Speaker 1: Tell me what you left was like before you died.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the space you go to church,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, I had My dad was a
Speaker 1: He was a periodic alcoholic. He would do a lot
Speaker 1: of binge drinking, and so at that time, you know
Speaker 1: what was going on with me before that, I was like,
Speaker 1: is this my life? Is this what it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be like? And I wanted my dad to get sober,
Speaker 1: and so I would do a lot of praying, you know,
Speaker 1: help dad. And I remember one time he went to church.
Speaker 1: I could see him. He was so uptight and he
Speaker 1: was sweating, and you know, and I know he was
Speaker 1: going there for my mom. But it's that my dad
Speaker 1: and I were very cle. And what was going on
Speaker 1: before I died is a lot of badness. I had
Speaker 1: been experimenting with drugs and alcohol and uh, going my
Speaker 1: own rebellious path, and so I experimented with other things.
Speaker 1: And you know, after a long weekend of partying, I
Speaker 1: had these great moments though, when I was experimenting, or
Speaker 1: I would look up at the sky and I would know,
Speaker 1: oh that I wasn't alone, even though I was doing,
Speaker 1: per se what you're not supposed to do. There was
Speaker 1: nights I would felt very austistic, you know, I would
Speaker 1: have this moment where I'd be like, I know there's
Speaker 1: something bigger than this, than where we are. I know
Speaker 1: we weren't born to suffer. I know we weren't created
Speaker 1: to be bad. I don't understand it. Also, I had
Speaker 1: those moments where those lucid moments where I would be
Speaker 1: sort of coming to from a long weekend of partying
Speaker 1: and I would be like, I know there's something better.
Speaker 1: I know there's something deeper, and you know, what I'm
Speaker 1: thinking is going to work's not working. I was living
Speaker 1: with my dad at the time, and living with my
Speaker 1: dad was quite fun. It was nineteen forty two in
Speaker 1: our household. So every time we come in, he'd have
Speaker 1: his and I think about this now with joy because
Speaker 1: I love my dad, but it's also the effects of PTSD.
Speaker 1: And so his truck driver friends would be there playing
Speaker 1: dominoes and it would be nineteen forty two in my house,
Speaker 1: and so they would be talking about the war and
Speaker 1: they would, you know, you would hear this recreation of
Speaker 1: the war in my house. And then they depended on
Speaker 1: how drunk things got, you know, And then by the
Speaker 1: end of the day that everybody would just pass out.
Speaker 1: But when I was living in that space, even God
Speaker 1: came in to me. In that space where you would
Speaker 1: think that there was no God and just suffering. It
Speaker 1: had been a long weekend of no sleep. I was aching,
Speaker 1: so I went to my mom's cabinet where all the
Speaker 1: medication was. It's probably they had already gone to work,
Speaker 1: so I snuck in when after nobody was there and mine.
Speaker 1: I was always on the lookout because my brother's a
Speaker 1: policeman whom I love and respect, but he had he
Speaker 1: had no patience for me, so I had to make
Speaker 1: sure the coast was clear to go home and crash.
Speaker 1: And so after I figured it was safe to come in,
Speaker 1: I just took whatever pills that were in the cabinet
Speaker 1: and I just need to go to sleep. I had zero.
Speaker 1: I just started this looks good. This looks good. If
Speaker 1: it said makes you drowsy, that's what I picked. And
Speaker 1: what I know is they found me on the front lawn.
Speaker 1: My brother had to revive me. It was a cop
Speaker 1: in the area that I lived in, and I went
Speaker 1: to treatment. They took me to the hospital and I
Speaker 1: woke up in the hospital from just taking some pills
Speaker 1: and going to sleep, and that moment when I woke up,
Speaker 1: I had had probably and I can't really equate just
Speaker 1: to moments and times, but it felt like long seconds
Speaker 1: where I was in a tunnel and it's like the
Speaker 1: sort of the clouds parted, you know, and I felt
Speaker 1: sort of called and really at peace and hole and
Speaker 1: it wasn't the trauma that I had been experiencing. I
Speaker 1: felt whole and pure, like I was walking a walking
Speaker 1: being of light. And I remember mentally when I could
Speaker 1: feel this sort of pool coming back to hearing beebs
Speaker 1: and things like that, and I said, God, I cannot
Speaker 1: go back there. This is not the place for me.
Speaker 1: This is wrong. You've got to I don't want to
Speaker 1: go back. Please don't make me go back. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what I said. I didn't feel like days, but it
Speaker 1: felt like eternity. It felt like a place where there
Speaker 1: was no time. It felt like where it was just energy.
Speaker 1: There was no door, it was just no time. But
Speaker 1: I one hundred percent going through the tunnel was amazing,
Speaker 1: and then there was this sort of tunnel of light. Again,
Speaker 1: I can't relate to time, whether that was minutes or hours.
Speaker 1: I have zero clue. I remember having feeling that love,
Speaker 1: that love what we call love. It's love beyond supernatural
Speaker 1: in many ways. And I felt the presence of God,
Speaker 1: a loving presence not necessarily human. But I could relate
Speaker 1: to this presence in English. I could relate to it
Speaker 1: with vocabulary in my head that I could have a conversation. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I always thought Jesus would. Of course, I'm Christian,
Speaker 1: so I've still got the christ Light within me. I
Speaker 1: always call myself a Christian on the fringe, literally because
Speaker 1: I still keep my roots of love and devotion and
Speaker 1: love and service I do, you know, doing others. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of that will stay with me. But you
Speaker 1: know that knowing that time, I can't really give you
Speaker 1: exactly how much time I was there. I just know
Speaker 1: that I clearly had a negotiation with God. Oh this
Speaker 1: is God. I've got to have a conversation. But what
Speaker 1: was interesting is I could feel coming back into my body.
Speaker 1: And that's why I started to have a negotiation, is
Speaker 1: because I could That's one hundred percent, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: I go, oh, we're going back. Oh God, this is
Speaker 1: not the pat No, it was like, oh, things are peaceful,
Speaker 1: I'm whole, I feel like where I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And then I feel this vacuum. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and that's when I started to beg literally please. So
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel, it felt like an
Speaker 1: open space avoid but the void it didn't feel like
Speaker 1: what you and I would It wasn't empty. It was
Speaker 1: a void, but it wasn't empty. It was filled with energy.
Speaker 1: And I always think about the stars in many ways
Speaker 1: like this, because in the stars they have, you know,
Speaker 1: between all the stars in the sky, they have an
Speaker 1: aura and they have a light that means there's a star,
Speaker 1: but there's no void, there's space between those stars. I
Speaker 1: was in the aura of this light. That's what it
Speaker 1: felt like for me. We'll be right back after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Speaker 1: And so it didn't feel empty, it didn't feel alone.
Speaker 1: It wasn't purgatory. I didn't, you know, I didn't have it.
Speaker 1: I didn't say, oh, you've reached. Now, look what you've done.
Speaker 1: You've not surrendered. And slowly I woke up and there's
Speaker 1: my mother who was scared to death. I was mad,
Speaker 1: and you know, i'd like to say that after I
Speaker 1: left that experience, I got clean and sober and all
Speaker 1: was perfect in that world. But that's not what happened.
Speaker 1: It took a long time for me to come together.
Speaker 1: But that moment of feeling that unconditional love and that
Speaker 1: moment of being on the other side, it felt like
Speaker 1: a lifetime that I'd never want to leave, so much
Speaker 1: that I mentally was negotiating with God, saying, this is
Speaker 1: where I'm supposed to be right here. That moment, I
Speaker 1: know gave me Three years later, that near death experience
Speaker 1: didn't have that much of an impact on me immediately,
Speaker 1: but three years later my dad died. It was very
Speaker 1: hard on me. I had had put together some sobriety
Speaker 1: at that time, and i'd probably been a year sober,
Speaker 1: and when he died, all bets were off. I remember
Speaker 1: it was New Year's Eve, actually, and it was Texas
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve. It's cold and rainy, and I got
Speaker 1: nowhere to go. I can't go home to my mom,
Speaker 1: but I'd come to a place in my life where
Speaker 1: I wanted to die. I couldn't bear being in the
Speaker 1: physical world. It was too painful, it was too lonely. Again,
Speaker 1: I processed it. It was nine months after my dad died.
Speaker 1: I was walking down the road to said, God, look,
Speaker 1: I can't keep this sobriety together. I don't want to
Speaker 1: live here. I'm trying to have a job and do
Speaker 1: all the right things, but the truth is my dad
Speaker 1: is not here with me. And I said, I can't
Speaker 1: live with my mother. And I said, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to jump out in front of the next car that passes.
Speaker 1: It's raining thirty degrees outside, and I was really I
Speaker 1: was fixing. I mean, this is a highway. I'm just
Speaker 1: fixing a step off. And I went to step off,
Speaker 1: and a van stopped behind me and asked me, do
Speaker 1: you need help? And I was probably five miles from
Speaker 1: my godmother's house, whom I had seen. This is why
Speaker 1: I know, even when we think life is terrible and
Speaker 1: it's sucking, it's not going our way, that there are
Speaker 1: angels along the path that love us. Whether they're teachers, neighbors,
Speaker 1: these were. They were My godmother was my neighbor. And
Speaker 1: I was five miles from there. I said, just take
Speaker 1: me to Betty's house. I said, Betty, I got to
Speaker 1: figure out my life. And she said, you can stay here,
Speaker 1: and I started to put to my life together. And
Speaker 1: then at that moment though, when I knew I had
Speaker 1: that fee, It's kind of like when I told God
Speaker 1: I was stepping off, I'm done with this, because by
Speaker 1: that time I had already tried to drink and use
Speaker 1: myself like I tried to mix things together, so I
Speaker 1: would just die now even though I look like I
Speaker 1: was having a good time, my plan was to get gone.
Speaker 1: That moment when I stepped off, I was talking to
Speaker 1: that near death person that I felt I was. I
Speaker 1: wanted to go back there, and I said, wherever you are, like,
Speaker 1: this is it. I'm I'm done. And when that van stopped,
Speaker 1: it's like that I kind of paid attention to that.
Speaker 1: I went, I did get help. I am getting help.
Speaker 1: Now what am I going to do with it? And
Speaker 1: so that gave me that knowing that all back then,
Speaker 1: it started to come together for me that something bigger
Speaker 1: than me wanted me to stay here, that it was
Speaker 1: something good in me that needed to be a purpose.
Speaker 1: And that's what I did. It's what I've done ever since,
Speaker 1: is I have put my life on a higher plane.
Speaker 1: And through that time, when my gifts started to awaken,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to say, I think that was better
Speaker 1: for me as an adult, because obviously I couldn't have
Speaker 1: handled any more gifts. So that there were periods that
Speaker 1: I know that I processed that, and I know that
Speaker 1: time in the light, whatever charge, whatever beautiful energy frequency
Speaker 1: that is, I know that when the time came, with
Speaker 1: enough intention, and I'm going to call it virtuous goals,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do something good for others that my
Speaker 1: life apparently me living for myself was not a good plan.
Speaker 1: That I needed to devote my life to helping others.
Speaker 1: That came together and then my sort of my gifts
Speaker 1: started to awaken in a very safe and comfortable way.
Speaker 1: Began to read people's energy and not be afraid. I
Speaker 1: used to be able to. I would know things at
Speaker 1: work and people would come and talk to me, and
Speaker 1: people started talking to me about their life, and things
Speaker 1: would come to me as they did from a different
Speaker 1: higher version of myself. And I think I love the
Speaker 1: fact that you use the term higher self, because I
Speaker 1: do believe that if we have education around that, if
Speaker 1: we understand what that is, that our life can change
Speaker 1: categorically for the better and the most powerful life that
Speaker 1: we can be if we're in our higher self. And
Speaker 1: it was through this sort of follow the bread crumbs
Speaker 1: through a lot of drama and you know, suffering and pain,
Speaker 1: but with the determined to know you want to do
Speaker 1: something good for yourself, then those gifts started to unfold
Speaker 1: like a lotus flower the spiritual path. Per se, I
Speaker 1: really still was on a mission to die, honestly, because
Speaker 1: it just didn't see how to be happy and do that. Now,
Speaker 1: that's one thing that stuck with me. I go that
Speaker 1: nobody else is meant to judge that even though if
Speaker 1: you go to the church that's all they do, you're
Speaker 1: not doing. And so I knew that if I could
Speaker 1: create a relationship with God that was a loving God
Speaker 1: like what I had felt, that that was going to
Speaker 1: be my answer. I can't tell you how logically I
Speaker 1: knew that. I just knew it. And I think that
Speaker 1: we can learn that from spirituality. Same thing with us
Speaker 1: choosing to move beyond our religion's upbringing. We look at
Speaker 1: are they who we want to be like? And I
Speaker 1: think that's the gift in our soul's path that yes,
Speaker 1: we do have suffering. So I think that you know,
Speaker 1: for people that are have gone through trauma. There's always
Speaker 1: there is a reason behind that, because their souls are
Speaker 1: meant to bring help and hope and healing to other
Speaker 1: people to their divine qualities. So trying to see the
Speaker 1: best in situation isn't just positive thinking. I think it's
Speaker 1: a spiritual discipline. Sometimes we spend half of our lives
Speaker 1: finding out that we're not bad, that were beautiful beings.