Atheist Died And Came Back; After Effects Drove Him Off The Deep End For A Decade (NDE)

We're co creators. Every religion actually says gets that one thing right. You're a part of God, God's a part of you. They all have a version of it. And you know, if for that to ring true, whether you want to say God or the universe or you know, collective whatever, whatever you want to call the, this creator that we're a part of, we're a part of that. A little bit of you and a little bit of me and a little bit of the next person. Well, we all make up what God is. So then we have a right to create whatever we want because we created everything collectively. So you can create for just you and your life and then collectively we can create for everybody.

Hello. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Nella and welcome to my podcast, Ethereality. Today's guest is Ray Catania. When he had his near death experience, he was a young adult and also an atheist. After he came back to life, some strange things were happening. While still maintaining his atheism, he was led to the point of madness. Like genuinely thought he was going to be admitted to a psych ward. But he navigated it. Things started to fall into place in his life that pointed him in the right direction. But really quick, before we get into it, hit that like button. And if you like near death experience content, subscribe. Also, I want to know what the most interesting thing is to you about near death experiences. Write it in the comment section and at the end of this interview I will share my thoughts on that as well. Alright, let's get into the interview. Ray, thank you so much for being here. Why don't you go ahead and start sharing your story?

Well, first let me say thank you so much for having me here today. I really appreciate it. It's an honor and a privilege to begin my story. I'll take you back to the very beginning. And that was childhood. And mine was, I guess you would say, not a particularly great one. It wasn't a happy one. There was a lot of drama and trauma and things in the household that I tried to avoid. So in order to do that, what I did was I would isolate myself and kind of hide in the, in my room or the basement or a closet or something where I would just stay out of the way of all the chaos that was going on in the home and what this allowed me to do. And I didn't realize this at the time because I'm only like five, six years old, but actually spending time in my creative brain and my mind and trying to go to Places, because we don't have cell phones and we don't have computers yet. None of that exists. So it's just me and my imagination. And when I understand, you know, yogis have meditated for six hours a day, day after day, and that. That was the kind of place I was in because I would stay hidden until after midnight when everything would kind of die down, and then I could go to sleep. So for multiple hours a day, I was just living in my own imagination. And I started to see things. I started to see energy. And I didn't know what I was seeing when I was seeing it, but in hindsight, I know that it was energy. You strip away what the wall is. If you look at a wall long enough, it's not a white wall or gray or whatever. It's. It's not even wood. It's energy. And you can start to see the little lines that are making the wood. So I sort of had this bond with energy, and eventually they developed into being interactive. Like, I thought I had imaginary friends. Okay. But again, later, in hindsight, these were energetic entities that I could see and I could speak with. I just thought everybody had them, right? Until I said something, and then I was, you know, criticized, condemned and going to hell and whatnot. So it wasn't. Didn't go over well.

That's very interesting. Did they actually look like humans?

Not yet. No, not yet. Not for many, many years. At this point in time, I just see lines.

Lines, okay. That would, like, move, like shapes, figures, kind of in the shape of humans.

Not even in the shape of humans. More like orbs.

Orbs, okay.

And that's the way I saw them for a very, very long time. But it was at the age of 20 when I had my NDE. And this is where things start to change. When I was 20 years old, I still lived in the same house. My bedroom was on the second floor and the kitchen was on the first floor. And what happened in the kitchen was the stove had a gas leak, and this was natural gas. So the natural gas would rise into the bedroom where I was sleeping, and I was inhaling it all night. We don't really know for how many hours when the gas leak started or why or whatnot, but it did. And the next morning, I guess my mother got up, turned on the stove to make breakfast or whatever, and there was a big, you know, kind of ball of flames. And there's a safety valve on these stoves, so it went out quickly, but the wall caught on fire, and there was a lot of smoke. But it wasn't the smoke or the fire that got me. It was the fact that I was inhaling the gas fumes for so many hours. So I heard the fire trucks and I heard the sirens and everything. And the police are coming in. And I go to get out of bed to see what's happening downstairs and I find that I can't move. Certain parts of my body, like my legs for example, felt like they weigh thousands of pounds each. My head, I couldn't get it off the pillow. I couldn't even yell for some reason. And I don't know why, but what worked were my arms. And I was able to start to pull myself to the edge of the bed. And as I would get closer and closer, I would pass out. And then I would hear the commotion again downstairs and it would kind of like bring me to. And then I would inch my way to the bed and then pass out again. But I knew if I didn't get to the edge of the bed, I was going to die. There was no question, because the paralysis was getting worse. So I eventually do. I get to the edge of the bed and I kind of tumbled out face first and I land on my chin. And I know that I hit my face first because I felt it. But here's the strange thing about it. There's no pain. So I hit the floor with my face. I know it, I felt it, I heard it. But I don't feel any pain. And that's because in that exact moment, I'm not in that body any longer. I'm now above it in the corner. And I'm in the corner looking down at my lifeless body. It's a square room. In the adjacent corner to me is a huge cone shaped white light that I can't even begin to express to you how beautiful this light felt. It did not feel like a light. It felt. It felt like life, it felt like love, it felt like energy, it felt like painlessness and euphoria and every beautiful word you could possibly imagine. And I was one with that light. And to experience that was the greatest feeling I had ever felt to this day. Needless to say, I wanted to continue on into the light because it was a long tunnel and at the end was a being. And again, not a man, not a woman. I can't see an image of a person at all. It's just again, energy. And it speaks to me. And I'm using the word speak because I'm not really hearing anything. It's more of a transmission of energetic thought. And I hear, it's safe to come into the light, right? It's safe to come into the light. I trust this being, and I don't trust anything or anyone because of my upbringing. So I slowly proceed to go into the light. And as I go deeper into the light, the euphoria increases. It just feels better, if that's even possible. It feels better. And I keep going in until what happens is my father kicks in the door because they heard the thump. I guess they heard me fall out of bed and go, oh, my God, Ray's still upstairs. Let's go. And my father comes in first, and he scoops me up, and he's on his knees, and he's crying and yelling for the paramedics. My son. My son. Help. My son. And I look down at this, and I almost don't recognize this man because my father and I didn't have a good relationship at all. It was very traumatic. You know, there's probably, I don't know, five times that he's hugged me, and one of them was when I was dead, to give you an idea of the relationship. So when I saw him hugging and crying, I was like, wow, you know, he really loves me. And I wanted to go back, and I asked if I could, and I said something like, you know, I can't leave him like that. Which was kind of silly, you know, in hindsight, I. I was, like, negotiating or something, and I don't know. I don't know that I. It was up to me anyway. But nonetheless, I did come back, and I wasn't in that room anymore. I was in the living room. I was on the floor on my back, and the paramedics were working on me diligently with their tools and their stuff. And I woke up, and I'm like, guys, guys, get off me. I feel great. What are you doing? You know, it took me a second to, like, figure out what they were doing, you know, And I was like, there's nothing wrong with me. And they're like, there's a lot wrong with you. First of all, you have no blood pressure. You're going to the hospital. I'm like, I don't need a hospital. Did you. Did you see the light? Did you hear the voice? Are you guys nuts? And now they're looking at me like I'm crazy, right? And. And I don't know which hospital I'm going to wind up going to remember if I spoke about the energy, I was crazy. Now I'm telling about the light. I'm Crazy. Every time I say anything, I'm crazy.

So.

So I'm shutting up. I just let them do their thing. And then the next day I was released and I tried to speak about it, and of course I was crazy. There's no light. There's no such thing. God doesn't work that way. And Catholic upbringing, you can't see dead people, you can't talk to anybody. It's just all nonsense. And I understand that now. There was actually a point where my mother didn't even acknowledge it occurred. And as a parent today, if my kid died on my watch, it would probably be so traumatic that I'd block it out too. And she did for many years. It wasn't until she was 82 years old and read the first book that she called me up and said, you must hate me. And I said, no, I don't hate you at all. In fact, we have a better relationship.

Now than we ever did the first book you written.

Yeah, the first book I wrote was the Atheist and the Afterlife, and it explains how I go from atheism to believing.

And so she went from completely blocking out the experience to taking a deep dive into your book detailing the whole thing. Wow. Yeah, that must have been pretty eye opening.

Huge for me.

It was probably pretty eye opening for her.

And she said, I didn't just die one time. It was three or four. She miscounted. She didn't know how many times because she was in the police car behind the ambulance, and the ambulance kept pulling over and they said they were quote, unquote, working on me, which, the way I understand it, back then I used to pull over to do the paddles because they didn't want to drive and accidentally, you know, hit the wrong person or whatever. So they would pull over, paddle you, you'd come back, and then they would continue on their route.

Okay.

After this happens, I'm still trying to hold on to atheism because since everybody is telling me I'm crazy and I'm. I'm. I'm starting to buy it, starting to believe it, and it's a little bit thereafter that I move out of that house and get my first apartment. And I'm really excited about this. It's my first apartment. I'm like 21, 22 years old. It's going to be parties and everything, and it's going to be great. And none of that ever happens because from the day I move in, that place is filled with energy. And I mean, energy that I could feel physically. They kept me awake they would mess with anything electrical. The TV on, off, changing channels, the blender would go on, the alarm would go off, lights would flicker, the telephones, we had landlines. And I can remember talking to one of my friends and I'm like kidding around. I said, I think my house is haunted. Click. And I call him back and I said, why'd you hang up on me? He goes, I didn't hang up on you. You hung up on me. And I said, no, no, I didn't. I said, well, anyway, listen, I can't sleep here because I think it's haunted. Click.

Oh my gosh.

And I'm like, this is crazy. I gotta get out of here. I really thought I was losing my mind. I think that I'm inching towards insanity slowly. And now I'm really, you know, starting to lose it. I start to use drugs and alcohol to be able to sleep in copious quantities. It took a lot to knock me out because I could not sleep there. It felt like the room was full. It felt like there were people watching me. It felt like you could feel the emotion of the energetic being. And later I learned what this is. But right now I have no clue. And I'm starting to think about like checking myself in, but I'm using so much drugs, so much alcohol, I become dependent and I move out of that apartment and I moved into another one thinking, okay, fresh start. This is the one where the party's going to be. This is going to be great. Move into that one. It's the same thing. So the house isn't haunted, Ray's haunted, that's it. Or I'm crazy. One or the other. This goes on for years, like 10 years before I get married and have two kids. That's the wake up call for me during this time, this 10 year period. I don't care if I live or die, I don't care what happens. I almost got like addicted to trying to get closer to death. Remember I experienced it, right? And in the back of my mind I kind of knew that I did. I had no fear of it. So I worked for some shady characters and put myself in bad situations.

You said kinda like you kind of knew in the back of your mind. So at this point in your life you weren't fully aware or conscious of what your experience was all about. Right, right. So you're still kind of trying to suppress it because you felt like if you believed in that, then that must have meant you were crazy. Like everyone was saying, yeah, I would.

Flip back and forth the nde There was something about it that was so beautiful that even if I died, let's face it, at this time in my life, I have no kids, no wife, no nothing. It really doesn't matter if I exist or I don't, whether it's real or it's not real, it doesn't really matter because I have no reason to live. This is the way I'm seeing it in that moment. I'm addicted to drugs. I see things that aren't there. I speak to things that aren't there. And I had an nd. So I really am starting to just not care too much about living. If you remember the being that told me it was okay to enter the light, well, he. I'm gonna say, I don't know if it's a he or she or whatever, but I'm going to say he, for lack of a better word, he shows up very often when I'm in situations where I'm about to die. And in one situation I'm working in a bar and like I said, I was working for some shady people. And there's a shootout in the bar and I'm behind the bar, it's after hours. I know the guy I'm serving is a drug dealer and I know this one over there is somebody else. And there's. They're having a whole meeting and I'm just pouring the drinks. I bend over to get something out of the locked cabinet. In that moment I hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And I know what that is. I know it too well. So I stay down and I'm trying to figure out how am I going to get out of here? And here's that being. And he says, side door, side door. And I said, I can't get to the side door. There's no way I can get to the side door. And the shooter's not going to see me. Side door, side door. So finally I've got nothing to lose and that's the only way out anyway. I run to the side door, I get through the side door, but that's not it. Because after you get through the side door, there's a 40 foot corridor that you have to go down until you get to the next side door. And that puts you out to the parking lot. And don't you know it, in all the time that I have been there, working there, I never put my car right outside that door. But that night I did. And I got outside the door and I remember dropping my keys, trying to get it into the ignition, dropping the keys. Finally I get out. That's not the only time he saved my life. I mean, I can recall a time when I was really young. I was about 10. My parents took me to the beach and I loved to swim in the ocean back then. I was swimming out and I swam out too far and there was an undertow that kept pulling us back. And I'm on one side and there's like 10 kids on the other side. So the lifeguard's really paying attention to the 10 and not the 1. And I'm going down and I even see my father from shore and I'm waving my hands. My father's like a friggin Navy SEAL type guy and he's not coming in to get me. I'm like, this is it, I'm going to die. My heart starts to beat out of my chest. I'm panicking. Here's my friend who shows up, for lack of a better word, my guide, my spirit guide, whoever he is. And he says, calm down. Swim sideways, take all the time you need. Calm down. Swim sideways, take all the time you need. I'll never forget that. And all of a sudden a feeling of peace and calm just overtook my entire body. And I started to swim on an angle and I made it to shore. Now I didn't know this at 10 years old, but that's what you do if you get caught in an undertow is you swim sideways. I had no idea. I would never would have known that. And I swim all the way down until I finally make it. And then I just collapse. And a bunch of people come over to make sure I'm okay. And now I'm afraid of strangers, right? Stranger dangers. So I get up and I try to run away. And I'm way down the beach and I'm running, I'm running, running. And finally I just start walking and it starts to rain thunder and lightning. In that moment I realized I'm the only person I can rely on.

That's a really heavy realization at 10 years old.

Yeah, but it later serves me well.

I like that you said that. Because earlier when you were talking about your isolation leading to your ability at a very young age to find that space within, in that meditative state. I really feel like our survival strategies oftentimes serve our spiritual growth.

Absolutely. I mean, it's the traumas in my life that are the best moments in my life. They're the moments that I'm most grateful for. If I didn't have them, I wouldn't be who I am.

I have a personal experience in my upbringing that I can credit for who I am today. For sure. It's awesome.

There's always good in everything that's bad.

Well, who knows what's good or bad, right? It's the fact that we have this impulse as humans to immediately judge something to be good or bad, when in the long run, it's something that we judge. Good often turns out to hurt us in the end. And sometimes we judge something as bad, which often turns around to service in a way that we didn't expect, you know, and it's a future futile effort to make these judgments.

One of my favorite quotes is, nothing is either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. That's Shakespeare from Hamlet.

Really?

I live by that. Nothing is bad. Nothing is bad. It's all what we think it to be. So I'm sitting here and I'm telling you, the worst traumas in my life were the best times of my life. Not because I enjoyed them, because they elevated me to a place that I never would have been otherwise. If it wasn't for the chaos that was in my home, I wouldn't have spent all that time, quote, unquote, meditating. I don't know that I'm meditating. I'm a young child. But ultimately that's what I'm doing. So it's those things that made me grow in leaps and bounds.

For me, I had an older stepsister that I was often compared to, and. And I had in my mind that I wished I was her. But I had this awareness that that was impossible on the outside no matter how hard I tried. And I learned instead of focusing that energy on the external, to focus the energy internally, since that was the only thing that I had control over. And in doing that at such a young age, as that being like my survival strategy to try to be better, I developed this passion for developing the inner self.

Yeah.

And that has grown and cultivated over the years. I started at such a young age. I share my experience about that. When I was 12 years old reading Carl Jung.

Were you really?

Yeah, yeah.

One of my favorite people of all time.

Yeah, mine too. Mine too.

And not an easy read, I might add. Pretty complicated. Not stopping reading by anyway, but a huge amount of information. That's wonderful. But very difficult reading. So I commend you reading at a young age.

I also interpreted my dreams because my mom taught me that you can learn a lot about yourself by paying attention to your dreams. And Carl Jung taught me that the key to understanding the world is to first understand yourself. So I would really explore my dreams. And it was in exploring those that I understood myself. And then I was able to take that and look externally and start to understand, okay, well, I had this experience which presented in me in this way of unintentionally harming the people around me, you know, so this person who is harming me is probably due to an experience that they had.

That's right.

Brought that out of them. It really, I feel like, gave me more of a broader understanding. The way that people treated me wasn't my fault.

Yeah.

I needed that to cope, to live with the circumstance of my upbringing.

Today I'm a coach and a metaphysical counselor, and that is where we spend a lot of time. People don't do things to you because of you. They do it because it was done to them. That's what they learned they were supposed to do. So I forgive my parents for everything, and I love them. They came from horrendous homes. If I told you mine was bad, theirs was 10 times worse than mine. And now I can see that, you know, each generation, hopefully, we try to make it better for our own children. But I understand the why, the where, the how and what transpired and why it transpired. And that never would have happened if I didn't put all of this together eventually. So I needed the trauma, and I needed to be called crazy, and I needed all these things to happen in order to make me who I am. And you, too. Would you have picked up a book by Dr. Carl Jung if you didn't? You know, if you didn't feel called to it? You know, that's not something that most people pick up off the shelf. Right. So I'm very grateful for those moments, and I'm sure you are, too.

I am. Most definitely. If you're getting any value out of this podcast, please hit that like button and subscribe. Also, if you've enjoyed my content before, or maybe you're new here, but you like it, drop a comment and let me know you're here, here. I would love to get to know my audience. Thank you for listening. And let's get back to the content.

After the second apartment, back to the craziness. I don't know what to believe yet, but I'm drowning it out with drugs and alcohol for good. 10, nine, 10 years. I don't know exactly, but I get married and have two kids, right? And although the marriage falls apart really quickly, I've got these two beautiful humans that are now reliant upon me for Everything that is a big wake up call. So what I do is I'm not going to raise my kids the way I was raised. So I check myself in a rehab, I go back to college and I finish my degree in business, I get a great job, I work my way up the ladder. That was in New York. I come back to Jersey and I do the same thing again. And I'm at the top of my game and my kids have everything. Maybe too much, but I'm in a place where me and the beings, it's almost like a ceasefire, right? You can't drive me crazy anymore. And they didn't because I couldn't help them. I didn't know what to do. And I don't even see them as people yet. It's probably 10 years later, maybe more, because I waited until my kids were almost out of high school to really seriously date. Not, you know, little things here and there, but seriously date. And I decide that I'm going to get serious and I'm going to settle down. And so I go online because that's how people find each other these days, right? And going through the different websites and I'm like, should I join this one? Should I join this one? I don't know which one. So I'm clicking on all of them. And I'm sure they do this for women, but for men, when you log on to these sites, they show you four women in your area to entice you to get you to join, right? I stumble upon one of those sites and I see a woman that I can't take my eyes off of. I feel like we've been together forever. Like, that is my wife, there's no question about it. That's my wife. So I joined the site and I send one email. That's it. That was my intention to send one email. And I told her that. I was like, listen, I joined the site for you. Just want to let you know it's the only email I'm sending. I know it's going to sound crazy, but you're my wife. And by the way, oh my gosh, you.

You came right out and said it.

Came right out. Not beating around the bush. I did say it in a funnier way and I actually copied and pasted in a book and it's kind of, you know, more funny. But she did respond. She's like, you're a nut job. Lol. Who are you and where are you from? And we are married and we are still together. And she is my soulmate and there's no question about it, that that was what was meant to happen. And here's why. When we first start dating, I'm going to say a month or two into dating one another, I remember I was at work and well, let me backtrack a little bit. My birthday is in this time period. And my wife says, you know, when you start getting serious with somebody, they're like, so what religion are you? Or what do you think of spirituality? Or whatever you want to see if you're on the same page, right? You're gonna raise kids together maybe, or whatever. I said, I have no idea. I said, I've really been meaning to get around to it, but I have no idea. I said, so what are you. And I would have said, whatever. She said I was going to be like, yeah, yeah, that's me too, me too. You know, because I didn't really care and I would have said anything, but, you know, I was honest about it and I was like, you know, I really don't know. It's been on my mind. It's definitely on my list of things to do and I need to figure that out. So she says, I'm going to buy you a spiritual clearing for your birthday. And I was like, huh? So it's like a massage then? And she's like, no. And I was like, okay, so are we gonna have cake? You know, I'm not thrilled about this spiritual thing because I have no idea what it is, right? She's like, yeah, we'll have cake. And she chuckles, Right? I said, so when and where she goes, it doesn't matter, the woman will call you, you don't have to be present. It's distance healing. I'm like, oh, this sounds wonderful, you know, like, yeah, this is real. And I'm total skeptic. And she pause and I'm at work and she says, so listen, right, here's the deal. I'm going to start at 10:30, don't make any appointments and don't make any life altering decisions for the next three days. And I'm like, huh, okay? And I was very polite. And she goes, by the way, before we hang up, if you feel off for a day or two, don't worry about it. Just give me a call and I'll talk you through it and tell you what's going on. And I said, horrific, thank you so much. Hang up the phone and two hours later she calls me back. She says, I've completed it and she gives me a whole rundown of my chakras and My this and my that and everything and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm taking some notes, and politely, I just kind of say, okay, thank you very much. Right? Like, it's not hitting me. It's not resonating at this point yet. Although I have to say she knew some things about me that I hadn't even told my future wife yet. So I found that as being odd. As we approach the Friday of that week, I start to feel stranger and stranger and stranger as the week progresses. Days go on. Two, three, four days, and we get to Friday. And here it is. The first time I see energy in a human form in my third eye. Okay, I'm not seeing this with my eyes. I'm not hearing with my ears. This is all here, third eye. And I start to feel these vibrations. And I see what appears to be a movie screen, like a panoramic movie screen inside my mind. And on that screen is a man. And that man says a sentence to me over and over. And here's what he says. He says, I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. So it's kind of like I'm part of the movie, But I'm sitting and I'm watching the movie, but he's talking to me. I don't know who the man is. I've never seen him before in my life. I don't know what he's talking about. You know, the first time I saw this, I figured it was just my imagination, so I don't take it too seriously. And then he comes back not long later and does the same exact thing. The movie screen open, and I see the big husky guy, beard, mustache, thick black hair. I can only see him from about the waist up. And he says, same thing. I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. And a little while later, he does it again. And then he does it again. And it's like a video loop that I'm watching over and over and over. Finally, I get a headache. I got a tremendous headache. And I leave work early, and I say I'm going home, and I don't have to be back till Monday. So, you know, I go to bed, and I wake up the next day, and it's Saturday. And from the second I got out of bed, there he is again. And it seemed as though every hour on the hour, he would return with the same message. Now it's starting to get disruptive. It's starting to scare me. It's starting to worry me. Why can't I stop this? If it's my imagination, I should just be able to distract myself, watch television, do something, right?

And couldn't he just provide a little more information if he's going to show up over and over and over again.

That's all I got. I got this eight second loop. And by Sunday, I don't know the exact time, but I will say it felt like every 10 minutes. I mean, it was literally just over and over and over again.

Now you asking questions like who?

No, because I don't believe in you. I'm saying I don't believe in any of this, you know? No, no, I don't even put it together with the spiritual clearing. Now, if we look at it right, I'm a kid who could see energy, right? Then I die and I cross over and then I bring a whole bunch of energy with me back to this side and they're all around me. And now I get the spiritual clearing and it just opens up that window again or that door, whatever you want to say. And here comes this big guy and he's not messing around. Like he is going to tell me this over and over. And by Sunday, I cannot function anymore. I can't drive. I can't have a conversation with anybody. I lose track of time. I lose track of the conversation. The breaking point for me, I was in a store and I was paying for my stuff and I gave the lady my credit card. I don't know what I did, but I must have done something really weird because the lady says, sir, are you okay? And I said, no, no, I'm not. And I took my card back and I went to the car and I sat down and I just put my head down. I said, I have been through so much in my life. I've battled addiction, I've battled this, I battled that. I faced death nine times and cheated it. And here you are. Now I'm effing crazy. So I really think I'm losing my mind. At that moment in time, I'm officially insane. I call my brother to make sure he has my will, my dnr, my kids will be taken care of. I'm getting ready to check out. This is my frame of mind in this moment. And now to top all of this off, I finally find this woman who I'm in love with. I know I'm meant to be with her and I have to tell her. I see things that aren't really there and I'm out of my mind. And if the story couldn't get any crazier My wife to be is a doctor of psychology and a doctor of neuropsychology pediatrics. Treat children as a clinical psychologist with a doctorate. And I am about to tell her I see things that aren't there. This is going to go over wonderfully. It's like I'm picturing my mind, you know, like, honey, how's the salmon? I see dead people. What do you want for dessert? You know? And she's just going to up and run for the hills. But that's not what happens at all. Because when I tell her what happens and I explain it, I get the vibrations and then this happens. And then the window opens up, or I should say the movie screen opens up. And there's this man, and he's big, he's husky, beard, mustache, dark black hair. Wearing this very distinct shirt from certain era of time very prominently. He says, I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. And he's like, almost dead center. Like kind of just almost right in front of me. Which is, I learned later, is a big deal. She says, well, that sounds like my dad. And I'm like, wait a minute. Wait. What do you mean, sounds like your dad? I said, your dad is dead. You told me he died over 10 years ago. Now I'm thinking you're crazy, and I need to get out of here. Check, please. I'm going to. You're nuts.

Oh, no.

You. You think these are dead people? So she's like, no, no, no, relax. You're probably a psychic medium and you don't know it. And I said, what the hell is a psychic medium? I know psychic. I don't know what medium is. And she goes on to explain that she has seen many, many mediums in her time. And her father always comes through, and he's very prominent and comes right in front of her face. And it's a very big deal because any medium will tell you that they cannot come directly in front. It's always got to be to the side. And the closer they get to the front, the more powerful and the more imposing they are in their messages. She says, I have heard when he comes across, it's very powerful. It takes the medium back. She's like, why don't we do this? And I said, what? She goes, let me take you to this medium who I've seen. She's coming back into our area for a short time. I'll book us two appointments. You can explain what happens, and you guys can just compare notes. I said, sounds great. Why not? She books us two appointments, and we go in. She says, are you going to go first? And I said, yeah, I'm going to go first. Either that or I'm going to run for the hills, because I'm petrified. I don't know what I want. Do I want to be insane or do I want this other medium thing? Insanity. At least I understand. I know what that is. Right? The unknown to me is mediumship. So I'm scared of the unknown. We're all scared of the unknown. But I'm not scared of what I understand. I don't like the idea that I'm crazy, but I can accept that. So I sit with the woman and I start to explain how things transpire when I see them. And I say, you know, first I see a lion. It shoots across the room. Then I see the swirlies and a side of my eye. And then I start to feel these vibrations. And if they're deep and they're low, I know it's going to be a really heavy message. And if they're high and tingly, I know it's going to be a light message. And then the screen opens up, and on the movie screen, I see. And she goes, stop. I said, what? She says, that's exactly the way I see it, too. She says, in fact, it's kind of the way we all see it. And I was like, really? And in that moment, I was relieved but scared at the same time. So although there was a relief that I'm not insane, there's this whole new thing that I don't understand. What are my responsibilities with this? What do I have to do with this now that I understand it? And how am I going to make this guy stop? And I'll tell you, the second I told my wife what he said, he went away. And later I learned when you deliver the message, they're gone. He just needed me to deliver the message. And then once I did, he was gone. And this huge feeling of relief came over me. And there's one more tidbit to the story. The guy that I saw looked a certain way. Remember I said the beard, the mustache, the shirt and everything. Well, she had this picture of her dad that it was in her home that I saw. And I was arguing. It doesn't look like that guy at all. This guy's husky and stuff. And she's like, that's a very, very old picture. And she showed me a picture on her phone, and it was exactly the guy that I saw. And I said, you know that guy. And she goes, that's my dad, silly. Ever since then, that woman that I met with the medium took me under her wing for the first year, and thank God she did, because she taught me how to, like, turn it on, turn it off, interpret things, how to deal with it. And that was a big turning moment in my believing and in my life.

That's amazing. And I'm sure it was by design that you connected with her. How does it turn on and off for you?

Well, to turn it on, you'll feel the energy in the room. And then whether or not you want to accept that and interact with the energy is my choice. It's almost like you can reject the call when you get it on your cell phone or accept the call. Basically, if I'm not going to deliver the message, and I have no intention of helping, they really have no reason to stick around. But when I was younger and they were really fighting for my attention, they were just happy. I could see that. And they were just like, you know, can you get a message? Can you get a message? That's always the thing. It's about getting a message to somebody. So they don't want to upset me or upset you or upset anybody. They just simply want to get a message across. That's what it's always about. After spending a year with my first mentor, it's my birthday again. And my wife says, what do you want to do for your birthday? She was like, you want to go to an island? You want to go to the Bahamas? You want to do this, Want to do that? And I said, no, no, no. All I want to do is go in the middle of nowhere where there's a ton of trees, and that's it. I just want to sit with trees and meditate, and I have no idea why. Now my thing is trees. I love trees. I love nature. I just have to be in it. I don't even care if we have a bathroom. We can have an outhouse and a shed. I don't care. I just need to be in this environment. And she's like, okay, so that's what we do. And we get a cabin in the middle of the woods, and we spend the whole time meditating. And during the trip, she takes out an illustration, a drawing, and I go, that's your dad. And she goes, yeah, I know. And I said, no, no, no, no. That is exactly the way I see him. That's the shirt he wears. That's the way the hair is. That's the way everything is when I see him. And she's like, well, that's interesting, because this was drawn by a spirit artist medium. And I was like, what you mean there's mediums that can draw? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, well, if that's not validation, what is? I gotta meet this man. Who is this man? And we go to her computer and we type in his name and his website comes up and it says, taking applications for a two year mediumship program with Medium Joe. And the deadline to apply is February 15th. That's my birthday. So again, it's always on my birthday. And she goes, are you going to apply? And I said, are you kidding me? If that's not divine intervention, I don't know what is. Now I'm talking like this. I'm all like, you know, into it. And so I submit an application, which is really just the beginning because then you get another application, and it's like a telephone book of essay questions because you have to explain everything. You have to know the difference between what's a premonition, what's a mediumship, what this is what that is. How does this happen? How do you feel? What comes first, what comes second, what comes third. It was all very, very specific in order for you to answer the questions, to get accepted after going through all the hurdles of getting in. And one of the things I have to say for him was his integrity was so impressive. Later on I found out because I didn't think I got in. So I called the assistant and she says, no, no, no, you don't understand. There's hundreds of applications and it's a several thousand dollars program because for two years. So you take hundreds and you times it by thousands. And look at, there's a lot of money there to be had, right? Well, I was chosen and I was the 11th person. That's it. And that's not because everybody else wasn't real. It was because he couldn't prove that they were real. And if you couldn't prove that you were real, you weren't getting in. He let hundreds of thousands of dollars go. I don't know that I could have done that. Honestly, I really don't. He could have just said, yeah, you're all real. Come on in, here we go. Last start. Set. Such and such. That's integrity. That's the real deal. And that's when I knew I was going to be with that guy forever. And I still am. He taught us about spirituality. He taught us not just mediumship, he taught us about, you know, integrity for one, how to be good people, how to meditate. And he taught us how to master the law of attraction. Meditate for manifestation. That was one of the things I was like, that can't be. That just doesn't sound right to me. And then I needed money for my kid really bad. I needed 10,000, otherwise he wasn't going to get into college. And I completely overlooked it. He was going away to school, about to move into his dorm, and the school said, you're short 10,000? And I was like, oh, my God. How did I make this error? The day before, I learned how to do this meditation for manifestation. I go through it properly. I do the whole thing at the end. I need 10,000, need it now. I need 10,000, need it now. I need 10,ousand, need it now. You're only supposed to do it twice a day. I did it six times that day. Absolutely nothing happened. And by the way, he says, allow 90 days for it to occur. But I don't have 90. I've got like three or four before. This kid's going to check into school, and I've got to have it paid or he's not getting in. And I'm not telling my kid he can't go to school. There's no way. So the end of the first day, my other son comes down and he gives me the mail. And I'm going through it, and it's bills, bills, bills, taxes. Oh, my God, are you kidding me? And I'm looking at a tax bill for my cpa, and I'm like, am I saying this wrong? Am I doing this wrong? Because I don't need bills. I need 10,000. I need it now. And so the second day, I do it again. I do everything perfectly, and I do it six times. And at the end of the second day, nothing happens. I sit down in my desk chair and I'm like, if I borrow from here and I take from here and I move this money here, I probably work it out and then I don't know what. And I decide to open the mail. I decide to open a mail to see what this tax bill looks like. Because I know when I do my income taxes, I owe. I'm a 1099 employee, and I always wind up paying. So I open up the tax bill, and it's always the same. I take out the first letter and it says, dra, thank you so much for your business. You owe us whatever it is. Okay? Put it down. I take out the second letter, and it says, the array. You've overpaid the federal government, $8200 something something cents. And I'm like, I overpaid. That means refund. I take out the third letter and it says, you've overpaid the state of New Jersey. 1,800 and something something dollars and something something cents. It's just barely over 10,000. And it was there on the first day and I wept like a child on my knees and thanked the universe for what it did for my son. I am a believer, to say the least. I've never gotten a refund, but it.

Showed up when it needed to.

It did.

It's amazing.

And I did it four more times after that, admittedly. But this is not only for money, obviously. We can use this for anything. Right? But I did have other instances, and it was like I was batting a thousand. By the fourth time, I started to feel guilty. It started to come so easily. And now I teach other people how to do it.

I've always had an interest in the law of attraction and have practiced it on some level, but not to that extent. That makes me feel like I should probably say that little meditation a few times.

I mean, you're a creator, right? We're co creators. Every religion actually gets that one thing right. You're a part of God. God's a part of you. They all have a version of it for that to ring true. Whether you want to say God or the universe or collective, whatever you want to call this creator that we're a part of, we're a part of that. And you've read Carl Jung, so you know that a little bit of you and a little bit of me and a little bit of the next person, well, we all make up what God is. So then we have a right to create whatever we want because we created everything collectively. So you can create for just you and your life, and then collectively we can create for everybody.

Absolutely. And that's what we're doing, having this conversation.

That's what we're doing.

I want to go back to when I asked you about whether you can turn it on or off. The mediumship, I suppose.

The mediumship, yeah.

The way that you talked about it, it sounded like there has to be a call. Right. Is it out of your control to turn it on? Like, obviously you can choose to pick up the call, but you can't ask for the call.

Well, no, I can't. Well, you can, you can and you can't. Let me explain. So in class we had to do readings. I don't do readings. Like, that's not My calling in life because. And I'll explain why in a moment. But when we're in class, we have to do reading. So what we do is we just open it up to anyone who wishes to come forth for the particular person that's sitting in front of us, and then we just go into our read and see who comes. I can't specifically say she wants to see her grandma. I need Grandma, you know, because grandma may not be able to come through. She may not want to come through. She may not be able to come through. I believe that on the other side, you have to have a certain amount of mediumship abilities on that side to meet with a medium on this side. I don't think it's an easy task for either one of us, you know, and the information comes in bits and pieces, but most of the time, it's pictures, you know, it's rarely words, if ever words. It's a puzzle that you start putting together. I had a spiritual awakening when I was writing the second book, and it was really, really a big one. I had been working on not getting rid of my ego, because I don't believe you can get rid of it. But I was working on it and trying to fracture it over and over again. And I finally got to a place where I lost my anger. And for me, that's a big deal, because that was my go to was anger for every day. If I was sad, I was angry, I was anxious, I was angry, I was anything. I was angry. So to lose that, having that massive breakthrough, when we're reading for someone and they're coming across, giving a message, the message is more often than not guilt, remorse, regret, I'm sorry. All these emotions that I don't want to have anymore, and I have to take them on in order to give them to someone else. And they stay with me for hours. It's not like I just end the reading and it goes away. And even my mentor does, I think three a day. It's taxing when you see mediums like, yeah, I'm a medium. I'm a medium. No, they're not. The mediums are like, yeah, I'm a medium. Please don't ask me to read, please, because it hurts. It is not easy. And I respect every real medium out there who does this, because it is not easy work. It is very taxing.

I haven't done an episode with somebody who talked about it in depth as much as you have so far on my podcast. And I was actually gonna ask if you would be willing to do kind of a demonstration of that.

But I stopped practicing simply because I finally got rid of those negative emotions.

Right.

And what would happen is coming from the background that I came from. One of the things that I learned because some people would get like nice lovey dovey messages and I would be like, how come I don't get those? Why do I get the suicides and the drug addicts and all this and the that and the killings? And my mentor said, you get what you know. And I was like, oh, that's not good. I didn't have a wonderful life up to this point. So, yeah, if spirit has one opportunity to get a message across, you're going to take it to the person who you think can deliver it the best and understand your feelings because that's what they're putting through you is their feelings. And that's how you, you have to do it. If you don't adopt, if you don't allow their energy to commingle with yours, you're not going to get the message. Right?

Yeah, I definitely don't want a message from you.

Yeah, okay.

That's wild.

I don't believe me.

I mean, I don't think that I have anything in, in my life that would present that sort of traumatic interaction with the other side. But I did have a cousin who. But I have a lot of peace about that situation. A lot of that came from the fact I had a visitation dream from my grandfather. And those kinds of dreams are very, very distinctly different than any other kind of dream than a lucid dream even. Well, I mean, it in itself is lucid, but there's a difference between a lucid dream and then a visitation dream.

And you know the feeling.

Yeah, it's undeniable. And you wake up and you're still just like immersed in that energy that is just so. It's like palpable. So I've had a visitation dream. I know what that experience is like. And my aunt had a visitation dream from him because it was her son. He said that he was fine. You know, don't think that I'm suffering eternally. You know, I'm okay here on the other side. And that gave me a lot of closure on the situation. And that was way before I even knew anything about near death experiences. Like, my frame of reference was Christianity, which told me that if you take your own life, you're just going to suffer eternally, you know, heaven or hell. Yeah, yeah. But that dream that she had rang more true to me than my entire life's worth. Of reference, developing.

Oh, yeah. And, you know, you can speak to your own relatives. Anyone can speak to their own relative through dreams or through synchronicities and various things. You don't have to be a medium to speak to your own relative. Anybody that you are very, very close to. People learn how to do things, how to communicate, and sometimes I help them with that. We find commonalities when they were alive, and then you start to look for those things after death, and they start to present themselves.

There is one person who passed away and I dearly miss on, like, a regular basis. But I have peace that he's okay. You know, Like, I feel like I am familiar enough with the other side to not worry about him. But I just miss him, you know, I just wish he was here for like a minute. So I think that anytime it comes up in conversation between me and a medium and I have, like, that potential open door, you know, I always kind of wish that I could have a moment with him because I have not, up to this point in my life, experienced any mediumship abilities of my own. So, I don't know. I'm hoping someday he comes through for me.

Look for that commonality. Look for that item, that thing that you guys both saw or experienced or used to do on a regular basis. I'll give you an example. My aunt passed away, and I was with her two daughters having dinner after the death. And they were reminiscing about a time when she. I don't remember the whole story, but it was something like, there were dimes where there weren't dimes. It was about the coin itself. And I always loved my aunt, and she was like second mother to me. You know, I asked her and I said, you know, what's the thing with the dimes? And dimes started to appear. I don't have any cash in my house. We use credit, debit cards. We don't have even dollars. Never had change. I got up from bed and underneath my butt was a dime. And then I went into the bathroom and there was a dime. And then another day, I come into my office and there's a dime sitting right on top of my computer. And they would just. They're everywhere. I've got a jar today. This is years later, I've got a jar of dimes. There's no quarters in there. There's no nickels in there. There's dimes. It's filled with dime. And you can find that item that is between the two of you that means something, and then allow that to Be the message that comes across.

My thing with him was satellites in the. At night. Yeah. Yeah. And every time I do see one, I do think of him, and I do have that experience, but it's not enough. Not enough.

Well, tell him, tell him and let's see what he comes up with.

Yeah. Yeah. I have this rock.

Yeah.

If you can see it.

My satellite.

Yeah. And there's, like, this little line that goes through right here. And on the line, there's this. This little dot in between these two dots.

Yep.

What we used to do is we would find two stars and we would find a satellite that looked like it was traveling towards two stars. We'd make, like, a goal post in between.

Right?

Yeah. But it's really hard to tell, you know, because, like, if the trajectory is off by, like, one degree, it could start here and look like it's going to travel through the goal. But sometimes it would go. And it would go and go right outside of it, and we're like, oh. So we had this, like, satellite game.

You know, but also, you know, it's hard to find a satellite in your backyard. Right. But you can find a rock in places where you would not normally see that type of a rock.

Yeah.

Like in your shoe or in your bed or at the bottom of the closet.

Yeah. Yeah.

Might be easier for him to do something like that than drop a satellite.

Right. I wake up tomorrow and I go outside and there's just a satellite crash in our park.

All right, thanks, buddy. I'm good with the rock.

I got the message. Oh, that's so funny. Right?

When. When I touch the dime, I get a feeling either I'm doing something right or I'm doing something wrong or something of that nature.

This has been an excellent conversation, and I. I mean, I love connecting with you, and I appreciate that you took time to share your story and insights with me and my audience.

I can't thank you enough. No, thank you for having me. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. As I promised in the beginning of this interview, I want to share with you what I think is the most interesting thing about near death experiences. Dr. Mary Neal said something that made a deep and lasting impact on me. She was talking about how each and every person has a different experience on the other side. I mean, sure, there's a lot of similar elements. I like to call them common denominators, but it's these more personalized elements that are unique to each individual, like the colors and the environment and who they encounter. She said that God orchestrates these experiences that are so perfectly tailored to what speaks beauty in that person's heart to convey to us that we are intimately known and loved. So the elements that make each story unique is what I find to be the most interesting thing about near death experiences. And I want to hear what you think is the most interesting thing about near death experiences. Drop it in a comment below. Hit that like button and if you want to hear more stories like these, I put out interviews like this every week, so go ahead and subscribe if you'd like to catch another episode in the future. Blessings to you all and I hope to catch you on my next episode. Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. If you loved this episode, please consider leaving a review if you're listening on YouTube. Don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe so we don't lose each other and to share the link with somebody who can appreciate this message. Blessings to you all and I hope to catch you on my next episode.