Near Death Experience Posts

Your Destiny is to Heal, Serve, and Love Unconditionally

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 2 Comments

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You can have much greater happiness when you turn your attention and consciousness to the presence of God within you.

Believe in Your Divinity:  You are the divine spark.  You are blessed and more beautiful and expansive than you fully grasp.  Your power for good in this world is literally limitless because there is a part of you that is eternal, limitless, and timeless.

Sure, you feel small.  You feel barely heard or even unheard of from time to time, but you are large, and you bless the world wherever you travel, wherever you walk, and wherever you work.

Personally, I’ve grown tired of blocks to the Divine while living in this body and participating in the human experience, so I decided to do away with the blocks and live in a place of love as much of the time as I can handle.  My goal is to permanently reside there.

Of course, big goals leave a lot of room for failure, but I prefer big goals. Beethoven wanted to create music that transceneded time.  In a way, he did create music that transcends time, though I’m sure this particular goal made him work harder than he imagined possible.  I am sure there are days he felt like a failure despite all the beauty he created.

My concentration is on the Divine light inside of me, and my purpose of living is to remind you of your light and connection.  Too often, we turn on and off our connection, but it is better to leave the light turned on.  Never turn it out.

Control:  As humans, we can only control our body and our mind.  These two areas take a lot of discipline to master.  We cannot control much more than this, and it is amusing (and frustrating) to try to control others or to watch others try to control others.  Master what you can control–yourself.  There is joy and peace in this practice.

You turn your light out with a focus on all that you don’t have in the physical world. 

Be Grateful:  Out-picture and believe in what you want and rejoice in all that you have.  Show your gratitude to the world in small and large ways, and you will be rewarded.   Make a long list of even small things that you enjoy about life.

I am grateful to have lungs that work, strong legs that take me many places, new friends, old friends, and nearly perfect vision to see many beautiful parts of this world.

I am grateful for the kind people in my life.  I’m grateful for the diligence of my online students this summer session.  Even though I would prefer to meet them at least once, I hope they are enjoying their freedom as much as I am enjoying mine.  I hope they get to spend more time with their families and friends and enjoy more vacations.  I hope they get more rest since they don’t have to commute in order to be in class.

I am grateful simply to be alive.  I am lucky to be alive after all the near misses, the two guns pointed at me (one in a robbery at a place I worked for and one on the sidewalk in Austin).  I’m lucky to have survived the anger and aggression of certain men who seemed to want me dead in the moment. I’m lucky to have a soft bed to rest my head, three square meals a day, toothpaste that tastes good, tons of books, and a sense of rhythm on the dance floor.

Choose to Love Others:  I’m lucky that I’ve chosen to love many times throughout my life, and I wish I had loved more fully more often. Though many teachers talk about loving the self—loving others is brave, risky, and a worthy journey.  To send your love out like a letter without a return address, like a messenger pigeon in the middle of a war, like a surrender flag—this is beautiful.  I’m not talking about need and lust—people are eventually turned off when you want something from them.  Love is something you give and give freely without a return address.  No expectations.  Love someone, and they don’t have to love you back. Love for the sake of love, for the beauty of love, for loves ability to change the world.

I remember when I first learned to walk again after my surgery and near death experience.  I was a vibrant twenty–two year old woman, exquisitely happy to be alive.  My light was fully, almost explosively, turned on.   Sometimes street lights even popped off when I walked under them.  I blew out watches within days, weeks, or months of having them on my wrist.  Time was blessed and not something to be managed down to the minute. Connecting with others and enjoying each moment is what mattered.

I walked down city streets of Austin and smiled into the eyes of everyone I passed.  Many people were so angry, upset, and disgusted with their lives that they scowled back in return. They were often overworked, unhappy, and unfulfilled.  They focused on all the burdens and bad luck that seemed to have come their way.  They were angry at others instead of simply being happy to be alive.  Joy and passion seemed far from their reach. Some women felt their value in society had decreased as they aged, and they were envious of my youth or perceived attractiveness.  They scoffed at my smile.   I promised myself to be a different type of woman throughout my time on earth and decided to support all women no matter where they are in their journey or what physical form they jumped into for this merry-go-round trip around the sun.  Some men flirted with me when all I wanted to do was smile.  Some people were centered enough to receive my love and ecstatic, newborn-like joy as something worthy of a return smile.   Some people were sincerely curious why I was so happy and listened to my story with interest.   Some people felt that divinity brought me into their lives just at the right time–just as they lost a loved one or struggled with the recent loss of a loved one.  They believed that my story of the other side was part of their healing journey.

Accept the Love of Others:  Most people readily accept ecstatic joy in the eyes of an infant or toddler, a tiny being enthralled with the colors and wonders of this world.  Why, then, can’t we accept ecstatic joy from people of all ages and nationalities?  We are all travelers going in the same direction—eventually home.

Why not let your light shine right now?  Why not love the light you see in others whether they are at the beginning, middle, or end of their journey.  Why not love without censorship or discrimination?  Why not love?  Most of all, why not love yourself with a love than never ends?  Why not be healed?  Why not serve others in the best ways that you can?

A Mission of Joy and Light from an NDE: A Special Message for Creative People

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 3 Comments

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Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

Mission from The Light:  Toward the end of my near death experience, the light of the divine flooded my spirit body with its own power and wholeness.  I was shocked by how large and light-filled my spirit body became in that moment and felt a little embarrassed that I was asked to carry this light back into the world.  At twenty-one, I felt more comfortable being small and hiding within myself.  I felt humbled that this mission would be accomplished by connecting with others and reminding them that their own light can and should be turned on and turned up.  There is no better way to be a light and force of good on this planet than to help others learn to love themselves more and to open up to the world with a desire to help, to serve, and to inspire.  I saw that my spirit’s journey would influence others to make thier way through the world, committed to making our world a better place with their unique talents and perspectives.  Teaching is one of the more obvious ways to build the self-esteem of others and to remind them of their power as individuals as a force of good on this planet.  I firmly believe that education transforms lives.

Many of you might be familiar with the Marianne Williamson quote from “A Return to Love:  Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

No one benefits from anyone who plays small and doesn’t fully own their power.  Maybe when you own your power, your family won’t understand you, but maybe thousands of other people might.  Maybe some people who don’t know you will be jealous and critical, but thousands of others will love you for being fully yourself, fully alive, and one hundred percent authentically you.  If you are a woman, maybe some twisted men will stalk you or harass you.   However, I am encouraged by the many women who stand up to their stalkers and refuse to be threatened.  I love this millennial generation of strong women, and I learn from them in many ways as I work as their professor.  I see that they have learned from the struggles of other generations and are willing to live differently and live with greater and greater personal power.

Education as a Connection to Purpose:  In classrooms across the nation, children, teens, and adults get glimpses of how they might offer their talents and joy to the world.  This process is the beginning of manifestation.  Great book ideas, inventions, and business ideas are often formed from a snippet of a lecture.  I love how Rebecca Skloot came up with the idea for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks from a brief mention of the woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge back in 1951.  Skloot heard this information while sitting in a biology class in community college.  This one moment in time eventually launched a different career path for Skloot.  If people dared not to believe in themselves, then the world would have fewer lights, connection, and beauty.

My mission as an instructor and writer (and the most important lesson I teach) is for others to believe in themselves.  I have reached a point in life where I know that believing in my power in more expansive ways will open up avenues to reach more people and remind them to love themselves and connect with the divine light inside of them.  In turn, they will carry their messages of light, kindness, compassion, and beauty into the world.

Self-Love:  Many spiritual practices begin with self-love and that is a great place to begin.  Matt Kahn suggests holding your hand over your heart and saying the words, “I love you,” during times of great distress.  It is important to keep doing this until you actually feel better.  Probably a few times won’t be enough to help.  Most people would comfort a child or baby in this way until the child calms down, yet they react to themselves with frustration and anger, sometimes even turning this anger outwards instead of taking care of themselves.  Giving ourselves kindness, compassion, and care is the first step in being able to adequately care for others.  If we are not filled with love for ourselves, then we are only using other people to fill a gaping hole within ourselves.   Self-love works against depression, fear, and trauma.  It is one of the greatest healing practices, and it is free, non-toxic, and the only side-effect is brighter eyes, fewer tears, and more joy.

Link between Creativity and Depression:  My Creative Writing students ask me why they write their best poems when they are sad or going through a break-up or why so many famous poets battled with depression and sometimes took their own lives.  There are many different researchers who claim that there is a link between depression and creativity and a few who claim that there isn’t a definite link.  Whether there is a link or not, I care about my student’s well-being, so we talk about ways they might take better care of themselves and others they know who suffer from depression.  Self-love seems to be the first step in recovery from depression, but helping others is the step that seems to make the most difference.   Being thankful or keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to train the mind to be more optimistic.

Artists have a particularly tough path in that they must also not be afraid of criticism. An extremely healthy self-esteem is part of being a successful artist. Defying tradition and defying the beliefs of others takes enormous courage.  The journey of the artist can be a lonely one, but it does not have to be characterized by depression.  Luckily, most artists embrace change and growth easily.  I have learned that the artist’s journey can be characterized by great, enormous amounts of joy if I only remember to stay present and aware of the beauty of this world.  My openness to new experiences and high tolerance for ambiguity means that I am more open-minded than many personality types, and I have the ability to appreciate a wide variety of experiences.  In the past, I let criticisms of these traits trouble me, but now I’m glad I live in my mind instead of minds ruled by tradition and routine.  Variety of personalities on this planet make the world more interesting.  I am who I am, and I choose to appreciate my particular approach to life and journey as an artist.  I hope that all creative types do appreciate their way of looking at the world.  Myers Briggs, Enneagram, and many other tests show us some of the beautiful variety of people we interact with regularly.

If you have the artist’s journey, be sure to have a good friend take pictures of you laughing.  Make sure your critics know that you are enjoying every delicious moment of your life fully and that they are wasting their time and only bringing themselves down with the time they spend in judgement and needless gossip.  That time could be better spent liking themselves because loving oneself is one of the most important keys to success. Make sure your critics know that criticism only makes you work harder and shine brighter and will never shut you up.   As Aristotle said, “Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”   Being and doing nothing benefits no one except the highly insecure.

Healing Work at Colleges and Universities:  Years ago, in a large undergraduate class at a large research university, we took a personality quiz and were divided up into groups.  Most of my friends participated in large groups of rowdy students as part of a study about leadership, but I was placed in a room by myself and asked to draw pictures and write poems based on various prompts.  The study looked at the link between depression and creativity.   This is a particularly lovely article from the Atlantic which discusses this possible link and profiles one of my favorite writers during college–Kurt Vonnegut.  I like to think that the study I participated in might have helped researchers realize something about the desperation and sadness some students can feel at university when they are thrown into a maelstrom of alcohol, drugs, and noncommittal relationships without having a chance to do any healing work on all of the wounds they may carry from childhood and early adolescence.  Barely surviving those first few years of college has given me enormous compassion for my students who struggle in their own ways and desperately try to create a bright future while still suffering from the wounds of their past.  They have no idea how to parent themselves in the ways their own parents might have failed them.   If they are creative, their artwork might represent some of this struggle.  I know that artists are sometimes a bit tortured, lovely but tortured.  Perhaps artists need extra healing work in order to help bring about societal changes they sometimes are inspired to create.

Healing work should be required and essential for first week back activities for freshman and community college students.  Education certainly transforms lives, but there is much more that it can and might do in the future.  I like to believe, despite what we see on the news, that the future is brighter and will continue to be brighter, perhaps because of the many lightworkers on the planet and the many more who will exist in the future and work to make our world safer and more beautiful.  One of my visions for my future is being a facilitator for this type of healing work at colleges across the country.

 

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My Story as a Rape Survivor and a Response to the Sentence for Brock Turner (Trigger Warning)

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 46 Comments

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Update 1/19/18:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, is available for pre-order.  It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love your support of a pre-order.  My aim is to help make near-death experiences more mainstream. 

Like every rape survivor, I know that Brock Turner’s victim will have repercussions from being raped that will last for years, decades, and perhaps her entire life. The moment will not end for her in the twenty-minutes it took to be assaulted.

Rape and the years of PTSD that followed did not fit into the story line that I imagined a near death experiencer might have in her life.  I imagined that I would write a book about my NDE many years ago.  I imagined being deeply involved in the spiritual community and learning from shamans how to make sense of moments of clairvoyance and clairaudience.

After my NDE, I read books by Carlos Castaneda and learned dream control.  It seemed easy for me to pop out of this physical form, and meditation allowed for out of body experiences on several occasions.  These types of experiences were the type of experiences I wanted to chronicle.  I never imagined rape as part of my story, and I had no idea how that one moment in time (probably a mere twenty minutes like the Brock Turner case) would deeply and profoundly affect the rest of my life.   Most people are outraged by Turner’s fathers statement that his son should not go to jail for twenty minutes of assault.  A crime is a crime.  It doesn’t matter how long it took someone to commit that crime.  I’m sure some women have been raped and assaulted in under ten minutes.   Each woman carries that story with her for the rest of her life.

As I finished my undergraduate degree in Austin, I studied A Course in Miracles, Thict Naht Hahn, mediated at retreats and on my own, and began practicing yoga.  After graduating, I decided to teach overseas in South Korea to see more of the world and teach.  While in Kunsan, South Korea, I loved meditating in the quiet, beautiful temples.  I loved my respectful Korean students who bowed to me, erased my boards, and wrote me the sweetest notes.  I even loved the food, imagining that I would miss Kimchi and continue to want it with every meal. (I didn’t miss it that much).  I had moments in South Korea that I have never experienced in the U.S., moments where I felt one with everyone.  A bank teller might hand me change, and suddenly I was one with her and with everyone around me.  These loving, light-filled experiences were magical and beautiful.

Rape in a Foreign Country:  What I didn’t count on or foresee or predict was the moment I was woken up in the middle of the night to find a man on top of me, the owner of a competing Hagwan in town.  One of my roommates suggested that he could crash on our couch after a night of drinking.  He had other plans while they stayed out.  I briefly fought him, but he fought back, jamming his elbow into my neck with surprising force; I feared my windpipe might collapse.  Shock, horror, and numbness took over.  My only thought was that I was glad I was not a virgin and that I could remember happier, loving, or freer times.  When it was over, I desperately wanted to go back in time to the few hours before when I was reading a book by Tolstoy.  I wanted to go back and stay awake all night long and avoid this moment in time.  I didn’t want rape to be part of my life story.  No one does.  This isn’t the story I wanted to tell the world.

The next morning, my Korean friend took me to the doctor, and advised me that it wasn’t worth going to the police.  She said they didn’t take the complaints of Korean women that seriously, so they certainly wouldn’t care about an American’s perspective, especially since the guy had taken us all out to dinner and bought our table a bottle of whiskey.  I argued saying I didn’t stay and drink with them.  This wasn’t a case of binge drinking and partying.  I had two drinks and walked home to the apartment I shared with two other teachers, one male and one female teacher. I wanted to read and go to bed early.

No Sentencing and No Trial:  My Korean friend said none of that mattered.  I drank in public, which few Korean women did, and I was an American.  According to her, my complaint wouldn’t be taken seriously.

When my Korean friend was fourteen years old, she was pulled into a shop, raped, and then pushed back onto the crowded sidewalk to walk home, altered forever.  She said this was common for Korean girls. Maybe her advice wasn’t the best advice, but she was my translator and closest friend.  She was operating based on what she knew at the time, and maybe she understood the police force there.  This Australian woman’s story shows that the Korean police placed more emphasis on the amount of alcohol she had in her system than on the fact that she was raped.   At the time, I was in shock and did whatever my friend said I should do, but I wanted to prosecute.  I wanted a trial. I wanted him to pay for this, but he didn’t.  I wanted to protect other women from him.

Though I didn’t report the rape, I got involved with groups of women in other towns who had been attacked or raped.  I let English teachers in my town know who the man was who raped me.  For the rest of my stay in South Korea, I couldn’t sleep very well.  And then, I was purely and simply terrified. I stayed up most of the night, sometimes meditating for seven hours, ready for the fight that might occur if I needed to fight.   It became apparent I needed to return to the states.  I had no idea I would spend large portions of my life having trouble falling asleep.  Sleep became my trigger.  The bargaining part of grief makes a person try to find a way to avoid the situation.  I believed that if I hadn’t been sound asleep, maybe I could’ve prepared for a fight better.  Logically, this doesn’t make sense, but I thought this for a long while.

Stages of Grieving:  One of the toughest moments to write about in my memoir is the moment I came out of The Rape Crisis Center in San Antonio, Texas and saw a young girl who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old with long brown braids on each side of her puffy, tear-stained cheeks.  The horror of what had happened to her immediately entered my body.  I felt the shock, shame, and confusion that she felt, and I wanted to kill the man who had raped this young girl.  I’ve never felt more rage in my life than in that moment.

I stormed out of The Rape Crisis Center and turned the radio up loud in my car and drove outside of town to the only deserted place I could find—a quarry.  No one was working at the time, so I pulled my car alongside a caterpillar and walked to the edge.  I picked up rocks and threw them into the quarry and screamed loudly.  I cried and screamed until my voice was hoarse and raspy, and I could barely talk.  I cried for her, for myself, for every victim everywhere on the earth and in all times and places.  I raged and screamed until the sun set, but I felt a little better after that.  Grieving has its stages, and I entered the stage of anger quickly and stayed there a while.  Kickboxing classes, Krav Maga, and one on one self-defense training became part of my healing.

At that point in my life, I didn’t care at all to find a deeper meaning for why this happened.  I only knew that rape was horribly unfair, and I didn’t like how it was altering my life.  I started to realize that part of the reason women struggle to achieve financial independence and freedom is a system that allows that allows women to be victimized and doesn’t make victimizer pay a very high price for their abuse.  Many times, women don’t search out or receive the support they need.  They simply try to move forward, but moving forward proves more complex than they might think at the time.   Situations become cumulative. A year before the rape, two different men stalked and harassed me.  These multiple traumas made it difficult to feel at peace or safe in the world.  For an unbelievable amount of time, I walked through the world always on high alert for danger.   I felt I needed a man for greater protection in the world, and this feeling of desperation didn’t often lead to the best possible partners.  Rape was devastating in ways I can’t possibly describe in a blog post.

As I write this post, I know that some people don’t want to hear from victims, and to those people I would like to say again that I never wanted to be a victim.  No victim writes this into the script of her life.  Every fiber of my being wants a different story from the one I have.

Luckily, my mission from the NDE was to teach. I taught junior high school, high school, and college classes.  Over the years, I met with junior high students and high school students who chose me to confide in when they needed me to report an abuser in their family to CPS.  Countless students have told me about being raped.  I was great in most crisis situations, but I quickly realized that I needed to show them how to heal from this trauma, and I had to learn to heal from it myself.

Love:  Looking back to that time period, I was the one in the most need of love.  I hope everyone can surround the victims in their life with a lot of love.  If you are a survivor of sexual assault and you don’t have that support, I hope you can love and thank yourself for being brave enough to survive.  I hope you can find a group of women who understand and who will support you. Now, I can love myself and love others who have experienced trauma.  Now, I can mourn for the students who confide in me, share my best wisdom, and pray for them.  I can warn students who travel abroad to be extra careful and to know each countries laws for foreigners before travelling.  The trauma I have experienced has become something I can use to help others.  I am connected to a world of people in a way I never dreamed possible.  Their stories are a part of me, as my story is a part of their lives.

On the other side, I clearly heard the words, “Love is all that matters.”  What I saw was a force of light and love that turned the world to golden sunlight.  All pain was only a shadow of who that person might have been or could be in their future.  In the end, love has shed light and transformed even the most harrowing of my experiences.   Some lessons take a while to play out, but these messages are true.  Love is stronger than fear, than darkness, than all the violence in the world.  Love is what matters.  Love yourself through every life experience and share this love with others so they might heal.  I know this is what the spiritual lesson of trauma reveals.  Loving the world and working together to make it a much safer place is the answer to the all too frequent violence and injustice.

Binge Drinking and Rape:  In relation to the recent case that has been in the news, high schools, colleges, and families should provide much more education for students about the dangers of binge drinking.  My junior year at UT, I came home from a party and saw my neighbor sitting outside on the steps outside of his apartment.  He had the longest, saddest face I have ever seen on a human being.  I was probably in a good mood and asked, “Why so sad?”  I wasn’t prepared for his answer of “Prison.”

This particular college student had been sentenced to ten years in prison for rape.  He was in a fraternity and blacked out the entire experience.  He didn’t even remember the girl, but he said it was sad and horrifying to hear her descriptions of everything that he had done to her.  He said he felt her pain and deserved this punishment.  He seemed to clearly understand that blacking out can have life altering consequences.  He felt horribly ashamed to have hurt his parents in this way.  He told me not to go to frat parties and not to binge drink.  I didn’t know what to say to him, but I said I hoped he might take never drinking again seriously.  Honestly, I felt sorry for him.  I didn’t want him to not go to prison, but I wished he had not been a part of a culture that accepted and even required him to binge drink.

He seemed like he would be willing to participate in counseling.  I wish all students had lots of healthier options for connecting with others and having a good time.  I would like to see more yoga raves, alcohol free concerts, meditation groups, cooking classes focused on health, and other options for students.  We shouldn’t only teach women not to binge drink to avoid being raped, we should teach men not to binge drink because they might end up in jail or prison as a consequence.  Both males and females are need of healing and education.

The longer I live on this planet, the more people I begin to include in my heart.  I hope that particular young man never drank alcohol again.   I hope Brock Turner never drinks, uses drugs, or objectifies women again on social media or in any way.  The idea that Turner posted the body parts of this girl on a website shows how deeply his brain and many men’s brains are changed because of pornography.  I hope Turner and others like him work to educate other men about the dangers of drug/alcohol abuse and dangers treating human beings like objects for momentary pleasure.

One of my favorite researchers on this topic is Dr. Rober Jensen.   Jensen advises men not to watch porn for a multitude of reasons, including how much of it is trafficked and how porn usage rarely makes for better intimate relationships. I know that the majority of college students want to learn how to love and have healthy relationships.  They want to understand how all these influences are affecting them and what to do in response to live a healthier life.

Healing our World:  Even our worst moments on this planet can be of use and help to others.  I hope Turner’s victim and the U.T. student’s victim found the support they need in order to heal deeply and move forward with their lives.  I hope all survivors of rape, sexual abuse, assault, stalking, and harassment receive the support they need.   Though my story is not just a story about a near death experience and the beauty of the beyond, it is a story I have grown to appreciate.

I am one with every rape survivor in this country and in other countries.  I understand PTSD, though I didn’t at first.  I didn’t want to embrace a community of other survivors at first, but once I did the healing multiplied.  I care deeply about the journeys of women I know only from their writings and blogs. We are in this together, and I hope we can help one another heal and make the world a safer place.  This means that justice systems are going to have to change in this country and around the world. 

End of the Semester Reflections

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 16 Comments

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Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

Outward Focus:  In a Ted Talk presentation, Adam Leipzig discusses how happier people are outward focused.  After a class reunion at Yale, Leipzig realized that even people with highly successful careers don’t feel the same level of happiness that others do who are clear about their intention to help others.  Teaching is a profession that has allowed me to be outward focused on a daily basis.  Even if the goal is only to improve students understanding of concepts and improve their critical thinking skills, teaching allows me to focus on others and for that I am immensely grateful. We are happier people in the moments we forget ourselves and live for others.

Many teachers have goals for their students beyond the basic concepts of their subject matter.  They hope to help others become more successful, more loving and connected to others, clearer about their goals and dreams, and more prepared to live a happy life of purpose themselves.  Perhaps the most important thing anyone can do after realizing what they are passionate about is deciding who they can help, entertain, or inspire with this passion. Taken further, Leipzig explains how it is important to think about what others need.

What Others Need: Before I started teaching, I thought about what I needed as a student and researched what other students from various backgrounds need.  As a student, I needed to be noticed.  I needed kindness, support, and structure.  I needed to expand my thinking and views of the world.  I needed inspiration. Sometimes, my students need to learn basic writing skills and to gain confidence as writers.  Sometimes, they need a clear path to success, healing from their past, or to expand their ideas and thinking about the world.  Sometimes, they simply need to be inspired to work harder and be more focused about what they want to accomplish.  Sometimes, they only need kindness, and they will figure the rest of their life’s journey out on their own or with the help of other mentors.

I am certain that I do not meet everyone’s needs as an instructor, but I took an oath to “Do no harm” before ever opening my mouth in a classroom, even as a student teacher at Stephen F. Austin High in Austin, Texas.  I saw every rebellious student as a gift.  Every angry student who I still occasionally encounter teaches me that fear and pain is what lies beneath the surface of anger.  Often, students who are angry have suffered a lot of abuse in their lives.  They have every right and reason to be angry, and if I am patient I am sometimes able to uncover this truth.  Although some students might prefer a different, style of teaching, I know that my students know my heart is in the right place.  My primary aim is to help students become more successful on any path of their choosing. I’ve taught long enough to see many of my students accomplish their goals, and there is little on this earth that gives me more happiness than their accomplishments.

The Light’s Last Message: Before my near death experience, I had very little interest in teaching.  When I returned to my body after my NDE and reflected on the fact that the last message given to me from the light was that I must return to earth and teach, I was not pleased.  I wanted a more lucrative career as a lawyer since I grew up poor.  My long-term plans weren’t final but attending U.T. Law School was a possibility; however, God had other plans for me.  If you meet God on the other side of this life and the last thing God tells you to do is to teach, is there really any other option?

After reflecting on my own history with teachers, I realized that I may not have applied for scholarships, applied to U.T. or believed in my potential if I hadn’t had a couple of supportive English teachers in high school.  I realized that their enthusiasm for their subject matter affected me in ways I didn’t realize at the time.  I read books I would have never found on my own, and my self-concept grew because of their ideas and lectures.

For years, I didn’t understand why the light commanded me to teach, but I followed these orders anyway.  I got my teaching certification and taught for four years in the public school system—junior high and high school, and I’ve taught at the college level ever since.   I’ve had so much fun on some days that I’m surprised they pay me at all.

Happy at Work: I have been extremely happy at work because I know why I teach.  I am not there for my ego or gratification; rather, I am there to help others, or at the very least to be kind and hopefully to inspire them to read more novels and enjoy the writing process a bit more.

Service work with my college students has been a rewarding experience.  For a moment in time, they experienced the joy that I feel working with them as they worked with elementary school kids.   Perhaps students who participate in service learning will be reminded that a life focused on others is a very good life indeed.

Many programs of recovery focus on service to others, and I don’t think this wisdom should be limited to recovery programs.  If everyone could realize that helping others is the quickest and surest way out of pain, we would all drop everything and look out into the world to see who we can help.  The mind all too often makes a “hell of heaven,” but when we get out of own mind and focus on the lives of others we can turn an actual world of “hell” into a “heaven” of connection and compassion.

 

Many Amazing Students:  I am humbled by the talent and passion of so many of my students.  One of my least favorite times of year is the time of year to give awards.  Though I love honoring particular students for their hard work, there are generally many deserving students and picking only one or two students to honor hurts my heart.  Often, the highest grade in a class is not the best indicator of who has learned the most and progressed the most.

I am impressed by how many of my students already have energy and passion to help the world.  They organize walks to bring awareness to issues such as suicide prevention, particular childhood diseases, or write stories which are a form of activism.  They have clear goals for their future and intend to help others long before entering my classroom.  They have energy, passion, and drive that reinvigorates my own drive and enthusiasm.  They are sometimes more like friends than students, and I miss them when the semester ends.  I am a lucky, lucky woman to have crossed paths with so many wonderful people.  The light certainly knew better than I did about the direction that my life should take. Teaching has been one of the brightest parts of my life, and I am grateful for all the students I have met over the years.

 

 

 

After Death Communication Part II

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 7 Comments

scene6

Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

“What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it. The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning.”Carl Jung

Those who die do not go very far away.  In fact, if you can hear messages from God, you can hear messages from those who have transitioned to the other side.   I am only recently opening up to this ability.  A couple of weeks ago, one of my students lost her father suddenly.  She is a grounded, beautiful, kind, talented young woman, and I wanted to support her through her time of grief to the best of my ability.  A few minutes before Creative Writing class started, I asked if her father had a message he wanted me to give to his daughter.

The minute I asked for a message, a wave of light and a powerful feeling of love came over me.  Love of this sort is not filtered by fear or material concerns. It is pure and direct, and I recognized the quality of it from the other side.   His communication felt similar to the telepathy I experienced from the angels, but his message slowed down a little in order to speak specific words to me.

I felt his strength, love, and admiration for his daughter.  He has enormous pride and belief in her and wanted to tell her to continue on with her goals and be strong.  I asked for clarification about what type of goals he wanted her to pursue, wondering if he meant writing or other educational goals.  He told me that he realized I worked as her instructor and though education was important to me it was only part of what she needs to focus on accomplishing.  He told me that she has is an interest outside of academia that she needs to pursue.

I didn’t have time to ask for specifics because several students walked into class and wanted to talk about their final projects.  Throughout the class, I felt excited and wanted to talk with her and see if she might be open to hearing this message from me.  When class ended, I walked out with her and asked if she had interests outside of studies at the college.  She replied that she wants to open a food truck and loves cooking.  We need a food truck near our community college campus, and I am certain that money could be made if someone made this happen.  I encouraged her to pursue this interest and even let her know that I felt her father’s powerful love and encouragement from the other side.

In the past, I wouldn’t have asked for a message from her father, and even if I received a message I probably would have only used the information to encourage her to pursue these interests.  I would’ve been embarrassed to admit that I believe I can “talk with dead people.”  I don’t care so much now what others think of this ability.  I know when the communication is real because it has that certain quality that I felt on the other side of the veil.  The love is tangible, real, and the only currency worth betting on for the long haul.

I think my student was pleased and somewhat surprised by the conversation.  For me, the experience of connecting with her father was both humbling and exciting.  It was a privilege to feel this man’s love for his daughter.  Love does not die at the time of death.  His love and connection for her will follow her throughout life, and she will feel him smiling as certain moments in her life fall into place.  Having this small confirmation gave me more security in the messages I’ve received from my father on the other side.

My father, who always had a sense of humor, says he approves of this message.  Danny Barker did a lot of talking in life, and he seems to want to continue talking from the other side as well.  For a while, I shut out messages from him.  I didn’t care for some of his advice, especially relationship advice.  I see his advice differently now. I’ll save that long story for another time (or perhaps a book later) and only say that I’m listening to his messages now.

I feel honored that my student’s father trusted me with a moment of communication, and I know he loves her dearly.  I am honored that I could pass on this message to her.

 

After-Death Communications

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 10 Comments

 

dad

Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.  Part of my memoir discusses some of my after-death communications with my father.

Love is the Link:  Dr. Pamela M. Kircher has a section in her book Love is the Link about after-death communications, and she encourages others to talk about dreams or other communications with relatives as a way to comfort those who may not have had communications with deceased relatives but want this communication.  Like Kircher, I don’t understand why some people receive messages from deceased relatives and others do not, but I want to tell others who have lost someone close to them to believe in the possibility and to be patient.  There might be a moment in your life when you need comfort or protection in a profound way, and your loved one might come to you then.  Also, telling yourself each night that you are open to communication in a dream or otherwise might open up the channels of communication.

Preparing for a Loved One’s Death:  In 2008, my father was diagnosed with a large, grapefruit-sized Glioblastoma brain tumor.  He opted not to have brain surgery and to live out his remaining time as coherently as possible.  We joked around as we often did, watched television together, and ate a lot of Chinese food that first week.  Dad didn’t take morphine because he wanted to be able to talk with me when I showed up after teaching classes.  That semester was one of the hardest teaching semesters of my life.  I was scheduled to teach nine different college classes at three different campuses.  Luckily, I found a nursing home for dad near one of my campuses, so I saw him every evening and between classes when possible.  There were many days, I ran out of class early to cry, overwhelmed by loss but also grateful that that I had experience with death and could help my dad by reminding him of what I knew from the other side.  We talked about my near-death experience a few times, and he believed my stories of the light, assuring me that he had no fears about the dying process.

The Transition:  When Dad was moved to hospice and the chaplain preformed the last rites, Dad could barely lift his arm, but he made his best attempt to pretend to conduct an orchestra.  The chaplain seemed annoyed, but I knew Dad was trying to make the moment lighter for me.  He wanted me to remember his sense of humor and how little he feared death. When I left to get some sleep, I hoped I might see him the next morning.  Something about the look in his eyes told me that I might not see him alive again.  I kept my phone ringer on as loud as possible, hoping to be informed if the end was near.

Around midnight I fell asleep and almost immediately had a dream where my grandparents talked with me in calming, comforting ways, hovering somewhere above the ceiling.  They told me that they were with Dad and had been with him for the last two days, waiting for him.  They said they would be the ones to welcome him to the other side and would take good care of him and that I had done all I could for him.  I woke up feeling more peaceful than I had felt in a while and looked down at my phone.  I had three missed calls from hospice, and I realized immediately what this meant.  I wanted to be there at his time of passing, but I felt comforted that his parents were with him.  Their presence was warm and loving in the dream as it had been in life.

First Dream:  A few nights later, dad came to me in a dream with the light behind him.  He said he was given only a moment where he could tell me that he understood I did all I could do within my time constraints at work.  He assured me that he slept and rested most of the hours I could not be with him so that he could be alert when I showed up for visits.  This relieved my guilt about how little time I had with him on some days.  Dad didn’t have siblings or any family members that I knew about at the time, so there was no one else besides a few of his friends and neighbors who stopped by to be with him when I was not with him.

Life Review Differences:  In Pamela Kircher’s book Love is the Link she discusses the differences between the NDEs experienced by those in traumatic situations versus those who are terminal.  A life review is usually not part of the NDE for terminal patients; rather, they are comforted about the dying process and sometimes met by relatives.  A few months after his death, Dad came to me in another dream and assured me that he had a lot more still to learn and that he was busy understanding his role on earth and the implications of his life.  He made it evident that he would wait and watch out for me, even though he preferred to return and give this life another shot.  I wondered if the life review process is more intense after death.  Perhaps, in terminal patients the life review is saved for a more intensive examination after the completion of their life.  During my life review, I was shown how to be more loving and open while in this life.  Perhaps, given more time on the other side, I would have extensively examined my life and actions.  Mainly, I saw that helping others, being kind, being connected to the light/source were important elements in returning.

The idea that dad wanted to return and live out another life puzzled me.  I hadn’t given reincarnation much thought, other than remembering dreams I had of a possible past life when I was a child.  In those dreams, I lived in Boston and supported several of struggling artists in my later years of life.  That life set me up to encourage creativity in others.  In that previous life, I felt sadness that I didn’t pursue my own art.  One of the lessons in my current life seems to be how to balance supporting other creative young people while also working on my own writing.

When I moved to Boston for a travelling job teaching SAT prep courses and later for a year with my first husband, the city felt so familiar that I rarely needed to look at maps. I have other theories about why the city might have seemed familiar, but on some level it seems that reincarnation or memories of various lives are possible.

Specific Communications from the Beyond:  As time has gone on, I realize there is a lot that I do not understand about after death communications with my father.  On a couple of occasions, he has been right and warned me about various people, telling me that their actions will not match their words.  I don’t want to go into detail about these particular situations, but maybe as time goes on I will have a better understanding of how these after death communications are meant to be used in my life.   He has made it clear that others who have tried to tap into communications with him are not as clear as I am in my communications with him.  I realize that I can largely trust these communications, but my rational mind does occasionally wonder if these moments are only wishful thinking. However, certain specifics make me think that the communications are more than wishful thinking.

Testing the Information:  I know that I have been comforted and protected in a couple of instances by after death communications with dad.  I haven’t yet tried out these communications at the race track to see if Dad can give me winning horses.  During the last years of his life, dad enjoyed betting on horses and wasn’t bad at it either.  I’ll let you know if I have some luck with that or not.

Recommendations:  I recommend Dr. Kircher’s book, Love is the Link, especially if you are interested in the ways others have been comforted at the time of their deaths or stories of those who have received messages from loved ones after their deaths.  Part II of her book focuses on her work as a hospice physician.  This section includes stories of agnostics visited by Jesus, angry young people with terminal illness who experienced NDEs which helped them cope with their deaths, and many other interesting stories of people in hospice settings.  Dr. Pamela Kircher has the unique perspective of having experienced a NDE as a young child and living her life informed by this moment at a very young age.  I found her personal journey in Part I fascinating as well.

If you want to read my next post about after-death communications, click here.

National Poetry Month and Other Reflections

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 14 Comments

rilke

Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

National Poetry Month:  To celebrate National Poetry Month, I’m posting “After the Wreck,” a poem published by the Binnacle in 2007 which is inspired from moments during my near death experience.  I’m also including a poem by Rilke from Book of Hours:  Love Poems to God which I adore.

Writing on Morphine:  I wanted to document my NDE as soon as I possibly could.  I stayed in ICU for a few days after surgery, but once I was moved to a hospital room, I asked for a pen and paper. My surgeon confirmed that I had died, but she didn’t feel inclined to talk about the spiritual experience with me.  The nurses were a bit more willing to listen to my experience but most seemed busy and hurried.  Some people only nodded and looked at me strangely when I wanted to talk about the powerful experience of being in God’s presence.

While in the hospital bed and hooked up to a morphine drip, my greatest fear was that I might forget those beautiful moments outside my body. The pain and disorientation made it difficult to write in a straight line, and the words bled down the page.  I persisted in the hope that a few lines would be salvageable and used later. The lines about the angels in this poem were lines I wrote days after the experience.

Memory:  To this day, I remember the vividness of the angels, the light, and the love from the divine intensely.  I’ve never forgotten the experience and the images.  What faded a bit were the direct messages given to me by light.  I remember a lot of what was communicated, but the information flowed into my spirit body so quickly that it was difficult to slow down the information and remember it as specific words.  Mainly, I knew that I had immediately and forever changed in that moment.

Outside of my body, I remember feeling slightly worried for my body as I looked down at the operating table, wondering if I would walk or run again.  The angels assured me that I would have complete healing.  In fact, they assisted in that healing, and my questions were answered not only with information but with demonstration.

Trauma and Forgetting the Beauty of the Light:  I have not forgotten the NDE in the way some dreams are forgotten, but there are times in life when the material world, when trauma, or when stress has overwhelmed me.  When overwhelmed and burdened by life, I can forget the beauty of that moment.  The memory though remains incredibly vivid.

Certainly, the actions of others have startled me, shocked me, and sometimes horrified me.  In my memoir, Healed, I write about being harassed by friend in a writer’s group, raped while living overseas, and beaten up by my first husband.  I thought my life after experiencing an NDE would be pure bliss, and I would live a protected, purely pleasurable life.  This was not my experience, and I wasn’t prepared to write about these traumatic moments until years later. Though I had greater moments of intuition after the NDE, I didn’t always know how to trust or use this intuition.  In those first years after the experience, I also had an almost child-like openness, trust, and belief in others and that trust sometimes put me in close contact with desperate people.

Service and Healing:  When I examine all my experiences together, these experiences sometimes seem like more than one person should have to endure.  However, I have survived and thrived, and I realize others have endured far worse events. Perhaps part of my legacy is to experience the horrors that many women have experienced and to report that what remains after harm has taken its best shot at me is light and hope.  I heard Matt Kahn say something similar about harm in his latest video, and this idea seems accurate to me.  What also remains after the harm is a deep desire to heal myself and to help others heal.  At certain times, I certainly forgot the light and its message.  At other times, I became angry at God on this journey, but I always came back to the belief that I should help others and should remind others of their connection to a loving, forgiving source.

Self-absorption and all too human wishes and desires vanish the moment I ask my students about their lives or when I am of service to others somewhere in this world.  There is no greater way to make the world a better place than to offer help or kindness.  We are freed of ourselves in those moments.  Who knew that freedom from the self would feel so wonderful?  It does though.

AFTER THE WRECK

How could I know that the world would have compassion

and that at the moment of impact my back would crack,

 

but I would retain the sensation of this body, first floating

away from it, then returning, silvered and open-mouthed

 

like a fish caught on the hook of a reoccurring dream,

struggling, flapping about, and jerked up to the surface

 

of a room full of florescence, tiny desires to survive

pulsing through my body in rivulets?

 

How could I know that the angels I recalled from paintings

would become bright, intelligent companions at the end of my bed

 

and that the torrential light from their eyes would answer my questions instantly?

How could I know that this peace would disintegrate like ice chips

 

in my mouth and this calming knowledge would drown in refills of morphine.

How could I know that I would forget specifics in the way we forget dreams?

—Tricia Barker

In these bodies, we are often anxious, but I love how Rilke reminds us that God is around us and in us from the beginning.  Certainly, the light on the other side of this life felt familiar. This light is the same light we have in our eyes as infants, and the same light that comes for us at the time of our death.

I am, You Anxious One

I am, you anxious one.

Don’t you sense me, ready to break

into being at your touch?

My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

Can’t you see me standing before you

cloaked in stillness?

Hasn’t my longing ripened in you

from the beginning

as fruit ripens on a branch?

 

I am the dream you are dreaming.

When you want to awaken, I am waiting.

I grow strong in the beauty you behold.

And with the silence of stars I enfold

your cities made by time.

–R.M. Rilke

Human Trafficking: Loving This Child in Mumbai

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 5 Comments

boy in india

Love is All That Matters:  After my NDE, I think about love a lot because one of the central messages from the light was that love is all that matters.  How does a person choose to love the world in each moment?  Maybe love is not being jaded to the pain of this world.  We see so many images, so many percentages about people suffering that sometimes we feel a certain resistance to feeling or doing anything about their suffering.  Love is caring enough to do something about a problem, and any contribution toward a solution is better than doing nothing.

Human Trafficking:  While traveling through Mumbai, India a few years ago, I saw a child I wanted to rescue from the streets.  Honestly, I wanted to rescue them all, but this particular young boy came up to my window in the backseat, and I could see that he had a cold.  His nose was running.  I thought about all the kids who have mothers who take their temperatures, tuck them in bed, and read them a story.  I thought about the children who don’t have mothers, but have fathers or grandparents who do this for them.  I knew this child most likely had to give his cash to the mafia who controlled him, but the shock of coming face to face with a beautiful, abandoned child hit me with palpable force.  I’m not a photographer, but I snapped this young boy’s picture and then handed him most of the rupees in my wallet.  The locals in the car with me assured me that he would not get any of that money, but I didn’t care.  Maybe someone would be nice to him that night and give him more rice for bringing in a good haul.  Maybe they would at least give him a smile.  I could forgo one day of shopping in the markets for lovely jewelry, handbags, and scarves.

Donating:  The child reminds me that status, pleasure, worldliness means very little when children and adults are treated this way.  I am not free when millions of people are enslaved in human trafficking around the world.  I look at his picture from time to time, so that I can pray for him and remember his eyes, his need, and his sadness.  Praying for him (though important) isn’t enough, so I donate to organizations focused on liberating people from human trafficking like Polaris, UNICEF, and others.   My rule with donating is to donate to the point it hurts a little, but not to the point where it comprises saving money, taking care of myself, or working on my goals so that I can donate more in the future.

Educating Others:  Help does not always have to be monetary help though.  For me, returning to the love I had for the world as a child helps me to prioritize my energy.   For every good meal I eat, I think about how that boy goes hungry and consider what I can do to help with the energy I have from this meal.  For starters, I educate my students about human trafficking, even if it is only the occasional article or Ted Talk video.  Many students choose this topic as their research topic.  Great books like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks have been inspired by a moment in a lecture at a community college.  I have faith that one or more of my community college students might do amazing work to help end human trafficking.   My energy can be multiplied if I can convince others to care about this issue.

Become Like the Little Children:  Another lesson from the light during my NDE was that I should remember the purity of my soul during childhood and return to that place.  As a child, I was moved by commercials about starving children in Africa.  Though I grew up rather poor myself and was rather skinny, I wasn’t starving.  When I made mud pies in my backyard, I always made a lot of them and imagined that I was feeding chicken pot pies (one of my favorites) to all the starving children.  I cared.  I wanted to help.  I always included these children in my prayers, and sometimes at night I had beautiful dreams where I met with a few of them in the heavens and talked about how we could teach people in the world to love more and care more for others.

Be Open to the Suffering of Others:  I remember years later when parodies about these type commercials came out, I didn’t laugh.  I laugh at most satire and most silly skits from Saturday Night Live, but I preferred the mindset of the young girl who desired to help others.  Children feel for others, but as adults we put up barriers to feeling because to look at someone’s suffering changes us.  We know that we can help, but giving monetarily rubs up against our own worldly goals of accumulations things, enjoying services, and fine food.  We tell ourselves we work hard for our lifestyles and deserve fine things, and to some degree we do.  However, where does the accumulation end?  When do we have enough when others have nothing?

Legacy:  I wonder how many people who have been taken to the cleaners in divorce court because of a greedy spouse wish that they could transfer some of that money to starving children. I’m sure many people want the money back for themselves, but given the choice of not having it or helping children, I wonder if they would chose helping children.  I hope so.   I hope they can see the futility of amassing great wealth but not helping others.  Having wealth without helping others leaves their souls sad and poor.   In the end, what we take with us is the good we have done in the world.  That is our reward.  We don’t take our accumulations of wealth with us.  We take memories of love and kindness with us.  We relive these memories and know we have reached a place of transcendence when the majority of our time was spent helping others.

Foreign Adoptions:  For me, love is saying a prayer of thanks to all the people with the money and ability to adopt children from countries around the world.  I don’t make fun of Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Sandra Bullock, Mary-Louise Parker, Julie Andrews, Meg Ryan, Katherine Heigl, Charlize Theron, or Jillian Michaels.  I say a prayer of thanks for their kindness, for having a calling to rescue a child from a foreign land, and for their ability to do what I would do given their resources.  An image of dinner at their homes makes me smile.  I say a prayer for all the other families who are not in the media and who donate their time and energy to help others or who have adopted a child domestically or from a foreign country.

Love for that child in Mumbai is never forgetting him and writing down these thoughts.  I hope others read my blog, contact me, and educate me about ways I can help in the movement to end human trafficking.  Love always wins.  It is the light that illuminates the darkness.

Response to National Geographic’s Article “The Crossing”

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 14 Comments

tigernatgeo

Update 1/19/18:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, is available for pre-order.  It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love your support of a pre-order.  My aim is to help make near-death experiences more mainstream. 

National Geographic:  This month my story and a few other NDE stories were briefly featured in the April issue of National Geographic.  Our stories were not the main focus of the article “The Crossing.”  This article examines scientific and human experience as a way to explore the dying process.  The primary NDE story is the story of Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon from Wyoming and author of To Heaven and Back.  I liked Robin Marantz Henig’s description of Mary Neal’s response to the first responders working on her body.  They called, “Come back, come back,” and Neal found this “really very irritating.”

Consciousness Beyond the Body:  I understand Neal’s irritation.  Being free of the body and merging with a greater sense of consciousness feels wonderful and not at all like the “brain is shutting down.”  It is irritating to come back, and many NDErs report this feeling.  I describe returning to my body as being swallowed up by a dark wind.  I felt more alive while dead.  Most of the magic, light, and beauty disappeared, and my body felt heavy, drugged, and painful.  I didn’t want to be stuck in the limited experience of this particular body with her history, her stories, her psychological and childhood wounds, and the limits of her particular mind.  Outside of my body, I was both myself and greater than myself, connected to an incredible download of information, and for that moment I knew so much more than I could ever know living in this one perspective.  The experience of existing in a more expansive and connected universe made my individual experience seem boring and limited.  I had been inside the minds of so many others, and now I only had my mind as a way to process life.   When the nurse asked me my name, I said, “I remember her name.  It’s Tricia,” and it seemed annoying to have only my brain as a vehicle to process experience and information. Outside of my body, I was connected to a greater knowledge and understanding.

Many people I know have reported having a knowledge or sense beyond the physical, sometimes knowing the very moment someone close to them has died.  There is a knowledge beyond the physical that perhaps cannot be explained by measuring brain waves.  NDErs sometimes report a great connection to knowledge beyond what they have ever experienced.  The moments outside my body seemed nothing like a dream or a hallucination.   After my accident, I began to practice lucid dreaming, and even though these dreams were glorious, they were not the same as the NDE.

During my NDE, angels were sent as guides to comfort me and the information given to me in streams of light altered my consciousness.  Watching the angels work through the surgeons was an amazing moment because the surgeon’s scientific backgrounds may have made them skeptical that angels could work through them, but the angels were able to work through them anyway.

Scientific Arguments:  This article gives a little more time to researchers like Kevin Nelson, a neurologist at the University of Kentucky who calls what is happening to the brain during an NDE a “REM intrusion,” asserting this is the same brain activity that characterizes dreaming and happens during events like moments when a person might suddenly lose oxygen.  The way I see it is that scientists are standing on this side of the veil testing brains and making hypotheses without giving enough credit to the idea that there might be a reality beyond this one that humans are in the process of navigating while in these states.

natgeo

Pear vs. Apple:  To put it another way, say I ate an apple away from the view of scientists, and then a group of scientists tested the bile in my stomach, tested my sugar levels, and the acid forming on my teeth and suggested that I may have eaten a pear or possibly an apple.  I tell them I know that I ate an apple, but they continue to believe that a pear is just as possible as an apple because of the chemical reactions in my body. NDErs are repeatedly telling researchers that they experienced a greater consciousness than their own consciousness.  They saw people working on their body, and they saw a world beyond the body, but scientists continue to say, “No…this is a dream state or high-frequency Gama waves associated with meditation.”

Even if the brain that is not completely brain dead experiences these states, might these experiences happen because the spirit has disconnected, the essence of that person has gone on and that is the realm NDErs are describing?  Maybe during some meditations the spirit takes a brief hiatus the body as well or at least calms down, no longer focused on sensations of this world, sometimes even opening to guides from the other side.  Maybe this is why the brain chemistry is similar during meditation.

Science and Religion:  Some scientists argue with these NDErs experiences using only data.  Some Christians argue with only the Bible. Going back to the apple vs. pear argument, if scientists tell me the apple I’m eating might be a pear, I think they are ridiculous.  In the same vein, if some Christians tell me that I ate a demonic pear instead of an apple because my experience isn’t described in their book, I think they are equally ridiculous, perhaps more so for giving a “demonic” explanation to  the most light-filled, glorious moment of my life.

Some scientists want to prove that NDErs are only dreaming and there is not an afterlife.  Some Christians want to prove that their particular version of the afterlife is the only one that is real.  Both camps are afraid to admit that they may not know everything and may not be able to explain everything given their current information.  Most NDErs laugh at both camps, preferring the poets, spiritual seekers, and the open-minded, curious folks of the world.  Though NDErs don’t have all the answers, they have profound experiences that make them believe that we go on after death.  Science and/or religion simply can’t explain everything for us after our particular journeys.  I know that I came back with a lot of joy for life, an almost childlike appreciation of the smallest things.

I wish the article had captured our joy and the essence of our experiences.  I think we all should have been pictured jumping for joy with a caption reading, “I’m Alive!”  I don’t think of death as a traumatic experience.  I think of it as a beautiful, peaceful experience, and choose not to focus too much on the physical trauma and instead on the spiritual insights and beauty of those moments outside of my body.triciajumping

Spiritual with Buddhist Leanings in an Evangelical Family: Part Two

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 3 Comments

triciaandbuddha

Update 1/19/18:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, is available for pre-order.  It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love your support of a pre-order.  My aim is to help make near-death experiences more mainstream.

“Because you are alive, everything is possible.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh Living Buddha, Living Christ

Humans are powerful spiritual beings meant to create good on earth. This good isn’t usually accomplished in bold actions, but in singular acts of kindness between people. It’s the little things that count, because they are more spontaneous and show who you truly are.—Dannion Brinkley

Since childhood, I have struggled with a few basic philosophies found in some Christian churches.  I don’t believe I was born sinful.  I believe I was born very close to the light of God. Reminding others of their basic goodness and divinity seems like a better plan than telling them they are born sinners.  I prefer Brinkley’s idea that “humans are powerful spiritual beings meant to create good on earth.”  This is what we should reinforce in ourselves and in others.  Peace is more than possible when the focus in on the power of the human spirit and one’s connection to source.

Recently, I’ve read arguments from Christians who dismiss the experiences of NDEers, saying that these experiences are merely subjective.  No single moment has ever seemed as real to me as the moments outside of my body.  Subjective or not, every moment in my waking reality pales in contrast to seeing angels interact with this reality.  Is that my personal experience?  Yes, but it is an experience unlike any experience before or after that experience, a vivid, multi-dimensional experience that granted me knowledge and understanding in a direct and powerful way.  I’ve spent decades trying to slow down those transmissions of light and information and decipher the meanings.  The main point is that I changed because of those transmissions.  Spiritual transformations happen in an instant.

Most people’s interpretations of the Bible are subjective.  Though I am grateful that my mom taught me to read before Kindergarten, mainly by focusing on the Bible, I remember questioning some passages, especially in relation to women’s roles.  Since I happened to be born a liberal, I suppose I was born a feminist as well, and St. Paul did not impress me, especially with lines like, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be quiet.” in Timothy 2:12.  The boys attending my elementary school acted like idiots, and I thought they could benefit from listening to me for a while.  I knew how to read, tie my shoes, sit without fidgeting, play well with others, and write in cursive while they made fart noises, cried to get out of reading, and beat each other up on the playground.  St. Paul seemed like a sexist who wanted power for himself.

His writings and certain interpretations of a woman’s role in marriage harmed countless women.  Divorce started to ramp up in the U.S. when I was a child, and yet there were too many women who put off divorce, choosing to stay in horribly abusive relationships or loveless marriages because they bought into this idea that they were less than without a man.  Sometimes, they even believed that they must submit their will to their husband and pray for his healing, even as he took his rage out on her.   Only very small percentages of men who are abusive change.   This information only seems to have become common knowledge in the last five to ten years thanks to books like Crazy Love  and amazing researchers like Jackson Katz who remind us that women’s issues are really men’s issues when men are the ones committing crimes against women.

As a child, I questioned many passages of the Bible, but I stayed quiet about my questions because it would have cost me a lot to speak my truth.  I would have compromised my safety and compromised being loved if I openly argued with the Bible.  I acted the part.  Being loved for a lie didn’t set well with me either.  I believed that many authority figures in my life were wrong for not fostering my inquisitive nature, for not encouraging me to think for myself and question the world around me.  Don’t get me wrong, there were and are many parts of the Bible I love dearly.  The teaching’s of Jesus are close to my heart, as are many passages from Psalms.  I only wanted the freedom to question religion and the world around me.  Growing up, I did not have the freedom to learn about other religions and other practices.  I wanted to believe in a loving God, not a vengeful one.  The God I met during my NDE was more loving than any force I have ever dreamed of or encountered.  I know that God is indeed a loving force.

Growing up, I never fit neatly within the box of one particular religion or way of thinking.  I never fully adapted to my culture, and I’m grateful I didn’t.  I saw it clearly for what it was. I detested the racism I saw growing up in East Texas.  I cared for all people, and it hurt me deeply to see teachers treat African American students differently from white students.  I knew these teachers were intentionally harming African American students by not giving them praise, attention, or awards.  I saw certain students visibly wither from the lack of attention from teachers.  I bristled when I heard comments like “women aren’t good at math and science,” dreaming of a different part of the country and a different time when these statements would seem archaic and outdated.  We are reaching that place now.  I sometimes felt crazy for my sensitivity as a child, but I am glad others had this sensitivity.  I am glad some things about our world have changed.

Loving kindness is the most important trait we can cultivate in ourselves and for the world.  We might fall on our faces, say horrible things to one another, but I hope each of us gets up, forgives ourselves and the world, and quickly and practices even greater kindness.  May we see ourselves as connected and not in competition.

I write because I can no longer repress and suppress my truth.  Any wisdom I offer is only with the intent to heal—to make everyone more aware of their essential goodness, more in touch with their ability to be a force of good on this planet.  We are alive, and the possibilities are endless.  Let’s not spend the time arguing and quibbling over details.  Let’s love one another.   I leave you with some of my favorite Thich Nhat Hanh quotes from Living Buddha, Living Christ. 

“When our beliefs are based on our own direct experience of reality and not on notions offered by others, no one can remove these beliefs from us.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

“Twenty years ago at a conference I attended of theologians and professors of religion, an Indian Christian friend told the assembly, “We are going to hear about the beauties of several traditions, but that does not mean that we are going to make a fruit salad.” When it came my turn to speak, I said, “Fruit salad can be delicious! I have shared the Eucharist with Father Daniel Berrigan, and our worship became possible because of the sufferings we Vietnamese and Americans shared over many years.” Some of the Buddhists present were shocked to hear I had participated in the Eucharist, and many Christians seemed truly horrified. To me, religious life is life. I do not see any reason to spend one’s whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh Living Buddha, Living Christ