Dian: NDE TAPESTRY and AfterEffects
05 08
On the afternoon of January 10th 2007 I began to feel kind of funky, like maybe I had eaten something bad. I went home that night and went straight to bed. Thursday, I went to work and by the afternoon I had a stomach ache and thought I was coming down with a virus. I went home that night and straight to bed again. About 12:30 a.m. I awoke with a strong pain in my gut like someone had stabbed me; it would not go away. I tried to call someone I knew and all I got was answering machines. I waited (in pain) until I finally reached my neighbor at about 7 a.m. I had her take me to the nearest urgent care place hoping that if it was serious enough to go the ER that I could bypass the wait from a doctor's referral.
When I got there they saw me right away, even though some of the other people that were waiting were somewhat peeved that I had no wait. The doctor told me she was not going to let me walk out. I had two choices, either they were going to call an ambulance or my neighbor was going to drive me to the ER then they gave me a "direct admit" to the nearest hospital and called them to say I was coming. I overheard the receptionist talking to the triage nurse in the ER and it sounded like they thought it was real serious. I got to the hospital a few minutes later (about 8:30 am, gave them the direct admit form and sat nearly thinking that if it was that serious, then it wouldn’t be a huge wait. Then it was almost eight hours before I saw anybody. I went back to the triage nurse about an hour later and she blew me off and said they would call me when my turn came up. About 45 minutes after I arrived one of the staff wanted to see my insurance card but then I was left in the lobby until well into the afternoon, about 6 hours after I arrived. Then they gave me more forms to fill out in the back along with putting an IV and some pain killers. Finally about 4 or 4:30 they put me through some tests. Meanwhile I called work throughout this time to give updates and became less and less coherent. The ER first assumed that I was a domestic abuse victim even through I had insisted that there had been no fight. They then though I might have an in entopic pregnancy (I was 50 and in no relationship) and gave me a pregnancy test which, of course, came up negative. They also ran other blood tests which came up real screwy such as an astronomical white blood count and ketosis but they assumed that the blood had somehow got contaminated but didn’t bother to re-run the tests. Then they decided I had something fairly minor and chronic like crohn's disease (which I knew was also wrong since my symptoms did not match others I have known with crohn’s) and an inflamed appendix which was a routine surgery and I would be out by Monday.
Well, when the surgeon went in, it was discovered that I not only had appendicitis (which the surgeon later said probably went on Wednesday afternoon) but also a ruptured ileum (which the surgeon later said probably was the sharp pain I was feeling starting the previous night). Puss went as high up as my liver. I did eventually recover (to the surgeons's amazement) but I never told him about the NDE that I had during this process. I figured he would probably think I had lost my mind and fill me with antipsychotics. I went through the in multiple steps throughout the next several days.
During the wait in the ER at some point I slipped away. It started with a darkened area (which was not a void) that was kind of a roadway with different colored streaks and sparks. I had the sensation like I was riding one of those airport level escalator things. Then the next thing I knew I was in a kind of desert-like place and I could see a stream of people going toward a building. At that point I knew what had happened and went to the join the line that was going towards the building. At the building there was a door which admitted one person at a time even though the line was two people wide. When my turn came I went through the door. What was inside looked like a cross between an old 19th century church and a barn. I was aware that the door I entered into was at the south end of the building with what was left of the altar, which was not religious-specific, or at least a religion that I am familiar with was at the north end of the building. There were people there (none of whom I knew) and some small animals. No one would talk to me because they were occupied with whatever they were doing. This did not bother me at the time. I tried to talk to a woman who was especially distressed but could not get her attention. I realized I could not help her and went outside through another door which was in the east side of the building thus not the door I entered from The area outside the building was very bright, much brighter than a normal bright sunny day but I needed no time to adjust to the light. There were large animals and several roadways. One went straight to the east and felt real icky. One went north, then bended off to the west. There were others but these two seemed the most significant at the time. In the distance on the north road, I saw a male relative but did not know who he was. He was about a half mile up that road and was with someone I did not recognize. I could see him clearly but he looked different than I knew therefore was not certain who had died. The road to the east was where I was supposed to have an insurmountable urge to go but did not have that urge. In fact, I definitely did not want to go there. It felt icky and wrong. I knew it was going somewhere I did not want to go-somewhere of suffering and nastiness. This is when I began to notice something wasn’t quite right. I then went back inside and finally found a badger who would talk to me. I was there for a very long time* but he told me that I would eventually go to where I needed to go. I then was met by an unfamiliar man who told me, "You don't belong here." I was sent away. He made a motion at me and I was thrown off to the west. I did not notice the door there until this moment. I flew through the door and I do not recall what happened next but I get the sense that something occurred with what I would call “the dharma lords” which is a Buddhist concept of beings who enforce karmic laws. I can say that it was not a life review in the common sense of the word. In fact, I later recalled that there was some sort of mistake. The experience in the building was supposed to be some sort of life review but it was not my life or any past life I was associated with. Somehow I had gotten mixed up with someone else or accused to doing things I had not done and that whoever these people and animals were, were not familiar to me in this life or any other. They were supposed to be which means that I was expected to react in some manner but I did not react to the situation. It did not trigger anything because the trigger did not connect to anything in me but not because I was beyond karma. At this point someone must have recognized that something was wrong and I eventually ended up in their “court” after I was more or less banished by that man. I have no recollection of this “court” but I know I was there. Anyway, after this, I then was suddenly back in the ER still in the lobby sitting uncomfortably in a chair-probably was slumped over and no one noticed. My experiential time* was approximately a week although only a few hours had passed here. I was rather disoriented and felt very weak. I had not been asleep for I was in way too much pain for that to be possible. Also, we all know what it feels like to wake up from an intense dream. This was clearly different. I really felt that I had been gone and ending up in the ER seemed out of place and that I had been instantly transported there out of context from somewhere else. I later figured out that I had gone for about 3 hours in the mundane world. I had the mental state as though I knew I was going to die and was okay with it. Eventually I was called back into the back part of the ER. This was around six hours after I had arrived. They finally took my vitals at that point and gave me a bed. They asked me several times whether I had been beaten in a domestic situation. Those of you that know me realize that this would not be a situation I would ever be in. For one thing I have a 2nd degree black belt in karate, have a strong personality and am not involved in any relationship nor am I looking. They had me drink a liter of this dye and ran me through an MRI and from this they decided it was something “chronic” and that I had an inflamed appendix and I would be out of the hospital in a day or so. I then went to surgery and they were in for a rude awakening. Not only had my appendix burst badly but also my ileum and cecum had also blew up and I had yuck (the liquid, shit and puss) going all of the way to my liver. The surgeon told me later that “people routinely die of what you had” and did not think I would live through this. People generally get peritonitis and die within a week or so afterwards. I later learned that this condition has an 80% fatality rate if surgery is done within two hours. Go figure. I was in the ER for a total of 10 hours before I went into surgery. At some point I slipped back into the experience and found myself in a "class" with several other beings. I do not know exactly when this happened in the course of this experience (during surgery?, perhaps). It was kind of a neutral place similar to the physical plane. There was a large building that looked somewhat like an outdoor tent similar to the ones rented for vendor space only this took up an area about the size of a city block and there were no poles, the canopy just floated there. There were tables with a variety of “tools” which went to the 100 or so students. Each of the students got one and knew which one we needed to take. These "tools" all had different functions. Also, the students were divided in groups of three except for mine which was one being and me. It seemed that both of us were last minute additions to the class. There were several instructors and it always seemed that we got the instruction we needed (never having to wait until an instructor was available). The being I worked with had a tool which could make constructs which could contain and manipulate metaphysical energy. I had a healing tool but it wasn’t physical-it seemed to do emotional healing. It wasn’t your typical college class. All the content was experiential and it did not matter how long it took us to “get it” since time did not work the same way as it does in the physical world and some of the tools were more complex than others requiring more effort to learn what we needed to learn from using the tool. The “power” level of the tools also varied. I had one in the middle range of energy capacity. The class took experientially about four months (see reference to time below). Half of it was actually at a place for learning how to use this tool and other related matters. My tool fit over my right hand then melded into it. It then stayed with me after that. After some effort I learned to use the tool which did not come instantly. There was a lot of trial and error, guidance from the instructor and assistance from my “lab partner”. I also assisted him in a similar way with his tool. I found that in a typical healing, I take in a sample of the emotional energy which I am healing into my right hand. It then runs through the tool and the rest of me where I am able to get an idea of what the injury is and how to heal it. Then I get some energy (either from myself or ambient) and use the tool to form it into the correct healing energy for this particular injury and run it out my left hand into the person or being I am healing. If they accept the energy, it goes to the place within them and does its work. If not, it just runs through them and does nothing. The last half of the class involved going with my "lab partner out in the field" using our tools in a variety of situations and places. Some of the places we went to were unpleasant but we were somehow insulated from the negative dynamics because we were not a part of that reality. The clearest memory of my work in the field involved going into an area that looked somewhat like a prison complex (I know this association by some volunteer work I have done), but it seemed to be more precisely a mental hospital that looked like a prison. I worked at healing some of the beings there and my “lab partner” worked at making the place more comfortable for the beings that had to stay there. After the class was over we then went to the home of my “lab partner” and we built some sort of healing construct. I met several of his closest friends who assisted us in whatever way they could. His tool built the construct and mine did the healing aspect to it. Experiential time (see time description below) passage for the class and building this construct was approximately six months. After I left my lab partner’s place, I was walking down a road when something approached me. I do not recall what happened next but get a sense of a memory gap.
At some point, I don't know exactly when this happened in the hospital, but I met "the lady of the veil" who put her left hand beneath my neck and her right hand on my belly and I passed out. There were other times where we interacted while I was in the hospital but this was the most intense. She had a very distinctive voice but I never actually saw her through the mist. When I first saw her, I thought she was some sort of Catholic spirit since I was in a Catholic hospital. However, it became clear shortly after she approached me the first time that she was no more Catholic than me. She has remained with me since and I have interacted with her many times. After I passed out when the lady of the veil was doing her thing, I went to a place that was kind of like rolling hills of memory foam grass with little flowers all over the place. Some entity like none I've ever encountered was embracing me. Complete unconditional love and acceptance. I interacted with this entity for the next experiential two months (again, see description of time below). We had conversations and also just quality time together. This area was clearly a place where the truly dead can only go and I thought that I was not coming back. I figured I had died in the hospital. I knew that the last place I went to was beyond any "barrier" to come back but something or someone made an exception. Since this happened, I have spoken with others who have had their own NDE and they have told me that they were not allowed or did not want to penetrate this “barrier” for it was the point of no return. I have the same impression of this “barrier” but actually do not have memories of actually crossing it. There are gaps in my memories of my NDE and this falls into one of those memory gaps, in particular, the one which happened right after I encountered that being on the road. I get the sense that I did actually choose to not come back and even get a sense of why I made this choice and crossed the “barrier” but I have no real memory of this. In this place, I felt like I was completely loved and accepted for who I exactly am. I may have quirks in my character but that is insignificant. I felt completely open and totally immersed in this love and acceptance. There was no judgment but there was an all knowing aspect to the entire situation and place. At some point this entity told me it was time to go. There was no mission or purpose mentioned nor did I have a choice of whether or not to go. I did not know at the time where I was going to go but I knew I had no choice but to go there. There a lot of memory gaps in the time I spent there but what I do recall is rather intense. I woke up to find at least two people (I think there was a third person out of my immediate vision) beside my bed. The doctor at the end of the bed had a big needle and was flicking the air out of it. I felt very disoriented and dazed. It took me a few seconds to realize how little time had passed here since I had been “gone” to about 8 experiential months*. The doctor leaped back when I opened my eyes. He said something kind of lame like, "It took us a lot of time and effort to wake you up...." I noticed it was difficult to speak but I understood what people around me were saying. He asked me to move this, that and the other thing then asked me questions and pushed me to answer. He checked me over for the next several minutes.
Obviously at some point I did come back. I noticed that my "life cord" was changed or absent and that I really wasn't back on some levels. This has remained true, in fact, if anything it has intensified since. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I went through eight months* of experience while only eight days passed here. I did not believe in a higher power before, I believed the "gods" were mentors and elders, not gods in the common sense of the word, but when you are embraced by this higher power, belief is not an issue. One cannot argue with experience. I am as much pagan as ever having not been raised (or indoctrinated) in the more common religions of this day and age. I interpret this “higher power” as my “patron deity” or personal guardian or whatever term you are familiar with. I did not have one prior to this and do now and am now able to interact with him/her.
A common side effect to near death experiencers (one who has been through an NDE) is a drastic “paradigm shift” which means a drastic change in one’s perception of the world resulting in a big change in one’s personality. People that know me have said “you’re a completely different person” and in many ways I feel like I am living a totally different life than before. The karmic mistake mentioned earlier has had some corrections which has change the dynamics of my life. Anyway, a rather amusing epilogue is that a week before this happened I got moved to a different program at work. I am an engineer and I work for a company that has many projects (programs) and a person will shift from one project to another fairly often. This is rather routine. In this move, there had not been any people common to both positions. I then went through the NDE. Six months later, performance evaluations came around. My boss got reviews from both bosses and they did not match. It was like a review of two completely different people. When they got together with me they argued with each other the entire time, each accusing the other of being totally wrong in their assessment. It began to get heated and both were clearly upset. It got up to the center manager (a level of management about three or four above these two) who called me into his office. He called it a "discontinuity" and attempted to make sense of it. I said nothing about the NDE or offered no explanation for the assessment inconsistencies. The later manager’ assessment was a lot better that the earlier one. If you look at the details of the assessments, its clear that my intelligence went up by a noticeable amount. This has also been mentioned to me by my friends (faster and more precise thinking than before). I was given a promotion of responsibility (meaning that because of the timing, I was not literally given a new job which reflected a promotion but was put into a position which usually goes to people one or two level above what my level was and told if I could handle this, then I would likely get a promotion to that title at the next cycle) and the department manager was ordered to “fix this”.
*Time: There are several references to time in this article which does not refer to time as we know it. I’m going to borrow an engineering concept here to help me describe what I mean by time here. In the physical world, experience is time-driven. For example, it took me an hour to drive to this place or the class lasts 16 weeks or it took me over a month to repair the garage etc. Events take place but they are put into terms of time and are usually sequenced in terms of when they took place. In the spirit world, experience is event-driven and time does not exist as we know it. I abstractly define time there as the density, complexity and change in my maturity level that the event brings and the experience of “time” as a kind of analogy, meaning if I were to look at the experience, approximately how long would it take to have a similar set of experiences here. When I say a week passed there, what I’m really saying is that if I had a similar set of events happen here, how long would it likely take? This “week” is a descriptor of the magnitude and complexity of the event. Therefore, I could have experienced the entire event in an instant for I have no way of actually knowing actually how much time actually passed during this event since it doesn’t exist there, but the experiential knowledge gained would take about a week had I experienced it here. Therefore, the “week” referred to here is merely an analogy or descriptor and is not meant to be an actual quantifiable quantity nor is it literally part of the experience. I did not experience a “week” in that building. I experienced a series of events which if they happened here would take about a week to happen. The reference to time made here is just the easiest analogy I could come up with that describes this aspect of the experience.
{Note: Occasionally I come across a case that is stunning in the sense of how the near-death experiencer changed afterwards and in ways that can be verified by third-party testimonials. The individual in this situation is Dian Curran. The pattern of physiological and psychological aftereffects she now exhibits is commonplace. But, the unique thing sbout Dian is that her old boss gave her a job performance review BEFORE she died, then, because of changes in her company, a new boss gave her a second job performance review AFTER she died. The two reviews were completely different. Neither man recognized the version of Dian that the other spoke of and a squabble ensued, leading to arguments between them. Dian had changed so much after her episode, that the new version of her was unrecognizable to her former employer. Again, this is typical. What is remarkable here is the two bosses and the two job performance reviews. Here's Dian in her own words discussing her aftereffects AND THE FACT THAT SHE IS STILL CHANGING! –PMH}
Here is my list of aftereffects:
Physical:
Waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason-I have little or no trouble falling back to sleep afterwards.
Extreme sensitivity to light and loud noises.
Increasing adverse reactions to certain scents and smells.
Needing less sleep than before and seem to sleep deeper than I used to in spite of the waking in the night.
Sensitivity to cold, more tolerance to heat.
Drastic change in appetite and diet. I eat less red meat and am drawn to fish. I hated fish before now I prefer it to all other meat. For some reason, crabs and salmon are on the top of the list. Drawn to eat more vegetables and fruit.
Psychological:
Much higher ability to handle stress.
I used to be prone to outbursts of anger, that has disappeared.
Much increase in psychological empathy and charisma to the point that people seek me out in random places like the grocery store.
Several unrelated people have said to me "its not that you've changed, its that you are en entirely different person..." Apparently, there are aspects of my personality that have changed but that has more of an outward manifestation than what I notice from inside myself. What I do notice from the inside is that I am a happier person and I feel there is meaning in my life. I have no idea why I was sent back but my life has more value to me now.
Spirituality not is an inseparable part of me, thus my life. I do not have to do rituals or meditations to be spiritual, l live it. I often do these things but they are usually when I am trying to focus on something particular. Before, I was somehow separate from it and struggled to get in touch with it. That struggle has ceased.
Metaphysical additions/subtractions:
I feel that the NDE kind of re-wired my brain. Channels were opened up that weren't open before which started a process which has continued since. The immediate things I noticed were:
Increased telepathic abilities. I had some abilities here before but they have increased since. At first I was unable to control it and constantly "overheard" things. I have since learned to control a kind of on/off switch.
Ability to reach other people's emotions and give them a feeling of safety and trust. This allows people to open up to me which then I am able to use some sort of healing method. However, I have had little practice with this because a lot of people are afraid of their own stuff. Thus this has been slow in development. I imagine that this would work well if I teamed up with a psychologist where I did the energy work then they precessed it with their counselor.
Ability to diagnose a physical/psychological ailment. I can look at someone and get a kind of knowing of what is wrong with them. I have been suggesting to people "get this checked" or "that checked.." when I do the diagnosis.
There is some sort of physical healing ability but this requires patience which most people do not have. I was able to clear up some clogged arteries in someone but that took regular treatments over several months. I used a visualization technique to make the buildup dissolve into the blood, go through the kidneys and out through the urine. Immediately within a day or so their urine got cloudy and continued to be cloudy until the end of the treatments. Then it was normal again. Then when they had a calcium recheck, the build up was gone. Others I have worked on expect whatever they have to go away after one or two treatments and it doesn't work that way thus have had little success.
Ability to interact with beings from other planes, meaning spirits or whatever. I think people call this mediumship. I feel their presence and have no trouble interacting with them. They do not interfere with my daily stuff or "give commands" or anything else that would indicate in out of my mind, although I wondered at first. I though maybe I hadnt fully come back or something. But I have grown used to this.
Not sure how to categorize this one: I think that my "silver cord" has never been the same since. I accidently almost harmed myself when I "went as far away as I could" as an experiment not long after I came back. I had been taught that one would always come back to my body when there was any strain or whatever. That there were automatic controls on this. Well, I seemed to have lost thost automatic controls and nearly died again. This is actually a short version of a longer story but the upshot of it is that I do not think my "life cord" functions the way it used to. It either got damaged or is not in place. I often have to kind of force myself to stay present in my body. Over time this has become easier but it is not the default and I easily drift away. From this I am able to recognise someone else who has had an NDE. I look at this cord and if it has a "kink" then they have has one. Some "kinks" are more noticable than others but all seem to have them. I have not been able to read my own cord.
The difficulty I have had in re-integrating into this world is that I live a different reality now and have these abilities but it doesnt pad my ego. I feel that I am somehow in a separate reality than those around me and no longer am part of this world.
-Dian
During the wait in the ER at some point I slipped away. It started with a darkened area (which was not a void) that was kind of a roadway with different colored streaks and sparks. I had the sensation like I was riding one of those airport level escalator things. Then the next thing I knew I was in a kind of desert-like place and I could see a stream of people going toward a building. At that point I knew what had happened and went to the join the line that was going towards the building. At the building there was a door which admitted one person at a time even though the line was two people wide. When my turn came I went through the door. What was inside looked like a cross between an old 19th century church and a barn. I was aware that the door I entered into was at the south end of the building with what was left of the altar, which was not religious-specific, or at least a religion that I am familiar with was at the north end of the building. There were people there (none of whom I knew) and some small animals. No one would talk to me because they were occupied with whatever they were doing. This did not bother me at the time. I tried to talk to a woman who was especially distressed but could not get her attention. I realized I could not help her and went outside through another door which was in the east side of the building thus not the door I entered from The area outside the building was very bright, much brighter than a normal bright sunny day but I needed no time to adjust to the light. There were large animals and several roadways. One went straight to the east and felt real icky. One went north, then bended off to the west. There were others but these two seemed the most significant at the time. In the distance on the north road, I saw a male relative but did not know who he was. He was about a half mile up that road and was with someone I did not recognize. I could see him clearly but he looked different than I knew therefore was not certain who had died. The road to the east was where I was supposed to have an insurmountable urge to go but did not have that urge. In fact, I definitely did not want to go there. It felt icky and wrong. I knew it was going somewhere I did not want to go-somewhere of suffering and nastiness. This is when I began to notice something wasn’t quite right. I then went back inside and finally found a badger who would talk to me. I was there for a very long time* but he told me that I would eventually go to where I needed to go. I then was met by an unfamiliar man who told me, "You don't belong here." I was sent away. He made a motion at me and I was thrown off to the west. I did not notice the door there until this moment. I flew through the door and I do not recall what happened next but I get the sense that something occurred with what I would call “the dharma lords” which is a Buddhist concept of beings who enforce karmic laws. I can say that it was not a life review in the common sense of the word. In fact, I later recalled that there was some sort of mistake. The experience in the building was supposed to be some sort of life review but it was not my life or any past life I was associated with. Somehow I had gotten mixed up with someone else or accused to doing things I had not done and that whoever these people and animals were, were not familiar to me in this life or any other. They were supposed to be which means that I was expected to react in some manner but I did not react to the situation. It did not trigger anything because the trigger did not connect to anything in me but not because I was beyond karma. At this point someone must have recognized that something was wrong and I eventually ended up in their “court” after I was more or less banished by that man. I have no recollection of this “court” but I know I was there. Anyway, after this, I then was suddenly back in the ER still in the lobby sitting uncomfortably in a chair-probably was slumped over and no one noticed. My experiential time* was approximately a week although only a few hours had passed here. I was rather disoriented and felt very weak. I had not been asleep for I was in way too much pain for that to be possible. Also, we all know what it feels like to wake up from an intense dream. This was clearly different. I really felt that I had been gone and ending up in the ER seemed out of place and that I had been instantly transported there out of context from somewhere else. I later figured out that I had gone for about 3 hours in the mundane world. I had the mental state as though I knew I was going to die and was okay with it. Eventually I was called back into the back part of the ER. This was around six hours after I had arrived. They finally took my vitals at that point and gave me a bed. They asked me several times whether I had been beaten in a domestic situation. Those of you that know me realize that this would not be a situation I would ever be in. For one thing I have a 2nd degree black belt in karate, have a strong personality and am not involved in any relationship nor am I looking. They had me drink a liter of this dye and ran me through an MRI and from this they decided it was something “chronic” and that I had an inflamed appendix and I would be out of the hospital in a day or so. I then went to surgery and they were in for a rude awakening. Not only had my appendix burst badly but also my ileum and cecum had also blew up and I had yuck (the liquid, shit and puss) going all of the way to my liver. The surgeon told me later that “people routinely die of what you had” and did not think I would live through this. People generally get peritonitis and die within a week or so afterwards. I later learned that this condition has an 80% fatality rate if surgery is done within two hours. Go figure. I was in the ER for a total of 10 hours before I went into surgery. At some point I slipped back into the experience and found myself in a "class" with several other beings. I do not know exactly when this happened in the course of this experience (during surgery?, perhaps). It was kind of a neutral place similar to the physical plane. There was a large building that looked somewhat like an outdoor tent similar to the ones rented for vendor space only this took up an area about the size of a city block and there were no poles, the canopy just floated there. There were tables with a variety of “tools” which went to the 100 or so students. Each of the students got one and knew which one we needed to take. These "tools" all had different functions. Also, the students were divided in groups of three except for mine which was one being and me. It seemed that both of us were last minute additions to the class. There were several instructors and it always seemed that we got the instruction we needed (never having to wait until an instructor was available). The being I worked with had a tool which could make constructs which could contain and manipulate metaphysical energy. I had a healing tool but it wasn’t physical-it seemed to do emotional healing. It wasn’t your typical college class. All the content was experiential and it did not matter how long it took us to “get it” since time did not work the same way as it does in the physical world and some of the tools were more complex than others requiring more effort to learn what we needed to learn from using the tool. The “power” level of the tools also varied. I had one in the middle range of energy capacity. The class took experientially about four months (see reference to time below). Half of it was actually at a place for learning how to use this tool and other related matters. My tool fit over my right hand then melded into it. It then stayed with me after that. After some effort I learned to use the tool which did not come instantly. There was a lot of trial and error, guidance from the instructor and assistance from my “lab partner”. I also assisted him in a similar way with his tool. I found that in a typical healing, I take in a sample of the emotional energy which I am healing into my right hand. It then runs through the tool and the rest of me where I am able to get an idea of what the injury is and how to heal it. Then I get some energy (either from myself or ambient) and use the tool to form it into the correct healing energy for this particular injury and run it out my left hand into the person or being I am healing. If they accept the energy, it goes to the place within them and does its work. If not, it just runs through them and does nothing. The last half of the class involved going with my "lab partner out in the field" using our tools in a variety of situations and places. Some of the places we went to were unpleasant but we were somehow insulated from the negative dynamics because we were not a part of that reality. The clearest memory of my work in the field involved going into an area that looked somewhat like a prison complex (I know this association by some volunteer work I have done), but it seemed to be more precisely a mental hospital that looked like a prison. I worked at healing some of the beings there and my “lab partner” worked at making the place more comfortable for the beings that had to stay there. After the class was over we then went to the home of my “lab partner” and we built some sort of healing construct. I met several of his closest friends who assisted us in whatever way they could. His tool built the construct and mine did the healing aspect to it. Experiential time (see time description below) passage for the class and building this construct was approximately six months. After I left my lab partner’s place, I was walking down a road when something approached me. I do not recall what happened next but get a sense of a memory gap.
At some point, I don't know exactly when this happened in the hospital, but I met "the lady of the veil" who put her left hand beneath my neck and her right hand on my belly and I passed out. There were other times where we interacted while I was in the hospital but this was the most intense. She had a very distinctive voice but I never actually saw her through the mist. When I first saw her, I thought she was some sort of Catholic spirit since I was in a Catholic hospital. However, it became clear shortly after she approached me the first time that she was no more Catholic than me. She has remained with me since and I have interacted with her many times. After I passed out when the lady of the veil was doing her thing, I went to a place that was kind of like rolling hills of memory foam grass with little flowers all over the place. Some entity like none I've ever encountered was embracing me. Complete unconditional love and acceptance. I interacted with this entity for the next experiential two months (again, see description of time below). We had conversations and also just quality time together. This area was clearly a place where the truly dead can only go and I thought that I was not coming back. I figured I had died in the hospital. I knew that the last place I went to was beyond any "barrier" to come back but something or someone made an exception. Since this happened, I have spoken with others who have had their own NDE and they have told me that they were not allowed or did not want to penetrate this “barrier” for it was the point of no return. I have the same impression of this “barrier” but actually do not have memories of actually crossing it. There are gaps in my memories of my NDE and this falls into one of those memory gaps, in particular, the one which happened right after I encountered that being on the road. I get the sense that I did actually choose to not come back and even get a sense of why I made this choice and crossed the “barrier” but I have no real memory of this. In this place, I felt like I was completely loved and accepted for who I exactly am. I may have quirks in my character but that is insignificant. I felt completely open and totally immersed in this love and acceptance. There was no judgment but there was an all knowing aspect to the entire situation and place. At some point this entity told me it was time to go. There was no mission or purpose mentioned nor did I have a choice of whether or not to go. I did not know at the time where I was going to go but I knew I had no choice but to go there. There a lot of memory gaps in the time I spent there but what I do recall is rather intense. I woke up to find at least two people (I think there was a third person out of my immediate vision) beside my bed. The doctor at the end of the bed had a big needle and was flicking the air out of it. I felt very disoriented and dazed. It took me a few seconds to realize how little time had passed here since I had been “gone” to about 8 experiential months*. The doctor leaped back when I opened my eyes. He said something kind of lame like, "It took us a lot of time and effort to wake you up...." I noticed it was difficult to speak but I understood what people around me were saying. He asked me to move this, that and the other thing then asked me questions and pushed me to answer. He checked me over for the next several minutes.
Obviously at some point I did come back. I noticed that my "life cord" was changed or absent and that I really wasn't back on some levels. This has remained true, in fact, if anything it has intensified since. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I went through eight months* of experience while only eight days passed here. I did not believe in a higher power before, I believed the "gods" were mentors and elders, not gods in the common sense of the word, but when you are embraced by this higher power, belief is not an issue. One cannot argue with experience. I am as much pagan as ever having not been raised (or indoctrinated) in the more common religions of this day and age. I interpret this “higher power” as my “patron deity” or personal guardian or whatever term you are familiar with. I did not have one prior to this and do now and am now able to interact with him/her.
A common side effect to near death experiencers (one who has been through an NDE) is a drastic “paradigm shift” which means a drastic change in one’s perception of the world resulting in a big change in one’s personality. People that know me have said “you’re a completely different person” and in many ways I feel like I am living a totally different life than before. The karmic mistake mentioned earlier has had some corrections which has change the dynamics of my life. Anyway, a rather amusing epilogue is that a week before this happened I got moved to a different program at work. I am an engineer and I work for a company that has many projects (programs) and a person will shift from one project to another fairly often. This is rather routine. In this move, there had not been any people common to both positions. I then went through the NDE. Six months later, performance evaluations came around. My boss got reviews from both bosses and they did not match. It was like a review of two completely different people. When they got together with me they argued with each other the entire time, each accusing the other of being totally wrong in their assessment. It began to get heated and both were clearly upset. It got up to the center manager (a level of management about three or four above these two) who called me into his office. He called it a "discontinuity" and attempted to make sense of it. I said nothing about the NDE or offered no explanation for the assessment inconsistencies. The later manager’ assessment was a lot better that the earlier one. If you look at the details of the assessments, its clear that my intelligence went up by a noticeable amount. This has also been mentioned to me by my friends (faster and more precise thinking than before). I was given a promotion of responsibility (meaning that because of the timing, I was not literally given a new job which reflected a promotion but was put into a position which usually goes to people one or two level above what my level was and told if I could handle this, then I would likely get a promotion to that title at the next cycle) and the department manager was ordered to “fix this”.
*Time: There are several references to time in this article which does not refer to time as we know it. I’m going to borrow an engineering concept here to help me describe what I mean by time here. In the physical world, experience is time-driven. For example, it took me an hour to drive to this place or the class lasts 16 weeks or it took me over a month to repair the garage etc. Events take place but they are put into terms of time and are usually sequenced in terms of when they took place. In the spirit world, experience is event-driven and time does not exist as we know it. I abstractly define time there as the density, complexity and change in my maturity level that the event brings and the experience of “time” as a kind of analogy, meaning if I were to look at the experience, approximately how long would it take to have a similar set of experiences here. When I say a week passed there, what I’m really saying is that if I had a similar set of events happen here, how long would it likely take? This “week” is a descriptor of the magnitude and complexity of the event. Therefore, I could have experienced the entire event in an instant for I have no way of actually knowing actually how much time actually passed during this event since it doesn’t exist there, but the experiential knowledge gained would take about a week had I experienced it here. Therefore, the “week” referred to here is merely an analogy or descriptor and is not meant to be an actual quantifiable quantity nor is it literally part of the experience. I did not experience a “week” in that building. I experienced a series of events which if they happened here would take about a week to happen. The reference to time made here is just the easiest analogy I could come up with that describes this aspect of the experience.
{Note: Occasionally I come across a case that is stunning in the sense of how the near-death experiencer changed afterwards and in ways that can be verified by third-party testimonials. The individual in this situation is Dian Curran. The pattern of physiological and psychological aftereffects she now exhibits is commonplace. But, the unique thing sbout Dian is that her old boss gave her a job performance review BEFORE she died, then, because of changes in her company, a new boss gave her a second job performance review AFTER she died. The two reviews were completely different. Neither man recognized the version of Dian that the other spoke of and a squabble ensued, leading to arguments between them. Dian had changed so much after her episode, that the new version of her was unrecognizable to her former employer. Again, this is typical. What is remarkable here is the two bosses and the two job performance reviews. Here's Dian in her own words discussing her aftereffects AND THE FACT THAT SHE IS STILL CHANGING! –PMH}
Here is my list of aftereffects:
Physical:
Waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason-I have little or no trouble falling back to sleep afterwards.
Extreme sensitivity to light and loud noises.
Increasing adverse reactions to certain scents and smells.
Needing less sleep than before and seem to sleep deeper than I used to in spite of the waking in the night.
Sensitivity to cold, more tolerance to heat.
Drastic change in appetite and diet. I eat less red meat and am drawn to fish. I hated fish before now I prefer it to all other meat. For some reason, crabs and salmon are on the top of the list. Drawn to eat more vegetables and fruit.
Psychological:
Much higher ability to handle stress.
I used to be prone to outbursts of anger, that has disappeared.
Much increase in psychological empathy and charisma to the point that people seek me out in random places like the grocery store.
Several unrelated people have said to me "its not that you've changed, its that you are en entirely different person..." Apparently, there are aspects of my personality that have changed but that has more of an outward manifestation than what I notice from inside myself. What I do notice from the inside is that I am a happier person and I feel there is meaning in my life. I have no idea why I was sent back but my life has more value to me now.
Spirituality not is an inseparable part of me, thus my life. I do not have to do rituals or meditations to be spiritual, l live it. I often do these things but they are usually when I am trying to focus on something particular. Before, I was somehow separate from it and struggled to get in touch with it. That struggle has ceased.
Metaphysical additions/subtractions:
I feel that the NDE kind of re-wired my brain. Channels were opened up that weren't open before which started a process which has continued since. The immediate things I noticed were:
Increased telepathic abilities. I had some abilities here before but they have increased since. At first I was unable to control it and constantly "overheard" things. I have since learned to control a kind of on/off switch.
Ability to reach other people's emotions and give them a feeling of safety and trust. This allows people to open up to me which then I am able to use some sort of healing method. However, I have had little practice with this because a lot of people are afraid of their own stuff. Thus this has been slow in development. I imagine that this would work well if I teamed up with a psychologist where I did the energy work then they precessed it with their counselor.
Ability to diagnose a physical/psychological ailment. I can look at someone and get a kind of knowing of what is wrong with them. I have been suggesting to people "get this checked" or "that checked.." when I do the diagnosis.
There is some sort of physical healing ability but this requires patience which most people do not have. I was able to clear up some clogged arteries in someone but that took regular treatments over several months. I used a visualization technique to make the buildup dissolve into the blood, go through the kidneys and out through the urine. Immediately within a day or so their urine got cloudy and continued to be cloudy until the end of the treatments. Then it was normal again. Then when they had a calcium recheck, the build up was gone. Others I have worked on expect whatever they have to go away after one or two treatments and it doesn't work that way thus have had little success.
Ability to interact with beings from other planes, meaning spirits or whatever. I think people call this mediumship. I feel their presence and have no trouble interacting with them. They do not interfere with my daily stuff or "give commands" or anything else that would indicate in out of my mind, although I wondered at first. I though maybe I hadnt fully come back or something. But I have grown used to this.
Not sure how to categorize this one: I think that my "silver cord" has never been the same since. I accidently almost harmed myself when I "went as far away as I could" as an experiment not long after I came back. I had been taught that one would always come back to my body when there was any strain or whatever. That there were automatic controls on this. Well, I seemed to have lost thost automatic controls and nearly died again. This is actually a short version of a longer story but the upshot of it is that I do not think my "life cord" functions the way it used to. It either got damaged or is not in place. I often have to kind of force myself to stay present in my body. Over time this has become easier but it is not the default and I easily drift away. From this I am able to recognise someone else who has had an NDE. I look at this cord and if it has a "kink" then they have has one. Some "kinks" are more noticable than others but all seem to have them. I have not been able to read my own cord.
The difficulty I have had in re-integrating into this world is that I live a different reality now and have these abilities but it doesnt pad my ego. I feel that I am somehow in a separate reality than those around me and no longer am part of this world.
-Dian
