This experience rendered me free from the fear associated with any idea of death. I have also personally resolved the question about the existence of life beyond death. This is because I know first hand of the freeing experience it can be to leave the body and maintain Self-awareness. I believe if we were raised with the truth of our infinite nature we would not fear death or experience such intense levels of grief when a loved one dies. If we understood that this thing we call death is really the trading in of one perspective for another, we could better understand and navigate our journey through this physical experience we call life. This awareness might eventually lead to a mainstream understanding of the higher realms that lie beyond those governed by matter, energy, space and time. In this we could all embrace the importance of connecting deeply to the intuition from our own non-physical aspect of consciousness.
It was a warm summer day and my mother and her friend had piled their kids into the car for a beach trip. A man made beach, that is. Today it would be referred to as a water park, but in the mid sixties there was no such term. As the oldest of the kids I remember sitting on the blanket in the sand as the younger ones splashed near the edge of the water in front of our moms. There was a huge slide just down the beach with a long line of kids waiting their turn to climb to the top so they could fly into the water below. This was my destination! I remember asking and pleading and begging to join those in line, but my mom was reluctant. Keeping us all close was easier and it was a very high slide. But, like any self-respecting oldest child I had learned the path of least resistance when it came to getting my way: annoyance! As mom and her friend chatted away I kept interrupting her for this, that and then another thing until she told me to go play in the water with the other kids. That was when I hit her with the slide request again. Much less pleading and begging finally resulted in acquiescence and I was off in a run down the beach toward the slide.
I stood in line for what seemed like a long time with kids that were much older. I remember looking up at them and feeling awkward on my own as they talked among themselves. But the adventure ahead over-road any self conscious anxiety and I excitedly waited my turn as the line inched forward. Finally on the ladder leading to the long awaited top, I climbed rung after rung as they were vacated, just as those in line behind me did the same. A vertical line of anxious kids now inched its way upward. This is an important aspect of my story because as impractical as it was, there was a lifeguard at the top of the slide making sure height requirements were met by those of us in line. As it turned out I was told that I was too young and too small to be on this particular slide. With a perplexed look at the crowding children hanging on the ladder beneath me, the lifeguard told me to go ahead and slide, but not to get back in line afterward. Delighted, I agreed and scooted myself onto the water drenched area of the large metal surface. Pushing myself off I flew down the slippery silver slope and hit the water with a force so powerful it pushed the air from my lungs as it thrust me deep into the water. Time stood still.
Breathless, I began struggling against the depths, clawing at the water toward the surface. The next thing I knew my consciousness was focused outside of my body, above the entire scene. Back and forth, my awareness moved between the panic ridden, struggling, oxygen deprived physical ‘me’ that was in the water, and a non-physical self-aware ‘me’ that floated high above the entire experience, free from all panic or concern! While consciously ‘inside’ my body, the struggle to survive was fraught with panic and absolute terror. The deafening silence from being underwater further disconnected me from normal reality, intensifying my fear. I was alone and drowning and I knew no one knew. When consciously focused outside of my body, I was still myself but completely detached with little or no concern about any of it. I simply watched in complete awareness of what was happening. Like a somewhat removed spectator, I simply observed, emotionless. At one point, upon realigning consciously with my body, I clearly remember the words “This is how I die.” calmly coming to me. It was as if my physical and non-physical aspects merged in a moment of peaceful communication. A profound acceptance of impending death seemed to calm the drowning me even as I continued to make my way toward the surface. Then, consciously separated from my body again, high above the scene, my non-physical awareness seemed to access a future scenario. I experienced my mother at the edge of the water, panicked as she searched for her missing child. Her palpable distress filled my consciousness as I knew she would soon learn of her child’s death. I literally saw and felt her anguish at the waters edge as she was told of her daughters drowning. In that instant I experienced complete conscious integration with my body and I surfaced near a buoyed rope that I instinctively latched onto. Gasping for breath and grateful to be alive, I clung to the rope trying to recover. The lifeguard, completely unaware of my harrowing experience, hollered from high atop the slide that the ropes were not for hanging on and motioned for me to ‘move along’. Initially ignoring her I gradually inched my way along the rope to the shore slowly catching my breath.
Eventually I made my way to my mother. She had apparently remained on the blanket talking with a friend throughout the entire event, completely unaware of all that I had experienced. Exhausted I sat near her on the blanket, quiet and reflective. After a bit I explained to her that because I was allowed on a water slide designated for teens and adults which emptied into the deep waters, I had nearly drown. I clearly remember her not understanding the gravity of my experience; dismissively saying, “Well don’t go over there again.” I knew she didn’t ‘get it’ but I had no energy or ability to explain what, at my age, was clearly unexplainable.
The rest of the day is lost to me. The years in between were not filled with this memory and in fact it wasn’t until I attended a NDE (near death experience) meeting more than twenty years later that the event even came to mind. In the meeting, as I shared the surfacing memory, every detail was vivid and clear. It wasn’t however until the facilitator said, “You had a near-death experience.” that I even had a name or a label for what had happened to me as a child. Now, many years and countless expansion experiences later I have a better understanding of what truly happened to me that day.
I simply experienced that my consciousness perceives through, but is not attached to or limited by my body. I have learned that who I truly am is infinite and limitless with countless perspectives, in and beyond the worlds governed by matter, energy, space and time. Either my surfacing, or a possible timeline connected to my mother’s devastation at losing her child, realigned the two aspects of my higher and lower self. I don’t know which ended the conscious distinction between my higher and lower awarenesses. I just know that not only didn’t I die at the beach that day, I would in fact, never die! I am a conscious and consciousness is alive!
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