My Near-Death Experience

I share this experience to share what I learned about the nature of our bodies and to help see that there is no need to fear death. In my opinion, we would all benefit from getting rid of most of our fears, but this story deals mostly with the fear of death.

I believe that there were two reasons why I had to go through a near-death experience at 16.

1. Fear of death.

2. Fear of failing at life.

These two fears paralyzed me. I now think all fears paralyze us in different ways.

Fear is the opposite of life, the opposite of movement, the opposite of change.

I was a kind of a nerd and always got straight A's. I was terrified of getting anything less than 90%. I always wanted to get things right. For the same reasons, I wanted to get an A in life. Just like so many young people, who get told and believe it, that if only you study well at school and get straight A's then you will be able to do anything in life. You are guaranteed success. It was a kind of an insurance policy for me. I was afraid of making my own moves, my own decisions, taking my own risks and so I thought that with good grades I could protect myself from failure.

I thought that just like at school, I need to get a good grade for life. It's like finally, someone would sit down with a red pen over your life and calculate a percentage of things I got right. Hopefully add some extra points, too. I thought the criteria for a good grade in life were the usual suspects: great career, great body, lot's of money, lot's of power due to career, body and money, great husband, great kids, great house, great car, great legacy for my kids, great respect and admiration from all.

I now see that having a life goal of having others respect and admire you is ludicrous. If there should be any respect and admiration in the picture, it should be from myself. I completely overlooked myself in this grand scheme of my life.

Every night before sleep, I would run my whole life plan in my mind. How fast should I graduate high school, how fast can I enter college and graduate, so that I can begin to have my career as soon as possible and get married and have kids simultaneously. Sounds nuts, but many young people also believe they need to do all this now and I can't even imagine how many of them are sleepless in their beds right now, stressing out about their lives that haven't even begun and how a lot of them need to take medication for their mental problems as a result.

My medication was a great fantasy, that an old, handsome vampire would catch me on the street or in the elevator somewhere, while I was busy going to school, and tell me: Hey, we were watching you secretly for years now and we think that you are worthy of an eternal life. Come and be a vampire with us and you will have all the time in the world to succeed in life. I thought that the only way I could ever succeed in life was by getting extra time. Life was a race against time.

Maybe that is why so many teenagers love vampire stories today. The alluring possibility of having all the time in the world to make as many mistakes as it takes to get to what you want, is just too attractive. You get a great body by default (provided that you turned at a younger age), you get to read all the books in the world, become wise, rich and experienced, and then just enjoy life. If we solve the problem of the existence of time, then we get to a much better goal than public respect and admiration: just simply enjoying life. This goal never crossed my mind before my near death experience.

Though it may seem that if only we solved the problem of time, we would be able to be ourselves and enjoy life, but time is one of the big illusions we choose to subscribe to when we enter this physical existence on Earth.

Dying does not have to be scary or painful, as I learned. I was on the back of a sports motorbike, being driven by a crush I had just recently met at my college. I was 16 and he was twenty-something. Two other friends of mine were on another bike, going slower than us. I secretly ran away to a nearby city by the beach for the whole day, telling my parents that I went for a movie and a day out with friends and that I would be back that evening. I had such a big crush on this guy, that when he wanted to rent sport motorbikes and ride around, I didn't have any objections. The guys, who rented out the bike told me to be careful, because this guy is likely to have an accident.

I was too fascinated with him, so I never asked him to slow down and I was also too cool for a helmet. Long story short, we made our first turn and there was a street light there. I don't even know what I saw, but I remember that I saw something that told me that something bad and inevitable was going to happen. I became so terrified and panicked, that the whole picture of the world, as I saw it, simply shut down.

It was like an old TV screen. A really old one, made of a tube and rounded glass screen. When you shut it down, it doesn't just switch off, but it kind of extinguishes into the center. The picture collapses into the center and then there is a dot of light in the middle of the screen for some time, until that fades too. I did not want any pain or suffering, so my vision of the whole thing turned off like that. I remember I actually had the time to be amused how much it looked like an old TV screen with that dot of light in the center, glowing for a while.

My friends saw me on the ground, in the middle of a big puddle of blood. They thought that there was too much blood loss and that I wouldn't make it. Fortunately, there was a pick-up driver nearby, who told us to put me inside and he drove us off to the nearest hospital.

The guy, who drove the bike had his arm broken in a number of places. As I later found out, I had two fractures on my shoulder, two fractured ribs, two fractures in my pelvis and a torn scalp, which is where all the blood had poured out from.

I remember that all this time, I was in a really wonderful place. I don't know if I actually had a clinical death. I don't think so, but the life-changing realizations tell me that it was planned and it was a kick-in-the-butt to wake me up.

The blackness and the silence that I remember were the most wonderful, peaceful sensations that I had ever experienced to this day. There were no worries about anything. Everything was assured. Everything was peaceful. Everything was full of love, a soft, all-encompassing love. There was no time and there was no hurry, there was no need, there was no force, there was true silence. Just a wonderful peaceful place I never ever wanted to leave.

Then I felt something disgusting and painful and something that caused distress and suffering, and the worst thing I knew about it was that it was absolutely unnecessary. I felt as if I was kicked in back to life, back to being me in this body, in this life. I was so angry at whoever did this, that I swore and shouted at it. When I realized that I have to continue living this life, I shouted in my mind: "-%$- you! Not this again!". I felt so disappointed and annoyed that I had to leave that nice peaceful place and come here again.

The five senses came back one at a time. The first was vision. I saw many glass bottle of medicine on shelves and the light hurt me so bad. I hated seeing everything. It was a terrible experience to see things. I felt it was unnecessary at all. The blackness was much better.

The second was hearing. I heard myself grunting from pain, but I didn't connect that it was me yet. I heard the clicking of surgical instruments the doctors were using to stick up my scalp. The hearing felt horrible, too.

Other senses followed. Each sense felt like a dirty potato sac that was placed around my essence/being. All was beautiful in the silence and darkness, but one dirty course potato sac was placed around me and now I had to see things. The sight was like a dirty, distorting filter of what truly was. When the hearing kicked in, I felt like there was a second dirty potato sac, that was placed around the first one and everything got even more distorted. The beautiful silence now had to be perceived through this dirty distorting filter of hearing. The rest of the senses were the same.

When others tell of such experiences, their stories seem much nicer. They clearly remember choosing to come in here and they feel a sense of purpose and love. I really did not feel that I chose to come back.

I got a clear knowing that I am coming back here again, and not for the first time. That I will keep coming back again and again until I do something. What that thing was, I did not know, but I knew that it was not career, money, reputation, family and not even knowledge.

All of those things were passing and not eternal. Even if you read the whole library, when you die it will be gone like your money. Another deeper knowing will replace your accumulated knowledge. So suddenly I knew that the purpose of my life is not career, money, reputation, family and knowledge. However, I still had no idea what that true thing was that was the purpose for this life.

I had a feeling that I had a conversation with a group of wise beings, while I was experiencing the beautiful darkness. I felt like they purposely hid my memory of our conversation. I just had a few clear "knowings" left from it.

1) Death will always come in the most perfect time. You will always appreciate the beauty of that timing. You do not need to be afraid of death. Death does not have to hurt. Death is a beautiful event in your existence and it will be like a blessing when it comes.

2) Your personality (most of the time) does not know when death is coming. It can come so fast, like if you get hit by a bus, going about your business, thinking that you still have plenty of time to work on your plans and so on. The message was that you need to do that meaningful thing now and that is what matters. If you are always doing your meaningful thing, then you won't even feel that you were interrupted by death.

3) Don't waste your time and energy on superficial things in life. Do the meaningful thing. This is why you come here. If you don't do the meaningful thing, then you will come back here again and again and again. So just find that meaningful thing and do it.

4) I had no idea what that meaningful thing for me was!

I was still kind of angry at those entities, who I had talked to. They blocked my memory of our conversation, they told me what not to do, they kicked me back in and they didn't even tell me my purpose!

They left a clue that the true purpose is supposed to feel a particular way in your stomach. It's supposed to feel grand and important and full of love and it doesn't have to look grand. It can be very small to the naked physical eye, but to you it should feel like a kind of liberation, like the only thing that matters. I think they left a message, that I will know my purpose when it comes. It will feel like a big orange warm ball of excitement and love.

I share this story with you because I want to spread the four messages I got above. Even if you have no idea what your purpose is, it is coming. If you search, it will come. You will feel it when you find it. It should feel fantastic.

I feel that I am so close to mine. I think I already started doing it. It is comprised of many little things I do. Mostly I think, it's about being true to yourself. Not hiding it, not pretending to be someone else. When we're true to ourselves, the purpose can keep opening up like a flower, always surprising you with more and more things you love doing, love experiencing.

The purpose can be very different for everyone, but the uniting feeling that comes with it is the same. The feeling of liberation, excitement, love, creativity accompanies it. If we allow ourselves to engage in things that make us feel that way, then we can be assured that we found our purpose and we are living it.

After that experience, my life changed completely. I became very calm and assured. I stopped planning my "successful" life. I was no longer afraid of death. I began my search for the true good thing I'm supposed to do. I also started having regular spiritual visions, full of messages about the universe and the structure of our souls, the Akashic Records and things like that. Life is amazing and so interesting!

I wish you to feel this liberating feeling of excitement and love and pleasure every single moment of your beautiful life, dear reader! Let's enjoy this wonderful journey together!