Near Death Experiencer (Ep. 9) - Ray Catania

Sam. Welcome to Near Death Experiencers Podcast. I am your host, Propagate this light. Stay in tune to our next guest. Hey, everyone, how are you? I'm Ray Catania and Prop. Thank you so much for having me here today as your guest. Getting a little feedback loop. Prop. I don't know if you're there, but I'm hearing myself two, three times. There's a little bit of an echo going on. All right, let's try again. Let's see if that's any better. All right. Okay, I think we're good. All right, Let's check again. Testing, 1, 2, 3, 4. It's. It's repeating what I say, like 20 seconds afterwards. I probably. If it's sounding good to you guys out there, I'll try to work with it. Let's see if I try like this, if this is going to be better, if I can take that out. Okay. All right. All right. Sorry about that. My apologies. So, like I said, I'm Ray Catania. I'm here to tell you a little bit about my NDE and a few other stories that go before the NDE and more importantly, what happened after the nde, because I think that that's really special. So before I start to tell you about my nde, I guess I gotta. I'm gonna give you a little bit of information about my background and when I was. When I was young, I. I guess you could say I grew up in a home that wasn't particularly family friendly or family oriented, although it tried to be. It was a lot of remnants and arguments and fighting and whatnot, and a lot of things that I really didn't want and any part of. So as a young kid, I would try to avoid that and by hiding or isolating myself for very long periods of time, sometimes in the basement, sometimes in my room, sometimes outside. But I really didn't want to get involved in, you know, what was going on. So when you isolate yourself for multiple hours at a time, it's similar to. When I look back at it now, it's similar to what the yogis do when they do a weekend retreat and they know they're not going to speak to anyone. Keep in mind, I have no cell phone that they weren't invented yet. I don't have a television. So I'm literally staring at a wall for hours. And when you do that six hours a day, seven days a week or more, you can start to see what makes up the wall. It's not just the wall anymore. You can begin to see the Energy that is all things. And this didn't scare me at all. In fact, I could. Some of those energies turned out to be what I thought were my imaginary friends. They were. We. We could communicate. I could hear them, I could see them. They didn't look like people. They just looked like lines that were moving about. And of course, if I told anybody, which I made the huge mistake of doing, so growing up in a Christian home, I pretty much got my butt kicked for that. So I would never bring that up again. I was never going to tell anybody that I could see things, that I might be able to perceive things a little bit differently, and that, you know, my. My consciousness was at work because it sounded too crazy to them. They wouldn't accept it, and so I suppressed it. So many years goes by, and growing up in the home with a lot of chaos, chaos became my comfort zone. So what you grow up with, you kind of become. Because we don't know any better. So in the early days of my life, if there was no chaos around me, I didn't know how to function. I didn't know how to act, I didn't know how to react, you know, so I would have to create some chaos because I was more comfortable there, or I would look for chaos and then drop myself in the middle because I could navigate those waters. If there was none, I did not know how to handle it. So, you know, as life goes on and I get into my teens and I start to approach my 20s, I up the ante with trying to create more chaos, be in places that. Where more chaos would exist. And it is at 20, when I have my NDE, I'm putting myself in places where I could potentially die or be killed. And I would choose jobs where I would work for people who made their money different ways that were perhaps illegitimate. I can remember, you know, being in the middle of a shootout and trying to get out of the bar. I had a lot of different, like, situations where I should be dead, but there was always someone or something that guided me to safety. And again, I'm not going to tell anybody that I have this imaginary friend who can get me out of really terrible situations, because then they're going to think I'm nuts and they're going to put me away. But even one time I manifested a car accident. And the reason I did so is because I didn't want to go to my job anymore. And you can manifest good things and bad things. Let me point that out. And I had a friend who had had this car accident he got a lot of money because he sued the people. And this, don't, don't try this now because this is like way back when you could still get money if you sued somebody and you were in a car accident. So I'm thinking to myself, how can I have this car accident just badly enough that I get hurt, but I don't die? And I'm actually playing this over and over in my mind and I'm watching it happen and I don't know, but I'm manifesting this truth, this reality. And sure enough, I'm driving to work and it does happen. This car cuts me off and the car went back. I didn't collide with that particular car, but because I am this different person, I had to tell that guy what I thought about him. So I had to pull up alongside and yell at him and say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I wasn't paying attention to is what was right in front of me. And traffic came to a dead halt. And I drove right into the car that was behind me. The car behind me hits me, another car hits that car, which hits me again, sends me into the left lane of. This is three lanes of traffic on a highway. The car spins around, I'm getting hit, and the voice is saying, get under the dash, under the dash, under the dash. And I put my head. And we didn't have to wear seatbelts yet. It wasn't, it wasn't a law. We had them, but nobody wore them. So I managed to get under the dash and I had my, my hands over my head protecting my head. And I just got hit and hit and spun. And eventually the car was faced the wrong way on the highway, half on the divider. And that's when everything stopped. And I remember the policewoman who got there first, there was a couple of bystanders who were trying to help me. And she said to them, is he with us? And I knew that meant, you know, is he dead? So I tried to like just kind of move my hand a little bit so I could say I'm, I'm still here. And I firmly believe that if I didn't get under the dash that I was not going to get through that car accident. So it is the. Let me go back to the NDE. I'm 20 years old, I'm still living in my parents house at this time. And there's a fire in the kitchen. And what's happening is the stove is located directly under my bed. So the bedroom's the top floor, the kitchen is the bottom floor. And the stove is leaking gas as I'm sleeping. And this is going on all night long, but I don't know it. I don't notice it. So the gas is rising, and I'm inhaling the gas. In the morning, my mother gets up to turn on the stove. And there was like a big fireball. It went. It went out relatively quickly, but the wall caught fire. And it wasn't the fire and it wasn't the smoke that. That harmed me in any way. My father was able to put that out the way I'm told the story very quickly. But the gas was rising all night long. So I'm just inhaling gas. So I hear the fire trucks, I hear the police cars. I hear all this commotion downstairs. And I go to get up out of bed to see what's going on in my house. And I find that I can't move. About 80% of my body. It's paralyzed. My legs feel like they weigh a ton. My. My head, I couldn't get it off the pillow. My face. I couldn't talk. I couldn't scream. So luckily, my arms were working. Why, I don't know. But I pulled myself to the edge of the bed. Each time I got a little closer, I would pass out again. And then one of the noises from downstairs would wake me up. And I would pull myself again another inch or two and. And finally I got to the edge of the bed and I tumbled out. And when I tumbled out, I fell face first. And as soon as I hit the floor, I did not feel any pain, which was very strange because I knew I hit that floor. I sort of felt it, but there was no pain. And it's a very difficult thing to explain, but at this point, I'm not in that body anymore. In that moment when I hit that floor, my body was dead and I was above it. I was in a neutral corner of the room. The room is a square. It's a perfect square. And I'm in a neutral corner looking down at my lifeless body. And I'm not scared at all. In fact, this feels great. I don't know what's going on, but I know it feels really good. And I'm trying. The colors are more lively and vivid, and you hear things clearer. Every sense just feels like it's intensified. And in the other corner of the room is this beautiful white light that's just like a tunnel or a spotlight. And this tunnel or this light is so much more than a light. It was euphoric. It was Beautiful. It was love. It was every positive emotion you could ever experience. And I was one with that light. And I know this sounds crazy, I know, but I was. My energy had left my body and become part of that light. And there was a being at the end of the light. And I don't know who it was, man or woman. Maybe the one who was always there to help me. You can't tell. But that person told me it was okay to come into the light. It's safe. And I believed him. And trust me, I didn't believe too many people about anything in my life. So I started to go in. And as I got farther and deeper into the tunnel, the euphoria increased and increased and it was more. More euphoric. And I. I trying to think of a better word, but that's the best adjective I have. It's just complete blood bliss. And I wanted to get to the other side. I wanted to see what was at the other side. But in that moment, my father came rushing into the room, pushed the door open, and he picked me up. And he's holding me, and he's screaming for the paramedics, and he's crying and he's distraught, My son. My son. Help my son. And, you know, we didn't have a relationship where he would ever put his arms around me. So, you know, he may have hugged me a handful of times, and one of them is when I'm dead. So I. I wanted that. I wanted to have that type of relationship with him. And I asked if I could go back. If I said I can't, I don't think I can leave him like that. Can I go back? And I asked more than once. And eventually I. I woke up, and I was not in that room anymore. And I was not in his arms anymore. I was in the living room, and I was on the floor, flat on my back. And the paramedics were doing all kinds of stuff with all their gadgets and their tools. And I was like, guys, guys, I'm fine. I'm fine. And they're like, you're. You're far from fine. Just, you know, settle down and relax. And I was like, but did you. Did you see the light? Did you hear the voice? I mean, do you feel this? Do you feel this? And now they're looking at me. You know, each one's looking at the other like, what's going on here? You know, thinking I'm insane or something. And I know this is time to shut my mouth, otherwise I might wind up in the wrong Type of hospital. So I don't say another word. They take me off to, to put me in the ambulance and they take me to the hospital. Now, me being who I am, a total complete skeptic, a non believer of anything. I was raised Christian. However, I rebelled against that. I rebelled against anything that my parents gave me or taught me. So I would go to the extreme other side. And I thought we lived, we died, everything goes black and that's that, it's over. So I held that until that day. And even on that day I tried to hold on to it. But it became really hard because the someone or something is saving my life. And now I have a near death. And I come back, you know, it's getting harder and harder to hold on to this. So I try to tell somebody that what I saw. You're crazy, you're out of your mind. Don't ever tell anybody that you're out of your mind. That did not happen. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what I would get, okay? It never happened. So I would put that, I would compartmentalize these things and put them in a box and lock it up and throw away the key and forget that it ever happened. And I justified it to myself. I figured, well, I fell in front of a window. It was probably a sunny day and the sunlight was the white light and I inhaled gas fumes all night long. So I was probably hallucinating and I hallucinated the other things. There you go, it's gone. And I lived that way with many things. So. But in the back of my mind, I kind of knew that I wasn't afraid to die because I had seen and felt something that was incredible. And the front of me, yeah, would have said, no, I don't believe in any of that crap. No, that's nonsense. But in the back of my mind, I think I knew exactly where I was. Now again, we didn't have computers yet. I can't look this up. I have no nowhere to go to. I don't know, I don't even know that it's a near death experience. I don't know that it's even a thing. All I know is something really strange happened to me and I have no one to consult. So I become, I start up in the ante and up in the ante as far as life and death situations because it's almost like becoming a high for me. And I must have cheated death I don't even know how many times. Like I said, I shouldn't be here. So after the nde, I. Things change. When I move out of that house, I moved out of that house and I went to my own apartment. It was the first time I ever had my own apartment. Early 20s, I'm a bachelor and I'm like, wow, this is going to be great. You know, and we're in a parties all the time and girls over, and it's going to be great. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of that ever happened. From the moment I moved into that house or that apartment, it felt like it was filled with people. Every night when I came home, it felt like it was filled with people. And I would see the lines like I saw shooting across the white walls. Everything would feel. I could feel those lines, they would shoot across, and I could feel them in my body. And you vibrate, and you vibrate, and it's physical becomes physical. You could get nauseous and it's hitting me. And all these different energies are in this place. But I'm like, you're not real. You're not real. None of you are real. I don't believe in you. And I'm gonna sit here, I'm gonna watch television, and you're not real. I'm just crazy. And I try to watch tv, and I put the TV on, TV goes off, I put it back on. A TV goes off, I put it on. You know what happens next? The phones back then were landlines. I remember having a conversation with one of my friends, and I said, hey, I think. And I said this jokingly, I said, I think my house is haunted. Click. And I called him back and I said, you hung up on me. No, you hung up on me. And I said, well, whatever. That was really strange. But anyway, what I was saying is, I think my house is haunted. Click. So needless to say, I have to get out of this place. I can't sleep there. I had the worst case of insomnia that I've ever experienced in my life. They would not let me sleep. There's no way I could see energy when I was here. When I was young, I crossed over. They came back. Now they know that I can see them. They know that I can feel them. And they have messages that they want delivered, and they're not going to leave me alone. I don't know this yet. This is what I learned later on. So I move into another place, another apartment. Get out of that one. And I think, okay, the house is haunted maybe, or whatever it is, doesn't matter. I'm out of there. I'm in My new place. This is the one. This is the bachelor pad. This is where we're gonna have the parties. This is where everything's gonna happen. This is great. Move in. Same exact thing happens, filled with people, people you can't see. You just feel them. And I'm like, these places aren't haunted. I'm haunted. Or I'm crazy. So, being the young twenties that I am, I turn to drugs and alcohol because, well, it helps me sleep, and I forget that they're there if I drink and use drugs excessively. And I certainly form a dependency to alcohol, to say the least. And this goes on for years and years and years. I'm suppressing everything that's going on, and I'm utilizing drugs and alcohol to help me do it. It's a recipe for disaster. Somehow I make it to the age of about 30, and I get married, and I have two kids. And when those kids were born, everything changed in that moment. And the reason why was because it didn't matter if I lived or died before they were born. But now that they're here, I can't die because they need me. So I have to change everything. So I checked myself into rehab. I literally drove myself to rehab and walked in the front door. Who does that? I don't know, but I did that. And then I went back to college, and I got my degree, and I got a good job in New York, and I worked my way up the ladder, and I was making very good money. And then I came back to Jersey, and I did the same thing. I worked for a large company, and I worked my way up the ladder. I did very well. My marriage fell apart very quickly, but the kids I willed into this life, and they're my responsibility. So I'm gonna do everything I can to make their life nothing the way mine was. And they're going to have everything that they need and some things that they want, and I'm going to make sure that that really happens. And it did. And me and the beings or the energy or whatever you want to call it, we just coexisted. And I didn't acknowledge them, and they didn't bother me. They would pop around, come around, and they would go. And there was no. It wasn't like a fight or a struggle like it once was. So I was able to live my life with fewer interruptions and have a pretty good life. So I remained single for a very long time. You know, I might have dated a little bit here and there, but it was nothing serious. It wasn't Until I'm in my mid to late 40s that I actually decide that, you know, maybe I should settle down. My kids are older, you know, it might be a good time. And so I go online because. And I. That's how people date now. And I. Looking at different websites and saying, you know, okay, this one, that one, which one do I join? I don't know. If you're a guy, when you go on to one of those sites, they show you, like five or six women that live in your neighborhood to try to get you, try to lure you in. Not that any of you guys have ever been on one of those, because I know you haven't. But, you know, she popped up on that screen and I was like, that's her. That's my wife. And I knew that. I don't know how, I don't know why. So I joined that site and I sent one email, one only to her, explaining that you're my wife. You just don't know it yet. Hi, my name's Ray. And yeah, I'm half crazy. And I said it in a funnier way, thank God, because she did get back to me. And we are married. And we do live in this house since that day. But when we meet and we start to date in the first couple of months, we start to get serious. And she asked me this question, what are your spiritual beliefs? And I was like, oh, no. And I was like, I don't know. I have absolutely no idea. And that's the truth. I don't know. And she says, okay. She says. And then weeks later, she goes, for your birthday, I'm going to get you something called a spiritual clearing. Well, she said it very matter of factly. You're going to get a spiritual clearing. And I was like, okay, I don't know what this is. It's like a massage. No, no, no. You're not even. She's not even going to be in the room. You're going to be wherever you're going to be at work or whatever, she'll call you. She's telling you that it's going to happen. And, you know, then she'll. She'll do what she does, which is some sort of energy work. And I'm like, okay, we're gonna have cake, right? Because I like cake. I don't know what this energy thing is, but cake is good. So she does. She calls me on the phone and I am at work. And she said, try not to make any major life decisions in the next 48 hours. You might feel Strange. Okay? I'm like, whatever. And two hours later, I feel really strange. I mean, walking to the bathroom from my office became a challenge. It was like my equilibrium was just off. Everything was off. And I remember I went home for the day. I was like, I got a headache. I'm taking a day off. This is a Friday, so I don't have to come back till Monday. And I leave. And this is the first time I see one of these energies that I've been seeing my whole life, but they look human. It's the first time I've seen a person who's not really there. And he says the same thing to me over and over. Now this. I'm not seeing it with my eyes. I'm not hearing him with my ears. He. It's in here. It's in my mind, but it's front and center, and I can't move him. And he says the same thing. I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. I have no idea who this is. I have no idea who he's talking about. And he. He will not leave. He keeps saying the message over and over and over. It's almost like if you rewind a video loop and you just keep watching it over and over. It was like every hour I would see this again. And that went on into Saturday. And by Sunday, it happened more frequently. It was so frequent on Sunday that I couldn't function anymore. I couldn't drive. I couldn't carry on a conversation. I couldn't do much of anything because he's right here. And I'm like, okay. I remember the moment I was in a store and I was paying for my stuff. And I don't know what I did, if I froze or I did something strange. I don't know what it was. But the clerk behind the counter goes, sir, are you okay? And I said, no, no, no, I'm not okay. And I took my card back and I went to the car and I just sat there and I said, okay. So I'm. It's official. I'm. I'm insane. This is the end of my life. I gotta. I gotta make sure that all my stuff is together for my kids. And I had done a will, and I needed to make sure that my brother had it and a dnr, because I'm going to the light this time. There's no way I'm coming back. And I made sure my affairs were in order because I really, really thought I was insane. And the woman I'm dating, who I Am head over heels in love with, but just started to date, really. I have to tell her I'm crazy. And if this. If this story isn't crazy enough, this will top it off. She is a doctor of psychology and a doctor of neuropsychology by trade. That's what she. That's what she does. And I'm going to tell her, I see dead people. How's the salmon? I see dead people. What's for dessert? Not going to go over. Well, it's not going to happen. So I'm prepared for the worst. I think going to tell her, and she's going to give me the name of a doctor or a hospital, and that's where they're going to send me. And, and she's going to be like, never. I don't ever want to see you again, and just call this guy. And that's not what happens at all. Remember, this is the same woman that bought me a spiritual clearing, who's a doctor. And she says when I tell her the story, I tell what he looks like. He's a husky guy. He's got a beard and mustache, thick black hair. And he was like, you know, kind of like really in my face. And. And he says, you know, I effed up. I made a mistake. You can help her. I cannot. He just keeps saying it over and over. She's like, oh, my God, that sounds like my dad. And now I'm thinking, you're crazy. I'm the one getting that. Check, please. She, she. She's like, no, no, no. I've been to mediums. I've been to a lot of mediums. And he comes through and he's always. They always say he's front and center, and he's very powerful. He's right there. And she's like, you're just probably a medium and you don't know it. And I said, what the heck is a medium? And she says, you don't know? I said, no, I don't know. I don't. I don't even know what you're talking about. And she proceeds to tell me what this is. And now I don't know what's worse, being a medium or being crazy. Crazy. I understand mediumship. I don't. So she says, there's a medium that's coming to town. Oh, by the way, the second I told her the message, he was gone. He was gone. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders because that's what I was supposed to do, was deliver the message. Oh, and here's one more part of that story. I said, I saw a picture of your father, and I'm sure it's not him because it doesn't look like him, that picture you have on the mantel. And she said, well, that's a very, very old photo. He had lost a lot of weight, and he shaved, and he didn't have his beard, mustache. Let me show you what he looked like every day. And she shows me, and I go, you know that guy? And she goes, yeah, that's my dad. And, you know, my heart just sank in my stomach. So she has the idea to take me to another medium who she knows is legit. And for me to sit with her and not say, just tell her, you know, like, what I feel, what I see. And you guys. She's like, you guys can just talk and you can get all your answers. And I said, okay, it sounds like a very good idea. Now, in the interim between the time that he had left and the time I see the medium, I do not want to look anything up. I do not look up what the word means. I don't want to see a medium. I don't know anything. And I have to keep it that way because I can't have. I need to know the truth. I need to know the actual truth. So we go in and I sit down, and she says, hi, how are you? And I said, hi, I'm Ray. It's a pleasure to meet you. And she goes, oh, you're that Ray. And I was like, yeah, yeah. She goes, what's wrong? Right? And I said, I'm insane. That's what's wrong. And she says, have a seat and tell me all about it. And I said, okay. And I said, well, you know, the first thing I see, the lines, they shoot across the wall. And then the vibrations, sometimes they're low, sometimes they're up here, they're high. And I kind of shake inside. And then the. Something opens up in my mind, and it just kind of looks like a movie screen. And then there's something on the movie. She goes, stop. And I was like, what? She goes, that's exactly way I see it. That's exactly the way we all see it. And I was like, wow. And in a moment, I was. In a way, I was relieved. But it then, on the flip side of that is, well, what are my responsibilities? What do I do with this? How do I control it? There's so many questions. And luckily, she took me on as her mentee. She was my mentor for the first year, and she taught me how to turn it on, turn it off, how to accelerate, connect better with her. I even had an out of body experience. So we did some really cool stuff. And, you know, I can definitely say that had it not been for her, you know, I. I don't know where I would be. She told me she confided in me that. That her parents had her institutionalized because they thought she was crazy. She voiced more than I did. I kept my mouth shut, remember? But she talked about it and they put her away. And I started thinking, how many people are put away because they're mediums and, and they're not crazy? So anyway, I'm with her for a year as my coach. And the next year comes around and it's my birthday again, and here we go. Something crazy always happens on my birthday. My wife says, where do you want to go? She goes, why don't we go on vacation? She's like, you pick the place. Any you want a beach, you want this, you want that. I said, just trees. I just want to be in the middle of nowhere and I just want trees. I have no idea why I. All of a sudden, I love trees. I don't know, I. I want to be in a cabin. I don't care if I have to go in an outhouse. I just want to be near as many trees as I can. And that's what we did. We just meditated. We had no tv, no clocks, no nothing, and just meditated and really got grounded with nature. And I don't know why I had to do that, but I had to do that. And during the time that we were there, she pulled out a drawing that somebody had had drawn. And I said, let me see that. I said, that's your dad. And she goes, yeah, I know. And I said, but what? No, you don't understand. That's him. That's him. That's the guy that I see. That's him. And she says, yes, I went to a medium who was a spirit artist and he drew what he saw. And I said, but he sees him the way I see him. That shirt, that exact shirt is what he's wearing when I see him. And in. In that moment, it was just so surreal that someone else not only saw this man, but exactly the way I saw him. Even that same shirt. It was a shirt for that era that was very popular. You would know it if you saw it. You just. You can't miss it. And I was like, I gotta meet this guy. Who is this guy? And we, we took out A laptop. And we typed his name in, and up he comes, right? His website, and it says, now taking applications for a two year mentorship program with Medium Joe. And the deadline to apply for this is February 15th. It's my birthday. She goes, are you going to apply? I said, am I going to apply? I said, yeah, yes, yes. That's divine intervention if I've ever seen it. And now I'm starting to talk like this, right? But I apply. I sure do. And then you get another application and you apply again, and then you get an interview, and then you apply again. And then this keeps going on and on and on because he does not take anyone unless he is absolutely, positively convinced that you are the real deal. So a long time goes by. Many, many applications are filled out. I do the interview and I hear nothing. And now I'm all the way back to, you know, maybe lucky guesses, maybe this, maybe that. It's probably not real. But I call his assistant just to. To hear that I didn't get it. I wanted to make sure I didn't get it. And she said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Right? Relax. There are hundreds of applications. He's got a lot to go through. Don't take it personally, you know, we'll get back to you. And I was like, oh, hundreds, okay. And I thought about this. Hundreds of applications. This program was for two years. So it was thousands of dollars that we had to pay to be in the program. He could have very easily accepted everybody and got one heck of a payday. But I really, I was chosen. And I was number 11 out of 11. That's it. To show you the integrity of this man, to only be able to take 11 because he could only prove that 11 could really do this. Hundreds of people willing to pay thousands of dollars. And I was like, in awe that he did that. And in that moment, there was no doubt in my mind that I had to learn about this. I had to learn from this man. And he became my mentor. It was a two year program and I'm still with him. And it's like four and a half years later. And I told him, I said, I'm never leaving you, man. You can't get rid of me. I don't want to graduate. I don't want a certificate. I'm with you no matter where you go. And he's like, that's fine. And he left. But he taught me so many things, and not just about mediumship. He taught me about spirituality. He taught me about the law of attraction. And I remember when he taught me the law of attraction. I didn't really. I wasn't buying it. It was kind of a little hokey to me. Now, it's not that I'm not a believer, but it just, it didn't sound. I could just think of something and it's going to come as long as I do step 1, 2, 3, 4. But here's what happened. It was the week after he had just taught me how to do it. And my son was leaving for college freshman year, and he was going away to school. He was going to live on campus. And the school called me and said, when are you going to send that last payment of $10,000? And I was like, oh my God, what do you. What, what 10? They're like, you still owe us 10. And I totally screwed up my accounting somehow for that exact number. 10, 000. I was like, oh my God, I gotta, I gotta get this together. I'm like, I'll get it right to you. I can't tell my son. I'm embarrassed. There's no way this kid's not going to school. I have to get this money. And then it hit me. A light bulb went off. He just taught me how to do this. Let's see if it works. So the process is two meditations. One in the morning and one at night. And you? I. I did it six times a day. I just did it over and over and over. And the process is getting yourself into the meditative state, what I call an attitude of gratitude, which is saying all the things that you're thankful for. Two things to raise your vibration. The third thing is you're listening to a track of Oz. You can chant with it if you want, or you can just listen to it. It's all about changing your vibrational state. And then you tell the universe what it is you need, or God, or universal collective, any term you wish to use. And I said, I need $10,000 and I need it now. I need it right now. I'm not asking. Joe told me you're my partner and we're partners. And I need $10,000 and I need it now. And this is for my kid. And I did it over and over and over. And I did the whole process, everything I said, everything I was thankful for, I said I did it to perfectly. And the first day around five o' clock and absolutely nothing happens. And my other son brought me the mail and I'm going through it and there's a. There's a, a letter from my Accountant. And I'm like, dear God, this, this is gonna, this is my tax bill. You're giving me my tax bill. You're not hearing me. I need money. I don't need to know what I owe the tax man. And I throw the thing aside and I'm completely, just completely frustrated. But I do it again six more times. Every time I get a chance, I break down, and I do it and I do it and I do it. I need 10,000. I need 10,000. And finally, on the end of the second day, absolutely nothing happens. So I go to the mail and I decide I'm going to open it up and see what the bad news is. How much do I owe? I always owe. And my accountant does it the same way every single year. The first letter is, thank you for your business. Blah, blah, blah. You owe me this much money. Okay, Put that one aside. Then there's two more letters, One for the federal, one for the state of New Jersey. And I take out the first one, and it's, dear Ray, you have overpaid the federal government 8200 and something something dollars and something something cents. And I said, and I stopped. I read it again, overpaid. That's a refund of 8200 and change. And I take out the next letter and it says, dear Ray, you have overpaid the state of New Jersey. 1,800 and something something dollars and something something cents. And I dropped to my knees and I cried and I cried like a baby. It was there on the first day. I was given it on the first day. And my kid never knew that story until I published the book. And I never questioned that again. I never questioned. Thank you. I just, I just not. I, I believe and I've done it. I, I, I've used it. I don't ask for things like expensive cars or things that I don't need. You know, it's just about what I need, if I need it. And it. And it comes. And so after, after the. They sure are nice surprises. The afterwards, I started to write the second book. And the second one was to show other people, to show them all the things that I learned so that they could do them. And I wrote the book in a way that it would explain, like the story I just told you about the 10,000, but then it would tell you how to do it and show you the meditations and also a little bit about the science behind it. Because I was, I'm, I was very, very skeptical of everything. I just didn't believe in Anything. So. But I figured the science out. So I started studying all the great spiritual guides. Deepak Chopra, Eckhart, you name it, I'm reading their books. But I'm also reading on the other side, physics, Einstein, Tesla, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, you name it, I'm reading their stuff. All the rock star. The physicists were like rock stars in the 30s, right? And Quantum physics starts to play a huge role in the connection of the two. So the way the law of attraction works is actually very, very simple. You are thinking of the item, you must say it in the positive tense. And what that means is if you, if you've been sick for a long time, you can't say, I don't want to be sick, I don't want to be sick. If that's your manifestation you're sending up I and sick, those are the two things. Universe does not speak English or Japanese or anything else that you can possibly think of. It speaks vibration. And the vibrations are changed by the pictures in your mind. So when you picture something in your mind, it vibrates, it goes out, it looks for its match. This is how our cell phones work. If I call you from my cell phone and I dial your number, my cell phone goes to your frequency. Your phone has its own frequency, but mine is going to adjust to yours. So that we can do what? Communicate back to one another. We can send information to each other. That's all it is. Like a radio station, right? You remember the old fashioned radios used to have to turn the dial and if it was just a smidgen off, it'd be all staticky and you couldn't hear the song. But if you got it spot on, you got to hear what you wanted to hear, but it's got to be precise. So here's what you would say if you've been sick for a long time. I want to be healthy. I need to be healthy. I will be healthy. I want to be healthy. I need to be healthy. That's your manifestation. Because now you're sending up I and health. And however you envision health to be, doesn't matter how other people see it. It's about how you see it. And when you send that up, that's what's going out. And it's never going to stop going until it finds its match. But you have to keep doing it and doing it and doing it so it knows where to come back to. And when I started to connect those dots, I just kept going with it. And I learned everything I could possibly digest. I Just became this voracious reader and writer. I went back to college again and I studied metaphysics. I have a master's, and I'm about to have my PhD in metaphysical sciences. That's for me, that's nuts. The guy who should be dead, that's crazy. And I think that's kind of like the point of the book is that it doesn't matter where we start out. If you really believe you can get to wherever it is you want to be. And all the techniques and the things, the tools that we need, they're out there, but no one teaches them to us. Like, you go to school, and this is probably the most important thing you could ever learn is how to communicate with your higher self, how to communicate with God. And no one's. No one's telling you. And it's. It's kind of sad. And it's because that. Well, I don't really know why, but the bottom line is when you learn it and you utilize it and you believe you, the things will come. So thank you. Thank you. I continue to write the second book, and when I got to the very end of it, I had an egoic fracture. This is when the part of your mind breaks that connects you to your subconscious mind. So imagine it this way. You have different parts of your mind. Not the brain. The brain is just an organ that creates the mind. 12 volts, I think, of electricity it is that runs through that organ that creates your mind. But your mind is actually energy. And you have an unconscious mind, a subconscious mind, an egoic mind, a conscious mind. I think I said that one already. And an awareness at the very, very top. Eckhart Tolle refers to it as our awareness. Here's why it's at the top. We're one of the few living things on the planet that we are aware that we're actually having a thought, that we're having an emotion. And if you know this, if you realize you're having an emotion, you could change it. It's up to you. You don't have to act a certain way to a certain thing. You don't have to react to a certain thing a certain way. So where does that come from? Well, our reactive mind is in our subconscious. And it's all the things that we've seen, all the things we've heard, all the things that have maybe been done to us or everything you can possibly think of. And always the negatives could float to the top because that's just human nature. And connected right to your subconscious mind is Your egoic mind, and it's feeding you, and it's telling you how to act, and it's telling you how to behave. This was stuff that you learned when you were probably 7 years old. We're basing our decisions on a foundation that we created between the ages of 2 and 7, because those are the moments when we're in a theta state at all times as a child. And the theta state is a. When you're in. When a hypnotist puts you under, you're in a theta state, and he can talk directly to your subconscious. When we're children, we are in that state naturally, as adults, we never get there. Maybe right before we go to sleep or if we meditate and we put ourselves there, we have to really, really try to get there. But when we're kids, like, you talk to your kid, and your kid knows something that you said four weeks ago, and you're like, how do you even know that? And you're just blown away. And they're. They're like, I don't know. I just remember it. You said it. You said it on a Tuesday, and it was raining outside, and it was cold, and they just know this stuff. So we remember everything. And it's stored. It may not come out, but it's in there. That's how powerful your subconscious is. It remembers all. It's like the hard drive of the computer. And if we don't change the hard drive and we don't change the program, that program is going to keep running, and it's going to tell the ego to tell me what to do. And because I think I am my ego, I'm going to listen, but I'm not. When you really think about it, who makes up my subconscious mind? Who made up all those things that I was taught and told? Not me. I came into this world, I knew nothing. Kids come in with a clean slate. I learned that stuff. I learned chaos. I learned that crap, and I kept it there. And my ego would say, you're not good enough. You can't do that. You can't do this. You can't do that. What are you crazy? Get out of here. And I believed it because it's all I knew. So I thought it was real. I thought it was me. And I started to study the psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who was a disciple of Freud, who was a brilliant individual. And he talks about the shadow. And Eckhart Tolle talks about the ego, Basically, the ego, because the subconscious is so intelligent, it shoots out and tells your ego to tell you what to do, how to react. So somebody goes, yells at you, right? You, you react right away and you just yell back. But maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. But you were, you were instantly told to do it. Now what if, what if you put a stop to that and you fractured or you broke your ego and you went to your awareness which is directly connected, you know, where God, universe, universal collective, pick your term and got your information. This there instead of your subconscious. Let me tell you, everything is different until you do that. You haven't even met yourself yet because you are some, you are all the things that someone said you were taught. You were in an environment and you learned that environment and that became us. But you don't have to be there. You can break away from that and you can get the answers from up there and they will be completely different. Now I'm going to share with you a story of how I knew that this happened. I was working on doing this for a long time. And the way you do it is you have to reprogram your subconscious. So every time I would do something that I really didn't like about myself, I would say it in my mind the proper way that I would, would have liked to do it. If I could have a do over, right? I don't, I don't want to get mad if a car cuts me off. I mean, that's just silly. Like my whole day is going to be ruined because a car cut me off. And, and I'm just going to talk about it all day. I mean, think about how silly that is. But that's who I was. It's nonsense. So if I felt those feelings, I would become aware of them and I would tell myself, I'm not going to feel that way. That was wrong. Get rid of it. Take on a new feeling. What should I do? Drive away. Okay. And you do that enough times over and over and over and eventually your ego will fracture. And this is the story of how I knew I was driving. We weren't married yet, we had separate houses and I was. There was going to be. There was a blizzard on its way. So I wanted to jump in my car and get a, get a, a rush, you know, home because I wanted to get there before the blizzard. So I jumped in my car and I had a really expensive car because I thought that was a thing. I thought that meant something at that time. I'm still learning and I'm driving it and I don't, I, I don't miss the blizzard. I'm in the blizzard, and I can't see a damn thing, and I run right into a deer. Now, the old ray would have been filled with adrenaline, and I don't know what I would have done. Yelled, screamed, I don't know what. I really have no idea. But none of that happened. I didn't get angry. I didn't get any. I. I felt compassion for the deer. All I cared about was the deer. Who am I? But I kind of like me now. I got out of the car and I went to the deer, and the deer got up and it wasn't hurt. And that was crazy, but because I hit it doing, like, 40, and I'm okay. I look. I look at myself and I'm like, there's nothing wrong with me, and there's nothing wrong with the deer. And then I look at the car, and the car is in bad shape, but it's just a car. Who cares? It's just a stupid piece of metal. The only two beings that mattered. Both walked away just fine. And that's when I knew, in that moment, I was not that old person anymore. I was not that guy. Chaos was gone forever. Now, I'm not going to say I never get mad or I never get sad, but they don't. Those. Those emotions don't resonate with me anymore. They don't. They don't take over. And I drove the car. Exactly. Exactly. And I took the car and I. And I pulled over, and I started to call my wife. Like I said, she wasn't my wife yet. But I start to call her, and then I stop because I'm thinking again. Right? Why would I call her? This would only upset her. Nothing here is going to make her feel good about anything. And I'm not hurt. It's just a car. And I'm going to see if it's drivable. And I'll drive, even if I have to, two miles an hour. And I'm going to get it to the body shop and I'm going to pull it in and I'm going to Uber home. I'm not going to bother her. She's. She's raising two children. I. What? I'm. I'm going to feel better if I dump my crap on her, Maybe. But that's not right. So I'm not going to do it. So I go home and I go right to sleep. I don't lose any sleep over the car. I don't care. I literally don't care. And in the morning, my son got up before me and he goes, somebody stole your car. Somebody stole your car? And I said, no, no, no, no. Relax. I had an accident. What? You had an accident? Why didn't you call me? You had to call me. You should have called. And I was like, no, because you're reacting like that. And I'm sorry, because I probably taught you that stupid stuff, but I didn't want to hurt you or anybody else. I'm fine. It's just a car. And I Uber to work, and I got to work, and on my lunch break, I used to go across the street for acupuncture. And I went that day, and I'm telling the practitioner, I'm telling her my story, and she's crying. She's like, that's so beautiful. And I said, it is. But I really don't know who I am anymore, so I had to relearn who I was. There's a learning curve because you don't know how you're going to react, because now you're being directed by a different entity instead of the old one. And it turns out that it was beautiful, but it was a little scary because it was unknown territory for me. You know, Like, I would always go to anger. I mean, I. That's what I knew. I understood that very well. Now I feel love. I feel good emotions. I feel things that I didn't feel for a very long time. The first half of my life, I didn't have any of those things. And. And that's why people will ask me, you know, how come you don't practice mediumship? And I said, because it. I have to engage with their emotions. Their emotions have to enter my body in order for me to give the message. And. And they're always guilt, remorse, regret. I'm sorry that that's all it is. Always. It's never anything else. There's an I love you in there, but it's always something that they didn't do when they were here, and they want to get that message across, and it's painful, and I don't want to feel those things anymore. And no disrespect, mediums are great people. If they're doing that work, God bless them, because it's hard work. You. You can probably only do three a day before it really affects you. I started seeing some really bad things, and I. I could not do it anymore. I couldn't, but. Because I just found happiness. Took me 50 years, and now I'm 55, and I just found it. So I'm going to live with happiness for a Little while and maybe I'll go back to it someday. But right now it's not something I have any interest in. And so I think I probably gone over on time. I really want to thank everybody for. For listening and being here today. I thank you very much. If there's any questions, I'll. I'll definitely answer any question I might have. No, no. I wanted to go through the light. The light. As you enter the light, the euphoria increases. It's far from a trick. You can't. I can't even. I wish I had words to describe how good that feels. And I knew that there was this loving being at the other side, saying, it's safe. It's okay to come into the light. And I really wanted to go to the other side. And let me tell you, when I came, when I woke up, and not right when I woke up, but let's say I think when I was in the hospital and you realize everything is, like, back to normal. Well, I felt like a bomb went off inside my body. The pain was unbearable because I was out of my body and I was just energy. And energy has no pain. But I was back in my body. So everything from head to toe hurt. And I never got those hugs that I wanted. So, you know, I came back for. I don't know what I wanted to do over. I wanted to go back to the light. But now, like, I know that the time will be when it's there for me. And, you know, I. I quit that job. I could not do it anymore. It doesn't. Didn't matter how much I was making. I had to give that up because it didn't. It didn't resonate with me anymore. It's just not who I am. So I. I left the job. And this is. This is what I do. I write and I coach, and that's what I do now. And I want to share this with as many people as I can. Sorry, I got off the topic. I think great question. Really, really good question. Hard to answer. I think that eventually I would have, because I don't think I reached the level of I'm not an enlightened being. And I think until we become enlightened on Earth, we probably are going to come back almost like, recycled, if you will. And that's. That's my best guess. It was the Buddha who said when he died, he said, this is my seventh and last life and I won't be coming back. So I need you guys, meaning his disciples, to spread the word because I can't come back. And he accredited that to the fact that he achieved enlightenment while here. So I think that's kind of like, what we have to do is achieve that level, and then we can stop coming back. Because it seems like I have this one client who calls Earth. Earth School. I don't know if she's on, but Earth School, it's like, we have to get it right before we can actually go over and stay there. And I think that's. I think that might be right, But I'm just guessing. I'm just guessing. Thank you for your question. Okay, so I will. I thank you all so very much for listening and watching. I hope this you you enjoyed the talk, and thank you. Thank you very much. And I hope to see you guys all again very soon. Thanks. Be well. Sa.