Today is the first Sunday of the month, so the Cincinnati chapter of the International Association for Near Death Studies is having its monthly meeting. My friend Penny sometimes attends these. She has had multiple NDEs We have never met, but she lives close enough to make the Cincy meeting. The meeting has totally slipped my mind until I get a calendar alert as we are driving to Costco. I have an hour to get through Costco (on the last day of coupons-do not try this), get home and drive to the meeting.
After blasting through Costco, dropping the groceries on the counter and rushing out the door, I pull into the parking lot of the library where they meet at 1:25. The meeting is supposed to start at 1:30. I find the room and walk in to see two people sitting there. One is the cofounder of the group. We make introductions. Gradually, about 8 people total are in the room and we begin with introductions. There was a gentleman there who has had two sons pass. There were two NDE experiencers and they shared their stories. The cofounder has studied NDEs and other similar phenomenon including having studied with Raymond Moody, the godfather of NDE documentation. The other cofounder is a Swedenborgian minister. He couldn’t make the meeting.
I share my story, the quick version of my fear of death, my studies of NDEs and the passing of Shayna which has just accelerated the pace of my studies. I usually can get through this with strangers without crying. I just step outside of myself and observe me telling the story, but today it doesn’t work. I break down in tears. I tell them I am here just to learn and observe. I don’t have anything to contribute to people who have actually had the experience, but I’m glad they let us seekers sit in their meetings. The two people who have had NDE give brief summaries of their experiences and the message/lesson they bring back which is the same one you always hear. We are all one. We are here to support each other. It’s all about love. The other side is peaceful and beautiful. One woman hemorrhaged during child birth and was thinking she would never get to see her baby, but as is typical, that wasn’t a concern. This freaks me out every time I hear it. It’s the first time I’ve heard it in person. Almost universally people who have had NDEs don’t want to come back. They feel their families will be OK. They know they’ll see them again. Time is different or non-existent there. They know it will be no time at all. They seem to have very little concern for us left behind.
We move on to discuss the nature of humans, why we are here, the role of religion- all the things you normally can’t talk about in a room full of strangers. Probably 45 minutes into the meeting a guy comes blasting in. Tall, completely shaved head and face, wearing a jacket and carrying a motorcycle helmet. He says “Is this the meeting of the living dead?” He sits down and pretty much takes over the meeting. The guy looks very familiar to me. He mentions he was at the Victory of Light convention a few weeks ago. He gave a talk there. He looks at me and asks my name saying I look familiar to him, too. Kind of wild since there were hundreds if not thousands of people there.
The conversations turns and we start talking a lot of conspiracy theories, the banking system, pharmaceuticals, etc. We talk about the origin of mankind and how the Sumerians wrote about space beings creating us and the similarities between that and the creation story in Genesis. Not exactly on topic, but interesting enough.
After 2-½ hours I excuse myself and head home.
I was hoping for more NDE experiencers and to stay a little more on topic about spiritual matters rather than our biology, but the meeting was good and I’m hoping if I make it back, we can stay more on topic. In any event, it was good to be able to talk about the things we talked about without people thinking we are crazy. We disagreed on a lot, but one thing we completely agreed on is we, as a species, need to see others as ourselves and stop all the division and strife. There is more than enough of everything on the planet. And the problem is we think competition is how we got to where we are in terms of advancement as a species when, in fact, it is the exact opposite. Cooperation is where it’s at.
