June 24, 2025 • 35 mins
He flatlined twice. What came back was a different man—and a different artist.
In 2008, artist and musician Rodney White survived a catastrophic car accident that left him in a coma, fighting for his life. He flatlined twice and underwent emergency surgery to piece his body back together. But what followed was an even deeper reconstruction of identity, purpose, and spirit.
In this intimate conversation, Rodney reflects on the surreal experience of waking from a coma, his struggle to reconcile memory loss with selfhood, and the mystical moments that guided his recovery—including a spiritual encounter that revealed the presence of his late father. He shares how his near-death experience reshaped his creativity, moving him beyond painting into clothing, poetry, and new forms of expression. We talk about the body as a vessel for spirit, the importance of protecting that spirit, and the challenge—and freedom—of rebuilding a life when the old one no longer fits.
This is a story about the invisible threads that connect past and present, art and healing, death and transformation. Rodney’s journey reminds us that sometimes we don’t go back to who we were… because we’re meant to become something more.
Story producer: Kate Sweeney.
Episode Cover Art by Rodney White.
To learn more about Rodney and his work, go to www.rodney-white.com
* If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story. Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psycopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Rodney White. On May third, two thousand
and eight, in a very serious car accident, I almost died.
You do all this work of understanding who you are,
defining who you are, knowing what this means, and then
something like this event happens and art of that gets
(00:36):
thrown out of the window and you're left with a
blank slate. And now you got to rebuild your image
of yourself again. But you gotta go through a new
trajectory of discovery to do it.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
That's scary.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people his lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:10):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I would describe myself professionally as I am an artist
and a creative. The way I started expressing myself creatively,
but do a lot of drawing, and once.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I discovered painting, painting kind of I became.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The medium that I was using the most to express
my creativity. Where I call home currently is Brooklyn, New York.
I've been here since two thousand and five, and I
moved here from my home state of Georgia.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
New York.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
For me, honestly, it was a childhood obsession of mine
and even as a kid, I was obsessed. I would
always draw the New York skyline in my name. I
would draw pictures of me on a subway platform. We
didn't have subways in a cause, so we had buses
at best, but I would always draw myself on subway platforms,
(02:16):
and I was just putting myself in this city. Fast
forward a few years. I was doing well. I was
having some decent success in the ad industry. I was
a great graphic designer, art director. I started painting and
met pretty quickly with some success from the painting, and
I knew I'm like, okay, now I'm ready to go.
And then around like two thousand and four, I made
(02:38):
the decision and I just prepared for a year to come.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
On to New York. It was immediate. The doors started
to like open up for me.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
My ad career in New York literally walked through my
front door of my apartment, like dude came in to
buy a pay to bind. He bought the biggest painting
on the wall. He gave me a check, and then
he said, you need any freelance. I said, I'm always
looking for freelance. He said, well, call these people and
tell them I recommended you. I went in for an interview.
They offered me a job.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So literally, the opportunity to get into.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
The addy industry in New York City walked through my
front door.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The path is opening up and I can see the
lanes I need to take and I'm just walking in.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So I started this job and one by accounts supervisors.
Sophia is my now wife. So we meet within six
months of me being in New York City, and there
was obviously something there between us.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Neither one of us really understood what it meant or
what it was.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And there were lots of starts and stops, you know,
hang out, don't hang out, hang out, don't break up.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
They didn't don't break.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It was just a lot of stop and starts. And
through that there was a lot of like a relationship building.
We were getting closer, We're becoming really really good friends.
And on one of our most beautiful vacations together, we're
in Costa Rica at the Eco.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Lodge, this big mansion.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It was like up this mountaintop, like, yeah, you're so
high up that clouds are blowing by the window.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And it was in that place we.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Break up, in one of the most beautiful places on
the planet. It seems like we break up. I was
entering a dark space, and even in the paintings that
I was doing, the colors were starting to get darker.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I knew I was going through something.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
The last painting that I was working on when the
car incident occurred, and I still have it in my garage.
I never finished it, but the words that I did
finish on the painting today in English and then.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
El bueno yo in Spanish today, I.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Am the good meet, I am the good version of
myself that was me through my painting, trying to wheel
myself out of the funk that I was in. The
spiritual funk that I was in. I was yearning for
something to change. I was yearning for some academic about
myself to be different. After the breakup in Costa Rica,
(05:30):
we come back home and we're still hanging out. We're
still friends. I know this is a tenth Ray part
like the last eight times we broke up and got
back together. I'm good, I can hang out. So we
go to a concert in Greenpoint to go see the
Brazilian Girls, and at the time, the Brazilian Girls was
like one of my favorite bands that I was listening to.
Us and listen to a lot of Brazilian girls. We're
(05:51):
leieving the concert and it's me, my wife, and two
other people from work.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So mind you.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Time, we've been on and off at work through almost
three years. No one at worked new so to kind
of like, you know, keep the inference that you know
something's going on between us.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
She rode with.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Them when we were leaving the concert, and they get
in their car and they dropped me off at mine
and they keep going.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It was a residential neighborhood that we was driving in.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So they go through a stop sign and then I
put up to the stop sign, and then I go
through the stop sign.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
They heard the crash and they turned around and they
were like, where.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Did Rodney go? They didn't see my car at all.
They got out of the car to come and look
for me, and they see my car was flipped over
and pushed two carings down the road. The car that
hit me was a Honda City and I'm in a
Jeep Cherokee, So to hit a jeep Cherokee and flip
(07:00):
it and then push it, those are extreaming speeds. So
Phil lifted up the gate of my of the Cherokee
and she could see that I was lying on the
passenger's side and that my chest was breathing, So she
knew I was alive, but I wasn't responsible because she
kept part of my name and I wasn't responsible. The
(07:25):
ambulance came, the fire trucks came. They used the jaws
of life to cut me out. They wouldn't let her
ride with me in the back of the amulets because
obviously we're not married at the time, so she had
to like ride in the front. They take me to
Balfy Hospital, but on the way they stopped and she
(07:50):
was really questioned like like why we stopped, like like
this this doesn't make any sense, like why are we stopping?
And it turns out I had flat line, the heart
started beating, there was no blood pumping, the heart was
no longer functioning. The ambulance can't move while they're resuscitating
(08:13):
the victim.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
So we get to the hospital. My entire left side
was broken.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
My clavigal seven ribs, my pelvis, and all of my
organs were pushed up into my lungs. So nothing was
where it should have been. So surgery was needed to
put everything.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Back in place.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
She can't authorize it, so she calls my mom and
they tell her, if you don't authorize this surgery, he won't.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Be here when you get here.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
My mom was like, do whatever you gotta do keep
my son alive. In order to do this surgery, they
put me in a medically induced coma. On the operating table,
I flatlined again. I don't know how long that flat
line occurred for, but I was revived. They were trying
(09:07):
to bring me out of the coma after a week, and.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
My body just wouldn't come out of the coma.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So then they resorted to just removing me from the morphine.
And they told him, like he used to be waking
up screaming and pain right now because he has no
morphine drilled. His body is in so much pain. He
should be screaming right now, and he's not.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's just in this coma with no more fear.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I woke up about three weeks later, and it wasn't
like the nurses or doctors doing something to bring me out.
It was literally just with Sophia beside my bed, maybe
watching TV or on her phone or something, and I
came out. I woke up out of the coma, and
(10:06):
I know where I am, but I have no idea
why I am here.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The person that I saw next to my bed was
to feel.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's almost like I didn't necessary see her face, I
saw her spirit. It was just like it was just
pure light next to my bed. She was like, if
you can understand me, squeeze my hand. So I squeezed
her hand and then she asked me if I could speak,
and I kind of like muttered out a couple of
words or whatever.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Gat good, and then she said, do you know who
I am?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I said, yeah, I know who you are, and then
she said who am I and I said Olivia.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And she freaked. She like, who if I doesn't live you.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
My explanation for that is that the person that I
saw beside my bed was.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
A pure, pure spirit.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And the only person that I've ever really associated that
purreness of light to was Olivia's character from the coffee
show Raven Someone, and she was like a little kid
like that character. Her light just just shines off of
the screen. It's like it just she was such a
cute pure spirit that I just.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Like just stayed with me.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
That was who I saw by my bedside when I
woke her from the comb. My memory was truly affected
by my TBI a week before the car ancident is
completely erased, so in my mind, I don't remember breaking
up with Sophia. In my mind, Sofia and I are
still together. So I didn't see my edge girlfriend next
(11:36):
to my bed. I saw my girlfriend next to my bed.
The recovery process for me, it was tough at first.
I first came out of the coma. Obviously, being three
weeks in a coma, your mouth is gonna.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Be kind of dry. I wanted water so bad.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
It was the only thing I was I was obsessed
with just getting water, and no one would give me water.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
No one was allowed to give me water.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
They didn't know if I could swallow without drowning, so
no one would give me water. It would give me
some ice cubes, and I have to chew on the
ice cubes. And I didn't want the ice cubes. I
wanted a glass of water. And one night I woke
up and it was late and there was a nurse
in the room with me, and she had fallen asleep,
and I see a picture of water on the table
(12:24):
next to the bed. So I start trying to get
to the picture of water and I fall out of
the bed and she wakes up and she's like, what
did I tell you?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
What?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
What did I My body had completely atrophied. I couldn't
even hold a spoon up to my mouth, so I
couldn't feed myself. I had to be fed food.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Obviously.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I couldn't stand in my body. I couldn't hold myself up.
I had to be held up, propped up. But the
physical therapy that start to happen at the hospital began
to help with that. One of the things that my
(13:08):
friends and family were most concerned about me when I
was in the hospital was howard his hands.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I was a painter.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I used my hands to create I had a pretty
successful commercial art career, and that was the concern, is
he gonna be able to paint again. I mentioned earlier
life I had created for myself.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Everything was exactly to my specifications.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I was obsessed and just so anxious to get back
to that life. It's an easy trap to fall into
because the old self that I had created was so dope.
I mean, I was making decent money. I had just
bought me a condo, I had a beautiful girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I was having a success.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's easy to say, no, get back to that, go
back to that, that's dope. Because of it happened in
May two thousand and eight, and three years later, Sophie
and I were married. By the time we got married,
I still wasn't back to my old self.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Things didn't fit the way they used to fit.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The physical effects of the accident changed the way I walk,
which sounds review, but the way you move through the
world there's a rhythm to you. There's a rhythm to
the way you engage with the environment around you, and
I had established that rhythm, where now my rhythm has
to change. So all these things were they seemed like
(14:39):
small effects, but when you start to put them all together,
you start to realize that, okay, it's this small physical
rhythm here, this memory issue here, this creative laps that
I'm having here, All these things are connected. Imagine this
picture of yourself being like a glass photograph, and when
(14:59):
the glass graph is broken, it gets broken up into
all these little pieces, and you start trying to put
the pieces back together because you know what the image
looks like. And you see a piece and you recognize
where it goes, but the space for it is different
than the shape of that piece. So now you're like, no,
(15:20):
this doesn't make any sense, Like this goes here? Why
isn't it shaped like that? That was because I later realized
and later learned that the inner parts of me were given.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
A new dimension.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
There were new levels that I was given access to,
that these old pieces, these old shapes, no longer served
and no longer fit.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
These are not things that my mind is able.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
To comprehend from a physical experience.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
I gotta go deeper to get these answers. I gotta
go within.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Myself to a level that my rational mind don't understand
just yet. Started practicing meditation every day, and my physical
exhaustion eased up quite a bit. I started doing cranial
sacho therapy. It starts with the therapist like behind your head,
(16:12):
and the skull comes in many different pieces, and there's movement,
there's shifting of those plates and those pieces that can
allow deeper physical and spiritual things to occur.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
That began almost in immediate transition.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
In the way my memory you had to hold and
take shape again, and it was it was profound.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I met Atlanta through through Sophia.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Actually, so Sophia did it first and the experience left
her in such a way where she was like, you right,
and you have to do this. I'm meditating now, I'm
into these non Western logical ways of approaching my development
that I'm like, okay, cool, I'm gaming, give me our number.
(17:01):
The way I understand Akashi records is energy cannot be
created or destroyed on the transfer.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Our spirits are energy. Spirits are not created.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
There are many bodies our spirits have been in, and
I believe that spirit has a purpose and it tries
to articulate that purpose in the.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Physical forms over its existence.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So Yakashi records are records of those lifetime records of
those lessons that that spirit has picked up along the way.
The imprints Elena has access to those records.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
So I called her, and the way she operates it
is like.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
She only really answers questions, and oftentimes you ask the
questions and she's shown an image and she only tells.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
You what she sees.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
She can only tell you what she's being shown. Sometimes
that there are statements. Sometimes they are just images, and
she has to describe those images to you. But the
first question I asked her, I told her about the coma,
first the medically induced coma and then the mysterious two
week coma that they couldn't figure out what was happening
(18:14):
to me. I asked her, what happened to me? And
where did I go?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
She took a moment, and then she said that she
could see the.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Spirit leave the body twice and it was debating whether
to return or not. I didn't tell her that I
had flat line twice, and she said there was a
figure there. I keep seeing a figure that was advocating
for your spirit to return. And she said, it's someone
that was once physical. It wasn't an angel, It wasn't
(18:48):
like a godlike figure, she said, but it was like
it was definitely a fatherlike figure that was advocating for
your spirit to return and then she said, I'm seeing
the color red in his shirt and I meanly on
the car. I started to cry because that father figure
was by father.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
My dad had passed.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Away on the same day as my car accident five
years prior, so between the day that he died and
the day I got into the car accident was exactly
five years. One of the things that I heard from
my stepmom, who was married to my dad was this
was like early, early in the beginning after my recovery.
(19:31):
She said to me that your dad.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Was not going to let you die on the same
day that he died. And you know, I kind of
dismissed it.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I dismissed it as like, okay, well whatever, everything is
not about Jimmy.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
My dad's name is Jimmy. I was like, everything is
not about Jimmy.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Obviously there's a connection that she has to my dad
that I would never be able to understand, and rightfully so,
so you know, after a while, it's like everybody does
it is with their parents and step parents was like
the things they.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Say, You're like, come on, man, this again.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
So she said that, I kind of dismissed it, and
you know, everything it's not about Jimmy.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Turns out, yes it is. It absolutely was about Jimmy.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Physically, we are the exact same height, We wore the
same size shoe, we were the same size clothes. I
still have some of his rings that he gave me
before he passed. Never had to get him resized. Fisty
is that same finger. Even down to the way I talked, right,
I speed taught like Jimmy, I move like Jimmy.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Like even I see myself with my only kids and.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I'm like, oh shit, that's my dad. It's really really
close and apparent. But there was many, many years where
there was a bit of a tension between me and
my dad. I didn't meet my dad until I was fourteen.
I knew who he was, I had seen pictures of him,
but the experience of knowing him in middle school in
(20:55):
high school was kind of like the beginnings of our relationship. Okay,
so now some clear pictures are starting to form. Can
use advocating for my spirit to return. The spirit would
not return to the body unless it was assured that
it was a safe place for it to be, so
(21:16):
in exchange for that return, the angels kept me in
the coma to continue to work on me. Atlanta uses
different terms to describe the beings that were in there.
To use his terms like master's teachers, the angels, the
higher beings, and she use them interchangeably sometimes. And the
(21:42):
way Atlanta described the scene to me, she said, there
was this cocoon around you made out of strands of light.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
You were being made better because the spirit wouldn't accept
or return in any other condition.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
But she said you were being fixed in and repaired
and fortified at the final frequencies. The first thing that
is spirits kind of helped me understand was who embrace
the mysteries of not knowing and embrace the mysteries of discovery.
(22:19):
It was tough to get to that point because it's
scary when something like this event happens. You look back
at the old pictures of yourself and you see, oh,
that was good. I want to get back to that.
And now you got to rebuild your image of yourself again.
The new pieces, the new direction, and the new trajectory
(22:43):
that I needed to take was unknown, and it required
work to get there, required respiraitual work to get there.
It required a vulnerability about what to do next. But
I also understood that. On the other side of that,
(23:04):
the reward is something that I'm not going to allow
myself to pass up on. These are now new pieces,
new gain pieces, and they're better, They're fortified with higher frequencies.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
These are new, better pieces.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
So have fun in experiencing the power and dynamics of
that combination.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
My art did change.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Painting has not been a part of my creative output
per se.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
I still have desires to paint.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I got things ideas and that I want to do,
But the expression of my creativity can take form in
whatever fashion in best needs to be articulated.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
That to me is most artists' greatest challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
When there's a message that needs to get out there,
there's something that needs to be articulated.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Oftentimes will have.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
A method of how we think that should be, but
the spirit has an other idea about that, and we
have to be able to tap into what that spirit
believe is the best articulation of it and and pursue that.
I created a couple of clothing brands. I'm working on
a poetry project. The art in the creativity is manifesting
itself in ways that aren't necessarily what.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
I'm known to do visually, but.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It's getting out there, it's coming through in these alternative
mediums and methods. Creativity is my it's it's what I
always believed or what I've kind of confirmed in through
a lot of my inner work, that creativity is my
spiritual purpose.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I'm an artist and then everything else.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
The way I see myself is if I'm not creative first,
nobody else wins. Nobody else has a positive experience of me,
nobody else gets the best of me, nobody else.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Gets the things that they need from me.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
If I'm not an artist first, I'm not serving my
highest spiritual purpose that benefits everyone else. Previous to painting,
words were a thing that led me down to create
a path, and then the painting became an articulation of
the words, and then the painting and words eventually moved
(25:18):
to me dabbling around trying to teach myself how to
make music, which is kind of where I'm now.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
The stuff so it all lives together. It all stems
from the.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Same trait, but the leaves was brought a different fruit
at various points. So it allowed me to step away
from having to control everything to make sure everything goes
the way I see it and goal as playing I
can handle whatever the outcome is of any situation. It
(25:50):
does the mystery of it don't scare me. One of
my living functions that I was living purposes now is
protect the spirit. The spirit did not want to return
to the body unless they knew it was safe, so
the body had to become a place that protected the spirit.
(26:11):
It found safety and security there. So I have to
make sure that I am protecting it at all costs.
And that looks very different to a lot of people,
especially those who knew me before the car accident. Oftentimes
it looks like selfishness. It looks like I'm looking out
for me first, and in a lot of ways, yes
i am.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
But one of.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
The things I learned is when you live out your
spiritual purpose, you inherently serve humanity by being true to
the spirit.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I often think about like time travel, and if I would.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Go back and change things, I wouldn't change anything. I
would not change the carcident. I would not change what
happened to me because the other side of all all
of those experiences is this life I'm living right now,
and it is dope.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
It is it is, it is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I have a firmly hell belief that most of us
don't always achieve our dreams because we are not intimately.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Familiar with what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But if you know the way the spirit feels when
it's faced with it, you'll recognize the unrecognizable particle dream.
Then life that I designed for myself before the car acident,
and then the parts that I was giving to put
the life put the picture back together. This life I'm
living now is a result of those pieces, because the
(27:36):
accident allowed a higher spiritual vibration, so I would not
change it at all. I have a spiritual function, a
spiritual purpose. I still have work to do. I know
my spirit still has work to do, and I know
there's things that my spirit uniquely believes that I can
(27:59):
articket that needs to be done, and I haven't done
them yet. There's a lot of I couldn't do them,
and then there's fifteen years if I wanted to, But
there's a lot of them, so I know I got
at least fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Welcome back, this is Alive again, joining me for a
conversation about today's story or my other Alive against story
Producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski and Brent Dye and I'm
your host, Dan Bush. So in this episode you talked
with Rodney White. What about Rodney's story drew you in?
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Well, you know, we heard so much variety in each
of the different folks that we talked with. And the
thing with Rodney White is he's an artist, and I
didn't know him before I talked with him, but I
knew that he was this prolific painter and this experience
in which he almost died forced him to reinvent himself completely.
(29:26):
And that's only like the tip of the iceberg of
this story.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
That was a fascinating story. What Rodney White went through
as an artist is particularly of interest to me, being
a creator. Just his description of having gone through this
and finding his way as an artist and going from
you know, being a renowned, in demand both commercial and
(29:53):
in the art world painter and a visual artist and
now he's sort of shifted more to music. Yeah, I
mean that entire shift of and now he also just
the feeling that he indicates of living in his own
flesh and blood and living in his own body and
living in his own spirit in a way that he
wasn't before.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Oh my gosh, I can say so much about Ronnie
White and you might have to just cut me off.
I found that to be really compelling, Like the whole
thing about his talking about how he was sort of
trying to force himself back into his old narrative as
an artist. This was before he spoke to the medium,
before he sort of discovered his purpose as he sees
(30:36):
it now. And you know, it's sort of the theme
that we see running through many of these stories, people
trying to go back to living life the way it
was before before realizing Okay, you know, some kind of
change is needed, and this is the form that that
takes in Rodney's story, you know, moving from painting to
(30:57):
you know, creating clothing, brands and music. And another thing
that struck me is, you know, as he puts it,
it allowed me to step away from having to control everything.
And I just found that to be really really inspiring. Actually,
this idea of like, Okay, it's not up to me,
this is up to the universe. And that's probably in
(31:20):
part because God, I wish.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
I could do that. You know, I can't do that.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
Well, I think there might be something to be said for,
you know, as an artist, you spend your life developing
the skill set that defines who you are, and you're
making your voice. You're spending your whole life creating your voice.
And to have that taken away like potentially so you
know it, I think, you know it puts a I
(31:45):
think all artists kind of feel that sense of I
only have so much time to create the work I
want to create, sure, you know, and then and then
to kind of take it in a different direction like
he did.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Yeah, yeah, Actually it makes me think about something that
something else that he believes so strongly that I've just
I found it to be so compelling, which is this
belief that if you're doing what you're meant to do,
doors will open for you. That's such a deep belief
for him. And again it's probably because I myself don't
(32:19):
always believe that. I don't believe the world is a meritocracy.
For example, I wish it were, but I don't think
that's the case. But every now and then it's really
nice hearing from somebody who know has complete confidence in
the fact that the universe sort of is supporting them,
you know, in this way, almost like a sense of destiny.
(32:40):
And in his story, I found it to be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
There's this idea that I've heard a lot lately, and
this kind of resonates in this story as well, this
idea that, like people, we're at our strongest when we're
most vulnerable. And there's something about that in the story,
like him, the willingness for him to let go. I
think it might have been like, maybe even more so
(33:04):
than any rehabilitation he did physically, or you know, any
any things he had to do financially in his life,
just for him to rebuild himself and to allow and
to and to go, Okay, I'm vulnerable here, and to
use that and to kind of live in that and
to have some some surrender then allowed him to find
(33:25):
a whole, entirely different sort of pathway as an artist.
It's extremely inspiring. Next time, on a Live Again, we
meet Anne Bayford, whose three near death experiences led to
profound insights about life and the function of trauma. She
now helps others as a certified counselor and psychic medium.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
I did not feel the van fitting me, but the
day I died in two thousand and two, that was
the day I actually woke up and realized why I
was here. When I look back at my life and
my journey, it's the violence so that I injured as
a child and as a woman as well. I can
obviously say I don't see the world as a doc place.
(34:09):
I see the world just having shadows.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die,
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima el Kali and
(34:35):
Noames Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhardt Slovitchca, Brent
Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
I'm your host, Dan Bush. Thanks to Rodney White for
sharing his story. To learn more about Rodney and his work,
go to Rodney dash White dot com. That's r O
d n E Y dash w h I TV dot com.
(34:59):
Alive agains its production of iHeart Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
If you have a transformative near death experience to share,
we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
a Live Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a
l I v e A g A I N P
R O j e c T at gmail dot com
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psycopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Rodney White. On May third, two thousand
and eight, in a very serious car accident, I almost died.
You do all this work of understanding who you are,
defining who you are, knowing what this means, and then
something like this event happens and art of that gets
(00:36):
thrown out of the window and you're left with a
blank slate. And now you got to rebuild your image
of yourself again. But you gotta go through a new
trajectory of discovery to do it.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
That's scary.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people his lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:10):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I would describe myself professionally as I am an artist
and a creative. The way I started expressing myself creatively,
but do a lot of drawing, and once.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I discovered painting, painting kind of I became.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The medium that I was using the most to express
my creativity. Where I call home currently is Brooklyn, New York.
I've been here since two thousand and five, and I
moved here from my home state of Georgia.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
New York.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
For me, honestly, it was a childhood obsession of mine
and even as a kid, I was obsessed. I would
always draw the New York skyline in my name. I
would draw pictures of me on a subway platform. We
didn't have subways in a cause, so we had buses
at best, but I would always draw myself on subway platforms,
(02:16):
and I was just putting myself in this city. Fast
forward a few years. I was doing well. I was
having some decent success in the ad industry. I was
a great graphic designer, art director. I started painting and
met pretty quickly with some success from the painting, and
I knew I'm like, okay, now I'm ready to go.
And then around like two thousand and four, I made
(02:38):
the decision and I just prepared for a year to come.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
On to New York. It was immediate. The doors started
to like open up for me.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
My ad career in New York literally walked through my
front door of my apartment, like dude came in to
buy a pay to bind. He bought the biggest painting
on the wall. He gave me a check, and then
he said, you need any freelance. I said, I'm always
looking for freelance. He said, well, call these people and
tell them I recommended you. I went in for an interview.
They offered me a job.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So literally, the opportunity to get into.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
The addy industry in New York City walked through my
front door.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The path is opening up and I can see the
lanes I need to take and I'm just walking in.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So I started this job and one by accounts supervisors.
Sophia is my now wife. So we meet within six
months of me being in New York City, and there
was obviously something there between us.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Neither one of us really understood what it meant or
what it was.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And there were lots of starts and stops, you know,
hang out, don't hang out, hang out, don't break up.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
They didn't don't break.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It was just a lot of stop and starts. And
through that there was a lot of like a relationship building.
We were getting closer, We're becoming really really good friends.
And on one of our most beautiful vacations together, we're
in Costa Rica at the Eco.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Lodge, this big mansion.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It was like up this mountaintop, like, yeah, you're so
high up that clouds are blowing by the window.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And it was in that place we.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Break up, in one of the most beautiful places on
the planet. It seems like we break up. I was
entering a dark space, and even in the paintings that
I was doing, the colors were starting to get darker.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I knew I was going through something.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
The last painting that I was working on when the
car incident occurred, and I still have it in my garage.
I never finished it, but the words that I did
finish on the painting today in English and then.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
El bueno yo in Spanish today, I.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Am the good meet, I am the good version of
myself that was me through my painting, trying to wheel
myself out of the funk that I was in. The
spiritual funk that I was in. I was yearning for
something to change. I was yearning for some academic about
myself to be different. After the breakup in Costa Rica,
(05:30):
we come back home and we're still hanging out. We're
still friends. I know this is a tenth Ray part
like the last eight times we broke up and got
back together. I'm good, I can hang out. So we
go to a concert in Greenpoint to go see the
Brazilian Girls, and at the time, the Brazilian Girls was
like one of my favorite bands that I was listening to.
Us and listen to a lot of Brazilian girls. We're
(05:51):
leieving the concert and it's me, my wife, and two
other people from work.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So mind you.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Time, we've been on and off at work through almost
three years. No one at worked new so to kind
of like, you know, keep the inference that you know
something's going on between us.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
She rode with.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Them when we were leaving the concert, and they get
in their car and they dropped me off at mine
and they keep going.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It was a residential neighborhood that we was driving in.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So they go through a stop sign and then I
put up to the stop sign, and then I go
through the stop sign.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
They heard the crash and they turned around and they
were like, where.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Did Rodney go? They didn't see my car at all.
They got out of the car to come and look
for me, and they see my car was flipped over
and pushed two carings down the road. The car that
hit me was a Honda City and I'm in a
Jeep Cherokee, So to hit a jeep Cherokee and flip
(07:00):
it and then push it, those are extreaming speeds. So
Phil lifted up the gate of my of the Cherokee
and she could see that I was lying on the
passenger's side and that my chest was breathing, So she
knew I was alive, but I wasn't responsible because she
kept part of my name and I wasn't responsible. The
(07:25):
ambulance came, the fire trucks came. They used the jaws
of life to cut me out. They wouldn't let her
ride with me in the back of the amulets because
obviously we're not married at the time, so she had
to like ride in the front. They take me to
Balfy Hospital, but on the way they stopped and she
(07:50):
was really questioned like like why we stopped, like like
this this doesn't make any sense, like why are we stopping?
And it turns out I had flat line, the heart
started beating, there was no blood pumping, the heart was
no longer functioning. The ambulance can't move while they're resuscitating
(08:13):
the victim.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
So we get to the hospital. My entire left side
was broken.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
My clavigal seven ribs, my pelvis, and all of my
organs were pushed up into my lungs. So nothing was
where it should have been. So surgery was needed to
put everything.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Back in place.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
She can't authorize it, so she calls my mom and
they tell her, if you don't authorize this surgery, he won't.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Be here when you get here.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
My mom was like, do whatever you gotta do keep
my son alive. In order to do this surgery, they
put me in a medically induced coma. On the operating table,
I flatlined again. I don't know how long that flat
line occurred for, but I was revived. They were trying
(09:07):
to bring me out of the coma after a week, and.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
My body just wouldn't come out of the coma.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So then they resorted to just removing me from the morphine.
And they told him, like he used to be waking
up screaming and pain right now because he has no
morphine drilled. His body is in so much pain. He
should be screaming right now, and he's not.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's just in this coma with no more fear.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I woke up about three weeks later, and it wasn't
like the nurses or doctors doing something to bring me out.
It was literally just with Sophia beside my bed, maybe
watching TV or on her phone or something, and I
came out. I woke up out of the coma, and
(10:06):
I know where I am, but I have no idea
why I am here.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The person that I saw next to my bed was
to feel.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's almost like I didn't necessary see her face, I
saw her spirit. It was just like it was just
pure light next to my bed. She was like, if
you can understand me, squeeze my hand. So I squeezed
her hand and then she asked me if I could speak,
and I kind of like muttered out a couple of
words or whatever.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Gat good, and then she said, do you know who
I am?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I said, yeah, I know who you are, and then
she said who am I and I said Olivia.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And she freaked. She like, who if I doesn't live you.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
My explanation for that is that the person that I
saw beside my bed was.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
A pure, pure spirit.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And the only person that I've ever really associated that
purreness of light to was Olivia's character from the coffee
show Raven Someone, and she was like a little kid
like that character. Her light just just shines off of
the screen. It's like it just she was such a
cute pure spirit that I just.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Like just stayed with me.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
That was who I saw by my bedside when I
woke her from the comb. My memory was truly affected
by my TBI a week before the car ancident is
completely erased, so in my mind, I don't remember breaking
up with Sophia. In my mind, Sofia and I are
still together. So I didn't see my edge girlfriend next
(11:36):
to my bed. I saw my girlfriend next to my bed.
The recovery process for me, it was tough at first.
I first came out of the coma. Obviously, being three
weeks in a coma, your mouth is gonna.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Be kind of dry. I wanted water so bad.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
It was the only thing I was I was obsessed
with just getting water, and no one would give me water.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
No one was allowed to give me water.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
They didn't know if I could swallow without drowning, so
no one would give me water. It would give me
some ice cubes, and I have to chew on the
ice cubes. And I didn't want the ice cubes. I
wanted a glass of water. And one night I woke
up and it was late and there was a nurse
in the room with me, and she had fallen asleep,
and I see a picture of water on the table
(12:24):
next to the bed. So I start trying to get
to the picture of water and I fall out of
the bed and she wakes up and she's like, what
did I tell you?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
What?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
What did I My body had completely atrophied. I couldn't
even hold a spoon up to my mouth, so I
couldn't feed myself. I had to be fed food.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Obviously.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I couldn't stand in my body. I couldn't hold myself up.
I had to be held up, propped up. But the
physical therapy that start to happen at the hospital began
to help with that. One of the things that my
(13:08):
friends and family were most concerned about me when I
was in the hospital was howard his hands.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I was a painter.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I used my hands to create I had a pretty
successful commercial art career, and that was the concern, is
he gonna be able to paint again. I mentioned earlier
life I had created for myself.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Everything was exactly to my specifications.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I was obsessed and just so anxious to get back
to that life. It's an easy trap to fall into
because the old self that I had created was so dope.
I mean, I was making decent money. I had just
bought me a condo, I had a beautiful girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I was having a success.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's easy to say, no, get back to that, go
back to that, that's dope. Because of it happened in
May two thousand and eight, and three years later, Sophie
and I were married. By the time we got married,
I still wasn't back to my old self.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Things didn't fit the way they used to fit.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The physical effects of the accident changed the way I walk,
which sounds review, but the way you move through the
world there's a rhythm to you. There's a rhythm to
the way you engage with the environment around you, and
I had established that rhythm, where now my rhythm has
to change. So all these things were they seemed like
(14:39):
small effects, but when you start to put them all together,
you start to realize that, okay, it's this small physical
rhythm here, this memory issue here, this creative laps that
I'm having here, All these things are connected. Imagine this
picture of yourself being like a glass photograph, and when
(14:59):
the glass graph is broken, it gets broken up into
all these little pieces, and you start trying to put
the pieces back together because you know what the image
looks like. And you see a piece and you recognize
where it goes, but the space for it is different
than the shape of that piece. So now you're like, no,
(15:20):
this doesn't make any sense, Like this goes here? Why
isn't it shaped like that? That was because I later realized
and later learned that the inner parts of me were given.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
A new dimension.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
There were new levels that I was given access to,
that these old pieces, these old shapes, no longer served
and no longer fit.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
These are not things that my mind is able.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
To comprehend from a physical experience.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
I gotta go deeper to get these answers. I gotta
go within.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Myself to a level that my rational mind don't understand
just yet. Started practicing meditation every day, and my physical
exhaustion eased up quite a bit. I started doing cranial
sacho therapy. It starts with the therapist like behind your head,
(16:12):
and the skull comes in many different pieces, and there's movement,
there's shifting of those plates and those pieces that can
allow deeper physical and spiritual things to occur.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
That began almost in immediate transition.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
In the way my memory you had to hold and
take shape again, and it was it was profound.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I met Atlanta through through Sophia.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Actually, so Sophia did it first and the experience left
her in such a way where she was like, you right,
and you have to do this. I'm meditating now, I'm
into these non Western logical ways of approaching my development
that I'm like, okay, cool, I'm gaming, give me our number.
(17:01):
The way I understand Akashi records is energy cannot be
created or destroyed on the transfer.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Our spirits are energy. Spirits are not created.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
There are many bodies our spirits have been in, and
I believe that spirit has a purpose and it tries
to articulate that purpose in the.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Physical forms over its existence.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So Yakashi records are records of those lifetime records of
those lessons that that spirit has picked up along the way.
The imprints Elena has access to those records.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
So I called her, and the way she operates it
is like.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
She only really answers questions, and oftentimes you ask the
questions and she's shown an image and she only tells.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
You what she sees.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
She can only tell you what she's being shown. Sometimes
that there are statements. Sometimes they are just images, and
she has to describe those images to you. But the
first question I asked her, I told her about the coma,
first the medically induced coma and then the mysterious two
week coma that they couldn't figure out what was happening
(18:14):
to me. I asked her, what happened to me? And
where did I go?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
She took a moment, and then she said that she
could see the.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Spirit leave the body twice and it was debating whether
to return or not. I didn't tell her that I
had flat line twice, and she said there was a
figure there. I keep seeing a figure that was advocating
for your spirit to return. And she said, it's someone
that was once physical. It wasn't an angel, It wasn't
(18:48):
like a godlike figure, she said, but it was like
it was definitely a fatherlike figure that was advocating for
your spirit to return and then she said, I'm seeing
the color red in his shirt and I meanly on
the car. I started to cry because that father figure
was by father.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
My dad had passed.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Away on the same day as my car accident five
years prior, so between the day that he died and
the day I got into the car accident was exactly
five years. One of the things that I heard from
my stepmom, who was married to my dad was this
was like early, early in the beginning after my recovery.
(19:31):
She said to me that your dad.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Was not going to let you die on the same
day that he died. And you know, I kind of
dismissed it.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I dismissed it as like, okay, well whatever, everything is
not about Jimmy.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
My dad's name is Jimmy. I was like, everything is
not about Jimmy.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Obviously there's a connection that she has to my dad
that I would never be able to understand, and rightfully so,
so you know, after a while, it's like everybody does
it is with their parents and step parents was like
the things they.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Say, You're like, come on, man, this again.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
So she said that, I kind of dismissed it, and
you know, everything it's not about Jimmy.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Turns out, yes it is. It absolutely was about Jimmy.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Physically, we are the exact same height, We wore the
same size shoe, we were the same size clothes. I
still have some of his rings that he gave me
before he passed. Never had to get him resized. Fisty
is that same finger. Even down to the way I talked, right,
I speed taught like Jimmy, I move like Jimmy.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Like even I see myself with my only kids and.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I'm like, oh shit, that's my dad. It's really really
close and apparent. But there was many, many years where
there was a bit of a tension between me and
my dad. I didn't meet my dad until I was fourteen.
I knew who he was, I had seen pictures of him,
but the experience of knowing him in middle school in
(20:55):
high school was kind of like the beginnings of our relationship. Okay,
so now some clear pictures are starting to form. Can
use advocating for my spirit to return. The spirit would
not return to the body unless it was assured that
it was a safe place for it to be, so
(21:16):
in exchange for that return, the angels kept me in
the coma to continue to work on me. Atlanta uses
different terms to describe the beings that were in there.
To use his terms like master's teachers, the angels, the
higher beings, and she use them interchangeably sometimes. And the
(21:42):
way Atlanta described the scene to me, she said, there
was this cocoon around you made out of strands of light.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
You were being made better because the spirit wouldn't accept
or return in any other condition.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
But she said you were being fixed in and repaired
and fortified at the final frequencies. The first thing that
is spirits kind of helped me understand was who embrace
the mysteries of not knowing and embrace the mysteries of discovery.
(22:19):
It was tough to get to that point because it's
scary when something like this event happens. You look back
at the old pictures of yourself and you see, oh,
that was good. I want to get back to that.
And now you got to rebuild your image of yourself again.
The new pieces, the new direction, and the new trajectory
(22:43):
that I needed to take was unknown, and it required
work to get there, required respiraitual work to get there.
It required a vulnerability about what to do next. But
I also understood that. On the other side of that,
(23:04):
the reward is something that I'm not going to allow
myself to pass up on. These are now new pieces,
new gain pieces, and they're better, They're fortified with higher frequencies.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
These are new, better pieces.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
So have fun in experiencing the power and dynamics of
that combination.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
My art did change.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Painting has not been a part of my creative output
per se.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
I still have desires to paint.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I got things ideas and that I want to do,
But the expression of my creativity can take form in
whatever fashion in best needs to be articulated.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
That to me is most artists' greatest challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
When there's a message that needs to get out there,
there's something that needs to be articulated.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Oftentimes will have.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
A method of how we think that should be, but
the spirit has an other idea about that, and we
have to be able to tap into what that spirit
believe is the best articulation of it and and pursue that.
I created a couple of clothing brands. I'm working on
a poetry project. The art in the creativity is manifesting
itself in ways that aren't necessarily what.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
I'm known to do visually, but.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
It's getting out there, it's coming through in these alternative
mediums and methods. Creativity is my it's it's what I
always believed or what I've kind of confirmed in through
a lot of my inner work, that creativity is my
spiritual purpose.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I'm an artist and then everything else.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
The way I see myself is if I'm not creative first,
nobody else wins. Nobody else has a positive experience of me,
nobody else gets the best of me, nobody else.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Gets the things that they need from me.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
If I'm not an artist first, I'm not serving my
highest spiritual purpose that benefits everyone else. Previous to painting,
words were a thing that led me down to create
a path, and then the painting became an articulation of
the words, and then the painting and words eventually moved
(25:18):
to me dabbling around trying to teach myself how to
make music, which is kind of where I'm now.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
The stuff so it all lives together. It all stems
from the.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Same trait, but the leaves was brought a different fruit
at various points. So it allowed me to step away
from having to control everything to make sure everything goes
the way I see it and goal as playing I
can handle whatever the outcome is of any situation. It
(25:50):
does the mystery of it don't scare me. One of
my living functions that I was living purposes now is
protect the spirit. The spirit did not want to return
to the body unless they knew it was safe, so
the body had to become a place that protected the spirit.
(26:11):
It found safety and security there. So I have to
make sure that I am protecting it at all costs.
And that looks very different to a lot of people,
especially those who knew me before the car accident. Oftentimes
it looks like selfishness. It looks like I'm looking out
for me first, and in a lot of ways, yes
i am.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
But one of.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
The things I learned is when you live out your
spiritual purpose, you inherently serve humanity by being true to
the spirit.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I often think about like time travel, and if I would.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Go back and change things, I wouldn't change anything. I
would not change the carcident. I would not change what
happened to me because the other side of all all
of those experiences is this life I'm living right now,
and it is dope.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
It is it is, it is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I have a firmly hell belief that most of us
don't always achieve our dreams because we are not intimately.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Familiar with what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But if you know the way the spirit feels when
it's faced with it, you'll recognize the unrecognizable particle dream.
Then life that I designed for myself before the car acident,
and then the parts that I was giving to put
the life put the picture back together. This life I'm
living now is a result of those pieces, because the
(27:36):
accident allowed a higher spiritual vibration, so I would not
change it at all. I have a spiritual function, a
spiritual purpose. I still have work to do. I know
my spirit still has work to do, and I know
there's things that my spirit uniquely believes that I can
(27:59):
articket that needs to be done, and I haven't done
them yet. There's a lot of I couldn't do them,
and then there's fifteen years if I wanted to, But
there's a lot of them, so I know I got
at least fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Welcome back, this is Alive again, joining me for a
conversation about today's story or my other Alive against story
Producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski and Brent Dye and I'm
your host, Dan Bush. So in this episode you talked
with Rodney White. What about Rodney's story drew you in?
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Well, you know, we heard so much variety in each
of the different folks that we talked with. And the
thing with Rodney White is he's an artist, and I
didn't know him before I talked with him, but I
knew that he was this prolific painter and this experience
in which he almost died forced him to reinvent himself completely.
(29:26):
And that's only like the tip of the iceberg of
this story.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
That was a fascinating story. What Rodney White went through
as an artist is particularly of interest to me, being
a creator. Just his description of having gone through this
and finding his way as an artist and going from
you know, being a renowned, in demand both commercial and
(29:53):
in the art world painter and a visual artist and
now he's sort of shifted more to music. Yeah, I
mean that entire shift of and now he also just
the feeling that he indicates of living in his own
flesh and blood and living in his own body and
living in his own spirit in a way that he
wasn't before.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Oh my gosh, I can say so much about Ronnie
White and you might have to just cut me off.
I found that to be really compelling, Like the whole
thing about his talking about how he was sort of
trying to force himself back into his old narrative as
an artist. This was before he spoke to the medium,
before he sort of discovered his purpose as he sees
(30:36):
it now. And you know, it's sort of the theme
that we see running through many of these stories, people
trying to go back to living life the way it
was before before realizing Okay, you know, some kind of
change is needed, and this is the form that that
takes in Rodney's story, you know, moving from painting to
(30:57):
you know, creating clothing, brands and music. And another thing
that struck me is, you know, as he puts it,
it allowed me to step away from having to control everything.
And I just found that to be really really inspiring. Actually,
this idea of like, Okay, it's not up to me,
this is up to the universe. And that's probably in
(31:20):
part because God, I wish.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
I could do that. You know, I can't do that.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
Well, I think there might be something to be said for,
you know, as an artist, you spend your life developing
the skill set that defines who you are, and you're
making your voice. You're spending your whole life creating your voice.
And to have that taken away like potentially so you
know it, I think, you know it puts a I
(31:45):
think all artists kind of feel that sense of I
only have so much time to create the work I
want to create, sure, you know, and then and then
to kind of take it in a different direction like
he did.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Yeah, yeah, Actually it makes me think about something that
something else that he believes so strongly that I've just
I found it to be so compelling, which is this
belief that if you're doing what you're meant to do,
doors will open for you. That's such a deep belief
for him. And again it's probably because I myself don't
(32:19):
always believe that. I don't believe the world is a meritocracy.
For example, I wish it were, but I don't think
that's the case. But every now and then it's really
nice hearing from somebody who know has complete confidence in
the fact that the universe sort of is supporting them,
you know, in this way, almost like a sense of destiny.
(32:40):
And in his story, I found it to be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
There's this idea that I've heard a lot lately, and
this kind of resonates in this story as well, this
idea that, like people, we're at our strongest when we're
most vulnerable. And there's something about that in the story,
like him, the willingness for him to let go. I
think it might have been like, maybe even more so
(33:04):
than any rehabilitation he did physically, or you know, any
any things he had to do financially in his life,
just for him to rebuild himself and to allow and
to and to go, Okay, I'm vulnerable here, and to
use that and to kind of live in that and
to have some some surrender then allowed him to find
(33:25):
a whole, entirely different sort of pathway as an artist.
It's extremely inspiring. Next time, on a Live Again, we
meet Anne Bayford, whose three near death experiences led to
profound insights about life and the function of trauma. She
now helps others as a certified counselor and psychic medium.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
I did not feel the van fitting me, but the
day I died in two thousand and two, that was
the day I actually woke up and realized why I
was here. When I look back at my life and
my journey, it's the violence so that I injured as
a child and as a woman as well. I can
obviously say I don't see the world as a doc place.
(34:09):
I see the world just having shadows.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die,
Nicholas Dakoski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett, additional
music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick
and Trevor Young. Special thanks to Alexander Williams for additional
production support. Our studio engineers are Rima el Kali and
(34:35):
Noames Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush, Gerhardt Slovitchca, Brent
Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
I'm your host, Dan Bush. Thanks to Rodney White for
sharing his story. To learn more about Rodney and his work,
go to Rodney dash White dot com. That's r O
d n E Y dash w h I TV dot com.
(34:59):
Alive agains its production of iHeart Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
If you have a transformative near death experience to share,
we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
a Live Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a
l I v e A g A I N P
R O j e c T at gmail dot com
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