November 18, 2024 • 44 mins
Janice Callahan struggled with drug addiction in private for decades, while publicly she tried to live a normal life with her job and family. A functional drug addict. Then came the overdose and the NDE.
As her body succumbed to the drugs, she felt herself pulling away until she was up in the corner of the room looking down on her dying body. Then in the blink of an eye she arrived in the most beautiful place... heaven, paradise.
She found herself in a room with no windows or doors, but blanked in beautiful, living colors. She met 3 large, blue, luminescent angels, then an immense presence, God The Father.
Find out how she was able to return to life with her children, how we are all connected, and what God told her to do with the millions of people she saw waiting.
Some near death experiences are bigger than others and this NDE is huge! You'll want to share it with a friend.
_______________
Video versions of this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@roundtripdeath
https://www.facebook.com/janice.callahan.5?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Donate to this podcast @ https://www.roundtripdeath.com/support/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes.
(00:08):
They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped.
And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my
physical body because I was somewhere else.
The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't
anything else to be felt.
(00:29):
I was greeted by people I'd known in the past.
I'm back home again.
Incredibly safe and felt at home.
Welcome, welcome to RoundTripDeath everybody and our very special guest today, Janice Callahan.
Down from the heart of Texas, how are you Janice?
I'm Gray Eric, hello.
(00:51):
Hi, it's good to see you.
Hey, before we jump into your near-death experience, I want our listeners to get to know you just
a little bit.
So one minute go, who is Janice?
Tell us anything you feel like.
Okay, I am a mom of three amazing, lovely children and age gap siblings.
(01:15):
So I'm also, I have a little one still at home and then I also am a grandmother and
absolutely love that role.
It's all that I thought it would be.
I love being out in nature.
I'm a reader.
I crochet.
I love music.
I spend a lot of time just carrying and ministering for others in various different ways.
(01:38):
Okay, you're not allowed to tell untruths on this show.
I was trying not to say lie, but when you say you're a grandmother, people that are watching
the video version of this are going to go no way, she's a liar.
You can't be a grandmother at age 30.
Oh, that's sweet.
Thank you, Eric.
(01:59):
Thank you.
I'm well over 30.
I assure you.
All right.
All right.
Enough buttering you up.
It's still lighting.
Okay.
All right.
So Janice, give us an idea of what your life was like prior to your near death experience.
We're going to talk about the experience and then talk about maybe how things have changed,
(02:23):
how there's a new Janice since then.
So what were you doing with your life prior?
I was in technical cells for a long time.
I sold things to large aerospace companies, things like software and hardware.
That kind of always been in marketing and in cells for my professional career and led
(02:47):
what I would call a double life.
And so I, for 20 years, was very successful in cells, but then also had an addiction issue
that nobody really knew about that I hid very, very well and worked.
And I guess I was what you would call a functioning addict.
Okay.
(03:08):
But somehow you had a really successful career anyway, right?
Yeah, I did.
I had the things that we look at on the outside that beams success, right?
I had a nice home, nice vehicle, money in the bank, kids and activities, sports activities
and doing all of the things.
But the reality was is that I was hurting a lot on the inside and I was self-medicating
(03:35):
with narcotics.
And so it created a whole lot of internal unrest.
Happens a lot, doesn't it?
More often than we think.
Yeah, unfortunately, there's a lot of it.
Okay.
We're not passing any judgment on anybody in that kind of situation except to let you
(03:55):
know there's hope and that hope comes in all kinds of ways for you started with the
NDE, right?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
What's going on?
I would say I was coming to the end of the holding everything together in the successful
management of the splintered or double life.
(04:21):
So there was some serious trauma that had happened about three weeks prior to this event.
And so I was suffering with a lot of anxiety and like PTSD, I had recently come off of
a lot of prescription pills.
(04:41):
They were prescribed to me.
I didn't use them as prescribed.
And so when I hold turkey, went off of them, it related in a ton of blood pressure issues
and I actually had an eating disorder at the time.
So I wasn't eating properly.
And it was just like the perfect storm, if you can imagine.
So the night that I had my NDE was basically I was suicidal, Eric.
(05:08):
I was in mass.
Now you had kids at this time.
Were you married?
No.
There was just a bunch of stuff going on in your life, obviously, in addition to the
drugs.
So did you have an overdose?
Is that what brought this on?
It is.
Okay, tell me about it.
(05:28):
Well, most people who have been in any kind of addiction, we kind of know our limit, right?
And we know what we can do and what we can't do.
And I was very, I would say, cautious.
Remember I was functioning, so I always had to go to work the next day.
So I didn't get too wild.
And so this night, I wasn't getting too wild per se.
(05:52):
In fact, it was almost as soon as I ingested the drug, so it was a drug that you smoke,
and I don't want to trigger people, but it was a drug that you smoke.
And I had only taken like a little bit.
So it was like an instantaneous reaction.
(06:14):
I had taken a little bit of one type of drug and then somewhat actually blew marijuana smoke
in my face in addition to that.
And I don't know if it was because both of them had just entered my system, but it was
kind of like an anaphylactic reaction where instantly my throat started to close and I
could not get any air whatsoever.
(06:36):
Had you had this kind of allergic reaction before?
Never.
Huh.
Okay, keep going.
I was terrified because I couldn't breathe.
And I was like, you know, trying so hard to get air into my lungs and relatively quickly,
quickly, kind of like if you were choking on food, I guess.
(06:58):
So there is some time where I was like, oh gosh, I can't breathe.
I can't breathe.
I needed to sit down and the person that I was with helped me to sit on the couch.
But very quickly, my eyesight, I started to see tunnel vision.
And then I realized I was in serious trouble.
And I remember at the point, like I remember trying to dial 911 and him saying, like, we
(07:24):
don't need to do that.
You're just breathe, just breathe.
And I could not breathe.
So I would call it like an anaphylactic shock reaction or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Tip of the day, by the way, if you're ever with someone that says call 911 or is trying,
just do it.
Don't judge and tell them, ah, you're fine.
(07:46):
Yeah.
And I think in this, you know, in this lifestyle, though, it happens a lot because no one wants
to get in trouble.
Eric, they're more worried.
People are usually more worried about getting in trouble than saving someone's life, unfortunately.
And it was relatively quickly that I began to, in my mind, I'm praying and I'm asking,
(08:08):
you know, God to help.
That was my immediate reaction internally.
And it was very quickly that I started to feel a sense of my spirit begins separating
from my body.
I don't know how to describe it, but it was like this pulling away from my actual vessel.
(08:29):
I like to call it a meat suit.
And it, and I remember my spirit floating to the corner of this person's living room.
And so for a moment, I'm looking back at myself and it's really wild because I'm seeing myself
(08:51):
in the corner of the room from my own eyes as well.
So it was like I could see here from my eyes, but as the spirit see from the corner of the
room.
And then it was like I was back in my body, but I felt like, I felt like if this person
would stay with me, like it's hard to describe, but I felt like I needed to be tethered to
(09:11):
the earth because it felt as though I was just going to float into oblivion at this
point.
I remember at this point looking down at my body and knowing my body is dying.
I could feel like every cell, every organ in my body, I was acutely aware of everything
(09:31):
physical.
Like, I mean, I remember thinking like my eyelashes.
I was, I was thinking about somehow like the, I could, I could sense that my organs were
shutting down.
And I remember trying to breathe, trying to get a breath, but knowing my lungs wouldn't
expand.
I looked down at my chest and I'm willing my heart to beat and nothing's happening.
(09:55):
I know I'm in trouble.
And in terms of like my, my body is giving up.
It's tired and rightfully so, you know, I was really hard on my body and didn't really
have a lot of value in my body, you know, um, through that lifestyle, through different
(10:16):
traumas that I had throughout my life, you know, I just was like an object to others
and to myself.
So I was really like for the first time realizing like my, my well-being, my body and my life
were actually precious, but that I took that for granted.
(10:37):
I started actually using, uh, substances as a very young girl.
And so it was, it was part of my life.
It was part of the people that I was around.
We all did something in some shape, fashion or form.
And I'm having this understanding of how easy it is and how fragile our bodies are and how
(10:58):
easy it is for our bodies to stop working properly.
And as this is happening, I see my heart, it was like, I was willing my heart to, to
beat and it was like it, it made one last very hard beat.
And like I saw it happen with, with my own eyes that I'm looking down at just, and then
(11:20):
I closed my eyes here.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a completely different place.
This is almost a two-part kind of thing where you, isn't it?
I mean, you talked about leaving your body slowly.
That's an unusual thing that I don't hear every day.
It is pretty common for people to see their own body and some of what's going on.
(11:43):
But then, but then to kind of, okay, here's the second act.
Interesting.
Jump into that.
Yeah.
So it was like an out-of-body experience and then a near-death experience, right?
If I would have been rendered eight or anything, if maybe it would have just been the out-of-body
experience, I presume, but because I wasn't, then it was full on death at that point.
(12:07):
And when I closed my eyes here, I opened my eyes and I was in the most beautiful place.
It was like a realm of this magnificent color that looked like an opal.
It was a living color.
I'm going to try to describe it, but just know that I'm going to do my best, but I still
(12:29):
can't do it justice.
So if you close your eyes and you just picture an opal, an opal has fire to it and it is a
multi-dimensional gem and it like turns different colors, so it was like, I was seeing lavender,
I was seeing some kind of like a gray, I was seeing like a fiery orange color.
And in this place, it was like the room was round, but without a door, no windows that
(12:56):
I saw, I was just instantly there.
To my left, I see three very, very tall, ethereal, what I recognize as angels, and I'm five
foot so in actuality, they were much, much taller, seven or eight feet.
Very strong, looked very human-like, but without skin, without features like we have, and they're
(13:25):
very, very, I guess I would say like powerful.
I guess they're translucent so I can see through them and they're a bluish color, a very, very
like an electric bluish hue.
I can see right through them and one extended its hand to me.
(13:46):
I couldn't see whether they were male or female per se, but the one that extended its hand
to me seemed like a masculine presence.
And I immediately swatted his hand away and I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I felt like I went with them that I was going to stay wherever I was, which I call this
(14:13):
place heaven, I call this place paradise.
Like this was, it was a small, I was only seeing a small section of it, but it was more beautiful
than any beautiful experiences I've had on earth combined.
I believe that I wanted to, I'm immediately thinking, yes, I'm dying and in this moment,
no, no, no, I don't want to live.
(14:35):
I want to be with my children.
And that was still the way that I felt.
Now at this time, I, like I said, I was struggling with a lot of depression.
So I even in the days leading up to this had been saying things and even telling people
and, and, and ruminating on these, these suicidal ideas and that I would be better off and my
(14:59):
family would be better off and, and the pain that I was feeling was too great.
And then when I was in the throes of it, I realized, no, no, no, that's not what I want.
That's not at all what I want.
I want to live.
I want to enjoy my life.
I want to live differently as I'm, you know, was, was dying.
(15:21):
And then now in this, so immediately in front of me, Eric, I don't, I don't know the measurements.
Okay.
So I'm saying like eight, seven, eight feet tall.
I don't know the measurements.
I mean, there was no measurement stick, but I perceive the presence in front of me to
be a hundred feet tall.
(15:41):
This very, it was a spirit.
I could not see it, but I could feel the presence.
And there was this powerful love just radiating from this presence.
And the first thing that comes to my mind is I'm feeling all of that love.
(16:02):
And the first thing that comes to my mind is thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice on
the cross.
I'd always been a believer, not really active or practicing my faith, but that was the first
thing.
And then I, when I tried to talk, I didn't actually need to speak.
It immediately transmitted like from my mind outward.
(16:24):
I knew that this power was like a million volts of electricity.
Like this was so powerful that I could have spontaneously combusted in this presence.
Okay.
I've got a million questions.
So we're going to, we're going to take us, why pause and we're going to cut, you remember
exactly where you were right there.
(16:45):
I want to go kind of from there backwards.
So this hundred foot presence is different than the three other seven to eight foot beings
that you saw, right?
Yes.
Do you have an idea of, well, in your mind, who do you think this big presence was?
The Father.
(17:05):
So the thought was, thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice on the cross.
This is the Father.
And what exactly did you see with him?
I was not seeing him per se, because he's spirit.
And I was seeing through him, but I could feel the love just emanating.
(17:26):
And it was so powerful that it's not just simply like, I mean, if you've ever stood
close to an electrical transformer and you felt that energy kind of humming out of it.
Yeah.
You can actually feel it even though you can't see it.
Yeah.
So I was like, multiply that infinitely.
I was saying, please, please, I want to go back.
(17:48):
Please let me go back.
Please let me.
And I was having this conversation that was very on my side.
I was frantic.
I was so upset with myself that I had found myself in this situation, that I had made
the choices that led up to this.
And the presence was just so calm, and I felt so safe and so loved, realizing like, I've
(18:15):
never even known love.
And now I'm in front of it.
You know, I'm saying, please, let me go back.
Let me go back.
Immediately, we're in another environment.
The second environment is, I always turn my body as I tell my story.
That's okay.
(18:35):
It's like I'm living it.
And in front of me, among some kind of platform, and I'm looking at millions of people.
I don't know how many people.
And his presence is right next to me.
And I say, what do I do?
Because all these people are just looking at me.
And they're looking up like, just wait.
(18:57):
I don't know what for.
And they're all standing very close together.
I remember that their arms and their shoulders were touching.
And I saw every nationality.
And nobody was separate.
Like it was just a huge group of human beings by the millions, standing there waiting, all
dressed the same.
(19:18):
I just, I lean into his presence and say, what do I do?
And his response was simple.
He said, love them.
Who do you think they were?
And what were they doing?
They were just standing there waiting.
Waiting for what?
Waiting for me to say something, waiting for, you know, they were there on purpose.
(19:40):
I mean, these were living people on earth.
They weren't relatives that have passed or anything.
These were people that were alive.
And they're just waiting.
So I said, what do I do?
I guess that his answer was love them.
So I guess they were waiting for love.
I don't know.
But I agreed that I could do that and I said, well, what do I say?
(20:03):
And again, his response was simple, the truth.
And that felt very heavy to me, Eric, because the truth was ugly and how I ended up here
and embarrassing.
And so he could have said something else and I would have liked that answer probably more.
And he said the truth, so I agreed again.
(20:27):
And then I said, well, what do I need to change though?
And what I meant about that was I had led and came to this place struggling with so
much stuff.
And so I needed to know how I could magically change myself was what I was asking him.
(20:47):
And his response again, simple.
You can't change yourself.
Nothing.
But I knew that he was actually changing me.
Just being in that presence of love was transforming me.
I said, OK, all right, I'm looking at them.
I'm like, OK, OK.
(21:08):
I said, but where are they going to learn everything?
Because it seemed like they were waiting for something major.
Who am I?
You know what I'm saying?
Who am I?
I'm going to offer all of these individuals.
And he said, it's already inside of you.
And that was really a surprise.
Honestly, I was like, what?
(21:32):
So I said, OK, OK.
And I wanted to come back so badly to my children.
You know, a mother's love can be very, very powerful.
And yes, this was like the most bliss I've ever experienced.
But for me, I never, I did not want my babies, my children.
(21:53):
They were actually two of them were grown.
One was little.
But I still didn't want them to know and have this painful memory of how their mom had expired.
And so I said, yes, I'm back in the first environment.
And this is the, I guess, the climax of the experience.
(22:15):
I'm standing in front of him.
I'm looking and it's like this room or wherever we were again, it's like I'm realizing that
as his spirit seems to shift, the room shifts with him and sink with him.
And it was amazing.
It was like it was an extension of him.
And then I am pulled like just pulled into his spirit.
(22:43):
And I'm somehow suspended in the air in his spirit.
And I'm looking around and I'm seeing other people are there too.
And they're not aware that they're within him.
They're just doing life.
So they're having regular daily activities, all of these different people, they're all
(23:06):
in him.
Again, living people, these were not deceased people.
And I, at that point, that's when I look at my hand and I see for the first time I've
looked at my body, like I knew I was in my body, but I hadn't just observed.
And at this point, I'm observing my body.
(23:27):
It's as though I can see the different layers of, so the layers of skin and then you have
the muscle, the tendon, the bone, and then looking further, I could see the cells.
I could see the atoms and I'm realizing that he's holding me together.
(23:47):
His power, his presence was somehow actually holding my being together.
And I'm just speechless, obviously.
And I'm realizing I've never, ever been alone.
I've never, ever been going through all of this stuff by myself.
(24:07):
If he is literally holding me together, all those times that I cried and I wondered, like,
do you even care about me and what I go through here?
Like, as a believer, am I supposed to have some, like, relationship with you?
And it's like that, I don't, do you even know me?
You know, do you even know I exist?
(24:28):
Yes, he knows that we exist.
He knew I existed and he was literally what was holding me together at the atomic level.
Same for all of these people in him.
And I'm seeing that even though we look separate right now, Eric, and you're there and I'm
here, we're actually all connected in a very spiritual and supernatural way.
(24:55):
And so I'm understanding also the impact of everything that I do and how it could affect
others and vice versa and how paramount love is, his power is love.
And so I'm understanding that when I'm acting in a coordinates with a divine love, there's
(25:18):
a power behind that.
I'm seeing that things that happened to me in my past, which I considered showstoppers,
horrific tragedies.
I'm seeing that there was this bigger purpose being woven through those experiences.
(25:40):
And so I had compassion on the people who hurt me.
I'm having more than just like regular compassion or pity, like deep compassion on people who
had hurt me in my life.
And there's just this healing that's taking place inside my being as I'm inside them,
like a fusion, you know, like an emergence, a fusion, whatever, a verbiage.
(26:08):
But it was healing the pain that was in me.
I'm just, it's the most pleasurable feeling that I've ever had.
And I was, I considered myself an apps for sure a pleasure seeker and I would seek it
through various ways.
And a lot of those ways were dangerous, lots of different things.
(26:30):
And I can use your imagination.
But I'm realizing that this is the pleasure I've always been seeking and that there's
nothing nursing that's more pleasurable than this.
Now, when you say then this, is that the feeling of his love?
Is that what you're getting at?
Yes.
(26:50):
Was there anything else that happened before it ended?
No.
Okay.
Tell me how it ended.
It felt like I was pressed back into my body and I took a deep breath.
But way deeper than that.
And I was, I was open my eyes and I say, I'm alive.
(27:16):
I'm alive.
Love is the answer.
Jesus is real.
This was a, a paramount moment for me where something that I had always believed since
like childhood became real.
It was just, it was just a book and stories before this.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to be disrespectful to anyone's faith at all, but I am the type of person
(27:40):
who I guess I was like, because it was a book I couldn't even read the Bible is the book
I'm talking about.
I couldn't even read it.
It didn't even make sense to me before this.
And it was just, I didn't, I didn't feel a connection to the standard Western churches
(28:02):
that I had visited.
And I visited a lot.
I've, you know, I've seen, and before this I had always wanted to like find the truth,
but maybe had really high expectations from the human beings in those places, you know.
All right.
Let's go back and dissect a bunch of this.
(28:24):
Now, tell me about the angels.
You describe them as bluish and translucent, which is really cool.
I almost called them the blue angels, but then I know that's a whole different thing.
So is there any way you can describe that any further?
No, I don't think so.
Any idea what angels these were?
(28:45):
Oh, I think they were guardian angels.
And there was, it was like, I kind of knew them.
It was definitely like they knew me, but just the fact that I was just so personal, like
when I was like, no, it was like, I knew them.
I don't know how else to describe them.
(29:06):
So I have wondered if they were guardian angels or perhaps just angels that had been assigned
to me that I don't really know where they're my whole life or something.
It was like they have known me.
It was like they had brought me there.
Okay.
You talked about this really beautiful place with living color.
Describe this again.
(29:26):
Well, it was just like a room or a gigantic world.
What was it like?
More like a room, a very large round room.
Okay.
And I like the description with the opalescence.
I can picture that because as you look at an opal, yeah, you see different colors in
it, right?
(29:47):
Yes.
But you described the colors as living, which is even more than that.
The paint here in the room around me is not moving as you can see.
It's what is like a flat color.
But this where I was was very, it was shimmering.
It was this dynamic, like changing living thing that literally like was mesmerizing.
(30:16):
That helps me picture it just a little bit better.
Cool.
So living it by calling it living, that means it was changing.
It was almost, I'm not going to say breathing, but it was had some kind of animation to it.
All right.
Very cool stuff.
Now, I want to talk about your pleading to be able to come back.
(30:39):
I love this because yes, mothers have superpowers.
Maybe even changing God's mind about something.
Maybe.
I don't know.
But I talked to so many people that tell me, I didn't want to come back because it was
so wonderful there.
(31:00):
And they were sort of told, yeah, you have to until they agreed to.
Others are just flat out given the choice.
You want to go back, you want to stay.
And I love how yours was different and that all of these are different.
Did you feel like, well, this being extended his hand to you.
(31:21):
So did you feel like you were meant to stay there?
But then you threw up the, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone here.
I'm going back.
That's a good way to put it.
I wouldn't have been there if it wasn't an option, right?
They would have just taken me somewhere else.
So my prayer in my head as I was dying was, please God, don't let me die.
(31:45):
And I also was thinking in my mind as I was dying, no, no, no, this doesn't have to be
the way it goes.
Death in my mind was an option.
If I could just get in front of God, I could ask him if I could come back.
It doesn't make sense when I'm trying to tell it.
(32:07):
It didn't make sense then, but it's definitely what was happening within me.
That makes sense to me.
Tell me more about us being all connected.
How does that work?
This is just the coolest part to me of the experience was, was seeing how beautiful his
people are and how much he loves them.
And he has constructed us to be designed where the way that we treat each other actually
(32:33):
affects us like internally.
And when we are kind and loving and gentle with one another, it enifies us internally
because of this connection that's unseen.
So I guess it has to do with, if I could say, and I'm not a scholar, so forgive me if I
don't have a right verbage, but like quantum mechanics, right?
(32:54):
What happens over here causes an effect over here, right?
Have you ever heard of like spooky action from a distance or the butterfly effect?
So that's actually how we are.
And that's how quantum physics works.
And I'm not a scholar on it either, but it comes up all the time on this show.
(33:15):
So yes, it also ties in with a life review.
And I don't think you use the term life review, but it sounded very much like one when you
were talking about how things that you did affected other people.
Was there more to it than that?
Yes.
There's a lot of very personal intimate details that I usually don't share, but I will say
(33:38):
this.
I was shown that I was looking at everything like I was a victim.
There were things that happened to me in early childhood that were horrific.
And but also some of them, there weren't even horrific, but they were damaging.
And so I had the wrong mindset, I looked at it like the world was this big scary place
(34:06):
and that I was a victim instead of that I had overcome and lived through these things.
And I was, I was a strong person.
And these things that happened were, were not okay, but that they also weren't everything.
You know, I was giving them a lot of weight where I didn't have to.
(34:29):
I can choose to, but I don't have to.
I wasn't necessarily showing things that I did to other people, but these were the things
that I was shown in this environment.
Right.
And, and it made a huge impact on me because still to this day, I think sometimes people
will say or do something and all, you know, kind of get like, I give my feelings hurt
(34:53):
really easily.
And it would be so a matter of me learning how to protect my heart, you know, and not
allow everyone to speak into my life, not allow, not, not take for granted that everyone
else knows something I don't and that they're the authority on this or that.
(35:15):
Or if you don't have saying, does that resonate?
Yeah.
Yeah, that does.
You also mentioned the healing that came from, I believe you said from the father, explain
that a little bit.
Absolutely.
Again, with, with these things that happened in childhood, I was wounded.
What happens when we're wounded is that we start seeking relief and I was seeking relief
(35:39):
and I was having this understanding and I have had it since I was actually not, it's
not that I was a drug addict.
It was that I was a hurt person seeking relief from pain and pain that I had not acknowledged
and not that there's a way to acknowledge it that I knew about.
It's not that I was preferring not to acknowledge it, but I was stuffing things down and so
(36:04):
it was just manifesting as these other behaviors.
So when I came back, the desire to behave like that was gone because his love had filled
those, those places like in me.
Let's talk about those desires a little bit.
You had been an addict prior.
Were you immediately healed from that when you came back or did you have to go through
(36:30):
steps and therapy and all kinds of things to get healed?
Immediately healed.
Immediately healed to the point when I tried to go back and do it again, I got violently
sick.
What a blessing that is.
Wow, how do you bottle that up and give that to other people?
If there's a way I want to know and I want to do it because I had struggled with addiction
(36:52):
and addiction was such a, like I would get months, days, sometimes years totally free
or what I thought was totally free of abstinence from drugs and then it would kind of lead
back to it.
And I'll tell you, even when I came back, Eric, like just my mind, it was so part of
(37:13):
my mind.
It was what all of my friends did.
It's what my associates did.
It's what we all did.
And I think that's very, very common for people in that lifestyle.
It's like when you, even when you do get a level of freedom or even if you get totally
free, it's a matter of then rebuilding your life.
And sometimes people don't get to come with you because they're not ready to leave that
(37:36):
lifestyle and because they didn't have this experience, I could drag them as far as I
could.
But it was also in the aftermath of this, it was somewhat sad.
I also find it interesting in the big picture here that you were in kind of a suicidal sort
of place.
(37:58):
You went to this wonderful place with immense outpouring of love like you had never felt
before.
Yet you wanted to come back here.
Something changed.
Some kind of switch and you flipped.
Oh yeah, definitely.
And I'm so glad I'm back.
It's been six years and there's not a day that goes by that I don't have this moment
(38:20):
of absolute deep gratitude every day.
Sometimes it'll be when I wake up and I hear my, I'll get emotional if I start to talk
about this, you know.
If I hear my daughter's voice and she says, mom, you know, and it's just like it'll hit
me in that moment.
Sometimes it's when I lay down at night and I have a blanket to pull up over myself and
(38:44):
I'm cozy under the covers and I'm like, I got it mother whole day.
It's just so amazing.
And since this experience, Eric, my life doesn't look like the success that it was.
In fact, I've lost everything.
So it's this experience, all of the material stuff.
I got fired about 30 days after the experience for talking about the experience at work.
(39:10):
I got fired for it and I had never even, I was always the, I never got ridden up at
work.
So suddenly I keep getting fired from different jobs and lost everything, you know, we're
only had the clothes on my back, a suitcase, had to give everything away, chose to give
everything away, whatever you want to look at it, right?
See that, that mindset can still prevent.
(39:30):
So multiple times continuously rebuilding, but there's this joy inside of me, this bliss
inside of me that, that doesn't go away.
And so even through all of the hardship that I've been through over the last six years,
there's never been a point where it seemed like a good idea to just go back to the other
way of living.
Never.
(39:51):
It's like the, the very things that I used to enjoy doing, they seem so useless and worthless
to me now.
And what I mean by that, not, not the good things I enjoy doing, I'm talking about the
bad things, the harmful things, the behaviors that I mentioned.
Yeah.
The things you enjoy have changed.
(40:11):
Yes.
And as we were talking earlier, your children, grandchild, huge part of your life.
Yeah.
How else have your priorities changed?
I think fundamentally I'm very similar, but well, but everything shifted.
So I don't enjoy, because my perspective has changed on a lot of things.
(40:35):
I don't, one thing like being in cells, right?
Technology cells, it's a very competitive business.
And now it seems like I don't have the desire to do what I used to do to have, to make those
cells, right?
You know, I don't have the selfish ambition, which I always thought was the best thing
(40:55):
a person can have, right?
Work until you're old and work until your body gives out.
That was kind of my mentality before, but now it's like, let's just rest.
Let's just be together.
Let's have conversations.
Let's go deeper than the surface level.
It seems like my filters are gone.
So throughout our life, every single one of us, we adopt filters.
(41:19):
And that's going to be relative to everything in our life, our speech patterns, our priorities.
And so we learn along the way, oh, you don't say this in this environment.
And then we learn filters like time.
A lot of us have the filter of money is very important.
(41:39):
And so all of those filters are gone.
So I used to be super controlling about planning things and being on time and just da da da
da da.
And now it's like in the easy, an easy living, a restful heart set, you know, heart posture.
I'm not nearly as emotionally driven.
(42:02):
I was extremely emotionally driven the first time around.
Motions are good.
We shouldn't be zombies.
But I was emotionally driven and that took me to the dark place of being suicidal, right?
Because everything, my emotions mattered more than facts back then.
You also mentioned that you were searching for truth.
Do you feel like you found it?
(42:24):
Yes.
What is it?
It's Jesus.
It's Jesus.
God is love.
And the Christian faith had been presented to me as like a list of rules.
Don't do this.
Don't do that.
You better do this.
You must.
You should, you should, you should.
Where after this experience, it's completely a spiritual, supernatural relationship where
(42:51):
I am experiencing the glory and the love on a daily basis.
And yes, it's still biblical, but there isn't a person shouting at me now.
I'm led by the spirit every day, you know?
It's very different than what I thought it was about.
(43:11):
That's beautifully said.
You've done a great job with your life.
Ha ha.
I can tell how happy you are and it is just, it's just wonderful.
And thanks for being with me today.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast.
Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtripdeath.com.
(43:35):
If you want to share your near death experience or if you have questions or comments about
the show, send an email to Eric at roundtripdeath.com.
Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.
From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes.
(00:08):
They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped.
And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my
physical body because I was somewhere else.
The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't
anything else to be felt.
(00:29):
I was greeted by people I'd known in the past.
I'm back home again.
Incredibly safe and felt at home.
Welcome, welcome to RoundTripDeath everybody and our very special guest today, Janice Callahan.
Down from the heart of Texas, how are you Janice?
I'm Gray Eric, hello.
(00:51):
Hi, it's good to see you.
Hey, before we jump into your near-death experience, I want our listeners to get to know you just
a little bit.
So one minute go, who is Janice?
Tell us anything you feel like.
Okay, I am a mom of three amazing, lovely children and age gap siblings.
(01:15):
So I'm also, I have a little one still at home and then I also am a grandmother and
absolutely love that role.
It's all that I thought it would be.
I love being out in nature.
I'm a reader.
I crochet.
I love music.
I spend a lot of time just carrying and ministering for others in various different ways.
(01:38):
Okay, you're not allowed to tell untruths on this show.
I was trying not to say lie, but when you say you're a grandmother, people that are watching
the video version of this are going to go no way, she's a liar.
You can't be a grandmother at age 30.
Oh, that's sweet.
Thank you, Eric.
(01:59):
Thank you.
I'm well over 30.
I assure you.
All right.
All right.
Enough buttering you up.
It's still lighting.
Okay.
All right.
So Janice, give us an idea of what your life was like prior to your near death experience.
We're going to talk about the experience and then talk about maybe how things have changed,
(02:23):
how there's a new Janice since then.
So what were you doing with your life prior?
I was in technical cells for a long time.
I sold things to large aerospace companies, things like software and hardware.
That kind of always been in marketing and in cells for my professional career and led
(02:47):
what I would call a double life.
And so I, for 20 years, was very successful in cells, but then also had an addiction issue
that nobody really knew about that I hid very, very well and worked.
And I guess I was what you would call a functioning addict.
Okay.
(03:08):
But somehow you had a really successful career anyway, right?
Yeah, I did.
I had the things that we look at on the outside that beams success, right?
I had a nice home, nice vehicle, money in the bank, kids and activities, sports activities
and doing all of the things.
But the reality was is that I was hurting a lot on the inside and I was self-medicating
(03:35):
with narcotics.
And so it created a whole lot of internal unrest.
Happens a lot, doesn't it?
More often than we think.
Yeah, unfortunately, there's a lot of it.
Okay.
We're not passing any judgment on anybody in that kind of situation except to let you
(03:55):
know there's hope and that hope comes in all kinds of ways for you started with the
NDE, right?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
What's going on?
I would say I was coming to the end of the holding everything together in the successful
management of the splintered or double life.
(04:21):
So there was some serious trauma that had happened about three weeks prior to this event.
And so I was suffering with a lot of anxiety and like PTSD, I had recently come off of
a lot of prescription pills.
(04:41):
They were prescribed to me.
I didn't use them as prescribed.
And so when I hold turkey, went off of them, it related in a ton of blood pressure issues
and I actually had an eating disorder at the time.
So I wasn't eating properly.
And it was just like the perfect storm, if you can imagine.
So the night that I had my NDE was basically I was suicidal, Eric.
(05:08):
I was in mass.
Now you had kids at this time.
Were you married?
No.
There was just a bunch of stuff going on in your life, obviously, in addition to the
drugs.
So did you have an overdose?
Is that what brought this on?
It is.
Okay, tell me about it.
(05:28):
Well, most people who have been in any kind of addiction, we kind of know our limit, right?
And we know what we can do and what we can't do.
And I was very, I would say, cautious.
Remember I was functioning, so I always had to go to work the next day.
So I didn't get too wild.
And so this night, I wasn't getting too wild per se.
(05:52):
In fact, it was almost as soon as I ingested the drug, so it was a drug that you smoke,
and I don't want to trigger people, but it was a drug that you smoke.
And I had only taken like a little bit.
So it was like an instantaneous reaction.
(06:14):
I had taken a little bit of one type of drug and then somewhat actually blew marijuana smoke
in my face in addition to that.
And I don't know if it was because both of them had just entered my system, but it was
kind of like an anaphylactic reaction where instantly my throat started to close and I
could not get any air whatsoever.
(06:36):
Had you had this kind of allergic reaction before?
Never.
Huh.
Okay, keep going.
I was terrified because I couldn't breathe.
And I was like, you know, trying so hard to get air into my lungs and relatively quickly,
quickly, kind of like if you were choking on food, I guess.
(06:58):
So there is some time where I was like, oh gosh, I can't breathe.
I can't breathe.
I needed to sit down and the person that I was with helped me to sit on the couch.
But very quickly, my eyesight, I started to see tunnel vision.
And then I realized I was in serious trouble.
And I remember at the point, like I remember trying to dial 911 and him saying, like, we
(07:24):
don't need to do that.
You're just breathe, just breathe.
And I could not breathe.
So I would call it like an anaphylactic shock reaction or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Tip of the day, by the way, if you're ever with someone that says call 911 or is trying,
just do it.
Don't judge and tell them, ah, you're fine.
(07:46):
Yeah.
And I think in this, you know, in this lifestyle, though, it happens a lot because no one wants
to get in trouble.
Eric, they're more worried.
People are usually more worried about getting in trouble than saving someone's life, unfortunately.
And it was relatively quickly that I began to, in my mind, I'm praying and I'm asking,
(08:08):
you know, God to help.
That was my immediate reaction internally.
And it was very quickly that I started to feel a sense of my spirit begins separating
from my body.
I don't know how to describe it, but it was like this pulling away from my actual vessel.
(08:29):
I like to call it a meat suit.
And it, and I remember my spirit floating to the corner of this person's living room.
And so for a moment, I'm looking back at myself and it's really wild because I'm seeing myself
(08:51):
in the corner of the room from my own eyes as well.
So it was like I could see here from my eyes, but as the spirit see from the corner of the
room.
And then it was like I was back in my body, but I felt like, I felt like if this person
would stay with me, like it's hard to describe, but I felt like I needed to be tethered to
(09:11):
the earth because it felt as though I was just going to float into oblivion at this
point.
I remember at this point looking down at my body and knowing my body is dying.
I could feel like every cell, every organ in my body, I was acutely aware of everything
(09:31):
physical.
Like, I mean, I remember thinking like my eyelashes.
I was, I was thinking about somehow like the, I could, I could sense that my organs were
shutting down.
And I remember trying to breathe, trying to get a breath, but knowing my lungs wouldn't
expand.
I looked down at my chest and I'm willing my heart to beat and nothing's happening.
(09:55):
I know I'm in trouble.
And in terms of like my, my body is giving up.
It's tired and rightfully so, you know, I was really hard on my body and didn't really
have a lot of value in my body, you know, um, through that lifestyle, through different
(10:16):
traumas that I had throughout my life, you know, I just was like an object to others
and to myself.
So I was really like for the first time realizing like my, my well-being, my body and my life
were actually precious, but that I took that for granted.
(10:37):
I started actually using, uh, substances as a very young girl.
And so it was, it was part of my life.
It was part of the people that I was around.
We all did something in some shape, fashion or form.
And I'm having this understanding of how easy it is and how fragile our bodies are and how
(10:58):
easy it is for our bodies to stop working properly.
And as this is happening, I see my heart, it was like, I was willing my heart to, to
beat and it was like it, it made one last very hard beat.
And like I saw it happen with, with my own eyes that I'm looking down at just, and then
(11:20):
I closed my eyes here.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a completely different place.
This is almost a two-part kind of thing where you, isn't it?
I mean, you talked about leaving your body slowly.
That's an unusual thing that I don't hear every day.
It is pretty common for people to see their own body and some of what's going on.
(11:43):
But then, but then to kind of, okay, here's the second act.
Interesting.
Jump into that.
Yeah.
So it was like an out-of-body experience and then a near-death experience, right?
If I would have been rendered eight or anything, if maybe it would have just been the out-of-body
experience, I presume, but because I wasn't, then it was full on death at that point.
(12:07):
And when I closed my eyes here, I opened my eyes and I was in the most beautiful place.
It was like a realm of this magnificent color that looked like an opal.
It was a living color.
I'm going to try to describe it, but just know that I'm going to do my best, but I still
(12:29):
can't do it justice.
So if you close your eyes and you just picture an opal, an opal has fire to it and it is a
multi-dimensional gem and it like turns different colors, so it was like, I was seeing lavender,
I was seeing some kind of like a gray, I was seeing like a fiery orange color.
And in this place, it was like the room was round, but without a door, no windows that
(12:56):
I saw, I was just instantly there.
To my left, I see three very, very tall, ethereal, what I recognize as angels, and I'm five
foot so in actuality, they were much, much taller, seven or eight feet.
Very strong, looked very human-like, but without skin, without features like we have, and they're
(13:25):
very, very, I guess I would say like powerful.
I guess they're translucent so I can see through them and they're a bluish color, a very, very
like an electric bluish hue.
I can see right through them and one extended its hand to me.
(13:46):
I couldn't see whether they were male or female per se, but the one that extended its hand
to me seemed like a masculine presence.
And I immediately swatted his hand away and I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I felt like I went with them that I was going to stay wherever I was, which I call this
(14:13):
place heaven, I call this place paradise.
Like this was, it was a small, I was only seeing a small section of it, but it was more beautiful
than any beautiful experiences I've had on earth combined.
I believe that I wanted to, I'm immediately thinking, yes, I'm dying and in this moment,
no, no, no, I don't want to live.
(14:35):
I want to be with my children.
And that was still the way that I felt.
Now at this time, I, like I said, I was struggling with a lot of depression.
So I even in the days leading up to this had been saying things and even telling people
and, and, and ruminating on these, these suicidal ideas and that I would be better off and my
(14:59):
family would be better off and, and the pain that I was feeling was too great.
And then when I was in the throes of it, I realized, no, no, no, that's not what I want.
That's not at all what I want.
I want to live.
I want to enjoy my life.
I want to live differently as I'm, you know, was, was dying.
(15:21):
And then now in this, so immediately in front of me, Eric, I don't, I don't know the measurements.
Okay.
So I'm saying like eight, seven, eight feet tall.
I don't know the measurements.
I mean, there was no measurement stick, but I perceive the presence in front of me to
be a hundred feet tall.
(15:41):
This very, it was a spirit.
I could not see it, but I could feel the presence.
And there was this powerful love just radiating from this presence.
And the first thing that comes to my mind is I'm feeling all of that love.
(16:02):
And the first thing that comes to my mind is thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice on
the cross.
I'd always been a believer, not really active or practicing my faith, but that was the first
thing.
And then I, when I tried to talk, I didn't actually need to speak.
It immediately transmitted like from my mind outward.
(16:24):
I knew that this power was like a million volts of electricity.
Like this was so powerful that I could have spontaneously combusted in this presence.
Okay.
I've got a million questions.
So we're going to, we're going to take us, why pause and we're going to cut, you remember
exactly where you were right there.
(16:45):
I want to go kind of from there backwards.
So this hundred foot presence is different than the three other seven to eight foot beings
that you saw, right?
Yes.
Do you have an idea of, well, in your mind, who do you think this big presence was?
The Father.
(17:05):
So the thought was, thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice on the cross.
This is the Father.
And what exactly did you see with him?
I was not seeing him per se, because he's spirit.
And I was seeing through him, but I could feel the love just emanating.
(17:26):
And it was so powerful that it's not just simply like, I mean, if you've ever stood
close to an electrical transformer and you felt that energy kind of humming out of it.
Yeah.
You can actually feel it even though you can't see it.
Yeah.
So I was like, multiply that infinitely.
I was saying, please, please, I want to go back.
(17:48):
Please let me go back.
Please let me.
And I was having this conversation that was very on my side.
I was frantic.
I was so upset with myself that I had found myself in this situation, that I had made
the choices that led up to this.
And the presence was just so calm, and I felt so safe and so loved, realizing like, I've
(18:15):
never even known love.
And now I'm in front of it.
You know, I'm saying, please, let me go back.
Let me go back.
Immediately, we're in another environment.
The second environment is, I always turn my body as I tell my story.
That's okay.
(18:35):
It's like I'm living it.
And in front of me, among some kind of platform, and I'm looking at millions of people.
I don't know how many people.
And his presence is right next to me.
And I say, what do I do?
Because all these people are just looking at me.
And they're looking up like, just wait.
(18:57):
I don't know what for.
And they're all standing very close together.
I remember that their arms and their shoulders were touching.
And I saw every nationality.
And nobody was separate.
Like it was just a huge group of human beings by the millions, standing there waiting, all
dressed the same.
(19:18):
I just, I lean into his presence and say, what do I do?
And his response was simple.
He said, love them.
Who do you think they were?
And what were they doing?
They were just standing there waiting.
Waiting for what?
Waiting for me to say something, waiting for, you know, they were there on purpose.
(19:40):
I mean, these were living people on earth.
They weren't relatives that have passed or anything.
These were people that were alive.
And they're just waiting.
So I said, what do I do?
I guess that his answer was love them.
So I guess they were waiting for love.
I don't know.
But I agreed that I could do that and I said, well, what do I say?
(20:03):
And again, his response was simple, the truth.
And that felt very heavy to me, Eric, because the truth was ugly and how I ended up here
and embarrassing.
And so he could have said something else and I would have liked that answer probably more.
And he said the truth, so I agreed again.
(20:27):
And then I said, well, what do I need to change though?
And what I meant about that was I had led and came to this place struggling with so
much stuff.
And so I needed to know how I could magically change myself was what I was asking him.
(20:47):
And his response again, simple.
You can't change yourself.
Nothing.
But I knew that he was actually changing me.
Just being in that presence of love was transforming me.
I said, OK, all right, I'm looking at them.
I'm like, OK, OK.
(21:08):
I said, but where are they going to learn everything?
Because it seemed like they were waiting for something major.
Who am I?
You know what I'm saying?
Who am I?
I'm going to offer all of these individuals.
And he said, it's already inside of you.
And that was really a surprise.
Honestly, I was like, what?
(21:32):
So I said, OK, OK.
And I wanted to come back so badly to my children.
You know, a mother's love can be very, very powerful.
And yes, this was like the most bliss I've ever experienced.
But for me, I never, I did not want my babies, my children.
(21:53):
They were actually two of them were grown.
One was little.
But I still didn't want them to know and have this painful memory of how their mom had expired.
And so I said, yes, I'm back in the first environment.
And this is the, I guess, the climax of the experience.
(22:15):
I'm standing in front of him.
I'm looking and it's like this room or wherever we were again, it's like I'm realizing that
as his spirit seems to shift, the room shifts with him and sink with him.
And it was amazing.
It was like it was an extension of him.
And then I am pulled like just pulled into his spirit.
(22:43):
And I'm somehow suspended in the air in his spirit.
And I'm looking around and I'm seeing other people are there too.
And they're not aware that they're within him.
They're just doing life.
So they're having regular daily activities, all of these different people, they're all
(23:06):
in him.
Again, living people, these were not deceased people.
And I, at that point, that's when I look at my hand and I see for the first time I've
looked at my body, like I knew I was in my body, but I hadn't just observed.
And at this point, I'm observing my body.
(23:27):
It's as though I can see the different layers of, so the layers of skin and then you have
the muscle, the tendon, the bone, and then looking further, I could see the cells.
I could see the atoms and I'm realizing that he's holding me together.
(23:47):
His power, his presence was somehow actually holding my being together.
And I'm just speechless, obviously.
And I'm realizing I've never, ever been alone.
I've never, ever been going through all of this stuff by myself.
(24:07):
If he is literally holding me together, all those times that I cried and I wondered, like,
do you even care about me and what I go through here?
Like, as a believer, am I supposed to have some, like, relationship with you?
And it's like that, I don't, do you even know me?
You know, do you even know I exist?
(24:28):
Yes, he knows that we exist.
He knew I existed and he was literally what was holding me together at the atomic level.
Same for all of these people in him.
And I'm seeing that even though we look separate right now, Eric, and you're there and I'm
here, we're actually all connected in a very spiritual and supernatural way.
(24:55):
And so I'm understanding also the impact of everything that I do and how it could affect
others and vice versa and how paramount love is, his power is love.
And so I'm understanding that when I'm acting in a coordinates with a divine love, there's
(25:18):
a power behind that.
I'm seeing that things that happened to me in my past, which I considered showstoppers,
horrific tragedies.
I'm seeing that there was this bigger purpose being woven through those experiences.
(25:40):
And so I had compassion on the people who hurt me.
I'm having more than just like regular compassion or pity, like deep compassion on people who
had hurt me in my life.
And there's just this healing that's taking place inside my being as I'm inside them,
like a fusion, you know, like an emergence, a fusion, whatever, a verbiage.
(26:08):
But it was healing the pain that was in me.
I'm just, it's the most pleasurable feeling that I've ever had.
And I was, I considered myself an apps for sure a pleasure seeker and I would seek it
through various ways.
And a lot of those ways were dangerous, lots of different things.
(26:30):
And I can use your imagination.
But I'm realizing that this is the pleasure I've always been seeking and that there's
nothing nursing that's more pleasurable than this.
Now, when you say then this, is that the feeling of his love?
Is that what you're getting at?
Yes.
(26:50):
Was there anything else that happened before it ended?
No.
Okay.
Tell me how it ended.
It felt like I was pressed back into my body and I took a deep breath.
But way deeper than that.
And I was, I was open my eyes and I say, I'm alive.
(27:16):
I'm alive.
Love is the answer.
Jesus is real.
This was a, a paramount moment for me where something that I had always believed since
like childhood became real.
It was just, it was just a book and stories before this.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to be disrespectful to anyone's faith at all, but I am the type of person
(27:40):
who I guess I was like, because it was a book I couldn't even read the Bible is the book
I'm talking about.
I couldn't even read it.
It didn't even make sense to me before this.
And it was just, I didn't, I didn't feel a connection to the standard Western churches
(28:02):
that I had visited.
And I visited a lot.
I've, you know, I've seen, and before this I had always wanted to like find the truth,
but maybe had really high expectations from the human beings in those places, you know.
All right.
Let's go back and dissect a bunch of this.
(28:24):
Now, tell me about the angels.
You describe them as bluish and translucent, which is really cool.
I almost called them the blue angels, but then I know that's a whole different thing.
So is there any way you can describe that any further?
No, I don't think so.
Any idea what angels these were?
(28:45):
Oh, I think they were guardian angels.
And there was, it was like, I kind of knew them.
It was definitely like they knew me, but just the fact that I was just so personal, like
when I was like, no, it was like, I knew them.
I don't know how else to describe them.
(29:06):
So I have wondered if they were guardian angels or perhaps just angels that had been assigned
to me that I don't really know where they're my whole life or something.
It was like they have known me.
It was like they had brought me there.
Okay.
You talked about this really beautiful place with living color.
Describe this again.
(29:26):
Well, it was just like a room or a gigantic world.
What was it like?
More like a room, a very large round room.
Okay.
And I like the description with the opalescence.
I can picture that because as you look at an opal, yeah, you see different colors in
it, right?
(29:47):
Yes.
But you described the colors as living, which is even more than that.
The paint here in the room around me is not moving as you can see.
It's what is like a flat color.
But this where I was was very, it was shimmering.
It was this dynamic, like changing living thing that literally like was mesmerizing.
(30:16):
That helps me picture it just a little bit better.
Cool.
So living it by calling it living, that means it was changing.
It was almost, I'm not going to say breathing, but it was had some kind of animation to it.
All right.
Very cool stuff.
Now, I want to talk about your pleading to be able to come back.
(30:39):
I love this because yes, mothers have superpowers.
Maybe even changing God's mind about something.
Maybe.
I don't know.
But I talked to so many people that tell me, I didn't want to come back because it was
so wonderful there.
(31:00):
And they were sort of told, yeah, you have to until they agreed to.
Others are just flat out given the choice.
You want to go back, you want to stay.
And I love how yours was different and that all of these are different.
Did you feel like, well, this being extended his hand to you.
(31:21):
So did you feel like you were meant to stay there?
But then you threw up the, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone here.
I'm going back.
That's a good way to put it.
I wouldn't have been there if it wasn't an option, right?
They would have just taken me somewhere else.
So my prayer in my head as I was dying was, please God, don't let me die.
(31:45):
And I also was thinking in my mind as I was dying, no, no, no, this doesn't have to be
the way it goes.
Death in my mind was an option.
If I could just get in front of God, I could ask him if I could come back.
It doesn't make sense when I'm trying to tell it.
(32:07):
It didn't make sense then, but it's definitely what was happening within me.
That makes sense to me.
Tell me more about us being all connected.
How does that work?
This is just the coolest part to me of the experience was, was seeing how beautiful his
people are and how much he loves them.
And he has constructed us to be designed where the way that we treat each other actually
(32:33):
affects us like internally.
And when we are kind and loving and gentle with one another, it enifies us internally
because of this connection that's unseen.
So I guess it has to do with, if I could say, and I'm not a scholar, so forgive me if I
don't have a right verbage, but like quantum mechanics, right?
(32:54):
What happens over here causes an effect over here, right?
Have you ever heard of like spooky action from a distance or the butterfly effect?
So that's actually how we are.
And that's how quantum physics works.
And I'm not a scholar on it either, but it comes up all the time on this show.
(33:15):
So yes, it also ties in with a life review.
And I don't think you use the term life review, but it sounded very much like one when you
were talking about how things that you did affected other people.
Was there more to it than that?
Yes.
There's a lot of very personal intimate details that I usually don't share, but I will say
(33:38):
this.
I was shown that I was looking at everything like I was a victim.
There were things that happened to me in early childhood that were horrific.
And but also some of them, there weren't even horrific, but they were damaging.
And so I had the wrong mindset, I looked at it like the world was this big scary place
(34:06):
and that I was a victim instead of that I had overcome and lived through these things.
And I was, I was a strong person.
And these things that happened were, were not okay, but that they also weren't everything.
You know, I was giving them a lot of weight where I didn't have to.
(34:29):
I can choose to, but I don't have to.
I wasn't necessarily showing things that I did to other people, but these were the things
that I was shown in this environment.
Right.
And, and it made a huge impact on me because still to this day, I think sometimes people
will say or do something and all, you know, kind of get like, I give my feelings hurt
(34:53):
really easily.
And it would be so a matter of me learning how to protect my heart, you know, and not
allow everyone to speak into my life, not allow, not, not take for granted that everyone
else knows something I don't and that they're the authority on this or that.
(35:15):
Or if you don't have saying, does that resonate?
Yeah.
Yeah, that does.
You also mentioned the healing that came from, I believe you said from the father, explain
that a little bit.
Absolutely.
Again, with, with these things that happened in childhood, I was wounded.
What happens when we're wounded is that we start seeking relief and I was seeking relief
(35:39):
and I was having this understanding and I have had it since I was actually not, it's
not that I was a drug addict.
It was that I was a hurt person seeking relief from pain and pain that I had not acknowledged
and not that there's a way to acknowledge it that I knew about.
It's not that I was preferring not to acknowledge it, but I was stuffing things down and so
(36:04):
it was just manifesting as these other behaviors.
So when I came back, the desire to behave like that was gone because his love had filled
those, those places like in me.
Let's talk about those desires a little bit.
You had been an addict prior.
Were you immediately healed from that when you came back or did you have to go through
(36:30):
steps and therapy and all kinds of things to get healed?
Immediately healed.
Immediately healed to the point when I tried to go back and do it again, I got violently
sick.
What a blessing that is.
Wow, how do you bottle that up and give that to other people?
If there's a way I want to know and I want to do it because I had struggled with addiction
(36:52):
and addiction was such a, like I would get months, days, sometimes years totally free
or what I thought was totally free of abstinence from drugs and then it would kind of lead
back to it.
And I'll tell you, even when I came back, Eric, like just my mind, it was so part of
(37:13):
my mind.
It was what all of my friends did.
It's what my associates did.
It's what we all did.
And I think that's very, very common for people in that lifestyle.
It's like when you, even when you do get a level of freedom or even if you get totally
free, it's a matter of then rebuilding your life.
And sometimes people don't get to come with you because they're not ready to leave that
(37:36):
lifestyle and because they didn't have this experience, I could drag them as far as I
could.
But it was also in the aftermath of this, it was somewhat sad.
I also find it interesting in the big picture here that you were in kind of a suicidal sort
of place.
(37:58):
You went to this wonderful place with immense outpouring of love like you had never felt
before.
Yet you wanted to come back here.
Something changed.
Some kind of switch and you flipped.
Oh yeah, definitely.
And I'm so glad I'm back.
It's been six years and there's not a day that goes by that I don't have this moment
(38:20):
of absolute deep gratitude every day.
Sometimes it'll be when I wake up and I hear my, I'll get emotional if I start to talk
about this, you know.
If I hear my daughter's voice and she says, mom, you know, and it's just like it'll hit
me in that moment.
Sometimes it's when I lay down at night and I have a blanket to pull up over myself and
(38:44):
I'm cozy under the covers and I'm like, I got it mother whole day.
It's just so amazing.
And since this experience, Eric, my life doesn't look like the success that it was.
In fact, I've lost everything.
So it's this experience, all of the material stuff.
I got fired about 30 days after the experience for talking about the experience at work.
(39:10):
I got fired for it and I had never even, I was always the, I never got ridden up at
work.
So suddenly I keep getting fired from different jobs and lost everything, you know, we're
only had the clothes on my back, a suitcase, had to give everything away, chose to give
everything away, whatever you want to look at it, right?
See that, that mindset can still prevent.
(39:30):
So multiple times continuously rebuilding, but there's this joy inside of me, this bliss
inside of me that, that doesn't go away.
And so even through all of the hardship that I've been through over the last six years,
there's never been a point where it seemed like a good idea to just go back to the other
way of living.
Never.
(39:51):
It's like the, the very things that I used to enjoy doing, they seem so useless and worthless
to me now.
And what I mean by that, not, not the good things I enjoy doing, I'm talking about the
bad things, the harmful things, the behaviors that I mentioned.
Yeah.
The things you enjoy have changed.
(40:11):
Yes.
And as we were talking earlier, your children, grandchild, huge part of your life.
Yeah.
How else have your priorities changed?
I think fundamentally I'm very similar, but well, but everything shifted.
So I don't enjoy, because my perspective has changed on a lot of things.
(40:35):
I don't, one thing like being in cells, right?
Technology cells, it's a very competitive business.
And now it seems like I don't have the desire to do what I used to do to have, to make those
cells, right?
You know, I don't have the selfish ambition, which I always thought was the best thing
(40:55):
a person can have, right?
Work until you're old and work until your body gives out.
That was kind of my mentality before, but now it's like, let's just rest.
Let's just be together.
Let's have conversations.
Let's go deeper than the surface level.
It seems like my filters are gone.
So throughout our life, every single one of us, we adopt filters.
(41:19):
And that's going to be relative to everything in our life, our speech patterns, our priorities.
And so we learn along the way, oh, you don't say this in this environment.
And then we learn filters like time.
A lot of us have the filter of money is very important.
(41:39):
And so all of those filters are gone.
So I used to be super controlling about planning things and being on time and just da da da
da da.
And now it's like in the easy, an easy living, a restful heart set, you know, heart posture.
I'm not nearly as emotionally driven.
(42:02):
I was extremely emotionally driven the first time around.
Motions are good.
We shouldn't be zombies.
But I was emotionally driven and that took me to the dark place of being suicidal, right?
Because everything, my emotions mattered more than facts back then.
You also mentioned that you were searching for truth.
Do you feel like you found it?
(42:24):
Yes.
What is it?
It's Jesus.
It's Jesus.
God is love.
And the Christian faith had been presented to me as like a list of rules.
Don't do this.
Don't do that.
You better do this.
You must.
You should, you should, you should.
Where after this experience, it's completely a spiritual, supernatural relationship where
(42:51):
I am experiencing the glory and the love on a daily basis.
And yes, it's still biblical, but there isn't a person shouting at me now.
I'm led by the spirit every day, you know?
It's very different than what I thought it was about.
(43:11):
That's beautifully said.
You've done a great job with your life.
Ha ha.
I can tell how happy you are and it is just, it's just wonderful.
And thanks for being with me today.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast.
Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtripdeath.com.
(43:35):
If you want to share your near death experience or if you have questions or comments about
the show, send an email to Eric at roundtripdeath.com.
Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.