421 The Near-death Experience of Ray Catania | Author of "The Atheist and The Afterlife"

Welcome to another episode of We Don't Die. I'm your host, Sandra Champlain, author of the international best selling book called We Don't Die, A Skeptic's Discovery of Life After Death. And just a reminder, our home base is wedontdie.com where you can always find all past episodes. See what's coming up including our free Sunday gathering held 2 o' clock New York time on Zoom. Every Sunday there's a medium demonstration included, so you may like that. We have a special guest today. Our guest is Ray Catania. He's author of the books the Atheist and the Afterlife. And you are still alive. Now act like it. Oh, I love those titles. Ray is a survivor of a near death experience and is a coach and a visionary metaphysical teacher. He is passionate on guiding others to have their own transformative experiences. He is the founder of Limitless Publications, Limitless Coaching and Scientific Spirituality for a Modern Human as a seeker of the truth. Ray is also pursuing a doctorate degree in metaphysical parapsychology, combining formal education with wisdom from world renowned intuitives, mediums, shamans and energy healers. Oh, there's so much more, but we're going to let him share in his own words. You can find his website@reykatania.com Ray, a warm welcome to We Don't Diet Radio.

Sandra, thank you so much. I'm so grateful to be here with you today. Thank you for having me as your guest.

You are most welcome and we always love meeting a new friend. So if you would tell us a little bit about you, where you're coming to us from today and you know, tell us your story.

Sure. Well, I come to you today from New York, actually the border of New York and New Jersey, the East Coast. Little chilly outside, but very beautiful. The leaves are changing colors. But had it my way, I'd be in the middle of the woods with nothing but trees around me but you know, maybe a little lake or something. But you know, we'll get there, we'll get there. We're moving out west. My story, let's see, my story starts the first book, the Atheist and the Afterlife. And it's entitled that because I began an atheist, I, I began a skeptic of all things spiritual. And I believe that I became that way because of kind of a rough and tumble childhood that took me into my own sort of self, I guess, destructive behavior. And so, you know, when you, when you come from an area of violence and trauma, anger, you tend to up the ante as you go along in life. And what I chose to do was rebel against my family's Christianity. So. And I also didn't real. It didn't resonate enough with me. It just didn't. There was no reason for me to go all the way to atheism other than the fact that I was being a rebel. But it was at the age of 20 that I had my NDE. Now, I've had many brushes with death, and that's because I put myself in terrible situations where I could. I don't know why they called the near death the near death, because it was actually the other ones that were near death that was the real death. But I'll share with you that story. When I was 20 years old, there was a fire in my home. It was caused by a gas leak. And this gas leak came from the stove that was located directly beneath my bedroom. I was still living at home with my parents, and the gas was leaking all night. Nobody knew. My mom had woken up, turned on the stove, and it just kind of went. You know, the fire went out pretty quickly. It was just like a big poof. There's a safety valve on the gas, and it shuts down pretty quickly. My father came to the rescue. So, you know, from what I hear, you know, and, you know, called 91 1, and now there's police and fire trucks and everything outside. Now I hear this, and it wakes me up. I'm sleeping. I'm. I'm in bed. I'm snoozing, and I hear this, and I'm like, well, obviously something's very wrong. I go to get out of bed, and I find that I cannot move most of my body. Most of my body's paralyzed, like my legs, my face. I could not yell. I couldn't move my mouth. I had very few working parts, if you will, and one of them was my right arm. And I began to pull myself to the edge of the bed because I was trying to get out and see what was going on. But I also knew something was very wrong with me. As I got closer to the edge, I passed out again. And then I would hear more commotion. And I woke up again, and I. And I started to pull to the edge, going inches at a time, and I pass out again. I hear a noise. I wake up again. Now I'm thinking, if I don't get out of this bed, I'm dead. This does not feel right. I know something's very seriously wrong. I got to get out of the bed. So with everything I have, I pulled to the edge of the bed. And I tumbled out of the bed and I fell face first. Right before I hit or right at the moment that I make contact with the floor. I feel nothing. I never felt myself hit the floor in that moment. I was no longer in that physical body. I was above it. And I was in the corner of the room and I was looking down upon my lifeless body. And the feeling. I wasn't afraid at all. In fact, I felt amazing. I felt free. I felt euphoria. The light. You've heard it probably a million times. A beautiful, bright white, cone shaped light that's like a spotlight shining only on me. At the end of the light is a being who. I don't know who he or she is, but they're telling me it's safe to enter into the light. And, boy, does that feel good. Because the more you go into the light, the more euphoria you feel as you get closer. So I'm going into the light until my dad comes into the room, scoops me up on the floor and starts screaming for the paramedics. My son. My son. Help my son. I see this and this affects me because I. I did not have a good relationship with him. It was a tough relationship, and it might have been one of the few times he ever hugged me. So I saw that and I wanted to. I wanted to go back to that. And I more or less said to the being, can I. I can't leave him like that. Is. Is that okay? And then I woke up and I was not in the room anymore. I was on the. In the living room. Now my father's not there. The paramedics are on top of me and they're doing all kinds of things, whatever it is that they do. And they're checking my blood pressure and they're talking to each other and they're getting the ambulance ready, and they're like, we got to get this guy out. Let's go. We gotta go. We gotta go. And I'm like, guys, I'm fine. I'm fine. I feel fantastic. In fact, I. I've never felt better. Like, I felt the euphoria stayed with me for a while, you know, it was. But that does wear off. And when it does and you come back to your body, oh, my God, it feels like a bomb went off inside you because all of a sudden you went from pure, this pure energy where you felt no pain, to back into a body where, you know, we have a lot of little things that bother us. Like maybe you broke your finger when you were like 12 years old. You never fixed it, but, you know, you just left it that way. And the brain's like, I'm not going think about that anymore. But when you come back into your body, every single thing that hurts, hurts. And you feel it like twice as much. And so I was like, oh, my God, this is terrible. And I was like, can I have a do over? Can I do this again, please? I want to go back to the light. That was way better. Did anybody see the light? Anybody here? Anybody hear the voice? And now they're starting to look at me like, you know, looney Tunes. And I'm thinking, all right, let me just shut up. Not going to talk about this anymore. Otherwise I'm going to wind up in the wrong type of hospital. So I'm going to just let them take me away. But it was. Even as a child, I always had the ability to see energy. And that was a result of the fact that I would isolate myself to stay away from the things that were happening in my house. I didn't want to be a part of it as a child. I mean, young now, 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, I don't. I'm trying to avoid this stuff and I'm hiding. And when you do that and you isolate yourself six hours, seven hours a day, day after day after day after day, you start to not just see a wall, you start to see what the wall's made of. You start to be able to. There are certain energies that you can communicate with, right? And this starts to develop at a very, very young age for me now, at the age of 20, I cross over. Now here's what happens. They come with me, okay, the floodgates are open. Now it's like a. It's like the doorway was open. Okay? We could talk to him a little bit. He wasn't sure. Blah, blah, blah. Now he came to our side. We're going back and we're going to talk. Okay? So it was like a year or two after, I remember I moved out. I got my first bachelor pad. I was like, oh, I'm finally out of that house. It's going to be great. We're going to parties all the time. Blah, blah, blah. The house that I lived in was an apartment. And every time I got home, there was never a party. Because every time I got home, I felt like there was a party already in my house. It felt like it was filled with people. And you would see lines shooting across the white walls and you would feel the energies and you would just. Anything electric would go on and off, on and off. On and off, right? I would turn the TV on, they would turn it off. I turn it on, they would turn it off. And I would call the maintenance guys and they're like, listen, you're nuts. There's nothing wrong with your facilities. And I'm like, okay, you know, I give up. I had a roommate, but he was never there. And I used to call him and accuse him of being there all the time. So finally I call my friend and I'm like, you know, I'm trying to hold on to atheism. I really am, because it's simpler. It's so much simpler. I just don't want to believe in any of this. It's too confusing. You know, my parents are going to call me the Antichrist. It's. It's going to be a mess. It's going to be a disaster. My family's never going to talk to me again. So I'm holding this all in and I'm just sticking to my non belief in nothing. And I'm even yelling at them, I don't believe in you. Go away. I do not believe in you. They don't listen. So I'm on the phone with my friend and I said, listen, I. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think my house is haunted. Click. And I call him back. I said, you hang up on me. No, you hung up on me. No, you hung up on me. Click. And I was like, oh, my God. All right, I can't. We had landlines in those days. You know, this is going back. I'm showing my age. But you know, they, they could, they could disconnect their call like it was nothing. So I, I leave because I can't sleep in that house. That's how irritating it was. Because I would keep pushing back and they're like, no, you're gonna listen. And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna listen. And I started to use a lot of drugs and alcohol to go to sleep. A lot. I moved to the next place I had. I left two months early. I had a 12 month lease. I left in 10, moved into my new place. I'm like, okay, breathe. This is going to be great. I move in. Psyched. Same stuff all over again, just in a different building. Okay, it's not the building. It's right. I could go to Siberia. They're coming along for the ride. It doesn't matter where I go, what building I'm in, because it has nothing to do with the building. So now I really start drinking and start using tons of drugs to try to get put this at bay. And like I, like I said now, you know, I'm in my 20s, I don't fear death because in the back of my mind I kind of know it doesn't suck. It's pretty cool actually. And I'm just putting myself in these terrible situations because I'm not, I, I don't know, fear, not fearless, but, you know, less fearful. And I start working for some bad people and, you know, in some bad predicaments. One time I was in the middle of a shootout and I dove under the bar and I was like, you know, hiding and nobody knows I'm there. And what would happen is they would tell me how to get out. And I'm not talking about one time or two times, I'm talking like 10, 15 times they would get me out of a situation where I was going to die. And they told me in that case, side door, side door. And I'm thinking, I tell this whole story in, in the first book, I can't get to the side door because that they'll see me. And, and it's no side door. And this voice has been with me. This is like from a higher level. This is, this is the one that was with me as a child. So this one I know, I trust. Okay, I go to the side door. I get out, I go down the corridor, there's another door that takes me out to the lot. I go out that door. I'm parked right outside that door. In all the years I've worked there, I have never ever once parked there. I would always park on the other side of the building. I wouldn't have made it to the other side of the building that day. But for some reason, I put my car there that day. So there's always been this. Spirit world that has looked out for me. For some reason, I'm not special. I've done nothing to deserve this. Especially in that point in my life. I, you know, coming from chaos, chaos was my comfort zone. So I created chaos. I, I don't deserve it. But yet they continue to be there for me and guide me over and over again. No matter. And I rejected them. I said, you're not real. You need to leave me alone. And so eventually what happens is I'm starting to approach my 30s and I get married and I have two kids of my own. And when I have my children, that's a major wake up call for me. I can't live that lifestyle. I go back to college. I get my degree. I get a regular job. It's a. It's a very good job. I go to rehab. I just drive the car up. I give them the keys. I said, don't let me out. I'm. Don't let me out until I'm. I'm good. So we're well over a decade approaching. Two.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And because I had a set, I. This is for. This is for them now, right? This is not about me. They need me to stay alive. Me. It doesn't matter so much. I've seen the light. I'll go back. It's pretty cool.

So.

But it was my. It was that love. And in the second book I dedicate to them because they don't know how much they did for me, let alone the things I've done. You know, they think that I've given. They've given me more than I've ever given them. So that being said, unfortunately, I was divorced very quickly, two, three years, and it was many, many years later until I started dating many, many years. And I went online, finally got my courage up. You know, I called my friend. I'm like, how marketable is a single guy with like two kids and blah, blah, blah. He goes, what are you talking about? He goes, come on, you're, you know, he's telling me all my good qualities and stuff. Get out there, you know, give you the pep talk. So I finally do, and I go online and. And I don't know if they do this for women, but when you're a man and you go to one of those websites, they show you a couple examples of women that are in your area that you might like, right? And there she was. And that was. I was like, oh, my God, that's my next wife right there. And I just knew that, that connection, I could see it just as soon as I saw her picture. So I go, okay, I joined the site. I pay the money. I send one email to her, and her only. And I explained to her, you're going to be my wife. And this is why I joined the site. And I'm sending one email. Yeah, yeah. So you're crazy, right? Luckily, she. She found that amusing. I did put it in a. In a funny kind of way. And she did write back to me, lol. You're nuts. Who are you? Where are you from, Blah, blah, blah. And we've been together ever since we are married. We live together. And that's great. But I had managed now to keep my career and my, my, my kids and moving up in my career, I was at the top of my game almost. Well, I was when we met, actually. And I had managed to put, you know, my friends aside, you know, like, they weren't intrusive at that point. They were there, but I would be able to go about my life. And it was kind of like an understanding that, you know, I'm not going to be able to answer you because everybody's going to think I'm nuts, you know, But I know you're there, and we're good, so. But now, here's what happens. When I meet her, we start to get serious very quickly. And she says, so, what are your spiritual beliefs? And I'm like, oh, no, I got no idea. I've been meaning to get around to that. And she says. She. She says, you know what? For your birthday, I'm going to buy you something called a spiritual clearing. And I said, no, I don't know what this is. I have no idea. And I'm like, okay, sounds really good. We're gonna have cake, too, right? Cake? Yeah, yeah, we'll have cake. So you don't have to be there. You don't have to do anything for the clearing. It'll just. It'll happen. The. She'll call you, it'll. And tell you what's going to happen, and she'll do it, and you can just be at work. I'm like, okay, sounds great. And I'm gonna feel better after this. She goes, well, not right away, but eventually, yeah. So I speak. I speak to the lady on the phone who's doing. Who's doing the clearing, and she tells me. She's like, you might feel a little woozy, a little off. You know, it's just a little discomfort. I don't even think she said woozy. Those are going to be my words later. Because now two hours goes by. They warned me, don't have any appointments on this day that are significant, and don't make any life changes for three days. I'm like, yeah, okay, all right, whatever you say. But I. I didn't have any appointments. Needless to say, two hours later, I don't know what it is that I'm feeling, but I am definitely woozy, to say the least. Like, I'm like, whoa. What? You know, like, things just look different now. Like, I'm starting to see that energy again that I didn't see since I was a kid. And I'm trying to, like, kind of navigate through it just to get to the bathroom. And. And. And I Call my wife. She's not my wife at that time, but I call her and I'm like, this was weird. Like, I don't, I don't feel good. I think I'm getting sick. She's like, no, it's just, it's the clearing. And I'm like, no, I think I got the flu. And she's like, just relax. Go home. Relax. I took the rest of the day off. Took a couple Advil, lay down. And now whatever was done to clear me so that I had a. A clear path, if you will, or a clear frequency. Here they are again. But there's one in particular. One man comes through like nothing I've ever experienced in my life. He's front and center. Okay, now let me explain. When, if I say I'm seeing or I'm hearing, I'm not using my eyes or my ears. I'm using my third eye, right? It's like the best way I could describe it is like a movie screen that kind of opens up and it's. They're speaking to me, but they're on a movie screen and it's in my head and I, you know, so here's this guy come in with this message. He's a husky guy. He's got a beard, a mustache, dark hair. And he says the same thing over and over. I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. It ends right there. I have no idea what that means. I have no idea who the man is. Never saw him before. So now it starts on a Friday, and it's maybe every couple of hours. On Saturday, it's every hour. By Sunday, it's every 15 minutes. I can't function. I can't drive. I was in the store, I was trying to pay for something, and the lady's like, are you okay? And I said, no, I'm not.

What's happening? Is it the guy coming back?

Yeah, I just keep seeing him.

Oh.

And over and over. It's the same eight second, like, video loop. And he will not stop. It's the same thing. It just replays and replays and replays. I could be at a stop, at a light, and there it goes. And there it goes. Every time my mind is idle, boom, he's there again. So I'm, I, I think I'm losing my mind at this point. I, I'm convinced this is it. This is the end for me. I'm losing my mind. I got to get my affairs in order. I'm starting to think about my kids. I got the will written up. I got to do a d. DNR so that they don't. I don't want to come back. I want to go back to the light. I'm, I'm thinking. This is what I'm thinking in the car. How to end, you know, how this is going to end. And let's top all of this off by the woman I'm dating is a doctor of psychology and neuropsychology by trade. That's what she does for a living. And I think I'm schizophrenic. So I, I, I decided to. I, I guess I'll tell her because she's gonna run for the hills. I'm gonna lose her. But maybe she'll get me the help I need, because I obviously need help. And I did. And I. And I told her, and I was expecting, you know, here, call this person and never call me again. This doctor will help you. That's not what happened at all. She was like, oh, it's probably my dad. He comes through all the time. I've seen many mediums. You're a medium, you just don't know it. I said, what the hell is a medium? But I ordered my steak medium. What's a me? What is this medium stuff? I don't know what a medium is. And she goes on to explain what that is. And, and very nonchalantly, like, it was not even a big deal. Right.

No big deal.

She's totally open to remember. She bought me the clearing. Yeah. Which invited the, the person that. We don't know who it is yet. So I explained, I give, I give her the message. I tell her what the guy looks like, and she's like, oh, my God, that's definitely my dad. And I said, that's not your dad. I saw the picture. I saw the, the picture on the mantle. Looks nothing like him. And she's like, race. Wait a minute. That picture, it's like 20 years old. He was 40 pounds lighter. He was cleanly shaven. Let me show you. She goes through the phone, shows me a picture. I'm like, oh, my God. You know that guy?

Same guy.

Same guy. That's my dad, silly. And I'm like, well, why is he in my brain? Get him out.

And why with that message?

As soon as I gave the message, he was gone. I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders because I was supposed to tell her the message. And the message is actually a very serious one. And in the book, I tell the whole story, it saves somebody's life. And that's why he was so persistent. But in this moment now, I'm like, so, okay, am I crazy? Do I want it? Is it better if I'm crazy or is it better if I'm medium? What do I do with this medium thing? I don't know what to do. And I'm just thinking about it and more things start coming to me. And so I give them to her. She knows immediately who it goes to. She delivers the message. I feel better. And I said, whatever you do, never tell anybody. I'm the one giving you the message. I do not want the neighbors to know I'm a medium thing or anything else for that matter. They're going to think I'm nuts. I'm never. They know now I'm never going to go outside again.

Can I just interrupt you for one second, Ray? The message that you said saved life. So it was more than just I effed up. So what? You don't have to share what you. What happened because I know you write about it fully, but there was more than just that that you needed to. Okay, so there was more.

There's more there. There's more messages to come in. We have to piece it together because we don't know right away. Like, it wasn't like a bulb went off. We're like, oh, my God. You know, it's. It's this. We got a series of messages from him that led us down a path. Now then we have to explain to the family member, how do you do this, right? Because, okay, can't come out and say, you know, I speak to dead people. And I know I've never met you before, but this is our first time meeting. But you have to address something really quickly or else, you know, that's not gonna go over well, Right? So we had to devise a whole plan to, to get the point across. And it worked, obviously, but it took. It took a lot of planning to keep my secret. And also, you know, because no one else is going to believe this. Nobody. So I, I really kept this. We kept this a secret for as long as possible. More messages would come, and I started to question the. The validation of them. So what would happen is Spirit would give me, like, a very weird thing, right? This one guy said to me, he said, remember the silly shoes. Ask her to remember the silly shoes. I don't even know who her is. I don't know who you are, so. But I do know enough about him that when I relay it to my wife that she understands fully exactly who it is, who his wife was. She's alive, he's not. And when I said, well, listen, tell her about the silly shoes. If she knows what silly shoes means, I'm a believer. She comes back, my wife, she's. She had dinner with the woman. She goes, first of all, your message cleared up so many things for her. She was crying. She needed to know that information that you gave her. And I said, the shoes. All I want to know is about the shoes. You know, I was like, great, great. That's great. I'm glad. You know, she feels good. But the shoes, the shoes. It was their first date. He had the most ridiculous pair of shoes on. And that was a running joke throughout their entire marriage. I was like, oh my God. Okay, all right, I'm starting to believe. And she says, let me, let me take you to a medium that you can sit with. There's a world renowned medium. She's not always in town. She's going to be in town. Let me take you to her. You guys can chit chat, compare notes. And that's what we did. We both made appointments. She was going to speak to her father, hopefully. And I was just going to find out what a medium is because apparently I can do this. So I'm sitting with her and we're having. As soon as I walk in, I was like, hi, I'm Ray. She says, hi, I'm meeting Bonnie. She said, Bonnie? And I said, she goes, and she just stopped and she goes, wait, who? You're. You're. You're that Ray? I've heard about you. I've heard about me. Nobody's supposed to even know about me. What do you mean you heard about me? Oh my God. Now I'm really like. I sit in the chair and I go on to explain to her how I see things the different ways some are. And she, she explains the difference. This is mediumship. This is clairvoyance. She's like, you know, men don't have all of these things. That's very rare. And, and, and I'm thinking like, yeah, we probably. That makes sense to me, right? Because men are like, you know, we could do like one, maybe two things at a time. If I, if I chew gum and walk, I'm doing really well, right? My wife could eggs at once and know where the kids are. You know, I, I could do maybe two. I pick things up, I put them down. So anyway, so she's like, this is ex. Extremely rare. And at the end of the conversation was a little bit awkward because I Wanted to exchange numbers with her, but that, that didn't really happen. I wanted to keep contact. And I, and I left and we got back to the car after she went, and she's like, are you excited? Are you excited? I'm like, for what? I don't, I don't. I, I got validated, but I, I don't know what to do next. She's like, she, as, as a, a mentee. She's going to be your mentor. She didn't even want my phone number. She's like, oh, stop. She, she doesn't take students anymore, but she's going to take you. And, and thank God she did because she showed me how to turn it on, how to turn it off, how to not lose my mind. And then after a while, my next mentor, ironically, was the very first guy that my wife had seen to speak to her dad. And that man is the teacher of many of the famous people that you see on television, although he does not want to be famous. He's never been on television. He's worked missing persons cases, he's worked for the government, he's FBI, you name it. And. But the way I met him was, was ironic because we went away for my birthday and we. He's a spirit artist. So he not only read for her, he drew him. He drew her dad. And she just happened to find the picture. And this is probably a year later now, after everything has transpired, and she goes, I found this in the basement. I wanted to show it to you. And she shows me the picture and I'm like, oh, my God, that is exactly the way I see your dad. I mean, wearing that shirt is the way I see him.

Crazy.

That was the shirt of the times. Like, everyone had that particular shirt, you know, and it just blew my mind. So I was like, who is this guy? And we started to look him up online and it said, now accepting applications for a two year mentorship program with Medium Joe. Excuse me. The deadline to apply is February 15th. That's my birthday. She says, are you going to apply? I said, if that's not universal intervention, I don't know what is. Now I'm talking like this, right? I'm the one talking about universal intervention. So I spend the weekend, I'm doing the application, which proceeds to have another application. Then you send that, and then you get another application. And it never ends because you have to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that you're. You're the real deal. Then there's an interview, and it just keeps going and going and eventually, like, so much time went by that I was like, he's not gonna. I guess he didn't pick me. So I checked in with his assistant. She's like, no, no, no. Just relax. There's hundreds of applicants. Hundreds. And I was thinking to myself, I never had such a hard time giving anybody my money in my entire life. But that shows you his integrity, right? Because he could have just taken all those students, and this was, like, thousands of dollars to. To. To be a mentor to this guy. It's not, you know, cheap. And so. But he didn't. The final class, which I was chosen, had 11, and I was one of 11. And I don't even know what I'm doing here. Like, these people know what they're doing. They know the terminology, they know the verbiage. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm. I'm way out of my league.

He didn't think so.

No. And he's like, no, you're not. You're. You've been doing this since you were 5. You just don't realize it, so you just need to. To catch up. And he just. You know, he took me to another level, both spiritually, not just from a mediumship perspective, but in so many different ways. And. And when I embraced this, I went back to school for metaphysics. I am working towards my PhD. I've read. I'm a voracious reader. Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Joe Dispenza. And then I love physics too, because, remember, metaphysics is where science and spirituality come together, right? So I study Einstein, I study Bohr, I study Tesla. I studied all the great physicists from the 30s. They were like rock stars in the 30s. And I start piecing these things together. Okay. Law of attraction works by vibration. What causes the vibration? The thought. The thought is energy. Energy is vibration. I start figuring out how these things actually work scientifically. And that's the second book. So the second book actually shows you the spiritual techniques, how I use them, how I replicated them, how I figured out how they work to the best of my ability using a previously scientific principle that's already legit and. And been proven and. And the. And the outcome and how you can do it, too. And during the writing of the second book is when I had my spiritual awakening. Like, the spiritual. I. I believe a person has a lot of awakenings along the way, because obviously, you know, when I met her dad, and so, you know, so many things that transpired in my life. But as I was writing this, that Particular book, I had an ego fracture. And because my whole life was chaos, violence, trauma, my go to emotion for just about everything was anger. And one day something transpired where I should have been livid, and I felt nothing. I had my very expensive car that I just bought. And I thought that was the most important thing in the world that I'm driving this car. Because my dad would say, you know, that's a symbol of whatever we think. These things that make us happy because other people tell us, not because they really do. And I drove into a deer and my car was just smashed. And instead of getting angry, the old Ray would have got out of the car yelling, you know, who knows what they all, I don't know. But none of that happened. I just felt bad for the deer. And I pulled over, I got out of the car and I tried to help the deer. And the deer gets up unharmed. She looks at me, I look at her, I'm like, I'm sorry. She's like, I'm sorry too. She walks off. I, I'm okay, right? There's. I'm physically fine. She's physically fine. My car is trashed. But that's just the car. And I realized that who, who am I? That's just a car. That's not, that's not me.

Yeah.

Now I got to rewrite the whole book.

No. Can I ask you some questions?

Please, go ahead.

Just because I just. There's a couple things that have come up while we were talking. First of all, in the beginning, you know, you had that question, why me? Why me? You know, I don't believe in any of this. My subtitle is A Skeptics Discovery of life after death. And you're a self proclaimed atheist. I think those they that are talking to you and many of us that don't know, we have people talking to us, we are the best messengers. Because I think when we look at some of these people that are claiming spirituality, and I'm talking the ones that are a little over the deep edge, you know, because some of them are just like, oh, I don't want to, to be that person. I think that's why we're afraid to talk about this right there. You know, you want to hear the rags to riches story. You don't want to hear somebody who's always been rich. So you want to hear the person that didn't believe because it's like, okay, I can follow this person on the journey. So they couldn't have picked a better person. Yes. I want to ask you when you studied and you got to be One of the 11, studying mediumship was part of your training, working with people? Did you actually work one on one with people to really get the power that people's loved ones are still alive and mediumship is real?

Yeah. So. Oh, absolutely. First you work with each other and you read for one another until you get like the core basics, and then they will give you a complete stranger that you have no idea who this person is. They volunteered to be read for. And you read and he watches. I, let me, let me say, you know, after years of doing that, it was a two year program and I'm still in it, and it's four years later because, you know, it took me 10 years to graduate college. So, you know, I'm like, right on track. I'm not leaving this guy. You know, I'm still a part of that program, but I come and go. And the reason is, is because mediumship really takes a toll on one's emotional state of being because you adopt the emotional state of the deceased and then it's commingled with what you're watching, which is the sitter's feelings. Right. So you're kind of getting it from both ends. And I can't shake that off right away. It takes hours. And being a person who just lost their negative feelings and their negative emotions, I want to experience that more. And it's not that I don't want to help people with the mediumship, it's just that, you know, I kind of feel like I, I, I kind of did a lot of time of anger and violence and trauma, and now I want to be happy. And, you know, there'll come a time when I may circle back, but I, I don't do it professionally and I don't do it at all unless I'm in class. And he, he says, okay, you're up. You, you go. And that's, that's been the only time that we do it. But yeah, they do, they, they bring people in. And I had this one amazing session. This woman, they don't tell you anything at all, just a first name. And during the reading, I was telling her a bunch of, of things, but I got, I said, I figured out that it was her husband that had passed, but it was a very young guy. So I was, I was like, yeah, I don't want to say husband too soon. Maybe it was son, because this guy's like, really young and, you know, but finally that, the love, the connection, I was like, did you lose your husband? And she's like, yeah. And I said, he looks young. He's showing me a very young version of himself. She goes, no, I married a very young man. And I was like, well, good for you. You know, I said, was his name Ben? And she's like, no. And that name just kept popping up. And I was like, okay, just hold on to that. I. I don't know why. And went through the reading and, you know, everything was pretty much on point and. But Ben, that was the one thing that we couldn't figure out. And I was like, so you're sure there's no Bens? No, no Ben. And I said, wait a minute. It's not a he, it's an it. Ben. Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Do you know what that means? She was like, yes. He had to have ice cream after every single dinner. He was an ice cream connoisseur. And he had to have his. Now she's weeping and she's. It's like, it's on now. And I'm like, oh, God. Okay. I'm. I'm glad you're happy. But, you know, it's. It's so emotional that, you know, it's. It's. It's. It's a ride for the me. I respect mediums so much for what they do. It's very, very difficult work.

That was, I think, because I've been told this myself, because I've taken classes too, enough to know I've got it. But it's not my calling to be a medium. And I think based on everything that you're doing and I'm doing, we are a different kind of medium. I think between your books and the coaching and everything that you're up to, you get to a much larger audience of people, as do I, than working with people one on one. So I think those in the unseen world use us to be this kind of medium, but I think on the way, they need to let us know how real the afterlife is. So it's no question that we got to experience those courses.

Perfect. I couldn't have said that better. Yeah, you're totally on point. It took those things to prove to us that we were right. We weren't crazy. We were. We. We are on the right path, but then we veer off in a different direction to help people in a different way and. And learn whatever that different way is. And I never, ever would have been able to write that second book if the first book didn't happen to me. Right? The first book happened. The second book I Made happen. And, and I love it so much because I can give it to somebody else and say, you can do this too. Like, I am not. There's nothing. You don't have to be a medium. You don't have to be anybody. You could be from any walk of life and you can have this same spiritual awakening. These are simple techniques that anybody can do. And here you go. And it's just.

I want to get into some of those points while we're here together. First of all, let me just commend you on your, in your Facebook titles, the Atheist and the Afterlife. Like, that's pretty bold. And then your second book, you are still alive now act like it. You know, they're in your face, they're bold. And it was great what you said about the ego and how you responded to when you hit the deer. And thankfully the deer made it. But we human beings don't realize it, but we are so attached thinking the little voice that talks to us in our head is truly us. And it's very rare that we get these feelings of inspiration and the good things which I think is our true soul self. But most of the time it's thinking about the future. It's worth, you know, worried about the future. It's thinking about the past. It's feelings of guilt. It's, you know, all of that stuff that the old Ray would have had happen when he hit the deer. So something magnificent happened that you are not attached anymore to the ego. And I'm sure there's times that you are because, you know, we're all human. But if you could go into maybe a couple of the principles that are in your book and, and things that we can use to empower our listener or our viewer right now because we have people listening and watching YouTube, just some things that can give them the little edge. And of course, we recommend everybody pick up a copy of Ray's books. But what are some things that are you can utilize now?

I think one of the biggest things is to understand how the mind works. Not the brain, but the mind. Remember that the brain is an organ and the energy that comes from the brain is. Makes up the mind. And the mind has several parts to it. And the more you understand it, the more you can choose which one you want to use and which one you don't. Your unconscious mind, that's your core emotions, your bodily functions. Those are, those are pretty much written in stone. They're probably going to stay as they are. That's your unconscious. However, your subconscious, that's Your hard drive of everything you've seen, everything you've heard, and a majority of it was consumed when you were between the ages of 2 and 7. Can you imagine we are basing decisions based upon the fundamentals of a 7 year old? We really are. We don't act it, but we are. And when you look at it that way, yeah, of course, anger was my goat. I mean, come on, you know, because that's what I saw in those in that range. So that's what I did. It becomes your programming. The ego is extended from the subconscious. And the little voice in your head that we think is us, it's not us. Couldn't be farther from us. That voice is all the people of authority in your life that have told you things about yourself that you internalized and believed. And usually the negatives tend to come to the surface because we focus on them more so than the positives. That's why when you turn on the news, there's negative news, not positive news. Because no one would watch the positive news. No one cares. But if somebody says something negative, you internalize it and it comes right up. And that ego will pop right out at you. You can't do that. You'll never be able to. Rich people do that. Oh my God. That's. My mother used rich people. What are you talking. Who? Why can't I be a rich people? I want to be a rich people too. So the next part is your conscious mind. And the beauty of the conscious mind is that you can use your conscious mind to overwrite your subconscious. Your subconscious doesn't know the difference between what's real and what isn't real. So when you just take a pause from that little voice and just stop, don't do what he says, or her. Don't listen to him or her. Just pause right there. Let your conscious mind catch up and decide what you want to do. And guess where you're going to get that information from if you don't already know it. Your awareness. Because that's what's connected to your higher self. Eckhart Tolle calls it the awareness. It's the highest level of consciousness that we have because if we're aware, we're one of the few creatures that are aware. We're having a thought or an emotion. And guess what? If you're aware of it, you can change it. You don't have to have that emotion. You don't have to have that feeling. There's no nothing written in stone that says if I total my beautiful car, I have to get angry. There's nothing written in stone that says I have to be sad at a funeral. There's nothing written in stone that says if a car cuts you off, you have to get angry with the other driver. It's not real. Those are learned behaviors. Now, you acting completely different than everybody else. People might think you're nuts, but who cares? You're free. You've. You can lose all of your negative thoughts and all your negative emotions. Listen, I'll experience anger, right? And. And I'll tell you a quick story, but it. It's gone in, like, quickly. I don't know exactly how much time I can put on it. I was driving. I had the little one in the back, and she was just playing with her phone. And a car ran a stop sign, and I had a swerve out of the way and then swerve. And if we would have hit, that car would have hit exactly where she was sitting. So I was mad, and I was like, you mother, mother. And then I just kept driving. And she goes, what happened? And I said, oh, that car nearly hit us. And now I'm calm and I'm talking about it. And she said, ask me a bunch of questions about the stop sign and how that networks and. And then she's like, oh, so you. You must be really mad. And I said, well, no, no, I'm not mad now. I was mad back there two blocks ago because he almost hit us, but I had. No one's almost hitting us now, so I'm not mad anymore. And she's like, oh, well, that makes sense. And she gets it because she's 10. Explain that to somebody who's 30 and they're gonna. Wait, wait a minute.

Wait.

You shook that off in how long? Two blocks? That's crazy. It's not crazy. I used my awareness. I'm aware of the. The feeling I'm having. I don't like that feeling. I push it away. It's that simple. You gotta practice and practice and practice. But once it becomes natural to you, that's when you have fractured the ego and you begun your ego dissolution. So understanding how the mind works is the first step in utilizing the parts of it that you like, the parts of it that you want, and that using the awareness to get your information instead of your hard drive. If you just keep doing what you did yesterday, you're going to wind up with the same result tomorrow. Right? We do the same thing and expect a different result. Not happening.

Isn't that Einstein's definition of insanity? Doing the Same thing over and over and expecting a different result. When you talked about what you, what you just did it to me, it's like catching yourself in the act. Because in the moment, you know, we human, we're human, we all have this ego, you know, we get hooked. But in that moment, like you did, you can say, okay, I'm angry. And then you can choose. Are you a believer that inputting a little gratitude can help shift the course of our future and our direction? Because I, I try and I'm human too. But when I get hooked by something that emotions there, it's like I can either go down that tunnel, which doesn't feel good and I'm usually not nice to other people either, or I could slide in something that, you know, somebody I'm grateful for or something.

A technique that I give to everyone is called an attitude of gratitude. And what, what that is, is you go into a very light, meditative state and you basically just thank the universe, God, whatever term you wish to use for the things that you already have. What are you grateful for? You know, what are the things that you've been given? A roof over your head, food, children, job, whatever it might be. Just go through your positives. And when you come out of that state, you've changed your vibration. So whatever negativity, whatever thing you were carrying, you've changed your vibration. It's not going to be there if you don't want it to be there. You can pick it back up again if you want. It's like a briefcase. You can put it down and you can walk away from it now because you've changed your entire frequency, or you can go back and pick it up again. That's now you have a choice. It will give you that break. And you could do it once a day, twice a day, 10 times a day. It takes like 20 seconds, 30 seconds to do this. It's not very long. And then when you want to go deeper, you change your speech patterns. Not just your thought patterns, but your speech patterns, right? You don't have to drive your kids to school. You get to drive your kids to school, right? You're blessed with children. You get to do that. You signed on for that. You don't have to go to work. You get to go to work. You're lucky enough to have a job. So, you know, it's the way we perceive everything, is the way things will be that come to you tomorrow. I had a client who had told me she had a horrible weekend and proceeded to tell me all the things that went wrong. And I said, okay, let's, let's go through these things. And we went through each one and in each so called negative, she had these huge moments of, in her case, she was trying to break into a business that's very difficult to get into. She met key contacts over the course of this horrible weekend who complimented her on her work and wanted to get her resume. I said, so wait a minute, you had a horrible weekend, but you met this one and this one and, and the producer of this one. And so, and so. And, and she's like, yeah, yeah. And then she started to put it in perspective. No, it wasn't that bad that I had to drive two hours in a hurricane. It was good that I had to drive two hours. Exactly. What is good and what is bad? It's whatever you decide. Nothing is either good nor bad. But thinking makes it so. Shakespeare. Right. Hamlet. Perfect. You decide what's good and bad.

Absolutely.

And once you can do that all the time with everything it does, there is no more bad. You just, you'll find the good. It's there. It's there for a reason. This happens for a reason. What's that reason? I learned this. And that's the takeaway. That's your gift.

Beautiful. Ray, with our few minutes that we have left, I would love to know two things. One, your website is, raycatania.com, what people can find on the website. And the second question is just to leave us with a little nugget. There's a lot of people, most people that are our community have a loved one that has passed. And you know, we're currently going into the holiday season, which is tough, but people may be listening at another time, still feeling that grief. And maybe this, after you tell us about your website, maybe just a little nugget that may, it may give us a little more air to breathe today.

Absolutely. The, the website, a brand new one, is going to be rolled out and there's going to be a lot more content on it and there'll be some courses that you could take and you can coach with me via Zoom. And there's other things that you can do and you'll be able to acquire the books through there. So there's a lot of things happening on Breakatania.com but more importantly, you know, when you miss your loved ones, remember that they're still here in this. They are right here. You can't see them, touch them, feel them. And I know that that's horrible, but they are still here with you. And you have to look for the signs and synchronicities. You may, you have that connection that you can communicate. Maybe not like a medium can or as easily as that, but there are ways to communicate with your loved ones. You have to be open to them and you have to look for them. And it could be anything. Look for something in the past. Look for a synchronicity, something that you relayed together, something that you bonded over. My cousin, my aunt passed away recently and my cousin was telling me a story about. I don't even remember the story anymore. But what it was about, a dime. Now, a dime is probably the rarest coin that we use. I think I, I can't think of any reason to, to even have one. And. But she started to see dimes and I thought, and I wanted. I, I loved her like a second mother. So I spoke to her and I said, let me know you're listening. Show me, show me. And I started finding dimes on my worst days in the worst, in, in craziest places. Like, I would wake up and they were under my butt, you know, in the bed. How does it get there? You know, I would find them everywhere. And I was up here. Here's the latest. Okay. I don't know if you can see that. I have to hold it against my shirt. That's a dime. Okay, that's right there, reminding me that today is going to be a great day. Look for those. You have them. Everybody does.

Ray, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being our guest today.

Thank you. It was my pleasure and an honor.

It was great. And for our listener or our viewer, thank you for taking the time to be with us. We always try to add a little value and a little smile, a little magic and a little empowerment to your life. As a reminder, Ray's website is rayconcatania.com. his books are the Atheist and the Afterlife. And you are still alive. Now act like it. Oh my gosh, I just love those titles. And of course my book is called We Don't Die A Skeptics Discovery of Life After Death. And if you'd like a free PDF copy of that, just go to my website, which is wedontdie.com@the bottom of the page there's a place for you to put your name and your email address and you'll get a pop up. It says it's only the first few chapters. The truth is, it's the whole book. Chapter 10, I think is one of the most important chapters because it helps you navigate through grief. And the grieving process gives you some things to feel better and so much more. Well, in closing, my name is Sandra Champlain. I'm always so delighted to be your host on We Don't Die. I do believe that life is an education for the soul and that your life here on earth is very, very important. But like being on a dime, making a choice on a dime, we can choose the direction of our life. We can buy into any negative people, any negative thoughts, or we can make a choice. And as Ray said, we can choose how lucky we are and that we get to have a life. We get to have experiences. Your loved ones are just around you. They have one foot in our world and one foot in theirs. They're continuing to learn and grow and explore, but they are here with you. Talk to them. Include them in your life. Keep a little journal of signs. They want you to know they're alive just as much as you want to know. So I really want to thank you for listening or for watching. And we'll see you again soon.