Immediately after my Near-Death Experience (NDE) and as soon as I returned to my body I was given these three gifts. Prior to my death experience I understood the words, but I did not incorporate their meanings into my life. The excerpts below are from the book we are writing.
Now remember I was the guy who had to cut my swath through life in order to survive. That was my philosophy. But suddenly, I was given what I call my three gifts: “Acceptance”, “Tolerance”, and “Truth”. Now they're very simple words but they can take lifetimes to really understand.
Acceptance ~
The first gift I dealt
with was Acceptance. Before my near-death (or as I have come to call it my new
life experience) I had no idea of acceptance. I had spent my teenage years
living in Arizona, going to school and hanging out with mostly Native American
children. My family life was very dysfunctional. So, I used to spend most of my
time trying to escape my family. My friend’s grandmothers would tell me the
stories of Spirit so I felt I knew all about this Spirit. All I really knew were
the stories I had heard of how we were supposed to live our lives. I was walking
through life dreaming of how I was supposed to be, not accepting who I was.
After my new life experience I had a new understanding of acceptance. In my life
review I had to face how my human side and my spirit nature worked together or
many times didn’t work together. In that life review I also had to watch all the
repercussions of how my actions affected others. Now I understood how my life
could touch others without my knowing it. I now knew that I am in the perfect
place at all times. From experiencing my life review with love and non judgment,
I knew who I was and could accept that I had faults and strengths. By
recognizing this I could start to work on myself to make myself a better human.
I no longer needed to beat myself up over a failure. Instead I could learn from
it, accept it and move on.
Now, I had never even thought of any of this before. I mean, I didn't even know
who I was. Acceptance was like a seed that was planted in me during my NDE. I
didn’t come to a full realization right away, but now I had an understanding of
it. I think my belief in spirituality took a great leap after this. After my
Near-Death, I remembered the Grandmother’s teachings of living the natural way.
It’s a way of living in tune with the earth and walking in respectful manner. I
wanted to re-examine and investigate that natural way of living. I wanted to
walk my talk with this new acceptance of who I am. I knew I then could move
forward in my life.
Tolerance ~
Another thing that
started becoming apparent during these three days was the concept of tolerance.
Tolerance is a way that you allow others to live their life because you have
seen that they have their own goals and their own paths. This tolerance of
others was an allowing of that to take place and so I learned not to take on
other peoples burdens or at least that other peoples burdens are not necessarily
a part of my path.
There are times in our life when we do pick up other peoples burdens. An example
could be dedicating time in your life to be in the peace corp., to work for our
environment or to help a close friend through a rough time. I am not saying that
you totally divorce yourself from another’s suffering, but you understand that
you don’t need to own it. You can still be compassionate and tolerant of others
issues.
Wow, as I’ve said before I had learned to cut my swath through life and to
survive, this had nothing to do with being tolerant of others. Many people think
it is normal to try to change others. Like a spouse trying to change their
partner into something they want or need. That is a lack of tolerance even if
you feel it is for a good purpose, aim or a goal. I still could choose if their
actions were something that I wanted to be around, but that involved changing
me, not them.
Suddenly I had a way of recognizing and respecting the beliefs and practices of
others. From watching my own life review, I recognized that everyone is in their
perfect place and experiencing what their life’s path needs for growth.
Prior to understanding this, if someone was argumentative toward me, and I
didn’t agree with their argument, I would discount them totally. I definitely
wouldn’t try to understand them. After this I begin to see that there was
another side. Thank goodness I was given this gift along with the understanding
that I didn’t have to take in their side in order to not discount it. If I took
in everyone’s opinions, I wouldn’t be able to move anywhere because I would have
all these opposing views inside. Tolerance was such a foreign thing to me
because I had never given anyone else’s opinion any further considering.
It was an amazing realization that I could be accepting and tolerant of
someone’s path without feeling I was condoning it. Even conflicting views didn’t
threaten me anymore and I found my self able to distance myself when necessary.
This led me to the gift of Truth.
Truth ~
Even as a small child,
and as I was growing up, I had a sense of when I was going against my true
nature. I would have an experience and I would behave in a way that I thought
would be most acceptable to the people around me. I knew then that was not who I
truly was. This fiction slowly became me, even though it was false. Over time I
became lost in the self I had constructed. The love from the light and the
consciousness of the light showed me my true self without the fiction. The light
knew me better than I knew myself to be or gave myself credit for. It is
difficult to shed that false persona overnight. I kept trying to wear the old
me, but it didn’t fit any more. It took me about a year after the NDE to accept
my true self as I had experienced it in the light. Now, when I am working with
my true self, I call it my truth. There are so many ways to express truth but
before my experience the only truth I knew was factual truth. Personal truth is
more abstract than just factual truth that comes out of a book. Personal truth
is often felt through experiences, and can sometimes be an understanding beyond
ourselves. It can be a root to our philosophy of life.
When you do something because it just makes you feel happy or you get that
feeling of “aha, this makes sense to me. I understand this,” it usually has to
do with your life’s philosophy and your personal truth. Your personal truth can
be 180 degrees out from another person’s. Once we have learned tolerance, we can
allow that and it can be okay.
People can observe the same event and because everyone views that occurrence
from different angles and points of view, they all come away from that
experience with a different understanding. In life that is how our personal
truth works.
We tend to not open our personal truth to other people. Because it feels good
when we experience our truth, we don’t want to change it. We want to hang on to
it and not let it go. The funny thing is that the harder we hang on, the more it
slips away from us. After my near death experience, I had quite a few go rounds
in trying to understand my truth and my philosophy because it kept changing as I
was growing.
As I would grow and change parts of my self to be a more accepting and tolerant
individual, I would try to hang on to what I knew to be my truth. I would then
realize that that my truth had changed because I had changed my philosophy just
a little bit. Your truth fluctuates with your growth and direction of your life
path. I don’t believe that your life path is a straight road, it takes lots of
twists. A winding road is a fun road to travel.
Since my NDE, I now understand a fluid truth that is mine. It comes from my
heart. When I weigh my experiences against the truth in my heart, instead of my
mind, I can move forward in my life much quicker. Suddenly, I'm living a life
that is more true to me. There is a joy in that, an indescribable joy, because
you start following all those little things that make your heart sing. For
example, using your creative side can be a great jump starter for this. You find
that creativeness within yourself and use that to start to learn where your
truth lies. When your heart sings, you know you've touched a truth.
After the initial three days of feeling here and in the light, I had my new
tools: Acceptance, Tolerance and Truth. I knew I had to try to live a more
loving and compassionate life. My battle cry became “Acceptance, Tolerance and
Truth”. I took some time to look back upon some of what the grandmothers had
taught me and I dove deeper into Native American culture by going to seminars,
pow wows and reading books. I really looked much deeper into spirituality.
I only took away from the experience what I felt I could handle and was
comfortable with. I had taken such a hard look at myself that I understood
better who I was and knew some of my problems and issues that I had to work on.
Knowing my issues didn’t mean I was going to change overnight. I still had the
same temper and people still pushed my buttons the same way they did a week
earlier. But now I was aware of my reactions and accepted that I could change
them.
I believe that the near-death experience makes you look at who you are. You see
all of the good and all of the bad. You understand that this is where you are
right now; it doesn’t mean that it is where you have to stay.
There may be no judgment from the light, but my human tendency of judgment still
peeked through. Lack of judgment requires a life time effort. It is human nature
to judge.
I knew who I was for the first time in my life. I could accept that I have
problems and issues. I have seen the Light (excuse the pun) and I can use that
to be a better human being in this life. I still felt very human, and being in
that light was still a little too much for my human side to handle. My
near-death left me in a state of shock for at least three days. Not a physical
shock, more like a spiritual shock. Let me explain. After returning from the
Light, it stays with you. Being in that light made me feel like I was in God’s
hands and I didn’t feel worthy of that blessing. “Who am I to have that love? I
wasn’t very spiritual before!” When I was there, the love I felt was for
everything. There is an experience of oneness within the light that once I came
back, was difficult to live without. During those next three days, I felt like I
was still in God’s presence. It was a little too overwhelming to me. You walk
around half there and half here. I was living those few days with my heart wide
open and if you have not experienced that, it can be very emotional and painful.
Plus, there was an incredible longing to go back into the Light and stay there.
I tried to forget it. I tried to not think about it anyway I could. I tried to
think about what was the next job I had to go on and get my focus back to living
my life and getting that experience behind me.
But the longing to return Home, to my true home, stays with me. It has become a
part of who I am now. I realize that I need to experience all this life has to
offer and bring it home with me when this life ends.
I could deal with the extrasensory awareness, but my subconscious took the
enormity of experiencing the light and the love and packaged it up nice and
tight. My experienced was wrapped up in a box and put on the highest shelf in
the back of my subconscious mind with a big sign on it that said “Do Not Touch,”
so I knew not to go there.
During the three day period after the NDE it was tough. I was attempting to get
my life back and move forward after my experience.
It was never spoken about again at home and none of us spoke of it at work. Working in a rough and gruff, macho male environment where tempting death was a source of pride left no room for that! I think we all respected the fact that anyone of us could have died that night and I sure wasn’t going to tell them that I had! I now had to find a way to integrate back into this life. This is a very difficult time for experiencer’s.
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Thank you, for reading this so far, maybe you would be interested in Before & After, |
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Ten years after the
Near-Death
Experience & My Soul Group was another experience you can read at Reliving the Death. |
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