What my near death experience did for my life

She had been feeling so tired. Her legs hurt so much. But her parents told her she was not ill. Her siblings told her she was just hungry for attention. And she, always the good girl believed them to be right. She was allowed to go to the doctor but he diagnosed "growth" and sent her home again. And she ate and she ate. She could not get enough of eating. Her parents became very displeased with her because she ate all the candy in the house. And she became so tired.. One day, when she want to school, being a 10-year-old, she had to throw up. With a shock she realised that her parents where wrong. Her life was at stake!

When I started blogging for Mindfunda three months ago I had some “golden rules” for blogging. One of the most important one is that i do not blog about myself. People don’t care, I was told, unless you had a near death experience.

So reluctantly, because I love my parents very much and I do not want to give the impression that they where bad caretakers, I decided to tell you about it.
My parents were born and raised in the twenties of last century. They where hard, cool analyzing people who did not like to fuzz. Being born the youngest child I did not have a high status in my family of birth. Seven siblings seemed to dislike me very much for the simple reason I was born last. My parents did not seem to respect me very much for the same reason. Subconsciously I decided I needed to take care of myself. Good thing I did.

Having had a natural birth, I had an advantage: my gut was nurtured with good mother bacteria from the get go. In a natural birth, some of the fasces of the mother get into the child’s mouth to inhabit the gut of the child. Stay with me, this is vital information to understand the tragedy that was about to happen. In an auto-immune disease like mine, the gut plays a vital role. It is the barrier between the inside world and the outside world. And my gut was leak: the barriers of my system, guarding the inside world was permeable.

My immune system was not set off right: it is hyper active. so my immune system was in a burned out state: everything was a thread. Including my own cells. My own immune system destroyed the beta cells of my pancreas, creating Type one diabetes.

But let’s not travel forward in time too soon. I was not aware of what was happening in my body. I only knew that I had pain. I only knew that I craved candy (which annoyed the hell out of my parents and siblings). But my parents had one golden rule: “You are not sick unless you have a fever”. And I did not have a fever. Yet.

As “luck” would have it, I got a bad ear infection. With a high fever.  So I was allowed to go to the doctor who diagnosed me with Diabetes. I thank my mother for the diagnoses because she asked the doctor to check my blood sugar level. He did and immediately called the hospital to make an appointment for the next day. I was crying. I did not want to say goodbye to sweets and candy. My mother rushed out to get me some natural sweeteners for my tea because I was very thirsty. Everything seemed under control.

In the evening the fever took over. I began to “see” things. I saw visions from flowers, morphing into images of the sky and the sun. My body was aching all over. In the middle of the night I dragged myself to the bathroom for some water. I remember clearly that I reached the hallway and then left my body.

On out-of-body experience can be terrific. I had several in my dreams, but none have given me so much relief as that escape out of my aching body. I remember flying about in a room I did not recognize. I was sitting next to a girl who was lying in a hospital bed. She was not me: she had a round face and curly hair. She had tubes in her vanes and I felt very worried about her.

In the next moment I was flying again, I saw a hallway and a bed with my own body in it. It scared me that I had become so skinny. I jumped back into my body and got confronted with my pain once again. The reason that I decided to leave my body. I decided to go out of bed to find somebody to help me. As soon as i tried, an elderly lady came running and told me to stay in bed. I was confused. Why should I stay in bed? She told me my body was too weak to carry me around.

I know what you are going to say. “Susanne, you promised us a near death experience. I expected angels, god, the whole shebang. Not a flight in a hospital sitting at the bedside of a peer.
Well, I was at the verge of death with not much energy left in my system and a vicious infection that cost me the hearing ability of my left ear. And before I left the hospital i began to look for the girl. She was there! In a closed off department I was not allowed to enter. right before I was dismissed I saw her and she looked at me. I shivered…

Going back home I started to read everything about paranormal investigation. My parents had “The Readers digest” that told stories of miracle healers that operated without sedation. I read all I could find written by Professor van Praag, the now discredited professor who allegedly forged proof about his favorite clairvoyant Mr. Croiset. One of the best books I read is life after life from Raymond Moody, one of the best authors on the subject.

The book told me that I was not foolish. Raymond Moody gathered data from more than one hundred patients. This book made me understand how important it is to befriend death, to be able to live a fulfilled life.

I decided that I had to become a psychologist because I could not figure out why people have this need to be so cruel. I wanted to make the world better. So nearly loosing my life at age 11 has set the stage for my most important life decisions. What work I do, the family I choose to create with my partner, my concept of God.

Even though I had a spiritual experience I did not have a meeting with God (or did I? I often wonder if that little girl was not a symbol). And that became my outlook in life: always to wonder, always ready to explore new intellectual and emotional endeavors.

Mindfunda is an end product of this process. I often call Mindfunda “The walking website” because most of the time I write down something, I am disappointed with the result and I go walking. While walking, my mind becomes creative and I juggle around thoughts, concerts, contradicting facts that will make a blog more interesting.

This is my story. I hope to hear from you. What do you like about Mindfunda? What sucks? What other topics do you want me to write about? Research? Spiritual stuff? Mythology? Or something completely different like a weekly question hour?

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PS:
I will be uploading another very interesting interview on my YouTube channel soon.
 Jean Raffa author talks about her book  Healing the sacred divide that got the 2013 Wilbur Award so be sure to sign up!

Grab yourself a free e-book and learn all about mutual dreaming using this link

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