Life-Changing Advice from Near Death Experiencer. Ray Catania Part 2

You can create your own life and create it to be the way you want it to be. You just have to kind of learn the system, learn how the universe works. And once you do, you can implement this for yourself and you can get yourself out of any situation. I mean, look at where I came from and you know, and where I am today. If you can do this just for yourself, you can just change your own life. Imagine if we all came together as a collective and made a difference. Now we change everything.

During your journeys you've met, you said one divine being. Tell us about that being. This is beyond with Heather Tesh, where we examine near death experiences and life itself, hopefully making this life a little better. Hello everybody. Welcome. And welcome back to my guest, Ray Catania. Hello, Ray.

Hi Heather. Thank you for having me back.

So wonderful to have you back. You told such a compelling story in part one. And for anybody listening, you can stay here because we've got a lot to talk about. But at some point you want to go back and listen to Ray's story of his near death experience and then discovering suddenly that these energies, dead people were reaching out to him and just so fascinating. Ray is the author of the Atheist and the Afterlife and then a follow up book and we'll talk more about that at the end. Ray, there are so much I want to cover. It's hard to know where to start. But why don't we start here? You, during your near death experience, you went into the light. What is the light?

Wow. The way the light is the entity that it connects us to, the creator of all sorts of imagine if you will. I call it the collective consciousness. And it's a little piece of all of us that we come where we come together as one. So in other words, a little piece of you, a little piece of me, a little piece of everybody is what make what I believe. This is my belief. This is what makes up God as a whole. And that light was representative of that energy. And I was able to see it and feel it and be a part of it, calling it a light. It's not a light. It was a part of source, it was a part of God. It was a piece of God that I was allowed to enter into. And I mean that's just the best way I can describe it. And it was the most amazing thing ever, ever. And I've done a lot of drugs and it was fantastic. So.

It sounds incredible, you and everybody who says it. I just love kind of living vicariously through you. And you describe just that sensation of Going there. One thing you talk a lot about in your book is the importance of meditation, both in your journey as well as you encourage the rest of us to do it. And when you meditate, you can very quickly now, through practice, enter into these different realms. Yeah. What kinds of things do you see in these realms?

So the way I see it, and again, this is much of my personal opinion and experience that I speak from. Let's call this where we live right now, third realm, if you will. And we'll say when you die, immediately, that's the fourth realm. And then there's a fifth. And those are really the only three that I've ever seen or know anything about that I could really share anything about. So there are other people that have. They say that they've seen others, and perhaps they have. So the way I look at it is in that fourth realm, when you die, it's almost like, well, there's a lot of things that transpire there. First is what I believe is a life review. And you're. You start, you become all knowing, and you know all the things you did right and all the things you did wrong. I don't have a sense of a heaven or a hell or a punishment or anything like that. Your punishment is the karma that transcends all realms, and it comes with you. And if you do incarnate, I believe that you will incarnate in a very bad situation if you hurt of a lot, lot of people when you are living. And that's kind of the way I see heaven and hell as being more of an experience and less of an actual destination. Now, the Buddha taught us, when he was on his deathbed, he said to his disciples, I won't be returning, and this is my seventh life, and I won't be returning. And it wasn't because it was his seventh life, but it was because he became enlightened in one life. So if we go from birth to death and we can become enlightened in that time, well, then we can go to the fifth realm, and we don't go to the fourth anymore, and we don't get recycled, so to speak, and come back. That's the way I view it. So the other thing the Buddha taught us is in order to become enlightened, we have to experience all emotions on the spectrum, even the ones that come from trauma and pain and, you know, some of the really, really bad ones. So when we go through this really bad stuff, it's not for nothing. It's so that you can evolve and reach that enlightened state. Because if you meet people and you speak to them, you know how there are some people that everything's just been given to them and it's been very easy and you know, God bless, great for you. But they're not going to reach that enlightened state until they have an experience where they have the good and the bad. Right. So for me, what was I. I'm not enlightened by any means. I'm a work in progress, I'll admit that. But what I was missing in the middle of my story was love. So I had experienced all the negatives that anybody could experience, but I didn't have the other side. I didn't have that unconditional love until I met my wife. I didn't have that feeling of being loved and knowing what that experience was like. So that really broadened my perspective on all things spiritual because I had now had all these experiences that allowed me to evolve to a higher level of consciousness. There's something that Native Americans put their, their, their children, their male children, I think when they're about 14 or 15, they do something called a vision quest or hablachia is the way they, what they call it. And they take the kid and they make a 10 by 10 square in the middle of the wilderness under a tree. Usually they take everything away from the kid. No food, no clothes, no water, no nothing. And they leave him for three days. They pick him up on the fourth day. By the fourth day he will have hallucinated or seen spirit who will tell him what his purpose in life is. So this is something that they go through purposely. Now, this is obviously a very uncomfortable situation. Right. But they go through it so that they can find their purpose. So when we get hit with these tragedies, traumas, we lose loved ones or something terrible happens. It's not for nothing it's part of your evolution. And yeah, it sucks, but the faster you get through it, the faster you can get to the other side and get to that evolutionary state that you want to be in.

And of course, in your book, you talk a lot about that and how we learn more from our pain than we do from pleasure.

Oh yeah.

And I can certainly echo that in my life, even though I didn't like it along the way.

Right. We don't like it, but if it wasn't there, we wouldn't be who we are.

Yeah, that's so true. So during your journeys, you've met, you said, one divine being. Tell us about that being.

So it was at a really Tough time I had. I was working with my first mentor, and she was kind of teaching me the ropes about mediumship and connecting with the spirit guides. And I was doing it very often. I was practicing a lot because it was new to me, and I was excited about it. And I started to get premonitions that were very painful to watch. One in particular was a woman who was murdered. And she was coming to me, I guess, to ask me to help her with her case, perhaps, but I didn't know what to do. And. And then I got another one, which was a horrific person doing something terrible to a child. And I don't want to go into any detail about it, but that broke me. And when I started to see these things, and they were very vivid, very clear, and I could see, you know, the house, and I. And I could almost try to figure out, you know, where is this place? Which is what I was trying to do. Figure it out. And. And I was just really like, this is not a blessing. This is a curse. Take this away. I don't want it. I don't want this. I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to help these people. And in that moment, it was. I'm going to try to describe this. I really don't know how. An energy entered the room that was larger than life. I mean, just. Just. I explained it like it was an eclipse because I could not look into the light without it hurting my eyes, but there wasn't. I know there's nothing there, but it's there. And I don't know how to. I got nothing to explain that with. It's on the movie screen. You can't see it, but it's right there. And it was so blinding, so overpowering, and the energy that came with it just knocked me to the floor, like I could not stand up. And I just saw in my mind's eye. I saw it like what appear to be an arm, because this is just giving me a visual so that I understand it. And he said, I'll take all of this from you. And he left. It didn't say the words. It was just an understanding. I've got this for you. You're not ready for this. And I was just on the floor crying. But all of a sudden I had this feeling like, what was. Who was that? And there's a chapter in the book called Jesus Never Speaks. And this was what I. I don't know that it was Jesus, but I will tell you it was a divine being, because it's unlike anything I've ever encountered before. I could not, like, communicate the way it would be with any other energy being from any realm. And it lasted a millisecond and changed my entire life because I wasn't scared anymore. He just took away the fear. He took away everything. And it was just like, here you go, I've got this. You're not ready for this. I got this. Don't worry about it. And for validation purposes, I got an email I subscribed to Experian where if a pedophile moves into or a sex offender moves into your city, you get the email? I got the email and it was the guy in the vision.

Wow.

What did I keep my kids home for a while?

That's incredible. I do find it so fascinating when people bring up Jesus because he shows up in a lot of near death experiences, or in your case, this experience. Yet it's a very different being than who we've been taught it seems.

Yeah, very, very much so. You know, I think that we have divine beings who, like the Buddha, like Jesus, those that are at that level that just have, you know, abilities that we can't even comprehend. And, you know, how, what or why we they, you know, I mean, I don't like to get into that because then it goes into religion. I don't want to go there and upset anyone because it might be different. But there's no question that if you get to be in his presence or any of their presence, you will know and it will be so overpowering. But at the same time, it'll feel good. And, and, and within a second, a millisecond, everything was just taken away. All the, all the bad stuff was taken away. Everything good was left. Just incredible.

Ray, from what you've learned, a couple of questions. Who are we and what is consciousness?

So consciousness is what I believe connects all of us. Consciousness is the unifying factor. I believe it's not been proven yet. It's a theory we're all looking for. What is this unifying factor that connects all things? I believe it's consciousness because we can use our consciousness to make things happen. We can also use our consciousness to read the energy that's around us and interpret energy that's around us. Remember that there 69% of the universe is dark energy. Right when we live, we. Our brain creates the mind, but the mind controls the brain and the mind emits consciousness or creates consciousness. And it's an energy that we release. We. If somebody says you have a great aura, that's the energy that's coming off you. Right. So where does this energy go when we die? Well, I tried to figure that out because I'm the biggest skeptic in the world and I have to have some sort of a basis to understand everything. So here's this energy that when we die, needs a place to go. Because the first law of thermodynamics, since this is science, is that all? There's no new energy created in the universe. And energy can never be destroyed or leave the universe. It just gets recycled. So where does it go when we die? Well, we have this energy called consciousness. And then we have this dark energy that we have no idea where it comes from. And it makes up 69% of the universe. That's a lot. So that could be many realms, many, many different timelines, realms, whatever you want to call it. And in order to. And it's right here. It's not like it's in this far away place. It's dark energy is between you and me and it's between me and Pluto and you and another planet. You know what I mean? It's everywhere. And learning to just tap into that source a little bit can grant you so much information. It's like the first time you take your computer out of the box, it's limited to the programs that are on it, but once you plug it into the Internet, then it's like, wow, there's a lot out here. And it's when you hit that connection and anybody can do this. When you hit that connection and you, you can get information, it's blows away anything. And all you want to do is meditate and get more information. Like there was a. I didn't want to watch Netflix. I didn't want to know about tv, I didn't care. All I wanted to do is meditate and see what was out there because I couldn't wait to see what was going to come next. After all the bad stuff was taken away, it just became a place to. Of enjoyment.

Which is of course why you encourage us all to meditate.

Oh yeah.

You mentioned also in your book the First Law of Thermodynamics, and as you were just talking about it, energy can never be created or destroyed. But one thing I read in your book, which I hadn't considered, is I've always thought of that with our essence, you know, that we go from who we are here to somewhere else, our consciousness. So that's never destroyed. But I found it really interesting because you also said our thoughts, our feelings and our words which that indicates that those are extremely powerful things.

Yeah, very much so. So thought and speech patterns are one of the very first thing that I work on with people who come to me for coaching. Because what we think, we become. And the Buddha taught us that, right? It's his quote. And there it's a hundred percent true. What you think about the way you look at life, the way you perceive it, and then the way you interpret it back to yourself. Anything can be a positive, anything can be a negative. Right. We were just talking about tragedies and traumas being the best things that's ever happened to us, not the worst things. So it's perception. So when you change your perception, it changes your truth. And when you change your truth, you've changed your reality. So it's really that simple, that nothing is either good nor bad. Thinking makes it so. Shakespeare, Hamlet, great quote. Unbelievable. What he's saying there is. It's how you perceive what is good and what is bad that's going to determine. So if you know that, project what you want to come back to you don't project the negative, because then the negative comes back to you. And I'll give you an example. During COVID a lot of people are like, oh, I just. I don't want to be sick anymore. I don't want to be sick anymore. I just. I just don't want to be sick anymore. So if we look at that pattern, what are we sending up into the universe? So the universe doesn't speak English or French or Spanish. It speaks vibration. So in that sentence, what's being interpreted into what's being turned into a vibration and sent out, it's I, which is sense of self. And I don't want to be what, sick anymore. So the other visual is sick. So you have the visual of I, the visual of sick. This is what you're sending out. Guess what? You're getting back. You're not getting better, you're going to get more sick. But if you say I want to be healthy, what you're sending out now is I and your picture or your image of health. So if you project that, you get back health now, we develop an ego, which is a sense of self. By the time we're 10, we've already predetermined our thought and speech patterns. They're already programmed into us, and usually they're not so great. So if we don't look at that and make those changes consciously, we can go through life stating everything in the negative tense. And if you do that, boy, are you gonna have a lot of negative stuff because what you put out, you will get back. There's no question. It's how the law of attraction works, the law of vibration. It's how the universe works.

It's such great advice and logically I get that. But I'm so guilty of some of those things. I had a recent guest, Kellen Flutiger, and he said notice and choose. And I'm trying to do that where you notice when I'm doing those kinds of things and then choose to do something differently.

Yeah. I call that retraining the brain, which is really retraining the mind. And it's an exercise that you can work on from now until forever and never really master it. But you can get it to a point where you're having this amazing life and it's because you've literally changed the way you see the world and you're putting out things that you're going to get back. It's. It's complicated, but not at the same time. You know what I mean? Like, it's.

Right.

It's really interesting how easy it is just to change your life by changing your perception. Because if. If bad things become good, then all things become good and you'll get more good things. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get more tragedies and traumas because you're not going to state that you're. You're stating you're changing your happiness, you're changing your state of being, and that's going to project more positivity. And there's where it comes back that makes sense.

Absolutely. And we can even see it when we're around certain people because under the same circumstances, one person's complaining and the other person's just loving life. And you do say in your book too surround yourself with the right people. And I do think that that's such a great example. You want to be around people that teach us to uplift our ways.

Yeah. If you put yourself in a group of people who limit themselves, then if, even if you're the best, you're going to be the best of the limited group.

Right.

Time for you to get a better group so that you're at the bottom and you can work your way up again and then you're at the top of a better group, then you get another group. And this is evolution. It's not. You're not hurting people. You can still stay friends with every. Still love everybody. But the ones that you see day to day to day have got to lift you up, not bring you down.

I think that's some of the best advice because we become like the people we hang around, which is what you're saying.

Yeah.

You talked about so many things in your book. You know, we're never going to get to all of them. But a couple of things that stood out to me toward the end of the book is, is you said, and this is chapter 35 for anybody that wants to look it up. But you said, do at least one thing a day that benefits you, but also do at least one thing a day that only benefits someone else. Can you explain that?

Sure. It's just something that I've tried to live by to the best of my ability. Taking care of yourself is extremely important to those that love you. It's not all about you. You're not really being selfish when you take care of yourself. You're doing it so you could take care of your children. Right. When, when the, when you're in an airplane and that thing drops, what do they tell you? Right. Put it on the kid first. Right. I mean, put it on yourself first so that you can put it on the kid, right?

Yes.

If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of the kid. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of the people you love. And if you don't take care of yourself, you're going to hurt the people that love you. So every single day, do something for yourself to better yourself. It'll make you feel better about you, and it's going to make everyone else feel better about you. Then very unselfishly, do something only for someone else. And this is for them and you and your relationship with them. But it also puts out this karma that you want to come back. We want to create a pay it forward type society where we do kind things for people. When we become evolved, we're expected to teach the other people how to evolve. It's like a gift, but you have to give back now in order for others to be able to do that too. And then there's always going to be somebody that knows more than me, and I'm going to be a student of that person, and so on and so forth. And this is how we can evolve as a society. And we can. We really have to acknowledge that we are one entity. We are one consciousness, one source. We can't stay this polarized and trying to, you know, attack each other and harm each other because, you know, that's. That's just going to create more chaos. And I call those separators and separators. When you define yourself as a, as a something, whether it's a political party or a race, creed, color or anything, you're separating yourself from everybody else and we can't do that. We're one thing, we're spirit, that's it. And we're all in this together. And if we come together and we pay things forward and we do things for ourselves, do things for others and keep that going, you're going to see society change and we'll get that needle tipped in the right direction, as Eckhart Tolle would say, and hopefully just, you know, keep it there so that we can evolve as a society. If you can do this just for yourself, if you can just change your own life, imagine if we all came together as a collective and made a difference. Now we change everything.

I love that and I believe today that you are helping more than one person. They are benefiting certainly from all that you are sharing with us. Ray. I know people are going to want to learn more about you. So tell us about your website. And then of course you've got two books that you've written. So just share all that in your coaching and so forth.

So we'll start at the website, it's raycatanya.com and up there you can learn more about the books I've written two so far or published two so far. I should say first one, Atheist in the Afterlife. And that's the beginning of my story that we talked about earlier. And the second one is you're still alive now act like it. And that is more of a guide book to. Well, the first book I took you through how I got there to that point. And then the second book is what did I Do after I got there to help others and myself evolve further. So they're very different books but I really like. I think they came out good if I say so myself.

Well, I've only read the first one or listened to it and it's excellent. So I'm looking forward to also picking up the audiobook for night too.

Thank you very much. And then if anybody's in, I do private coaching as well and that that can be arranged through my website through the contact screen. So thank you. Thank you for letting me say that. I appreciate it.

Oh, it's. I, I want to share your story with other people because I think it's one that's really going to touch a lot of people and, and there's so Much practical things in there that we can learn, the advice on, meditating and so forth. What is one thing that you hope people will take away from this?

Well, I think it was the last thing that we just touched on as the most important. But if we had to choose something else, I would also say the fact that you can create your own life and create it to be the way you want it to be. You just have to kind of learn the system, learn how the universe works. And once you do, you can implement this for yourself and you can get yourself out of any situation. I mean, look at where I came from and, you know, and where I am today. It's just completely different. And yeah, it was many, many years in the making, but you don't. It doesn't have to be that way for you because you can have somebody help you get there. And I think everybody should have a mentor or a teacher that's helping them get to their next level. But the thing to remember is that you can change any aspect, any aspect of your life. You can change it. It's up to you to. You have to put in the work, but you are in control.

One thing I do admire about you is you have put in the work.

Whether I like it or not, you've done it.

And that's gotten you where you are today. And there are a lot of us that. It's like, I just want to get there.

There's no. For this one.

Yeah. Well, you are very encouraging to all of us, Ray. I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed talking to you. And I was telling you, too, after we recorded part one and before we did this one, I can just feel your energy, and it's. It's really incredible. You definitely have a gift, and I'm so grateful that you're sharing all of this with all of us.

Thank you so very much, Heather. I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you.

You are so welcome. Thank you, Ray. I appreciate it. You have a wonderful day.

Thank you. You too.

As I said already, just when I think my guests can't get any more amazing, along comes Ray with this utterly incredible story. And also just an amazing human being. I literally felt his energy. And I'm so curious if some of the rest of you felt that energy from him as well. Please let me know if you did and share that in the comments. Also in the comments, you may just want to let me know. You know what stood out the most to you. We talked about the realms. We talked about the light consciousness. The first law of thermodynamics. And then of course his story from part one, his near death experience. I mean the ability to hear from what he calls energy. But the dead and just being such a skeptic and then whoa, he's just bombarded with this in his life. So yes, just let me know any thoughts you have. Put those in the comments if you prefer just to say I made it, do that please. That means I made it to the end and I always really appreciate that as well. And then if you haven't and you liked it, please give it a like like. And hopefully a lot of you are subscribing by now, but if there's a friend that you want to share this with, that's always really helpful too. Remember, you can find all of your helpful information in the description. You'll find out more there about Ray and you can connect with him via his website, his books, that sort of information. Also a link there. You'll find it to part one and you'll find a link to all of my episodes there. Thank you so much everybody. I am so grateful that you are here today and here to hear this message from Ray and thank you just for coming back week after week. You have a wonderful day and I hope I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining me on beyond with Heather Tesh. Please add comments and questions you'd like future guests to answer. Also, if you liked what you heard, please hit the thumbs up button and subscribe. That'll help keep this podcast going. You can also go to beyond with Heather Tesh to look for more episodes.