Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.

Donna Rebadow 0:08
I was vacationing with my family in the Adirondacks of Northern New York, Bear Lake. We were on a lake toy, not skiing, but there was a ski rope involved a tow rope. It towed a little bullet around it, you know, little lake toy and a series of impossible things happened. Water was being taken on by the boat. We were out in the middle, and my brother in law yelled, get off the bullet. The boat's sinking. So my sister had the tow rope in her hand, and I watched where she was behind me, the two of us were on the bullet. She threw the rope to the left, and we went into the water on the right, and the bullet got its moved in between my brother in law's sight line and myself. So he didn't, he didn't know what was happening, and the tow rope, that's nylon that shouldn't sink, was wrapped around my left leg. And I looked down. I go, What the heck. And then I heard the boat start, and I went, oh my god, this is gonna hurt. So I dig it. Took a big gulp of air, and then, boom, the tow rope strangled my leg to the bone above the knee, and I was being dragged underwater. And I thought, well, now I know how I'm going to die. And so I was drowning. In fact, I drowned. And you know, people say, well, it's just a product of your brain. It was just You saw what you wanted to see. There was nothing that happened next that was in my brain, that was in my biology. So I popped out of my body and I went, Oh, okay. I knew the difference between time and eternity. Immediately. I was like, oh, there's, there's no time here. And it's like, you have a body, but you don't. But I all my cells in my body, which I didn't have, but it's like I did. We're all laughing like happy faces, like, Oh, here he comes here. He comes down. I go. Was coming, and I realized there was something moving. And as I looked up on the edge of the I call it the edge, but you know how the rotation of the Earth, the Earth is round, so something was coming up. And I went, oh my god, I'm about to meet the creator of the universe. And then all kinds of things started happening. Knowledge over there, it's telepathic. It's telepathy, but not like telepathy here. It's like, whoever's talking to you puts this concept in your brain, and you automatically, without words, you know everything that they were talking about. So language doesn't matter. Over there, people say, Well, you speak English. How did you hear something in French or whatever? It's like, No, it's It's this instant knowledge. So I knew all these things that were happening as I was flying up toward the creator of the universe. And when I got there, nowhere in our Catholic teaching Did someone say God is going to present to you as the Aurora Borealis was not a human being, but actually that's the closest thing I can say. It was this big electric field that was alive and vibrant and electric, and I was okay with that. I was like, Oh my God, you're the creator of the universe. And then we started having conversations at the same time, time is there's no time. And so whenever, whatever you think is going to happen, wherever you want to be, is immediate. It's just the other side was not anything I thought of and I knew the love of God. It was like love bombs being shot through my body. Every cell in my body was full of love. That's incomprehensible. That's not you can't know this kind of love while you're on Earth. And so I was getting closer, said, you're the creator of the universe. You know, the Aurora doesn't have a gender. You don't need a gender over there. It's just this big, you know, all encompassing. I knew that this was the creator of everything, and I kind of leaned into him, and I felt like it's a big hug, and I just, I wanted to be there forever. The love that was, it was just amazing. And so I felt like I was the only person in the universe. I felt like the love that God had for me was so individual. That's why I think there's a designer death. He's gonna he did why? He talked to all nde's, and they all have different experiences. It was like he you say, Where's my Donna? There she is. I made her this is what we're gonna do. And I kind of leaned in and got a big hug, and when I got this hug, I then heard, what do you want to do here? And I kind of backed up, and I knew there was a line to my right, that there was the demarcation line, that if I passed that line, I'd be dead, dead. So it's kind of dead, you know, I'm dead. I'm drowned. I knew if I went over there, I wasn't going back. So he goes, Well, Donna, what do you want to do here? So in my psychology degree, we learned active listening. So I start active listening with God. Who does that? I go, Oh God, what I hear you saying if I live or die? It's a concept that you can't believe here. So the closest thing I could say is, remember, it's the Aurora Borealis. So I'm kind of in this space of multiverses, like eternity. It was just like 360 everything and all this knowledge. So this environment, when it started off, it was light, but I didn't go through a tunnel. I didn't see Jesus, so I was like, you know, okay, so I I'll just get God, the Creator. So okay, it was like some things that you would see on the James Webb telescope. It was like three dimensional, five dimensional. It was like everything. It was the most incredible thing. But for people that want to know about dying, so when the rope strength. Hold my leg to the bone, that was a pain I never had felt in my life. So I felt that pain, but when I died, I did. There was no pain, and it only took me a few there was no time. So I say in seconds, you know, I crossed through this veil and I knew I was dead. I brought my consciousness with me. That surprised me. I don't know why, but it was like my whole personality and consciousness went there, but the love so people the dying didn't hurt. There was, there was nothing hurtful about drowning. It was like I was being dragged underwater saying, I wonder where they're going to have the funeral. You know, how's this going to work? And then, boom, you're in this space of pure love and knowledge. Andso people that are worried about their loved ones or themselves, you hear a lot of nd your say, I'm not afraid to die. I'm just afraid of the pain before. Just you take me fast like I don't want to. But dying in my brother in law this past April of this year, we didn't talk about this for 26 years because he felt responsible for killing me, but he was dying of pancreatic cancer, and I got to go back home and talk to him when he hadn't talked about this. I said, Wes, I have to talk to you about what happened. And he was ready to hear he was afraid of dying. And I said, Okay, well, you have homework. He died within a month. So I said, you have homework. I want you to prepare yourself a big banquet when you pass, so that as soon as you cross, you have, you have, I want you to have. What are you going to eat? What's What are your guest lists? Just get your mind off of this. Whatever you think of heaven, hell or purgatory. It's alive. It's loving. So I we actually got to share some moments there. So if I can help people know that dying is wonderful, it's glorious, it's loving. There's nothing but love over there. I know other people have had, like, hellish experiences. That's all I had. It's not what I was expecting. It wasn't anything that was it came back, changed in my cosmology. He had asked me, What do you want to do here? So I said, Well, if you're asking me if I want to live or die, then I give the choice to you. And I learned a very valuable lesson about choice, because that as soon as I did that, I went, oh my god, what have I done? I now don't know what's going to happen, and so that's the unknown that people are afraid of. But I was like, you know, am I going to go? What's going to happen? So as that was happening, all this knowledge about choices and free will were being fed into my brain, and I heard, well, when you go back, you're going to talk to people about the power of choice, and it's dawn on me, Alex, he said, When you go back, because I'm still waiting for the answer. So I'm like, Okay, I became unhinged and was flying back to Earth, and snapped into my body. And I went, what was that? And I was still drowned. I'm dead in the water. And so I didn't know how they were going to get the rope out of my leg. It was strangled to the bone, and I could feel human hands under my armpits, lifting me up, and I thought it was my sister. When it got to the surface, no one was there, and just gallons of water coming out of me, the rope came undone. I had a life jacket on. So another miracle was the rope came undone. A nylon rope strangled my leg to the bone. My femoral artery should have ruptured. It was just, I thought it was amputated, but the rope came undone. Like, how did that happen? So I had my life jacket. I'm in the lake. My brother in law doesn't know what's going on, so he's continuing to go to the shore because there was water coming on the boat. My sister was back where we left her, and so when I got to the surface, I was like, I'm just all this lake water in my lungs, you know, wrecked. Wrecked my lungs and my throat. The rope wrecked my leg. So I looked down, and I went, Oh my God, if I twitch or kick my calf, you know, the below the knee is going to fall off. And I grabbed it, because I want to have it, maybe they could reattach it at the emergency room. It's like somebody was pounding on my back, you know, I was like, Don how they two things, how are they going to get the water out of me, and how they going to get the rope on done? And those two things happened. I snapped back into my body, I can actually feel that observer and me snap together. That also was very strange, that was in shock or something, you know. I mean, think about that. A tow rope strangles your leg to the bone. The pain was there and now it's not. I'm like, What the heck? There's no bleed. My leg wasn't amputated. It was strangled. So I got to the hospital. It started swelling, so they were afraid that my leg it would explode, so they were watching me for a little bit, and once it started, iced it and it started going down, they gave me pain pills and sent me home because, well, you know, you're not gonna die. You're, you know, it's a country little er, it's not amputated. You know, when you get home, see your doctor sitting there going, Are you hitting me? They wrapped it. They wrapped my leg in ice. Gave me antibiotics, biotics for the Giardia that was in the lake. They were more concerned about my lungs, my throat and not my leg. So I had to deal with a year of rehabbing my nerves. And every doctor I saw was like, how did you not die your femoral artery and where the knot was, you know, in the rope where the knot was over my femoral artery, there's no scar there. There's nothing. It was perfectly placed. And if the rope had been like a millimeter down, it would have ripped my leg off. And I got a life review where one of the guys was. Really standing out in my mind. And that came up, and I got to see how he felt when we got to choose what piece of type of bread he wanted. He wanted rye or white. I mean, sometimes that's the only choice they have that day. And I just let him go on and on, yeah, you want this one? No, okay, you want that one. And how that made him feel, and how he went through the rest of his day. And because of what my mission was to come back and tell people about choices this planet is, you can call it a teaching planet, or a hospital, or whatever metaphor you want. We're here to evolve our souls and to become love. So all these things are evolving me, making me aware of every moment of my life. So part of the choice was, every choice that you make has a ramification even if you say it or don't say it. So as a teacher of psychology, I would teach people about the fundamental attribution error. It's fundamental we all make it. You attribute someone's behavior to a personality or situation, and you usually make an error with it. For example, I had a student came come late to class all the time, and I told kids in the college kids, you know, people pay for this. Don't come late. You know, plan your schedule. Pretend like the class starts 10 minutes before it actually does. And this kid was late, late, late, and I said, You got to come see me in my office. I attributed his behavior to his personality. He's lazy. He doesn't like authority. He's this, he's that. And he told me a story of being the oldest of a single mom in three busses he had to take to class. He had to get his younger siblings off to school. I about cried with now this is before my nd about cried with how I did the fundamental attribution error. So knowing that what happens in my life review, what happens every day in my life is I just slow down and take every day, day by day, almost like situation by situation, I'd like that for all my life reviews, since my drowning, I was just saying it's the choices we make, people need to be aware of and not afraid of the choices we make, because it's not a shame or guilt like we grew up with. It's more like be aware of it. Don't make fundamental attribution or give people the benefit of the doubt, find out about their situation first, if I had to come at them with you know what's happening with you and found out about the situation before I said, you know you're lazy or this, you're that. It's very much an awareness for me since then, go easy on yourself. Forgive, forgive, forgive. Watch your belief system and your thinking. Be aware. Just don't go through life. Be aware of yourself. Be aware of others. So go through life with an awareness, not asleep. Be aware of what you're doing.