Experience description:   

I was separated from my wife for the third time and she wanted me to go back to her again. The pull to go back was strong because my family was my world. It was the foundation on how I lived my life, it was all I had. Leaving that original family unit would have meant that there would no longer be the possibility to live my life as I had imagined it would look like. 

    I was thinking about what I should do when I accepted that nothing would be different if I returned again and everybody involved would just suffer more. The deciding factor was my two sons. I couldn't put them through any more of what they had gone through and thought that hopefully taking myself out of the commotion would bring some peace to the situation. So I decided it was over and at that moment the life I had lived up to that point became meaningless because I had lived it with a concept of life that was no longer possible and I felt that I had somehow been lied to for 32 years. I felt an emptiness that I had never felt before, my old life was gone and the last thing I wanted to do was start a new one. Through my tears I looked up and yelled out ""God help me"". It was a plea and a demand at the same time, and before I could close my mouth on the last syllable, it felt like my consciousness was seized. My vision was drawn down to a single point of white light which immediately exploded up around me in a violet color that seemed to have texture. Then I was aware of being on a cloud while retaining all my minds faculties, but I knew I was no longer present with my physical body. The first thing I saw was the figure of who I can only describe as being Jesus, sitting across from me looking into my eyes. He wore a white robe and had white hair and beard along with a radiant smile. I immediately knew that every bit of my life was known and accepted as being good and right. Several moments in my life flashed through my consciousness that let me know that I was known by a power that I had not previously been conscious of, and in that there was the feeling of unconditional love. In that moment I was free from all fear and understood how deeply I had been living life to avoid my many levels of fear. The fear was removed because I knew at that moment that I was not my body, my consciousness could exist without it. I knew I was eternally safe in this and that there was never anything to be afraid of. I also understood why I had not felt loved in my life, it was because nobody in my life had known what love really was and therefore could not give it, but it didn�t matter any longer as I knew it and felt it. 

    The way the cloud I was on was positioned was out in the direction I was looking in when I cried out to God. At about a 45 degree angle and 100-150ft. out, which placed my perspective at the edge of the parking lot of the apartment I was living in at the time. The figure of Jesus turned from me and pointed down to the parking lot and started to laugh, although I saw and felt his laughter rather than heard it. So I followed his gaze and saw dark shadows of people hiding behind cars and I was hearing their thoughts. The thoughts were familiar to me because they were some of the same as had run through my mind on many occasions while I was living a life of fear. These dark figures were constantly imagining that something or someone was out to get them which put them in a constant defensive mode when all the while what they thought was happening had no shred of truth to it. It wasn't happening and existed only in their imagination, which I knew was what was keeping them in the dark to what I was seeing that they were really involved in. Their minds were so focused on an imagined reality that they had no consciousness left over to rest on the truth of the incredible beauty that surrounded them.   

    In the experience the apartment building was cut off on the left side and behind it I could see what seemed to be a boiling cauldron of energy like is seen in images of the star forming regions of galaxies. The feelings I had from this were ones of infinite possibilities, unbounded potential, and I knew that the potential to create from this state of love was beyond any words I have to express. It was more than what I could have imagined and has tremendous force to back up creation. I felt this energy was also what we can draw from in our individual creation. I knew Jesus was laughing because he knew that no real harm was coming to these dark figures. He looked on them as children who hadn't yet developed to their full potential yet. He knew, as I did, that soon enough in their development, they would grow tired of these particular games they were playing and refuse to participate any longer. He knew that they could take as much time as they wanted in the entirety of their lives to come to this point, at which time they too will laugh and continue on in love, where all fears are laughable and new worlds are opened up, free from the constraints of fear.   

   My consciousness was then back in my body, standing in my living room, looking in the same direction as before, but it was only there for a moment before it left again, this time I was seeing a room that resembled a kitchen. Everything was white, the walls, cabinets and counters. At the opposite corner of the room was a hallway with sunbeams streaming down into the room. My perspective was from behind a counter top supported by V shaped legs. I watched as the sunbeams began to grow brighter and slowly everything began to lose its definition as the light overtook the shadows that gave definition, until there was nothing discernable except a shadow behind one of the legs of the counter, the light had absorbed all the rest, but I thought that there was no way for the light to overtake this shadow, because of how well it was sheltered by the shape of the leg, I thought the light couldn't bend around a corner like that, but the light just kept growing brighter until the shadow was simply over powered by it, it could no longer exist in that intensity of light. The feelings I had were warm, peaceful and content as I saw nothing but this light. It then took on a golden hue and to the right of my vision I could see what appeared to be the tail end of a gold brick disappearing through what appeared to be a wall of liquid gold. I knew then that we are all made of this substance, we come from this light and add shadows to it in order to have form, but the reality is that we are light. I knew that everything was contained in this light. When the brick passed through the wall, the ripples it made in passing stopped, and the wall became perfectly still. In that state of stillness, I couldn't even distinguish that it was there any longer, but I had seen it so I knew of its existence. 

    Once again my consciousness was in my body, still in the same spot looking in the same direction and yet again it left and I found myself in complete darkness. At this point the state I was in was one of rapture although that word is meaningless to really describe the feeling. With wide eyed nonphysical eyes I watched in wonder at the blackness where, moving from the right to left, came a series of circles as in the previous experience I had with the question about a business, but with so much more power and information. I realized right away that I was witnessing creation from the very beginning. The images came one at a time and each new one overlapped the previous one until it separated from it, like one was born out of another. The circles progressed in a line out into the darkness and I had a sense of the infinite and felt absolute perfection in its design. I say design because I knew from the outset that there was a force that began it all with knowledge that it would be so. All the information as to how creation was to unfold was known before it began, the thought of it was already formed before the creation began and it is playing out, it can be no other way. The feeling behind this creation of our universe was one of pure love, there was no doubt coming from this consciousness that it would be anything other than perfect, a perfect expression from a perfectly loving thought. Again I knew we had nothing to fear while we play out our part in this creative process. 

    The information that was running through my consciousness at the time was overwhelming in quantity. I was seeing and knowing every single detail of the process of creation and my mind was forced to notice the information over what images were contained in the circles. The only thing I can remember of the images was that the first one was mostly white with progressively more detail as they moved out into the darkness, Also the darkness seemed to be nothing more than something to shine some light on, but it was becoming more than I felt I could handle. I started to feel a sort of pressure, as if my head would explode if it kept up, so I began begging for it to stop. ""No more, no more"" I thought, and as if responding to that plea, I found my consciousness back in my body. I was still in the same position but this time I turned away quickly, still sobbing, but now they were tears of an indescribable joy rather than of anguished pain.  

When I turned away from the direction I was looking, I saw with my physical eyes a translucent image of an open book suspended between myself and the wall several feet in front of me. It was lying at eye level with a slight tilt, enough that I could see dull grey lines of words in the open pages, then a line of black words began to rise from the book as if someone was lifting them out in an arch. I couldn't read what the words said and had no feelings or knowledge imparted to me with the image and have never understood what that was all about, but that didn't matter as I knew that I could never be the same person I was up until this time as I had something else to base my life on, in a truer sense than I had ever possessed before, life was not what I had thought it to be.

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?     No      

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? Yes     The feeling, knowing aspects of the experience can't be adequately explained with words.

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          No      

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?           I was awake and conscious before the experience and nothing changed during the experience except for what I was conscious and alert to. I didn't know that this kind of experience was available for me to be conscious of, I felt expanded instead of more conscious or alert, as those things seem to always be the same. I wasn't conscious or alert in any way other than what I would consider normal, however I was aware of just how much I could be aware of. It's the same consciousness aware of something it wasn't previously conscious of. The awareness was the same, but with more to be aware of.

            Was the experience dream like in any way?   As part of my journaling exercises, I recorded my dreams for a full year, waking myself up in the middle of the night to do so. I've had lucid dreams, out of body dreams and dreams that impacted strongly enough to influence my waking feelings for days, but nothing of those experiences could even come close to the power of this experience that changed my feelings every day from that point on. The experience didn't present images from the past in new ways as dreams tend to do, it presented information in a way that I couldn't have previously imagined. What this experience did was make life as most people know it to be the dream because it is only a small portion of who we are in the reality of our totality. We're mostly asleep to this knowledge, but if I have the capacity to know this then that means to me that I always did possess it or it wouldn't have happened. I believe as human beings, everybody has this capacity for greater knowledge.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     Yes     It felt like a physical force took my consciousness to a different state, one where a body is not required.

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Primarily unconditional love. It was responsible for all the other new emotions and all were new to me. I knew freedom, joy, awe, rapture, fearlessness, and humility in that I had known very little. It put a perpetual smile on my face and I knew what it was to be a child again. I also felt peace, safety, warmth, acceptance and at the same time, immensely powerful.

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?           I heard the inner chatter going on in the dark figures, everything else was made known as either information passing through my consciousness or a feeling as with Jesus' laughter and God's loving intention.

LOCATION DESCRIPTION:  Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?            Yes     The figure of Jesus was familiar and amazing.

Did you see a light?           Yes     see experience

Did you meet or see any other beings?           Yes     Jesus and dark human figures as described in the experience section

Did you experiment while out of the body or in another, altered state? No      

Too much information was being passed through my mind for me to form an intent to explore.

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?          No      

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?          Yes     I had the full capacity of my mind to know. I could see and emotionally feel.

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?   Yes     I had a sense of eternity, there is no way to divide this into units of time because no matter how short or long a span of time is in eternity, it is meaningless when there is no end to time, or space for that matter. The whole experience seemed to happen in the blink of an eye so to speak, but it included infinity.

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Yes     I briefly knew every step in the creative process. I knew then that it was perfect, that it is a perfectly loving expression of a consciousness that has no thought of creation diverging from a perfect path, it quite naturally cannot happen. It's like a perfect love was sparked in the darkness and began to fill it with light for the sole purpose of the love of this creation. It is unavoidable for me at this time to think of our purpose here to be anything other than creation itself. Either we create from the consciousness of our all inclusive selves, or the partial self that believes we play no part in this creation.  

I also knew myself from another vantage point, in relation to something else, I knew the span of this life is less than a speck when compared with eternity and I knew I was perfectly safe. I also knew that I am and we are, much more than we can imagine. The power I experienced was so immense that it raised up my thoughts as to the power that we posses. Experiencing that kind of power does not allow you to hold a small image of yourself any longer and I knew unconditional love, for myself and all of creation.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?             No       My experience removed all boundaries. I don't consider the liquid like gold wall to be a barrier, but rather an entrance.

Did you become aware of future events?       No       however it seems obvious to me now that if we continue to live out of fear we will most likely destroy ourselves.

Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?       Yes     Both the beginning and end of the experience were at my conscious emotional pleas and were instantaneous.

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?         Yes     I consider the knowledge of unconditional love a special gift. It got me through some horrible times, as a new life was beginning in me, on the outside the circumstances were just beginning to become worse, culminating in my boys being taken from me illegally and against my will, and while the voices around me screamed for persecution, I knew that only love would bring any good out of the situation, so I held tight and some 15 years later that chapter is finally closed. Love did prevail and produced the result I knew it would in healing instead of further destruction. The best possible outcome was realized.  

I experienced one instance where I had a visual premonition of a future event. Looking out my window while washing the dishes, I saw a clear picture in the peripheral area of my vision of two men getting out of a car, one I recognized and one I didn't. The one I didn't recognize was wearing a uniform of some type. This turned out to be symbolically true in the way events played out in actuality. I'm sure this is another capacity of ours, but I wasn't interested in pursuing its development at the time.   

I also have a greater capacity to know people through an expanded intuition. How much of that can be attributed to the experience versus the work I had done, I don't know, but I know it's easier to read people now.

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   Yes     Everything was changed. My whole perspective on life was shifted and I was free to love without conditions, where love is its own reward.

How has the experience affected your relationships? Daily life? Religious practices? Career choices?       Relationships- The experience put unconditional love in my heart, I love everything with that real love, the one that accepts everything because it knows that nothing is intrinsically bad or wrong in creation, things are only misunderstood. It seems to make all relationships good even if there is a dispute, which have become few and far between. I'm almost always loving and playful and that seems to attract people to me. I have been single since the experience because I didn't want to draw anyone into my life while it was in such a shambles and I wanted to concentrate all my energy in bringing back a sense of security to my sons, that love compelled me to fix what I had broken while not having this love, I knew the part I had played and making it right was more important than anything else, love seems to demand that you un-do what lack of love has done. Everything I did was geared towards this end including career choices. 

I would enjoy sharing my life with someone, but that is part of the problem for me now. I can see that most relationships are more about possessing rather than sharing. People are looking to another to give them the love they don't possess and it can't be done because the love their looking for is an experience inside themselves, having absolutely nothing to do with anything other than the self. That's why so many relationships don't last and a lot are spent in quiet desperation or numbness, they've used another person to make them feel better and called it love while the reality of my experience has taught me that love and fulfillment is an inner journey that has to be taken before you can really know what love is, the kind that is in you and doesn't go away. 

Immediately following the experience I was also filled with an expanded sense of possibilities for my life and a fearlessness that I couldn't fail. At first it seemed like I hadn't completely come back to the same world I left. I can't explain it but it seemed as if a residue of the experience was still with me. The following day my route to the grocery store down the street a few blocks, took me to train track overpass. Before the tracks is a main thoroughfare leading out of the city, with a stretch of trees and grass, then the tracks. This section stood out to me because the vegetation between the road and the tracks was a shade of green I had never seen before. It almost looked like a cartoon scene because it was in such contrast to all its surroundings. It was radiant and vibrant as it looked like life thriving through the concrete jungle. It was a new way of seeing things and I thought if I was seeing it in this fashion, it meant we must possess this as a human capacity or else this would not be happening to me. I knew there was more to being human than I had thought before and this sight I was witnessing conveyed that life could not be covered up and buried, it breaks through. It was during this residual time that I had the following experiences with my career path.  

 I was a driver for a courier company that had a union trying to get its' foot in the door and the atmosphere was not good, so I fearlessly quit the day after the experience. After a short time I thought I should get a job as the bills were piling up. I was not in a stable condition however because of the experience and the circumstances of my life and wanted something where I could work alone so I could have some time to sort things out, mindless work. I thought that carpet cleaning would offer that for me and remembered a guy whose carpet cleaning services I had used when I was involved in rental property management. I gave him a call and he invited me for lunch to talk about it. It turned out that he needed an operation that, if he had taken the time to have, would have lost him his business and he was praying to God to help him. So I played a part in answering another's pleas which was an experience all on its' own. 

Some months after beginning carpet cleaning I realized I needed to get myself into a position where I could provide for my kids and that required that I increase my income. I thought how I like working with my hands and I had enjoyed doing mechanical work, so I decided to pursue a career in heavy equipment mechanics. I found an ad in the newspaper for a wash-bay attendant at a local commercial chemical transport company and thought that this was a way into the trade and I applied. I felt a certainty that I would get this job even when they called and said they had given it to someone else. I saw one of their chrome tankers the day after that call and as it turned a corner, the light that shone off it reminded me of the light I had seen in my experience which only deepened my faith that the job was somehow still mine. Sure enough they called back a couple of days later and gave me the job. It turned out that the man they hired had strong religious convictions and was demanding the business change some of its policies to suit those convictions. The fact that this had another religious aspect to it did not escape my attention. It seemed like miracles were happening, the doors were being swung open for me. I'm now a licensed heavy equipment mechanic and inspector. 

As for religious practice, I never followed any religious practices as I had long ago dismissed a God that would set up a system in which you could be damned for eternity if you didn't do things the right way, which is what I saw in the Catholicism I was raised in. My practice was for internal exploration with the intention to find peace. I had no idea that any of these experiences that came to me were even a possibility. Following that life changing event I stopped all practices. My initial thoughts were that if this is what was going to happen from doing this work then I had to stop because I would not have been able to function in society. I had thoughts of getting stuck, or so drawn to it that I would just stay in that consciousness and I didn't want that because I had a life that needed fixing with my consciousness in my body. I now know how to silence my mind and live in the moment, I have peace and love and I'm content, that provides the atmosphere for my day to day life now.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         Yes     I love life again and feel like a child most of the time. I've taken possession of my life and have brought it to where I wanted it to be instead of being blown by the winds of popular opinion. I no longer have a sense of need because I know I can't be harmed in any true sense of the word because I know I�m not my body and all situations are temporary. Living with this lack of need, and the sense of safety it induces, is what it is to be free.

Have you shared this experience with others?         Yes     At first the urge to tell the world was very strong. I felt that if everyone experienced what I had it would save the world, everybody would be too in love with life to be able to destroy anything, but I also knew that I would appear to be a raving lunatic to a lot of people if I started raving on about it, and nothing would be gained by doing that. I had to test the waters though and told a few people. The reactions ranged from blank stares to complete disbelief from an in-law who thought it was horrible that I even consider that I had such an enlightening experience.  

After the experience, when I went to turn in my written resignation at the courier company, there was a new manager that had just been put in place. Everybody thought he was put there to intimidate the employees so that we wouldn't join the union, but when I started to talk to him, he revealed that he didn't know the situation he was getting into and didn't like it one bit, in fact he was a minister at a rural church looking to subsidize his income. He was quite a talented artist as well, but it almost felt as if this man was placed there for the purpose of hearing my story. We had a very interesting conversation, and he was the closest one I can say believed me when I relayed the experience.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?  I felt as if the experienced had deepened my capacity to feel. The highs were higher and the lows correspondingly low. I started into the experience feeling the lowest I ever had and ended up feeling higher than I ever could have imagined, from sobs of pain, to sobs of joy. The experience made me believe that in your darkest moment lies your greatest joy. I experienced the truth of that. It was a necessity to hold tight to the love I had felt because I also knew and felt the pain of the world. My consciousness expanded to include the globe and not just myself any longer and seeing the pain and fear most people are in, and the suffering this creates, was very hard to know in the feeling sense. That�s why focusing on the love I know was, and is, important to me.  

I felt like a ghost walking amongst the people for some time after the experience, I felt very alone and constrained by a society that wouldn't allow me to express myself without ridicule and as recently as a few years ago I was ready to leave this place. My plans didn't seem to be coming to fruition and I felt alone in a horrible place, not wanting to wake up in the mornings. It was your forums and the people there who changed that feeling in me in a hurry. I was no longer alone with this and it made all the difference for me and all the things I set out to do have come to fruition now. 

For some time right after the experience every love song I heard felt like it was written to God. I was filled with love, joy, awe and gratitude for being set free from my fears. I felt like I was born again into a new life of freedom. I was ecstatic at the reality of life from this new perspective, at the endless possibilities and an eternity to explore them in this creative environment we�re involved in. The perfection and magnificence of it all expanded my view of who I am and what I am capable of. Things have leveled off as time has passed and I'm content with whatever comes my way.

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      The experience itself was the best part, the worst part was trying to incorporate what I had experienced into my life while life as I knew it crumbled

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?        Not at the moment

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?         Yes     Simple loving acts bring me to tears with the love I feel at seeing such things. After the experience I searched in the world around me for the love I had experienced. I was adamant that the world act accordingly, and it caused some trouble, but I didn't want to live in a world without it at first. I could see it in children and in nature but it was definitely lacking in adults. I'm settled now but every time I see an example of real love the tears want to flow like they did with the experience as love wells up inside.

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?               Yes     As best as can be expressed using words

Please offer any suggestions you may have to improve this questionnaire.    I think you've done an excellent job with the questions you've put forth.