So it began, the story of my life. It was like watching a movie, only better. Yes the old "life flashing before your eyes" routine. However, it only "flashed" up to a point then it stopped. I was almost three years old, I realized that if I took things away from my baby brother it would make him cry. I wanted to make him cry. Mommy and Daddy were spending too much time with him and less time with me. The memory of what I did is causing me to weep even now as I write this. I felt (and can still feel) the pain I caused my innocent baby brother. I could feel the love he had for me, that and the confusion he was feeling over what I was doing. He was just a baby and I was torturing him for my own pleasure. I had to face this.
As humans, we make excuses. Some might say a sibling taking a toy away from another is normal, not that big of a deal. I won't argue that. However, I know that I will have to one day again face the pain I have caused others.
I was not facing this wrong doing alone. My escort, who now seemed to be a perfect entity, clean and without sin, was with me. He also could see what I had done and that I was ashamed. Yet we were not alone, the sky was fill with an innumerable amount of beings, all pure, and all were witness to what I had chosen to do.
Now I feel as if I will run into trouble with this description. I can not put into words the shame, disgust, guilt, embarrassment, sorrow, or self-loathing I felt over what I had done. There are no words. I feel inept in trying to convey the experience. These are just words. Human words.
These feelings actually took on a physical form in the way of an ocean, with no boundaries and no end to its depths. An ocean of regret with me, in its center, treading water. Every ounce of my strength I used to keep my chin above its surface. I pleaded, and cried, but the knowledge of what I had done, what I had chosen to do, would not go away.
I thought for a moment that I had been tricked. My escort was not an angel but the devil himself and this was hell. It was not my time but he was getting a piece of me nonetheless. Or that it really was my time and I had just chosen my own hell. However, as quickly as these thoughts entered my mind I knew they were not true. I was just making excuses not to have to face what I had done. Not to have to face it in the light of the perfect beings that were all around me. One might ask how long this had to go on. How long must I suffer this way for the "innocent" act of a child? The answer is an eternity (no concept of time). In addition, the act was not innocent; I knew what I was doing and chose to do so.
Then it ended. The water receded and the emotions left me. I had faced what I had done. The distrust, anger, and the loss of innocence in my baby brother I had caused. Then the tape started rolling again, I had chosen this, I could not make it stop. I will edit the rest of my life down by just making a few points. Every time the "tape" stopped, I went through the same ordeal. The tape stopped for thoughts as well as actions. I would hope you could see how the tape stopped more often, as I got older.
I made an excuse for an action (well he did this to me first) which was met with a tidal wave of negative emotions that swept me under. Only direct prayer to God brought the level back down to its now regular position of just below my chin.
This went on so long that I had forgotten what happened to me (a human trait) and made another excuse, which was met by the same consequences.
I only had to face those things I had not asked forgiveness for through true prayer in life.
I still had to face those things I had asked forgiveness for through false prayer. When I was just going through the motions. This went on so long (no time concept) that I made a third excuse.
I know what hell is. It was the moment/eternity after the tape of my life ended and I believed it would start all over. For the next moment/eternity, I was among the others. My escort by my side, she no longer looked on me with disdain, but with love, as did the others. I would like to believe there was a little more from my escort in the fact that she knew I did not have to face what I did. It was almost as if she was proud of me, a mother's pride in a son.
I know what heaven is. It was there among the others. Again, the human words of peace, joy, and love fail miserable to describe the essence of being. This is the place I remember when I face doubts. The place I would like to talk to others about, others who have been there.
I then found myself back in the room with my escort. The mood had definitely changed. She was now a loving, caring, and understanding mother figure. Not the disappointed father figure I had come to be familiar with.
You will forgive me if I again interrupt this narrative. I am drained, it is late, and there is still so much to tell. I can not believe I got this much out on paper, so to speak. I am not sure if it makes any sense to anyone except me. Forgive me, but I do not know if any of you will believe it. I am frightened, now that I have put just this much of myself "on display".
If your responses to what I have shared so far are negative I will end it here and go in peace with love to you all. If you can understand what I have gone through so far I will gladly continue to share it with you.
Yours, Me.
First, I would like to thank those of you who have commented on my NDE so far. I am still amazed that someone can actually understand what happened to me. I have only known one person who had an NDE, he was not willing to talk about it, and I was not comfortable to bring up my own. With your patience, I would like to continue.
I found myself again in the room with my escort, only now it was much more pleasant. She was much more kind without a hint of condescension. She seemed to be waiting to see what I would do next, as a parent watches a young child who has just learned to walk and waits to see where they will go first.
The idea of an out-of-body experience was still on my mind and now I knew I could do it. I left my body and hovered in the trailer I was living in, it was quite the remarkable experience. After just a few moments, it became common place, as if I knew how to do it all along. I registered a strange noise and went to investigate, but I did this already knowing what it was and what I would find. Information was coming to me very quickly.
Around the front of the house whose back yard the trailer was located in I went. There I found one of my friends standing on the hood of another one of my friend's car with a large rock, smashing in the windshield. I "stood" there for a while watching him, I knew why he was doing it. I felt his anger. I also knew he was wrong. He had based his choice to do this on misinformation; I knew how he thought. I could tap into all of his memories, and did. I not only saw his life through his eyes, I could also see it from a third parties perspective. I could see the truth to all the situations he had clouded up for himself, and I was sad. I was sad that his life was filled with pain over things that never happened as he remembered them. Things he had caused himself. His memories warped by arrogance, greed, envy, and all the other common human frailties. I believe I would have cried if I could, instead I just stayed with him and hoped I could help him when it was no longer my time.
I then realized I could go anywhere. Again, the information was coming to me quickly. Distance did not bind me. Anywhere in a thought, and all I met were open books. Their memories were mine and the outside perspective was there. I could see their lives through their eyes and the truth at the same time. I could see how human frailties ruin us and bring pain upon ourselves. I learned that, for the most part, we are all the same. Thinking we are so different from one another holds us apart. I also learned that humans get very boring very fast. I no longer had human desires; the want to be able to go anywhere and know what people are thinking is a human desire. It serves what end? It taught me that we are alike, but then the lesson was over.
I found myself back in the room with my companion. I pictured her with a knowing look on her loving face as she turned her head slightly to the side and said. Well? As if to say what did you think or what did you learn. I talked it over with her. How we were all the same, how we messed up our own lives through our thoughts and actions. How childish and small we really were. How disappointing we were, and the fact that now I could do what I had hoped for as a human, now that I could do it, the act no longer appealed to me. She just radiated a smile so full of love I could have just stayed with her forever. She knew -- she knew all these things as if they were self-evident. Her reaction to me when I first arrived now made sense in a way. I was so disappointed. I thought we were better than that. That we, as humans, had come farther. We no longer crucified people in the streets, but we still killed out of fear. We still thought the same.
After an eternity with her, I began to feel better, but still I wanted to know how much longer I was to be here. I could help others now. I had information; I could make the world a better place. She just smiled that smile and said, "a little while". I asked what else could I do, what else could I learn? She responded where would I like to go. However, her answer was not limited by time. I asked her what she meant by "where". If I could really travel back in time. This appealed to me, I could see if we were better than those that had come before us were. I would know that we were not the same as those who had killed so many and hated for so long. She told me yes, but with limits.
I could only see though a first person perspective. The eyes I would look out of could only be that of my fathers and his father and so on. I would only know and see what they had. I agreed.
I could not believe I could find anything more disappointing than my fellow man until I took this trip. I bounced from one set of eyes to another, one mind to another. All were again the same. Hate prejudice, fear, greed, etc. They were all there and had always been there. I quickly returned to my room and again talked over these events with my escort.
How can the Big Guy put up with us? I am pissed off at us and I am one of them. How can God, who gave us the gift of life and free will, stand the sight of what we have done with it? Her answer - Love. Well how the heck could I argue that one, I knew she was telling the truth. Love, and all that comes with it, patience, understanding, caring, and compassion. All these in a never ending supply.
I had hoped we were better than we were. I had hoped we had come farther than we had. These things took time to get over. After another eternity, I asked if there was nothing else to learn, maybe something positive I could take with me. She again asked me where I wanted to go. Again, there was timelessness about it. I asked if I could see the future. She answered, yes, but with limits.
I would again like to interrupt my story. I am tired and these pages just keep getting longer. I hope you are still able to understand what happened to me. I feel as if you will and that gives me comfort.
Love to you all, Me.
I appreciate all the patience that you have shown me as I attempt to tell this story. Sometimes I am in turmoil whether to finish the telling or to just quit and pretend this has never happened. I have often wished for just that - that this never happened, that I could just go on with my life believing this was just a bad dream. However, for those of you who have gone through it you know that it is an impossibility to just wish it away. All of it at least.
My escort told me that there would be limitations to seeing the future. I asked what they would be. To this she replied, "You can only see what is to occur in your life time". I could watch it from one of two perspectives, out through my eyes, in which case I would live it from moment to moment with myself. Knowing what my future self knew and thought. Alternatively, I could be outside myself, as if viewing a movie. In this manor, I found I could run ahead and see what was to become.
This double perspective may get a little complicated so I will attempt to make it clear. For the next three days I lived inside my future self, I stayed, looking out my eyes, caught up in the experience for 72 hours, and then I "flashed".
"Flashing" is just a word I will use to describe the following. I left my future self and watched from the outside. From this perspective I was not only able to see what was happening to me, but what would happen for each choice I made. If I had the choice to turn left, I could follow that decision out to its finality. I could then go back to that moment again and follow out the path leading to the right and see what was to become of me. I would then "flash" into my self at the moment of the decision and try to influence my future self to make the right choice. In addition, when I would "flash in" I was aware of my future self's personality, how I would change over the years, how I was going to think in the future. I was also aware of all that had transpired from a, now, first person perspective instead of the third person perspective I had from just watching. I will try to clarify more by using examples of what I saw.
As I said, for three days I lived inside myself. I have to admit I paid little attention to what was going on around me. The experience was overwhelming. But at the end of those three days an episode occurred which made me want to flash (I will go into this more once I finish this future segment). I flashed and I saw the choices I would be faced with and the end results. Know this, each choice was met with more choices and so on and so on. The mind boggles at the amount of decisions we make in a day and how they truly affect our lives, the lives of those around us, and our souls.
When I witnessed a significant event in my life I would run it out, run out the other choices that I could have made, flash in and influence my decision. I was not always successful. We have free will no matter what the circumstances. I also want to make it clear that sometimes none of my choices had a happy ending, sometimes I had to pick the lesser of two evils.
I would then flash out and continue flashing in and out as needed. I quickly found out these few things. I would have to flash less often as time went on, fewer nudges were needed to keep me on course. In addition, for the most part, my decision to intervene was based on the perspective of a spirit being; i.e. I did not give myself lottery numbers.
There was at least one exception to that rule, something I did for selfish reasons. When you do something for reasons like that, you are going to pay for it. Every decision has its consequences.
Therefore, I continued flashing. The most surprising aspect I began to encounter was how the future me thought, so unlike the nineteen-year-old boy who was flashing. I was confused but proud at what was going to be important to me in the future. It was strange sharing the body with the future me, for the short period of time I chose to stay, before flashing. At some point my escort began telling me my time was short, that "little while" was just about up. I began skipping over larger and larger spans of time in an attempt to give myself help in the far future. Then, all at once I awoke.
My first thoughts were these. I am not going to marry my fiancée. I was giggling at the career choice I was going to make. I knew whom I was going to marry. Finally, I cried tears of joy at the memories of my children.
My post NDE life quickly slid downhill. Knowing everything that was going to happen for the next three days was hell. It sounds nice, but what is the point of living if you know what is to become. Worse still, I still knew what everyone was thinking and why, a gift. Some of you may be able to understand this one -- the thoughts of others will drive you insane. So imagine this, you know what's going to happen, you know what people are thinking, you know why they think the way they do, you know everything they have ever done in their entire lives - mostly bad, and no one will believe you and no one understands.
How long would it take before you lost it? Three days. I remember praying that night, I now knew that God heard all prayers. I cried and I prayed for Him to take me or to take the gift, I could not live with it any longer. And who to my joyous surprise came to me -- but my escort.
She was a ray of warmth, all smiles and love, and she asked me what I wanted. I told her to take it from me I could not bare it any longer. My only other choice to make it leave me, was to sin, and knowing what I did I could not bring myself to do that. (That might take some explaining).
She just smiled that knowing smile and asked me if I was sure. Something in the way she did that made me stop and think -- I then knew it did not have to be all or nothing. Therefore, we worked out a deal. I do not know how else to put it, and I am not yet allowed to remember it, but it has something to do with only receiving the gift as I can handle it. No, it has not been all peaches and cream, there is a passage in the Good Book that states the Lord will not give you more than He knows you can handle, and not what you think you can handle.
Well, I awoke not remembering. I knew something had happened but when I tried to recall it, I would break out in terror sweats. So it went for awhile. A few days later, I suddenly got the feeling that someone - me - was inside my head with me, trying to tell me something, and then was gone. This continued over the next few years of my life with the spans between flashes usually growing farther apart. Each time it would happen I would be reminded that something important had happened to me, but I just could not recall - at first.
My life got on track; I turned into a "lucky" person. No matter what bad decisions I made in life, I came out - eventually - smelling like a rose. Sometimes it almost seemed as if I knew what was going to happen. Through it all, the fear I felt at remembering that night diminished and slowly, the memories returned, and so did the gifts. I was lucky, for the most part they came slow and easy, giving me time to adapt, time to learn control, to teach myself control. By this time, I was not in a position in life to bring it up to anyone's attention. I was trying to erase that boy of nineteen, and to bring this up, would bring up him. In addition, the career path I had chosen did not lend itself to this kind of experience, it would not have gone over well. Therefore, I was left to deal with it on my own.
I grew, my life went on. I learned to live with my gifts and make them a part of my life eventually. To the point to where I almost feel "normal", with one major exception. Every so often, I find myself not alone, for a few moments, I am here with myself. The nineteen-year-old me, is with me, a constant reminder that what happened did happen. An occasional nudge to keep me moving in the right direction. Some people find me over confident when they first meet me, they say I act as if I know the answers to everything. After awhile they say I am just "lucky" then, after more time passes, they just get use to it.
I know I am doing what I am suppose to be doing, my nineteen-year-old self reminds me. Every time he shows he brings a little more of that night with him and gives me a clue as to what is to come. He lets me know that what I am doing is the best that I can and he gives me the greatest of gifts - confidence.
I am surprised by how much he and I have changed from each other, pleasantly surprised. Again, it is a reminder of what I was and what I hope to one day become.
I cannot put into this story all I have learned; I learn more every day. However, I would like to leave you with a few essential ideas if I may. There is a God and He will listen when you pray. You must believe He will never give you more than He knows you can handle (not what you think you can handle). Love, and what comes with it, will get you through anything. Everything happens for a reason. Finally -- tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life -- you can start again.
Love to all, Me.
(This Near Death Experience came in three parts. I left the beginning and ending of each part in because they are so interesting. The writer is anonymous.)
