Pilot DIES in CRASH; Taken to the “IN-BETWEEN” – Shown HUMANITY’S FUTURE! (NDE) with Jim Bruton

In this episode, we meet Jim Bruton, a man who has traveled the world, chased storms, reported from war zones, and worked in realms many would only dream of. But in a twist of fate, a plane crash brought him somewhere altogether unexpected—the in-between. From this surreal vantage point, Jim experienced a near-death journey that went beyond the usual light and tunnel, plunging him into a vast landscape of choices, probabilities, and life’s potential futures.

Jim’s adventure starts with a daring passion for aviation. In 2016, while testing his homemade plane, his engine cut out mid-air, sending him into a violent crash. That moment of impact shattered not only his body but his concept of reality. In the haze of unconsciousness, Jim describes suddenly “teleporting” to what felt like a post-apocalyptic cityscape, where a sense of calm enveloped him. There was no fear, just the quiet understanding that he was somewhere beyond the ordinary—standing in what he would come to call “the eternity of a single moment.”

As Jim looked around, he noticed a towering, latticed egg filled with gears, each one delicately hovering in space. The gears represented choices, futures, and possibilities, he explained, and each one could be felt rather than seen. Some gears brought a sense of peace; others, when touched, emitted a wave of nausea or pain, signaling a choice that could lead to suffering. “It’s the process of becoming,” a disembodied voice told him, urging Jim to engage with his own fate as he would a living puzzle.

In this vast in-between, Jim began removing the “painful” gears, choices that would have led him to spiritual dead-ends. One gear hinted at a lottery win, yet the pull of its danger told Jim that path would derail his journey, leading him away from his spiritual progress. His reflex was to let it go, casting the gear aside as it dissolved into the space around him. “For those who make poor use of their choices, offering fewer possibilities could be called Mercy,” the voice added, an insight that profoundly shifted Jim’s understanding of free will and destiny.

This experience wasn’t passive; Jim was in control, an active participant in navigating the paths his life could take. His choices in that space weren’t just about personal gain—they were about finding the right road to spiritual evolution, learning to let go of what no longer served him. The voice urged him to remember that each decision has unseen impacts, rippling through time and space, shaping not only his life but all connected to him.

After what seemed like an eternity, Jim was directed back to the waking world with a final message: “Pay attention to your relationships.” This wisdom stayed with him, offering a new perspective on the bonds that shape us. Since his experience, Jim finds that people are drawn to him in a different way, responding to a quiet, unspoken depth within him. His near-death journey left him with a gentle detachment, one that allows him to see beyond the surface and connect more authentically with others.

Jim’s return to life wasn’t just about survival; it was about living with intentional awareness, treating each interaction as an opportunity for growth and understanding. His journey through the in-between was a reminder that we are not here to amass things or fulfill ambitions but to evolve spiritually, to learn, and, ultimately, to let go.

SPIRITUAL TAKEAWAYS

  1. Embrace Your Choices with Reverence: Jim’s journey reminds us that each choice shapes not just our future but our spiritual trajectory. Trusting the “grand design” helps us make decisions aligned with a higher path.
  2. Life as a Mosaic of Connections: Every relationship, Jim shares, carries an unseen purpose. By nurturing these connections and living authentically, we align closer to our spiritual essence.
  3. Detach and Let Go: The true power, Jim says, lies in the art of letting go. When we release attachment, we allow life to unfold organically, connecting us to our higher purpose.

Please enjoy my conversation with Jim Bruton.

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Follow Along with the Transcript – Episode 516

Jim Bruton 0:00
Next pass, my engine just quit. I crashed headlong into all these tree trunks, and that's how I found it. A year later, I could see all the scarring on the trees from where my wings broke up, even though I am doped up, tubed up, broken. I mean, I am delirious. First of all, no time I just it's as if I teleported in, boom, I'm there. As I looked at these, I realized, these are all events for my future. Why is that? And I said, Well, where am I? And it said, you're in the in between. I said, in between. What? And it said, everything. You're standing inside the eternity of a single moment.

Alex Ferrari 0:36
I like to welcome to the show Jim Bruton, how you doing Jim?

Jim Bruton 0:49
Hi Alex, it's great to be here. Thank you.

Alex Ferrari 0:51
Thank you so much for coming down to Next Level Soul Studios, man, I appreciate you making the trip out here. We're here to talk about your books in between, The in between: A trip of a lifetime, and practice The practice of in between: The Art of Letting Go, which is based upon your near death experience. Now, what was your life like before this near death experience? Because you lived a pretty exciting life.

Jim Bruton 1:17
I was really blessed to live an exciting life. If I were to write the cocktail napkin version of it, it would be, imagine a little boy growing up in the 1960s Kennedy had made the promise, we're going to the moon, and then every Popular Mechanics thereafter that came to the door was, here's the flying saucer in every garage, the jet pack to work Moon tourism by the year 2000 and I mean, any little boy with a huge Imagination is going to just bite into that, right? So I my life was full of imagination. I was an only child, so I'm really living in my head a lot. And I also love to watch on our little black and white TV this show called Wild Kingdom. It came on every Sunday night just before Disney, and it was Marlon Perkins and Jim Fowler traveling all over the world, filming their adventures with animals, usually different conservation programs that might be going on, but it was everywhere. And of course, you know, there was always the joke Marlins telling you about mutual Omaha insurance while Jim's out running the bear to get into the tree. But I just remember watching that, thinking, How do I do that for a living? And then my and I'm lining these up, because they all come to a head. And then my father learned to fly in 62 when I was in first grade, and I probably had 10,000 hours as a passenger by the time I was in college. And so be so being up in the air was very comfortable to me, but in the 60s, a couple of really great films about old airplanes came out. One was a fictitious race across the English Channel in 1910 and another one was about World War One, the fighter pilots, the first sort of nights of the air. And back then, when airplanes were fabric and wire and wood and brass. I mean, they were like works of art and you and there was also an age of discovery. You go fly, you come back, and you tweak a few things and go try, see if I can go faster, higher, whatever. So those were the main milestones of, sort of like I said, a discovery or excitement for me as a child. So think about the idea that I want to live in that science fiction environment now, you know. And I want to invent something in technology, you know. I want to help bring that future in now. The other was, and I want to film wildlife and travel all over the world, and, oh, and now I want to build. This is like, how do you tie that together? Well, I got to, I have an Emmy for work with National Geographic, living in Africa, off and on for 14 years, making wildlife documentaries. So I got to do that. I It was while I was out there that Disney came out to scavel location and had an early version of a satellite telephone. We're 300 miles from anyone, and I'm watching them unfold these boxes, unfold this Nicholas poly polyester dish, and talk to their studio in LA. And I'm thinking it would take me six weeks if I left right now and drove to town to mail a letter, to get a rose, in a sense. And I said, Hey, has anybody ever pushed video over that they go we don't know. I said, I'm gonna figure out how to do it. And I was the first in the world. And that changed my life. And it really has changed. It sort of started things in motion. That's changed how news, I mean, everybody with a cell phone with a camera is a citizen journalist. Now, this pointed in that direction, and it truly disrupted. Anyway, I could talk more about that later, but it was like shrinking a TV truck down into a backpack. And I've been in all seven continents, tarpol, mount, Everest several times, in a lot of war zones because I became a war correspondent for NBC News. I integrated some interesting medical devices that were destined for the space station, and went back to Everest twice in a row as and I was a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine.

Alex Ferrari 5:00
And so you had a pretty full life. It seems like you weren't off the track, which is what I hear a lot of near death experiencers say,

Jim Bruton 5:08
Right, right. No, I was pretty plugged into the world and achieving something like, what's the next thing we're going to do?

Alex Ferrari 5:14
This sounds like you're having some fun,

Jim Bruton 5:16
Really. And and then when I was I was I was a war journalist, as I mentioned, for NBC News. I was over in Iraq in 2003 and then I thought, You know what it pays well, it's nice to be on camera. It's nice to be recognized, but I don't have a family life. Wouldn't it be kind of nice to just have some normal and I mean, there's a part of that world that just, it's almost like there are no rules. Anything can happen. Anything goes. It's like, I just need some boundaries. So I met a widow with three babies and married her, and went corporate, taking my knowledge of video compression and satellite communications and all that, and I went to work for Pfizer. And then I was at Ernst and Young, and I was at the UN just sort of bouncing around, doing that, but enjoying that as well, for that constancy. And it was at that time my wife said, Well, now that you're not traveling, but you're kind of used to that high testosterone life, why don't you build those old airplanes? You're always talking? I said, I will. So I did. I built a world war one fighter from Germany, like the Red Baron flew, but I put my own white and black stripes on it. And it took me about eight years to build that. But it was worth it, and it was worth it and it was fun. It's kind of like riding a unicycle. If you really want to go somewhere, you use something else. Yeah. And then after I built my macho plane, I built another airplane that was more whimsical, like something out of a Disney cartoon. It was a tiny little plane from the 1930s in France called a flying flea. And that's the that's the plane I was flying on the second test flight when I lost my engine and crashed. That brings me up to the next part of

Alex Ferrari 6:48
Well, like I said, You seem like to be having a really pretty fulfilled life, like I indicated before that, many near death experiencers say that they had their near death experience because it was a wake up call, or, you know, they were on the wrong path and they had to get pulled back, or it was an option for them to leave because their contract, or sole contract, wasn't working out the way it was supposed to. But you seem to be like, Hey, man, I'm good. I'm having a good I'm building planes. I was you've done you've gone around the world. You've lived multiple lives, essentially, in this one life.

Jim Bruton 7:21
It's true. You know, a lot of the things I got to do, like, you know, whether it was get an Emmy or the king of Malaysia giving me the highest honor a non Malaysian can receive for helping them up at Mount Everest, or lecturing at Yale or being an NBC News. I mean, each one of those things is almost a singular lifetime achievement. But it's like that didn't define me. Like, if I had an Emmy. It was a doorstop. Sure, I just don't think about it, you know. And it's more like the evolution part of this is where I was focused. What's the next step? Where can I push next? What can I understand next? It had nothing to do with the achievement itself. It had everything to do with the evolution.

Alex Ferrari 7:58
So tell me what happened on the day that you you went to the other side?

Jim Bruton 8:03
Yeah, exactly. So that was October 6, 2016 just built my little flying flee. I'd had a test flight a few days before, and it was, it was okay. It was very, you know, experimental. I wasn't quite happy with the way it handles, so I thought, well, let me go up and get used to it. And so it was on that second test flight, I took off, came around once the airfield, and then on my next pass, my engine just quit, and I was able to get it started. I didn't panic, because, you know, panic as well, just so just don't and I got it started again, and it quit again. Well, I was dropping altitude, and it was very this was in Connecticut, in the countryside, and it was very hilly, very rocky and very forested, and I couldn't make it back to my grass strip. Luckily, next door to it was a Boy Scout camp, and they had a small lake, and the front of my plane was shaped almost like a boat. I'll just aim for that, you know, and it's open cockpit. I'll just land in it. Whatever happens, I'll pop the belt. I'm out. So it almost went that way. And what's funny is I had to go back to the crash site.

Alex Ferrari 9:15
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Jim Bruton 10:11
You know about I think it was a year later I went back and I was able to work out what my thinking was, because when I crashed, I'll tell you about the crash in a second, when I crashed, it knocked out two days of memory, out of me. I don't even remember crashing, which was probably a blessing, right? No, PTSD, I could go fly again, no problem. So what happened was, I was aiming for the lake, and I wound up when you come down close to the ground or the water, you come into something called ground effect, and actually extend your glide. So I overshot the bank. So in the equivalent of a soap box derby car with a propeller, seven foot propeller spinning in front of my face and a big BMW motorcycle engine, I crashed headlong into all these tree trunks, and that's how I found it. A year later, I could see all the scarring on the trees from where my wings broke up and I stopped in probably about 10 feet, and I ruptured both lungs, broke all my ribs, my right leg had multiple fractures. The battery broke loose and hit me in the back, 70 mile an hour projectile. Oh, and then I was fine. You know, luckily for me, because that was in October, the Boy Scout camp was closed, but there was this retired the essentially they reported him as a retired teacher, which he was, but he was also a retired police officer. Thank heavens, because think about a police officer seeing trauma, car crashes and all these things. And if he had just been a teacher, he might have freaked out, and that would have gotten me killed. He happened to have a cell phone on him, which he normally did not do, because he liked to go down there for the peace and quiet. And quiet, and then I come in, you know, anything but peace and quiet. So he called 911, and he kept me kind of propped up because I said, Well, what was going is, you weren't breathing. You were gasping, because, we know now, because you really had no lungs. So the helicopter landed as close as it probably only about 30 or 45 minutes later, it's like everything was incredibly efficient. I'm amazed. I mean, starting with the fact that he just happened to be there and he knew what to do, and then they put me in the helicopter and flew me up to Hartford's Trauma Center, where there was a team waiting for me there. And so everything I'm telling you is what other people have told me, because, like I said, I only had one memory when I was in the hospital, and I thought, I'm in I'm in an enemy hospital, and I something I haven't told you. Also did work for you overseas. And so I escaped the restraints, even though I am doped up, tubed up, broken, I mean, I am delirious. I escaped the restraints, of course, where the hell was I gonna go, you know? But when I did, my oldest daughter was there, and she called out for help. So they came in. I remember when they came in, I thought, remember, I think I'm misgiving. I said they're going to hurt me now. And you were out, I was and I really thought, you know, I mean, so they put me in bigger restraints, tighter, whatever, and then they told my wife, he he's got six, seven days of six to eight hour operations every day coming up. We think we should just put him and you know, especially if he's acting like this now. And she said, by all means, do what's necessary. So they put me into a coma. My best, you know, again, it's a best guess, right? My best guess is that when they put me into a coma here, whether it lasted a split second, you know how you hear, how time flows differently, whether it was a second or whether it was a week, I'm not sure, but it was, it was seemed like I was there for quite a while.

Alex Ferrari 13:34
Okay, so what happened?

Jim Bruton 13:35
Well, let me preface it with this. You know how a lot of near death experiences have a lot of similarities. I went through a tunnel, maybe I saw some dead, deceased loved ones that certainly made me feel better about where I was right, and then some in. Maybe the surroundings and circumstances are not unpleasant. Perhaps, you know, it looks nice there, and then they have a life review, and that's a real common one, you know. And it's not about judgment, but it's like you, you look and see, and then sometimes they might get a big message, or have conversation with an angelic being, or something like that. And then they, if it's an NDE, they come back, if you think about it, that's a fairly passive experience. I floated through a tunnel. I saw somebody. I saw my life. I got a message, I got my back. Mine was not passive at all. It was very interactive. First of all, no tunnel. I just it's as if I teleported in, boom, I'm there. And where I teleported was as if it was up on a terrace of a tall building in a post apocalyptic city. Imagine LA or New York, 1000 years after the meteor hit, or the bomb goes off or something, and it is a dead city. And I was up there, and I was also very emotionless about them, just taking it in. As I looked around, I looked up and the sky just had literally like the mother of all storms, getting ready to unload. Then. All of a sudden, this wave of nausea passed through my stomach. And again, it's interesting. It's like I had a body. I don't have had a body. I'm not aware of it, looking at hands or legs, but nothing was I mean, there was no mirror, and I wasn't like sitting there looking at myself. Everything felt like I kind of had a body or analog of one. And when that nausea path through, I said out loud again, this is all so analogous to how it probably really went down. I said, I don't know that I can stand this. And when I said that, I heard the sound off to my left, and I looked over and on, sort of on this terrace, or at Terrace level, if you will. Was this large egg, and I would say it was around four to five stories high, and it was made out of lattice work. Imagine like taking metal could be anything but metal bands, and then loosely shaping, bending them and riveting them together and shaping it so it looks like an egg, but that means there's a lot of open space there. You can see through, okay? So I looked over there, and I could hear this little like clacking sound inside. And I knew this thing and I are connected somehow. So I made my way over to it, and when I got up to the egg, I looked through the open lattice work, and what was what I saw were these gears in there. I realized later when I came in, they're called sector gears. When you think of a gear, you think of a wheel with little teeth all the way around it, right? You see them in watches and chalks and stuff. A sector gear is a partial arc of a gear, maybe a PI section, and it's designed to move back and forth, which means it has a beginning, middle and end to its action. That's significant. And as I looked at these, and they were kind of freely suspended in space, you know, in the air there, and they were just kind of slowly moving, as if they were in idle, you know, sort of idling. And some were very definite and, you know, sharp, and some were more ghost like, and they would just pass either way. They would just sort of pass through each other unimpeded. And as I looked at them, I if I looked at one, really hard, I had a video feed play in my head of what it represented. And as I looked at these, I realized these are all events for my future. Why is that? Because I saw my daughter at an amusement park with her two children, and at this time she was, you know, 18 years old and still living at home, no no kids, and I was there with her, and it was really nice. You know, she was putting her kids in the little cart, goes spinning around, and everybody was having a good time. And then I also, I don't know why, I saw myself over at Home Depot buying stuff for a home renovation project. How did you look? Well, I don't I Well, when I was with the kids, I definitely looked older. I was aware of looking older, but with the Home Depot project, I was just focused on getting did you look like you look right now? Kind of Yeah, okay. But with the kids a little bit older and a little gray, or whatever, so my teeth, but, but anyway, but I saw other events as well. Here's the interesting thing I put my hand through the lattice because I said, you know, very concrete, very ghost like, I wonder if I can touch these, you know, so I did. And when I did, one of these gears brushed by my hand, and I felt this intense pain, like nausea running through my stomach reflexively. And I don't know why this was my reflex, rather than just to jerk back, was to grab that gear, pull it out and throw it away. I can't explain why that was the reflex, but that was the reflex. And when I did, it's like all the gears just woke up and started spinning around like crazy. And at some point I said, What is this thing? And that's when this disembodied voice joined me, never saw who it was, and engaged with me, and it said, this, this is the art of this is the process of becoming. And I said, What do you mean? Said that, you know, basically this idea, this is the process of becoming. And I said, Well, where am I? And it said, you're in the in between. I said, in between. What? And it said everything, you're standing inside the eternity of a single moment. And and I said, Okay. And I said, So what's going on here with the gears? And then it said, basically, it told me, these are all probabilities in your future. Think about quantum physics, juxtaposition probabilities, right? And think about it at every moment of your life that is a crossroads of decision in which you can make multiple choice. So each moment in our life is one of juxtaposition probabilities, and it's through the act of observing. And choice that one collapses into what we call reality and the others dissipate, I learned that was what that the gears, the probabilities, the choices in the future that were very sharp indefinite were the ones that were either closer in time or more likely to occur, the other ones were further out in time or less likely to occur, like winning the lottery, that'd be a very ghost, like when, even though I might go in and buy a ticket, so that indicates a probability, right?

Alex Ferrari 20:28
So is it kind of like you were seeing parallel realities of yourself?

Jim Bruton 20:34
It could be, because I definitely was under coming to understand more about the multiverse? Okay? So it could be, and it could be some of those just spin off. In other words, if, if we live a for example, and we know this number is just random, a million different lifetimes in the whole idea is, you like reincarnation, if there is no past and future, we're living those lifetimes right now, which only hints at what it must mean to really be a child of God? We have no clue what that means, because we're able to live millions of lifetimes any one moment exactly the same exact same time, and we're living out a lot of these choices that are these probabilities, maybe we relive them all out.

Alex Ferrari 21:17
So right now, there's a gym who won the lottery, there's a gym who's still a pilot, and there's Jim, Jim crash, a gym who didn't leave. Then maybe there's new Jim who died, or there's a gym who died in that crash and and all these probabilities in just this life. Then there's Roman gym, yeah. Then there's Atlantis gym, yeah. And the 1000 of those versions is why millions of those? It's so it's your infinite amount,

Jim Bruton 21:40
So many there's so many facets to the jewel. And it's so interesting, if you think about it, if you know when they say when, when the tide rises, it lifts all ships. Kind of makes you wonder if one of your incarnations is really intent on, you know, becoming, whether you want to call it one with God or one with the void or escaping the cycles of reincarnation. Does that lift all the other lives as well?

Alex Ferrari 22:09
Well to my understanding, from my studies in Eastern philosophies and Eastern thought and many of these avatars on the wall here behind me, to my understanding is that if you, Jim, currently in this lifetime, can reach enlightenment or self pure Self Realization, that is an explosion in the not only the multiverse of your existence, and it scatters through All your lifetimes for future and present, but it also affects your soul group, of your parents, your grandparents, your Yes, relatives, your daughters, everyone in your soul group, and all of their lifetimes.

Jim Bruton 22:51
I've heard it seven generations back and seven generations forward.

Alex Ferrari 22:55
Yeah, that's what I heard as well. It's like that. There's a number of all of them,

Jim Bruton 22:58
But it since we're all connected, like I'm connected to you. If you're connected to me, it can't do it. Can't help but help everybody.

Alex Ferrari 23:05
Well, of course. I mean, the more people who become enlightened, the more people who are awakened. Period on the planet starts to change the consciousness of the planet, which is what's happening.

Jim Bruton 23:15
It is. It's so obvious. People are just saying, You know what? We're tired of, the same old crap. And look at, I mean, the fact that, I mean, look, we, we voted Obama in because we retire the same old crap, you know, we, we've, we've tried it both ways on in terms of conservative and liberal. And we're still trying. We're still aching for the answer that will Yes. We can all be productive, we can all be safe, we can all have peace. We a better world overall. There's such an ache right now for it that I think people are really willing to to push the boundaries of what they understand, and try, continue to try new

Alex Ferrari 23:51
Absolutely and like, you know, they voted Obama in, but they also voted Trump in. So there was a large swath that wanted to go that way because they were tired of the way it was going, and vice versa. It always swings, going both ways, yeah, but the thing is, it's, it's more erratic now than I've ever seen it. I mean, I've been walking the earth for a few years now, not as long as you, but a few years. And I've seen the decades that I've been alive, and I've seen how politics, I've seen how the economy, I've seen how we look at education, how we look at religion, how we look at spirituality. It's changed so dramatically. These conversations weren't happening 10 years ago, no, 15 years ago.

Jim Bruton 24:33
And if they were, they might have been in secret. They certainly weren't being televised.

Alex Ferrari 24:37
They weren't, they weren't, they weren't reaching millions and millions. No, no, it just wasn't a thing where now, not only are they reaching that through other alternative media, because you were part of, you know, ABC News, which was a reputable it still is a reputable news organization, but the new media gets much larger numbers. So true. I mean, I mean this show gets. Better numbers at CNN,

You have very high number of subscribers,

Not only subscribers, but views on on episodes that are much higher than shows on major networks. I'm not I'm not boasting myself. There's other shows that have the same kind of reach that I do in other in many other areas.

Jim Bruton 25:17
It's the nature of how people consume media,

Alex Ferrari 25:19
Right! But the thing is that people are now getting access to information, that there is no gatekeeper anymore.

Jim Bruton 25:26
I was gonna say that when you watch television, you're very aware of this barrier between you, all the audience, and the town movies. But in this modality, it's so much easier to feel closer to the source. You know, like it's me, like the chance that you reached out to me and said, Hey, let's do this together, versus if you were Walter Cronkite

Alex Ferrari 25:46
And 1000 other people are in between you and me, and having to organize it and have a this and that when you get here, there's 45 people in the room, and only, you only see what three people are doing, and you don't even know why the other 45 or.

Jim Bruton 25:56
And I think people, this is, this is something people have also hungered for is to feel closer to the source of all this information and to feel like where they they think it's almost like they have the opportunity to better see where they fit into it.

Alex Ferrari 26:09
I think they're all striving to get closer to source period. Yeah, exactly. They're looking for truth because they've been told, I want to say lies, but they've been told different stories throughout history that they're starting to realize, hey, that doesn't make sense anymore, right? And the second the internet really kicked in, in the night, late 90s, that's when you saw it happening. Sure, the information changed. Now anybody could talk about anything which is good and bad at the same time, because it does. It's a Freedom of Information for everybody, and there's and it goes on both sides, but it was able, we were able to start exchanging ideas, seeing what's happening on the other side of the world that wasn't curated completely by a giant organization.

Jim Bruton 26:57
You could talk directly to the people who are living there, like you could talk to people who lived in Kabul, Afghanistan, correct, you know, they'd be in a school. You could connect schools together. Remember, there were all these movements like, let's connect the kids together. And, like, really jazz it up. You know, with China, with Russia, with Africa, whatever. You know that that digital divide they talked about as we tried to close that, how was that represented? A lot of times is like, let's connect the kids together, as well as people who are doing research. You know, whether it's medical or physics or whatever, and it, you know, when we talk about how the more diverse your team is, how the better it is. I mean, the bridge of Star Trek, right? Yeah, yeah. I suppose diverse as it got. I mean, Star Wars to the Wookie Yeah, yeah. There you go. Throw him in. But, you know, it was a better it was a better team. Was better solutioning. And so that's what this really pointed to, and it still points to, because we're not going back.

Alex Ferrari 27:49
No, I don't think you can't take the eggs out of the cake. It's it's already in there. I don't think we're going to be able to go back. I think that even moving forward, we are. I think we all, as a as a as a consciousness, will not go back to the 80s or 90s or to another world war. I don't think that we're going to agree to that. There's a lot of older systems that are still holding on to power, trying to like the death rattle of a lot of organizations in all parts of our lives. But I do believe that we all agree that we're like, no, no. Even the words that are happening right now, when they started happening, everyone was like, what? Like, there's a large swath of human beings on the planet, like, what, what? What year is this?

Jim Bruton 28:35
Right!

Alex Ferrari 28:36
You're going after land. When was the last time you saw war after land? A major war with, like, I need land back. Sure, sure. It's been forever. And then, of course, Gaza and all that stuff. Like, Jesus, how old is that fight going on? So it's like, why is it like it's and from what I understand, and please let me know what you think all this stuff is being thrown up so we can see it in the light. Yes, to clean it out, but it's going to be messy.

Jim Bruton 29:02
Well, that, you know, it almost speaks to education, you know, is people, the viewers, are becoming more educated. Oh, and as we were talking about earlier, about how the model of television has changed in favor of the internet, is that you can be in television and be an executive. Is still trying to hold on to that model. But who? What is a king without the kingdom? What happens when all the subjects leave? Well, that's not a king. What happened in newspapers, exactly, and magazines everything? You know, it's a movie theaters, either? Good. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 29:35
I mean, even, but network television. Do you think network television is going to be around in 10 years? No, in the way that we see it now.

Jim Bruton 29:40
No, it's interesting. I mean, how are they going to try to hang on, by changing their programming up? But I'll give you one example which has changed. I think, you know, CNN is struggling right now, and they've and they've said, gone are the days? Are the of the big, paid, highly paid anchors. Oh, that's there. No more Peter Jennings, Walter, cronkites and. No, they're going now you can't pay those people what you were paying them before. And I've even seen, I've even seen out in the field teams are using foreign stringers now, of course, you know, they were not flying these people all over the place

Alex Ferrari 30:11
Because the model doesn't work anymore. And Holly was the same way. That's why we don't see as many blockbusters as we did before. And, yeah, all that stuff. But that's just examples of the change. Yeah, of what's happening. We all see it.

Jim Bruton 30:21
I think it points also to a more it's almost as a democratization of the business model in general. Let's face it, anybody can start up. Not that this is that case. But, you know, a kid can, I mean YouTube influencers as an example. I mean everybody wants to be one, and a few people are. But the fact that that could happen at all is a case in point, correct, you know, like, like, I, I live enough of an interesting life that people want to see me.

Alex Ferrari 30:47
If you would have been born at this time and you live the life that you live, foreign correspondent, I could see you on Instagram. Like, here I am. You could be an influencer, but when you were a younger man, you know, absolutely, but those I could have probably had something like that going on too, not as nearly as exciting as yours, but, but that world doesn't it's just did. It's so so bizarre and different. Yeah, for people, because I like you, i i border both sides. Sure, I border Hollywood, that's right, because I come from it for 30 years, but I also understand YouTube and the new media, and they do not know how to speak to each other right at all. And they look at each other like like a foreign, foreign adversary. In many ways, it's really interesting,

Jim Bruton 31:30
And it's like our understanding can barely keep up with the development, so it's only it's really hard to kind of get in front of it, as they would say, sure to see to really understand where it's coming from to really understand where it's going to so that you can put around any type of analytics that are meaningful. We can try, but a lot of times it's just like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks and saying, okay, is this describing a pattern? Is this? Is there any kind of predictive value to this?

Alex Ferrari 31:58
So when you were so when you're there with the egg in the in the in this big voice, was any of this in, in the in the purview at that point, like you saw old systems coming down right there.

Jim Bruton 32:11
I just did you see, the only thing I was there to do was to keep putting my hand inside it and finding a gear that hurt, and the pain it was causing me, I came to understand was a potential choice in my future that would be to my spiritual detriment. Interesting. And let's put this way, imagine one of those choices that looked pretty definite, was you're gonna win the Powerball. That's gonna but imagine I touched it and it caused me pain, of course, because maybe I become the world's biggest jerk, of course, maybe I hurt a lot of people. Maybe I cheat on my wife. Maybe I, you know, not nice to my kids, whatever. You know, a lot of things that you know, people might fail at, but you could imagine, if I'd had the wherewithal, I might have tried to argue my way. Oh, come on, let me win. I promise I'll be good. You know what? Let's just cut to the chase. Here's the pain it's going to cause. Do you still want to talk about this, or do you want to just get rid of it so it stops hurting? It's almost like building a mouse maze. And there's only one way you can run it, sure. And so, and that came up as I was removing these things. I even said, you know, I turned around and saw this huge growing pile of gears. And I said, it looks like if I don't have a bad life, I have no life at all. And the voice said, your number of breaths are already counted. I will worry about your last one. And I said, I don't even know where, when these futures happen. It said it's not important, just have faith in the grand design. And at one point, it said to me, for those who make poor use of their choices, offering fewer possibilities, could be called Mercy.

Alex Ferrari 33:49
Interesting. Oh, that's powerful. Yeah, that is beautiful.

Jim Bruton 33:54
And so if somebody says, Oh, he's hallucinating due to being in a comb, I'm saying, Okay, I have two bookends of amnesia, one that's two days before my crash, and one that's a week after my crash when I came out of the coma. And they both book in this most lucid moment in my life I've ever had. Explain that to me. Sure, I can't be making this stuff up. I really just don't believe it. And anyway, this is the type of conversation we had, and what else happened while you were there? Mostly it was just me removing one gear after another. While I'm having this conversation in between,

Alex Ferrari 34:32
What was going to happen in those gears? Or did you just feel it?

Jim Bruton 34:35
I was only in a couple of cases do I remember seeing it was all by feel

Alex Ferrari 34:41
That's the thing that I understand from the other side, that the the way that we communicate is is instant, and there is an in it's so difficult to explain, but there is an understanding without knowing. It's just you just it's not that you're not knowing, but you can't see. It. There's no explanation for it. You just go, oh, that's Bob, and Bob's having this.

Jim Bruton 35:04
It's like this here, I can look at you, okay, I know Alex is a man, sure, over there. If I don't have to ask you how you feel about something, I look at Joe, and I know you can see the life and things. You can see the health and things. Did you see, by the way, besides the egg, no, that's all I was just focused on. Was reaching around in these gears, in some cases, reaching up here, where I didn't even see them. I just felt something hurt, and I pulled it out and threw it away, and it all spun around again. And that's actually after what seemed like 10,000 times I did this, it I finally it was almost getting to be like torture. Remember, I said every time I removed when all the gears had to spin around to account for the loss of one. There can't be a gap in the universe, so it has to refit itself. And it was getting to be like torture, just to watch this thing spin around over and over and over and over again. In other words, it was so many times that it just became so important what all of these probabilities actually were.

Alex Ferrari 36:01
So you pulled out basically all the bad decisions that you were.

Jim Bruton 36:06
I pulled out a lot, and I pulled out enough until I felt I just couldn't stand it anymore. Of looking at all these spinning around over and over and over again, I mean, it's like, just imagine looking this, no, no wind over and over.

Alex Ferrari 36:20
Didn't but did you hear so you only heard the voice. You never saw a being or anything like that. You just heard it and you understood there's never fear,

Jim Bruton 36:29
No. Well, that's something I want to speak to back in the beginning, when it said, you know you're standing in the in between. And I said that, you know, doesn't I'm having a hard time understanding it. Said, Well, do you remember the body the world to which your body belongs? And I really tried, and I said, No. Said, then you see the truth and how the past is dust. Because I had no memory of this place. I had no memory of a family. If you'd come up and said, Jim, if you stay here any longer, you can't go back. I'd say, go back. Where to your family? What family? What's a family? I had no memory of this place as I've studied it. It's as if. And I say it's as if because, you know, think I'm a scholar. No, I was depersonalized down to zero. I didn't have a sense of who I was. If you'd asked me what my name was, I didn't know. I'm just a conscious being. Let me ask you, and it's okay if you say no, but a lot of times when you have a sudden surprise, for example, like you're driving down the road and you almost have a bad accident, you know, when I've had that happen to me before in all my travels, because you can imagine that kind of crazy stuff might happen a lot. I noticed my mind sort of split into two. There's one part that is the active mind dealing with avoiding the car wreck or putting on the brakes or whatever, right? But there was this other part of my mind that was just silent and observing, no judgment, no fear, no reaction, no anger at whoever pulled that right, just watching. And I've talked to a few people who've also experienced something like that, and I it's as if this were the silent watching part of me and the act of mine was left behind in the coma because it wasn't needed over there. And honestly, because of that wiping clean what seemed to be any shade of personality, what I brought back was an incredible sense of detachment. It's as if that cut at the roots of so much of my attachment here, and that's continual. That's continued to be a part of my journey is discovering the interesting lack of attachment. Or to watch attachments, it's like each one of them has their own little gas tank, and they're all running on fume. Now you can imagine some attachments that go deep or long in your life have the bigger gas tank so it has more fumes it can run on before it quits, some things which might be no more than, Oh, I had just found a new favorite show to watch on television. No, they fall off right away. And I find, why am I sitting here looking at this? And I'm looking at things in a way that, well, that seems silly, or that's boring, or that doesn't make any sense. So I go do something with my time that does make more sense relationships, you know. I mean, I'm sort of taking you fast forward there, but anyway, continue on until I, I finally, I think, Said, I think I can live with this now, because I'm done watching this. Excuse me and and with that, the voice said, you know, because it said at one point that my being there was an answer to a prayer I had made at some point. And I think that was simply, you know, almost like, be careful what you ask for. And I'm sure it had to do with, you know. I long to be free of the world, free of the pain of the world, free of the attachment to the world. And I would like to escape the cycles of reincarnation and go home. And it was like, well, then maybe you need to go through this. It was like going to boot camp, you know, and getting your butt kicked Exactly. It wasn't, it wasn't the unicorns and rainbows. No, it was like boot camp.

And so now you've thought you're tired of looking at the situation. You're still not seeing anything else other than this thing, so you're not seeing anything on the side or anything else. What happens at this point to come back

At that point, when I said, you know, I'm I think I can live with this now, it's literally said, um, pay attention to your relationships. It said, Okay. And then, as I was sort of starting to zoom back.

Alex Ferrari 40:41
You felt it, did you?

Jim Bruton 40:43
Yeah, I felt like I was zooming back,

Alex Ferrari 40:44
Pulling someone's pull. Something was pulling you back,

Jim Bruton 40:46
Yeah, like I was coming back here. And it said, you know, all choices have unintended consequences, but live life in celebration the individual spirit, and pay more attention to your relationships. That seemed to be a real key point. It wanted to say to me. And with that, you know, I just sort of took everything in, and yeah, and then I came back. However, I can say this, that when I came out of the coma, based on, you know, my loved ones around me talking about how I was, I would say it was a full week before I actually had a functioning mind, and that was already when I'd been moved to a rehabilitation hospital.

Alex Ferrari 41:26
So you came back in the middle of the coma, or did you come back when you woke up?

Jim Bruton 41:31
So, so I came out of the coma. Let's I was in a coma for a week.

Alex Ferrari 41:34
When did your soul come back into your body?

Jim Bruton 41:36
That's hard to say. Okay, I mean, I would say somewhere between when I came out of the coma, probably then, but my mind itself wasn't functioning for a week. I don't have a memory until a week after, and that was in the rehab hospital. And I can remember the first coming. It's almost as if I were opening my eyes for the first time. Though, apparently my eyes were open before, because he almost carrying on with people. But I remember in the rehab hospital, laying there. It's as if I did this, and I'm now here, I'm back, and I remember basically feeling pretty good, but I remember the memory of being in the in between was just cycling over and over in my mind, like I'm not letting you go, I'm going to go over and over in your head, and with each iteration, there was more detail, there was more of an emotional impact. And I was like, What the heck is this, you know? And I knew, I knew I'd had an out of body experience. I wasn't sure I understood the difference between out of body experience and a near death experience, even though, to me, one's probably a subset of the other. And I remember just looking around and, you know, people were in the room and doing stuff and and that seven weeks I was in the hospital until I went home, believe it or not, only seven weeks after all, that was, was actually pretty nice time. You know, at some point I said to the nurse, I said, this may not be the vacation I wanted, but it might be the one I needed. But what's nice is there was this, yeah, how you might have three shifts of nurses, and if you want to stop me and ask a question of going any other direction, by all means. But as I'm taking everybody in, I realized that the the A team was that first shift in the day, like nine to five, right? Man, they were 18, and there was this one. Her name was Jen, and she was super sharp. And I remember one day she just sat there and got really close to my face and studied. And I go, What are you doing? She goes, Well, you're you were cut like this, and you also had a stick sticking through your mouth. But this was all torn up, and it was actually just hanging down. You couldn't have made you a you had.

Alex Ferrari 43:50
How old are you in this?

Jim Bruton 43:51
I'm 60.

Alex Ferrari 43:52
No. How old were you then?

Jim Bruton 43:53
60. I'm 67 now.

Alex Ferrari 43:55
Oh, someone happened about seven years ago.

Jim Bruton 43:57
Yeah. Oh, wow. Well, it was in 2016 Coming up on eight, yeah. So anyway, she said she was studying. He said they really did a good job of putting you back together there. And even now you can in the right light, you can see this scar down here, something like a German fencing scar or something, but, but, yeah, I didn't even know. I wouldn't have, I still wouldn't have known to this day, if somebody hadn't told me, it was pretty amazing. So one day, I just looked at her and I said, Can I just share with you something that's going on in my head? And I noticed that it seemed like sometimes she was just kind of hanging out in the room, like she just kind of like hanging out with me, or energy talk about life, or whatever. She said, Sure, and she just kind of leaned over on the thing and just was ready. And I told her my experience with the in between, and toward the end, she started crying. I said, Why are you crying? And she said, because I don't want you to die. Since I was talking about death, right, and going where the dead go. And I said, we were a nurse. In a hospital, you must see death all the time. And she said, Yeah, but you're magical. And I said, Well, where are you getting that from? He said, Well, you you know how all the doctors are busy. All the medical staff is busy. All the patients here might get 15 minutes of their doctor's time every day. For some reason, you have three to five doctors in here for up to an hour and a half. And I walked by because I'm snooping, and said, y'all are talking about all kinds of things about life and anything but your medical case, and they want to be in here with you. One wants to have you in business with him so bad. He has you on international phone calls at night with your leg up in the air in its cage. She says, I've never seen anything like this,

Alex Ferrari 45:43
So you started to see the change in people around you.

Jim Bruton 45:46
It's as if almost like a reverse empathy, almost like a projection of empathy, like people feel, instead of empathy, where I feel connected to you. It's like, imagine something's happening. You feel super connected to me. And I remember one night on the overnight shift, this matronly nurse that would go around. She was very quiet, very nice. I remember like 2am sitting there, like watching CNN or something, because that was the 2016 presidential so of course, I'm going to kind of watch that and see what's going on. And when I saw her coming in there, I'd like pretended to be asleep, right? And she actually reached over and kissed me on my forehead. Oh, it was just such a sweet thing. And that's how fascinating. It was. Really interesting to see when people, and I remember now and then these guys, big, strong guys who could carry me, would come in with, you know, their ambulance outside to take me over to a specialist or something to look at my back or look at my leg or whatever. And my wife, at the time, had pasted this picture on the wall of what she thought was the best version of myself, and that was me in northern Afghanistan, smoke and cigars, gun running for Joint Special Operations Command to the Northern Alliance when I wasn't doing NBC, reporting the very interesting, yeah, it was like a double life in that case. So that's the, that's who she thought I She wanted me to heal back to right? And, man, I looked at that patient, I thought, who's that guy? That guy died in the crash, you know? And I'm not that person anymore. And, but, you know, these guys come in a lot of more ex military, you know, they were big and strong and really cool guys. And they would say, Oh, now you got to tell the story, right? And so they would respond to that, you know, and like, we were early guys, yeah, we Yeah. We'd be like, brothers, you know, in arms and stuff like this. And it was really an interesting experience. And

Alex Ferrari 47:34
There wasn't, there wasn't a time that you kept this in the closet. There was because a lot of end years hold on to sometimes for decades,

Jim Bruton 47:42
I felt this thing trying to push itself out of my pores. Why did this happen to you? I think it's it was the next natural step in my spiritual evolution.

Alex Ferrari 47:53
I think is this part of your soul time?

Jim Bruton 47:55
I'm sure it was because I think, I think if you look at it from the outside, it could look like a random event, right? No, you're playing quit, or, you know, you, you got hit by a bus, or you, you fell down the stairs, or you had the cancer, or something like that, and this happened to you. But I think if you could look at it from within internally, I think it would, they would all look like this is the next most natural step in your spiritual evolution. Is this bump, this kick in the butt, or this jump start? Because I'll tell you, you've heard this too, when you were talking to people about the Eastern path and meditating and rising above the body. Nothing. Does it like experience? Yeah. I mean, before that, it's just intellectual knowledge and if you live a life according to you know, an ascetic or someone who's on that path, you know, as you filter what you see and experience through life in in ways that are meaningful to that path, it means you start to see the world a certain way, for sure. But when is it you actually have that jump? A lot of times? It's supposed to be at the point of initiation, when you're giving your mantra and the guru takes you on as a disciple. So, oh, okay, now I've had a taste of the other side. I've seen a glimpse of the other side. Now I know where I'm going. And wow, and it's real. I remember one time hearing story that this, this one guy who was searching for a guru, searching for an experience. You know, he was there was like, some big Banda in India, and he was like, oh, man, there's all these gurus, and some are riding in on elephants, or some are walking in with staff, and they all have an entourage. And he was talking this one guru. He says, How do you choose? How do you know, and the group said, you can't, and you don't. He said, So what do I do? He said, Do this. As you walk around, you listen to the different gurus talking about, you know, life here in the Grand beyond. Just feel which one kind of has a resonance with you, which one just kind of sounds. A little more right than the others. Spend time around them and around their people. Their disciples said, notice your mind in so doing? Do you find your mind is thinking less about the things that pull you down to the world, and maybe it's thinking more about the things that would lift you up out of the world. He said that might be about as good as it gets for a while. Just go with that, which is so humbling. You know, it's not this big bugles in the clouds and all that stuff. It's just go your gut. I thought that that's a really good answer. I can relate to.

Alex Ferrari 50:40
So let me ask you, Jim, if there's someone watching right now, which I'm sure they are, who are in the process of losing somebody, or they themselves know that they are coming to a close in this incarnation. For whatever reason, what words can you give them, from your experience and your point of view to comfort either one of them?

Jim Bruton 51:06
I'll say this I, first of all, I believe that, and this is if people are reflecting about loved ones who've been taken, I think I was jerked out of my body before the crash. And I think I've heard about this a lot of times with triple so anything you know, if someone you know was in a car crash or something like that, I would say it's good chance they weren't there when it finally stopped. Yeah, they don't. They don't. They're not the very end exactly, it wasn't needed. And that's, that's mercy, right on the other side, if you know you're going, I mean, it's almost like whether your path is one of religion or one of spirituality. I'd say it's gonna be less of a surprise if you believe in be an atheist if you want, because when you get to the other side, you'll realize, Oh, I was just here, yeah, because this lifetime is just a wink in eternity. And if you were even sitting there arguing with God, like this time, I want to go down and live the life of a drug lord, because I like the cars, I like the suits, I like the women, I like the money, I like the power. Guy would say, well, go try it and see how it works out for you, and then come back and we'll compare notes, because I'm not going anywhere, and it would be about that important now, like playing a video game, exactly. I would say that for me, I would really characterize this like we were talking about changing channels. When you watch a show on television, let's say you get bored with watching something, you change the channel. Now you're looking at the new program, right? How much are you thinking about the old program? Zero? It doesn't even exist.

Alex Ferrari 52:39
That hits true to me, because you're absolutely when you're done with an episode of Friends, or of whatever you're watching, when you move on to the next show,

Jim Bruton 52:50
Flick, over to Seinfeld, or whatever you know you're engrossed in that you're absorbed in that

Alex Ferrari 52:54
The old one, there might be a flicker of memory, or maybe, if there's something really memorable, you'd remember a joke you would say to somebody later, but exactly, but your focus at that moment, it doesn't matter. That's how it is. And if a date goes by, you absolutely Forget it.

Jim Bruton 53:08
That's how it is. You literally just change channels. You're here, and then you're not here. It's devastating for the people left behind you, for you like, oh, but I'm out of here.

Alex Ferrari 53:18
But Jim, the thing is this, though, that while we're here, the this reality, this construct, you and I are both very good fans of Friends of the matrix is so real. Yeah, it's kind of like when cipher was eating the steak. You know, I know the steak doesn't it's not real, right? And, you know, and I know I'm just putting ones and zeros, but I don't care. This is so real, it's hard to

Jim Bruton 53:45
Try this the inherent truth in this is that things live because our attention gives them life. All right, you and I have both been young men at one time, and you know, if we said, oh, there's this sports car, I'd really like to go, or my first car. I don't care if it's an old beetle, you know, but there's this first car, right? Or maybe there's this at Christmas, there's this toy I really want. The only reason it lived was because you gave it your attention. The only reason that car was the hottest thing in the world that you had to have was because your attention fed that the only reason we had to have that toy at Christmas or our birthday was because our attention fed that three months later, it's on. The toy is under the bed, gathering dust. We've moved on to something else. The first little scratch we get on the car, the bubble popped, and now we're okay,

Alex Ferrari 54:41
By the way, no teenager should ever have a new car. Not one teenager should have any sort of new car. Agree with you, not even a fancy Yeah, no new car. I agree.

Jim Bruton 54:52
I agree. But you can see how the attention is what gives things life, and the attention is what, and that sense of. It has life is what creates that sense of attachment. And it's to these things we are attached,

Alex Ferrari 55:05
But we are creators. We are the ones creating our reality with our thoughts. You know, a lot of people think of that as just manifestation or the secret or that kind of stuff, but we are co creators with source, with God, on what we are trying to explore down here in a life,

Jim Bruton 55:26
And I think that's part of it. Let's face it, it's like everybody came down to Disneyland and they're here to ride the rides. So it's somewhere scary. Some are scary. But the thing is, you know, when we're a little hard on ourselves and we're trying to be an ascetic and like, well, we shouldn't really be having fun and going to dances or whatever the hell it is. You know, it's like you came here to ride these rides, right? You came here for this experience. Now, what's interesting is, imagine there are 10 people on a bus that pulls up to Disney World, right? They all get off. Five of them there are met by Disney guides who say we are going to have the best time today. You're going to ride every ride. I'm going to tell you the history of the ride and the history of Disney. And you were just going to, yeah, man, easy. You know, the pass is there. We're first in line. The other five are standing there in their coveralls, carrying tools, watching them go. Because they're going to go behind the scenes of all the rides like it's a small world. They're going to make sure all the gears are working and the valves are working and the steam is blowing and all this other stuff, and the music is working. They are invisible, and the better do they do their job, the more invisible they are. If they don't do their job very good, somebody's going to complain. Well, they need to fix this ride. But if you do your job right, no one knows, and they just enjoy the ride. Having an NDE moves you to that side of things. So you're seeing what the workers are doing. You become more of a conscious co creator with God, because you can see the subtle patterns moving in people in the universe. And it's not about controlling any of it. No, it's about observing it, and if anything, it's about just surfing the wave. Does a surfer control away? No, his job is just to stay on the board in the ocean. We'll take him where we're supposed to go. That's what it's like.

Alex Ferrari 57:11
Jim, how and I have asked this question to others who have gone to the other side, how do you balance this reality with the knowledge that you have of the other

Jim Bruton 57:20
I'll tell you this. It makes its own room. My particular journey has been this, and this is a hard thing to say. I don't know if it's hard to hear. It's almost like when you have an NDE, you've been drafted, you're now a soldier. And guess what? Your evolution doesn't care whether you like it or not. You've been drafted. You've been drafted, and you go where you're told to go, and you interact with whom you've been told to interact. And you don't always have to know why or where it's going anything. You just have to show up and do your job. And that's what life is like. And I'll tell you this, 78 Okay, in a nationwide divorce rate of about 53% which means, drive through your neighborhood, every other house has fallen apart within the ears at 78% 50% increase over normal meaning, like three out of four houses. Now that makes sense. So yeah, well, that's kind of how that's your effort of trying to balance. I'll be honest, a year after my nde, a year I could still sit there and just stare at the wall for six hours because I would go somewhere. I don't know, my wife Karen, said we're going to marriage counsel. Okay. Well, that was 18 months of what turned out to be a waste, I guess. And when one time when we were there, the she was complaining about some bad habits I'd had at some point my life. I said, but she was, she was a good person, and she was honest. She just didn't know what to do with this new version. And I said, Have I done any of this? And I couldn't say my nde, because she didn't like it. So I had to say, the crash. She didn't do not like my nde, well, that was, that was, that was the beginning of the end. Well, yeah, she knew it was the beginning. And also she thought, Well, does that elevate you? You know, you're not perfect. Now. Said, no, no, secure, and a lot of people would be, and I get that right. I mean, there's no judgment here. And so I said, well, that person died in a crash. This is what you have left. And then I felt the in between, well up inside me, and I said to her, I said, and our marriage vows said, till death, do us part. What happens when one of us dies, no matter that we return, I said, our covenant is broken, and the only reason we stay together now is simply because we choose to, and that truth was not well received. So the eventual thing that was supposed to happen happened and but the thing is, we do. We remain friends, sure, and I we stay in touch. She's She just didn't want to. She just. Didn't see where she fit into my life anymore after that.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:03
You know, what's fascinating is, you know, to a much lesser extent, obviously, I felt something similar doing this show. There's people who were part of my life, who look at it and just are wondered by it, about who we talk about and what we talk about. People I meet these kind of conversations, they're fascinated, but they're scared. Many times, they're scared of it, but they're fascinated with it. Because there's not one human being on the planet who doesn't want to know what happens when we die. Of course, every single one of them do, and not even going into the more esoteric stuff that we talk about on the show, just near death experiences. It's something they can wrap their head around, and I found it to be a gateway drug, in many ways, to a lot of other thoughts, a lot of other ideas, philosophies, teachings that they would have never even thought about. But the near death experience is a way in it's very fascinating to see how others project their own fears onto Yeah, you or me, because they're just scared of maybe the source, or maybe it changes their programming, or it messes with their foundational story that they've told themselves, yeah, their entire life. It's it's a scary thing to have your whole life, everything you've believed torn apart in a matter of seconds by a new idea. Right?

Jim Bruton 1:01:28
It is, I'd like to return to a question you asked a second ago, and had to do with people who might know they're dying, or, Yes, might be preparing themselves to lose someone. Yes, one Sunday morning at 7:30 I had, but between five and 7am sometimes I'll have these dreams that are more than dreams. It says it's a meditation with more visual impact. And this particular morning, I saw my wife when she was, you know, we were still together, and I had a clinic, and there was this, like 10 year old boy, bald headed Sonia. Okay, he's got cancer, and I guess he's our son, and don't really remember any conversation going on. And I'm not sure how many dreams actually remember a conversation. It's more feelings a lot of times. And you know the sim, you know the importance of seeing someone there, they don't have to tell you under there. So anyway, then I woke up. What was that all about? Well, I'm not awake now, so I go down to make coffee, and I go sit down at the computer, and I have an email from someone, a woman, and she said, My I'm writing to you to see what you can say that might be of help to me. It's a certain number of year anniversary since I lost my 10 year old son due to cancer. And said in my his his brother, who was 14 at the time, is really having he's mad at God. Why did God take my little brother? Right? And she said, and I, I'm, I'm feeling sad about it. And I said, Well, I would probably, you know, I went to my dad's grave one time, and there were balloons all over this one grave near because the kid was 16 and dead. I said I'd be that parent putting balloons and cakes. You know, I get it. And I thought about, and I told, I said, you know, you were not born here to suffer. And I said, If you believe in the continuation of spirit, and your son could see you. He does not want to see you sad. He does not want to see his brother sad. You literally tear apart the dead. And I think that's one of the things that probably makes them move on. In the end, they just can't stand to see people they love in constant misery, and they can't talk to them. They can't unless there's moments where the lights flicker, some way of showing the inevitable, exactly, right? They just tears them up, and it would anybody. So they're still human, just without the body they're gonna leave. I can't deal with this, you know? And so I said you're going to suffer for as long as you choose to suffer. And the reason you're choosing to suffer is you no longer this child's protector who could save them from death. The only emotion left to you is misery, and you feel like if you let that go, you are abandoning them. You have to turn that around. You're not serving them, and you're not serving yourself, as instinctive as it may feel to not let that last emotion go, but until you do, you will suffer, but it's your choice now. And she actually called me back three weeks later and said this in some way helped her, but it's true. It's just like you said, we are the creators of our worlds. Very true. So which world do you want to wake up in tomorrow?

Alex Ferrari 1:04:49
Amen, sir. Amen.

Jim Bruton 1:04:51
So that's my answer.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:53
Now I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Ask all my guests, Jim, how do you what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?

Jim Bruton 1:04:59
I think it starts. By living whatever you it is you perceive to be an authentic life. Because if you live an authentic life, you can be an atheist and living a spiritual life. Oh, absolutely. Because how many people are living a religious life, but they're not living an authentic life? I know many. So how can you get closer to God? You know, if you're not Socrates, men know thyself. If you're not saying this is who I am, as out in left field as it might be, or as crazy as it might appear, or whatever. And you know, like Like on Facebook, when they say, live your authentic life. No, no, not that way, you know. So that's how it is. But it takes guts to do that, and it takes an honesty and but until you do that, how could you live a fulfilled life? So I think when you live a life of authenticity and you really start letting go, The Art of Letting Go, I mean, what I was told is, all the force of will you'll ever need is found in the Art of Letting Go. Always celebrate life of the individual spirit for no one, and no thing can stand before the brilliance of a truly naked soul. So if you can go down that path, even in inch, and start to realize, well, this is what resonates with me. These are the kind of people who resonate with me. This is the kind of music that resonates with me, and it's not how I was raised, or it's not who I thought I was, because I've been living all my life trying to be something else to other people, to just get through the damn day, to just get through life, to just be accepted, to just get the job, to just get the wife or the husband, and then have the kids, and then fit into the PTA and all the other stuff. Who the heck am I? Yeah, and so start one step at a time. Start with authenticity, and you will find your fulfillment.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:47
You had a chance to go back in time and speak to little Jim. What advice would you give him?

Jim Bruton 1:06:51
Hang in there.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:53
It's a common answer.

Jim Bruton 1:06:54
It's not gonna it's not gonna be, it's not always gonna be like this. I think that's the thing is that almost like, slow down, take your time, enjoy and don't panic. It's, it's, it might seem tough right now, but life is a long time. And also keep your eyes open. It could be that all the different things you are going through that don't seem to be related will all connect one day. And when you're living this incredible life one day and traveling all over the world, you're going to be able to see solve problems and see life, and see people from so many different angles, because you're doing all these things, and sometimes, because so much of our life is based on relationships, sometimes You get to the Crossroads early, and the only way to hunt is to sit and wait.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:46
Beautiful answer, how do you define God or Source?

Jim Bruton 1:07:50
I think it would be closest, probably to the Taoist. Because I would say, if I were to trend toward anything, anybody could try to put form to it'd be Taoism, which is so formless. And that is probably thinking of it as the void. And the reason I say that is John Milton, you know, from the 1500s in England, he himself said the highest aspect of God is that which is not manifest. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, it's beyond duality, right? And certainly the Dow speaks of this. And I think, to me, the people who are really plugged in say that, and that makes sense to me, because it's the ultimate ambiguity, the thing which we are not comfortable with, as you said right now, why do people get scared of this stuff? Because to them, it's very ambiguous. They don't know where it's coming from. They don't know where it's going. And they just, Hey, hold on, Nelly, we're coming through. So to me, God and the highest state of being is that which is not manifest. It's, it's, it's when we talk about The juxtapositioning of all those probabilities. The will is free until it acts. So it's when you wait to the last possible moment to choose from all those probabilities that you are at your most powerful, because that's when you have the greatest number of possibilities that you can choose or that you can be. That is that state of ambiguity. That is that state that they have not yet manifested.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:20
Beautiful answer, what is love?

Jim Bruton 1:09:24
It's not what a lot of people think. Most people, what they think of love is attachment. Let me ask you a question, can I answer it obliquely, an endless, zero win? So, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, I wish I could tell the future. You know, I wish I had the power of precognition, right? I'm saying, Okay, let me ask you a question. I personally think that we make a conscious choice not to have those things. Let's say you're a mother. You've got your your child, you're packing their lunch box, you're tying their. Shoes and you're sending them out the door across the street to wait for the school bus. Could you do that? If you knew that was the day the bus was going to jump the curb, mow down your kid? Of course not, right? Magnify that times everything else you we would never get anything done because we're too busy trying to change the outcome of so many things on any given day, and yet, what's love and what is attachment? Meaning? I believe if you had true love, you could let things unfold the way they're supposed to, and that would be very hard to do well.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:42
I mean, if someone asks me, do you want to know when you die? Absolutely, not absolutely I don't want that information. I don't want that information at all because it would, it would skew the entire, the entire journey, the entire game and what is the ultimate purpose of life?

Jim Bruton 1:11:00
To escape the cycles of reincarnation and return home.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:04
And where can people find out more about you your work. Pick up these two books, The practice in between: The Art of Letting Go and A trip of a lifetime in the in between.

Jim Bruton 1:11:14
Thank you. Well, I just revamped my website. As of yesterday, it's www.inbetweenproductions.com, with an S. inbetweenproductions.com, there's my story, there's the conversation I had with the in between. There are two links to Amazon for both the books, and there's even a page if you want to send me like a almost like an email. We talk about, if you want to schedule some time to talk for an hour or so, there's a calendar feature there for that. And you know, if anybody has anything, any question they're wrestling with, or they just want a very direct, different perspective, because I'm pretty direct, I know, and because I don't think if we just hug each other all the time, I don't think that does any good. If I talk about, I'm holding space for you, or I'm I'm sorry I hear so much of that I like in the in between, there's no holding space. You're getting your butt kicked. And maybe the holding space stuff only takes you so far. If you're so worried about, I need to be in a safe space. If you're so much into you need people to hold space. For me, I'm not sure you're going to get your money's worth out of what you're going through.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:28
Oh yeah.

Jim Bruton 1:12:29
I mean, learning how to ride a horse is fun, but man, your butt's going to be sore for a little while. You know those saddle sores bring wisdom. And I mean, you know, I would say that's, that's who I am, because it's really about, like I said, your evolution doesn't care whether you like it or not, and my core belief is this, that nothing was put here for your enjoyment. It was put here for your correct use, and it's in its correct use that you find joy.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:57
Jim, it has been a pleasure and honor having you on the show, my friend. Thank you so much for coming all the way down here to do this episode with me and for helping them what the world awaken just a little bit more at a time.

Jim Bruton 1:13:09
You're doing great work here, and I'm so glad to have come in and been part of it today. Thank you, Alex!

Alex Ferrari 1:13:13
Appreciate you, man.

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