Hertha Felt Like "A 4 Year Old Running to Heavenly Parents" during NDE

0:03 From the time that they pronounced me dead 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 realise 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. I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death, everybody. And we have a very special guest today. This is going to be fun. Hertha Lund. She is in the beautiful state of Montana.

0:48 And welcome to the show, Hertha. So nice to be here, Eric. I've been really excited to talk to you. We've been going back and forth and talked a while back and people are going to love your near death experience and especially all the things that you learned from it and how life transforming it was in a lot of ways. Just quickly before we jump into that, tell us a little bit about you. Let's get to know Hertha. Well, I am in Montana and I grew up here. I actually grew up on a rural ranch near Zortman, Montana, where we were 50 miles from any town that had services. And for me, it was a slice of heaven on earth because I got to be with my horses. And being outside with horses, I always had an affinity and a religious experience, kind of from the inside out, but it was with horses and outside, and then I felt like one was something greater than me. But I also had hell, and that was an inside. My mom was not really meant to be mom. She was not mom material. She had her own early childhood trauma that she did not deal with, except for with alcohol. I was the oldest daughter, and so she was pretty abusive towards me because she hadn't dealt with her own trauma.

1:55 Anyhow, she choked me. Anywhere around her was somewhat dangerous. And so I learned how to escape and I stuffed all that trauma. Also early on, I had early childhood sexual abuse at five from a neighbor kid. And so with those things, I started really early wanting to go home, back to God. I spent most of my life before my dear death experience really wanting to go home. Along with that, I also became an overachiever. I was a state champion in rodeo and basketball in the same year. During college, I was a pre -vet, pre -med student. I also played on the college basketball team and the college rodeo team. So I got good grades and did all that. So I became an overachiever as a way to escape the pain that I didn't want to feel. I covered Congress as a journalist after going to journalism school on the East Coast, covered the United States Supreme Court. did a case that had to do with the takings of private property. And during that case, I decided I wanted to go to law school and protect other people. We had lost our family ranch when I was in college. So I went to law school, went back to D .C. clerk for the chief judge, United States Court of Federal Claims, which was a very much a plum job. Came back to Montana, practiced in Montana, in Washington state, in Wyoming. and then back to Montana, been all over the West doing natural resource policy issue, property rights, water rights.

3:18 And being a lawyer, it was very much met up with my need to try to suppress slowing down to feel. That's kind of led to my illness that set me up to be able to have the near -death experience. Now, before that, I had almost left a couple of other times. And note that I had an ongoing conversation with God telling him I wanted to come home, that obviously you sent me to the wrong place. Even telling you that right now, I get spirit tingles. This was a hard place for me to be because of the trauma and the harshness that people treat each other with. I mean, with my horses, I felt comfortable, but people could be kind of mean. You talk about overachiever.

3:58 Absolutely. Well, congratulations on all that. I've talked to so many people that have had NDEs that had abusive childhoods and I never know what to say. I just want to say I'm so sorry and wrap my arms around you that you had to go through that. Maybe you can help me. What is an even better thing for me to say or express those feelings to others in the future? That actually worked. I felt it and it was comforting to me. But note that until somebody tell I could deal with the trauma, I had to block out anything that was too supportive. because it could tip me over. I mean, right now I'm pretty, I no longer have the propensity to go down the road of feeling.

4:46 I can talk to you from a wound that's healed. So it depends on where the wound is. It's not, it's always okay to say, I'm sorry that happened to you. I mean, that's probably the safest thing until you know where they're at in their healing process. We know when somebody else is kind and loving, you could have just almost smiled. I can feel your love, you know, and your support of me. even because of the fact that you just honestly have that inside you. Thank you. All right. Well, let's get to the task at hand today. Talking about near -death experiences. Yours happened about nine years ago. What led up to it? You mentioned your health a second ago. What was going on? So as soon as I started practicing law, that actually added a whole other layer of stress and that tipped me over into experiencing the physical remnants of pain or the pain that was stuck in my body. So that would have been 1995. I go on for 21 years practicing law, handling the stress, but sometimes not so well. Then one year it started that I had inflammation around my heart. I didn't know what it was at first.

5:49 It hurt just like in a rectangle around my heart. I went to the doctor in and out of the emergency room and I had pericarditis, which is inflammation around the heart. It just kept on getting worse. Apparently, they don't know what causes pericarditis and they don't know how to treat it. So I was hospitalized. I took one trip in the ambulance because it got so bad that the pain caused me to go into shock. And so I got a ride in the ambulance. About three months after that, I couldn't hardly function anymore. I'd been hospitalized for a couple of weekends. I chose to go to a different hospital. My husband took me there, and I was visiting a heart doctor. I said, I think you should admit me, because I was pretty sharp. I was a pre -med student. I was like, I may have septus because all my symptoms were getting so bad. And they did admit me and I had severe inflammation in around my heart. I also had pneumonia and pleuritis. So everything in my chest cavity was severely inflamed. My CRP, which is a measurement for inflammation, they get nervous if it's more than seven. Mine was 197. Yeah, doctors get nervous. Some would even come and look at me because they'd never seen me so sick. So I'm in the hospital and I'm not on the regular floor. There's a floor, I wasn't in intensive care, there's a floor in between intensive care and the regular floor. And that's where if you have heart surgery, after you get out of intensive care, you go to this, I don't know, the cause of middle floor. And you get more care there, but you're not as serious as

7:19 ICU. So I wasn't intubated, but I was on oxygen. around me people coded and died and one night it was right across the hall so I could witness that and note that I'm hardly sleeping because I have so much pain with all that inflammation it was systemic mostly around my heart and lungs but everything hurt my teeth fillings hurt I'm observing all this and then that one night I'm like laying there and I was like huh I could die too it's like yes you could and I'm like well I've never really liked it here I usually call it a shit show that's what I'm like I shouldn't talk to God that way And then all of a sudden, I just I feel and I thought about who I loved. I thought about my husband and I felt into and I'm like, you know, he will miss me. We have a really good relationship. I thought about my pets, my horses and everything. And I thought, you know what? I think everybody would be OK if I go home now. And then I realized it's like I kind of laughed like it's true. I'm not thinking about my success, how much I won the state championships, the cases I won, the money I made. All I'm thinking about is who and what I loved and God. And then I just left. I was encapsulated in this white and gold shimmery light. I mean, it was bigger than, in this consciousness, even as soon as I started separating from my body, there is no time and space. I was totally at home, warm.

8:43 I felt like I was one with God. and everything was coming home, and I just keep on going up, up, up. And this column of light was bigger than the universe. There is no time or space. It was just huge and vast, all -encompassing. Up, up, up, and I'm high in the upper atmosphere, and I'm loving it. And at one level, I feel like I'm a little four -year -old running to my heavenly parents' lap, and I just can't wait to get there. And then I think about it. I'm like, I'm going to meet my spiritual advisor, whom I love. And I'm not done. I did not complete my reason for being here. You know, I knew that I was accepted. I was loved. There was nothing but love. And somebody asked me, did you see God? And I was like, no, no, I was God. It was inside me. I mean, it was the most magnificent thing to be one with this light and love that's so much greater than us. And as soon as I realized I wasn't done, my number one value is integrity, honor. I thought about it. I'm like, I want to finish. I felt like I only had a nanosecond. I didn't have time to think it through or do pluses and minuses, any of that type of analysis. So I went to my heart and my gut and I made a promise, two promises.

9:55 I said, I promise I'll do whatever it takes to get whole and I promise I will do whatever it takes to get in my body. As soon as I made the promise, I just fell high out of the upper atmosphere and I come right back into my body, thud, thunk. And it was awful. I felt like I was crawling into a dead elk carcass on the interstate. I mean, I go from this high consciousness of oneness, peace, all this light and love to being in my sick body, which literally felt like a carcass. And so that's where I started the last nine years of my healing journey. I could say that I'm healthier now than I've ever been. I did not get scar tissue around my heart and lungs that the doctors thought I would from having so much inflammation. I no longer have the chronic pain that I had before dying. Multiple different doctors had told me that I would probably never get rid of the conditions that I had. I had fibromyalgia. I don't have that. I just had no idea I could live on Earth with such a good feeling in my body. Alright I want to start sort of at the end and work our way backwards and then I'm going to ask you to fill in more details if you can. One thing that always fascinates me is how people explain coming back into their body and you made it sound like just this thud and it was horrible. It was not a good experience. That is very typical by the way although it's explained in a lot of different ways. Is there anything else that you can add to that? It is the worst feeling. I think it's,

11:25 I obviously don't remember being born the first time, but I think it's way worse than being born the first time. Because coming from that awareness and experience of being so high up and the feelings of love and oneness that we all long for, I think, but we just don't necessarily believe it exists until we experience it again. I was out of the body, but I still had a body, I guess. But when I came back in and my body was so sick, it was literally like putting a I think that the elk carcass captures it. I mean, I felt like I was crawling into something that did not belong to me. And at that point, since I promised I would do whatever it took, I didn't allow myself the indulgence of complaining. But at that time, I'm like, am I really going to be able to transform this body, this carcass that is so sick, into something that can house, the part of me that experienced light and love and such wholeness, the extraordinary consciousness that exists up there outside of our body. And I have to say, just telling you the story, I get excited. You notice I'm talking faster because I can feel the energy again. But I haven't been able to manifest it at the level that I experienced it during the near -death experience daily. But that is my goal. My sense is if we know about it and experienced it, I should be able to live in that consciousness fully in my body. So that's my goal. Let's contrast that coming back into your body to if you remember what it felt like

12:55 leaving your body. Now note that I wasn't very attached to my body because of the early childhood trauma. I always wanted to go home and my number one defense for the pain that I felt was I was very good at disassociation. which means I would leave as a strategy to not feel the pain in my body. I would live, exist above it. That's also something we do when we have trauma as a way to just be able to continue to exist. So that was one of my skills. So leaving was not hard for me. In fact, it was very hard even once I came back to learn how to first live in my body. I had to go through what's called sabbatic experiencing. It's a technique where they take Peter Levine's work, and there was another doctor who wrote the book that the body remembers to help me learn the skills of actually being able to keep my consciousness in my body. But the body is key.

13:50 I really don't believe we can heal or be whole unless we fully occupy our bodies. So that is one of the biggest things that might take away after dying, and I'm not sure I would have done it. Unless I died because I was so sure that if I Felt in my body that it would kill me because of all the pain that was stuck there from my trauma All right, and we'll come back to talking more about healing when we're done talking about the NDE a couple of things that stood out to me that you mentioned and people that listen to this podcast know we talk about whatever happened we're not going to say oh this doesn't jive with that religion or those that theology or something else we're just going to talk about it and please be open -minded everybody okay you talked about god being inside of you you were one with god explain that because most people think Hey that that can't happen because that being is, you know clear over here and clear up here and go ahead I have been spiritual since early on but a lot of my spiritual nature came from inside out It wasn't indoctrinated from the outside in so that's always given me enough courage and confidence to be able to explore that connection from the inside Having said that without the experience of being high in the upper atmosphere the light and love that was Welcoming me home and was all around me was I was one with it There

15:23 was no separation and I have studied the mystical traditions of many of the world's religions And I don't think that's in my awareness and experience That is similar to when you talk about the mystical experiences. There's just no doubt. Once we experienced that, I remember afterwards I was at a social event and I was talking to a man and he was older and he was talking about potentially dying. And I explained to him, I said, well, you know, I liked it up there. You know, I liked being out of my body. I liked the oneness. And I said that how I've experienced it, he says, well, that doesn't ring true to me. And I said, well, it was my experience. He says, OK. And actually, you could see that his mind that had been trained spiritually or through religion was kind of blocking it. But at another level, he accepted that. And I think that in a lot of the spiritual traditions, they teach us that that fearing death is a major part of being able to live well. And I understand that now because Well, during COVID, I like everyone else. I was scared, and I'm like, what if I die?

16:24 And I'm like, well, you did die, and you liked it. So that shouldn't be a big fear. But I think that once we can live and know that a body isn't the end, I am positive that when we are in a higher consciousness and when we leave our bodies and that we feel that light and love outside of us, it is inside of us. So that is something I know I am sure about based on my experience. And I love how you explained when that person who was having a hard time with your experience, you weren't trying to change his beliefs. You were just saying, well, this is what happened to me, right? It's very matter of fact. You can choose to believe this or not believe this. It doesn't matter. This is my personal experience.

17:09 Okay, next. One of the very first things you said, and correct me if I'm off just a little bit. You said something like, I felt like a four year old going home to heavenly parents. Please explain that more. Literally, I felt that part of me. And of course, that's the time in my life before I had, you know, had a lot of the abuse. So I think I must go back to that, to where I felt that freedom of the child. As I am going up, I am a free, I'm just free in that childhood exuberance. And I am literally. I had a feeling even though I didn't have a body, there was a part of me that was like running. I don't know if you remember, I really loved my grandparents and we lived in rural Montana. And so they didn't visit often. And when they would come, I would sometimes sit by the road and I couldn't wait to see them. And this was like the times waiting for my grandparents who I love to come visit times a million. The experience of wanting to just go to that being, that consciousness. and I'll use the word God, but I think people have many names for this sense of oneness and going towards it because it is the greatest sense of love that we can experience. And I had no, the parts of me and the human consciousness that would make me shrink back or think I wasn't worthy and that level going up, up, up, there was none of that in me. I was a child, a four -year -old, so happy, fully accepting. the love and light

18:40 that was calling me to it. It was like a coming together. The other way I can explain it, which is so hard to find words to explain it because it's out of this world, so to have the container of words is hard, but it's the feeling of being home at the greatest extent possible of what we experience in the human form. You also used the term spiritual advisor. Was that the God that you're talking about, or was that some sort of different being? Different being, and in my sense, it's still part of God. What I now, from experiencing that, I believe that God created all of us. We all have a divine spark, a divine geometry, our identity that is created by Him.

19:24 At that level, it's our gift, an expression of God. And so, my spiritual advisor was also part of God, but he had his divine expression of that, and I knew that person. I don't know how I knew him, but I knew him, and I loved him, and I really wanted to see him. But I also knew that I wasn't done, and I was aware that if I got too far away from my body, since I had so much longing that I had had my whole life to go back home to God, that the further I got, the harder it would be for me to come back. So I willingly immediately stopped the process and asked, and I knew that it wasn't up to me, that it was out of my hands whether or not I'd get to come back. But I didn't want to get too far away because I think the further I got away, the more likely I would be, well, I don't really want to go back. Was there anything else that you can remember? Did you actually see things? Did you feel most of this?

20:22 What else did you experience? Besides the white and gold shimmery light and the sense that I was walking in the higher atmosphere in that realm, I did not see much. And I also didn't want to see much because again, I was very aware, even though part of me is already gone. It's like when you, I'm a horse person and when you jump a horse, you really want to throw, you want to go over the jump with your consciousness before the horse does to help them make it. So part of me is already going forward, but I don't want to get too committed. because as soon as I realized I wasn't done, that I started doing whatever I could internally with my consciousness and energy to be able to halt this going up, up, up and merging with the light, being with the light, being able to have the ability to ask to see if I can come back. It's like you knew that you were going to be coming back. So you didn't dare step too far that direction. Well, I didn't know. It was definitely something that I had to ask for, and it happened so fast. The other thing that's really hard to explain is there's no time or space. Me thinking it is simultaneous with whatever is outside of us or whomever or whatever. I almost think sometimes there's other advisors up there that may also be part of this process of deciding what's best for my life stream, what happens to me next. It's almost like it's

21:52 all happened simultaneously. They chose the part of me that used to think that I could make things happen. And, you know, as a litigation attorney, we think that we're a little bit of have an illusion of our own power. I had none of that in this state of consciousness. I was very aware that something greater than me was going to decide where I went next. OK, let's talk about the healing process. You were very, very sick in the hospital. Did you start healing immediately after this NDE or was there a whole lot more medical treatment and finally the doctors figured it out? Well that's an interesting question. I did not start healing right away and so I was granted the ability to come back to my body. I was not given instantaneous healing. The doctors never did figure out what caused the severe inflammation. While I was there, I did have surgery. They went inside and looked at my lungs. They did multiple tests. I had all types of extras coming and looking at me because to them it was a mystery. They just could not figure it out. When I left there, I was going to go to a Mayo Clinic. My friend who's a naturopathic doctor said, well, they're going to do all the same tests and find the same answers and cost you another couple of hundred thousand dollars.

23:05 And I'm like, well, that doesn't sound very smart. Remember, I told God I would do whatever it took to heal. The first thing is that I didn't sleep much for years because I had chronic pain. I had fibromyalgia, I had headaches, I had low back pain and I had severe endometriosis. All of those are severe pain conditions and they would sometimes happen all at the same time. I had put myself through college. even through law school, mostly working and borrowing money. So the idea of me not being able to work to pay off my debt was extremely stressful. And that's part of what helped me get so sick. And so I have all of those conditions that are still going on. And the first thing that I was told from the inner, it seemed like I came back with a stronger connection and communication with source, with God. And my first assignment was to learn how to sleep. And so I took regular medicine to sleep at first. I did sleep hygiene. I did everything practical because sleep is where our body restores. And note that there is no, in my belief system, in my experience, there is no pill that can fix the inner condition, can heal. Pills can mask pain and help us be able to live, but they won't fix what's going on inside.

24:18 Doctors, I did stay with regular medicine, allopathic medicine. But they pretty much said, go do those other things that I'd come see them. And they'd say, keep on doing what you're doing, because they didn't know how to fix it. But they could recognize that what I was doing was healing me. I went to a nature path. It took herbs and different homeopathy, different remedies. I went to a somatic experience practitioner. I did psychology, because a lot of what goes wrong I now know is because of my beliefs. When those traumas happened I decided that I would never I never wanted to feel that way again and so I created a way of defending myself from being hurt but that meant that I wasn't open -hearted and I closed myself off and I avoided all the things that help us find wholeness which is love connection and all that so I did all of those things but the greatest thing that I did was when I went to an equine gestalt coach because I love horses. And horses are amazing creatures, and they have the ability.

25:23 Heart math has measured them, and their heart emanates five times greater than the emanation from a human's heart at peace. For us, when we're healing and we need safe space and to be able to drop, really slow our consciousness down and go to that place where deep healing occurs, horses can help facilitate that, even if we're not horse people. But it took years, because here's an example. All that pain and scar tissue was around my heart, and that had to do with the grief. from the troubles that I had with my mom. I loved my mom. She had some really good traits, but when she was drinking and not dealing with her own pain and putting it onto me, she could be pretty horrible. That just made me sad to be here, to the point of despair. All of my deep organ pain that was unhealthy was the heart and lungs, which is grief and despair. To heal that, I had to be able to go into that feeling of it a little bit, like it's almost like titration, but then to experience life differently. And it's an ongoing part of going back and forth.

26:29 And so now I no longer have the wound. I have the experience of, you know, going back to it being healed and me re -experiencing life through love and support from the people who have come into my life. Once we decide that we want to get whole, I found everything I needed in Bozeman. in Montana and my little community that I live in, that when I decided to heal, I attracted to me all that I needed with the people, the different modalities and everything. And I think that's available to all of us. Isn't it all so interesting prior to that? It sounds like you had to put this big emotional and mental shield around your heart to quit feeling all that pain.

27:12 And that ended up being a physical thing also. Do we do that a lot? I think we all do it a lot. The energy that we create to protect ourselves, and this is in psychology, they call it defenses. I think if you have too many defenses and they get out of hand, psychosis, all these different words that they have, but really what it is It's a part of us where we decide that we are gonna wall ourselves off, we're gonna protect ourselves. We're not gonna be able to live from our hearts openly and authentically because we don't feel we're safe. And once we do that, the other thing that's a very interesting, today most of my body is healed. I mean, I'm 63 and a lot of people don't think I look younger now than I did before I died, I think. Most of my body is healed, except I still trim my own horses and I still get stiff because I'm older. But most of my body is pretty much pain free, except there's one place on my hip. And that happens to be one of the places where I had trauma contact. And my mama also choked me. And so I still have some places here in the back of my neck that are unfolding. It's still coming out of the physical form. And what I think happens is those places are places where I got an energy tangle that actually manifests in the physical body. But then all of us have our energy and what people can feel about us extends beyond our bodies. So to heal, we have

28:42 to go through an experience or something that allows us to let go of that, the tangle, let it come out. And then I actually think that the light that we have and the more we love, the more light we bring into us. then that light is used and in my mind I see the angels sewing us back together in our original identity. That's a beautiful thought. You need to tell me more specifically what in the world is equine gestalt therapy? Equine gestalt therapy is a process of working with horses. Melissa Pierce went to college and she was trained in gestalt. Gestalt is a branch of psychology that was a takeoff from Dr. Young. And in it, they believe that the people are whole. Gestalt is a German word for wholeness. She was a practitioner for many years. She's also an expert horsewoman. And so she would show horses, quarter horses, and different horses. And when people would come visit her for her gestalt therapy, she would watch how they interacted with the horses. So she is a pioneer, one of the original people, to put together what we now know as a vast and ongoing horse therapy, you know, people are aware of how much horses help us and all the horse therapy. But she put together gestalt with horses and I'm trained in her program for equine gestalt therapy.

30:05 And I'm trained as a coach, not a therapist. And as a coach, I see people as whole. I do not diagnose what's wrong with them. I believe that whoever comes to me have the answers inside them. And while they're there with my horses and myself at our retreat center in Montana. They get to kind of go to those places where they still have these blocks and then re -experience life differently. And the horses and being in nature helps them find that place where they find greater wholeness. And people leave looking different than when they arrived. It's looked like they had a soul facelift. I mean, a whole being just kind of glows. And if that's a thought resonating with our listeners, they can find out more by going to your website. We'll stick it in the show notes so they can look you up and find out more about that. Before I let you go, I want you to talk about one last thing. I love how you mentioned that you felt love only during your experience.

30:59 Please explain that more. And if you can, how do we feel that way now? Oh, wow. I love that question. In the consciousness of being out of my body and being in that vast tube of light, there was no other thing that existed besides love. And to me, love is, I felt totally worthy. I felt 100 % at home. I felt I was moving towards it. It was bringing me in closer. There was no doubt that I was worthy and that I was in the presence of my father, mother. my father, mother, God. I can't even explain it any other way. To feel it now, I do have times where I feel a large percentage of it. It's hard to go back to that peak experience because I think it's hard to bring that consciousness to earth. But I do think it's each one of the greatest way we can serve the earth is by bringing that consciousness into our bodies. And the way I do it now is I remember how it felt. Because once I remember how it felt, the felt sense, the experience, then I can recreate that. It's almost like a tuning fork. And my being will go back to that vibration. Yesterday, I was in court. I'll tell the story this way.

32:13 And I had the choice, opposing counsel, I won't use names here, but opposing counsel was kind of a bully. And the old me would have wanted to kind of be pugilistic. You know, I can go nose to nose with you. And I chose yesterday to take the high road, to not engage at that level, and to consciously embody light and love and trust the process. And I can tell you that it worked. I did win for my client. And I still practice law. I just did not do it from the vibration of being in the fight. I tried to have a higher consciousness. And I believe that the way that we change the world around us, I'm on a mission to spark a revolution for wholeness. one person at a time, one heart at a time. Because when you become whole, and I live in my wholeness, and we share that with each other, and I think that's what Gandhi taught, that's how we change the world around us. I lobbied for years, changing laws and all that will not change the world to make it a better place. We may all choose to have, agree on policy, but first we have to be in communication and connection with each other from a place of wholeness. That is beautiful.

33:26 Hertha Lund, thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you, Eric. I really enjoyed talking to 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 RoundTripDest .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 roundtripdeath .com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.