Divine Encounters Episode 071 | Near-Death Experience Story
Betty Guadagno was living through the pain of her past, and passing some of it on to others, when, on March 23, 2019, she says she overdosed on her bathroom floor and went through a brutal life review before reaching a very different place. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari about the light, the commander and the grocery store where she says she picked her life, and why she came back.
Key Takeaways
- Betty says her experience began with a brutal life review in which she felt the pain she had caused others from their point of view.
- She describes a collective life review, in which she felt childbirth, a child’s death and the losses of family members, and says it took years to understand what it was.
- She says she heard her father’s voice chanting, “You are worthy of all the love in the universe,” and followed it into a light.
- She describes a spaceship-like deck with thousands of souls cheering as volunteers for the transformation of consciousness on Earth.
- She says she was shown her pre-birth planning, with life experiences as cereal boxes, and understood her hardest experiences as part of a larger healing.
- She says she was told, “You’re not meant to stay. You’re only here for information,” and sent back with a mission.
| Guest | Betty Guadagno |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 071 |
| Date | March 23, 2019 |
| What Betty says happened | She overdosed on her bathroom floor and went through a life review |
| Where she says she went | A deck like a spaceship, a banquet table of beings and a grocery store |
| Who she met | Her father’s voice, a commander, beings with a big book, and a guide in a fedora |
| What she was shown | Her pre-birth plan, laid out as cereal boxes |
| The message | You are worthy of all the love in the universe; remember |
Betty Guadagno Before March 23, 2019
Alex asks what life was like before Betty died. She starts with a date. It was March 23, 2019, she says, the start of Aries season, a symbol of rebirth, right around the spring solstice. In her words, it was an epic rebirth.
She is plain about where she was. She says she was a traumatized person who was intentionally traumatizing other people. She had lied, cheated, stolen and hurt people physically. She took too much because she was about to do her laundry, she says, and wanted to be, in her words, real wavy to do it. She overdosed.
A note before we go on. This story includes overdose, suicide and abuse, told respectfully and without detail. If you are struggling, you are not alone. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.
A Brutal Life Review
The first part of her experience, Betty says, was a life review, and it was not nice. “It was brutal. It was agonizing.” She began to experience the pain she had caused from the other person’s point of view. It was not only the physical things she had done. It was the emotional pain and turmoil, too. “It felt like I had ripped a piece of their soul apart.”
If you would like to read about how people describe this, our glossary has an entry on the life review.
Living Every Experience
Then it widened, she says, into what felt like a collective life review. She was experiencing things that had never happened to her in this lifetime. She felt childbirth, though she has never had a child. She felt the death of a child. She has some awareness, she says, that she has had past lives like that, and it was coming to her like that.
She also saw experiences from the viewpoint of family members. When she felt a child dying, she was in the awareness of her aunt, whose child had died. She saw her face and felt her agony.
Then she began to experience the loss of her parents to suicide from their point of view, as well as her own, as a grieving daughter. From their view, it was “the ocean of anguish that I was drowning in.” It felt like every cell in her body was covered in spikes, static and concrete, and she was being shredded apart.
She thought, okay, I must be dead, because she was seeing dead people. She says she fell on her bathroom floor and just started to feel the feelings. It took her years to piece together that it was a life review. For a long time she would only say she knew she was dead because she saw her dead parents.
Looking back, she says, it was every emotion you could have in the earth experience. She experienced all of life, every life. At the same time she had a unity experience. It was as if her soul was going up and down the scale of consciousness: grief, apathy, loss, anger and betrayal, then acceptance, willingness and unconditional love, in rapid fire.
Her Father’s Voice
The space she was in had no physical features, she says. Her mind’s eye was constructing spaces within it. While she was in the space of her parents’ deaths, she gave up. This is it, she thought. This is what life is now.
Then she heard her father’s voice. He was chanting, “You are worthy of all the love in the universe.” He said it again. It morphed into the voices of every masculine man she had known, and she followed those voices because she trusted them. She knew her dad’s voice.
Following them, she says, she traveled into the light, and the experience changed. It was very welcome.
For a wider look at what people describe in moments like this, see our complete guide to near-death experiences.
The Deck and the Commander
In the light, Betty says, everything looked a lot like a video game. That might be because of the generation she was born into, she says, or because we are living in a simulation.
She found herself on what felt like the deck of a spaceship, with thousands of other souls around her. It looked, she says, like the inside of the Gravitron ride at a carnival, the one that spins fast. She came out of the side of one of those walls, and in the center was a commander, like the commander of an army. You can call that commander Christ or Krishna or Buddha, she says. It was a higher consciousness: loving, accepting, leading and secure.
The souls were pumped, she says. The commander was telling them they were the most special volunteers, who had decided to jump to Earth for the transformation of consciousness. Everybody was cheering. She had no idea what was going on, but she knew she was part of it, and she felt the connection to all the other souls.
The Beings at the Banquet Table
Her awareness shifted. She was in front of a table of beings, a plastic banquet hall table, nothing ornate, she says. She did not ask who they were because she knew they were the ones in charge. She does not know whether they are in charge of everything or just of her.
They had a giant book and were thumbing through it, looking at her and looking at the book. They said it was nice to see her. “You’re not meant to stay. You’re only here for information.”
Betty looked around, thinking they could not be talking to her. This place felt awesome, she says, in contrast to where she had just been, and she wanted to stay. They kept looking through the book and repeated that she was here for information.
Picking Her Life in a Grocery Store
Then her awareness shifted again. She was with a man who, like a video game character, was guiding her. He wore a plaid blazer and a fedora, and pushed a giant empty grocery cart. He said, “Okay, let’s pick your life.”
She ran through the aisles Supermarket Sweep style. Lining the aisles were huge, family size cereal boxes, and every box had a life experience on it. Her soul was ready: Earth, great awakening, transformation of consciousness. She just started grabbing.
Her family line had already been decided, she says, because there were experiences she needed to have in this lifetime. She says she was seeing her pre-birth planning. It was good foreshadowing, she jokes, since she ate a lot of cereal as a kid. She grabbed things no single soul has business taking on: addiction, poverty, sexual trauma. She got, she says, the variety pack.
For more on this idea, see our glossary entries on pre-birth memory and soul contracts.
The Box With an Orb of Light
The experience she most wants to share is about childhood sexual trauma. We include it carefully, as Betty’s own understanding of her own story. It is not a statement about anyone else’s.
She says that when she pulled that cereal box off the shelf, a little orb of light came out with it. It was the soul of the man who molested her as a small child. The two orbs came into contact, she says, and she saw all the reasons. One was that in a previous lifetime she had been his abuser, and they were balancing their energy. She also saw that they loved each other so much that they were going to play these roles for each other.
She also saw that because she was coming for the great awakening, this experience was not only about her. It was about healing for every little girl and boy who does not get a chance to heal from their own childhood sexual trauma. She took it on, she says, with the intention that “as I heal, everyone around me heals.” She would ripple it out into the universe.
That knowledge cracked her out of her victim mentality, she says. It felt as if a whole shell came off. Two tons of garbage had been released from her spirit. “I’m not a victim. I’m a divine co creator.”
A Tantrum, and Being Sent Back
She was back in front of the beings, crying in gratitude, on her knees. She was so thankful for the information. But “Earth is still a dumpster fire, though.” She was definitely not going back. She would watch from up there with her pajamas and a bowl of popcorn.
They told her: No girl, you’re going back. She says she transformed into a small child and threw a tantrum. She cried out, “you guys don’t tell us what Earth is actually like.” They answered, “You say that every time you come back home.”
They told her she was not going back as a punishment. “You’re going back because you’ve been training for lifetimes,” they said, and this is a mission. They would not let her miss the opportunity. It is “the most exciting time to be on earth,” and every soul here is here for the transformation of consciousness.
She could see her body, blasted out on the bathroom floor. She said, look at her, she is glitched, broken and needs too much healing. She could not go back into her. They said she did not have to. They would show her the baby she would be born into.
A little avatar of a baby popped up, slowly circling, with her stats alongside: gender, ethnicity, where she would be born, her parents, her adversity, her purpose. This baby would have an even more challenging life than her own. Betty thought she could not start over from zero. If these were the only options, she would go back into the body she came from.
Boot Camp and the Mission
The beings of light were very loving, she says. They told her the first part of her life was boot camp. “First part of your life was boot camp.” Nobody likes boot camp, with the bald guy screaming in your face and a thousand pushups in the mud. The second part would be carrying out her mission, with a team, soulmates, kindred spirits, mentors, teachers and communities. It would be much better. Just trust us, they said.
She said, “I do not trust you guys.” Then she was back in her body.
At first she wrote the whole thing off as drug induced psychosis. She sat up and shook her head, thinking, damn, I was so high, I thought I was talking to God. She went on doing the same things she had always done. The meaning came much later.
What She Believes Now
A fulfilled life, Betty says, is about experiencing all of it, good, bad and indifferent. “I’m a service junkie,” she says. It is her new drug of choice. Service does not need to be grand. It can be holding a door, paying a compliment, or accepting one.
Her idea of God is a source of energy she was sparked from: unconditional love, safety, security, peace. God is not a form, a gender, a race or a class, she says, but an effervescent ball of unconditional love.
All her life she believed love was transactional, that she had to do something to be worthy of it. Now she holds a concept of unconditional love, which she says is accessible to her. “We come here to forget so that we can remember,” she says, “because it’s in the remembrance that that is, that’s the bliss.” Her closing words: please remember.
Questions to Sit With
- Betty heard that she was worthy of all the love in the universe. What would it change if you believed that on an ordinary Tuesday?
- She says love is not transactional. Where do you still earn love, and what would it feel like to stop?
- She calls herself a service junkie. What is one small act of service you can offer this week?
Hold a door, give a sincere compliment, or accept one without deflecting this week. Notice how it feels to receive.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Betty says her father’s voice told her she is worthy of all the love in the universe.
- She says she chose her life with a larger healing in mind.
- She says she is not a victim, but a divine co creator.
- She says service can be small and still be real.
- Her message is to remember that love is unconditional.
Please enjoy my conversation with Betty Guadagno.
Guest Links: Connect With Betty Guadagno
Listen to the Episode
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Read the complete guide to near-death experiences and Betty’s earlier conversation, Buddha Betty: Betty Guadagno’s NDE story.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Betty Guadagno?
Betty Guadagno is a near-death experiencer who tells host Alex Ferrari about an overdose on March 23, 2019 and the experience she says followed.
What does Betty say happened?
She says she overdosed, fell on her bathroom floor, and went through a life review and a series of scenes in which she felt the pain of others and then reached a light.
What did she hear before the light?
She says she heard her father’s voice chanting that she was worthy of all the love in the universe, and followed it into the light.
What was the spaceship deck?
She describes the deck like the inside of the Gravitron ride, with thousands of souls cheering as volunteers for the transformation of consciousness on Earth, led by a commander she says could be called Christ, Krishna or Buddha.
What did the table of beings tell her?
She says they told her she was not meant to stay and was only there for information.
What was the grocery store?
She says a guide in a fedora took her through a grocery store where each cereal box held a life experience, and she saw her pre-birth planning.
What did Betty say about her abuse?
She says she was shown reasons she had agreed to the experience before birth, and that it was also for healing. This is her own understanding and not a statement about anyone else.
Why did she return?
She says the beings told her she was not going back as a punishment, but because she had trained for lifetimes for this mission.
How did she see it afterward?
She says she first wrote it off as a drug induced psychosis, and only years later pieced together what it was.
Is a near-death experience proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as lived experiences told in the person’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate what they mean. Nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What is a near-death experience? (glossary)
- What is a life review? (glossary)
- What is a soul contract? (glossary)
- A man overdoses and meets different timeline versions of himself
- A man overdoses and is shown the future
- A woman returns from an overdose with ancient wisdom
- A woman sees past lives with her abuser after a bus accident
- Browse more free masterclasses and the Divine Encounters podcast.
Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
Betty Guadagno 0:06
So it was on March 23, 2019 which is actually the beginning of the season of Aries, which is a symbol of rebirth, and it's right around the spring Solstice. And this was an epic rebirth. I took too much because I was gonna go do my laundry, and I was like, I better be real wavy to go do this laundry. I ended up overdosing, and I had this incredibly contrasted experience in my overdose. The first part of it was a life review, and like I said, I was a traumatized person who was intentionally traumatizing other people my life review was not nice, it was not a good time. It was brutal. It was agonizing. I started to experience the pain that I inflicted on others from their point of view, and it was emotional pain that I was feeling too, not just the physical things that I had done to people like lied, cheated, steal like stolen from beat in, you know, all of this physical stuff, the emotional pain and turmoil, like it felt like I had ripped a piece of their soul apart. And so that was what I was experiencing. And then I started to experience what felt like a collective life review. I was experiencing all the experiences that have ever happened on earth because I was experiencing things that had not happened in this physical lifetime for me, like I experienced childbirth, but I'm not a person who's had a child. I experienced the death of my child again, not a person who's had a child. My awareness is going into all of these other life experiences today. I have some awareness that those I've had past lives like that. And so it was kind of coming to me like that, but I was also seeing it from people's perspectives in my family. So when I had this experience of my child dying, I was in the awareness of my aunt who my cousin died. And so I was experiencing her pain. I was seeing her face, feeling her agony. And then I started to experience my parents suicide from their point of view, as well as my point of view as a grieving daughter, but from their point of view, the pain the ocean of anguish that I was drowning in, it felt like every cell in my body was covered in spikes and static and concrete, and I was being shredded apart. And in that moment, I thought, okay, I must be dead, because I'm seeing all these dead people, and I'm I'm dead, and this is it, and this sucks. This is not what I expected. It's I fell on my bathroom floor, and I just started to feel the feelings. And it took me years to piece together that it was a life review. I just used to say, you know, I saw my parents, and that's how I knew I was dead, because I saw my dead parents. But you know, the amount of emotions that I was experiencing was every emotion that you could ever have in the earth experience. So I was having this life force, energy activation. I was experiencing all of life, not just my life, every life. And it was, I mean, it wasn't the most intense thing ever, and I had a unity experience. And it was as if my soul was going up and down the scale of consciousness. I was experiencing grief and apathy and loss and anger and betrayal and then going into acceptance and willingness and unconditional love, but it was just rapid firing up and down. So the way that I perceive it is that everything that I was constructing was coming from My Mind's Eye. The space where I was had no physical features to it, but my mind's eye was constructing spaces within it. So while I was in that space of my parents death, I gave up, this is it? This is what life is now. And then I started to hear my father's voice, and he was chanting, you are worthy of all the love in the universe. You are worthy of all the love in the universe. It was him, yeah. And so I and then it kind of morphed into every masculine man that I've ever had in my life, and I started to follow those voices because I trusted them, because I knew my dad's voice. And as I was following that, that was when I traveled into the light, and I started to have a very different experience than the life review, which was very welcome. So I go into the light. And so everything looked a lot like a video game in my light experience, and that could be because of the generation that I'm born in, or because we're living in a simulation. So I end up what on what felt like the deck of a spaceship, and there was 1000s of other souls around me. I just don't have any better language for it. It actually looked like the inside of the Gravitron ride from carnivals. Do you remember that looks like a spaceship spins really fast? I came out of the side of one of those walls, and then in the center there was this commander. It felt like a commander to an army. And there was 1000s of souls all around me. And you can call that commander Christ or Krishna or Buddha higher there was a higher consciousness loving except. Accepting leading secure, and all these souls were all jazzed, like we are pumped, and our commander is telling us that we are the most special volunteers, and we have decided to jump to Earth for the transformation of consciousness. And everybody is cheering, and everybody's so excited. And, you know, I have no idea what's going on, but I know that I am part of this, and I feel the connection to all the other souls around me. My awareness quickly shifts over to another scene, and I find myself in front of a table of beings, and it was like this really crappy plastic like banquet hall table, nothing ornate, nothing beautiful. There was these beings behind the table, and I didn't ask them who they were, because I didn't need to, because I knew that they were people in charge. I didn't have to ask them who they were. I don't know if they're in charge of everything that is or just me, but they had this big, giant book, and they were thumbing through it and looking at me and looking at the book and saying, it's really nice to see you. You're not meant to stay. You're only here for information. And I'm like, looking all around me. I'm like, You guys aren't talking to me, are you? Because I don't know where I am, but I'm staying This place feels awesome where I just was not awesome this place. Yes, I want to stay here. And they just continue to look through the book and they said, You're here for information. And my awareness shifts to another scene, and I find myself with a man. He was again, like a video game, so it was kind of like NPC, and he's guiding me. He's wearing a plaid blazer and a fedora. He has this big, giant empty grocery cart, and he says, Okay, let's pick your life. And so I start Supermarket Sweep style, running through the aisles of a grocery store and lining the walls of the grocery store aisles were these big, huge, family size cereal boxes. And every cereal box has a life experience on it. And so my soul is like, let's do it. We're going to Earth. Great Awakening. Here we come, transformation of consciousness. And just starts grabbing everything. Now my family line had already been decided because there were certain experiences that I needed to have in this lifetime, I'm seeing my pre birth planning. So I'm seeing all of what's happening before I jump to Earth. This is all what's taking place before my jump. This is my pre birth experience with the cereal boxes, which is good foreshadowing, because I ate a lot of cereal as a kid, so I start grabbing all of these cereal boxes, and I'm grabbing things that one soul has no business taking on all this cereal, nobody can eat all this food in one lifetime, like addiction and poverty and, you know, sexual trauma. I got the variety pack of that one give it all to me, and the one, the one experience that I think is really profound, that I like to share about, is that I did choose this experience of childhood sexual trauma. I grabbed the cereal box, and when I pulled the cereal box out, a little orb of light came out with the box, and that orb of light was the Soul of the Man that molested me as a small child. And we came orb to orb with each other, and we came into contract, and I saw all the reasons why, one of the main reasons being that in a previous lifetime, I had been his abuser, and we were balancing our energy with each other. I also saw that we loved each other so much, and that's why we were going to play these roles to each other, that he was going to be the villain for me in this lifetime, my perpetrator. And I also saw that because I was coming to earth for the Great Awakening that particular life experience wasn't just about me, it was about healing for every little girl and boy who doesn't get an opportunity to heal from their childhood sexual trauma. And so I was taking this on with the intention that as I heal, everyone around me heals, I ripple it out into the universe. And so this experience, this knowledge, just cracked me out of my victim mentality. It felt like a whole shell had come off of me. Two tons of garbage had been released from my spirit. I'm not a victim. I'm a divine co creator. I have, I have co created, my experience with the divine. And so I find myself back in front of the table of the table of beings. I'm crying out in gratitude. I'm on my knees. This is so incredible. I'm so grateful to have this information. Earth is still a dumpster fire, though. I'm definitely not going back, but I feel so much better now that I know this, this great awakening. Show, it's gonna be lit. I'm gonna watch it from up here. I'm gonna grab my PJs and a bowl of popcorn, and I'm gonna chill with you guys. And they were like, No girl, you're going back. And I transformed into a small child, like hitting my hands and my feet, figurative hands and feet. There's nobody there, but like, just throwing a tantrum, I will not go back. You cannot make me go back. Do not make me go back. And then I cried out, you guys don't tell us what Earth is actually like. And they said, You say that every time you come back home, like literally every time you come back here. They said, You're not going back as a punishment. You're going back because you've been training for lifetimes, for this particular lifetime, this is a mission that you're on, and we're not gonna let you miss your opportunity this. Is the most exciting time to be on earth. Every soul that is here is here for the transformation of consciousness. And I said, Well, I can't go back into her. And I could see my body outside myself, just like blasted out on my bathroom floor. I was like, Look at her. She's a mess. She's glitched, she's broken. She needs way too much healing it would be impossible to accomplish. I can't go back into her. And they said, okay, you don't have to go back into her. I will show you the baby that you'll be born into, because you're going back. There's no other option. And so I could kind of perceive my grocery cart getting shoved over to the side my my life experience grocery cart. And then again, like a video game, a little avatar of a baby popped up. It was like slowly circling 360 degrees. And I saw all her stats line up next to her, her gender, her ethnicity, where she would be born, who her parents were, what was her adversity, her purpose, parts of her mission. And this baby was going to have an even more challenging life than my own. And I thought, I can't do this from zero, if these are really my only options to go back into that glitched, broken body that I just came from, or start over, I'm just gonna go back into the body that I came from. And the beings of light were very loving, and they said to me, listen, first part of your life was boot camp. Nobody likes boot camp. There's like a bald guy screaming in your face. You're doing 1000 push ups in the mud. It's gross. The second part of your life is gonna be carrying out your mission. You're going to have a team. You're going to have soulmates, kindred spirits, mentors, teachers, communities. It's going to be so much better. You won't even be able to understand. Just trust us. And I was like, I do not trust you guys. Peace. I found myself back in my awareness. I found myself back in my body, and I just wrote the whole thing off as drug induced psychosis. I kind of sat up, shook my head. I was like, damn, I was so high. I thought I was talking to God. That was crazy. And I just went about my life doing the same thing I'd always been doing. Living a fulfilled life is just about experience. It means all the experience, good, bad and indifferent. I want to experience all of it that is fulfilling to me. And being of service, oh, my God, I'm a service junkie. Now that's my new drug of choice. And being of service doesn't have to be some grand act where you donate 1000s of dollars to a cause. It could just be holding the door open for a stranger, or paying somebody a compliment or accepting a compliment. That's also an act of service. The source is all that is as a piece of energy. I'm sparked from a source of energy. That's my conception of God, and it's unconditional love, it's safety, it's security, it's all of these amazing feelings of peace and serenity. That's how I conceptualize God. So when I'm praying. I'm praying to those attributes, and God is not a form or a gender or race or a class, in my mind, just this effervescent ball of unconditional love that I'm sparked from. Love is, you know, on earth, obviously, like we, we romanticize the idea of love. We think about a romantic partner or even a parent child relationship, like there's these special relationships, of course, in miracles would call it, but a holy relationship is where love can really thrive and be experienced, because it's love without condition. My whole life, I was under the impression that love is transactional, that I have to do something in order to be worthy of love, whether it's get good grades or clean my room or be a good spouse or whatever it looks like today, I have this concept of unconditional love that means without conditions, that it's accessible to me again, the feeling of safety, security, connection, all of those Things encapsulate the idea of love for me to experience, to experience everything that life has to offer. That means, experience heartbreak, experience grief, experience love, experience connection, experience everything that is the meaning of life. We come here to forget so that we can remember, because it's in the remembrance that that is, that's the bliss. Please remember.
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