Drowned at Age Two: What I Saw in the Afterlife Changed Everything with Ingrid Honkala

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

Ingrid Honkala 0:08
I started when I was so young, and yeah, what happened at the time is that my parents work, and they will leave us at the care of a maid, and she was this young lady that when my parents were not around, she was into her radio novellas, so the soap operas, and then she didn't pay attention to us. And one morning, very early, my parents left, and my oldest sister and I just realized she's not paying attention, and we went to play in the patio in the house. The thing about these patios, there was a big tank, and this tank, the purpose of the tank was to collect water for hand washing clothes, and this tank held about 900 gallons of water. So it was a pretty big tank. And my sister and I saw a ball and decided, let's play catchacross the tank. And then, because I said it was a pretty big tank, we just grabbed stools, we climb on the tank, and next to the tank, there was a surface for scrubbing, for washing clothes. So my sister just sat on that surface that were a little she was more safer there. And I went to the other side of the tank, which was just a thin edge. I bended my legs, and of course, at that moment, we're not thinking about any danger. This is so much fun. So she had the ball, and she threw the ball, and she didn't apply enough force, so the ball fell in the water, and it was floating. And I thought, oh, I can grab it. I lean forward, and when I touch the ball, it rolled, and I lost my balance and fell in the tank. The first feeling was the stencil. This water was frigid cold. People have the misconception that, because I'm from Colombia, I come from hot water country, but Bogota is pretty high up in the Andes. So the temperature of this water, I don't know, was between 3040 degrees six in the morning. And it was that sense of like my chest in like and I was frigid cold. And after that, it came the sense why I cannot breathe. I have never been in a pool. We didn't have a bathtub. So I did not have idea, at that point on my life, being almost three years old, that if you fall in water you cannot breathe, that you drown. And I enter into this state of panic you can imagine, like this desperate attempt I need to breathe, but I didn't know how to swim nothing, and I just sunk in the tongue. And this is just the incredible, amazing part, and is that when I am in this state of desperate terror, horror, I cannot breathe suddenly from that, I didn't know what happened, but suddenly I was calm. I didn't have the need to get out of the tongue, to breathe, to go anywhere. I was just completely calm. And he was like, wow, you feel so good. And from that, people always ask me the question, how can you remember you were so little? And throughout this conversation, I want to bring that to clarity. And one imagine the trauma that I experienced during these moments of terror and drowning after that. I bring a lot the word contrast. Why? Because there was many things that were like pretty extreme. So one thing is that I live in a house that was very noisy. It was always noise. And the last thing I heard with my like ears, like, almost like in my head, was my heart beating. Know, when you get very scared, and it was the heart was beating in my head like a drum. And when I enter into that space of peace. It was silence, and I call it the silence behind the silence, it was so profound and so calm that I craved that silence for the rest of my life. Later, I will go into closets, under the bed, in chapels, whatever I wanted that silence, and I look why I cannot find it. The other thing, the other contrast, was that this tank was completely made of cement. It was a dark space, and it had a roof. Six in the morning, last thing I saw in this space was the darkness of the space, and when I went into the state of calmness and peace and joy and serenity. The last the first thing I saw was a light. And it was a light that came from below. So it was the sense like, now there is light. It was even now a lot even more more amazing, like there is light. And then this next thing I start. To see bubbles, and these bubbles were surrounded by light. And he was like, Oh, what is happening? And it was like looking at these bubbles that I or chasing the bubbles that I turn around and I saw a body. And it's when I realized, had that clarity, the realization that is my body. But it was the sense of like, oh, this already kind of happened before. Like it was the sense of familiarity, like, this is not new. And the other thing it was just that sense of, there was nothing to fear, everything was okay. And the other contrast that came at this moment is that I was born as a very sick child, and I spent almost the first three years of my life feeling unwell. So imagine now, Alex, I'm experiencing absolute well being. I didn't even know what was to feel well, because the only thing I knew was this sickness. And now I'm like, feeling incredibly well. So when I look at the body, my reaction was like, I'm not going back there. Forget. And I turn around and I left the body behind, so see, it's like this, all these contrasts. I mean, how can I forget this? And after that, the moment I turned around and I started to walk away, I saw flowers that were blooming from nowhere, and it was majestic, and the flowers picked me up. So imagine even I lost the sense of dimension of how big these flowers had to be to pick me up. And but now I'm being picked and I'm being carried, and I just like, oh, completely relaxed, I said to people that give the analogies like going back to the womb, where you're not doing anything, you're just being done and just such a bliss. And from there, just stop playing like that. I appear in the maid's room, and I was looking at her from above, like I'm floating, and she's just like listening to the soap operas in the radio, completely unaware of what is happening. And I said, Oh, that's Maria, but nothing happened. Then from there, like that, in another blink, I appear in my mom's path. She was on her way to work. She didn't have a car, and she was close to get to her bus stop, she had to cross this, like, very big neighborhood. So it was about, if you're walking as low, like, about 10 minutes to get to your boss. And from above, I again floating. I looked at her, and this is the part that blows everybody's minds, and that validates, validates experience. At that moment, I said, Oh, that's mom. And when I said this, she stopped. She did not give another step. She did not she just stopped. And she had this knowing something is happening at home with one of my babies. And I have to say two things, my mom had an amazing intuition. The other thing is that she listened to that intuition, because that's the part that many times we don't do. And then she turned around and she started to run, and I just looked at her like, Oh, why is she running? And then, but at the moment that I'm looking at her, because I changed my angle of vision, I saw a dog, and a dog was at the end of the road, and I'm like, oh, because I love animals, the moment I have the desire to be with the dog, I am with the dog. So I looked, and now the other side there was a park, and the moment I desired to be in the park, I am in the park. Oh, now I was having so much fun. I'm like, This is great, and I'm having fun. So imagine, for me, all the sense of time and space as we know it disappear, and I started to play that game of going places, and when I was having fun, in the midst of all that, in another just like Blink, like that, and a flash, I appear in a realm that was made of pure, bright, intense, shiny light. At least this was the first time, even beyond that sense of serenity, that sense of peace, that sense of well being, the feeling was, Oh, I am home. I am home. And it was that again, that sense of familiarity like this feels so incredibly good, like I put the analogy when you've been working really hard throughout the whole day, and you get home and you have this comfortable, delicious couch with TV and a cup of coffee, imagine just like this feels so good, and this isn't incredible, because up to this point, I didn't have the realization yet that I was not that persona, that I was not that body. Although I saw the body, I didn't have that connection yet. And it's when I had this realization

I am not that and it's when I realized myself as a beginning of light, and I started to have this sense that I was kind of like dissolving like i. I'm part of this, the whole, and then it went even beyond. And it's when I bring the Word that scare many people, but I experience what I call nothingness. Some call it non self. Some call it emptiness. Some call it wholeness, because at the same time, it's like that sense of is nothing that you know, but you're like experiencing the whole and I know that analogy to bring this to clarity is like if all you knew about yourself is a little tiny box in the middle of a stadium, and now you open the box and you realize I'm more than I thought I was. And imagine I was only a three year old, but even almost three, even that little is like I'm not the sickness I thought I was, or anything like that. And and then I enter into in the state of the only thing I can say that you words I can use to describe this state is a state of absolute presence and just just pure consciousness. There was nothing. I don't even have words to say it, because there's nothing that you can describe or you can give color or movement or sensation, nothing. It was just holding it up. Maybe I could use the word bliss. And when I am in this estate, my mom finally arrived home, and this is the other amazing thing. And we live in a big house, but my mom knew exactly where to go, so that inner guidance so strong, and she directed herself to the back of the house, where there was my sister there sitting still, like in the in the scrubbing area, and people ask me why she didn't go, call them a why she didn't go call for help, and he's because we didn't supposed to be in this plane, in this tank. That was our limit. So imagine children like, I don't supposed to be doing that. She's going to get mad. See, this is what happened when we get fear. And then she I don't know if I mentioned, but she was little too. She was three. I was two, she was three. And then she tried to get me out of the tongue, but we're grateful she didn't fall too because she couldn't reach me. So when she saw my mom, she's like mom ingredients there, and I cannot get her and my mom jump into the tank. She got me out. And these are the synchronicities, the incredible things in life. I just say I meant to be here because she was trained to do CPR, she worked with children, and she was trained to do CPR for children, and then she got me out, she knew what to do, and whatever she got, I imagined that anguish at that moment, and I did not feel anything she was doing. I'm in my place of bliss at that moment, Alex, I'm completely disconnected from this reality. There was nothing I felt, nothing I experienced about this physical reality at this moment. But what I experienced was certainly like I had jumped from the tallest building in the world, and there's nothing I could do to stop this. And it was that sense of like, no, want to come back, yes. And I felt like I was being vacuum, like I was being sucked. And then I cannot have you ever jump from, I don't know, a very tall building, or down the whatever that you feel, this vacuum thing that was the feeling. And then now I knew I was back in the body because the pain, because of the coldness, because of imagine the sense of again being trapped in the little box, and that sense of expansive being was now here. And I was very angry, and I didn't want to be here. And this became a problem because I was so angry that I refused to eat, I didn't want to participate with anything. I didn't want to play. I didn't even want to be touched. And it escalated through time, and I became sicker because of the accident itself. And then what happened too, is that, imagine, I came, although I was so little, I came back with an awareness that clearly I didn't have before. And this awareness was like, the sense of like, I'm not just this I'm not this child. I am more than this. And when I was looking at my parents, I'm like, they're not just my parents. I felt them as my equal, because I had experienced that sense of oneness, and I couldn't relate with this body, and I couldn't relate with this name, and looking at other children was terrible, because I'm like, what is happening to that people? They don't know anything, and I could not even get close to any of these people. I even felt like little bit more comfortable with adults. And this is not all. I started to show abilities that I didn't have before. And what abilities are these? I'm telling you, I'm just about to be three years old, and now I can read and write. I can resolve mathematical problems. I can put together Complex. Puzzles I can paint, and the people around my mom, that was a teacher, like, what is going on. There was no knowledge at the time. There was no understanding. There was nothing they could use to understand what was happening to me. So I start feeling that everything in life is actually a gift. I don't call challenges problems. I call them challenging opportunities. And how can I become the master of the wave in the ocean? How can I see the good behind everything? And that's how a life becomes so amazing. I'm playing this game called life. And another thing there is not that only life, and this is the opportunity to remember that.