Evolution of love

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES

I consider the moment of my death the greatest gift of my life. However, anyone who heard me screaming at the top of my lungs in pure, unrestrained panic in the emergency room would not have believed that twenty-four hours later I would be filled with the wonder and peace of the afterlife. I had a head on collision on my way to run the Austin 10K run. I broke my back in several places and sustained several internal injuries. I didn't have health insurance at the time, and had to wait 17 hours for a surgeon to work on me. I didn't have painkillers or anything to numb the pain.

During surgery, I popped out of my body and had a full NDE experience. No one, except possibly the most committed atheist, could have been more surprised than me at the beginning of my near death experience. The first moments outside my body felt exciting and electrifying. My spirit danced a bit of jig realizing that there is more to existence than the physical. I felt like a child again, happy to see what came next and glad that my spirit body retained the essence of who I am.

.....

I was very close to a love, I can’t put it into words. I have tried to write about this experience so many times, but I break down and can’t write the words. I miss the love. I miss the light. A large part of me never wanted to leave the safety of that place.

In that place, I felt no stress and more love than I imagined possible. I felt more joy and contentment than even the brightest moments in this life ever provided, and I didn’t want to return to my body. If a soul could smile, then my soul smiled. I was comfortable and without worry. I felt complete and utter trust in this experience. As I got deeper into to the light, I felt the prayers of my mother, father, grandmothers, and a couple of my aunts. I especially felt the prayer of a great-aunt who lost a daughter in a car wreck. I very clearly heard her pray and beg God that my mother not suffer the pain she suffered when she lost her daughter. This touched me, and I almost wanted to return because of her sweet prayer…

One of the most important lessons that was transferred to me by the light is that love is all that matters. Though this seemed like a hippie slogan or a paraphrase from the Beatles, the message sunk into me on a deeper level. Every interaction is meaningless if love is not attached to it in some way. A prayer is meaningless without love. A sermon is meaningless without love. A religion is meaningless without love. The prayers of those who loved me felt like wind, slowing down my progress toward the light. Though their love felt sweet, and reminded me of my life on earth, their prayers did not stop my desire to keep going deeper into the light. I’ve always been an adventurous soul, and this was the greatest adventure I’d ever been on. When I returned to my body, it felt like a dark wind had engulfed me. I still felt one with everything.

If I had to sum up, the main lesson of my NDE is that God, or the light, is a loving force that doesn’t want people to harm others and wants us to feel joy and happiness in our lives. Love and kindness are the greatest gift we can give others. We are all a part of that light, but we forget how to love because of fear. We forget how to walk through this world as the light. We are all closer to God as children because love comes more natural for us. We are able to be gleeful about pets, a bird in the sky, looking into our parent’s eyes. We are in love with the world, and the world is in love with us. We breathed easier as children, and lived more extended, intense moments as children.