Dancing Past the Dark ~ distressing near-death experiences

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Distressing NDEs as Scary Rites of Passage

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No, we are not dead, nor even really gone. The blog and I simply got overscheduled, overdue, and overtired and had to take a time out.

It’s not that I’ve been doing nothing, mind you. There’ve been substantial family matters to deal with, and facilitating two groups at church, and a stupefyingly advanced college class reunion back in New York State. And then came the IANDS conference, which went so well it has occurred to me that you might like to know what I said in my presentation, which provides this post. Furthermore, over its three-year history, this blog has accumulated 117 posts, most of them articles not published anywhere else, so  I am working on revising and restructuring the best of them into book form. (Please stay tuned, as I’m going to be asking your help finding a title.)

The conference presentation was an hour long, far too much for a single blog post, so you will find it distributed over the next four weeks (and, if you wait a bit, as a chapter in the new book). As always, your comments will be welcome.

It feels good to be back.

Scary Rites of Passage:

Accepting Distressing NDEs as Spiritual Experiences

Part 1

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Waves not things: the question of reality and illusion

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These most recent posts about the Void have been difficult to read, I know. They stir up all sorts of dreads, old and new, about whether life has meaning, about personal identity, reality and illusion and trickery, about purpose and abandonment and isolation, and–for some of us–about the character of God. The comments here and in my emails have reflected sometimes great distress, and I was finding it difficult to craft an adequate response.  For instance (and with her permission), here is Linda:

A person once said to me, “If there is a God, this is all a joke/game.” With anger. I was aghast.

Only to read this [blog post]–that nothing is real and we don’t exist–after an ADC not long ago with my son? Wow. I’d stopped dusting, cleaning and cooking from grieving the loss of my children and my home, I  sit and watch cobwebs grow. To read we are not real, no-thing is real ires me. Especially with all the suffering in this “fictional” world.

After my hellish experience I learned it was an illusion. But I rejoiced  my life. Many years later I experienced unconditional love. Was that an illusion too?

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