From Death to Life

As a child I was traumatized by the death of a well-loved neighbor. That painful experience left me with a paralyzing phobia. Perhaps my susceptibility to phobia was because was the kind of child who questioned everything, and had customarily pondered big questions at night before falling asleep. Questions like Where did I come from? Why was I born? What will I become? After our neighbor passed, I fixated on questions like Who am I? Will God save me from death? What’s the point of being here if I I’m only going to die? I questioned my mom and others about why they thought people were born if they were only going to die in the end. They brushed me off by telling me I shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts. My friends said either “I don’t know,” or looked at me as though I had just dropped in from another planet. I couldn’t understand why everybody was so engrossed in daily activities when death made everything meaningless. 

One night, while pondering Who am I? a knowing arose that I had lived before in a different body with a different name. I asked my mother what she thought about that, and she changed the subject. I had no clue that there were people on earth who actually believed in “my” concept. (It would be another 8 or 9 years before I came across the term “reincarnation.”) I became frustrated with unanswered questions and ultimately suppressed them; yet, my fear of death persisted. Eventually, I fell in line with the status quo, even though I felt that I didn’t belong.

At age eighteen I experienced a miracle. It was an NDE (near-death experience) which abolished my fear of death and answered my underlying questions. A near-death experience means that I died, visited the afterlife, then returned to my body. When I awoke, I was filled with the ecstasy of Divine LOVE and JOY beyond anything I could describe with mere words. I knew that we are not our bodies. We are eternal souls, spirits, essences, call it what you will. Our bodies age and disintegrate, but our souls are one with Creation, Non-local Consciousness, The Universe, God, call It what you will. We are born into human bodies with free will for the purpose of experiencing human existence. From that moment to this, I no longer see human life as meaningless. We are here to discover in a variety of ways that LOVE is the power of the universe that gives LIFE purpose and meaning. 

The NDE was the just the beginning of my transformation. It opened a door to myriad mystical events ranging from coincidental to outright miraculous. I call those blessed events mystical interludes. For more than 50 years they have continued to expand and deepen my awareness. Believing as I do in reincarnation, I greet each day with gratitude for another opportunity to experience my challenges and also to love and serve. Most important of all, I no longer see death as the end of life—as something to be feared—but as the beginning of a new episode of existence.