Rebecca's 2 Year Near Death Experience (NDE)

0:04 Welcome, welcome to Round Trip Death everybody. We are happy to have a special guest from Denver, Colorado with us today but I want to give just a little bit of background first about Rebecca. It seems like every week I'm coming on saying this is not your usual NDE and that's because none of them are usual or average. If I said this happened for two whole years no one would believe me. Some explanation will be coming and there's a gray area between I'm gonna use I'm gonna use all the three -letter terms NDE STE OBE These profound spiritual experiences and I don't feel like putting any definitions on any of them today We'll just let the listeners do that, but you're gonna love Rebecca. So Rebecca welcome Thank you so much, Eric. It's so great to be here. Hi to your viewers. Before we jump in, I would love our viewers to get to know you.

1:05 So if you take a minute, tell us a little bit about you. Just my real life, my regular life. I'm a speech language pathologist. I work with children. I have a daughter, live in Colorado, but I'm from New Orleans. And I did have a two year long near death like or spiritually transformative experience from age 26 to 28. As long as you brought it up why mess around let's jump right into it. What was going on that led up to this? Okay. Well, the background was that I had a trauma So while I didn't physically die like in a near -death experience at age 13 I had a really traumatic experience and in a way I kind of spiritually died Do you mind telling us a little bit about that one? I was assaulted I woke up in the middle of being assaulted when I was 13 and I was at my friend's house and it was really awful. And I spent a lot of time in therapy. I was kind of the perfect kid. And then I had this trauma just imposed into my life. And I kept trying to be perfect on the outside, great student, you know, nice person, good family, but this trauma was like, kind of eating me alive on the inside. And I went to therapy. And eventually my therapists in college and after college told me that I was fine and that I didn't need any more therapy. But I knew that I wasn't fine.

2:24 So that's kind of what led me to keep healing. I'm so sorry that that happened to you. And by the way, any questions that I ask that you don't feel like answering, you don't have to. It's OK. No, thanks. Some people don't want to hear about it, but some people do. And I've just I've started sharing about it because I know it helps people. So OK. And that's probably plenty of detail. So what did that have to do with the experience that you had when you were 26 years old? Yeah, so I was basically from age 23 to 26. I had decided that I wanted to heal all the way This was kind of my goal in life. I remember saying at 23 I want to heal all the way and I was trying to do things that would help me feel my heart because I just felt like after this trauma even though my therapist told me I was okay, I still love therapists, but I think there's just more I had to do to heal and I just felt like something was on top of my heart and I kept trying to feel what was under it and so as I was going like trying to feel my heart and like learn how to heal myself I was writing my journal Dear God and I would write Dear God and I would just write about my life and then one night when I was 26 and I was in actually in graduate school I spontaneously devoted my life to God in my journal. So I wrote, Dear God, I have decided to give my life to you and whatever that entails.

3:47 I want to be guided by you by the light. This is my pledge. I will work hard to follow this path and bring it to fruition. Please help me do this. Please help me bring light to other people. Thank you. Amen. I just wrote that out of the blue and I was crying. I've had to memorize it because I share about it but I just was writing in my journal about life and then I just got really like taken over and said I wanted to give my life to God. So that's what started my two -year -long experience. Were you religious at all before that? Well, it's a very good question. I come from an interfaith family. I was raised Jewish, but my mom converted to Judaism and she came from 200 years of Methodist ministers on her side and like some of them are in books.

4:30 In fact, my aunts and uncles on that side of the family have heard my story and they're like, oh yeah, that happens to us all the time. I think it's kind of a family thing, but so I'm interfaith Jewish and Christian. Okay. It seems like, you know, YouTube's a weird place. And of course the audio version of this is on all the regular podcast apps, but on YouTube it's easy for people to comment. And it seems like almost any time that somebody starts talking about devoting their life to God, somebody just feels like they have to comment and go, you've got some, you know, whole Christian thing that you're trying to shove down our throats or something. This show is, what's the term that I'm looking for? I don't want to call it agnostic, but we are not pushing any faith on anybody. All we're doing is listening to people's stories. It's a safe place to do that. So Rebecca, keep going. Okay. Well, on top of that, between the Jewish and the Christian I had, and indigenous steps out of my 20s. So I'm truly interfaith. And I didn't mean to write, dear God, I want to give my life to you. I was just writing that. So yeah, there are a ton of questions that come up from that. Well, it sounds like a prayer. It was a prayer that was very spontaneous. So after I wrote that, I didn't really think much about it. And I was just going, I went, I was going to sleep. And as I was getting ready to fall asleep that night I saw a light

6:00 come over my bed it went from one end of the room to right over me and it was like a white light that could see into my heart and my soul and I was really scared for this light to see me because it was like I still was hiding a lot of myself so I tensed up and I said go away I'm scared go away I'm scared right to the light I didn't know what it was. And then once I said that, I started to feel this tingling come in my head and it started to spread from the top of my head and come down my head. And it was very loving and it felt like a loving headache. I was like, this is a weird headache because it felt like love and peace in my head. And as I felt that it got stronger and stronger, I had a boyfriend at the time and I looked at him.

6:43 He was asleep and I was like, should I wake him up? Is he having this really weird headache? I don't know what this headache is. it got stronger, I just relaxed into the feeling and I felt a voice come into my head. I swear I asked myself a million times, I thought I was losing my mind, but the voice came in and it said, you don't have to be afraid in the most loving way. You don't have to be afraid, but if you are, you can wear a hat. And it put a graduation hat into my mind's eye. And at the time I thought that was an ugly hat and I said right back to the voice, here are some other hats you could choose, because that one's not cute. Because I didn't know what was happening to me. But now I know like at the time I was actually a graduate student at Columbia University Teachers College. And the message was I think you can wear the hat of a graduate student and make it through while you go through what became two years of spiritual experiences. I just really didn't know what was happening. Before you move on, can I please ask more about this light? Was the whole room light?

7:45 Was a little pinprick of light? It was like this maybe, and it went from one end of the room to right over me. I honestly think if I had better spiritual sight, it might have looked bigger or like an angel or something, but I could just see this light, and it was like moving up to over my head. I knew it wasn't like a light you turn on in the room, because like you turn on a light, it's not a big deal. This was like a light that was seeing into my heart, and I could feel it, and I was terrified of it. I'm not ready for this level of like, I don't know what it was. It was just seeing all the parts of myself that I was still hiding. I heard people tell me about seeing spheres that were light of different colors. Sometimes there were people that they knew that had passed away in these lights. Would you describe that light as round like a sphere or more like just a bulb of light that turned on? It was round, you know, I wish I would have written all of this down because it was just happening and I was like, I think I'm crazy.

8:43 So I didn't write a lot, I wrote some of it down. It was white, round, but I think as it moved up, I kind of imagine like feel it was definitely round, but it might've been like waving up over me kind of. It sounds like the feeling was even stronger than what you were seeing right? Yes, it was looking into my heart It was like it was like my soul was being met by this light It wasn't my personality that I got by in school and I was like Rebecca and I was your friend This was like, okay. Who are you really? I'm looking at that part of you No, that's okay and if you don't mind I'm gonna keep digging just a little bit and maybe it'll help you put all this together in your mind also. You keep talking about it almost as if it had some kind of a life or personality or something. Could you expound on that a little bit? Oh, the light? Yeah. It felt like a loving presence. So I guess when I say it, I'm thinking of, well, I guess I could say God. I don't know if God just comes into people's rooms with like a light. but that's what I wrote in my journal.

9:55 The light was just loving and kind and seeing me, but it was strong. It was loving, but it was also intense. Why do you think you were afraid of it? I think my personality was afraid of it because I think many of us, and I know I was very used to hiding my true self. I think there were a lot of parts of me that were covered up. From my trauma or just from being in society and and I had gotten really used to not like I don't know it was like being seen Fully and I was just I was afraid to be seen But these are good questions. No one ever has asked me this. So thanks Eric. I'm taking over for your therapist Okay, I've actually never gone to therapy about this I've spoken to like my stepdad and spiritual people about it, but not I'll send you the bill later Okay, tell me about this headache Okay, so I really the only language I had for it was that was a headache, but it was like tingling It just started like once the light and I was so scared then then the light like I guess it went to my head And it was going like I felt like this tingling and I was like, what is this headache? It was just getting really strong and it felt loving and peaceful but stronger and stronger and stronger It felt like I was getting a love massage on the top of my head. Wow, that's really awesome Yeah, I did not know. I wish I wouldn't have talked back to the voice. I wish I wouldn't have told the light to go away. I feel like I made a promise that my soul went into make when my personality was like WTF. What

11:28 did I just do? I have a feeling the light didn't mind. That's a good point. It didn't mind. Like as soon as I talked back to the voice and said that was a bad hat choice. The voice did just stop in that moment, but it wasn't like it was upset. It just knew I wasn't ready to hear anymore. But like, what if I would have just said, OK, thanks for the hat. And it would have kept going. But I didn't do that. All right. What happened next? Well, I went to bed and I woke up the next morning thinking like that was really weird. I really don't know what that was about. And then I'm walking to class and I see beautiful, ethereal white light coming out of everyone I pass like everyone was an angel. And I had never seen that before. When I was in a place of trauma, I thought everyone I ever saw was really angry.

12:18 And now I was seeing like that everyone was really, really beautiful and had all this light coming out of them. And it wasn't just like auras, like different colors. It was just like a beautiful white light coming out of everyone. Like I could see their souls and I just was in love with everyone. And that was the next thing that happened. And then I thought I was going crazy again. So then I started having psychic dreams. So like the first few things happened the very first week and they haven't really stopped I don't see the light as bright but I do see the light in everyone and I started having psychic dreams and I still have those now Give me an example Okay, so My mom was a PhD psychologist and my dad was an MD with a PhD in biochemistry. So psychic dreams were not a thing in my family. Some people grew up with that. I didn't. I grew up analyzing my dreams. So some of the biggest ones I've had about events were like mostly my own life, like a dream about a car accident. And then I have the car accident five days later. a dream about getting carbon monoxide poisoning, and then I got it and survived it like that week. And I don't always remember the time. Dreams about my friends, they come to me in my dreams and tell me things, and then they tell me the same thing in real life. So those were starting to happen right away. And I just remember doing things and thinking, oh my gosh, I dreamt this.

13:34 And I had never had that before. That's been a consistent part of my life since then. Okay, you mentioned that this whole experience was about two years though, and now you're talking about things keeping going. Let's get back to the two -year window. We've talked about the beginning. Was there sort of an ending to it? Yeah, so that all of these things started within the two years and there was an ending. Other things that happened were like I felt angels around me, really, really strong, like right around me, like loving presences. A few other things that had happened, I saw an an alternate and lived an alternate timeline of my life during those two years. So all these things would happen and it was just like I think most of it was getting me on the right path. I also had a spontaneous life review where like while I was alive like just seeing and feeling in my body how much everything I did affected everyone around me. But the ending was the most beautiful and the hardest part of my experience. So during those two years, I was like, I'm learning all this cool stuff and I think when I'm done, I'm gonna go. Like I just had this sense that either it was gonna continue the rest of my life. Or if it did end, it was because I was going to be leaving and going to heaven. I don't even know what I thought was going to happen. That's not really possible.

14:47 But the end was I was in my room and I was talking to this beautiful, glowing person. And I was talking with him and my room was full of light. And I was saying, life is hard and I don't know why I'm here. And I don't know what I'm doing. Even though I was having all these beautiful spiritual experiences. And he's looking at me with all this love and all this light is just shining out of his eyes and his heart. And he's just saying like, life is amazing. I just felt like how much love there was for me. He was saying how great life was. I needed to go have adventures. I needed to go live a great life and that being alive was a real gift. And then I thought in the dream, I remember saying, oh my gosh, like I felt all this love and I thought he was going to be my boyfriend. And I said, what's your name?

15:29 When am I going to meet you? And he said, my name is Jonathan. And you can meet me when you finish swimming. And there was like no judgment that I had made this really ridiculous assumption. I really thought for a long time that he was a real person. I haven't met him. He was definitely an angel because most people don't glow that. I mean people glow but not that much. He said you can meet me when you finish swimming and the dream shifted from me talking to him in my room with all this light to me being on a big ship at night and lowered down into the ocean and having to just swim out alone into the ocean. And I woke up the next morning and literally all the light was gone. All the light I'd felt, all the angels I'd felt around me. And I was very confused. It felt like I got gut punched.

16:11 And I was like, where did all the light go? And I just thought God left me and abandoned me. And I spent pretty much a fair few years in a deep depression. Because I didn't really understand why it would stop and why I would be left here, honestly. Because it was like I saw light in everything and then it was gone. That must have been hard. It was hard. I went and lived in the woods by myself. My family was down the road technically, but my friends during that time, they told me that I couldn't really talk. I didn't know how to process and integrate that experience for a long time. How long did that take? It ended in 2008 and I finally started talking about it in 2023, but I spent a long time first trying to figure out how to give back to the light.

17:01 Like I remember looking around, like I would go in the woods and be like, is all the light here? Like where did it go? I was just like, and then I thought, no, maybe I just made all that up. Like I must have just lost my mind and that's not real. And I was like, wait, I think it's real. Cause I keep having the psychic dreams and I would start to do these prayers with the angels I'd felt and start to feel guidance. So, but yeah, it took me about 15 years to start to actually accept it and start talking about it. So. Yeah, it's a long time. Okay, I want to go back and ask you about some of these things Filling angels around you regularly. What was that like? It was awesome. I felt like I had all these team this team of helpers It felt like I needed to listen to them Because they would tell me like I would feel guidance about what I needed to do like different things I should do and it just felt like Like people made of light standing right next to me Over time I've been like, okay, that was real Let me try to reconnect and I part of the whole experience was that I was just totally in with God and God did everything or whatever the creator love Divine love and now I like have to be an equal partner and when I do my sessions I just reconnect to that I feel them and then they like go but I just know what it feels like from this experience Did you feel some kind of personal relationship with these angels? Yeah, they felt like my best friends kind of but like soul best friends like Like they knew me deeper than most people like anyone. Yeah, I didn't know who they were. They felt like one time I felt them step forward and they felt really tall. Two of them on either

18:31 shoulder felt really tall, but also just felt like a deep heart knowing and I didn't always even see them. I just felt them. They felt like light. Great questions, by the way. My job and I'm sticking to it. I have also not talked to anybody that I can remember that had a life review. outside of a typical NDE and you called it a spontaneous life review. What do you mean by that and what brought it on? So this really just started because I was talking to my sister on the phone and I had heard her feelings by accident and it wasn't like I saw everything but it was so close to what NDEers describe that that's what I call it. While we were on the phone after I'd kind of dropped the ball for her with this thing it really mattered to her. I suddenly just felt all of her feelings. I felt how much it had hurt her and it was like in my body. And I thought, oh my gosh, I didn't even know I was affecting anyone and I didn't know that I'd hurt her. This was just a very real experience. I just remember feeling like just completely like jaw -droppingly devastated. because I felt how she was feeling. And then I was feeling how other people were feeling, like how much it mattered if I was kind to someone. It just felt like in my body and my spirit really knew what my actions were doing with other people and even my words and my thoughts. It's kind of an intense way to live. Yeah, it is. So what did you learn from that? Kindness is really important. Forgiveness

20:02 is important. And respecting everybody as a beautiful soul who comes from God, creator, source. Seeing that light and treating it as the light within each person. So that's basically what I learned. But sometimes I don't do that very well. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. But even if I was upset a little bit in my heart, and I remember going to teachers when I would work in the schools after my experience ended, I would go up and be like, I'm so sorry. I was grumpy and they're like, you weren't grumpy. I was like, oh, inside I was. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't live with myself. You faked it on the outside. Well, welcome to being human. I know. Right? We try and we don't always do that great of a job, but nobody even noticed. I'm going to come back to this Jonathan thing later. Okay. How's this changed your life? What do you do differently now because of this whole thing? Well, a few things. So now that I've integrated it, well, right away I shifted my whole life to work with children. So I had been doing a lot of research and nothing against research. I just think my sole blueprint, like I have to work with kids. I work with a lot of high needs children now. That was never really part of my plan. If I see someone suffering, I have to help them. I can't just walk by and not care. I see the light in people and I did joke during my spiritual experience, especially I was like, eventually I was a single woman in New York and every boy was glowing and it was really hard for me to date. Like I was like, wow, I love you, you know, like to everyone.

21:33 So that was kind of funny. It's true though. I think I was kind of freaking people out. Yeah, I just think, and I have to kind of stay in tune with that light, that love I felt in my heart. So I kind of try to tend to it, like, especially now that I'm back in touch with it. I used to not. Try to be in touch with it because I was I thought I've made it up but and then but now I just Actively connect to that love and I do it every day. Otherwise, I feel really lost Also that kind of wanting to leave the planet thing that NDE people have I really relate to even though it all happened while I was here I'm always longing for all of that light that I saw and felt like to just be here all the time I don't know why I got to see it for a little while and then it went but I'm hoping it will come back for everyone Well, and that's a really hard thing, as you know, for regular near -death experiencers, it's not easy coming back. They're a different person and depression sometimes happens, sometimes not. Quite often big changes happen in their life. The divorce rate's super high, changing careers is, you know, a really high percentage, a lot of kinds of things like that. and you just had to figure out how to work your way through it for a lot of years. But I can tell you're happy you've done well and come out on the other end. took a long time. My stepdad really helped because I mentioned, you know, I have this very interfaith background. My stepdad was an indigenous man who came from a medicine tradition. But, you know, on the outside, he was like a Marine and an engineer. But as soon as my spiritual

23:04 experience started, he was starting to have dreams about me. And so not only did he really verify what was happening to me that later helped me accept it, but he also kind of he wrote me some letters about you know, how to walk in this path of being connected to God and the Creator from his tradition that was really helpful. All right, just a couple more things. One is, let's get back to Jonathan. Okay, my pretend boyfriend, yeah. Just because you haven't met him yet doesn't mean he's pretend. Okay, I really waited every, so it ended and I had that dream and he was like, you'll meet me when you finish swimming and like for every week and then... every month and then every year until I gave up, I was like, I think I'm done swimming. I'm going to meet this amazing guy. But then I thought most people aren't that full of love. Like everyone has that potential.

23:50 But I don't think anyway, I think I think I finally decided in the last few years he was an angelic being. He was very full of light and I felt completely seen and completely loved in a really deep way. And that whole thing was symbolic, right? Yeah. The ship, the water. So what does swimming really mean? How have you interpreted it? Is it the end of some kind of journey you're on right now? I think it was that I needed to learn how to live a spiritual life in the physical world. And I think in the beginning I was drowning. I didn't know how to do that and I wanted to leave. And then it was just, I think it's the rest of my life. I think about that dream more and more now that I tell it. I remembered it was nighttime. Like I always knew that, but I never talked about that part. It was nighttime and then there was no shore in sight. I was just swimming in the middle of the ocean at night.

24:39 So I think it's the rest of my life is me swimming. And maybe he's one of my angels I'll get to meet when I finish this life. I don't know. That makes sense to me. But I will be careful to not put your email address in the show notes because every Jonathan in the world may be emailing you. Don't worry. I've already emailed them. I used to email people named Jonathan and be like, I think I had a dream about you. No, I would think I never actually did it. But like how weird would that be? But I did used to like specifically try to date people named Jonathan because I thought maybe it would be him. like get on Tinder and look for all the Jonathans. No, it was more just like if their name was Jonathan, I would give them a chance. But I honestly, I think the thing that was really confusing, but also beautiful was that I saw light in everyone. So it was almost like if I was on a date or even with my friends who are girls like anyone, I would just be like, oh, you have that same light that I saw. Like everyone has it. And then I would also think like maybe everybody's that guy because I was just seeing so much light if I kept looking into people's eyes and into their hearts. Just such beautiful light, so. It seems like how God sees all of us. Yeah, and I got the littlest glimpse.

25:51 I think he's, God sees us much bigger, but much more, but I got a little glimpse and it's really beautiful. Yeah, very cool. Okay, I'm going to give you the last minute. Leave us with some kind of a message of hope. There's a lot of people out there struggling today. Yeah, thanks, Eric. First, I'm sorry if you're suffering and struggling. Life is not guaranteed to be easy, but I do truly believe because of my experience that your prayers are heard, that you're deeply loved and deeply cared for, and that you can kind of reach out and feel that love that's there for you individually as a beautiful, beautiful soul. So don't give up and pray or whatever you want to call it. Call out to God, the Creator. That love is here for you. I really believe it. And what about the future after this life? Do we have something to look forward to, do you think? Yes, I think we definitely have something to look forward to, but hopefully, because my experience is a little different, I hope we can all look forward to seeing all that light right here. I'm not having to leave the planet. But yeah, I definitely believe there's definitely a beautiful world.

26:53 And I think the goal is to bring it as much as we can bring it here, too. By the way, I want to give you a second just to mention your book if you'd like to. Sure. I recently wrote a book. So part of how I reconnected with my experience is I would write prayers and feel answers to prayers. And so I made a book of messages that I share. I share these messages on my Instagram and Facebook every day. Well, every day, Monday through Friday, I take the weekends off. But I feel these words come in. So I've made a book of them, of these messages. It's daily moments with the angels. It's 365 angel messages that I... That I wrote and every month has a little page where you can write your monthly reflections A lot of people in fact people who've had spiritual experience or near -death experiences says it really reminds them of what they felt So i'm just basically bringing that frequency through in this book Sounds beautiful. Send me a copy I'll send you a copy. I'd love to be an honor All right. Thanks again rebecca. Thank you so much. Thanks eric 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 roundtripdeath .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.

28:15 Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.