(Originally published August 15, 2012.)
This week my dear uncle, Martin Hunter, died. It has been hard on the family to watch him go from bon-vivant to stage-4 wraith, and I allowed myself to get caught up in their grief, but when I woke up today I realized that I know better.
Yes, of course I sympathize for my aunt who has lost her companion of 25 years, but I am reminded of a Sacred Mission of mine. I hope that as you read this, if fears come up for you, you’ll feel them, and let them pass through you without taking root.
According to the Akashic Records, those of us who have had near-death experiences (NDEs as they are known) have a Sacred Contract to help other humans step out of fear and into more ease and grace about dying. And since I’ve had numerous NDEs, this is especially true for me.
Having visited death’s door a few times—once very reluctantly—I can tell you from experience that death from the perspective of the dying is not at all a bad option. In fact, it’s about the most peaceful thing there is.
The first time I was consciously given the choice of living or dying (though not my first NDE), it was when I was experiencing pre-eclampsia and extremely high blood pressure. Throughout the first 6 months of my pregnancy, my blood pressure was a solid 90/60, but on this day it shot so high that the medical staff at the local hospital was in awe that I was not passed out or catatonic. I’m not sure how high it got, but I was considered stable enough to transfer to the state capital hours later at 240/200.
As I was lying there on the table gritting my teeth at the intense pain and having battled the panic of my brain being very much too small for my skull (I suddenly understood those ancient skulls with windows cut into them!) I was presented with an option by a disembodied voice. If I wanted the pain to stop, it would be a very easy move: I was shown that each life chugged along on a track like a skateboard/train mashup, but very slowly. It would be easy for me to take a small step to the left, off the platform: no more pain, nothing jarring, very easy.
My response to this was: “No, I think I’ll stay.” Not because I had any worries about anything, Au contraire. (In fact I knew that my daughter would not only survive whether I did or not, but that everything would be okay—incidentally, this is the moment that my career as an intuitive really started, even through I was about 4 years from knowing it!) I wanted to stay because I was curious to see my daughter’s face.
Miraculously—or predictably, depending on your perspective—at that moment when I decided to live, everything fell into place: the medical staff, which had been struggling for long minutes to get a line in for morphine and magnesium to prevent seizures, landed a vein right away, and everything turned around: my child and I were no longer in such grave danger. Thus ends the tale of my first NDE that week.
My second/third of the week happened 5 days later when she was born. In cases like ours, they like to keep the incredibly-premature babies in their mommies until the natural incubator is about to die, then grab the baby and hope they both survive. It worked! My C-section was done with no anesthesia (I fell into an 8-hour coma as they raced me down to delivery) but she and I are both here to tell the tale, 6.5 years later.
That night, before I’d been able to see her face (I was far too sick to be admitted to the NICU until 60 hours later), I had the most incredible dream ever. This really sealed the deal for me on the life + death question.
I was in a beige room containing nothing but a kind of examination or massage table where I was sitting, and an empty closet with a few stray hangers. I was again talking to a disembodied voice, but this time it was telling me that I was dead.
You can imagine my indignation: I had chosen to stay primarily to see Anne-Charlotte’s face, and I hadn’t yet. Why wasn’t I being given the choice again?
Lots of things were explained to me in this dream, including how time works, and that everyone is on the Earth for the perfect amount of time for them. Time is elastic, you see, like an accordion: it expands and contracts. Much like how, when a person is asleep, it may feel as though hours have passed whereas according to the clock it has only been a few minutes, or vice versa.
The same is true about lifespan: it may feel too short to those left on Earth, but it’s always perfect and best for the soul in question. That even when children die, it’s perfect; their souls only wanted a small taste of Earth life anyway.
When I asked what about the surviving family members and friends, the answer was that they chose to incarnate and spend important parts of their lives with certain people, and that dealing with, and learning from, the death was not “just” a part of their path, but was what they needed and had chosen.
Everything that the divine Universe creates for us is perfect. It’s up to us to decide whether or not we want to suffer when painful things appear in our lives. This applies to everything, not simply illness and death. It applies to anything that appears to be a loss of something cherished (a person, thing, pastime, opportunity, freedom, everything).
After lots of back-and-forth with the voice, I capitulated, and decided that since I had no choice, I had better move forward. As I turned around, the beige room disappeared and I was in a totally black space, facing a door outlined in fire. I walked up to it and knocked. No answer. I turned back to find the voice, but it was gone, so I knocked again, a little perturbed that I had to insist when it wasn’t my idea. Still no answer. By then I was a little angry: here I am, prepared to cross over even though I don’t really want to, and you’re not even answering the door!
On the third knock, I could see light coming from behind the door as it opened slowly. And then I was back in my hospital bed, in the dark room, and the nurse was coming in to check on me.
I had passed the test, and was allowed to come back to be able to share this knowledge with you. Death isn’t tragic, even though it often feels that way from a human perspective. It’s always perfectly timed, and exactly what you, on a soul level, asked for.
If you have been called to deal with the death of a loved one, please do your best to be at peace and know how much grace is associated with this transition. I used to think we were alive and then dead and that’s all there was. Now I know that the years we spend on the Earth are like the dream and that the real existence is the fullness that is beyond this one, brief lifetime.
I know that Martin is resting in peace. I know that he has now rejoined who he is in his Akashic Records: the full him, beyond names, beyond peace + sorrow, beyond space + time, just pure Love.
I wish peace + grace to the entire family, his friends, and anyone else facing or dealing with the death of someone close.
