Experience description:

Circumstances around the time of experience (Check all that apply):

1.  At the time of your experience was there an associated life-threatening event?

Yes, Illness:  Other (briefly specify): I had two experiences that I don’t know how to categorize since I was not dying in those moments. Both were for lack of a better term a type of astral projection of sorts but because of their content and the context they gave to my NDE I include them

2.  Please describe your experience using as much detail as you can and as much space as you need.  The scroll bars allow an almost unlimited amount of writing.  Please also describe the events that occurred both prior to and after the experience.

     I had been diagnosed by June 15th, 1998 with cardiomyopathy late stages. It came on suddenly at the end of my 8th grade year starting in April and May but our family doctor  thought it was bronchitis the whole time. So they were giving me cough syrup. Then one morning my Mom thought to take my pulse and immediately booked me an appointment for June 15th as my heart rate was in the 100’s and I hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. All spring I had been competing on a track team for the oncoming freshman in my high school and was running every single weekday and competing Saturdays. Turns out that lifestyle doesn’t mix well with Ritalin which my mother had asked the doctor to prescribe me 20 mg starting in 7th grade so I could concentrate after school on my homework. I only took it after school thank heaven, but even so the combination of having the gene for non compaction cardiomyopathy that triggers naturally during puberty and then running with a stimulant in my system made things much worse than they might have been.

     From June 15-July 19th I would yo-yo back and forth from the hospital to home. They’d pump me full of medicines that helped my heart pump with more force so it didn’t have to beat so hard, and I began to keep down food. Then they’d release me and I’d go back home with no medicine besides a diuretic and hope I could make it a week. The closer it got to the middle of July the less time I spent at home. July 19th was a Friday and I had been in the hospital the whole week prior to that. I was finally too ill to go home at all. By Friday July 17th I was at hourly risk of heart attack and stroke because my blood wasn’t being pushed out with enough force and would slosh back in the chambers of my heart.

     Even though I was young, I wasn’t so young that I didn’t know I was dying. All these weeks leading up to this I had hoped they’d have a drug therapy that would make my heart better but the week of the 19th, I finally was addressing the idea that my heart was beyond repair, and I was dying at record speed. So as everyone does at the end of their life, I began to take stock and to read religious scriptures that spoke about what life was all about and what was expected of us before we met our maker. Since I only slept for a few hours at a time by this point, I spent every night searching all the footnotes in the scriptures to get the clearest data I could about heaven and Jesus and God, because I knew despite all my faith to the contrary, God might take me home at any point. It kept me in a sort of light bubble mentally despite the ever present goblins of fear that loomed so close just a few feet from my insulated hospital bed. As long as I was researching heaven and Jesus, I wasn’t thinking about how scary death was going to be. I believe this mental state was the key to the out of body experience I had the night I knelt and prayed for a heart at the foot of my bed in that big ICU.

     By the 18th I’d had 24 hours on and off of dystonia from droperidol and compazine together. I had swelling all over every inch of me because my body had taken to storing water build up everywhere instead of just around my lungs. Each of my organs were now circling the drain in what the medical field calls catastrophic organ failure. My metabolism had now eaten away nearly 30 pounds of muscle and I could barely lift my legs and arms without severe tremors and instability. However, I needed to kneel and ask God to give me a new heart so I insisted Mom help me out of bed and get me in a kneeling position on the floor. As I closed my eyes and began my prayer, I let my mind express every dread I felt, every sorrow I expected to feel if ripped away so soon from my loved ones. Then with one last question I wondered how heaven could be heaven at all if it meant I couldn’t even speak to my loved ones much less be there for them when they were having a hard time, or laugh in good times, for ages and ages until they all died at old age and came back to me. In my understanding, that kind of separation from everyone I loved would feel more like a never ending hell than anything, so I sought God’s explanation.

     Usually my answers were more of words and feelings that came to my mind, but this time pictures, words, feelings, and an uncanny complete and fleshed out understanding flooded my mind almost instantly. I saw myself floating just beyond an open view of a young cosmos. New earths were being formed, new planets. Stars were exploding and nebulas were birthing new ones. “You can come back to me and I will take you with me and teach you everything there is to know about astronomy. You will not be bored. You will comprehend physics and math, and chemistry and even help me. The heavens will be at your disposal and you will be able to go anywhere. You will also be preoccupied with missions for me. There are many who need our help and you will be of great service. Time will pass on this earth far quicker than for us in heaven so the wait will feel like nothing. Also, there will be certain key moments when you will be able to communicate with your loved ones. They may not know it’s you, but they will feel your influence nonetheless. Moreover, your spirit will not be hindered in the way you’ve known. You will not tire. You will not have pain or sickness anymore. Heaven will free you from all of that, so you can finally pursue those quests of your heart that fulfill you, without stopping for a single moment to heed the needs of the flesh.

     Now that I understood how preoccupied I’d be in heaven, learning about astronomy, (which was my passion in school) and doing errands for God, it was at this point that I remembered to ask my question. “God, my family, my congregation and many hundreds of people are currently fasting for me to get a new heart.” Then as if the gentlest reminder a thought came to me, “I cannot grant what you don’t offer your faith for. You have to add in yours too.” With that I smiled and added that I knew God could grant me a heart that very moment. I knew he ordered when people lived and died and could orchestrate someone who was already dying, to have the right blood type, and age and distance from me so I could take the organ that would no longer be used. “I know you can give me a new heart if you want to. I need one now. Everyone is fasting for me Sunday (two days from then) and I think I can hold on until Monday so they can add in their faith in too.” I thought. “There’s so much I still want to do. I want to know what it is like to be married to the love of my life. I want to know what it’s like to bear children to raise with my husband and the way that teaches us the greatest capacity to love that we ever experience. I know that this is the realm of the most important missionary work, and I want to be a part of it. There are so many hearts to prepare before the Second coming. I want to be a part of that. May I stay?”

     I knelt there waiting, and within just a few seconds I felt a great warmth as if someone had placed a stoked wood stove right in front of me. It radiated from my chest out in all directions until it filled my toes and fingers and the top of my head. “I will miss you.” I felt. “Go read your scriptures for the rest.”

     With that I opened my eyes, wiped my tear stained face and with Mom’s help got myself back in bed to bring my scriptures to my lap and read where I had last left off. As miraculous as it was, the very next verses were about miracles and how miracles are reserved for the undoubting, that God was bound when we followed his explicit directions regarding faith. My eyes about popped out of my head as I read that God would always follow through if our request was righteous and we offered all our faith, as long as it was in line with what God wanted, and we focused on our faith and let no doubt in. It seemed like God was giving me the formula he’d given all his prophets before him, who moved mountains and spread the red sea, brought pillars of fire down as needed. All of this was telling me that my request for a heart by Monday was in line with God and was within the parameters set forth in these verses. God was telling me I could stay! These verses seemed my proof and a key to a formula very few understood. Exuberantly I burst out to my mom that I’d received my answer and that God told me I would have a heart by Monday.

     Almost immediately Mom got angry and told me that I couldn’t just expect God to give me a heart by Monday. Shocked at her strange about-face in trusting prayers, I stood my ground and told her firmly that I would. She then stormed out of the ICU to take a walk and I was left immediately having to push her doubts as far from my mind as I could. That night Mom and I had little to say to one another. Sunday, the day so many back home were fasting food and water all day for me, I was moved to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit because I needed their expert nurses and a sterile room with an ECMO machine for each patient as needed. Sunday night my college age siblings drove down from school out of state, and stayed with me in my hospital room watching what they saw as my last hours.

     Sunday and Monday were a blur to me. When I don’t remember speaking to my siblings, getting all my tubes adjusted or having tests done, it was just black nothingness. My family remembers my ashen skin color, unceasing cough, emaciated form, and vomiting bile constantly. They were constantly using a dental suction tool to remove the build up of phlegm in my throat making it hard for me to speak to anyone. I hadn’t slept in over two days at that point and was beyond distressed by it. My mother’s friend came by to hold my hand and tell me her family was always praying for me. She later told Mom that in all her years as a nurse she’d never seen someone deter on the edge of death so closely before. Mom tells the story of those two days as if I was delirious since I was in and out of consciousness so much, but that is not the truth. I was getting too exhausted from no sleep, and too out of breath, and aching ademas all over, as well as the emotional strain of slowly suffocating in all my own fluids being stored everywhere. I was losing my will to fight my spirit that wanted out of my crippled body. In those moments of supposed delirium I was experiencing all the swirling data of everyone’s emotions around me. The more I relinquished myself to the darkness, the more I felt everyone in the room. The more I succumbed to the nothing beyond my closed eyelids, the less pain I felt, the more I could breathe in, ALL THE WAY DOWN, something I hadn ‘t been able to do in months. I don’t know how many times I ventured out of my body, but I do remember one particular instance.

     It was Monday evening or thereabouts. My sister Carolynn was sitting by my bedside on my left. Up above her in the left corner was my monitor, hooked to a wall. I remember slipping off to “sleep” and then I saw the top of her head as she let a tear slip off her nose and drip onto my left shoulder. I couldn’t have seen this with my own eyes, because by then I didn’t have the strength to turn my head or any other part of my body. I was entirely at the mercy of others. She seemed to feel like a failure in crying, because Mom had insisted that no one cried in my presence, though if she’d asked me, I would have welcomed it. I hated how private we all were about the pain of my imminent death. I knew there was no growth in trying to bear our emotions in isolation, that emotions were to be shared or they got much too heavy for just one person. I desperately wanted Carolynn to know that it was perfectly ok to cry, that it WAS scary to watch me die, and that it’s ok to let me see her pain. Somewhere around this time, I began to notice that it wasn’t just a lucid real-to-life dream but that I was really out of my body because I started to realize that I shouldn’t be able to feel Carolynn’s emotions so crisply or see the top of her head or see my monitor that was 180 degrees from where I was looking. I was breathing steadily now, something that was just NOT possible. My steady breath meant my heart was working at normal speeds again, and I finally began to move. My vertical blinds were almost constantly drawn and my room made dim so I could catch some shut eye in between visits from staff and family but I passed through them as if they were nothing but a fog. Anything I wanted to see was right in my view. I remember an older man with either bright white hair or that was the shine from the light around him. It’s hard to remember which now. As I looked at him I noticed he was wearing a caramel colored cardigan and had come to speak with my parents and offer himself to them for anything they needed. Tucked underneath one arm was a stuffed animal St Bernard he’d brought to cheer me up. I sense so much about this man. I felt so much love for him and from him. It was almost as if he saw me as a granddaughter and I reciprocated. I knew somehow that he’d not been a stranger to hardship and so knew how to succor people. He’d listened to the inspiration to come to the hospital that was a full hour away from his home, just because he didn’t want any of us to feel alone. I wanted his life to be immensely blessed for all that he was doing for us and his huge heart. (Later I learned that his name is Mr. Campbell and still to this day, I feel that same love and admiration for a man I’ve still never met.)

     Somewhere around this time I felt Carolynn’s deep distress at watching me fade away. She was now pleading with God and saying that she didn’t know how to live without me by her side. I sensed that she felt lost and heavily burdened with a loneliness at being left without me. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go on. She so desperately needed me with her. Here is where I remember a thick darkness, not a foreboding darkness but an absence of matter kind of darkness that encompassed me, and then gave way almost immediately to a bright electric white light that seemed to open up to me from the upper left hand corner of my few in the front of my hospital room. This light seemed to expand from that single point as if spinning outward in ever expanding spokes. This light wasn’t the kind of light from the sun but more like the light you’d see if you could be inside a bolt of lightning. It seemed as if composed of all the colors of the universe and if interested it would refract like a prism and show you all it’s compositional particles and rays. It wasn’t just light though. It was so much more. It was a conduit, a life-force, a communicator. As it illuminated me, I also seemed to absorb its love. It seemed to convey to me that I had intrinsic worth far beyond anything I’d ever imagined. I belonged to it and it to me. It seemed to want to take me somewhere and beaconed me into it. I felt so encompassed in peace and could give so much trust to it because I knew how safe I was. I knew somehow that this light wanted to take me to see Jesus and after experiencing some of the symptoms similar to his crucifixion like suffocation, enlarged heart, fluid edemas everywhere, catastrophic organ failure and extreme thirst, I was eager to embrace him and cry into his shoulders in gratitude for what he’d been willing to put up with for me. Then as if the light whispered something to me, I felt that a visit with Jesus was a one way street. I could not come back. I knew that I had a choice to make. It was at this point that I remembered Carolynn’s tears and the fragile lost state she was in, and I knew without a second thought that I could not leave her alone. I had to stay behind, if only to help give her someone she was allowed to cry with. Just then I felt flooded with an inescapable powerful love for her and I rushed back, knowing that I loved Jesus but my hug would have to wait. I still had something to do. I remember closing my eyes tightly and the force of being back in my body was so overwhelming I almost immediately burst into tears. I felt a surge of depression that was powerful as I breathed in expecting my stomach to make way for a deep breath but instead found that I just scooped a little air off the top, and that was all it could do. Seeing my tears Carolynn pressed her hand into mine and told me that if I got better she’d get me any present I wanted. I told her she could get me a fantail goldfish like in pinocchio and she laughed and said she’d make it work. I told her that she’d have to make good on it, because I was getting a heart very soon. Just then the realization hit me that Jesus was going to be a long way off from now on, and that I’d missed my chance by seconds! Tears came fresh and the sting of my lost chance lasted for quite some time.

     I must have drifted off after that because I woke to see my brother Bryant shouting to me to wake up because they’d found a heart for me finally. Later I found out that it was from a 48 year old woman who’d died within a four hour helicopter ride from UCLA. I was wheeled into the OR at around 10pm that night.

     It took a good three weeks to recover enough for them to discharge me. They finally did just before school started and I began taking slow walks up and down my hallways at home when I wasn’t being privately tutored. One night in an effort to make sure the house was all locked up, I went into the family room to check the back patio door. When I could see that it was locked I stopped to take a look out the glass to the beautiful stars in the sky. I was so taken with their beauty and my joy at being on this side of heaven, that I slumped down to gaze more intently at them. I suddenly saw my earth as if I was floating in its orbit looking upon my great magnificent planet. I began understanding that this was my home, and the home of billions of others like myself who had been given this earth as a training ground to see if they would search God out while in a flesh and blood body. In our previous place each of us had a personal relationship with God the Father. We knew him as everything a father should be. He was generous with his time, always eager to teach us as our curiosity sparked. He always showed unlimited compassion for our needs and our feelings. He truly was the absolute and most magnificent father we’d known. As I looked down at the earth again, I felt a scurrying about, a need to find, that engrossed each person that ever lived. “What are they trying to find?” I asked mentally. “They are trying to find me again. They know they miss the feelings of peace and acceptance but now they don’t remember where it comes from so they try to find it in praise. Some look for praise in fame. Some look for it in scholarly accolades. Some look for it in beauty. Still some look for it in power. Each expects to feel that love they once knew whenever they get praise from others, because it initially feels like acceptance and peace but each are disappointed. Praise from their peers will never satisfy because it is not from me. Only I can fill them with a sense of wholeness/acceptance/absolute unconditional love, they thought they’d finally found. They don’t know it, but are actually looking for only what I alone can give them. Only those who seek me in prayer will ever find it.” As I took this all in, I felt, “You now know where to look for acceptance and love. You have no need to look anywhere else. Come to me in prayer and I will show you how much you matter and how important you are. You need not look elsewhere.” With that, the vision closed up and I found myself back on the floor gazing out my back patio.

     Some weeks later, after I could finally sleep on my stomach (after they’d sawed my sternum apart and clasped it back together with wire and glue) I woke from a dream that will forever be stamped in my memory. I found myself at the base of a two level lobby of sorts that was supported at the front by columns of salmon colored alabaster. Just in front of me was a landing several steps up which I quickly trotted up. There in front of me was a tall hallway made up of hundreds of intricate vaulted archways leading back to the other end. I felt an urgency to go find someone in the few moments I had here and so began forward. I wanted to get to someone I’d known from long ago. I needed to wrap my arms around him and tell him how much I missed him. Then a figure appeared at the other end of the hallway, seemingly making their way to me. As I moved down the hallway, the faster I went the faster this figure went, and soon we embraced in the kind of tight hug you give your dearest loved ones after a long trip away. The feeling of his embrace was so familiar and yet so distant in my memory. I felt so at home, so complete and accepted for the real me. He knew my love of a good laugh, and could match it! He knew the depths of my heartaches, and was willing to sit with me in my grief. He knew the real me. It was only in recognizing these things that I began to see who it was I was hugging. This man had dark corkscrew curly brunette hair cut close around his neck and a slightly Eastern looking nose, but his eyes were a kind of liquid aqua. As soon as I recognized my Jesus, I felt myself wake up. Tears immediately wet my pillow as I closed my eyes as tight as I could, trying to will myself back into my dream so I could talk to Him again. It wasn’t until Todd Burpo’s book, “Heaven is For Real,” that I found out that Akiane had painted the same likeness of Christ that Colton Burpo had seen. As quickly as I could I opened my computer and went to her site. There on my computer screen after more than 15 years of keeping quiet about who I saw, was the same image of Jesus that I knew.

     I include the above because I don’t think spiritual experiences are confined to just NDE’s and OBE’s. I include dreams as well because the ones that are in the spirit don’t ever ever fade. I have had several dreams over the course of my life that further confirm that there is a life beyond this one, and a number of different forces at work helping us and our loved ones have the best lives we can.

3.  At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness?

     my NDE for sure

4.  How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness?

More consciousness and alertness than normal 

     I could see in a 360 degree viewpoint. I could sense feelings of others so much so that I think it was very hard for me to focus on exploring around me.

5.  Was the experience difficult to express in words?

how do you explain floating through walls as if a fog? It sounds so cliché and yet that is the absolute truth. So many people say they floated through walls to see things around the hospital but for me it was so instantaneous, it was as if I was in several rooms at once, watching family, watching myself, watching nurses, family friends. Everything seemed to be presented to me. I didn’t need to GO anywhere to be where I wanted to be.

6.  Were your thoughts speeded up?

Incredibly fast

7.  Were your senses more vivid than usual?

Incredibly more vivid

8.  Please compare your vision during the experience to your everyday vision that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience.

      I could see anything I thought about, literally, it was that quick. I could see the monitor at the back of my head that would have required bird-like neckbones. Anything I wanted to see, was already shown me almost before I finished thinking about seeing it. I still remember this spot-light over Mr. Campbell that made his hair shine a brilliant white. I have a feeling I was seeing the aura of his spirit because I have a hard time believing there was a huge can light right over his head in a random part of the ceiling near the nurse’s station.

9.  Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience.

I honestly can’t remember much about what my ears took in.

10.  Did you feel separated from your body?

I lost awareness of my body, for the most part

11.  Did you see or hear any earthly events that were occurring during a time that your consciousness / awareness was apart from your physical / earthly body?

yes, My visit to what I think was the nurse’s station where Mr. Campbell greeting my parents happened while I was supposedly asleep.

12.  What emotions did you feel during the experience?

Explorative, empathetic for my family, happy to be free of my suffocating body, pure love flooding me and filling me with exuberance.

13.  Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness?

Incredible peace or pleasantness

14.  Did you have a feeling of joy?

Incredible joy

15.  Did you pass into or through a tunnel?

 Not really, I just kind of got encompassed by light and let it take me a little ways in

16.  Did you see an unearthly light? 

Yes it was electric white and prismic in nature, in how it could refract as you were curious about it.

17.  Did you see, or feel surrounded by, a brilliant light?

An unusually bright light: yes

A light clearly of mystical or other-worldly origin: yes

18.  Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice?

I heard a voice I could not identify

I encountered a definite being, or a voice clearly of mystical or unearthly origin

19.  Did you see deceased or religious spirits?

I sensed their presence: no

I actually saw them: no

20.  Did you encounter or become aware of any beings who previously lived on earth who are described by name in religions (for example: Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, etc.)?

Not in my NDE

21.  Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased (or alive) beings? No

22.  Did you become aware of past events in your life during your experience? No

23.  Did scenes from your past come back to you? No

I remembered many past events

My past flashed before me, out of my control

24.  Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world? No

Some unfamiliar and strange place

A clearly mystical or unearthly realm

25.  Did time seem to speed up or slow down? It seemed to do both as needed, weird as it sounds. 

26.  Did you feel a sense of harmony or unity with the universe? I felt at rest with it. I had been fighting so dang hard to live, and finally I didn’t feel the need to fight anymore that everything was going to be ok

27.  Did you suddenly seem to understand everything? No, I think I was preoccupied with watching my family

28.  Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere, as if by ESP?

Yes, and the facts have been checked out

29.  Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?

I can’t say for sure. I only felt that there was one somewhere in the distance.

30.  Did you come to a border or point of no return?

I came to a definite conscious decision to "return" to life

31.  Did scenes from the future come to you? No

32.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness suggesting that there either is (or is not) continued existence after earthly life (“life after death”) (***experience only)?

Not specific information about it. I believed it though

33.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness that God or a supreme being either does (or does not) exist (***experience only)? I felt that Jesus was close by, that’s all during my NDE.

34.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness that you either did (or did not) exist prior to this lifetime (***experience only)? Information, no. Awareness that my spirit was highly capable of movement, of senses, of telepathy,

35.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness that a mystical universal connection or unity/oneness either does (or does not) exist (***experience only)? No 

36.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness regarding earthly life’s meaning or purpose (***experience only)? No 

37.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness regarding earthly life’s difficulties, challenges, or hardships (***experience only)? No 

38.  During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness regarding love (***experience only)? Only in that the light conveyed love for me 

39.  During your experience, did you encounter any other specific information / awareness that you have not shared in other questions that is relevant to living our earthly lives (***experience only)? No 

41.  What occurred during your experience included (select the one best response) (***experience only):  Content that was entirely consistent with the beliefs you had at the time of your experience

42.  How accurately do you remember the experience in comparison to other life events that occurred around the time of the experience (select the one best response)?

I remember the experience more accurately than other life events that occurred around the time of the experience

50.  My experience directly resulted in (select the best response):

Large changes in my life

51.  Did you have any changes in your values or beliefs after your experience that occurred as a result of the experience?

Yes, once recovered I saw people as precious to God no matter what they looked like or acted like. Many people thought I was kooky. I believed the vast majority of people always have good intentions and goodwill for others. I remember being in the backseat of the car with my younger sister Jen. Mom was filling up the gas tank and Jen was insulting someone in the next stall for who knows what reason. I remember suggesting that that man had someone who loved him and that we don’t know what’s happening in someone else’s life so we can’t sit in judgement of them. She scoffed at me and told me I was really changed. I didn’t think that the direction I’d changed was a bad one. Since then I have dreams and OBE’s at random and as I’ve been learning to meditate, can also add vivid meditations into the mix too. My dreams have predicted certain future events for my family, as well as shed light on persons in my family and what their emotional state is in a current situation.

My friends in high school teased me for how lost in a trance I could get when I looked up at clouds or stars.

My new beliefs made me split in two as a person. One side of me really wanted to be a normal teenage girl. The other side of me wanted to already be a grown up so I could be a mom and a wife and in some kind of helping profession. I settled for being an honorary counselor for my friends who would take turns calling me on the phone with their respective problems.

It also made me pretty picky about the boys I dated. I wanted someone who could keep his life together even if he lost his wife. I knew that meant most of the boys my age were not quite ready for me.

52.  Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience?

Yes, I’ve come to realize that I am highly in tune with the spiritual gifts I have. I can lucid dream, have premonition dreams, OBE’s, and I can intuit the emotional state of most people in the same room as me. I can feel now which ones are consumed with hidden pride and which are humble. I can get a sense about someone in a simple moment. Several times I’ve flown next to someone and we’ve had really in depth discussions about the purpose of life and they’ve come away saying that they’d never met anyone quite as aware as me.

53.  Are there one or several parts of your experience that are especially meaningful or significant to you?  Please explain. there is no one instance that is more significant than another. They all taught me an important concept.

54.  Have you ever shared this experience with others? Not often. I told my parents about 15 years afterwards on an evening I thought they would be receptive. I finally began a memoir this year that puts it in chapter form on a blog called Undoubting.org. For a long time I thought it was too sacred to talk about, but I’ve learned since then that if your motive is to help people feel loved, then it’s ok to talk about something so long as the other is willing to take it as sacred to you. Since opening up about it, it’s almost as if I’m finally allowing my spiritual intuneness to be a tangible part of me. I’m finally willing to say, “Hi my name is Julia  and I’m an NDE survivor and inspirational speaker.” My world is now richer for allowing myself to be wholly in that persona. It doesn’t matter so much what people will say about me. I can intuit people well enough now to steer clear of those who scoff at spiritual things. The people I will allow myself around are always going to be the people who understand the value of what I am.

     When I first began writing Undoubting, I got a great deal of backlash from a few but what still amazes me is that there are far more people that have come away really inspired by my work rather than angered. I’ve come to understand that the people who are angry don’t grasp the full effect of my story and what it means to the world and instead see it how they want to see it rather than how it really is.

      To answer how the people’s lives around me changed, that’s really a question for them. I can have an NDE right in front of someone and they can explain it away. It all has to do with if someone is spiritually in tune enough to be aware of the spiritual things around us. I have not noticed any significant changes in anyone’s life but my own, in my circle.

55.  Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? No

56.  What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened (choose the best response):

Experience was definitely real

     It was the beginning of a new me. I was one way up until July 21st 1998, and then I was someone new. It was the beginning of a life focused on empathy for others, compassion and a desire for more light and knowledge. Since I believed that every human being has immense intrinsic value I began saying hi to everyone in the halls at school. I welcomed everyone as a friend and at the same time my self assurance was growing. Knowing we are God’s spiritual offspring, and living it are very different things. I was now on a mission to live it and my life began to change accordingly. The people that hated themselves steered clear of me. The people who wanted to feel better about themselves began hanging around me. Soon I had a wide circle of friends and lots of dates, and flirtations. I learned from experience that the secret to being popular isn’t in trying to be the coolest person, but in treating everyone like they were. It is a beautiful concept I’ve seen work time and time again as I’ve moved in social circles. It is applicable in politics, in family circles, in every social hierarchy imaginable. It’s all based on that innate search for praise that each of us has deep inside. Whenever I treat someone as if they are deeply and intrinsically valued they are drawn to me, every time, and I do it not because I want to be popular but because my life is now one big errand for God. I am here to teach everyone I can how intrinsically valued they are.

57.  What do you believe about the reality of your experience at the current time (choose the best response):

Experience was definitely real

     Since then, I believe everything that led up to my transplant was preparing me for who I need to be today. Time and time again I’ve been put in the path of a holistic healer or believer of some kind. Some have told me I should try acupuncture, oils, all sorts of things to try and get pregnant safely. In the beginning I was drawn to it but my family and doctors acted as if the literature I was reading about it was a Ouija board and scolded me until I let go. They convinced me for ages that I was different. Holistic medicine was for the wackos, not for people who needed to actively kill their immune system to keep living with a borrowed heart. After reading Anita Moorjani’s book just a few weeks ago about how she healed cancer once she believed in the strength of spiritual healing methods and intuiting her own healing regimen, I began considering what living for joy could do for my heart. Even assuming I don’t do acupuncture, and stuck to more mental forms of therapy I now believe I could further the quality of life for transplant recipient women like myself who are child bearing age. A child-less life with a constant fear of cancer for 10-20 years or until a second organ fails, is not adequate enough for me anymore. I’m now on a search for a mental holistic strategy that helps a foreign organ in the body become wholly integrated into the system to the extent that medications are not necessary. I know this is a tall order but I’ve worked with God to help tall orders happen in my life. Here we go again!

58.  Have your relationships changed specifically as a result of your experience?

YEP! People who are ready to listen will crowd around and ask questions and smile with their whole bodies. People who aren’t, don’t give me the time of day. I’ve learned to let them go instead of trying to chase after them to and bring them back

59.  Have your religious beliefs/spiritual practices changed specifically as a result of your experience?

Yes, I now meditate as well as pray. I have regular appointments with reiki healers and have been known to keep many of my spiritual awakenings back when in conversation with other believers such as myself. I must be able to intuit that they are in my same vibration or near it, before I will feel good about speaking to them.

60.  At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience?

No

61.  Is there anything else that you would like to add about your experience? No I think you thought of everything :-)

62.  Did the questions asked and information that you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?

Yes.

63.  What could a national organization with an interest in near death experience (NDE) do that would be of interest to you? Connect the western medical world, and eastern medicine for that matter, to it so we can collaborate together. I would love to talk with both Anita and Rajiv the anesthesiologist who now helps people heal from chronic pain. There is an untapped world of mental healing that translates to physical healing. I have to believe that I can still improve my health even at this stage. I can’t accept that immunosuppressant are the end all.

64.  Please offer any suggestions that you may have to improve this questionnaire.  Are there any other questions that we could ask to help you communicate your experience? a Google form format for these questions would have far less bugs.