Dr. Efrat Shokef - Her NDE & Promises to Her Children Before Birth

0:00 From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped. And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else. The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. On back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death, everybody.

0:41 And please welcome our special guest today, who I'm going to try so hard to pronounce her name right, Dr. Efrat Shoketh. Perfect. Thank you. A nod is not good enough. I need the little pad on the back. And Efrat, you are in Israel right now, which is amazing. You're our first guest to be on From Israel. So welcome. And before we jump into it, and just to promise, people are going to love this today. We're talking about something a little bit new. But first, tell us about you. First, gratitude and thank you for having me. I'm curious and looking forward to this conversation.

1:23 My name is Efrat, and I am indeed from Israel. I'm a mother of three teens, teen daughters, all of them girls, amazing teachers that I received for this lifetime. We'll be talking about my books. So in my book, I refer to when there were babies. I have four dogs. I love my dogs so much that whatever they want me to do, I will do for them. Give them candy and more vlogs. What kind are they? All kinds of mixes. Two big ones, two little ones. And I am working with children following my New Day's experience, which we'll be talking about. I learned how to work with the spiritual tools and ways and dimensions.

2:05 It came my way. Learned how to work with shamanic practices. And today, I mostly work with children, teens, parents, using shamanic tools worldwide. Did you say your girls are teenagers? Yes. How old? 17. And my twins are 15, almost 15. Tell me if our family was typical. When those teenage girls hit 16, 17, all of a sudden they butted heads with their mother a lot. Luckily my relationship was still good with them. Are you experiencing any of that or are you a perfect parent so it's not happening? I'm not a perfect parent.

2:46 None of us are perfect. We're always growing and learning. I find that it's mostly about what I don't know. But I am blessed, blessed, blessed and I'm grateful from morning to evening and from evening to morning that my relationship with my daughters is very warm, loving, respectful. We have very, very good communication. So far we hardly clash, but if it happens, it happens. And if that's what they'll need on their journey, I'll be there for that as well. I think we're all very appreciative of the fact that I'm here alive and their mom and they are very much aware of it as well.

3:27 And also we do spiritual work. We do shamanic journey. We meditate. They have the spiritual tools as well. We release the energy and the density that naturally creates between family members just about who took the garbage out or those stuff like that. So we add in the energetics and we clear those pieces. And I think that helps us a lot in our way of life and we choose love. We choose to wake up in love and to finish our days with love. So far as of today, we're good. That is beautiful. We're going to be getting into your near-death experience and also talking about how it relates to parenting.

4:10 And you ended up writing a book about it, which I'm just going to give you this shameless plug right now. It's called The Promise We Made Three Universal Soul Promises We Made To Our Children. And my copy didn't show up till yesterday, so I haven't had time to read it yet. So I'm really looking forward to this. Let's start from the beginning. What led to your near-death experience? I know you were in a car accident. Give us a little bit of background. Where were you? What was going on with your life then? So a bit of the background before the car crash, I finished my postdoctoral studies in organizational social psychology, working in multicultural teams.

4:51 My toddler, my older daughter was a toddler. She was a little over three years old and my twins were 13 months old. I was mostly home with them. And I was just teaching in an academic university, just one horse a week. And I was mostly home. It was a choice. And I had a fairly regular routine. Raising twins wasn't easy to start with. And I think just before they turned one and we felt like me and my husband, we felt that, okay, we're starting, we got it. We got it. We figured it out and these are smooth and we know how to handle things.

5:31 That week of the car crash, the car crash happened on a Thursday. And on that Sunday, I had, as part of our community, we used to gather the moms and the babies. And I invited the group over to our little apartment then to celebrate a year of the surviving, being a mom, two, three, and the twins. And it was a kind of celebration for their first birthday. And we opened a circle and each mom was invited to share what motherhood means to her. How did I know where that's going to lead me with this book and this whole journey that I found myself walking?

6:13 And that was it. That was invitation and each mom shared. And my twins were coming and nursing and going back to their friends within the circle. And I was last as a host. And I couldn't say a word. And I had all speech prepared. I couldn't say anything. And what I said was, I whispered, I want to be their mom. I said it once. I choked. I didn't know anything. I think it's go with moms and babies. Soon it was loud and the circle started spreading around. And one friend was sitting next to me, a dear, dear friend, a wise woman, looked at me and said, Frat, are you okay?

6:58 What did you just say? I was like, but babies, I was hosting. I put it aside. Five days later, the car crash happened. And I was invited to choose and ask and pray that I would indeed be their mom. So that's a bit of what happened before, like the background of our lives. That morning, it was a morning I was teaching. My mom came to watch the twins. I nursed them, the twins together. I hold that beautiful memory within me. And I took my father on the way to the daycare. And she had a few hours a day.

7:41 I had time. I talked to his friends. We enjoyed the rain on the way. It was a really beautiful, beautiful Israeli winter, which is fairly warm. A bit of rain. That took cold. My next memory is as I set to drive to my class, we live in small villages. So the daycare was also in a small village near Brian. And remember, it took me a long time to turn left into the main road. A few seconds later, I remember a sense of a boom. I did not see the other car coming. The other car slipped to the right and fixed the slip to the right, to the left, and bumped into me.

8:22 And we're actually really good friends now, the other driver, the other woman from the story and myself. An amazing woman. I'm very grateful to her, but that's a different story. And I was out of my body. I don't remember a tunnel, like many share. I was immediately in this most beautiful space, luminous, loving. I have, it's anchored in my body, the feeling of stillness, deep, deep, deep, deep stillness. And within that stillness, the faraway sound of, it's like bells, but it's not bells.

9:07 Really, really, really soft, nourishing music. And it wasn't something I was hearing or something I was hearing in my heart. Have you heard anything like it here? Did you describe it? Oh, it was like this piece of music or anything like that. So what if my daughter plays the harp? And sometimes when she, she's just making it up, kind of going into a meditative, high-frequency space of around and she plays and just something comes out. That's a bit, that's the closest. It's not the same, but that's the closest. That could wake up those memories within me.

9:47 I've never heard anything like that here on Earth. And it's like, it's, it's, it's music that came in complete silence, but there was music. I have experienced this music again when I, as part of shamanic journey, when I traveled into the cosmos and visited various planets and dimensions. And then I have had that experience of that same music again, but not here on Earth. What are you seeing? You said it was beautiful. What was beautiful as you look around and I can see you're going back to it in your mind's eye here and that's great. And I'll read a little bit.

10:29 How many years ago was this, by the way? And what was it? 12 or something? 13 years ago. 13 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. The light was very bright, brightness that would dazzle us here. We wouldn't be able to look into that brightness, but it was beautifully bright. Very, very, very light colors, kind of clouds, feathery clouds. I don't remember so much looking as I was feeling what was going on. And then I started floating. I noticed I was floating forward like this very, very, very clear and that I was not floating alone, that there were other beings floating in the same directions, not very close to me, but before me and after me.

11:15 I did not pay any attention to how I looked, but they kind of looked, I guess, in human, in a way. And we were floating forwards and in that space. And all along I was feeling that it's like the melting of my physical, the melting of myself, the melting of judgments, the melting of beliefs, of who I am. It was breathing love. It was being in clouds of love. It was feeling I am love. And it's not, I can't say that it happened at once, but it all happened at once because it was out of time.

11:56 I felt I was love. I felt I was accepted in ways I've never felt accepted before. I felt perfect as I am. And I was, I wasn't thinking about my broken body. I wasn't aware that there was an accident. I wasn't thinking of my daughters or my family or my earthly life. I was just in that very much here now of that luminous space. As we were floating forward and I was melting into this amazing, amazing stillness and beauty and love, I noticed others floating towards us.

12:38 And those beings that were floating towards us, some of them came alone, some of them came in small groups, never more than three, four, five, and they met those other beings that were floating forward with me. And these were, I realized that these were people who have transferred and have left their physical body only much later as I was integrating my new experience. But at that time, it was just a beautiful scene, seeing, being floating forward and being accepted and loved and embraced by loved ones. Sorry, when you say loved ones, did you recognize anybody? I met someone that I, I'm still not never sure if it was my grandpa or my high guidance at a later point in my near-death experience.

13:28 And I'm saying loved ones and referring to loved ones that others met and it was clear that they were loved ones because of the interaction. It was such happy meetings of people embracing those who came, people beings, souls, including guidance. They had all kinds of features. Some of them were tall, luminous beings. There was one that looked like an orb of light and they were floating forward, but I couldn't float forward. There was like this unseen barrier that they were moving forward. They met each other. They were really, really happy. Wow, so beautiful.

14:09 And they were floating forward. And I wasn't occupied with, oh, nobody's meeting me at that point. I was just, wow. It was amazing. And I was really, really touched by those meetings. And beings continued to flood from behind me and in front of me and just move forward. And I couldn't. I was shocked. In hindsight, do you think that was because you were just meant to be there temporarily? Yes, yes. I wasn't supposed to go through that barrier. I'm not sure. My understanding is that if I had gone forward, I wouldn't be able to come back.

14:51 Okay, keep going. And then someone was floating towards me and it looked like my grandpa. And the communication was not in words to tell path. They could just communication of love. Not a lot of how you've been, what happened, not stuff like that. Just how amazing and wonderful and great it is to embrace and see one another. In hindsight, I also know that I've met this frequency more than once later on as part of my spiritual guides. And I understand that there is a chance. I never asked and I leave it in this ambiguity of both that my guide took the form of my grandfather so that I would be able to recognize someone and surrender to the interaction.

15:43 There are no words. I'm sure you hear that for many other people who are experienced, near-death experienced, but there aren't really words to express the love that is communicated, the acceptance, the tranquility, the calmness. Everything melts. He embraced me and we talked. And it was a short conversation about how amazing to see you in energy. And then I was invited and he divided me and we floated to this shimmering white balcony. And I was shown a lot of aspects of Earth. And I'm not sure if it was Earth floating, if it was still and the Earth was floating below us, or if it was the balcony floating above stuff and places, happy moments, sad moments, the complexity of the human journey, the many sad choices and the confusion we humans walk with.

16:44 It felt like days, I know it was probably, we estimate that it was about seven minutes or maybe a little more. It was a few minutes in earthly time that I was not in my body, but I felt like days have passed. A lot of information. I was observing it, not even understanding what I'm seeing, just understanding I'm seeing the whole spectrum of possibilities and gaining an understanding of humanity and answers to all kinds of understandings about our journey. Stuff that I never asked before. I wasn't occupied with those questions. Like many do. Many are.

17:24 Many people are asking questions and it's beautiful. I wasn't one of them. I wasn't asking questions. I was living my life. Shout had a good life, but with small discomfort that were inviting change because I was not on my path and that observation from that balcony opened up a lot. So you weren't having a conversation there with your guide. This was just information coming to you, right? Yes. Yes. I was shown. It was information coming to me. There were not too many explanations. Just notice this, notice that. Seize a difference.

18:05 Like pointing what I need to see, that type of information. Yes. It wasn't about communication or download, like a mental download that came in words. That came later. And then at some point he just said, you must go back now. That did. My time was up. And I had no chance of saying, oh wait, I want to stay here. And of course I wanted to stay. In many ways I wanted to stay, but I think I understood that as beautiful as this place is, I will return to it one day as we all do. And that was in my time. And I needed to go back. And I was pulled, floating really, really fast and boom, fell into my broken body.

18:51 At that stage I was gone for about, let's say, an average of seven minutes. We don't really know somebody who didn't see the car crash happen, but stopped immediately. And I was waiting for the paramedics and everything. I was trying to talk to me. And he was trying to talk to me. And he was talking and talking and talking because that's what the paramedics told him. Later when we met him, he said that my eyes were rolling and I was not barely breathing and he was pretty sure I was not going to make it. And he kept asking me, and I remember, were there any babies in the car? Were there any babies in the car because he saw the bases of the click connect because I had two bases in the car, in the car seat for the toddler.

19:33 And he was afraid that somebody flew out because the car was broken. And he wouldn't hear my voice. He wouldn't hear anything I was saying. But I felt like I was present and I was very, very, very confused. But it's some, and I don't know how that happened. But I had a moment of clarity. I managed to talk. I told him nobody was in the car with me. I gave him my home phone number and my husband's name and told him, call my husband. We leave nearby. He's going to show up in a few minutes, just to scold him. And I was gone again. And at that stage, I wasn't the luminous dimensions. I was just floating above my car, seeing how they put a fire at the front, me taken out of the car.

20:19 I don't think I understood it was me. I wasn't even asking questions. I was just sitting in that very, very blurry, possibly escaping my really painful body. I was severely injured, multiple injuries. And a helicopter came to take me to the hospital because I had no chance of making it otherwise. And at that stage, I was already, when the helicopter came, my husband was already there. He managed to leave his car through the traffic jam crate. And he saw a friend that didn't know that it was me through his car keys and told him, take my car home. And he managed to convince the people on the helicopter, the paramedics, to let him join us and arrive at the hospital.

21:05 The other woman from the story was also with us there. For the next few days, I went through operations. I barely remember anything. I was in an induced coma. I wasn't in my body. I went back to that. I have memories from that time of going back to the balcony, replaying that movie I experienced, replaying it again and again and again. And then slowly the Lord of the anesthesia and I came back and I had no idea what happened. I did not remember the car crash. I had a stoma open that was later closed. One of the things, the reflection I received that when they told me that I said, okay, but I'm alive, everything is okay.

21:47 People are usually when they found out such news, they are really, really alarmed. I wasn't alarmed from anything. Something about my attitude around what happened was really surprising for many people around me. And all I knew was that something really profound happened, that there is a huge reason why I'm here and why I'm back, but I had no idea what happened. I couldn't put any word to it. Yeah, I think that's where the dramatic story ends. Okay. I want to ask about that calmness. Do you think that was because of where you had been and what had happened to you?

22:28 You were so calm with everything? Definitely, definitely because in parallel to the earthly drama, I was a mother to three little ones, I nursed them in the morning, later today I was bleeding milk and blood. I had a knowing. It was a knowing that something had changed, something really profound happened. And it wasn't about a mental knowing. I think it was my energy, my heart. It took me a long time to give words and to be able to share my story and write about my story and it was just this, maybe a large bird perspective that what was happening was part of a bigger plan, a bigger understanding.

23:16 And that now I need to go through those stages as the adult babies that I was. I often feel it's like when babies come, you know, they're huge souls, amazing beings coming from far away planets. And in order to be born and experiencing, or as you have to go through that, being cooked in the world and being small, exactly, and then being dependent and letting people take care of you, there's this process that allows you to get used to it and learn its rules. And I was kind of like that. I was learning the rules. I was learning to walk. I was later and I needed to learn how to walk again.

23:57 I needed to learn how to eat again. There were so many functions. And I also needed to learn who I was because I wasn't the person who left. Who did you first tell about what experiences you had? Was it your husband? Yes. Yes. And how did he react? Did he immediately believe you or was he a little skeptical? It was all new to him. He's a very rational person, but he immediately believed me. He knew that I wouldn't be telling anything like that if it hadn't happened. Not everyone was like that. Some people really wanted to know. We were really intrigued once I started telling.

24:38 And I was really looking for who can I talk to? Who can I share this story? And some of the people I was trying to share the story with didn't want to hear. It was too much for them. And some of the people that I shared the story immediately analyzed it and gave me interpretations and explained to me that it was actually my brain waves or that I imagined it. And maybe it was because of the painkillers I was receiving. It was hard for a lot of people to hear the story, but for me, it was stronger than anything. And I was resting hours of resting when in the hospital and then when I was home.

25:18 And I was just drifting back to this safe place of light. That's amazing. And it is very common, by the way, for people when they're unconscious or in coma. I don't know that those are two different things, but to go back to this place or to have a very similar experience to when maybe a time that their heart is actually stopped. It's not that different. And so those experiences can happen both places. And for you, it sounds like they did. Maybe some of it was repeated maybe so it would sink even further inside for you and become even more real.

25:58 Yes, exactly. Because I needed to integrate it. I think, and that's I think also true and you've heard many stories. So you maybe even have a greater perspective about this, that we have this luminous experience and it can be a new experience and it can be an out of body experience. It can be spiritual experience. And we come back and it's like, at least the environment expects us to be who we were and to be the same. But we're not. But we ourselves, we don't have that language yet. I needed to learn words. I didn't even know that the near death experience were so common and that it has a name.

26:38 So I needed to learn all that vocabulary to myself. I needed to understand that it's okay for me to talk about it and that if somebody else doesn't want to hear about it, I can respect that. But it doesn't make my experience less real. I needed to learn what the invitation was because I needed to bring changes into my life. Everybody has changed when they come back and you mentioned that you were changed. Give us a little bit of an idea. Was it your personality quite a bit changed? In what ways were you different? I think in the perspective, the perspective of our things, it was a much wider perspective of understanding.

27:21 My priorities, that was also very clear of what's more important and what's less important to me. Following my truths, and that took time because I needed to unweave and shed a lot of definitions and a lot of limiting beliefs I was walking with. And that's an ongoing process I still find that there is more to heal and there is more to cleanse so I could become just me, my essence in my human form for this lifetime. So that was also learning my truths. I think these are the main things that I felt at that time. Some people go through huge shifts.

28:02 They change their career. They get rid of some relationships that are not bringing anything to them. Was that a thing for you or was it just more of an internal shift? No, it was all of it. It was an internal shift that brought a choice of who's staying in our lives and who's not. I had very little energy so that was also a choice. If I have a little energy, I want to, as soon as I started communicating and being able to be around my daughters, and that was a very clear priority or my very close family. And I would not invest that in old friends, but there were a few very good friends that I would. And naturally, some people also, we changed.

28:44 My whole family changed and we were going through something and some people can stay around and some people can't. And that's okay. Some people returned to our lives and some people didn't. In terms of my career, I was not on an academic path because I didn't want to be only a new university professor. I was supposed to start a tenure track in a small college while going also into counseling and to multinational firms. That whole change, I couldn't do it. I tried to go back to teaching because I was encouraged to go back to teaching and the faculty were amazing. They said, just take one course. They were so good to me, but it was all the environment expecting me to return to who I was.

29:28 I was lying along, but I couldn't teach. I didn't remember what was on the next slide. I was not ready to teach. I was not able to go back to that academic environment. So everything had to change. Your book talks about three universal sole promises we made to our children. Can you touch on those and tell me how you learned those? If you allow me, I'll take you as a step back. When I returned, one, I had that prayer of being my daughter's mom. And I wasn't participating in any of the caretaking. I was in the hospital for a long time and then I was home sometimes on the couch, but not.

30:11 I wasn't the one approached to. I was like a picture on the wall anyway. And I was looking to what would make me their mom. I was constantly asking, what makes me my own daughter's mother when I'm not participating in any of the doing. The doing defines us. And I was looking for something beyond the doing that would define me. And those promises were part of the answer. And another thread that was walking with me and I was obsessive about it, I knew I had to find, I knew it was possible to live with having a nurse. I knew it was possible to feel feelings that are close to what I felt in my near-death experience in the here and now, in a physical presence.

30:58 And I was trying to understand, it wasn't a mental understanding, it was an energetic understanding of how do I share my story, this really beautiful space I've been to with my daughters, but not as mom says that mom had a near-death experience and she experienced not, but as their experience. And as I was healing and I was exploring and trying to find my own truths, I noticed when I'm aligned to my truths, my feeling of that joy, of wholeness, of the monocity, of being the love that I am, awakens. When I'm not aligned to that truth, somebody suggests something and I'm just keeping quiet and keeping small because I'm not doing anything and I don't feel I have any right to say anything, I'm not aligned.

31:45 I feel bad. And that was also aligned with my physical recovery. I was aligned with my truths, I felt better physically. I wasn't aligned with my truths, I was really weak and unable to participate in anything. And as those understanding integrated, I realized that what makes me my daughters mom is that I see and know and I'm the one they chose to create the conditions for them to feel, to live their life in joy and in illness and to have those experiences of alignment, of being the love that they are and we all are in the here and now in their lives.

32:28 And then I was asking, I was asking and at that point I was already writing and downloading and being very, very much guided to ask what were the conditions. And so we each have universal agreements, I think it's better to call them. Why your children chose you, why your grandchildren chose your kids and their spouses as their parents, what was the personality, what is their lifestyle, what are the things that they're going to be able to teach them and what are the things that are going to be challenging because we choose also what would challenge us to make a choice to be different. I grew up in a very academic family. I needed to make a choice to be a very un-rational spiritual, we still feed on the grand person.

33:15 So we choose all kinds of personal agreements, we create the conditions on a personal level that do it. I was asking what makes us all of us, what's the essence of motherhood, what does everyone, no matter where they are born, expect from their parents and what is shared. And that's when the three very basic universal promises came. Truce, attentiveness and emotion, truce, how do we allow the children to stay aligned to as they are, who they are in the beauty and the essence and the love that they are. And you know when we see babies, where our heart opens, they press a button in us, they remind us of love, they remind us of who we are because they're so, it's not about evolutionary cuteness of making sure we'll take care of them.

34:08 It's so much more than that. It's reminding us who we are, that's like a gift of a journey and they know truth. If somebody they don't like or somebody with a bad energy would pick them up, they wouldn't express that they don't want to be picked up by that person. That is so, so true. I know she doesn't listen to this so I can say it. When my mother-in-law picked up our first baby, it was it was ugly. She screamed. Just, I love where we're going with this. So the first thing was truth. What's next?

34:49 So Truce's, I'll say something about Truce because from very early age, we teach them that they don't know what's best for them. And it's not about not keeping discipline or making sure things are organized. It's just about respect, attentiveness. We think it tells you to eat a banana so we push that banana and maybe that child doesn't need to eat that banana or as we said, who picks them up? Who's they stay with? There's so many little elements, it's important to say that I've got through these mistakes and I have no self judgment about it because if you have a toddler and you have twins, sometimes you attend to one and the other one needs to wait, it's part of the earthly conditions.

35:30 But I do believe that we can do often much more than we do in order to respect and listen to those little communications of their truth and as we, and we know so many adults that are working so hard to find their truth and are growing through so much crisis in order to find their truth and to come back to who they are. And I believe that if we allow our children and create the conditions for them to stay true to who they are, they would have so much less conflict and they would be able to come and work out and work out whatever they came here to work out, but they won't have to have a drama around it.

36:13 So that's truth. And truth is a very subjective thing when you start with my say, if I start with myself or we start with you or we start with every individual, but as we climb, and I think that's part of what New Desk Experience offers us. We're all the same. We're all love regardless of the skin, the religion, the gender, our life choices, our life circumstances, we're all the same. And as we raise our frequency and walk our truth, we find that our choices meet and align and integrate and become one. The second is attentiveness. They come attentive. They know how to listen.

36:54 They are connected to their beautiful guidance, whether angels or other beings, and they're not alone. And they listen and they're connected to nature and to Mother Earth. And we tell them we'd spend to go home because we have a list to do list. And we tell them that they shouldn't get too dirty in the mud. And we do all kinds of things that, and the monster under the bed is not real when it's actually really frightened entity, but it's very real. And we tell them again that first that they don't know what's right for them. And we distance them and we don't let them listen.

37:34 So many parents when their child just gazes, that's doing nothing. That's bad education. That's, they need to be doing something all day long. So many parents feel their kids' schedule with so many activities. And there is no room for just dreaming, being, connecting. And then we grow up and we try and find the meditation. Hopefully we find the meditation that works for us that can bring in that stillness then, but they come with that stillness. So second promise is creating those conditions for them to stay still, be attentive.

38:18 And all of those promises are mainly about not interfering. It's not, they come with what they come with. We came with the same, but society has its way. Order is needed. I understand why. But we also want to balance things and allow our kids to stay as true to their essence as possible. And the third promise talks about motion and that's more about the interaction between kids and their parents and their family and the significance adults around them that they are just as important. When a child notices that we take that first step into healing, when we try to give them the opportunity to be attentive, when we are becoming aware of our own truths and often becoming aware of our own truths starts with being aware of all those moments that we're not aligned before we find that alignment.

39:12 But as we communicate energetically that we're in a motion that allows the children energetically to see that we're trying, we're trying to be the essence that they chose to come to, the potential, the promise. That's when they can stay, it gives them like a wider time frame, I guess, to stay who they are because just that really slow motion of parents. And for some, some parents carry so much wounding and so many limiting beliefs they internalize. Even if they're aware they want to do the best and create the conditions for their kids.

39:52 And you know, and when a baby is born, we promise of the world, we really promise them the world. But then life happens. But even those stages, being really self-compassionate but finding those soul moments of alignment, of being attentive, honoring, respectful for a truth and acting according to it in the very little details of life, communicates energetically to the kids. That parent, that significant adult, that grandparent is trying. So now you have the legitimacy to stay who you are because that's the right way of staying who you are. So these are the three promises that relate to in this book.

40:32 There are a few more but that we form up in the future. All right. Thank you for those. I'm going to back up for a minute throughout some questions here that I had along the way that I jotted down. One is you mentioned that children choose their parents before they come here. Tell us a little bit about that process and there are some people out there that are going, hey, my parents were horrible. I was abused. Why would I have chosen that? So there's about three questions in one. Try to give some explanation to how that all works. I'll try to give my understanding of the process in a short version. We come here for many reasons.

41:15 One of the reasons is to experience emotions. Experience Earth is so beautiful and there's so many experiences we can have here. It's an amazing planet with all the sadness and the hardship and the chaos we're experiencing. It's still amazing place. And humans are such beautiful beings when they are aligned to who they are, kind and loving. And we come to experience all those aspects. We also come here to evolve and grow. So we have this kind of a checklist, I guess, of we want to experience this and this and this because we haven't experienced this before. We want to grow in these and these and these aspects.

41:57 We want to resolve and experience all kinds of relationships with souls that are part of our soul family. We also come here to provide some service and maybe a teaching to others. So we have this checklist and then we're asking which conditions would maximize our chances of becoming who we are, who we want to be and what we want to do in this journey, in this lifetime. Sometimes we choose families that will really, really challenge us. Now there are limits to violence. Because nobody puts on their plans anything very, very violent.

42:41 Sometimes we know that we may come to a confused family, that the beings that the parents are confused in, we hope because they're part of our soul family that we will be able to push those workings that will create the ripple of healing to that family or to those parents. Each family has at least one being, if not two, that are more sensitive, evolved, high frequency beings that come and help that family resolve its stuff. And I meet a lot of children in my practice because there's a sensitive, spiritually aware ones. I have a dear friend that she says, I was a bully, she was bullied, she became a bully.

43:24 But her ability to walk with bullies and to guide them into healing in her adult life was possible because of her experiences. So I think there is a limit, there is a border that we need to know that we don't nut every violence in bad experience is planned. A lot of it is because humans are very confused and it is not what we expect when we want to come. But a lot of challenges are challenges that we experience in order to become who we are. Can I throw out another concept and you tell me what you think of this? And that is that maybe when the children were making those choices, they didn't see every single thing that was going to happen in the future.

44:12 They saw the potential of those parents had to be. And then maybe along the way, one or both of those parents deviated and through their own agency to make their own choices, chose to make some bad choices and became a different or not as good of a person and a parent as they could have been. And so maybe that child didn't necessarily choose violence to happen to them. But that was a consequence of the fact that that parent that they chose went off on the wrong track. You think that could be? Yes, definitely, definitely.

44:53 And I think it happens more often that we want to, that we wish for. Yeah, I'm afraid it does. This human experience where we make so many mistakes. Okay, now we're going on a whole different tangent. And I can't help but ask this in, by the way, this is a safe space. It's non-denominational as to religion, but you brought up something that I just have to ask a little question. You don't have to answer it. You mentioned shamanism. How does that? A little bit that I understand about Israel and Judaism, how does shamanism fit into that and into your community and the way that you were raised?

45:39 Does that create some conflict or is everything cool there? Everything is cool. Everything is cool. I was raised in a secular family, secular Jewish family, my grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and while some Holocaust survivors were all about religious, when they started to build their lives again, my family, mine took a lot of steps back from religious religion because of what they experienced. And my house was not spiritual either. I did not hear spiritual concepts.

46:19 As a child, I had a lot of experiences, a lot of intuition, a lot of knowing, but I had no one to guide me. Or maybe it's better to say I was not aware of the ones I could have talked to that possibly could have guided me a bit. After the car crash and as I was integrating my near-death experience, I saw that I had spiritual abilities. A child of a friend would experience something and she would call and say, Vlad, can you look and I would just do a light wash, something really, really simple, just share that luminosity and love that I was carrying in my field and the issue would be resolved.

47:00 And I was looking for a framing. So I started in shamanism as a very ancient body of wisdom. And shamanism is a lot of things. So for me, it's a healing modality. I use it to knakes, I really relate to the connection to earth and to all beings. Not everyone around me can relate. And some people around me took some time to digest and I still have family members who want to know nothing about it. And I respect that. But when we think of Judaism and Kabbalah, Kabbalah is the Jewish shamanism.

47:43 And the essence of shamanism, of being connected to all beings, of us being spiritual, being on a journey, earth being heaven, it's the essence of all religions in some way or another. So when we weave in, I'm always waiting for somebody to write that book. I know it will happen at some point. Weave in all those pieces of different religions that are walking and that provide the framework and order that for some reason we use really, really need because we forget who we are. It all comes back to the same essence. Now I'm skipping topics again. You mentioned the feeling that you had there.

48:24 And there you never referred to it as heaven or spirit world or wherever. Have you put a name to it? I would call it, they mentioned of cosmic love. You mentioned that you couldn't really describe how you felt there. You felt love, you felt other things, okay, dig a little deeper. What did it really feel like? How can you relate it to someone who maybe hasn't felt that? I would invite that someone to maybe recall a moment of deep relaxation and stillness and maybe even guide them on a meditation because we can go very close to that when we do shamanic journey.

49:08 And when we're in that very relaxed surrendering state, we call moment of alignment of the sole moment of alignment of joy. That's the closest I think that in the human experience we can go to it. In my sense, it's a feeling that as we talk, I feel my energy. I feel the luminous air surrounding me. The flow is very, very, very, very soft. I feel in my cells, in my physical cells as we talk. And am I managing to communicate that feeling? I don't know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, depending who is listening.

49:50 It's difficult and I think it's something we all crave that being really loved and relaxed and knowing where we're at play as we are, we're safe. People are so stressed and we feel it here very much in the past few months that it distance us from who we are and then feeling that sense of really, really deep, deep down that knowing. And I think people feel it when they're aligned and those small moments of being in nature of surrendering to the soil, surrendering to a tree, surrendering to the sound of the leaves falling down, far away the water.

50:33 Each one of us connects to different elements, but that's when we have a moment of we're just in the now. That's when we connect to that feeling that I had in my new life experience, but I know people having so many other experiences. I don't know if I answered your questions. I hope I did. You're doing well. And I'm running out here. I know that we need to wrap up soon. You are raising three spiritual beings that are having an earthly human experience. The things that you have learned and felt, how does that help you on a day to day basis? What piece of advice can our listeners take away from that that can help them raise their children?

51:18 I think that as soon as we understand his parents, the justice we are on a journey, they are on a journey. Our whole perspective changes because it's not a dependent baby or a dependent child or a teen who is struggling or not struggling, who is growing up and becoming their own self. It's a huge soul. It's a beautiful being in a dense body, just like you and I and adults that raise them or try to guide them. And when we have that understanding, I think something really, really deep shifts because we respect them.

51:59 And when we respect, we set on a mutual journey. The hierarchy, which is still there, there are parents, there are children, there is some hierarchy, but the hierarchy dissolves and it's more about a shared journey. What am I? How can I serve them? How can I create the conditions that they need? And also noticing and embracing all the invitations that they bring us and they bring us so many invitations because they chose to come to us and they love us and they want us to be our best selves, our essence. That's part of the invitation. And as we embrace it, things just start to open up. I see that with a lot of families I work with, just understanding, awareness.

52:41 Oh, they're on a journey too and if I respect them and listen to them and then guide them on their lives here on earth, not because they need to assimilate and become and be able to earn money and to be able to be responsible adults and to have a profession, but because I'm truly looking at what their needs and who they are and what essence they came here to express and what they came to experience and we don't know. It's something we keep even from ourselves, but we do our best to be who we are and then we serve them and they serve us and it's a mutual dance. So just be attentive to that, I guess that's the first thing I say to parents. Be attentive to the journey, embrace it, open up, listen and things will just, we open our hearts and things start to change because we remember who we are.

53:30 That's such a good summary. I want to leave it at that. That's a great ending note. Efrat, thank you so much for being with me today. If anybody wants to find you or your book, it'll be in the show notes. Thank you. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtriptest.com. If you want to share your near-death experience or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to eric at roundtriptest.com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.