I've mentioned on this forum that I had an NDE (near death experience), but I've never shared the details or put down the experience in writing. Part of my NDE involved seeing a very hopeful vision of my personal future (and perhaps the collective future), and now that decidedly positive changes have started to act upon my life, spirit has been telling me to share my experience as a way of guaranteeing those positive developments for both myself and others. This community seems like the most natural place to do that. So here goes (this is a long one).
Some necessary background. In 2014 I began experiencing pronounced difficulties as a result of neurofibromatosis type II (NF2). The big issue was brain surgery which resulted in sudden hearing loss in my left ear, but I was also increasingly contending with disequilibrium (poor balance) and muscle atrophy in parts of my body. I had begun my undergraduate studies in fall of 2013 at a small university in a beautiful rural setting, both of which I fell in love with, and all of these challenges were a huge blow to how I had previously imagined my life unfolding. I persisted at my university, but I closed myself off from meaningful friendship. And without being aware of it, I began employing various temporary measures to ward off depression, including taking a semester off from college to volunteer on small organic farms throughout New England.
In October 2016 I finally exhausted these measures and fell into a deep depression, but I didn't tell anyone. Four months later I almost tried to kill myself, after which I spent 18 days in the hospital undergoing psychiatric care. Over the next two months, which I spent at home with my parents In Connecticut, I was feeling better, but I was still in the "aura" of depression. Then, on Easter Sunday, I had a grand mal seizure. It turned out the seizure was an aftereffect of a brain surgery I underwent the previous December. I spent 1 night in the hospital after the seizure and was back exercising at the gym within a few days.
Here's the NDE proper. Two weeks after the seizure, I went to bed and started feeling a sharp pain at the back of my chest whenever I inhaled. As the pain increased, a voice seemed to be telling me to get out of bed, get dressed, and wake up my parents, because something important was about to happen. In fact, I didn't seem to be in complete control of my own movements as I roused myself; it was like I was being guided. It was after midnight, but the moment I turned on the lights in the hallway, my mom came out my parents bedroom because she sensed something was up (mother's intuition). As i stood in the hallway and told her about the pain, I became increasingly panicked and suddenly passed out. When I regained consciousness after about 30 seconds, my dad had already called an ambulance and I didn't have the strength to get off the floor. My vision was also different. The overhead lights seemed otherworldly in a way, and I could see what looked like sparks and electrical currents in the air. Meanwhile, the spiritual presence that spoke to me when the pain in my chest first started was a lot more powerful. I could also anticipate each new moment. I was able to sense the arrival of the EMTs before they announced themselves, and I could read the profound distress racing through my parents' minds.
When the EMTs did finally come through the front door and started walking up the stairs, the sparks and electrical currents in the air coalesced into what I can only describe as a rotating pattern at the edge of my line of sight. And then I received a vision: I saw myself crouched alone in an agricultural field at the edge of a forest under golden sunlight. I looked much more robust and physically substantial, and I was decked out in rugged outdoors gear. It was almost like all of the damage NF2 had done to my body had been reversed. The field I was working in looked biodynamic and was planted with a diversity of trees, bushes, and crops. I was joyous and completely at ease; I was tending to all of those plants and they were tending my health in return. There was a strong association between the vision and the 30s number range, meaning the vision I was seeing was of me in my 30s or that the vision was from the 2030s (either way, I turn 35 in 2030). Spirit seemed to be telling me that despite all of the challenges and despair I had been through, this vision would be my future if I persisted.
I never left my body or lost consciousness, so this vision was superimposed on what was going on around me. The EMTs loaded me onto a special chair they used to carry me down the stairs, and I even cracked a joke so that my parents would be less concerned (the spiritual presence told me to make a joke for my parents' benefit, and my dad at least cracked up). By the time we were outside and I was loaded onto a stretcher and into the amblance, the vision of me in the field was gone, but the peace and joy of that vision was still very much present. I knew everything would be fine, and that's when the rotating electricity at the edge of my vision started to impart knowledge of its own. I understood that the rotating energy field was a glimpse of the spiral nature of the universe. Everything in the universe is coordinated and works in cyclical patterns. While things will renew and return to origins in the course of those cycles, the universe is always advancing towards a new destination, "spiraling" to new experiences and discoveries for discovery's sake. And there are nested cycles within larger cycles, and cycles within those cycles, like a Mandelbrot set. Even the turbulence of my life at that point and the turbulence and ugliness of the world were purposefully building up towards a more beautiful whole with implications that went well beyond humanity or planet Earth. I understood all of this with each passing moment in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital as if I were hooked up to an IV of knowledge, and I could only keep on repeating "oh, wow!" over and over in my mind.
I could also feel my depression melting away. Having seen my potential future and being gifted with so much spiritual knowledge, I had no desire to die at all, and I could feel the cells in my body begin to mobilize for healing. It then occurred to me; what if I didn't want to live? I realized that the universe was giving me a choice, and that If I really wanted to, I could shift my energy in the opposite direction and I would die right there in the ambulance, and that would be fine. The universe had alternate plans in that event. But I never considered it. I still didn't know why I was in pain, nor did the EMTs, but I decided then and there that I would do whatever it took to get better.
After they ran a few tests on me in the hospital, we were finally able to figure out that I had an advanced case of pneumonia and that I must have aspirated on saliva when I had my seizure two weeks earlier. At first they wanted to operate on my lungs, but I absolutely refused, and I even got out of bed and stormed out of the ward in my hospital gown just to make the point that I was not so sick that I needed surgery (the same spirit guides who led me through my NDE told me I needed to make a scene in order to demonstrate my vitality). So after two days they discharged me with an infusion kit and a port in my arm so that I could administer antibiotic fluids myself from home. After three weeks of diligently administering antibiotics every 6 hours, I was free of pneumonia. But what I really want to write about is the first full day I was home from the hospital, which was May 1st (May Day). It was magical. It was sunny with ice blue skies, but the moon was visible, and the temperature was perfectly poised so that I barely registered any sense of temperature at all. I felt like I had grown several inches, and it seemed like a veil had been removed from my eyes, all of the colors were so much brighter and acute. As I walked around outside, I felt all of my spiritual helpers congratulating me for navigating the gauntlet.
It's been exactly 30 months to the day since my NDE, and the universe keeps sending me energy so that I'm moving forward. Through the profound kindness and understanding of my professors, it pushed me to complete my undergrad honors thesis when I wanted to give up and just be done with college. Through a series of dreams this past summer, it pushed me to submit the application for the job I currently have, and if not for those dreams I wouldn't be living in a new state surrounded by new people (which is exactly what I need). One of the more out-of-the-blue transformational experiences I've had in the past 2 and half years occurred last fall, when I was completing my studies in upstate New York. Through the campus chaplain, with whom I had been visiting regularly, I found out that there was a trained shaman who lived just down the road and performed soul capture ceremonies informed by Native American cosmology. She did a soul capture for me, and that's how I found out that my totem animal is coyote. That eventuality led me to the "Coyote Trilogy" of books by the doctor and healer Lewis Mehl-Madrona. One of the centerpieces of Mehl-Madrona's "coyote medicine" is the power of storytelling, and that's why I've been up past midnight writing this novel of a post. When we share our stories with open-minded individuals, we validate those stories and make them come true. So telling this story of my health struggles and my NDE validate those experiences while also making the future I saw in my NDE vision more possible. On one level, what I saw is personal; being free of the depredations of NF2. At the same time, though, I saw a healthier Earth and a more mindful, cooperative way of living with our environment that benefits the health of both the planet and the human collective. That's what we all want. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
 Â
Wow. Â Wow. Â Coyote, this is riveting and so profound. I feel so lucky you shared your story with us. I'm reading this first thing in the morning, and it's so hopeful and meaningful it's lifted my spirits. Thank you for having the courage to tell your story with us. It gives me hope.Â
- ...As the pain increased, a voice seemed to be telling me to get out of bed, get dressed, and wake up my parents, because something important was about to happen.
- ...the spiritual presence that spoke to me when the pain in my chest first started was a lot more powerful.
- I could also anticipate each new moment. I was able to sense the arrival of the EMTs before they announced themselves, and I could read the profound distress racing through my parents' minds.
- When the EMTs did finally come through the front door and started walking up the stairs, the sparks and electrical currents in the air coalesced into what I can only describe as a rotating pattern at the edge of my line of sight.
- And then I received a vision:...There was a strong association between the vision and the 30s number range, meaning the vision I was seeing was of me in my 30s or that the vision was from the 2030s (either way, I turn 35 in 2030). Spirit seemed to be telling me that despite all of the challenges and despair I had been through, this vision would be my future if I persisted.
- ...I knew everything would be fine, and that's when the rotating electricity at the edge of my vision started to impart knowledge of its own.
- I understood that the rotating energy field was a glimpse of the spiral nature of the universe. Everything in the universe is coordinated and works in cyclical patterns. While things will renew and return to origins in the course of those cycles, the universe is always advancing towards a new destination, "spiraling" to new experiences and discoveries for discovery's sake. And there are nested cycles within larger cycles, and cycles within those cycles, like a Mandelbrot set.
- Even the turbulence of my life at that point and the turbulence and ugliness of the world were purposefully building up towards a more beautiful whole with implications that went well beyond humanity or planet Earth.
- As I walked around outside, I felt all of my spiritual helpers congratulating me for navigating the gauntlet.
- It's been exactly 30 months to the day since my NDE
- One of the centerpieces of Mehl-Madrona's "coyote medicine" is the power of storytelling, and that's why I've been up past midnight writing this novel of a post. When we share our stories with open-minded individuals, we validate those stories and make them come true.
- On one level, what I saw is personal; being free of the depredations of NF2.
- At the same time, though, I saw a healthier Earth and a more mindful, cooperative way of living with our environment that benefits the health of both the planet and the human collective.      Â
 Â
Coyote, this story is a gift from spirit that you have now given to all of us. It is the most remarkable NDE I have ever read. It also shares some themes from other NDEs that have been published, but yours is more detailed. I pulled out what stood out the strongest to me but everything you wrote was powerful and profound.
You are clearly meant to be a messenger in this life. And this story is a powerful debut that I think you see demonstrates that you can help the world just by sharing it to others. I know you have many gifts and want to help in many ways, and you already have even in this forum where you've been a major contributor.  This story, however, stands out as an incredible gift to us all.Â
There is so much in your experience that fits the best of what we know about our world. I hope others here will read it and note here how it resonates with them. What truths are here for each of you?Â
What other worldly experiences have each of you had in your life?Â
Again, thank you Coyote for sharing this. Â
I also want to add that I have seen over the years that there are mathematical cycles that we as a civilization follow, as well we as individuals. Yours seems to be along the number 3: It was 30 months to the day that you had the NDE that you shared this account of it. You also see the 2030's and your age of thirty-five as occurring at the beginning of the 2030's. You might be able to track events in your life along cycles of three -- three days, three weeks, three years, 30 months, 30 years.
I have my own cycle of 6 which is remarkable to track.Â
This NDE could be the beginning of a wonderful book.Â
I'd like to post separately some of the truths you have posted here and how for me they connect to truths about our world that I've received from elsewhere. I am interested in what others also see here that fits their visions or if even just what spiritual truths have come to them in supernatural ways.
Â
Â
Â
Beautiful beautiful, beautiful and amazing. It all fits you and the energy and presence you project here.
Bless you and thank you for the gift of you, your story and this journey.
It has the power to change, even transform many reading here as well as fulfill your soul's purpose here on earth.
Â
I echo everyone here. Wow. What an incredible experience. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. I, too, felt such power in reading what you wrote and shared with us all here. Truly, the time was right for you to do so. Thank you!
I am fascinated by your mention of cycles. I would love to know more about how to figure out/track cycles of my own. Just a quick think back through the years and I may have a cycle of 4, but would love to know more to see if this is accurate. Thanks for anything you can share!
Thanks so much Jeanne. I read lots of NDE stories in the months following my own NDE (the website nderf.org was a big help on this account), and I came across quite a few that I considered to be more dynamic than mine (conversations with religious figures, meetings with future offspring, astral projections, etc.). And yes, I noticed many similarities, both in how the NDEs unfolded and between the types of revelations received. So, as with you, I'm interested in hearing from others what resonates and whether anyone else here has received similar spiritual truths.
Regarding the cycles, I only became aware of the recurring number 3 as I was typing. I've been able to identify other 3 cycles in my life. This may or may not be one of those cycles, but I always seem to be glancing at clocks right when it's 12:34 (am or pm). In fact, my computer displayed 12:34 right before I began typing all of this this morning.
It's been a week now, and I'd like to thank everyone who offered their thoughts or took the time to read and internalize my original post. I feel like I'm passing through a succession of gates towards healing, and the energy I've been feeling for the past several days has indicated that sharing my NDE was definitely one of those gates and that I'm gearing up for the next step, whatever that might be.
I'd like to add an addendum. When I finally went to bed after posting my NDE on Sunday morning, I had a distressing dream. I was in a hospital, strapped to a gurney and being prepared for a neurosurgery that would leave me completely deaf. I was frightened and crying and trying to get off the gurney and out of the hospital. I could even feel pain, as if my body could anticipate the violation it was about to undergo. At one point the surgeon rushed past me and absentmindedly confirmed over his shoulder all of the awful outcomes I should expect. But when they wheeled me into the surgery room, I became somewhat lucid and I forced myself to wake up. I was fine!
The dream and my choice to end it by waking up felt like an invitation from spirit to change my story from one of linear health degeneration to one of healing. When I talk about healing, though, I am also referring to collective healing. I feel strongly that we as a global civilization have the opportunity to change our collective cultural stories towards life affirmation and compassion (to continue the dream metaphor, it's within our power to wake up from the nightmare we've constructed to a more beautiful world). In fact, I believe my personal healing will be contingent on inspiring these changes in the people around me. Â
I’ve been off the grid for the past week, but did read your post about your NDE.  Thank you so much for sharing about your health struggles, personal crises and your remarkable visions.  These are just beautiful and truly touch my heart.  I’m so glad you are part of our community.  I’ve read your posts over and over again and feel uplifted by your experiences.  Namaste.
Dear Coyote,
I just read the story of your incredible NDE! My heart is filled with awe and wonder. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. We are blessed to receive it, to have your trust. I am so glad that you chose to live, that you have found a spiritually nurturing environment and that your future is drawing you towards ever enfolding purpose.Â
Do you know the organization IANDS? They focus on honoring and gathering NDE stories through conferences and their newsletter.Â
Again, thank you so much for sharing your incredible story. Bless you.
Thank you, Penelope. I have heard of IANDS, but right now I'm in the process of submitting my experience to the organization NDERF. I'm more drawn to their website, and I chiefly relied on them for learning about NDEs after my own.
I don't feel like I need to participate in NDE conferences or receive related newsletters. I'm more focused on living my life. I still struggle with unknowns like everyone else, and I inevitably have my periods of doubt: will my future really work out the way I saw it in my NDE? But I've become better at noticing signs source/my spirit guides/the universe has been sending me (especially after I started participating in this forum). So for me, "keeping the faith" means trusting my intuition and living with the awareness that each moment holds the potential to set me on my way to my soul's desire.Â
Â
Your story is so amazing, as I think I've said before I have no words, but your follow up and explanation gave me chills (good ones lol). You are such a powerful spirit! I know in every fiber of my being that you were given this "job" of this life to help human beings and the earth. Many of your generation are a special group of folks who I believe left the earth then came back at an opportune time to help the planet. You have incredible strength and light around you. You are such an old soul, so beyond your 24 yrs here. Thank you again for sharing this and for your courage. I'm humbled and grateful for your presence here.
I have a story of a friend's NDE I'd like to share. His was not what you'd expect:
My friend Steve G. He passed away a few years ago from ALS (very sad) but when I met him over 18 years ago he was "on fire" for God and Life. He had a profound NDE that shook him. He was in the DFW airport on one of the buses going from the plane to the terminal, when he had a major heart attack. He had stopped breathing for a total of 40 minutes, and when he was at the hospital (within those 40 minutes, after the heart surgeon unsuccessfully tried to massage his heart back to life), he was in the room where they were going to harvest his eyes (he was a donor). All of a sudden he woke up! The doctor freaked out and said there is no way you are awake, let alone able to speak right now since you would have no brain activity after 40 minutes of no oxygen to your brain! The doctor asked him a series of questions like, name, address, what year it is etc. He was awake! The doc said it was a miracle.
Steve G. then went on to have children with his wife (3 girls) and he changed his ways. Apparently he had been a serial cheater and womanizer and never went to church. He devoted himself to his wife and girls and the church. He told me the most incredible thing about his NDE. I asked him if he saw "the light" or God, heaven etc. He said No - just the opposite, he said he saw what looked like like a depressing, dark and worrisome place. He said he heard God tell him "I'm giving you another chance to change". It was sad when he developed ALS in his last 2 years of life, but his attitude was one of gratitude and love because of his experience. He also went on to help others and told everyone he knew to get a nuclear stress test if they had heart issues, because he had a twin brother who, due to Steve's experience, had a nuclear stress test that detected the same heart abnormality and saved his life.
Not sure what to make of Steve's experience but it did change him profoundly.
Â
Wow! Thank you Coyote for sharing your story. I am going to be thinking about this. I always felt that our DNA structure mirrored our universe. I once worked with a Dr. who's mother was a geneticist and he told me he has seen DNA and it looks and feels like thin white thread. That make me think of the myth-stories of the Fates, who spin, weave and cut the threads of life. From science to experience to mythos...
Anyway, I had a dream once (not an NDE) that I was in a place where souls go very soon after death. There was a large room with small beds or platforms that "people" are laying on and healers going from person to person and placing their hands on their heads/bodies and healing them energetically. It was communicated that these were souls who had some major trauma and mental illnesses (or perhaps damaged by the ravages of addiction) that affected them and they needed to be healed first. The healing helped these souls return to themselves. That their lives here on earth had altered them and we were just helping to make them whole again/kind of like a straightening out of frequencies-- similar to like how an electrophysiologist re-routes aberrent electrical conduction in the heart but using energy not an ablation probe.
I should add that prior to this dream, many years ago, I had befriended a coworker who had schizophrenia and she told me about the voice she heard in her head and how it was an individual-- who had a name, a history and a personality. To me it seemed like she was soul sick and this personality was like a virus, feeding off her energy and distress. I know that is very unscientific and probably considered superstitious but I really had this sense of it. Added that science offered her little in healing, the medications made her feel sick but enabled her to sort of cope- be functional most of the time and prevent her from hurting herself mostly but still, periodically her symptoms would break through and she would be required to be inpatient at a hospital for short periods of time. This impression remained with me in future encounters with mental illness and addiction. Science says it is a chemical imbalance. Spirit tells me there is more to this, but the solution is less complicated overall.
I've read several NDE accounts and pieces of writing from mediums who channel the afterlife that recount the place you saw in your dream. Yes, it's a place where souls who lived very traumatic lives or happened to die through violent means go so that they can coalesce and come back to themselves. I've seen some people refer to this place as the Hall of Healing.
Lewis Mehl-Madrona is trained as a psychiatrist, and he's written quite a bit about using Cherokee and Lakota shamanic approaches to treating people with mental illness. There is more to it than chemical imbalances, and Mehl-Madrona (along with many other native healers) have seen patients make remarkable recoveries from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder using their "unscientific" methods.
@Coyote, thank you so much for sharing. I am trying to figure out how to put feelings and colors into words now, but you must know that I have tears in my eyes reading.
Your experience comes across as very Druidic as well. Druidism has a distinct cyclic believe to it; you can also see this in most of their holy symbols-> spiral imagery like in New Grange, Ireland.
@Jeanne mentions the mathematics of numbers to which you responded, I totally believe in that. There are numbers that will follow you throughout life like clockwork. Hold on to that; it can give clarity whenever you have moments of doubt.
I am so glad that it helped you to find peace and on the path to the life you wish for yourself!
Meeting the shaman is icing on the cake! Be blessed with the wisdom you can receive from them.
I always felt close to the wolf and although I haven't had a confirmation of my spirit animal, it feels right. So, my brother, right on! Run wild and breath in the fresh air of freedom and hope! ❤️Â
Everything in the universe is coordinated and works in cyclical patterns. While things will renew and return to origins in the course of those cycles, the universe is always advancing towards a new destination, "spiraling" to new experiences and discoveries for discovery's sake. And there are nested cycles within larger cycles, and cycles within those cycles, like a Mandelbrot set. Even the turbulence of my life at that point and the turbulence and ugliness of the world were purposefully building up towards a more beautiful whole with implications that went well beyond humanity or planet Earth. I understood all of this with each passing moment in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital as if I were hooked up to an IV of knowledge, and I could only keep on repeating "oh, wow!" over and over in my mind.
I'm overwhelmed by the beauty and brilliance of this young being, our Coyote. He has been a teacher and a guiding light for so many. I am so incredibly grateful to be allowed to know him, even if only for a little while.Â
We do not die; Coyote knows this. We go on, spiraling forward in great arcs of fractaling life.
I can already sense him in another time, standing strong and healthy in a verdant field, admiring the Earth and witnessing the fruits of his unique healing power to make "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible" real. I can feel my future grandchildren there, and yours. And I'm moved to tears of gratitude.Â
Thank you, Coyote.Â
💗