Divine Encounters Episode 046 | Near-Death Experience Story
Jose Hernandez grew up in the South Bronx, studied engineering, and did not believe in God when, he says, he could not breathe in a hospital bed at 12:31 in the morning and his heart stopped. In this Divine Encounters episode he tells Alex Ferrari about the fear he was trained never to show, the feminine presence who touched him, the memories that made him weep with gratitude, and a hug with his father he says he finally got.
Key Takeaways
- Jose says he grew up in a world where men compete, never show fear and never cry, and that he believed everything was his: his house, his car, his wife, his kids.
- He describes a workplace accident that broke the ribs on one side, followed by weeks of worsening breathing and a hospital night when his heart stopped.
- His strongest feeling in the emergency was fear, and a longing for someone to hold his hand. He says he bargained with a God he did not believe in, then got angry.
- He says a shadow with a feminine energy touched him, and he found himself standing in a corner of the room watching the team work on his body.
- He describes feeling deep gratitude toward his body and being shown ordinary memories, like holding his daughter’s hand, as the real treasures of life.
- He says he met his father on a beach, heard “I was so proud of you,” and hugged him for the first time.
| Guest | Jose Hernandez |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 046 |
| Background | Grew up in the South Bronx; studied engineering; worked running electrical lines |
| What Jose says happened | After weeks of worsening breathing, his heart stopped in a hospital room around 2 a.m. |
| Where he says he went | A sphere of living color, then a forest, mountains, the sun and a beach |
| Who he met | A feminine presence and his father, who had died five years earlier |
| Time away | Five minutes by the hospital clock; about a day and a half, he says, in the experience |
| The message | We all need to be loved; the good feeling is what you hold on to |
Growing Up in the South Bronx
Jose grew up in the South Bronx, which he calls a very difficult neighborhood. As a Latino man, he says, there were visions of what a man should be and how he should look. His father taught the family how to survive, in his mind, as a way of justifying his behavior. His father’s life was complicated: his mother was indigenous and he wanted to disguise that, thinking it would not help him, and he had come from Puerto Rico to New York with a language barrier.
Jose was a little lucky. He was taken into a college-bound program, studied engineering and, as he puts it, got out of the hood. But he was living in a world where men compete and climb the ladder, and there was the acquisition of stuff, with a philosophy that everything belonged to him. It was his house, his car, his wife, his kids. He thought that was what was expected, and he thought he was doing the right thing.
The Bucket, the Tree and the Ribs
He and his partners were putting together a deal in South Florida, and while it came through he went back to running electrical lines. That was supposed to happen in April; in October he was back on the lines. It was a Wednesday night, the night before Thanksgiving. They were running late and it was getting dark, so to save time they did something Jose says was not the brightest idea with the bucket he was in.
Nothing exotic happened, he says. He was not electrocuted. The driver was looking up to make sure he did not fry him, bumped into a tree, and Jose hit the side of the bucket. He broke all the ribs on his right side. At the hospital they taped him up and gave him pain medication.
Weeks of Harder Breathing
At home he found it very difficult to breathe. He called the ER, and the person he spoke to told him that, with those ribs, of course he could not take a deep breath. Jose, who calls himself science-minded, figured they knew what they were talking about. He kept on with the medication, and his breathing got worse and worse. He got past the holidays and past New Year’s, which was the Y2K one, with everyone wondering what would collapse at midnight.
On January 5, he could not breathe at all. His wife and son took him to the ER. They decided to keep him, and he told his wife and son to go home, that he would be fine. The nurse showed him the call button before leaving.
The Button He Did Not Want to Push
Jose remembers looking at the clock: 12:31 in the morning. He told himself, “I’m not gonna push the button no matter what.” He is a guy. But the reason he was saying it, he realizes, was that he was thinking of pushing it because it was so hard to breathe. After about 45 minutes he could barely breathe and decided he had better push it. It took the nurse about a minute to come, though the minute felt like forever. She opened the door, looked at him and hit the cold blue code button on the wall.
Suddenly there were people running in. He could not get air in or out. His first feeling, he says, was shame. They stripped the sheet off him, slid a board under him and worked on him, squeezing air into his lungs, and he was mortified, helpless, and unable to stop it.
Fear, and a Hand He Wanted to Hold
In his own space, he says, he thought: what if this is real? He thought about his family and felt a knot in his chest. He believed he would not see them again, and worse, that they would not get a chance to see him. He could not say anything, because he could not breathe. It was almost two in the morning and there was no way they could get there in time. He began to free fall into a very deep fear.
Having grown up in the South Bronx, he says, he was not allowed to show fear or cry. So he had to choose. All he wanted was for someone to just hold his hand. But his head got in the way. His father had died five years earlier, and Jose thought his father would turn in his grave if he saw him show these people fear. His body actually stiffened. He did not show it. He still wanted someone to hold his hand, because he felt so alone, in a room full of people.
Bargaining With a God He Did Not Believe In
Jose did not believe in God. He was very science-minded and math-minded. His mother was Catholic and told him to go find God in church. His father, who was indigenous, told him to look out the window: God is everywhere, the creator. So in the hospital room he said, “God, if You’re real, I promise I’m going to change.” He promised to be a better person, a good man. Then he waited to see whether there would be an intervention.
The team was struggling to keep him going. His heart raced from the drugs they were giving him to make him breathe, then he felt it stop, and he heard the monitor confirm it. He was fully conscious and aware. He became angry. “I knew you weren’t real,” he told God, and he scolded himself for having asked.
The Doorway and the Shadow
He looked at the doorway in front of him, which was very bright, and there was a shadow in it. He was thinking like an engineer: he would be turned off like a light switch and go to nothing, just blackness. But the moment he had that thought, he says, the shadow reached out to him. Everything was perfectly clear. He could hear the IV drip sounding like water splashing on a tin roof, the kind you hear in the islands. He could see the green of the wallpaper.
Then the shadow moved in. It felt like a feminine energy to him. She reached out and touched him, and at that touch he says he felt galvanized, better than ever, with a breeze, a sense of peace and love, and wind blowing through what felt like long hair. The next thing he knew, he was standing in the corner, looking at himself in the bed, with the crash team doing everything they could.
Who Am I? Saying Goodbye to the Body
In the corner Jose asked a question that, he says, changed his every day: who am I? He knew he was not the body. He heard a voice say, “visualize yourself as a car, except that that car has 5 million miles on it.” Now he had to say goodbye to his body.
Something magical happened. Looking at his body, he says, for the first time in his life he felt gratitude and love. His thought was “that body sacrificed itself for me.” It had given everything it had, and it just had nothing left. For everybody listening, he says, this is important: he had never felt good enough, and that had made life hard. Now he looked at how perfectly that body had been made.
The Memories That Mattered
Then he began having what he calls benign memories. They were not dramatic moments. He remembers holding his little girl’s hand, taking a breath of air, the sunrise, the wind, the birds singing. He remembers looking into his kids’ eyes when they were small and the love they looked at him with. He realized he had had all of that in every moment of his life, and it had been free.
He had been worried about buying another car and getting a better coffee machine. He asked himself what he had been doing. And yet it made him love who he had been. For more on this theme of a life review, see our glossary entry on the life review.
The Tunnel and the Sphere of Color
Then the voice said they had to go, and they began to walk together. He fell through what he calls a black hole, a tunnel, and felt something being ripped off him. At the bottom the voice said they had to keep going. It happened again. When he reached the bottom of that, he found himself in a world of color all around, as if he were in the center of a basketball, and everything was moving, alive and speaking to him in a million voices.
The voice explained that what he had felt was all the painful moments of his life being taken away. “Can’t come into this place with any negativity,” it said. He understood he was being purified. The color seemed to welcome him just as he was. “It doesn’t judge me in any way,” he says. He felt that he belonged. He became the color, red and blue, and heard voices telling him how to paint, though he is not a painter.
Forest, Oneness and the Sun
He came out on the other side to a beautiful forest and mountains, with herds of animals roaming free. For a man from New York City, he says, it was the last thing he expected. He thought about his kids and wondered what would happen to them. He says he was told not to worry, and he could see them.
Then he explored, and he had an experience of oneness. If he got near a tree, “I became that tree.” He could feel it taking nutrients from the ground. The same happened with a bird, a leaf, a rock, even the air. It taught him “everything was interconnected.” You can read more in our glossary entry on oneness.
He flew over a snow-capped mountain top, like being in an airplane. He saw the sun as through a telescope, with solar flares, and felt a warm breeze he realized came from it. To his left he saw a U-shaped beach with a man holding six children in a line on one hand and one on the other, knee deep in the water.
His Father on the Beach
There is no time as we understand it there, he says. It felt like he had been there a day and a half, though in this world he had been dead for about five minutes. As he got within 10 or 15 feet, the man turned around. It was his father. Jose thought: I am going to do now what I couldn’t do when he was alive.
His father had a strong image of being a man: no hugs, no I love yous, no holding hands. Jose grew up bitter and angry, and when his father died, it was difficult to know that the chance was gone. But now the moment was here. They talked, not as we talk, he says. His father told him, “I was so proud of you,” when he graduated, when he went to college, and that he loved him. Jose hugged his father for the first time. When he did, he became him, as with the trees, and lived his life in an instant and knew what he had been about.
His father asked him to go back. Jose did not want to. They had a debate. Then he felt a tug, from his back.
Back in the Body
He opened his eyes and the doctors jumped back. Two things happened right away. He felt isolated, inside a body and separate from everything, when over there he had been part of everything. And he crashed emotionally. When he was able to speak, he says, he went back in his mind to the place where he felt completely unjudged and so welcomed, and found peace.
How Jose’s Story Fits
Many people who describe a near-death experience speak of leaving the body, watching efforts to revive them, a presence that welcomes without judgment, a review that focuses on love, a visit with someone who has died and a reluctant return. Jose’s account has all of these, and also a vivid account of oneness with trees and animals. Our complete guide to near-death experiences lists the common themes. We share this as Jose’s experience, in his words, with no medical claims.
What Jose Takes From It
Jose says the words you tell someone can change their life forever. He says he now works at helping people understand who they are, because if you understand who you are, you can understand everyone else. “We all need to be loved,” he says. We all want to be happy and live in peace and calm.
He sees life as a chance to touch, feel, see and love. Look at the magic the body does, he says. What feeds this life are the memories we make, which are what we take with us. In his words, “that good feeling is what you hold on to.”
Questions to Sit With
- Jose wanted someone to hold his hand and could not ask. When have you needed something simple from someone and not said so?
- He remembers small, free moments as the real treasure. Which ordinary moment from this week would you want to keep?
- He felt gratitude toward his body for the first time. What would you say to yours today?
Tonight, take two minutes to name five ordinary things from your day that cost nothing and that you would not want to lose. Say thank you for each one.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Jose says the body gives everything it has for us, and deserves our gratitude.
- He says the memories that matter are small, free and ordinary.
- He describes being welcomed without judgment, exactly as he was.
- He says everything is interconnected, and that we can feel what a tree or another person feels.
- He says we all need to be loved, and that good feeling is what we hold on to.
Please enjoy my conversation with Jose Hernandez.
Guest Links: Connect With Jose Hernandez
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Jose Hernandez?
Jose Hernandez grew up in the South Bronx and trained as an engineer. He was an atheist when, he says, his heart stopped in a hospital after weeks of worsening breathing following a workplace accident, and he shares what he says happened next in this Divine Encounters episode.
What happened to Jose Hernandez?
He says he broke the ribs on his right side in a workplace accident the night before Thanksgiving. His breathing got worse, and on January 5 he was admitted to the hospital, where his heart stopped around 2 a.m.
What was Jose’s biggest feeling in the emergency?
He says it was fear, and a longing for someone to hold his hand. He had grown up not being allowed to show fear or cry, so he held it in.
Did Jose believe in God before his experience?
No. He was science-minded and did not believe, though he says he bargained with God in the room and then got angry when nothing seemed to happen.
Who touched Jose at the beginning of his experience?
He says a shadow in the doorway, which felt like a feminine energy, reached out and touched him. He says he felt galvanized, with peace, love and a breeze.
What did Jose realize about his body?
He says a voice asked him to picture his body as a car with 5 million miles on it, and he felt gratitude and love for it for the first time, because it had given everything it had.
What memories did Jose see?
He says they were ordinary moments: holding his daughter’s hand, taking a breath, the sunrise, the wind, the birds, and his kids’ loving eyes when they were small.
What did Jose experience in nature?
He says that when he got near a tree, a bird, a leaf or a rock, he became it, and that taught him everything is interconnected.
Who did Jose meet on the beach?
His father, who had died five years earlier. Jose says his father told him he was proud of him, and they hugged for the first time.
What is Jose’s message?
He says we all need to be loved and want to be happy, and that what we take with us are the memories we make and the good feelings we hold on to.
Keep Exploring
- complete guide to near-death experiences
- what oneness means
- what a life review is
- an atheist stunned by a life-changing near-death experience
- a former atheist describes what awaits beyond
- an atheist woman describes what she saw
- a woman meets the father she never knew
- an atheist learns about life’s purpose
- 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.
Jose Hernandez 0:08
I grew up in the South Bronx, a very difficult neighborhood. Being Latino, we have these visions of what a man should be or what he should look like. And so I grew up in an environment where my father was teaching us how to survive in his mind, just so I could justify the behavior. His life was a little more complicated, because his mother is indigenous, so he was kind of like wanted always to disguise that part of him. He thought it wasn't going to help him moving forward, he had that challenge, and then the language barrier coming in from Puerto Rico to live in New York, and the language is suddenly different, and you didn't know it. So there were a lot of challenges. So I grew up in that environment, complex community, trying to figure out how to get out of the hood. I was a little lucky. I was taken into a program that was a college bound program, and I wound up going to school, studied engineering, and kind of got out of the hood, right? But I was living in a world where we were taught to be very competitive, and that was what, what men do? You compete, you climb the ladder, you know. And then there was this thing of acquisition of stuff, and this philosophy that everything belongs to me. So it was my house, my car, my wife, my kids, everything mine. And I was living that life. And I thought that was what it was expected of me. I thought I was good. I'm doing the right thing. I'm on the right track. And we were getting ready to kind of get into this deal that we were putting together in South Florida, and I decided to go and run electrical lines for a while till that came through. So that was supposed to happen in April. I went back to running electrical lines in October. What happened was a very simple thing we were it was Wednesday night. You could imagine tomorrow, Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to that four day weekend. You got Black Friday. We got a lot of stuff going on, and the issue I'm having is that we're running late, and it's getting gonna get dark soon, but we gotta finish. I'm up on the bucket. And what we decided to do to save time was this, I had this bucket going up and down. You kind of managed from one point to the other. And anyway, wasn't the brightest idea. So nothing exotic happened. I didn't get electrocuted or anything, but the driver was looking up making sure that he didn't fry me, and he kind of bumped into a tree, and I hit the side of the bucket, and I broke all the ribs on my right side, so the whole side, just all my ribs broke. Go to hospital, of course, and they tape you up. They give you this medication. And they gave me medication that, because of the ribs and everything now broken, they wanted to give me something that had an anti inflammatory component in it. So they gave me a painkiller that had ibuprofen. I take the pill in the hospital, send me home, I go home, and I'm finding it very difficult to breathe. Let me call up. So I called him up, and I spoke with the ER guy, and he says, Ah, you're all Tiktok. You can't take a deep breath anyway. So I said, alright, you know, and being science minded myself, I said, well, they know what they're talking about, right? So I continue to take this medication, and my breathing slowly start to get worse and worse and worse and worse. And ultimately, what happens is I get past the holidays, past New Years. And this was an interesting new year's, but it was that y 2k thing where they thought everything was going to collapse and everything was going crazy, and there was like a vigil, right? Let's see what happens first, when it hits midnight, all way over there first. Anyway, I got past all that, and I just got to the point where I couldn't breathe at all. And it was January 5, and I had my wife and my son take me to the hospital, and I went in the ER, put me in a room. They decided they were going to keep me, so I said to my wife, and said, Ah, you guys go home. I'm going to be okay. There's not a worry about right? Anyway, they hooked up some IVs, and the nurse said to me, you know, Jose, if you need any help, that little button that's by your bed, and I'll come in and check on anyway, she leaves the room. And I remember looking at the clock, and it's like 1231 o'clock in the morning. And I'm saying I'm not gonna push that button. I'm a guy. I'm not gonna push the button no matter what, so don't worry about it. But the reason I'm saying that to myself is because I'm actually thinking of pushing that button because it's so hard to breathe. So I'm trying to, kind of like, make myself feel like everything's okay. I'm pretending everything's fine. I wait about 45 minutes, and I can't barely breathe, and I said, You know what? I think I better push that button. And it took about one minute for that nurse to come into that room, but that minute felt like forever, and she opened the door, and she just looked at me, and she just hit that cold blue button. Now in my mind, I'm saying that she just hit that cold blue going on a wall, and then you hear a cold, blue, cold and all of a sudden there's a bunch of people running into I can't breathe at all, so I can't get air out. I can't get air in. So the first feeling that I had, if you can believe, was shame. And I became felt ashamed simply because when they moved into that room, they just stripped me down. They took the sheet off of me, and I was trying to hang on to, and I was so ashamed that they stripped me down like that, and I was helping us, and I couldn't stop it, and they take this piece of a board and they slip it under you, and they put you on top of this board. And anyway, there's all this stuff going on, but I'm kind of like in my own space, kind of like not understanding what they're doing. They're trying to they got this thing on you, and they're squeezing and trying to compare into your lungs. And. And while they're doing all that, I'm thinking, what if this is real? I started thinking about my family, and I'm saying I'm not going to see them again. And I felt this knot in my chest like emotional and it was like I was dying thinking that I would never see them again. What was worse was that they wouldn't get a chance to see me. I wouldn't be able to say anything. I couldn't talk anywhere because I couldn't breathe. But in your head. That's not relevant. You're like, if they get here, I'll be able to talk, I'll be able to say goodbye or whatever, right? But anyway, and I also realized that it was almost two o'clock in the morning, and there's no way they're going to be able to get here in time. So I started to free fall emotion and crash, and I became incredibly fearful. Now, understanding that I grew up in the South Bronx and how I grew up, we're not allowed to show fear. We were not allowed to cry. So I am so scared here because I'm thinking, what if this is real? And then I just want somebody to hold my hand. That's what I want. Just hold my hand. I don't care who doesn't I wanted to ask someone, but then my head got in the way, right? And I'm thinking, all right, my father had died five years before, and he's gonna turn in his grave if he sees that I'm showing these people fear. And that was my thought, man. I was like, I can't show fear. They went to the point where I just my body actually stiffened. And I say, That's it. I'm not going to show fear. I still wanted somebody to hold my hand, because I felt so alone. Now, the room is full of people, but I felt so alone. And then I start thinking, I didn't believe in God. I was very science minded, very math minded. I had a conflict. My mother was Catholic, my father was indigenous. My mother said, Go find God in church. My father said, look out the window. God is everywhere, right? And God would be creator. So I'm like, God, if You're real, I promise I'm going to change. I'm going to be a better person, I'm going to be a good man, I'm going to be whatever, right? So I was almost like bargaining, and then I waited. I said, Alright, let's see if there's an intervention. Meantime, these guys are really struggling to keep me going. Can't breathe at all. My heart becomes very regular. So imagine it pumping with all these drugs to get me to breathe, and my heart is racing. And what happens is that it reaches a moment where my heart just felt like a horse was gotta be like I was going crazy, and then the next thing I know, you feel your heart to stop and then to kind of like, validate that that just happened. You hear the thing that was just go be. And the thing is that I was totally conscious and aware, and I'm saying that just didn't happen. And my response was, I became angry at God, and I said, I knew you weren't real. What was I doing? I'm just keep pulling myself. And then I looked at the door, doorway, which was right in front of me, and it was just so bright man, and there was a shadow there. And in my mind, I'm thinking like an engineer, I'm gonna get turned off like a light switch, and I'm gonna turn to nothing, just blackness. But the minute that thought goes through my mind, that shadow and it reaches out to me, it's perfectly clear. While that's happening, I hear the IB drips, and it sounds like water splashing on a tin roof. You know, when you're in the island, like rain hitting a tin roof. And then I looked at the wall and the wallpaper, I could see the green kind of like, wow, what is this? Then my focus was on the shadow. And as the shadow moved in, she kind of reached out. It felt like a feminine energy to me. She kind of reached out, and she touched me, and the minute she touched me, I became like galvanized. I felt so well. I felt so unsafe. I felt so better than ever. And I felt this breeze in the sense of peace and love. And I got this wind blowing in my head. I'm thinking. I got this long hair blowing in the wind, and we've got crazy vision, so I feel like I'm being lifted, and the next thing I know, I'm standing in the corner. This is what really changed my life, this moment when I saw myself in the bed and these guys were trying to save my life. So you got that crash team, they're doing everything they chance to say. And then I asked this question, and this is a question that changed my every day. I ask, who am I? Because I know I'm not this temper. So I asked that question, and I hear this voice my lesson. She says to me, visualize yourself as a car, except that that car has 5 million miles on it. Now you gotta say goodbye to your body. And I'm thinking, wow, I just said goodbye life. I gotta say goodbye to my body type thing, something magical happened. Looked at my body, and for the first time in my life, I had so much gratitude and love, and the thought was that body sacrificed itself for me. It gave everything it had for me, and it just didn't have anything left. And then I started having these memories, and I call them benign memories, because they weren't like, you know, we think about these dramatic moments in our life, and that's what we're going to remember. I remember holding my little girl's hand, Lucas, taking a breath of air, the sunrise, the wind, the birds singing. I remember looking at my kids eyes when they were little, how they looked at me with so much love, how they depend on your sleep, right? And what I realized at that moment was that I had that every moment of my life, my guys here, my kids and and love that moment, feel that breath, feel that warm sun on my skin, and here I am understanding the value of life, and it's truly I'm understanding that I have all these things, and they're all free. They don't come with any cost, any hopes, nothing. And I was worried about buying another car, getting a better coffee machine, getting, you know, all these crazy things. And I'm like, What was I doing? But it made me love who I had been. If. For everybody out there, this is really important. I always was never happy with what. I was never good enough, no matter what. That made my life difficult. Now look at my body and see how perfect that body had made. First time it was the second moment where I just changed. I hear the voice say to me, okay, now we gotta, we gotta go, kind of like, start walking together, and I kind of fall through this whole this black hole. I call it tunnel, and I feel like something being ripped off of me. Get to the bottom. She said, No, we got to keep going. I keep going. The same thing happens again. And when I get to the bottom of that, I find myself in a whole color all around, like three six, I think, imagine you're in the in the center of basketball, and everything around you, it's color, and it's moving, and it's alive, and it's talking to me million voices. That voice that brought me there says to me, what you felt was all the painful moments in your life being taken away from you. Can't come into this place with any negativity, anything that makes you feel bad. And I understood that I was just being kind of like purified anyway, I feel the color moving towards me, or I'm moving towards the color. The sense is that the color welcomes me the way I am. It doesn't judge me in any way. I just feel so good. So appreciate it. So like welcome and so like a part of it, and I really belong here. And finally, I get in the color, and I become the color red and blue, and I hear all these voices, and I'm not a painter, but it was telling me how to paint. You're like a blueprint. You're gonna paint like this. You thought with this. Then I come out on the other side and I see this beautiful I grew up in New York City, you know, forest and mountains, the last thing I would imagine that was gonna be what I encountered. And then these herds of animals roaming around, running free. It was so beautiful. And I got a thought, remember my kids? And I said, What's going to happen to my kids? Boys said to me, not to worry. I could see them, and their thought was flying. And then I started exploring in my mind. And as I got near a tree, what was interesting about it was I had this experience of oneness. What I mean was that if I got near a tree, I became that tree. I could feel taking nutrients from the ground. It was living, being like me. I got near a bird, the same thing, if I got near a leaf, the same thing, even the air atmosphere, I got to experience all these things, even a rock. And it taught me that everything was interconnected as I'm kind of like integrating that I see these mountains in front of me, and I see the snow cap, and it was so galvanizing that I wanted to go up there and see I was like, so I started heading up in that direction. Get up there, and I go over it, and I can see a mountain top and snow. It was like being in an airplane just flying over a mountain top. It was so beautiful and so peaceful. And then I look to my right, and I see the sun. And the sun, I don't know if it's steady or rising, but I'm looking at it as if I'm looking to a telescope, and I can see the solar flares coming out of it, and it's so beautiful. And I can feel that warm breeze, and I'm saying to myself, Oh, this is where the warm breeze is coming from. And I look to my left, there's a cold a U shaped beach, and I see a man, and he's holding six children in a line on his right hand, and one on the left, they're about knee deep in the water. For some reason I said, let me go down there and check that out. So I go down, it's hard to gage time and distance. There is really no time the way we understand it here. So I felt like I had been there for a day and a half right. Now I'm only dead for five minutes in this world. Anyway, as I get close, I'm about 10 or 15 feet away, maybe a man turns around and he looks at my father, and I looked at my dad, and I said, Man, I'm gonna do when I'm dead what I couldn't do when I was my father. I care and all that stuff. Now my dad had this real image of being a man. Was like, we can't hug, we don't say we love each other. We don't have that kind of relationship. We don't even hold hands. We were little, you know, that was what your mother was. So I grew up bitter and angry, and when he died, it was so difficult for me, everything that I'm feeling right now, that chance was done. I lost that moment, but now here I was, and now the moment was here. I looked at my dad, and we're talking, but not like I'm talking to you. I was so proud of you when you graduated. I was so proud of you when you went to college. I was so proud of you. I loved you, all these things that I thought were not there, and then I hugged my father, helped the first time. And what happened when I hugged my dad is I became him, just like what happened with the trees and everything else. And I lived his life in an instant, and I knew what he had been about. I always find a contrast between that, because when I was alive, I didn't want to die. Now I'm here, he's asking me, I go back. And I'm like, No man, I don't want to go back. And we have this debate. Then I feel like this tug right here, right like it's really coming from my back. The next day, I'm back in my body, open my eyes, and the doctors wouldn't see when I opened my eyes, kind of just jumped back right now. And then I was back with my father. And then two things happened right away. I felt this isolation, because I felt like I was inside this body, and I felt like I was separate from everything. When I was over there, I was part of everything. Now I just feel a separation. I'm back on this body, everything not connected to me anymore, and I crashed when I got better and I was able to speak. And so what I did was I went back to that whole side where I felt completely unjudged and so welcomed. I found peace and that. My go to my skate, cold, blue, that ball world. Of course, the words that you tell someone can change their life forever. So the practice is engineered to help you to understand who you are, and if you understand who you are, then I could understand what exists. I can understand who every one of you are, because we're all more alike. All do the same thing. We all need to be loved. We all want to be happy, peace and calm in our life. This is a chance where I get to touch and feel, and I could touch things in a good way, watch to feel, see to love. I mean, look at the magic the body does. This is what matters. And then what feeds this life are the memories that I make, that's what I store, that's what I take, and then what matters is that good feeling is what you hold on to.
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