The End of Life with Death Doula Dr. Martha Jo Atkins

Alex Ferrari 0:00
It's something we're all gonna have to deal with but so many people, most people, don't want to think about it.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 0:05
At the point where I just trust the process and I trust the person, and we open to things we need to open to when we're ready. And you watch them have an experience that you've not seen before, and try to put all that together. And that's what I was doing with her. She got still and she got peaceful. Her face just relaxed. I took that experience and grabbed hold of it and thought there's something here that I want to learn more about. How we get at his body and those little pieces of language, to me, are indicators that they're they're working to get out.

Alex Ferrari 0:43
Now before we jump into this episode, if this conversation resonates with you, please, like, subscribe and share this with whoever you feel that needs to hear it. Your support helps us keep bringing this information out into the world and helps us awaken this planet. Thank you. I like to welcome to the show, Dr. Martha Jo Atkins, how you doing Martha?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:26
Great. Thank you so glad to be here.

Alex Ferrari 1:28
Thank you so much for coming. I'm, you know, I had a few of you on the show before. You are a death doula and a end of life counselor, essentially, right, or specialist, not something that everybody wants to talk about. But I'm fascinated with it, because I have aging parents, obviously, and I think everybody is we're all going, we're all going get there as they, as I, as they always like to say everyone wants to go to heaven, but just not right now, basically. So it's something we're all going to have to deal with. But so many people, most people, don't want to think about it, because we're in this little world, in our little bubble, and we're going down this, this bullet train of a life, and you don't want to think where the tracks gonna end. And it's much more comforting not to think about it, because I have I have work to do. I have things to do. I have things but sometimes you really do kind of have to think about it, yeah, especially when you have parents, or especially when you have ailing parents, ailing friends. And you know, you know, as we get older, you know, I remember when I was younger, I didn't have anyone die in my life until I was in my late 20s. I was very blessed that way. Yeah, you know, I have other family members who parents died early on, things like that. Can I ask who it was? It was my grandfather, yeah, or my grandmother. My grandmother died first, then my grandfather died seven, six months later, seven months later, then my other grandmother died, and then my early grandfather died, like after a year after I was born. So that was it, and I still have both my parents. But they're older, you know, and they're still good, yeah, rock and roll, still holding the good fight, but, but then, then I started having friends die, yeah? That sucks. That's, that's when it really starts to kick in. So as as you get older, you look around and you're like, God, I just was working with that person. Oh God, I just, you know, yeah, oh my god, they were younger than me, and they died, you know? And sometimes it's accident, sometimes it's health, it's just, so you start to think about this, and in the world that I'm in here. I talk about it all the time, between mediumship and the other side, and the scope of the world, the universe, why we're here, karma, reincarnation. So I'm constantly thinking about it, and it actually has made it for me at least much more palatable. Yeah, is that your take as well?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 4:01
Makes sense to me. I get to talk about it a lot. I am most often with people who want to talk about it. Every now and again, I get somebody who comes along with somebody else, and that person is reluctant, and like, I'll have conversations with you, and the other person is listening, and maybe they'll pipe up, and maybe I'll hear something a couple weeks later that something was opened, but I just at the point where I just trust the process and I trust the person, and we open to things we need To open to when we're ready, I think. And it's, well, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 4:25
That's, that's the sledgehammer of life, as I like to call it.

Alex Ferrari 4:42
It does come along that way sometimes.

Alex Ferrari 4:46
So tell us a little bit about your background. Like, how did you get into I'm assuming at five year old, at six years old, you're like, you know what I want to do when I grow up? I. To be a death doula, and your parents would be like, What the hell is a death doula?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 5:03
I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved animals, and I and I would get the, remember the tic tacs?

Alex Ferrari 5:09
Yeah, of course.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 5:09
You'd get the tic tacs, and I'd put little pecans in the tic tacs, and I'd make medicine, and I'd give the animals medicine. I know that's that was my thing. I was not particularly interested in dying. I understood about it. I was interested in hospitals. I was interested in working with children. Had an opportunity to go to Children's National Medical Center when I was in college and do an internship in psychology on a children's floor, and I worked on a orthopedic floor. One of my friends was on a floor where there were other things happening, and I was interested in those other things, but it was a great it was a great experience for me that summer, and that is the first time I met a child who I knew was dying. The kid had HIV. He was a foster kid, and the foster mom had like the gym mats were on the floor in the hospital room, and she was on the floor with him, and they were playing, and he was able to pick up his head and big, giant brown eyes. And I didn't have much interaction with them. I was leaving the hospital one day, and there's a people mover at that hospital at the time, and they were on the people mover, and I was standing still, and I was watching him go by, and that little guy picked his head up and looked at me. He didn't wave, but there was a contact there, and it was the first time I thought I won't ever see him again, but I'm not going to see him again, not because I'm not going to see him again, because he's going to die, and I don't I don't know that I took it any farther than that, but as I sit here four years later, that had an impact on me. I i tootled along. I got to go work at Children's Hospital in San Antonio. I worked in intensive care unit as a child life specialist, we job of child job of a child life specialist is to help kids cope and adjust to hospitalization and illness so.

Alex Ferrari 7:12
You start that you're already that's the gateway. It was a gateway drug, as you will.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 7:15
I went, yeah. I went right in. You know somebody who's been sedated and missed Christmas. So we did Christmas in February. We decorated the whole unit, and Santa Claus came in. And the whole there were, there were two kids. It was, it was great. Another kid who'd been sedated for a long time and trying to come back in and shaving cream and painting with shaving cream. She had one hand. She could use those kinds of things. And then kids who were sick and going to die were sick and had died. I had the opportunity to do him prints and footprints. I had a really amazing mentor named Glee who taught me about being with families and being with myself, and how to honor and how to be with these grieving people. I was young. I was 20 22 23 and went on vacation with my family. We got a phone call in the middle of the middle of the night that my brother Jim had died. He was 37 and I was 24 Yeah, it was pretty it was

Alex Ferrari 8:23
You're not that's not supposed to happen

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 8:24
No it's not supposed to happen. And we were a family that didn't do feelings and and then you have to, yeah, yeah, you, you have to sledgehammer. That's a sledgehammer. So that Sledgehammer at 24 woke you up, woke me up, and it changed the, well, it opened the trajectory. I don't know that it changed it, but it opened it.

Alex Ferrari 8:53
I've heard that from a lot of people in your in your world, yeah, that there's a thing, there's a moment, that something happens, more likely it's a family member or some tragedy, yeah, that kind of makes them rethink. Well, wait a minute, is I always use Uncle Bob? My uncle Bob always makes an appearance on the show. Is Uncle Bob okay? What did Uncle Bob go through? Where is Uncle Bob? Now, before these revelations, and before you started getting into it, how spiritual were you? How, how, what understanding did you have? Did you even think about the afterlife? Did you think about souls or either reincarnation, or what happens when you did you think of any of this?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 9:35
So I had, I had an uncle Charlie. I also had an uncle Bob, but Uncle Charlie was the one who Uncle Charlie was interested in past lives, and Uncle Charlie was interested in reincarnation. Oh, he's a woo guy. He was a big woo guy. And he also probably was bipolar. He would take off and be gone for several months, and then he'd come back. And he's a fascinating guy, but in in conversations with him and. And my aunt, Betty, his wife, I had a little taste of that, and a little bit interested in it. We were also Methodist preacher family, and there are rules and regulations and ways you're supposed to be in West Texas. And you West Texas youth, you act you Yeah, some things you talk about, and some things you don't. And I had this patriarchal system that I lived in, and these are the ways you're supposed to be, and this is what religion is supposed to do. Is it programming? Yeah. And then I had these little nudges of, this is, this is, let's think about this. But I didn't. I didn't have the what, what there was to fall back on when Jim died, was that Jim was a good guy, and Jim went to heaven, and I began to unspool that story and think about what that meant and what it meant for me, my family was trying to figure out what dying was to them and where he was, and it was a and then we were sad. We were grieving. We missed him terribly. So that that opened, that opened many, many things for me. So no, there was not a lot of spirituality. There was religion. There was not some spirituality. Spirituality came after college.

Alex Ferrari 11:32
So is the dogma of whatever the Yeah, that that flavor of Christianity, yeah, you had Yeah. So then at what point where, so when you start going into becoming end of life counselor, yeah, and then you have the tag of death doula, yeah, which is a interesting name to say the least.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 11:51
It is, I don't like it.

Alex Ferrari 11:52
It's, it's a new it does. It's not great branding. No, not great brand. End of Life counselor is a little bit better than death doula. It's like something out of the Middle Ages, like bringing the death doula.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 12:06
It is. It has such a it's heavy gravitas to it, yes.

Alex Ferrari 12:10
Energy, yeah, very heavy energy, yeah, because the word death alone, yeah, is heavy. Then you the doula. You're like, wait a minute, but doula, like, Oh,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 12:18
I like thresholder. I like this idea of somebody standing at the threshold with somebody as they're moving across, and that has a little different resonance for me,

Alex Ferrari 12:30
Right! But we need a brand anyway. End of Life counselor, yes. So when you start going into that world, what was, what was it about it that drew you there? They're like, you know, I think I want to do the rest of my life. I want to go down this space. And then what did you start seeing that started to shake your foundations in your programming.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 12:53
So my mother had deathbed visions. My mother had metastatic breast cancer, and we had conversations about what she might see. At some point I had done, I was working on my doctorate and doing lots and lots of research on deathbed phenomenon and deathbed visions. And so I had this. I had all this in me. And then here she is moving into this experience. And we got to we got to talk about things. She had lots of restlessness. And then there was some stillness. I didn't understand what all that was at the time this you you have your first experience with dying in the way that you get to sit with somebody you know, and you watch them have an experience that you've not seen before, and try to put all that together. And that's what I was doing with her. She got still and she got peaceful. Her face just relaxed and her eyes relaxed. And I was watching her watch something under her eyelids. And I said, Mom, what do you see? And she said, Daddy, Charlie and Aunt Lala and a couple other people. And I said, Where's Jim? Jim's my brother who died, and she said, Oh, he's been here. And I had had a dream that Jim was sitting in a chair reading a book. One of his favorite things to do was to read. I called my brother John, and was telling him about it, and he had had a similar dream. So when mom said that I had this really beautiful image that has, I have a little emotion as I think about it, of him sitting in the room, just kind of hanging out and waiting for her. And I, I took that experience and grabbed hold of it, and thought, there's something here that. I want to learn more about. I read final gifts by a couple of nurses. It was written in 19 or published in 1992 and mom did a number of the things that those nurses were talking about. There's a lot of metaphors and behaviors. And I then got more interested and more interested. Continue to do coursework, and then my dad got sick, and I watched him do the things that I was reading about in these research papers, and they kept telling me he was getting well and he was not getting well, and I would say to the doctor, but he's doing this and this. And this. And she said, No, it's no, no big deal. Don't worry about it. And I said, Can we, could we change the antibiotics? I just, I'm not sure it's working. They ended up changing antibiotics three times, I think. And he, he did reaching. He saw people off the side of the bed. He saw my mother. He saw people around the corners of the room. He was way far away. He would, he would get annoyed when people came in the room because he was off somewhere. He He the woman came in to bring his trade eat, and she said, I watched him put his stole on that he saw in his the rest of us couldn't see put his stole on, and he probably opened his Bible, and he was about to do something. And she said, Pastor, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bother you. And he said, I'm about to teach Sunday school. So he was off somewhere. And what I imagined about that he's back in time somewhere, so I started watching and listening to him and pattern tracking. I'm an introvert. I have that thing where I really pay attention and see how things fit together. And the other part of this was I was probably scared out of my mind, and if I could track patterns, maybe I could make sense of this thing that felt really out of control. So I watched and watched and watched, and I would put that against the research that was in my brain, and started seeing these patterns emerge, and got super, super fascinated by it. He didn't die. He came back one morning. My brother said, Dad, where have you been? And he said, traveling. He couldn't remember where he'd been, but he did say, traveling interesting. He was off with a bunch of people singing. At one point, he let us know that there was some gathering, and he was with these people, and he was singing, and all of those other people look at that and say, Oh, he's confused. And these hallucinations, and and, and, and, and none of that made sense to me, that there's got to be it seems that there's something else happening. And so I have pursued that that's been my lifelong spirit, spirituality, move from religion to spirituality into this bubble that's in this larger field of dying. And there's a bunch of us that are, that are in this particular field, field of energy, that are surfing it and learning and making sense of it. And you have, you have these people on your show, and it's really, it's fun for me to listen to where other people are plugging in and what they're learning and what they're taking back and how it's helping, yeah. And super fun

Alex Ferrari 18:43
It is not only in this, this field, which is the end of life, but then I do that with a lot of different fields, and yes, your visuality as well. So he's like, Okay, so here all the Buddhists, and here all of this, and here is the psychics. And here this, here's a Atlantis and all this kind of consciousness. Yeah, exactly. Well, let me ask you, what is your take on consciousness? Now, because the story you just said, I mean, I lean towards, I'm a storyteller, so I lean towards the stories and the mystical and the the the bigger ideas, because they make sense to me. So when he's like, traveling, I'm like, Yeah, I did. Doesn't even I didn't. I don't hesitate. Makes complete sense. Obviously, he was traveling, but Mike, but obviously, because of my understanding of not only metaphysics, but just my experiences with gurus from India and mystics and all these things that they talk about, these ideas, yeah, so from my understanding the story that he's saying, like I was gone, but fascinating, they came back. So he didn't have a near death experience. He had a something else happening to him, because he didn't die. He was just on the brink.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 19:52
He was on the brink. So I bet money on it.

Alex Ferrari 19:55
So he was traveling, and he was going to either. Now we're going to go a little Yeah, go. We're going to go a little deeper. It could be alternate realities. It could be past lives, it could be parallel lives. It could be the future, the past, the, you know, all of this stuff, and he's exploring all of it. But when the veil gets so thin, where he was on the brink the silver cord, as they call it, is being tugged, also tightly. Yes. He's able to then go and do these things where it was almost like a dream like state, yes, but a conscious dream like state, so it's, it was interesting.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 20:39
It's it was, it seemed to be conscious to him. We're, I mean, we're, we're, we're watching, sitting. I'm watching, I'm watching him reach for things. I'm watching him so he was open. So wasn't just like he was here, sometimes he was away, and sometimes he was here and and he's great, he's, he's doing this, and he's, he's, he's licking his hands. So it's the holodeck. I said, what are you what are you doing? And he said, he said, I mean, it's a sonic hamburger. So if you're in Texas, we have Sonic sure Friday, Friday evenings, we go have Sonic hamburger. So he had opened the wrapper, and as he was want to do, if there was something on the wrapper he needed, he would lick it off the wrapper. So in his reality, in that moment, he'd gone back to the time where he's leaking off this wrapper. So I'm I'm watching him, and as he my experience, my meaning making was as he his body was moving further and further into sickness, further and further into shutting down, these other things started happening. So he's getting sicker, and he's putting a stole on and in having a Sunday school class, he's getting sicker. And he says, Does anybody else see the Blue Angel? And this is what I got to talk to William about, because he was able. William Peters on the show, he talks about shared death experience, yeah. So there's a whole thing about a very particular kind of guide that comes in. And he got very the researchers got very excited about this blue angel. And I guess this is something that comes up every now and again. So, you know, dad is sicker and he sees the Blue Angel, and then he is sicker, and my mother's there, and she's cooking something in the corner. She's here on the ground. The angel was up a little bit, and I just paid attention to all those things. So he was he was going, and I was sitting by his bed one night, and I watched him reach up like this. This kind of reaching is not far from going. When somebody has the the energy to reach like that, it's a big deal. I recognize now because they're dying, because they're dying. He had the energy to do that, but it's this straight up, something here. This is different. This is a little before you get to here. But so here is the portal here, if you will. Yeah, we're at a boat. We had a second room in a boat. There were several guests that came in, one after another. I keep looking up like it's there. There's a light in the ceiling. And the we didn't tell the guests about the person who was there before who saw a light in the ceiling, they would talk about it. I was like, wow. Okay, so the portal is in room two right now, and it's staying there. It's i for whatever reason. So I make up that dad was seeing something and I was videoing, doing a phone. How old am I videotaping? Yeah, I'd filming, filming. There we go. And I I heard my inhalation when he reached up like that, because I thought, oh crap, we're we're far, we're far here. He's gonna die. And I called my brother and wondering about, do we get hospice in? And it was this whole thing. And then he got better, and then we had this like, gosh, we shouldn't have told people. And a little embarrassment about that, which I was also able to share. And people came back to me and said, Oh my gosh, we were there too. Our person was right at the edge. Our mother was right at the edge. And then they came back. So I've gotten really fascinated about that too. And there's this conversation on hospice around I call them surges. So these surges of energy that people have, and they're up, and then they go down, and they're five days, seven days, nine days, and they're not talking, and then they're come back for a little while. And I was with a woman named Glee who did that over a couple of months, and I started tracking her surges on post it notes. I've got a had a whole wall of she's down today. She's slept this much today. She's been awake for four days. Eyes, and it was like she had all this energy, and she she'd go down and rest and rest and rest, and then she'd come back, and

Alex Ferrari 25:07
When she was resting, what was happening? Yeah, that's the question, because it seems like she's, from my understanding, from what I my experience, is that when they're going down that way, that they are off somewhere. Yes, you know. And I've heard of this through I've heard the same thing happened to people with dementia. Yes, dementia and Alzheimer's, and yes, that they're they're here, but they're not here. Yes, they're alive, but they're not they're not actively here, but they are somewhere. And there is reality, yeah, and there is definitely activity. I'm not sure if there's been any scientific research done on that. Like, they put something that, yeah, we'd love to see. Like, if they're gone, like, what's going on? Are they dreaming? Are they? Yeah, it's something going on, of what's happening during that time. And then they, then they come back. But it's interesting, like, on a soul level. Why? I mean, I guess every case is different. So like, why are you going through this? It's up to it's really up to the soul, and why they tend to do that. You've no idea why I'm being taken to the brink and then coming back. Yeah. So great example, when your dad came back, yeah. Did you have conversations like, Dad, what did you see?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 26:19
I did, and he didn't remember he, he, he doesn't even remember the saying to my brother that that he had been traveling. And I this needs to be this, this signpost of dying that I wrote was from watching him. And it's, it's one thing to do. You do your you do your work with dying people. You're in and out of a house. Maybe you go once a week. Maybe you go twice a week at abode, where our hospice house in San Antonio, you see people every day. You you are in a different kind of intimate space with them. So there's a different kind of learning in inpatient unit. Same kind of thing you're still in and out of the room. And you may recognize some things and not recognize some things, but when it's your family member and you you know how they are, and you're interested, some people are not so interested. There's a different level of awareness that can happen there. And for, for people who do hospice work, it's, it's a whole different animal when you're when you're with your own people. Oh, of course. Oh, different. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 27:40
There's emotions, there's anger, there's peace, there's love, it's all of it.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 27:44
There is all of that. And there's all this knowledge you have, or you think you have, about what dying looks like, until and then you start to see the layers of it, and you hold it differently, and you feel things differently because they talk about the field. Again, you're in a field of energy with your family, which is different than anybody anything else. And you, if you have that kind of connection, you feel things, and you may know or may not know what's cooking. But because of those experiences with my dad, which went they happened a lot. He he was in and out of hospitals. That particular instance was, it was it was powerful for both. It was powerful for all of us.

Alex Ferrari 28:33
And do you mind me asking, Is he still with us?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 28:36
He's gone. He died in 16

Alex Ferrari 28:38
Okay, and did it, was it? Was it end of life, or was it quick?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 28:42
It was end of life I went to

Alex Ferrari 28:44
So how did that differ?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 28:45
So fascinating. I have a friend who does energy work, and she was working with a kid who had Down syndrome and who was dying, and she said, called me, and she said, his web of life is just tatters. And I said, Tell me what that means. And she said, think of a spider web. She said, I can, I can see a web inside of him. I can see yours. She said, his is just, it's falling apart. Yes, it's because exactly I loved that imagery. So I went to visit dad, and he was awake for about five minutes, and then he went to sleep. And it's the first time that had ever happened, and I knew that we were close not not long, and he I got a call from his I got, I got a call from his assisted living. He'd been at the hospital. He was back home, but they didn't think he was okay. And I went to visit him, and his kidneys were failing. And I said, you know, you can go to the hospital. We can take you back to the ER. If you stay here, you're gonna die. And I said, it like that. And he said, I don't want to die. And I said, Well, we got to go to the ER then. So went to the ER. Said. Very kind man came in and said, if, if you were my grandpa, which made me laugh. Dad was 40 years older than me, I would tell you to go home and be with your family. So he wanted to be at the hospital. That night, he got some fluids. I went home to take care of the dog. Woman from somewhere in the hospital came in and visited with him, and the gave him some kind of peace. He told me he was not afraid to die. But something happened in that exchange. I never found out who that woman was. Was there a woman? They came in to draw blood, and they couldn't get blood from him. And I said, Dad, you know, you don't have to get blood draw. And he said, he said, I don't. And I said, No, you don't ever have to get a blood draw again. And he he said to her, I don't want a blood draw. Man, they were in that room, Mr. Atkins, if you don't have blood draw, you know, treatment, you're gonna die. And he said, It's okay. So we went home, my brother and I tag teamed. He dad was at an assisted living in Taylor down the road, and that experience was different in that I could feel, if you think about the web of life, the energy was so different, the the breath was different. The movement was different, and, but you could feel it. I could feel it. Yeah, I could feel it. And, and, yeah, that it was hot. It was summer in Texas, and, and you, he let me videotape him, and I taped a lot of it for research sake. For Yeah, I said, you know, you want to, you want to teach. So he agreed, but he would say things, and those things ended up being things that were in the book that I read when mom died from the hospice nurses, and things that folks I've worked with have said, and there's this, there's this common trait, common trait that I think's in the zeitgeist, not in the zeitgeist, in the in consciousness. There's this language,

Alex Ferrari 32:18
Well, yeah, it's like the near death experience. Yes, yes. So near death experiencers have key things. It doesn't happen. Everything doesn't happen for everybody, but there are a group of, you know, six to eight things that are common. Some are, you know, less common, more common. So same thing happens when someone's dying. They go through these stages, from your point of view, okay, so you've gone through this process. What do you think of consciousness at this point? What is consciousness from your point of view, from all the experience of you seeing people pass, because it has to open up, has to open up, a different idea now of all of this and rein in the concept of reincarnation and souls. Does that play any part in this?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 33:02
Yeah, I'm have been on a search. I spent time in Peru. I listened to the shaman talk about the true God, and my ears perked up, and I thought, what's what's the true God, the real God, and not the God of religion, and not the God of your parents. And and on that went. And I thought, okay, maybe I can get behind that. And and then this idea that we are all pieces of consciousness. We are We are part of the universe. We are part of this evolving consciousness. You're doing your work in the world that's adding to what comes next. I'm doing my work that's coming that that is adding to what's next. And when you say what's next, you're talking about the evolution, the evolution of consciousness, the evolution of the world, of humanity. We're, we're, we are our little fractal part of that, and what we do matters, and that feels, that feels right.

Alex Ferrari 34:17
So from your some I mean, we've spoken about your father's passing and his experiences were, which are interesting. It's on a experimental standpoint, to see that as a researcher, to see that firsthand, those two elements, one when he actually passed, but the other one that we thought he was going to pass, being able to compare those two is pretty fascinating. Yeah, for you. So, yeah, it was, that was the kind of it seems like it was a foundational for sure, part of your journey for sure. So now, since then, you've probably been witness to so many other passings as a death doula.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 34:55
I started calling myself a death doula because other people were calling themselves a death doula.

Alex Ferrari 34:59
So might as well. It's branding. I get it so. So as end of life counselor, you've seen so many people, there you go, as you've seen so many people pass and go through that transition. What are, what's some of the phenomenon that you're seeing deathbed phenomenon that are seeing that stuff that I'm assuming at this point you're not surprised at anything, because you've seen it so much. But there are moments then you're like, Well, yeah, this happens. And you know, Uncle Bob shows up and you know, and this and that, and Uncle Charlie's there too, and all of this stuff, right? But at certain times you're just like, oh, yeah, this is new. So what are some of the common and what are the some of the outliers?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 35:42
Well, let me so Aunt Betty,

Alex Ferrari 35:46
Oh, I love this. Uncle Charlie, Uncle Bob.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 35:48
They're all together and they're all They're all over here. Yeah, I got a call from my cousin, Aunt Betty. She said, I've got something here I want to read to you. And she started to read me this letter that said, I'm got the car loaded and ready to go. I can't find the car keys. I'll call Charlie. So at this point, I sat down uncle Charlie's been dead for 20 years when the car is packed and ready to go and you can't find the car keys, the person is in a I estimated, in a dying experience of some kind, and there's a little hitch in there, but when they find the car keys, they're going to go, I'm in, I'm in Conroe. So she's back in time. She'd been in Conroe 40 years before. They worked for Exxon. It looks different than before. This woman is with her. I don't, I don't know her, but she's nice. She's smoking a cigarette, which made me laugh, because I think of, I think of this person as a guide, and that Aunt Betty had a guide who smoked, cracked me up, because she didn't smoke or drink or any of those things very

Alex Ferrari 36:56
But that made sense to her

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 36:58
In that so she's, she's written all this out. Kathy says, I called mom this morning. Couldn't get her to answer the phone. We found her in the chair. She'd had a heart attack, she'd had a stroke. She's alive. We've got her at the hospital. Aunt Betty died Friday. She said, I think this letter is for you. I think this is, you know, this is your work. I think she wrote this for you, and she Aunt Betty, had tried to date it. She had gotten the month, but she she didn't get the year, but it's in her hand, and it's a deathbed phenomena, experience that she wrote for me, and I get to use that for teaching, and it that documented. Wow, that was powerful for me. Super powerful for me. Really rare, yeah? So I I have that, and when I go and talk to people, I'll share that sometimes, and that opens people's memory to things that somebody said somewhere, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't, I didn't know. That's what it was. I didn't know. I thought they were confused. But maybe they weren't confused. They were talking about this. They were talking about a jet on the runway that didn't have any doors, or they were talking about the train. That's the train's been by next time the train comes, I'm going to get on it. That's one that I hear a lot. Interesting. Yeah, so, and is it? Is it consciousness? Is it our internal self trying to make sense of dying and our body is doing whatever it's doing? I just think it's fascinating, and the more stories I hear, the more interested I get.

Alex Ferrari 38:40
Well, what's interesting from this? It's the same concept of the scientific argument for near death experiences, that it's just your brain doing something or chemicals going off. And I'm like, well, then they all should be the exact same thing. They're not. Yeah, they're not. They're not. It's all very custom. But what I find fascinating about what you're saying is that it seems like in a end of life thing, not an accident, but in an in a life situation, when there's time for the soul to transition, it seems like the universe is, or I'll use the term universe, God, whatever you want to call it. The other side is constructing a runway in a way for them to be comfortable, to take the ride, because this is a jarring coming out of this and going into their place again, from a lot of Near Death Experience conversations, yes, it's you know, in near death experiences, after interviewing 150 of them, at this point, the understanding is you get a customized experience. Yes, what is pleasurable for you, what is going to calm you? Who's going to be there? You know, if you're if you're Christian, Jesus generally, is the hardest working man in show business, so he does show up. But there is a rare occasion that Krishna will show up for someone who never was a. Do, yeah, it happens, yeah. But generally speaking, whoever's there, it's either deity. It's either sometimes it's a a that substitute teacher in second grade that you had a connection with, yes, which is like, wow, that's random, yeah. But those are the people that kind of are placed there, characters that are placed there, and then the environments are very customized. So that's in the near death experience,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 40:23
Yes, and I find the same thing in deathbed phenomenon. I hadn't heard that one. Yeah, I that's, that's one of the things I wrote about in my dissertation, was it is, it is, I didn't use the word customized, but it's that, it's, it's specific to the person and what they need. One of the examples of that was a gentleman who wasn't letting go, and his family was getting kind of like, you know, what's the issue here? And he didn't want to see his father. His father had beaten him. He knew people came to help. Yeah, it was trauma. And after he said that, after the family was made aware, his wife came in one day, and the man was talking to somebody beside him, and it was a little boy. And that little boy ended up staying with this guy for the next couple weeks. And that was his, I'll call it his transition partner.

Alex Ferrari 41:16
But that was that was not in reality.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 41:18
It was in his reality. But that and that transition partner was who helped ease the way. I didn't hear any other story about any other kid that showed up in that particular in that that kind of way to help somebody, other people. You well, it people will see people they don't know, and and then begin to see and hear people they do know. And it may be people from long, long time ago. Butch was a South African soccer player, and his soccer team came in one day, you know, he was in his 20s when all that happened, and he was, I don't know, 85 or 88 and he was mad, and his family didn't know what was cooking. And he said, the team is here, but they left, and they left ladders in the room. So he's seeing things in the ceiling. Left ladders in the room, but the ladders are too short, and I can't get up them to get away, to leave. So it's that I call it almost ready. But like, there, there. There are some past I didn't jump on. There are some hindrances are not they're just not quite ready to go yet. And I think about that in terms of our ideas of somebody should be ready to go, and why can't they let go. We don't know. We don't know what needs to get sorted. And I watched this guy at abode, I swear probably 15 people came in and said, It's okay for you to go, you know, you got to give permission. And I thought if 15 people came in and told me that it was okay for me to go and just to leave, I would be so sad. So I switched that because of that experience, I started changing my language to, we're here with you until you're ready to go. We're right here with you whenever you're ready. But we're right here with you instead of it's okay for you to go. Get out of here. Get out of here. So I don't I beautiful that that inside, there's something that's just not quite ready yet. And I love that metaphor. Sometimes the the they took the ladders all the way away, but his, his were too short. Or there's a rope, but the rope is too short.

Alex Ferrari 43:33
There's a lot of that. Yeah. I'll tell you a story, if you don't mind. Helmet, yes. So I was speaking to a medium as one does, yes, one does as and she told me a story of someone who was dying and he wouldn't go, yeah. And in the family, like, knew her, like, can you come in and just let us know he's been here for a few weeks now, he just won't go, yeah. I mean, it's tearing us apart watching this. We don't want him to suffer anymore. What's the problem? Yeah. So she came in and she had a conversation with him, yeah, because she's able to talk to him on the other side. And she goes, she tells the wife or the daughter, she's like, Listen, can you go to his office in his house? She's like, okay, there's the daughter and the wife still alive. She goes to the house. She's like, Oh, go to his desk in the it's funny when I tell this story, because it's so ridiculous, but it meant a lot to him, and he wouldn't go before this. Yes, you would think, but go to that the right top drawer. Open it. There are his taxes. They're filed. They have a stamp on it. You just need to put it in the mailbox. And he can't go until that is done. And she's like, Are you kidding me? My father is hanging around for 10. Taxes, literally, death, and taxes seriously. And she's like, do it. And she's like, look, it's no harm. Just put it in the mail. She put it in the mail. He died within hours. Yeah, he left, yeah. It was that simple. And she's like, I can't believe he was holding on to make sure the taxes got but it's fascinating, what a soul, a personality and a soul, will do in this reality. Yeah, so we are so ingrained in our mask, in our character, yes, and of these worldly things, which mean truly nothing in the grand scheme of the universe, but in our experience and our souls journey is extremely important. But that tax, that tax example, it's a great one. It makes no sense whatsoever to us outside, yeah, but in his world, yeah, that meant something. So I'm thinking about like my parents and things that mean something to them that is insane, yeah, to me, but in their world and in their experience, that's super important. Like, if my dad's not watching baseball on Saturday and Sunday, yeah? I mean, it's the end of the world. Yeah? To me, it's like, it's a game, yeah, you know. But for him, there's a meaning to it, yes. Just like, when I'm going, I'll probably be some sort of movie stuff going on, yeah, I'll be like, you know, the I'm in the theater, honey, yeah, and Steven Spielberg's here, and that, that would be my experience. Probably, I'm just throwing that out there, but like, something that is meaningful. And then also Yogananda is here as well. So, like, what is happening? So, like, those would be, you know, George Lucas is here. Is this star? Am I in Star Wars? Right? That would be something that would be really meaningful, impactful to me, yeah, as my soul journey. But to the outside advice, like, Dad, are you watching a movie right now? Yeah, kind of thing. So it's, it's, it's really fascinating.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 47:00
If your family knows, your family knows you sure, and knows what you love and don't love and what drove you crazy, and all that stuff as you, as you begin to as your web begins to dissolve, and the metaphors begin to happen, and the language changes and the behaviors changes. They can see things that will make sense in terms of your life that other people don't. So hospice folks are are fabulous and wonderful, and they don't know you the way your family does. So there's some things that you're doing. They you know, he's patient in Bedford's doing some things. It's no big thing. But if you, if you as a family member, can see that and hold that a little bit differently, it makes the dying experience different. So I I talk about going back in time. So if you as a family member are watching and you hear something like I you might say, I need to I need the suitcases. That is a classic piece of language that that people say they'll come up out of a sleep. They've been sleeping for nine hours or 10 hours, and they'll say, I need my get my bags. I need my luggage. I need the map. I need my dad wanted his knife, his pocket knife, exactly these little Yes, yeah. And you either blow that off or you go, yeah. All right, let me, let me go find your pocket knife and find your pocket knife and put it there. We had a adult sons who went home and got the suitcases and brought the suitcases so when the dad woke up, even just for a flash, he could see the suitcases were by the end of the bed. A beautiful picture of those suitcases and the dad's feet at the end of the bed, and it's black and white. I love that picture, and I love that they they did that for him. It wasn't just, it wasn't just a thing. And I think that's the that's the part of the the dying experience that I want more people to understand, so that it can be meaningful in a different way and maybe a deeper way, and maybe make it more special.

Alex Ferrari 49:17
Because a lot of times, the relatives and family members are only thinking about themselves and how they're grieving the situation, which I get Sure, but for them to step out of themselves just for a moment and make sure that the person who is a dying what do they need? Yeah, I know you're you'll have time to grieve and but they're so complex. There's so many different emotions. There's so much like, I hate him, I love him. I did he trauma. Then no trauma, you know, like he was great, he was horrible. Like this whole it's just this. That's what human humanity is. This, this beautiful soup of stuff,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 49:50
Beautiful soup of stuff. That is exactly right,

Alex Ferrari 49:56
So, but, but people who are watching a loved one pass. Because if they can be empathetic for that moment and help like that, that's a beautiful story about the luggage, like the go get or go get the pocket knife, yeah, and put it in their hand. Yeah? These kind of little things to get over the pain that you're going through. If you can put it aside for a minute and make sure that they need, what they need is there for them, yeah? And it's not just being in a hospice unit. Sometimes it's about going through the theatrics of, let's go get his bags. Yeah, let's go get the pocket knife. Yeah, here's the tilt book. We're mailing it. We're mailing it. And by the way, wasn't in the room. He just knew on a cosmic, or, you know, quantum field level that that was in, she didn't walk in and go, Dad, I already know, the second she did it, he knew, I think was 30 minutes later, the call came in from that doctor. Yeah, he's gone.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 50:52
That's the part that I love, those those pieces of wisps of energy that passed between us, like somebody you thinking about, and then the phone rings, and it's them that that makes sense to me, in terms of dying too. There are things that happen that get sent across airwaves, and people know and the person comes to say goodbye in California before they they leave, they feel them beside the bed, all that, all that stuff, those communications.

Alex Ferrari 51:21
A classic one is like, you know, Uncle Bob came to visit me, Yes, Jenny or aunt and Betty showed up. Yes, that's a week before they pass. Yeah, and they were talking to me like, it's okay. I'll be here for you when you're ready. And all that kind of stuff. I'm gonna tell you another story that happened to me. This is my this is one of my deathbed situations that happened to me when I wasn't near her when she passed. But my aunt, we were, I mean, I wouldn't say we were close, that we talked all the time, but I loved her tremendously. She had a lot of love for me, and anytime I saw her, it was, you know, but she did help, you know, when I was that, when I was a young boy, we spent a lot of time together, yeah, went over and played with my cousins, all that kind of stuff. So I had a I had a connection with her more so than a lot of my other relatives that I that grew up with. So there was a lot of love there. And I loved her, her black rice, I said she used to make hungry. It's called hungry in in Cuban, Spanish. So it was a dark rice with beans and stuff that she used to always make for me. So we had a deep connection. So when she passed, I heard about it. I was in LA at the time, and she was in Florida, and she passed, and then three days later, I was doing a project, a filmmaking project, where I was I needed, like, some VHS, foot like, textures and stuff like that. Was creating something for a project that was doing. So I was like, filming VHS, like, you know, tracking, you know, the old all that kind of stuff, to apply it to current footage, to make it look more VHS, yeah, that kind of stuff. So I was creating all of that. And I was like, going through my archives of stuff, and then all of a sudden I press play, and there's this scene that I shot for 30 seconds a minute. I was testing out a I never forgot it. I was my first job. I had a steady cam Jr, which is a gimbal, essentially what gimbal used to be, yeah. And I had a high eight camera, yeah. And I was testing it out at Thanksgiving, and they were all there. I'm getting chills thinking about it. And she was there, my grandmother was there, my other aunts were there, and it was so I had forgotten it was lost to time, and just three days later, that video showed up, and I was like, son of a Yeah, and I sent it to my parents. I sent it to my family, and everyone was crying. And it was like, Oh, my God. I'm like, I completely, I mean, it was literally a minute a footage. It was a test, some test footage, yeah, and they were all there. And it was like, my dad was there when he was like, I think probably my age now. So it was, but she was there smiling and everything. And I think it was just a way, the way, what I like to believe happened is that she, she was trying to tell me I'm okay, and send me a little kind of love, love letter to not only me, because she knew I would send it to everybody else, yes, and I was the only one that could do it, yeah, yeah, or would do it, yeah, and I did it. And this is years before next level soul, this is years before I'm having these insane conversations, all of this stuff. It was so beautiful, but I always was like, oh, it's love, yeah. But it was just so specific, so random, the timing, it was just come on,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 54:45
Except not

Alex Ferrari 54:46
Exactly like come on. This is, you know, so one other so as far as death phenomena go, there's the grabbing up, there's the trains, there's the ropes, there's the thing, all that kind of stuff. So is there Julie Ryan, who's a friend of ours. She's, she deals with a lot of this.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 55:09
There's Julie, yeah, no, she's right.

Alex Ferrari 55:12
She's, she's a psychic medium and a healer, yes, but she does. She wrote a whole book about the stages of death, yes. So I'm looking forward to having you guys having a conversation that should be fun, but she talks about every day there's like, a 12 day there's like, there's different phases of things, like on if this happens, then like, you're a few days away. If this happens, you're a few days away. If this app and it's getting closer and closer. So the relatives, the animals, the deities, the the experiences you're talking about. Yeah, there is a there's a systematic thing. What is your experience with that?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 55:47
There is, I call it a trajectory. There's a trajectory of experiences that happen. Everybody's different, right? And you can look at somebody and think, their pulse is what it is their breathing is what it is they're gray. You are certain they're going to die in the next three hours, and they come back and they're there for another two weeks. I listen to seasoned hospice people who will not say it's going to be, you know, families want to know it's going to know what's going to be in the next couple hours, next couple days. We're going to, I'm going to, it could be here. It could be here. This is what I'm seeing. But I I have, I was hesitant for a while, several years, to talk about the trajectory of experiences as I saw them, because I didn't want people to take them literally, because sometimes you just can't. You can recognize them as signposts, which is what I you talk about, mile markers in life. And that's what these are. And it doesn't mean this kind of reaching. I hear somebody said they're going to go in 24 hours. You can't. No, I don't, I don't think it works that way. No, if they're, if they have the energy to reach like that, they might be close. Maybe. Yeah, I was close. I wouldn't I if they're, if they're reaching like that, and they're on hospice, and there are people to call that need to come or want to be with a person. I would call them

Alex Ferrari 57:25
It could be a day or could be a week.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 57:28
There's different kinds of breathing, you know, the physical things that happened. Oh, that's that's different when, when my dad said he kind of came out of a haze, and he said, Lift me up. Lift Me Up, up, up. And my brother and I dutifully went to the bed and scooted him up in the bed, and he said, Well, that's one way. And when he said that, I realized he wasn't on our plane. He he's trying to figure out how to get out of here. Lift Me Up, up, up. How do I go? Take the take the chains off. He kind of mumbled. I said, What? He said, Take the chains off. And I said, Okay, so I reached down and I touched his hand and rubbed him a little bit. And I said, they're off now. He said, Okay, you could see his whole body just this relaxing happened. So how do we how do we get out of this suit? How we get out of this body? And those little pieces of language, to me, are indicators that they're they're working to get out and my opportunity as another human who is coming along, somebody who's dying, is to sit in that space and be peaceful and let that peaceful energy be in the room. Frank osteestesky is a Zen Haas. He started Zen hospice in San Francisco, and he talks about having best, best case scenario. You have somebody that works with the body, takes care of the body, and then somebody that takes care of the Spirit. You have those two people in the room, or a bunch of people in the room that do those kinds of things. That's a beautiful way to accompany somebody as they're leaving. So I, when I worked at abode, I I often would sit there's a couch that was up against a wall, and then the bed was there. And I got to a point where I would recognize when I needed to be on the couch, or when I needed to be beside the person. And I don't know that, I could always tell you what that was when you when you get to a place where you know something Well, you take it in with your whole senses, and that's what I do when I walk into a room with somebody's dying now, and I can't I. I don't separate it anymore. It's just there's a knowing, and it's the smell, it's the feel, it's the movement in the room with the other people there. It's the way the bed looks. All of those things are pieces of information that guide me about what's the best way I can be helpful.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:20
You know what's really interesting? You're a doctor, and you've been in the

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:00:27
Counseling doctor,

Alex Ferrari 1:00:27
Counseling doctor, but a doctor nevertheless, but you've been around many doctors, and hospice and end of life is a very interesting aspect of the medical field, yeah, because, you know doctors in general, when I've spoken to doctors who are not in this field, they look at it as almost an oddity. Many times, some love it and really want they but or they're confused by it. Yeah, they're just like, I don't know what's happening there. But then someone like yourself, obviously an educated woman, you know, someone who's gone through stuff and you're speaking articulately about very woo, woo stuff. Like, he's like, I feel the energy. I feel this. I feel this the web. It's hard for them to wrap their heads around it, because they are so yeah, not only programmed, but trained in the physical as they kind of need to be for the work that they do. Yeah? Like, I always say, if I'm shot, don't rub a leaf on me. Don't do that. Take me to an urgent take me to the emergency room and a trauma center, please. Yeah, don't like, Okay, it's time to get some sage out. No, please, for God's sakes. But anything long term, I always like to go more natural, homeopathic, if I can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's places for both in the medical field and the healing in the healing arts and so on. I think so, exactly, but, but looking at hospice in general, and speaking to doctors, they just looked at it as an oddity, almost like, I can't. It's over there. Yeah, it sounds hospice, yeah, they can't think, because it's kind of like they can't wrap their head around it's really interesting. So I imagine that you've had to encounter that in your work over the years, of other people in the field, in the medical field, who are just not dismissive of it. I can't. I don't. I mean, I find that very rude, if it beats someone being dismissive of it because something is happening, but nobody really knows what it is.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:02:29
Yeah, I think there, there are people on the planet who have a very materialistic view of the world, and

Alex Ferrari 1:02:41
Very three dimensional, as we like

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:02:43
3 dimensional and and then something happens, if you're lucky, and there's a little bit of an opening, and you start to make meaning of things that maybe didn't mean something to earlier. An example I can think of is when I talk about deathbed language, some people get it. Some people are like, Yeah, okay, whatever. If you went to an emergency room emergency department and said, I feel like I've got an elephant on my chest, or I feel like I've got a no, that means something to the people behind the desk, and they're going to take you back and check your heart see if you're having a heart attack. Deathbed language is the same for me. When I hear somebody say, lift me up, up, up. Or how do I get out of here? I want to go home. That is, that makes sense to me. Or somebody standing in the corner, or there's a blue angel, there's a blue Angelite, great, yeah. All of that stuff in the realm of that that all makes sense to me, and it's part of my, I was gonna say constitution. I think it is part of my constitution at this point. This is the it's just part of how I see the world and how I experience dying. And this, this field that people are in, and, yeah, some people don't. They're not in there. I had a doctor say about this guy, he's just, he's not in there. And he did a sternal rub, and he was looking in the guy's eyes. And I asked him not to do that again. I said, you know, he's here for a conscious, dying experience. He didn't want all of that. Please, don't do that again. We got mad, and eventually was able to come around, and that man who was dying in the bed, who was so far away, and you know, this is all for he came back and opened his eyes. And it was 3045, seconds. But those two had a moment. I was having a moment. I don't know what it took for that guy to come back. I mean, I imagine it took a lot, a lot of energy to come back, to be able to open his eyes. He couldn't speak, but he looked at but he looked at him, and there was, there was. Something. There it was. I have goose bumps. It's hard. It was incredible.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:04
Did it change him?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:05:09
Yeah, I think imagine it did. In that moment, he was like, you're here.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:14
You know, what's fascinating too, is that, you know, you're talking about people who are very in the material. And I get that in the material world and understand that, but all of us will have to deal with something supernatural in our lives at one point or another, which is death, because it's beyond what we are now. It is an unknown question. So it's whether, if your parents die or something like that, and some people will see that experience that you just explained, and they just put it down somewhere, and I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to think about it. But others like you said it's a crack, it's a slight opening that will open their idea, their perspective of life. And some doctors that we've had on the show, like Dr William Peters, he went all in, yeah, because he was fascinated. And let's so let's so let's bring, let's bring his work into this a little bit shared death experiences. Yeah, what is your Have you had a shared death experience? And what can you explain to people, what a shared death experiences, as opposed to near death?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:06:13
So the way, the way William talks about shared, shared crossing, shared death experiences are experiences that witnesses, you're at the bedside with somebody who's dying, and you and the person who's dying have an experience where, an example that William gives, He was reading to a man that's in hospice, and William said we were out of our bodies. He said, the guy who's in the bed is up here, and I'm up here, and we're looking at each other. The guy who's dying in the bed is he's up here. He's just grinning at me, and I look down. He's in the bed. I'm reading the book, and I'm looking here and looking here, and I'm thinking, What in the world is happening that's a shared crossing experience, people who shared death experience. You have an experience of crossing with your mother. A woman talked to me about sitting beside her mother, having an experience of seeing her mother. They were up out of their body. She could see her mother, and she was asking her mother where the dad was and she could hear her dad in the distance. This was a shared experience. Williams research expanded what shared death experiences included to include dreams. So I dream with your brother. Dream with my brother would have been one, yeah, your brother brother had the same my other brother had the same one, exactly. So that's exact example of that. And I really had not thought of that until right now. So thank you for that. I thought of one on the way over, a person who was at abode, who was not going for whatever reason. And I really didn't think about it like that, but they they were there in the bed and still for a long time. And I had a dream that they were in a parking garage, a cement parking garage, and I walked down and found them. They were facing this cement wall, and I found them and brought them out. And I don't remember where I took them, but it was out of the garage, and that was a shared death experience. There was, there was some kind of hindrance for them. I wouldn't have thought that until I heard William talk about his work. I got to talk to a person this week who will be accompanying their spouse with medical aid in dying in a state that allows that we don't have that in Texas, the spouse has been working with a Buddhist scholar and meditating the so this is not death is imminent, because the the cocktail will be happening in days the end of end of this year. Yeah, days. So offhandedly, the the person I was talking to said about their person who's dying, they're seeing people in their meditation who they don't know. And I got all excited. I kind of leaned into the computer, and I said, Tell me more. And she said, Well, that's what I it's what I can tell you. I They're just these people are starting to show up. And I said, that's what happens when somebody is dying in a hospice situation. So I am fascinated that with this practice, that there's some kind of similarity there, even with medical aid in dying. And I know the person is dying, they're on their trajectory, but they're not supposed to go. Supposed to go anytime soon

Alex Ferrari 1:09:59
As you're talking. About these That's fascinating. I think it is. That's fascinating. I haven't heard about the meditation stuff because that's generally in the West. It's not something that right, it's done. I'd imagine in the east, it's probably something that's done a little bit more than here in the West. But what I find fascinating, as you're talking like in my my gears, are all all the experiences, all the conversations I've had about this stuff, is that there seems to be, on a soul level, this is gonna go deep. So we're gonna get into some deep weeds here. I'm not scary. I know, I know you're not. I know, I definitely know you're not. You're definitely not. But on a soul level, you know, if you believe in reincarnation, in soul blueprints, in soul contracts, that we come down here to learn something and and this is our life, and that there's a soul group with you. There are certain souls that just keep hanging around you and interacting with you in multiple left you just play different partners. Sometimes you're my wife, sometimes I'm the wife, sometimes you're my son, I'm daughter, that kind of stuff. So if you believe that, let's say I'm the daughter, or I'm the son, and you're the mom, let's say and, and you're on your deathbed, and, um, I'm meditating, and all of a sudden I start seeing Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty, yeah, yeah. And then I'm also seeing people I don't recognize, who are dressed in 50s clothes. I don't know, whatever, yeah, yeah, something like that. That's a deep connection. Because as a son and a daughter, or a mom and a dad or son, you know, I'm talking about like a relative, that that connection is so deep that in the death scenario, I'd imagine that that connection would stay deep if you're open to it. So something like a meditation, if you're open to is the very key point of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you're open to it, you can actually really connect with your loved one, yeah, in a deep way, meditation is a great way to do it. Dreams is just another way. It's another opening. But meditation is a way for you to kind of control, or at least have an opportunity open the space for something like that to happen, where you can actually be given kind of not only a glimpse at what's happening to your loved one, but also give you peace. Yeah, that is something that most don't get when a loved one passes, generally speaking, but just saying that, when you're saying, I'm like, Oh my God, that would give me a lot of peace. If I didn't already believe everything I believe and my experiences, yeah, but if I was scared, like, it's mom going to be okay? Like, where is mom gonna go? And if you're meditating about it, and you see things starting to come in, it's, it's almost like you're opening up. It's, this is a this is now, now we'll get into the quantum world, which is the frequency. Yes, we're opening our vibration, or our frequency, up to a level that can open and see these things. Hence, a shared death experience is they're now raising their frequency so high that they're leaving this space. Masters have done this. All the Masters on the wall have done this. They elevate their frequency to go beyond the third dimension, and as a relative connected to that, you already have a very deep vibrational connection to that person. So if you're able to raise your vibration or frequency through meditation, which happens, you'll be able to connect to that experience and get information that will be not only beneficial for the loved one, but beneficial for you in this journey as well. Because this is a two part scenario. Does all of any of that makes sense? And do you agree with any of it?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:13:30
It does. It does make sense to me. One of the things I love about Williams work is that he's got a protocol now where he works with the person who's dying and whatever family members want to work with them. And with them, and they do meditations. And it's kind of like seeding the seeding the space. So when the person is at the point where they can't talk anymore, and they begin to leave their body, the the opportunity for some kind of connection, which might be telepathic, which might be something, a sign that we see in the physical butterflies, butterflies or dreams there, there's a likelihood that those kinds of things can happen. I like this because it gives the family from a from a psychotherapist, being here present kind of conversation. It gives the family an opportunity to talk about the dying experience. This person is really going to die. And there's this kind of call and response he does about a memory. You find a shared memory, and you tag it, and when I think of this memory, I'm going to know that you're okay. And so that experience, along with meditating together, thinking about what dying is, thinking about that, I'm going to miss you, thinking about that. I may come back and give you a sign, and then that sign. Happens, or some kind of experience happens, gives the person, the people who are left, and gives the person who's dying opportunity to really be in the experience, to have some grief, moved, some energy moved. And then if one of those experiences happen, there's a whole other level of I'm gonna say goodness, or it's not even goodness

Alex Ferrari 1:15:26
Is beyond that. It's, it's, it's love, conditional it is,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:15:33
It is love. So when the person their experience, I can think of that they did, the protocol, had the experience. And when the person died, the sister saw swirlies, some kind of swirlies, whatever, yeah, and it gave her so much peace. And nobody else in the world needs to believe or understand. But between those two, yes, it mattered. And that kind of that kind of experience is something that I hope more people will do. And I think about these, these made deaths, which I think are going to happen more in our country. I think the medical aid in dying people are able to make a choice about when they want to leave, and so there's more planning. There can be thoughtfulness around meditation and these kinds of things. Yeah, it's a whole other

Alex Ferrari 1:16:30
That's a whole other podcast to talk about. But I agree with you. I agree with you. Have you in your work, run across someone who's passing, who has such a strong programming in them about what hell is, what heaven is, and and that they are so terrified of God dying because they were bad. Yeah, whether that might be a prisoner in jail or someone who was abusive to their family, or something like that, and they're like, at the end, they're like, oh my god, am I going to go to the other place, for sure? What's your experience with that? How and does that transition into a peaceful place? Or sometimes they just need to go through that, like in a near death experience. There have been hellish experiences. They're not often, but they do happen. And the people I've spoken to said I needed to go through that, because I believe that needed to go through that interesting I needed, I believe that I had to go through seven days in my mind of a dystopian hell where demons and and lower energy beings were torturing me until I finally said, God help me. Yeah, Jesus helped me, or something like that. And then all of a sudden, of a sudden, a light shows up. Everyone scatters, and they're saved, but they had to make the decision, but they had to go through it, yeah? And then when they came back, they're like, it was all BS, there is no hell, there is no this. It was just something I needed to go through, because I believe I needed to go through it. So what's your experience with that?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:18:00
I I have seen people who struggle to get there's there's a point where people aren't able to talk anymore, and there's a lot of mumbling, but there can be a lot of moving and and we call it terminal agitation. But for some people, there's no medicine, no amount of medicine, that's going to keep that angstiness And that movement and that agitation away. And when that happens, my I have a doctor friend named Heather, and she talks about that. That's how I know somebody's in an existential crisis. There's something in them that has to get worked out. And I give them, give them as much medicine as I can give them, and we circle them and hold them until it ebbs. And sometimes it takes several days for it to ebb. I don't know. I don't know what to do. There are people who would say, call in a priest and an exorcist. Sing and you there's, I don't know. I don't know how that works. Interesting. And I've seen it. I

Alex Ferrari 1:19:10
Do they go, have you seen them leave like that, with that kind of energy in them? Like, Oh my god, oh my god, I'm gonna or does it like, Finally, I'm it's, I'm good.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:19:21
I have not seen I've seen one time where a person has left and nobody was comfortable. Nobody in that room was comfortable when they left that way. It was, it was, it was awful, and they they were suffering. And we somehow imagined they were suffering. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. It sure did look like they were,

Alex Ferrari 1:19:42
And you feel it. I Yeah, well, you seem like a very empathetic person most days. Yeah, you pick up on people's energies. Yeah, pretty, pretty easily. So you can feel it out. When you walk in a room, you like,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:19:56
Yeah and I don't Yes, yes and. Most of the time when somebody says to me, somebody's struggling, I walk in and it's that's not my experience. My experience is they're trying to leave. It's not a it's not a there's not a fight. And I think because I've seen so many people, and most people see two, three or four people die in their whole life, and that's their image. Whatever it is they see, that's their image. So there's just such a continuum about what bodies do, and what I imagine spirits are doing in the body to release and stillness and movement and sound and all of that.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:41
So in the in your experience as well, do these emotions or guilt or things like that come up? I mean, obviously, when they're at a stage, they can still talk, yeah, is there like, oh my god, I see, I see Aunt Betty. And I used to beat aunt petty, you know, like, or I used to have some sort of, I did something bad to that person, or I did something bad. It's almost like Christmas Carol, you know, Marley shows up with the chains, you know. And it's like, oh, God, I'm looking at what I did to these people, and it's their projection of that. Do you see that?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:21:21
Every now and again. I think the thing with that is there when, when something like that is said out loud, it's got to be said to a person who, the person who's saying it trusts enough to hold it and, and and they won't be judged, or they won't be left or abandoned, or whatever it is.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:21:47
So people would come into abode, and there are stories that people tell for the last time, and I would watch who, who among the volunteers or the staff would connect with that person, and what story was told for the last time to that person. And there were a couple of those people who would get those kind of, those really hard stories,

Alex Ferrari 1:22:15
Because they needed to get it off them.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:22:19
They needed to get it off their chest, off their heart and and those, they're two guys, I'm thinking of in particular, and they can handle it. They could do it.

Alex Ferrari 1:22:30
And they can sense that, yeah, wow, there's, there's so many things here that there's no, yeah, it's hard to wrap your head around, because it's not tangible, none of it's nothing you could hold on to. Martha, I have to ask you, how the hell do you do this?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:22:46
Oh, I love it. Yeah. I think what I love about it is the intimacy of it. I mean, you and I have had a conversation today that is pretty powerful and pretty deep, and that's what I get to do. I it's fast you and it's heart to heart, and when somebody's ready, and we can both sit in that space together. There's a, I will say, that energy, I know it. There's a there's a feeling, and that feeling is nourishing, and it is peaceful and enlivening, and I like it. And so to be able to be in spaces where other people might have a hard time, is it? It just this is this is just what I'm built for. There are other places I can't be. There's places I would not want to be in a million years. But this, this space is, it works for me.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:08
You were built in a spiritual factory for this work.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:24:11
Stood in that line before I came in.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:14
You're like, I'll do that. It seems that's gonna that seems interesting. I'll do it.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:24:18
Yeah, and it is no no, dying is the same, right? We have these little things along the way, but all the nuances of it and what you learn and love,

Alex Ferrari 1:24:30
I have to ask you a woo question.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:24:32
Oh, let's hear it.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:32
I have to ask you a woo question. So on a soul level,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:24:35
You're so funny, okay, on a soul level,

Alex Ferrari 1:24:39
On a soul level, this kind of work is very giving you. Are you are helping many, many people throughout your the course of your life? Yeah, you're providing a service, very much like a nurse. Would a doctor? Would you? Even spiritual leaders and teachers that they they're more so with death though, like, it's constant, it's like, it's like we were saying it's recession proof. You're not going to lose your job anytime soon. It's going to always be, you know, fortunately, you always have work to do. But it's an extreme version of giving in my in a normal life, a normal life, people don't give this much on a daily basis. So this is an extremely giving scenario. I mean, you give to your family, you give to your to your work or things. But this is different. You are in a very different stage in this humans or this souls experience, and you're helping them again and again and again. So on a soul level, if you believe in reincarnation, yes, why do you think this is the life you chose in this life? Is it? Is it a karmic thing that you have to give back because I did a whole lot of other stuff. Or is it that, like, No, I want, this is what I want to do because of out of love and out of this, or I need to learn about death, and this is going to teach this to me. I mean, I told you, we're going to get in the weeds here.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:26:15
So when you said I want to learn about death, I could feel some emotion come up. And so that makes me like there's something in my body that resonates with, that I need to learn about, that I have wondered from this life Jim died, I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know what to do with my family. And I have imagined, I've been on this path of sorting out his death and being in relationship with him after his death. What does all that mean? And I have thought about past lives and have had some conversation, as one does,

Alex Ferrari 1:26:59
With a medium here and there,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:27:00
With a past life regression. Yeah, they're fascinating, aren't they are fascinating. I we are. One of them told me I was a nun in some life, and

Alex Ferrari 1:27:14
That makes sense. Oh, you have the nun energy. Oh, my gosh, not in a bad way, not in a ruler, not in a ruler way, but in a when I think of a nun, I think of a piece a lot of peace, yeah. Except if you're a Catholic nun in the 80s, that's a whole other conversation. I had a different experiences with nuns at the 80s.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:27:33
I've heard tales, my goodness,

Alex Ferrari 1:27:38
But that makes that makes sense.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:27:40
And I worked with children for a long time, and I've never, I don't have my own children in this life and the in the past life, in the know, in this life, in this life, I worked with children for rent a children's bereavement center for seven years. So I was with kids all the time who were bereaved. And a woman would see the psychic, and she said, Who are all these people around you? And I said, I said, I have no idea. And she said, What is it with these kids? And so I told her a little bit about what I do, and she talked to me about a past life where I had a bunch of kids, and some of my kids died, and then I ended up dying under a horse. And I don't know. You know, I heard that, and I took it in, and I thought, okay, whatever. And there was more to it than that. But I have wondered, I have wondered about what past influences land now, and I don't know, and I don't think about very much, because until sometimes, yeah, it's kind of fun to think about.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:44
It's in, well, it's interesting. What I mean again, I live in this world, yeah, constantly in this, in this, these kind of conversations. So I obviously do a lot of self reflection on, like, what's the point?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:28:56
What do you think? What's happened, what's got you here?

Alex Ferrari 1:28:58
Oh, I that's a long story for another time, I know exactly why I'm here and what I'm doing and the reasons why I'm doing most of it, not all of it. I know all of it. But, like, perfect example, I was talking to somebody the other day, and they asked me, What did you want to be when you grew up, like when you're a kid, like you said, you want to be a vet? Yeah. So we all have those, you know, the early ones. So the first one I can remember, there's two in my early stages of my life. One was an astronaut because I wanted to see space. I don't know why. I just wanted to explore, yeah. Second one was a priest, okay, because I saw a priest walk in on first in first grade, and I saw the power and the prestige and the respect they might that seems cool, yeah. Then when I told my mom that she's like, Oh, Jesus. And then the third one was a filmmaker. So you combine the three, an explorer, yes, a religious leader of some sort, or teacher, or, you know, someone who's interested in spirituality. And. And a filmmaker to tell stories. Yeah. So I was like, Oh, that that make i when someone sounds like, Oh, God, that's right, that does make a lot of sense, because it's really those are the only three I'd never had any other I never had any other inclinations other than like business. I like business. I like building businesses and things like that. But I'd never, there was no other career other than those three that have ever come into my mind. Like, it took me forever to figure out I want to be a filmmaker, and I only learned that because I worked at a video store for five years, and then when I got out of high school, like, I gotta do something. Like, there's 3000 VHS around me, apparently I like movies, so I'm gonna be a director. Yeah? It was that simple. It was like, All right, I'm gonna be, I'll go into filmmaking. Yeah, you know, which was a very steady job, obviously, and you can make millions back then. My father's like, what run off with the circus? I'm like, I am, I am, and look what I do, your own circus. I've created my own beautiful circus. No, thank you, but I'm always fascinated about that, because if you start looking at it from a cosmic soul purpose, you know, do you believe that there are people who come into your life who are there for a reason? It sounds to me, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna be the psychotherapist here for a second for it. It sounds to me that your brother came into your life, and he was a motivating factor into your life's work. I mean, there's just, I mean, you, you can't deny that. It's like, that's exactly what happened. Yes, so to me, on a soul level, you guys were talking up in the cloud somewhere, wherever you're at, and you're like, man in this life, I want to learn about death. Hey, I'm going to help you with this one. Yeah, I'll come down here as your brother this time last time we were married, but this time, we're going to come down as a brother and sister, and I'm going to be I'm going to come ahead of you, so I'm going to learn a whole lot more, and I'm going to get things prepared for you. And then on my exit point, this is going to spawn your entire life, work, and I'm going to do that for you, and I don't want you to cry. I'm not going to cry but, but I feel that. So it's so much love there. I feel it too. It's so much love, and it's so beautiful. And we all do that. All of our families play those parts in different things. I'm just using your brother as an example, because it really has spawned your entire life work, yeah, and I've heard that again and again from people like my mom died and did this, or I had my my sibling die early on, and it changed me, you know, all these things. And it just seems like, Yeah, I'm gonna do that for you in this life, you know. And that's a and this is a positive one. I also believe on the negative side as well, where people are like, you know, I need to learn about this. I'm like, well, I'll be the a hole, yeah, to come down and do that for you, and I'll have to learn a whole lot of stuff along that side as well. Did you does that make sense to you?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:32:55
It does. It does. And I like that meaning making as I've gotten older because it gives more elbow room to breathe and think about life in a different way and to not create more suffering for myself. It's good,

Alex Ferrari 1:33:13
Yeah, it's the equivalent of a soul on the other side. Like, you know, I've never been famous. I want to know what that's like. And they come in, they're like, Okay, how famous do you want to be? Do you want to be? Do you want to be, like, local community theater famous? Or do you want to be Tom Cruise famous? Like, where do you want to go? And then you go, you know, Tom Cruise famous would be interesting. Like, all right, buckle up buttercup. Buckle up buttercup. Where are you gonna be? Oh, is it gonna be Bollywood, or is it gonna be Hollywood? And what year are you going in? Like, okay? And like, that's when I want to come in, and then all of a sudden, like, Oh, this is not what it's all cracked up to be. I needed to learn what that was like. Other ones, other people come in like, I need to learn what addiction is like. I need to go over that, or I need to learn what this pain is, or I need to know what it's like to just not worry and come in rich, yeah. And then you're like, oh, but you don't worry about this, but you got other things you got other things you got to deal with. So it's just grand tapestry, it is, of the human experience, of the souls experience, and we haven't even gotten into parallel lives and multiverses and all that stuff that makes my head hurt when I start hearing about that stuff, which makes sense to me, I understand on a quantum level, on a Vedic. You know the Vedic, the Vedic teachers of the past spoke about multiverses and how many? You know, there's multiple lives, multiple not only multiple lives, but multiple versions of this conversation happening right now in this universe. As a human, let's not even talk about what else

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:34:39
That makes my head hurt.

Alex Ferrari 1:34:41
It makes my head hurt too, because it's, it's, it's not something that our heads capable of comprehending.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:34:45
Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Alex Ferrari 1:34:46
Have you ever heard the concept that everything is happening all at once? Everything? Yes, I have that there is no past, there's no future, that we're all all our lives are happening at the same exact time. Yeah, that's okay. Sure. Sure, sure. Why not? Why not? Yeah, the best example of that, though, I've heard, because I've asked this question some some mystics and some some big spiritual teachers, and I go explain this as a layman, like I'm a child, explain that concept I just told you, and what I've gotten, and that this one's a really great one. Is like, well, you have a TV, right? Yeah. It's like, well, when you're watching a TV, What show are you watching? Like, oh, I don't know, watching South Park. Okay, great. Well, you know, The Simpsons are on another channel. You know, reruns on friends are on another channel, right? You know, big bangs on another channel. Oh, great escape from the 50s is on the other channel, right? There's 1000 channels going on, and they're all happening at this moment. But what are you tuned into? I was like, oh, yeah, that I could wrap my head around.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:35:49
That makes sense to me, right? Yes.

Alex Ferrari 1:35:50
Isn't that a great analogy?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:35:51
It is a great analogy,

Alex Ferrari 1:35:54
Because it's all happening right now. The signals are all going out, yes.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:35:58
And where are you tuning yourself to? What are you tuning yourself?

Alex Ferrari 1:36:01
And if you want to take that analogy to take that analogy to the next levels, like, well, on YouTube, how many videos are uploaded on a daily basis? Well, they're all playing they're all up there. What are you tuning into? So those are all different lives, all different experiences, all different entertainment, if you will. And they're all at the same time out there, yeah, being played billions and billions of times a day. Yeah? So that's and that's even a speck of the universe,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:36:27
Yes, yes, yes, yes,

Alex Ferrari 1:36:31
Martha, this has been so fascinating. I absolutely love you. It's been great talking to you.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:36:36
You are a delight. Look at that laugh. I told you. I've been listening to you last couple days. It's really fun. Your laugh is great.

Alex Ferrari 1:36:43
I appreciate it. People think it's fake, but please tell them not fake. He can't be that happy. He can't be always laughing. I'm like, I laugh all the time.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:36:52
So I did it. I did a meditation before,

Alex Ferrari 1:36:56
Did Aunt Betty or Uncle Bob?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:36:58
No, it's, it's a, it's a way to attune that I learned from a friend of mine, to attune to a situation I'm going to be in and and you, you know, it's Pull, pull you up in. And sometimes when I pull the person up, they're kind of like, it's a it's a square. Sometimes they're in the back of the box. You are right in the front of the box with this big that face, that is the face. And I, I did it twice, and you came in the same way both times. And this is going to be interesting.

Alex Ferrari 1:37:27
Oh, really, yeah, you kind of, you were, you were testing the waters to see where it was going?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:37:31
I think it's if it's imagination, and seeing this, this happy, seemingly connected guy in this in this box, and thinking that I was going to get to spend some time and doing my best to be grounded and connected. And then what could we co create together? And that's, it's an, it's a nice way to move into an interview. So thank you.

Alex Ferrari 1:38:03
Oh, that's awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:38:07
So this, so this, yes, this is all real. This is all real. That's Yes.

Alex Ferrari 1:38:12
I had someone come to our event and walk up to my wife, and she's like, is he really this? Is he really who he is. I flew from, God knows, 1000s of miles. She said, I just wanted to make sure he was real. Oh, wow. And I was fascinated by She didn't ask me this, yeah, like my wife would say, notes that you should run. But she's like, No, that's, he laughed like that. He's, he's happy generally, all the time. I mean, don't get me wrong, I hear human. I'm a human. And I have children, teenagers as well. So of course, I'm not always happy, but I generally am. You know, I do have a good time with life. I try, I try, yeah.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:38:54
Has it always been that way? Or did you is it it's changed? Yeah, yeah. I'm that's my experience, too

Alex Ferrari 1:39:00
Angry for, yeah, all this time I was like, Why isn't my film career going? Oh, my God, I want to go. It wasn't going where I wanted. It goes. Oh, I was angry. I was bitter for a good decade. Yeah, I'd be on, I'll be honest with I mean, yeah, there was elements of this. I was always a class clown. I was always joking, and that's who I am. But the I was really bitter, because I would help other filmmakers fulfill their dreams and and I was saving their movies, and I couldn't get one of my movies off the ground the way I wanted it to. So it's really interesting, but I don't know, I can't remember the moment that it clicked off, but I think it was obviously when I started meditating about eight years seven, eight years ago, I started meditating, meditating, yeah, not little two minute meditations. It matters. And when I started meditate, I started to calm a lot more. My life became and my wife saw it. She was like, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it, because she saw it. She's. She's the close your spouse is the closest observer of your life. Yeah, they're the witness, yeah, more so than your parents. Yes, your your spouse is your witness, because they're with you generally all the time. They see the good, the bad and the ugly all the time. Yeah, and she said she felt it. My kids actually felt it as well, and they just so I've been become a much more chilled dude over the years. When I was a young man, Jesus, yeah, oh God,

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:40:33
We evolve happily,

Alex Ferrari 1:40:34
Yeah, I was piss and vinegar boy, oh, jokey, but piss and vinegar, jokey, you know, I am a Gen Xer from the 80s. So I watched a lot of movies, and I the wit will pop off, but it was something, um, yeah, that was it wasn't always there it was. And as you get older, you start to kind of let go of a lot of, lot of things that don't matter anymore, yeah? Because at the end of at the end of the day, none of it really does in the scope of what we give it importance to it. I'll end our conversation with Alan Watts. Okay, I love Alan Watts. And he said, he said this, and it was so profound, and I'm a paraphrase, but he goes, in 100 years, there'll be strangers living in your house, Anyone who remembers you will be dead. Maybe, maybe you've done something in your life that someone remember you for. But in 500 years, in 1000 think about it, how many Roman millions of Romans during the Roman Empire of 1000 years. How many do we remember? How many do we actually think about? It's usually the emperor is usually key players in certain dramas that happen to be written down. But there were millions and no one remembers, you know at all. So when you look at things like that and you start like, oh, maybe I shouldn't worry much, as much as I used to about these little stupid things. It's not easy. It's not it's not easy. But when you look at it from that perspective, you just kind of like, oh, maybe I should do things that make me happy.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:42:20
Well, and for me, when, when a couple of my contemporaries died, that was this one of, one of the big shifts, like, oh, they were the same age, and she's not here anymore. She's done. So the game is over, and my game could be over tomorrow. Could be over in five years. And what am I going to do today to feel alive?

Alex Ferrari 1:42:47
So that's so beautiful. Last question, what has all of this work done for you on a on your soul journey, meaning that you are more aware than most that death is coming, and it could have come, like you just said, Tomorrow, or it can come in 10 years, 20 years, whatever. How has this changed your perspective on the dying process in your own life? Because you've been an observer of death and the transitions for many years now. But how does that register with you now? How you want to go, how you are opening, like, how does that work for you? Because I I have a very clear idea of my my exiting this video game. Yeah. I have a clear idea of how I want to do it, and I might even have seen what will happen. Who knows in the meditation, who knows what shows up? Yeah, but I have a clear idea from this work, because I can't do this work without thinking. I talk about it all the time. Yeah, so you've had to have that self this kind of meditative thoughts about yourself. How does this affected you?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:43:56
I didn't think about my own dying for a long time, and I was very much in the let me, I'm going to do this work, and I'm going to be of service, and did that to my detriment, and did that in some places, Those places inside of ourselves where we want to save and we have, we have the the wholeness of every feeling, thought, emotion in us, I think, and I've, I've had to, or gotten to really look at my shadow and look at my light. And I think in the last five years, especially, have really been able to hold both of those so as I do this work now, I do it from that perspective that I am a human and I'm fallible, and there are things that I love and there are people I love, and I make mistakes and. And the calling I feel is to do end of life work and and it's okay. For a long time, I wasn't sure it was okay. It felt a little weird and odd. And as we have talked about past lives and all those things that that was all part of the do I say these things out loud? Because those, those things got to be more and more. I can't, I can't talk about, I can't talk about dying in the feeling of somebody who's died standing behind me without thinking about consciousness. And what does this all mean? What's really real, all of that. And so when I think of myself in a bed, dying, if I am lucky enough to do that, if I don't get hit by a truck, that I think, wow, I hope I get to see people I love, and I am doing things now to take care of my body and take care of my spirit that I wouldn't have done 10 years ago, 15 years ago, taking taking breaks and going to nature and those kind of, those kinds of things that are nourishing and help me stay in myself. And I hope that when I'm dying, I can be in myself too and have the, have the, just have the experience of it, whatever the experience is. I don't I don't know what it's going to be. I don't want to hurt and I think we'll have have opportunity for that not to be and there are particular people I want to have around me who will care for me and care for my body and care for my spirit. And I'm very clear about that. I'm clear about the energy I want around me, and I think that's that's transferred into regular life. You pick who you want to spend time with. I I've gotten pretty choosy

Alex Ferrari 1:47:07
As we do as we get older.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:47:08
Yeah, we're allowed.

Alex Ferrari 1:47:11
Is the funny comedian Nate bergazi says, like, when you're in your 20s, your friend calls you and goes, Hey, man, we're going. Where are we going? What are we doing? You mean, burn a house down. Let's do it. 30s, you're like, where are we going? 40s are like, I'm driving, I'm driving separately. So true. 20, you're like, I'm down a clown. Let's go yes. But as you're like, now you're like, No, I think it's Tom Papa. The other great comedian, Tom Papa. He's like, one of the greatest things in my life is canceling on plans. Oh, my God. Like, it's just like, I have, oh, we have a dinner date with another couple. Oh, I could cancel. Yes, I just want to stay home in my pajamas and just a great and as you get older, you know what? It's such. Yes, it's so true. Martha, where can people find out more about you and the amazing work you're doing?

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:48:12
My website marthajoatkins.com, simple as that, simple as that. And you have a book out right? I have a book signpost of dying and working on a second book. I'll say that out loud to spur myself on to get that finished. Been working on it for a while.

Alex Ferrari 1:48:26
Martha, it's been such a pleasure talking to you in this about things that are not pleasurable as a general statement, but they can be. They absolutely can, because it's part of this whole system, yeah, of what we're doing. And I appreciate you being not only being here and helping the planet in the way that you're helping humanity, but I appreciate the work. I appreciate the the empathy, the love that you do the work with and I hope that this conversation does help others who are going through this as well. So I appreciate you so much.

Dr. Martha Jo Atkins 1:48:59
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.