Can we accept dNDEs as true spiritual experience?
Is there evidence that only light experiences can be spiritual? That only positive experience is spiritually acceptable? No. The altered states of a shamanic initiation may often be psychotic, but there is little argument about their potential for being deeply spiritual. The betrayed and battered Jesus, dying forsaken on his cross, was clearly in profound spiritual crisis. The archetype of suffering/death/ and resurrection is universal as a spiritual reality.
Here is what four contemporary mystics of differing faith backgrounds say about suffering and its relation to spiritual truth:
Caroline Myss
What is true is, light attracts darkness, and darkness attracts light. It attracts it because they contain each other. They contain each other; you have to understand this.
This is why good people often attract such difficult experiences. This is why people like Gandhi or Mandela attracted dark experiences, but in fact it was contained so light could burst through. It was light and darkness at its fullest being held by these men. This is how a huge light/darkness soul works. If you see clearly, they have to contain both. They have to… how it manifests comes in the shape of the human society as it is.
…The darkness has to humble the light. The light has to temper the darkness. Darkness bats the light into submission, so it does not become arrogant. They require each other, as a force. The light pulls the cruelty out of the darkness. The darkness pulls the arrogance and abuse out of the light. They talk to each other. They need each other; together they evolve, they evolve, they evolve.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, p 14
Reaching our limit is not some kind of punishment. It’s actually a sign of health that, when we meet the place where we are about to die, we feel fear and trembling. A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us…messengers telling us that we’re about to go into unknown territory.
Connie Zweig
I had believed, with a kind of spiritual hubris, that a deep and committed inner life would protect me from human suffering, that I could somehow deflate the power of the shadow with my metaphysical practices and beliefs. I had assumed, in effect, that it was managed, as I managed my moods and my diet, with the discipline of self-control… Seekers are often led to believe that, with the right teacher or the right practice, they can transcend to higher levels of awareness without dealing with their more petty vices or ugly emotional attachments. It doesn’t work.
Walter Brueggemann
It is my judgment that this [insistence on positive attitudes] is less defiance guided by faith, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to me, not from faith, but from the wishful optimism of our culture.
How much did their views make us want to argue back?
Wherever we resist most strongly, that’s where we need to look at our thinking.
Shadow
Jung and depth psychology have given us the concept of Shadow, the concept that all our unacceptable parts are deeply buried so we can avoid looking at them. It is our immature ego which operates solely on the pleasure principle, keeping us mired in what we think is self-interest but which is really our fragmentation. But our deeper Self knows that we must directly confront and reintegrate the repressed contents of our unconscious before we can achieve wholeness.
Of all groups, we had better be paying attention to this, because distressing NDEs are the Shadow of near-death studies.
When we insist on banishing our existential fears and painful ideas, thinking that will keep us safe, they become, ironically, our monsters. The shortsighted attempt at self-preservation turns on us as psychopathologies or other growth-inhibiting mechanisms. We wind up believing that a natural ordeal is really a mythological Fall, totally misunderstanding the function of psychological ordeals and distressing NDEs.
Dealing with nightmares, Shadow, dNDE
Distressing NDEs are not dreams, but they come from the same imaginal core of our deep unconscious. Jung taught that nightmares may arise as a symptom of failed integration, an unhealthy split of the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. This is why his approach to nightmares was to encourage the dreamer to accept the frightening elements as parts of themselves. Jung said to his students, “A persecutory dream always means: This wants to come to me… You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien – but it just becomes all the more dangerous.”
Instead of fighting against unconscious energies, Jung advocated accepting them. He did not mean acting them out or surrendering to their control, but rather acknowledging their reality within us and respecting their role in the healthy functioning of our minds. The same can be true of NDEs.
Hell lives inside us, burning as the fires and torments of our shadow and the deepest archetypal contents of our psyche.. That is what we meet in a distressing NDE. We have to be brave enough to confront our shadow, our demons, our darkness, and move through it. It is not punishment; it is an invitation to growth, to wholeness.
Conclusions
Any NDE is a rite of passage – it is a temporary state. It has a before and an after. It is not a blanket measure of character. Beautiful NDEs happen to flawed and sometimes mean and horrible people, and painful NDEs happen to wonderful people. We have to stop accepting and perpetrating automatically negative judgments about people who have a difficult NDE—sometimes it’s just that emotional/spiritual bad hair day.
The event does not allow us to go back, we have to go forward. So we have to learn enough bravery to walk into the questions we fear the most. As individuals and as IANDS, we are being called to look deeply at our resistance to the disturbing NDEs.
Rather than looking from the filter of our terror, we must learn to see ordeal as a challenge, as a gateway to other realms, as a source of potential pride of survival and deep achievement .
What does such an NDE mean? There is no global answer in specific. The question is, what is the message of the experience to the person who has it? Always a personal question. The gift at the innermost core of the hero’s journey is not always the same old apple. It is not enough to go on YouTube and cry only, “Oh oh, it was so scary!” What is its gift? What is it telling you about yourself? Ask: What do you want? Why are you coming to me? What is your message? What is your question of me?
Like those people of the late Renaissance, hearing that their earth had come unmoored and with it the institution which had been their rock for a thousand years—we have to be brave enough to admit that our comfort zone has to stretch way wider than we are ready for.
What do we get with this approach? We get to let go of the infantile belief that every difficult experience means we are being punished; we let go of hell. We get to learn courage and look at whatever is our challenge, our monster, our dread. We drop knee-jerk judgments about people who have scary rites of passage and discover new depths of empathy and compassion. We take on more of truth and of strength, which can then be passed around. We discover more about the paradigm of the new cosmology which says there are no separations—that every kind of experience is our own.. And as we let go of the old patterns, we move farther toward our own wholeness.
It is simply time to be brave. If this goes out of here with us today…we can work wonders.
[Ed. note: My sincere apologies to you all, and great thanks to Marion Dixon, who wrote to say, in the most pleasant possible way–‘Please wake up and post Part #4.’ We do get by with a little help from our friends! Thank you, Marion. And for what it’s worth, the reason for my distraction was completing the final draft of book #2, expected to be out by early spring.]
Excellent post! Very much looking forward to book #2!
Thanks, Judy!
“Any NDE is a rite of passage – it is a temporary state.”
I don’t think this point can be emphasized enough. Too many people in the NDE community seem to draw grand, concrete conclusions about the nature of life after physical death. But if you put all these experiences side by side and look at them as a complete picture, it doesn’t make sense. My experience in this life has taught me that if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because…it doesn’t make sense. My understanding is incomplete.
Remember, these are NEAR death experiences. Sure, the body may have temporarily croaked, but the Spiritual Essence has returned to re-energize it. The Journey was short-circuited. Some folks may come back to ‘learn lessons’ or ‘finish their mission’, but it’s just as pragmatic to say that they came back because the body was reviving. We. Don’t. Know.
The real comfort here is that these experiences (both transcendent and distressing) can be used as a tool for liberation from our reductionist materialist psycho-spiritual prison.
Consciousness continues, the Life Force is indestructible. What we say and do right now matters.
Our personal Truth is as real and serious as a heart attack – take it with a grain of salt. 🙂
🙂 right back. Your aim with comments is so accurate!
Nancy, I had never before seen the crucifixion as a spiritual crisis but it is so obvious when you point it out.
Jung’s idea, expressed in various forms, that what we don’t make conscious comes to us as fate has been a guiding light for me in finding that courage to face the difficulties that I would have preferred to avoid dealing with. I’d already had enough life experience to know the truth of that statement when I first heard it, so it really sank in.
It’s not just NDEs that can be distressing but all sorts of spiritual experiences. I know I can look back at some of my experiences and laugh at the distress they caused me but it was certainly no laughing matter at the time.
I applaud your courage in persisting with keeping the issue of distressing NDEs in the public eye and also look forward to reading the next book.
Thanks, Gloria. I love the economy of “what we don’t make conscious comes to us as fate.”
Without the darkness, we could not find the light…simple as that.
Exactly, Dave.
I’m re reading your first book. I have a kindle reader that I always keep with me. I come back for re reads on books. I have 16 books in there. A first read is always just scratching the surface of the inner realization it takes to truly understand.
Dave, is it different second time through? Thanks for the lift!
Yes…it is, immediately. Those who probably were just hoping for a collection of lurid stories would probably be disappointed, but forget about them. This book is something that you add up to form your own individual conclusions that will keep evolving over time. There will probably be as many different conclusions as there are people who read it. I can see that in the book, you’re reaching out to help those who are struggling with distressing NDE’s…good girl.
For myself, I see my life review now before I leave. In what I’ve done right, I’ve cared and enjoyed. What I’ve done wrong I remember every day, and cringe at the thought……how?…could I have ever done…That.
Dave, I think all of us surely share those “how could I ever” reviews of our life. And you’re right, it’s a wonderful example of how a life review is never only all the good stuff or the “how could I” stuff, but the combination of everything
Loved this, Nan! The Walter Brueggemann quote particularly resonated with me:
“It is my judgment that this [insistence on positive attitudes] is less defiance guided by faith, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to me, not from faith, but from the wishful optimism of our culture.”
This post reminded me that it took decades for me to begin to understand the meaning of perhaps the most terrifying “spiritually transformative experience” of my life–it was an extended, five-part dream-state “NDE addenda” experience (to borrow a phrase from one of my PhD-dissertation research participants). This was in 1968.
Between each of the segments of this terrifying experience, I woke up drenched with sweat and shaking with fear. The entire experience confronted me with all that my “positive thinking” could not account for. But, in particular, I had no means to begin to understand the meaning of the fifth part until 9/11 occurred. On that terrible day, I finally understood what I had experienced in 1968: in that experience, decades beforehand, I had experienced being inside the second tower as the plane was heading for it. I won’t add the pages it would take to explicate the details of whole event, its impact on me, and the meaning I continue to take from it. But it remains one of the most significant and meaningful experiences of my life.
Thank you again!
A proper response will have to wait a bit, as there are people waiting. In the meantime, I do not feel one bit trivial about saying I am hugging you so hard! So many thanks, Suzanne.
I don’t think the NDE community wants to hear about dNDEs. Not the researchers, not the people in the media, not the “real” NDErs and certainly not the people who go to IANDS conferences. I went to IANDS looking for a community, and was sadly disappointed. There is no fellowship for those of us who have had frightening experiences. People will look at your name tag, ask about your experience, and as soon as you admit it was one of the bad ones, they don’t want to hear anymore. Just to add insult to injury, they might ask what terrible thing you did to deserve it.
People want to hear about love and light. It sells tickets to conferences and lots of books. I wish someone would start an organization for the dark NDErs. I think we need a place too.
You are not alone in this view. I can only agree. Even after all these years, I cannot account for the extent of the near-refusal of so many people in the NDE community to show interest in distressing NDEs. Oh, of course everyone loves the love-and-light experiences–so do we!–but it only makes sense to acknowledge the existence of others. The situation is better than it once was, but that is actually not saying much. I’ve come to believe that for a great many people, their fear is so strong, it overtakes ordinarily good minds and they either escape by way of ignoring or they deny by way of denigrating both the dNDE and those unfortunates (that would be us) who have one (reputedly because of hatefulness, control, anger issues, etc.–you know the routine). But face it–given the choice, we would also have gone for the light.
So, we have what we have. We can either learn all we can and come to terms with our actual NDE and its residuals, or agree to live and die in terror, or burn ourselves out with anger. I have discovered how very much there is to learn, and how rich a field it can be. Not that others necessarily agree, but I/we know what I/we know. I am no longer afraid of dying. my sense of humor is generally intact, and life is full of love and service. And yes, sometimes (at least on my better days) I get past my irritation at the superciliousness and feel compassion for those who can’t muster the courage or interest to do such basic exploring.
This is very interesting to me. In the antidepressant withdrawal community, it’s all distress all the time. Yet, even so, the significant minority of people who have extra-long recoveries, and thus extra distress, are shunned. No one can tolerate hearing that the narrative — “This recovery is very hard, but it is completely done within a moderate number of years” — doesn’t hold true for everyone. It’s way too threatening. As with dNDE’ers, the experience of people on the longer path holds unique clues to the syndrome as a whole (perhaps especially re its teleology). And a lot of wisdom and potential brain-storming is being lost because there’s no place in the public, international, online community for us. Instead, this significant minority tends to email privately one-on-one or meet in small, closed groups, and the knowledge is splintered.
Sheila, at least we’re here, though not in the well organized way that might be more helpful–and which I might have tried to instigate twenty years ago but not now. Maybe (quite probably, in fact) it is only my desire to stay positive that keeps me seeing some advantage in being forced to mingle with the love-‘n’-light perspective, if only to reinforce to both sides that no one is the whole story. But you’re right, of course, about the lost wisdom and potential brainstorming. What might we do to encourage or enable that?
Your mention of the mingling reminds me that evolution often seems to be served by duality — a creative tension between two opposing forces leads to new innovations. So, you’re right — it’s advantageous to have the blissful STE’ers talking with the darker STE’ers.
Re what we might do about the lost wisdom, all I can think of so far is that we need more stories of the full narrative arc of the hero’s journey for the dNDE and the long-form antidepressant withdrawal — complete with descent, ascent, and really, really satisfyingly good arrival. I mean, we have that from people with blissful NDEs (eg Moorjani) and medium-length antidepressant recoveries. but people would be more open to hearing about the darker STEs if there were more narratives that show the (perhaps different?) benefits of going that distance.
Also, if you have even the slightest interest in instigating and organizing something, you could just be the Founder, and your apprentice — perhaps another dNDE’er — could be the Executive Director. 😉
What bothers me at this point, is that we have a collection of NDE superstars. Everybody and their brother or sister is running to write a book. To me Eben Alexander is a good example of this. This is getting to be like commercial show business. Bill Vandenbush is different. It took him years to cope with it, on his own. He finally over time, long after the event, was finally persuaded to write a book about his NDE. I also have to say that IANDS is also pushing this “event”style of agenda. Those who only want to hear the good stuff are NDE “Groupies”. Show biz. marches on.
I’m going to respond to this in a post. (Yes, there will be another post!)
Just got done reading a distressing NDE from NDERF. (John R Probable NDE 12/19/2015. NDE 7859. ) He was still having issues with lucid dreams (bad ones) for a period of time after this.
Nancy, in your experience or those you heard, is this common, where this event– dNDE or a dSTE — sets off a period of extreme Lucid Dreaming for the experiencer?
Laurie, I have not heard much of anything specifically about lucid dreaming. A period of struggling with the issues raised by the NDE goes without saying, which often involves dreaming (though not necessarily lucid). There is such a need for a real study of the effects of these NDEs!
Nancy, thanks for the response. Sending good thoughts on your upcoming books!
Sheila, your post struck a cord with me. I liked the reference to those who are “on the longer path”. Mine is a dSTE. Most don’t want to hear about that…I suppose it is threatening to how their perceptions…on many levels. How do you tell someone, this is something that will not resolve here, this lifetime? I also what I believe to be a brief NDE during an operation…at least that is what I suspect now.
Cherylee Black I think is the one who can move objects now using telekinesis.
We share a liking for “the longer path”! Thanks, Laurie.
Thanks for your comment, Laurie. I’m sorry you are on the dSTE path, and I’m sending you wishes for wind under your wings.
I guess I wouldn’t tell someone that their dSTE definitely won’t resolve in this lifetime. I know some won’t, but we don’t know in advance who that will be.
I have read of people becoming remarkably “arrived,” happy, fulfilled at the end of a narrative arc that started very, very darkly.
The full narrative arc can take many, many years (mine is) — and Americans definitely don’t want to hear that! 🙂 But, just as the dark crisis came completely out of the blue, so too can the unpredictable, illogical, surprising denouement.
And I also believe that, because of your dSTE path, there is something that you are becoming uniquely qualified to contribute to the world.
Big ‘ditto’ for Sheila Joshi’s assessment and suggestion. 2016 looks like a good time to start!
You ready to take it on? I’m working full time to get this book out, and then another one after that, and a blog that’s already behind schedule, and wondering if I can manage one more conference with a presentation. Help is decidedly wanted!
In grammar school, there was one kid who bullied me, and I didn’t stand up to him. This bothers me to this very day. Had I stood up to him and lost, at least I would have gone down swinging. I would have nothing to be ashamed of. Now, pushing 81, my financial situation and worry about the welfare of my dependent family is the big bully that I’m facing. I have to admit that I’m afraid. For myself, I could say “what tha’ hell, I’m going to be dead very soon anyway, I’ll be out of it. This is leaving without putting up a fight. However if I do this, and don’t stand up to it, I will face my death transition holding on to the fear. I intend to go down swinging on their behalf, confronting the bully once and for all. I think that distressing NDE’s could very well be caused by unresolved feelings like this. We bury, or try to bury stuff like this during our physical existence, but it confronts us when we die.
Good one, Dave! Thanks.
Here I come again, and my antics are probably going to get me banished from the Dancing Past The Dark forum, but here goes. Today in re reading, and studying the section on Hell in Revelation, I’ve furnished an update. The lake of mire (excrement) update has people standing on their tippy toes with just their heads and faces above the surface. Every half hour the Devil comes through in a speed boat. The never ending group chant is “Don’t make waves”, “Don’t make waves”. I realize this reply is never going to see the light of day, but I thought you might get a laugh out of it.
I just listened to this podcast in which a woman talks about a distressing NDE she had as a child. It surprised me how many of the elements found in the blissful accounts could be found in this very frightening experience.
John, quite possibly the largest number of distressing NDEs, when simply described, don’t sound frightening to those of us who are outside the experience. There aren’t obvious demons or giant spiders or monsters; there aren’t talons or flames or pits of snakes. As you say, elements appear which are common in blissful accounts–going out of body, moving through space, encountering a landscape or presences–but instead of thinking ‘Cool!” about an OBE, the person thinks, “This isn’t supposed to happen!” Instead of a happy reunion with Grandma, the terrified response may be, “Why am I talking to a dead person?” Something within the NDE strikes them with fear.
In the podcast you mention, what is fascinating is that her fright was not about anything on the “inside” of her NDE, but was a toddler’s age-appropriate alarm at observing her parents argue, something that could have been heard by anybody sitting with them in the waiting room. But because she was able to hear it while “inside,” during her OBE, the incident has registered with her as a distressing NDE.
So the question arises–is this truly a distressing NDE, even though it was nothing about the NDE itself that frightened her? And if not, how would you characterize it?
Dave – really!
Absorbing Dancing Past the Dark. I’ve just finished reading the section on “Filters” for the 3rd time in succession. This is the way to read this book. A cover to cover reading with a “how interesting” when finished, don’t get it (my grammar) What this does is awaken you personally into your own experience regardless whether it was good, bad, incomplete, or indifferent. It also points out due to the reactions and justifications of others, The psych of the world we live in. and how far away we are from living in harmony. It’s a dangerous thing, the human condition.
You’re reading it rather like I did the editing and rewriting. Sure will get to know the material! Thanks, Dave.
Reading all of this has made me terrified of death. Isn’t this life filled with enough distress, suffering and despair? Death should be a relief, even if it is just the end (which i hope it is).
I’m so sorry you’re feeling overwhelmed. Been there, done that. It’s important to take this information one step at a time. For one thing, recognize that if you haven’t already had a distressing NDE-like experience, there’s probably a bigger chance of your being hit by a train than encountering this kind of event when you die; the great majority of reported NDEs and, according to hospice people, actual deaths seem to have a capacity for being amazingly beautiful. And if you have had such an experience, it pays to keep in mind that we live (and die) in an astonishing universe filled with a gigantic range of potential sensations and experiences, none of which seems altogether conclusive, as the only constant is apparently change.
My purpose in focusing so much on distressing NDEs is neither to romanticize them nor to be doing a psychological Revenant, but to help folks deal with them. Having no control over how the system works, I try to avoid the cosmic “shoulds.”)
As you are finding yourself terrified of death, I strongly suggest that for a few months at least you fill your mind with stories of the wonderful NDEs–read Life After Life, browse the NDE accounts at the IANDS website or David Sunfellow’s http://ndestories.org/, watch some IANDS conference presentations at YouTube. It makes sense to me that we not fasten ourselves like barnacles to admitting any one of them, but that we do our best to meet any situation with bravery and kindness. Love wins in every setting.
Thank you for your kind reply. I will consider what you said and read from the site you linked.
Rob
Hi Nancy. You said it is easier to be hit by a train than to have one of these dSTEs/dNDEs, but in other article you claim that it can happen at most 1 in 5 cases…
How one can conciliate these 2 numbers? I am also reading your book (dancing past) and started to be a bit troubled by it.
Thanks for your time.
Well, thinking more about it, you may refer to compare people who had an NDE to the amount of us who never had one… then the amount of dNDEs would diminish even further… but I still would like to see more on these numbers. Ty.
Leo, maybe you can figure out how to get the statistical study we need to get the information! Let me know. Thanks for asking.
Hi, Leo. Well, with a population of 328 million, the estimate is for about 16.4 million total experienceea, of whom possibly 17% may have a dNDE (remember, these are all estimates, not scientifically rendered numbers), which would put the estimated total of dNDEs at about 2.8 million, which is less than 1% of the total population. That’s a lot of people, but not a lot of risk.
What’s troubling you about Dancing? And again, remember, anything approximating statistics runs out about the time the book takes up hell. If you’re looking for solid data, distressing NDEs are not the place to go searching.
All best.
That number eased me a bit, although if we consider that NDEs are real spiritual experiences and spitirual world is solid-rock, then it implies that everyone will have one kind of experience one day in life, so the odds may not be so small after all…
Anyway, aside it I like to think the universe in being “friendly” (Einstein’s question in your book), because if it was unfriendly, there was no point of it in giving us anything good anyway. We could be born in hell directly if an evil deity was to create us just to make us suffer. And by seeing beauty and impossible displays of life and love in a vastly barren space gives me hope.
So something inside tells me that even a hellish NDE isn’t supposed to be there to simply destroy you utterly and end your hopes. Maybe they are indeed incomplete experiences or God allows them for an yet undisclosed purpose.
The trouble with the book is more mine than with the book itself. I myself am a kind of person sometimes fearful and impressionable and others skeptical. I was raised with a strict sense of a judgmental God, spent much of my years dealing with deep neurosis and fears and thus the pictures and archetypes of punishment always ressound badly within me. Never had any NDE experience, but already had some blissful unexplained events in life, as feeling i was being rescued from the depts of my soul. That also eased things for me a bit. But most of the time i still struggle.
But i am still digesting the book’s contents.
Anyway, i thank you so much for your kindness in answering me. And I am glad to see you are still active here. And I really hope you can keep researching and bringing light to this almost obscure part of the spiritual reality we live.
Best regards.
Leo, I share some of that fundamentalist childhood trauma–the Calvinist grimness, at least–and have spent my life trying to find another way to meet the world. It does seem to me almost antithetical that Jesus’ teachings, so rooted in love and trust, should have fallen into the heads and hands of a group of men with such Issues!–Augustine, Luther, and Calvin to name only three of them. All of them crippled by fear and distrust, heavy on anger and guilt. Wouldn’t Jesus be shocked!
I am spending the coronavirus quarantine working on a new book, this one about the whole issue of coming to terms with an NDE, STE (spiritually transformative), or similar event that produces a major shock to a person’s life and worldview. With any luck (which probably means that there’s enough time to hide away and get this done), I am intending to have the book out later this year. Stay tuned!
I’m glad to know you have had some blissful events as “mentors” No proof better than one’s own experience, by whatever name. That’s an important start!
Thanks for writing.
Nancy
In re reading chapter 9, and the Eastern/Western concepts of an all pervading “God” force that we are a part of, again I’ll mention the work of Wilhelm Reich, who as a scientist not a religious mystic, discovering Orgone Energy. This is scientific discovery not derived from religious searching or theorizing. Reich upon discovering the existence of the Orgone (his title) experimented with it. Everything living is powered by it from within itself. This life force is within us and infinitely all around us. It comes from space. Reich was also a Psychiatrist with a medical degree, receiving his training under Sigmund Freud. I personally went through Orgone Therapy with Dr. Victor Sobe who was personally trained in Orgone therapy by Wilhelm Reich. Our bodies Armor up from encountering emotional stress in our environment. This creates stasis in our individual energy economy creating blocks, and restricting it’s flow within us. Orgone Therapy breaks this energy stasis loose and gets the energy flow moving again where it’s in stasis. Nurosis, unconscious irrational fears get released in the therapy techniques. I know, I went through this as a direct experience. when the therapist breaks an energy block loose, you feel it regurgitating out of your body, and you remember the events and circumstances that created it. I think this possibly has a lot to do with a distressing NDE, and also the all pervading concept of God.
Such an interesting perspective. I wonder why it hasn’t had stronger reception. Any theory, Dave?
Because of his studies regarding Orgone energy ( life force, spirit, non religious), He was persecuted. He equated the energy with sexuality. which was a taboo subject at the time. They were looking for ways, anyway to suppress Reich and his work. He invented the Orgone Box or Orgone Energy Accumulator. One could it in it and absorb the energy into their body. Metallic substances attract the energy and organic substances absorbed it. As a result, while sitting within it, your energy level would be strengthened. The FDA looking within it, just saw an empty box that one could sit in. It was labeled a fraud. When one of his associates sent one across state lines. they arrested Reich and sent him to prison where he died. http://www.orgonics.com/blankets.htm Check this out, as a place to start. This DOES fit into our search within the NDE.
What is a dSTE?
Sandy, a dSTE is a spiritually transformative experience (STE) which is distressing (d). Like a ‘bad trip’ or disturbing NDE, the content may be similarbut the initials (the circumstances) are different.
I haven’t been on here before and haven’t read all of it – but is there anyone like me whose NDE itself at 5 years old, was very nice and pleasant, but whose aftereffects (well I can’t call them that, exactly), which are practically the whole rest of my life, are certainly not? I know that sounds obscure, but will tell that later – or maybe much too long- Ha! But my NDE was rather short and not scary at all- but everything after that, just felt like getting hit repeatedly with a 2 by 4! Oh, well, I’m 70 now so it will have to stop pretty soon (relatively), but I’m not ready to leave the 2 by 4 alone yet! I just keep tripping along as if I expected it to stop, but it doesn’t! Anyone whose after experience is the whole continued “problem?” Karen
Hello. I was on here a few years ago, with some incredibly stupid and childish nickname (I was, and still am a kid) freaked out because some evangelicals had tried to convert me right after my Hindu, Krishna-loving dad had died. I’m a lot better now, thanks to a methodist priest, an atheist philosophy lecturer, a dissertation on psychedelics, and a year on citalopram. I’ve come to see most dNDEs as being a sort of “unpleasant medicine” in the way that Ayahuasca is, and have been helped along by some weird Lucid Dreams. That said, I’m a bit disappointed in myself: although the depression and anxiety is gone in everyday life, when I decided to read about NDEs again, my heart rate increased to 102 BPM, because that 2% of people who have negative deathbed visions apparently still terrifies me.
I don’t understand how you, as an actual experiencer, no longer have a fear of death- how long does it take to come to terms with this? At the moment I’ve only got Seneca for comfort: http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Seneca.html
Dear Kid, Actually, it’s quite a bit like my own list, though you seem to be moving a lot faster than I did. My guess is also much like yours, that dNDEs may be a sort of unpleasant medicine. Thanks to a metaphor offered by an orthopedist, I now think of them as “potholes”: definitely uncomfortable, potentially harmful, but not permanent and decidedly not a judgment.
Sorry about the evangelicals. They mean well, but it’s a closed loop. I do like the breadth of your positive resources–priest, philosophy, theoretical psychedelics, and an antidepressant!
As for the raised heart rate, I am completely sympathetic. It has taken me decades of persistence and helpful life experiences to reach a point at which I believe (on almost all days) that I am not afraid to die. My mother had a lovely NDE, and that helped. A niece died, and there were signs afterward. A dear friend and collaborator died, and I got bluebirds in November. And I have read and learned about and have experienced meditation and energy work, and have spent 34 years full-time in NDE research, and am still actively reworking Christianity into something to which I can give myself again. All that has helped. But I cannot absolutely claim that, were I to encounter aspects of my own NDE again, my BP would not go up to 102 BPM; indeed, it might go higher. I think it would be okay, but am not ready to guarantee. Getting past the terror takes time, time, time, and practice. See how you do for a while with glimpses–can you read part of a page, or think part of a thought–and then back off. Keep doing it. For me, that took about twenty years. You’re not there yet. Please do let me know how it goes. And thank you very much for writing.
Thanks for the reply. The weird lucid dreams continue. In them, “God” shows up and we have conversations. Usually, dream God is pretty cool and funny, but I had a recent one and he was much less pleasant. I thought about it and realised that the dream was basically saying “lay off the mystical stuff. You’re not ready for that. Fix yourself first.” So, I probably will let you know how it goes, but, not for a long while.
I agree with you, but hoping it isn’t for too long a while! Good journeying! Take a hug with you.