Dancing Past the Dark ~ distressing near-death experiences

You are here: Home / Archives for Uncategorized

Uncategorized

By Leave a Comment

Here is Scottish physician Bob Leckridge in a post on his “Heroes Not Zombies” blog.

The suffering gap

by bobleckridge

http://heroesnotzombies.com/2013/01/06/the-suffering-gap/

mindthegap.jpg

 

I come across this issue all the time – there is a gap between reality and fantasy, and that’s where suffering occurs.

By fantasy, I really mean imagination, but that includes hopes, dreams, and idealised wishes for how things could be. It includes memories too, because I don’t believe memories are like objects tucked into some cerebral drawer – we recreate them, imagine them anew, every time we bring them into the present.

Some terrible things happen to people. Things that will never go away. And those things keep jumping into the present.

[Read more…] about

https://dancingpastthedark.com/bob-leckridge/

After Newtown: Children and NDEs

By 4 Comments

Since the horror of the slaughter in a Connecticut elementary school, it has been difficult to know what to say about almost anything. Unreality is not limited to the so-called supernatural or paranormal, and hell walked into that school as surely as it is said to exist in any terrible afterlife.

What can one say? What could I say? At last it dawned on me that the voices which might be helpful are those of children about their near-death experiences.

Back in the olden days, when NDEs were still relatively fresh as a phenomenon, there was a certain amount of disbelief that children could have such an experience. For sure, there was curiosity about the possibility. At the time, because I spent my days in the IANDS office and saw the mail and processed entries into the archives, it was a simple matter to see what could be found.  The result, which took about six months of research and correspondence, was an article in one of the early volumes of what would become the Journal of Near-Death Studies.

So far as I know, none of the experiences of the children in that study originated from being shot. At the same time, I have heard more than a few accounts of NDEs from teens and adults associated with criminal assault, combat, sexual attack, physical abuse, and other types of violence. They sound the same as NDEs related to ordinary illness and misadventure. And all of them sound the same as reports of deathbed visions.

This post, then, offers a link to a slightly edited version of that original article about how children experience being close to death or, in some instances, believing themselves on the other side.

The Near-Death Experience in Children

 

 

BONUS post: There Is NO Hell — God Just Couldn’t Be Meaner Than We Are

By 12 Comments

As anyone who deals with near-death experiences knows, their reality is often seen less in their description than in their effects on people’s lives. The same is true of any beliefs, for what happens in the world is driven by what we believe to be true. Regular readers here know my conviction that belief in hell has consequences in the world of everyday life.

Into this reality comes a powerful blog post by Frank Schaeffer, who is as big a Name as there is in the circle of writers whose viewpoint began with but has profoundly changed from a fundamentalist or neo-conservative Evangelical Christian background. Here, posted with his permission, is why, beyond religious discussions, the “hell issue” is so important to the entire world.

[Read more…] about BONUS post: There Is NO Hell — God Just Couldn’t Be Meaner Than We Are

The non-inevitability of hell: Not all “negative” NDEs are all that negative

By 48 Comments

As important as I believe it is to poke deeply into the relationship between religion and near-death and similar experiences, as we’ve been doing of late, I’m taking this post to go back to basics. Just what is a “distressing NDE” and does having one inevitably involve an encounter with hell?

What are we talking about? There are psychological events which are experienced as an encounter beyond physical existence. Being close to death is a fairly reliable trigger for this kind of happening, which has led to the term “near-death experience.” In actuality, nearly identical events occur under a wide variety of circumstances, including people who are in no danger of dying. The events may be called spiritually transformative experiences (STE), extraordinary human experiences (EHE), mystical experiences, religious or conversion experiences, or near-death experiences (NDE).  however, because of its familiarity, I use the term “NDE” to apply broadly rather than exclusively.  Yes, that is, strictly speaking, inaccurate; however,  it’s efficient. Bear with me for the sake of word count!

[Read more…] about The non-inevitability of hell: Not all “negative” NDEs are all that negative

Meaning and Imagination: NDErs as Hobbits

By 11 Comments

You may remember (dimly by now), that in this series about religion and near-death experience I have been prowling through layers of human interpretation, in search of whatever may amount to bedrock understandings.

A few days back, something came along that stopped me in my prowling tracks like a bird dog on point. I’ll give you some context so you can understand the impact.

Back two posts, I had suggested that descriptive systems—theologies, ideologies, disciplines, paradigms—provide us with cognitive grab bars: ways of ordering information to give a sense of stability in a deeply mysterious universe. The grab bars say, here, this is the way this place works; hold on to these to keep your balance so you do not fall into a chaos of disordered observations. 
[Read more…] about Meaning and Imagination: NDErs as Hobbits

The Christian fantasy of hell: Getting from there to here, or NDEs, Evangelicals, and the demise of hell

By 18 Comments

 “The New Testament does not describe the torment of Gehenna or portray Satan as the lord of Gehenna. These are later literary accoutrements.”  —Anchor Bible Dictionary, S.V. “Hades, Gehenna”

“Theologically, Hell is out of favor now, but it still seems more ‘real’ to most people than Fairyland or Atlantis or Valhalla or other much imagined places.”  —Alice K. Turner, A History of Hell

Mind you, I’m a Christian, so if you’re hoping for a skeptical slam at religion or Christianity, this post will be a letdown. (My view of Christianity would be nothing like what you would expect, either, in that case.) On the other hand, it is fair to ask why, if I don’t believe in hell, I keep going on about it. Yawn.

I keep writing about hell because, as the Alice Turner quote above says, so many people are living their lives in terror of it. This is especially true of people who have had a distressing NDE. And the group that may be in the worst fear consists of those who come out of error-ridden fundamentalist Christian teachings.

I’ll tell you why we must question the teaching of hell. The very name and character of God is at stake!

Even if you’re an agnostic or atheist, it’s worth knowing what it is we’re talking about, so read on. Today’s post is mostly for readers who are Evangelical Christians trying to move beyond a no-exit belief in hell.
[Read more…] about The Christian fantasy of hell: Getting from there to here, or NDEs, Evangelicals, and the demise of hell