Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I lived a very normal American life.

I grew up on a small farm up in the mountains.

We had cows and horses.

And it was a family of boys.

I had all brothers, so I grew up in a very rough and tumble

lifestyle.

We worked hard.

We played hard.

And we had a lot of fun.

My brothers and I were very close.

I was the middle one.

I had a younger brother and an older brother,

but we were all within about four years.

So we were very, very close.

We did a lot of sports, a lot of football, things like that.

So we were very active.

Then my mother was a devout Christian.

She and my father had split up, but I grew up

with that conservative Christian background.

For me, there was always this stirring,

I suppose, about what is real?

You know, what is truth?

And I remember as a boy going out into the fields.

And it was dark.

You would see the stars at night, you know?

And I could look up at the stars.

I went away to college, actually,

to play American football.

I had a scholarship to do that.

But I also wanted to be an artist,

so I was studying art and playing

football on the other side.

And that's when I was 19, 20, 21.

And while I was away at college, that's--

probably the most important thing

happened is I fell madly head over heels in love.

I met a young woman named Tamara.

And gosh, my heart just knew.

I mean, I didn't even know her name.

She walked in the room, and it was like lightning hit me.

It's like, there she is.

And we became beautiful friends.

I mean, we had a friendship, and it turned into a relationship,

and it turned into a courtship.

And then we were eventually married.

Tamara was a schoolteacher.

She taught high school, the upper levels.

And I was a marketing person.

I graduated and got my degree in marketing.

And we were pursuing our careers.

And we had our first child, a little son.

We called him Spencer.

Oh, he was a joy.

It was fun.

We enjoyed raising our little boy.

And Tamara said, let's have more children.

But there had been complications.

But six years after the fact came Griffin, a second child.

So suddenly, we had these two boys, beautiful family.

But everything changed, really, with the near-death experience.

And that was a result of a horrific automobile accident.

And I'll never forget it.

It's been 20 years now since the accident happened,

but I can recall the details like it was yesterday.

We were on a family vacation, actually.

It was the Easter weekend.

We'd been away.

We had been visiting Tamara's parents.

We had had a beautiful Easter weekend.

And Monday came, and it was time for me to get back to work,

so we loaded everyone in the car.

And we'd been down in Southern Utah in the red rock country

and we were driving up to north Utah where we live.

And there's certain moments of that that I'll never forget.

It's almost like time stood still, especially in hindsight.

I mean, we had put everyone in the car.

And actually, we were just getting ready to pull away.

I had just put the car in drive.

And Tamara reached over and said, oh wait.

Wait just a minute.

I want to go say goodbye to mom and dad one more time.

Which at the time, I thought, gosh, we said goodbye.

You know, let's get on the road.

But I put the car in park and I watched.

She went up to the porch.

She not only hugged her mother and father,

but she also kissed them both.

And then she came back to the car quite happy,

got in, buckled in her seatbelt. We got on the interstate.

I put the car on cruise control, went up to 75

miles per hour, which was as fast as I could legally go.

I was hurrying to get back to work in the office.

And it was a half day drive.

It was a four to five hour drive that we were making.

And even during that process, I was racing down the road.

And I was thinking about all the things I had to do at work

and going on and on.

Tamara had actually laid her seat back to have a nap.

And I just peeked in the rearview mirror.

I noticed Griffin, my youngest son, just barely learning

to walk and talk.

I saw this little boy, and I thought what a miracle.

We were told we may not have any more children,

and there he is, beautiful.

And then I just glanced behind me

where Spencer, who was seven years old at the time,

he was playing with little action figures

and making all kinds of noise.

And I just--

I thought what a joyful little boy.

And I then glanced at Tamara, who was sleeping but holding

my hand.

And I thought, wow, I'm so lucky.

That's what I felt. I had this moment

of just absolute gratitude.

I'm so lucky for what I have.

But it was about an hour after that

that it got really, really bad.

There was heavy winds.

There was reports of a pickup truck

that was driving erratically on the highway.

The hardest part about the story and the experience

is I really--

I believe I dozed off.

I mean, we'd been driving long, and I

think I maybe just nodded off at the wheel for a minute.

But when I did that, the car swerved to the right.

I overcorrected to the left, and I lost control of the car.

And then it began to roll.

And it rolled not off the road, but down the road

at 75 miles an hour on the concrete.

It was a horrific automobile accident.

The police reports say the car probably

rolled six to eight times.

I blacked out for most of that.

I don't recall actually rolling.

But when the car came to a stop, I was incredibly conscious.

I mean, I'm like, oh my gosh, what happened?

And the first thing I was aware of

was Spencer, my seven-year-old, crying in the back seat.

Just crying hysterically.

And as a father, I thought, OK, well, he's OK.

I've got to get to my son.

I've got to get to my boy.

But that's when I realized that I could not move.

I was pinned.

And I couldn't tell if I was pinned

to the seat or the floorboard.

I was disoriented.

I was struggling to breathe.

There was excruciating pain.

I had no idea of my injuries.

What had actually happened is that both of my legs

had been crushed and shattered.

The left leg was actually amputated above the knee.

My back had been injured.

My rib cage was injured, and my lungs were collapsing.

My right arm had almost been torn off.

It was severed really badly and all the muscles

had been torn out of the socket.

And then the seat belt cut through my midsection

and had ruptured my intestines, my insides.

I had no idea.

All I knew is that my son was crying.

I wanted to get to him.

And that's when the brutal reality hit

that no one else was crying.

That's when I thought, oh my gosh.

And I knew.

I knew Tamara is gone.

I saw, which I don't talk a lot about--

Tamara, because she had laid her seat

back was not restrained properly by the seat belt.

And so she had suffered some pretty severe head trauma

in the accident which took her life.

Griffin, my little boy, the car seat had broken up,

and he had been ejected from the car.

And so I couldn't see him.

But it's like I knew in my heart.

I just-- it was the darkest, most awful feeling of,

they're gone.

They're gone.

And I knew that.

And I-- suddenly the guilt. I mean, the regret.

I just kept thinking, can't I just take back

that five seconds?

I mean, what happened?

How did I crash the car?

It was absolute panic.

And Spencer is crying hysterically.

In fact, I was attempting to speak to him.

I knew I was losing consciousness.

But I said to Spencer, I said, it's going to be OK.

And I thought, that's a lie.

It's not OK.

I mean, half the family's gone.

I'm losing consciousness.

Nothing will ever be the same.

But it was in that darkest moment,

it was in that turmoil, that horror of the accident

that I felt, well, the best word is light.

It's like, light came.

It's like I felt light come and circle around me.

Almost like it was a blanket.

Almost like it was comforting me in this horrific moment.

And it felt as if I was rising above the scene

of the accident.

The best word is maybe like in this bubble of light.

And I rose above the accident.

Oh, now I can breathe.

I don't-- the pain's gone.

Am I OK?

That's what I was asking, is am I OK?

Suddenly, I realized that Tamara, who I knew

was gone at the scene, she was there with me and very much

alive.

And gorgeous.

I mean, that's the only reason I share

what happened to her in the accident,

because all of a sudden she was there.

And there was no injuries.

There was no head trauma.

She was radiant and beautiful and glorious.

She was upset and frantic.

She's like, Jeff, Jeff, you've got to go back.

You've got to go back.

You can't come.

You can't be here.

There I was looking at the woman I loved more than life.

But I also knew I had a little boy crying

in the backseat of that car.

And I had to make a choice about coming back.

It was so real.

I mean, it wasn't like a dream at all.

It's almost like my senses were multiplied.

For instance, in this state, if I can see and smell and taste

and hear and all those things, in that state

it was super sensory.

It was so real that it makes this life feel

like the foggy dream.

It's like this feels like the weird, strange, dreamy state.

That was reality.

I looked at her, and I thought, I've got to go back.

I can't leave our little boy orphaned.

I literally got to say goodbye.

And I made the choice to come back.

Now, I didn't have to figure out how do I go back?

It was in the intention.

It was in the intention of thinking, I'm going back.

As I did so, I found myself wandering around a hospital.

Now, I have no concept of time in this bubble of light.

I mean, I don't know how many minutes or hours went by.

I later found out that people arrived

at the scene of the accident.

One happened to be a doctor, which

was able to do some emergency procedures, care for Spencer.

They rushed us to a local hospital.

And Spencer was not badly hurt, my seven-year-old.

He was banged up a little bit, but he basically physically

walked away from the accident.

But emotionally, he thought the whole family was gone.

With the extent of my injuries, there's

no way that hospital could see to my care.

They had to life flight me to a level one trauma

center, which they did.

They flew me to the nearest metropolitan city

where I could get the care I needed.

And I had no idea about any of that.

All I knew was I had wrecked the car.

I had said the most profound goodbye I would ever say.

And there I was wandering around through a hospital,

looking at the nurses, and the doctors,

and the patients, and the families of the patients.

But the incredible thing is everybody I saw, I knew them.

Like, they were strangers, but I would look at them

and I knew everything about them.

I knew their love, their hate, their joy, their decisions,

their pain, their motivations.

I knew them as if they were me.

It was intense things.

I felt-- there was a nurse, and I just, I

knew that she had been abused as a child, physically, sexually,

emotionally.

And I thought-- well, I could feel it

as if it had happened to me.

But in feeling it, I had this profound compassion for her.

It's like, oh wow, look what she has overcome.

Look what she endured.

And then I had this intense feeling of look

who she is now because of that.

This compassionate medical staff, literally

healing people.

I had this intense connection to everyone.

And there was this sense of love for everyone.

And it didn't matter who they were or what they had done

or what they hadn't done.

And I saw them as this incredible soul.

All those judgments from religion just went away.

It was like, aren't they incredible?

Aren't they beautiful?

And I did have a verse, like from the Bible,

come up as I'm wandering around the hospital.

There's a famous verse attributed to Jesus

that says "inasmuch as you've done it

under the least of these, you've done it unto me",

which I used to think was a really nice passage about being

nice to people.

Which I suppose it is.

But I was feeling it at such an intense level.

I realized, wow.

So what Jesus was saying is I am them and they are me.

And that's what I was experiencing.

I was them and they were me.

And there was this oneness, this connection that was undeniable.

And I was the heroin addict.

I was the nurse.

I was all of it.

I was everything, and everything was me.

But it was all encircled in this intense love

and this intense compassion, unconditional love.

And I was just marveling at this experience

until I came up to a man, or a body laying on the gurney

that I didn't feel anything from, which I thought

was weird.

And so I stepped closer and took a look,

and that's when I realized, oh my goodness, that's me.

But it wasn't me.

I was having this incredible connected experience,

but there was my body.

There was that skin suit that I had been wearing around life.

And it was incredibly sad, because my body was a wreck.

I've taken for granted that I'm healthy and can run

and be athletic and feel good.

And yet there was my body so broken.

A couple of things were huge for me in that.

And that is that I'm not my body.

I was something far greater.

And then also, I had peace, even in the trauma of everything

that had happened, by being out of this situation.

And I also realized too that passing, I mean dying,

was very natural.

It was very beautiful.

Many might say that I suffered a very violent, traumatic death

in the car accident and all the injuries

and everything that had happened.

But I wasn't even aware of the injuries.

But I also knew I've got to get back in.

I've got to get back in that body and carry on.

I've got to live for my son.

And once again, there was no figuring it out.

It was intention.

I'm going back in.

And then, boom, I was back in the body.

But when I went back into the body, the heaviness

and the regret, the guilt, the pain, the trauma, all of that.

So I was in the hospital for almost six months.

I mean, it was awful to be back in the body.

I was ventilated.

They had a big tube down my throat doing the breathing

since my lungs had collapsed.

My legs were obviously immobile.

My right arm was immobile.

And then they had tied down my left arm

because I kept grabbing at all the medical equipment.

It was really intense.

In fact, it was almost like I had

one foot in this realm and one foot in that realm.

Because I would find myself leaving the body every now

and then.

I would feel like, gosh, I need a break.

And there was times I felt like I

was over in the corner watching it all,

just taking a break from it all, knowing I've got

to get back in the body again.

And I would go in and out of the body.

I also had-- it was like continued communication

with Tamara, my wife.

I recall having a very intense conversation with her when

I was out of the body again.

And she was letting me know what she wanted

done at the funeral services.

And she wanted her sister in-laws

to have her fancy dresses.

And she wanted her cousin and her niece

to have those special rings and the jewelry.

I mean, it was almost trivial things.

But she was communicating to me.

Probably the most profound thing that happened

was at the end of my hospital stay.

I was out of ICU, and I was in ICU for months,

and then I would go to surgical recovery.

I had horrible infections.

I had pneumonia in my lungs.

I kept throwing pulmonary embolisms.

They're blood clots that lodge in your lungs.

So I was very sick for a very long time.

But by this case, I was out of ICU, out of surgical recovery.

I was actually in the rehabilitation unit

at the hospital.

In fact, it was only weeks before I was to come home.

I finally was able to roll and sleep on my side.

And I remember falling asleep.

And I mean, the guilt, the grief, the pain, the trauma,

everything that I'd been dealing with.

And while I was sleeping, I felt that light come again,

just like at the scene of the accident.

Suddenly I felt this blanket of light.

And although I was joyful to be sleeping,

the grief and the guilt. I mean, I'd lost half my family.

I had lost half my body.

I was worried about my son, and how was he

going to deal with this?

How was I going to deal with it?

So there was a constant worry.

But I was peaceful in my sleep.

And this light came and embraced me

and was comforting me just like at the accident

in those situations.

And again, I felt a lift.

And then the light seemed to dispense,

like a fog or a mist that goes away.

The light was gone.

And I was in the most incredibly beautiful place.

And it was so real.

Once again, it was so sensory.

I mean, that might seem odd that it felt physical,

but I was running.

I could feel the ground beneath my feet.

I could feel the warmth and the energy from the ground

beneath my feet.

And I began to run.

And it felt as if I was running.

I mean, I could feel, you know, the muscles

in my calves and thighs.

And I was joyfully, joyfully running.

It's odd.

What was coming to my mind is, wow, it's good to be home.

I was home.

I mean, people say heaven, or the other side.

To me, I was home.

It was so familiar.

It was so welcoming.

I was so joyful to be there.

And when I say it felt like a physical experience,

everything was super sensory.

I could taste the colors.

I could smell what I was seeing.

And I was elated to be there.

I got this message.

It was like a knowledge, like a knowing

that you're not here to stay.

And I thought, oh, I just want to stay, you know?

And

About the time I got that message there was

this corridor off to my left.

And I knew intuitively I'm to go down there.

And I made my way down the corridor.

And as I did, I could see something

at the end of the corridor.

And so I made my way to the end of the corridor.

And when I got there, it was a crib,

much like the one Griffin had been sleeping in, because he

was still just a baby.

I raced to the crib, and I looked in the crib.

And there was Griffin.

There was my little boy.

And he was sleeping as peacefully and as beautifully

as when I had peeked in the rear view mirror on the ride home.

And I swept him up in my arms.

Now, I had worried and had pain over that,

because I knew he had been thrown from the car.

And I didn't know what had happened,

but I knew he had been killed.

But there he was, perfect.

And when I swept him up-- and again,

it was so physical what I could feel.

I could feel the heat from his body.

And I thought, he's OK.

And I could feel him breathing.

I could feel his rib cage expanding.

I could feel his breath on my neck.

And I thought, he's OK.

He's just fine.

And then I smelled his hair.

You know, I smelled his hair and thought, it's my little boy.

He's perfect.

He's OK.

And I could feel him solid against me.

And I was even marveling then.

If I'm out of the body, how does it feel so physical?

But it did.

I could feel, and smell, and taste, and touch everything.

And I began to weep just thinking, oh, he's OK.

And I was holding him.

And I had longed for that over those months.

And as I was holding him, I felt an intense feeling behind me.

It was a presence.

It felt so cosmic, so big, so wise, so powerful.

And I began to become fearful.

In fact, my thoughts were, that's God.

I am in the presence of God.

And then I begin to have those guilt feelings again.

I was holding my little boy thinking,

he died because I crashed the car.

He's here because I messed up and lost control.

And I began to think, well, my thought was,

I hope I'm forgiven.

I hope some way I can be forgiven for--

I mean, did I take the life of my little boy?

I mean, that was the guilt. It was very deep.

And as I was weeping and holding him, and feeling

this presence come behind, and as I had that thought,

suddenly this presence came so close.

And this felt physical too.

I felt these loving arms wrap around and hold us.

And the message just came as powerful as could be.

There's nothing to forgive.

Everything is in pure divine order.

Everything is OK.

And it was almost like there was just

this download of truth and knowledge and love and peace.

And all those misconceptions I had about God,

that I was being tested, that I was probably failing,

that I was going to be judged, those

were swept away in pure, unconditional love.

There are not even words for the love

that I felt as I was wrapped in those arms.

And it was almost like me and my little boy became part of that.

Like we became God.

And suddenly, I was seeing everything differently.

In fact, I saw my life.

You know, I saw my parents get divorced,

and the insecurities that created in me.

And I saw the relationship with my brothers

and the things that had happened.

And I saw things that I thought, well, that was a mistake.

That was a mistake.

But in those loving arms, it was just flowing.

There are no mistakes.

Everything's in perfect order.

And I saw things that, like, I knew they were wrong,

but I did them anyway.

And I was thinking, oh, don't-- you know.

And there was so much love.

All that was flowing through me is look how much we love you.

Look how much we honor your choices.

Look how much we honor your life.

And I was being told or I was--

I say told.

It wasn't with words.

It was just pure energy that everything was perfect.

Even that my life was perfect.

That everything happened for a reason,

that I was learning in every instance.

And that actually, that I was perfect.

And that was-- that would blow my mind.

I thought, well, how could I be perfect?

But there was also this oneness in that.

If I was perfect, then everyone else was perfect too.

And everything was in divine order.

And I also felt as if I was divine.

Like I say, it's almost like we became God.

It felt like I'm a divine soul.

I'm a divine being of light having this crazy life

experience that my soul might expand.

And yet, none of it is real.

This is real.

That's just the stage of a play or something I'm going through.

It's an experience I'm having.

And also, I learned about choice again.

I was told that I could be angry at God my whole life,

and think that he took my family away,

or that somehow life was not fair.

And that was OK.

There was no judgment whatsoever.

I could do that.

But the beautiful thing is I was given another choice.

And it was that I could exercise my will.

I could give Griffin--

I could give my son back to God, back to the universe.

And then my will would be part of it.

That I could make a choice in that,

and I could literally let go.

In all that love, and in all that peace,

and in all that beauty, I was able to kiss my little boy

and give him back.

And then I woke up back in the hospital bed,

back to the amputation, the injuries, you know,

all that had happened.

But I had a little bit different perspective realizing

everything's a choice.

And realizing that everything is in divine order.

And that if I'm perfect, then everyone's perfect.

There's no need to judge anyone for anything.

And that life's actually perfect,

if I could literally reach out and embrace it that way.

So I think it's interesting that these two things happened when

I was not on heavy narcotics.

And they're so real.

I mean, it's been 20 years.

But I can remember them like they were yesterday.

I can't remember what happened in the hospital.

I don't remember when I moved from ICU to--

all of that is foggy.

But the spiritual things that happened,

the out of body things that happened

were like they were yesterday.

I'll never forget them.

And it changed me.

Now, I don't want any misconceptions.

It was difficult. I mean, it wasn't like I wrecked the car,

I had these incredible experiences, and then I was OK.

I was a wreck for almost 10 years.

I mean, I was grieving.

I was hurt.

I missed my family.

I missed my leg.

I missed all of it.

Spencer, my little seven-year-old.

How difficult for him.

He lost everything I did.

He didn't lose his leg.

But he lost his mother.

He lost his brother.

He, in many ways, lost his father.

Coming home to him was very difficult. Because I thought,

how am I going to do this?

I mean, well, first of all, I was in a wheelchair.

And this leg was chopped off.

My right leg was still in a big brace

holding it out straight so it would heal.

My right arm was in a sling, and I

had a little electric wheelchair that I could

drive with my one good hand.

And that's how I returned home.

Now I was going out into the world.

We were going to have to go to the market, and to school,

and, you know, I was really worried about him.

The day I came home was interesting.

And I share this for a specific reason.

My brothers, who were incredible,

I mean, I can't imagine what I would have done without family

and friends in this situation.

But my brothers were--

they almost lost their jobs to be at the hospital with me

to see me through.

They came to get me when it was time to go home.

They'd have to lift me into the wheelchair,

and put me and lift me into the car.

And they drove me home.

And there was a ramp that had been installed so I

could get in the front door.

And I saw Spencer, my seven-year-old,

watching out the window as my brothers, his uncles,

were lifting me out of the car and putting me

in the wheelchair.

And I thought, how is he going to deal with this?

And then he did run.

And he finally threw himself on my lap, which just about killed

me, because I still had all the sutures down from when

they put my insides together.

And he threw his arms around me.

And I had a huge epiphany.

I realized that sitting in a wheelchair

and holding my surviving son in this realm

was no less divine than being in the other realm

and holding my son who had passed there.

I mean, suddenly heaven, if you will, was right here.

I mean, there was nowhere to go.

There was nothing to be.

There was these divine moments.

And it's never gone away.

I mean, for 20 years now-- and yeah, I

had to get back to work.

I had to make a life.

And we did.

But there's those little moments in life

that are just-- they're divine.

It's like something opens up and your heart gets it.

I had miracles happen.

I mean, I say I had angels show up.

And sometimes those angels were my brothers or my mom.

Sometimes it was neighbors.

But I felt as if there was always

angels from the other side.

It's almost like Griffin and Tamara never really were gone.

I eventually fell in love again, which was crazy.

I mean, it was--

I had guilt about that.

I think I have a guilt complex.

I mean, I had this incredible woman come into my life, Tonya.

She's my wife now.

And I wasn't dating.

I was still bereaved.

I was still heartbroken.

But I began to have feelings for her.

And I felt awful.

I would go to the graveyard and I would lay on my wife's grave.

And I was sobbing, saying--

well, I was angry at one point.

I'm like, how could you leave me like this?

You know, I don't even walk right.

And I'm trying to raise our son.

And you're in that beautiful place.

And how dare you?

How dare you leave me?

I mean, I was angry.

And it was interesting, because as I was pouring out my heart

and letting her have it with my words, I felt her.

Now, I don't see, but I felt her.

I felt as if she came and put her hands on my shoulders

behind me.

And then she communicated so clearly.

She was like, don't berate me for leaving.

And she said to me, she said, I loved you enough to leave.

And I thought, wow.

But that can't be right.

That can't-- you know, that doesn't make sense.

And she communicated.

She said you would not be learning what you're learning.

Life would be so different.

I would have loved nothing more than to grow old with you

and be with you.

But that was not the plan.

And she laid out-- like, this was a big plan.

We made this deal that you were going to come.

You were going to have this experience.

And that I was going to love you enough to go so that you would

have those feelings and have your soul expand in such a way.

And none of this really made sense.

And so I don't fight fair, and I said, yeah,

but I'm having feelings for another woman.

And she laughed at me.

She said, of course you are.

Of course you are.

I want you to be happy.

I want you to have love.

I want you to be with someone.

I am not jealous.

I'm not upset.

I'm not hurt.

In fact, she communicated, I sent her your way.

You can do whatever you want.

You have the choice.

But she will teach you unconditional love.

And it was so real.

Once again, that was so real to me.

I could hear the voice in my head.

But I could feel it in my heart.

I mean, the communication was so clear.

And I could feel her there.

Even though I didn't feel her physically,

I could feel her right there with me.

And that was life changing as well.

And I eventually remarried, you know.

I mean, Tonya and I continued our relationship.

And Spencer embraced her as a mother.

Tonya is the hero of the story.

I mean, she came in and continued to heal a broken man,

because I was broken.

And she took Spencer on as her son

and kind of put all the pieces back together for us.

And then we adopted two boys.

Tonya was not able to have children.

And she said, I think we should adopt.

And I don't even say adopted boys.

I just called them my sons.

We adopted two boys that are brothers.

And they came as a package deal to our home.

But I just say my sons made it to our house.

It looked a little different.

We rebuilt this family, but it was still hard.

You know, it wasn't--

I mean, it took me 10 years to really get over the grief,

to really embrace love.

And I think the key for me, too, is

even though I had had those profound experiences,

I was still looking for joy and peace out there somewhere.

Who can bring this to me?

Tonya, if she could just love me enough to make me feel OK.

Or if the boys could just love me enough to make me feel OK.

Or in my job or whatever else I was grasping at

to feel like I was wanted and I was loved and I was OK.

Even though I had been in the arms of God and felt perfect.

But I was still looking for an outside source.

In fact, I was wandering around thinking, where's

all that love I felt here?

Where will I ever find it?

And the key was when I finally looked within myself

instead of looking out there.

When I finally realized, oh, to love unconditionally,

I get to love myself unconditionally.

And when that happened, the healing began.

Because I was never going to find it out there.

That had to be felt within.

And even in my Christian upbringing,

this Jesus fellow said "the kingdom of God is within you".

Don't look out there for it.

And I began to maybe grasp what that meant a little

more, that it is within us.

We are divine beings.

We do have the power to create our own situations if we

embrace ourselves that way and do so.

For many years, I didn't talk about my experience at all.

I didn't want people to think I was crazy.

And also, I felt it was just for me.

It's like, this is sacred stuff.

You know, it's not lunchtime conversation to say,

hey, by the way, I went to the other side and saw God.

And so I just held it to my own self.

I didn't share about it.

I didn't talk about it.

Very few people even knew that I had had an experience.

But I was talking to a group of people.

And it was-- actually, it was a Sunday school class.

I was teaching a class.

And the subject was the love of God.

And I begin to get emotional, saying, oh, I

have felt the love of God.

I couldn't hold back the emotions,

because I was thinking of being in those arms.

And there was a woman in the back that came up.

And I knew her.

She was a neighbor of ours.

And she said, there's a lot more to your experience

you don't talk about, right?

And I said, yeah, but I don't talk about it.

And she said, I think you should meet with a person I know.

And it was a man at the university

who studied near death or out of body experiences.

And I said, oh, no, I don't--

and she said, please do this.

So I sat down with him and shared what had happened.

And of course I'm just weeping.

I hadn't talked of it much.

And he was crying too.

And when I finished, there was someone

in the back that was with a publishing company and came up

and said, you've got to write a book.

And I said, no.

I don't even talk about this, let alone write a book.

And, well, there was so many things falling into place.

And there was this little whisper.

I call it a whisper.

That was saying, maybe that's why you're still here.

And so it's really not about me, you know?

It's about healing.

And if I can do something that makes

a difference in the world with the catastrophe that happened,

then that makes it worth it.

Then that makes it in some ways OK, or at least

a little bit better.

I mean, there's so much division in the world.

Everything teaches us that we're separate.

You're of that political party.

I'm of this one.

You're woman and I'm a man.

Or you're gay and I'm straight.

Or you're Black and I'm white.

Or, I mean, there's all this segregation, all this division.

The one thing that was so profound in my experience

was the oneness, realizing that we are connected.

That I am and you are me, and that we're really

here together.

We're all in this together.

There's no stepchildren in this family of God.

And also the love.

The love I felt. I have embraced that love

is the most powerful force in the universe.

Love can heal everything.

And it can heal anything if we can simply come together.

And in many ways, too, I embrace that as well.

You know, I used to live in a fear

that the world was going to end, or God

was going to come and fix it.

Now, I'm a firm believer that it's up to us.

That we're divine, powerful beings.

And that if we can embrace that love that is within each of us

by loving ourselves and then loving others,

that that's the ripple effect.

That's what creates heaven right here.

You know, there's nowhere to go or anything to be.

It's to really embrace and love each other here.

And suddenly, that beautiful place

becomes the ground under our own feet.

The oneness, the connection that we have.

And it doesn't matter who said it.

There's been many masters, you know.

Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, I don't care which one.

I mean, Gandhi, Mother Teresa.

It doesn't matter.

The homeless guy on the street.

I mean, we are all masters.

You will never encounter someone that's

not a magnificent, glorious, divine being.

I mean, there's this whole great big universe.

Uni-verse.

I love that, because uni means one, and verse means song.

There's this one big song.

And each and every one of us have a part

to play in that, a part to sing.

And I sing at a tone that's far different than yours.

And every tone comes together in the perfect melody,

the perfect harmony.

And it's already happening.

We don't see it, because we see ourselves as separate.

But if we realized, and stepped into the oneness

that we already are, and sang our songs so

brightly and shined as we do, it's like the stars.

Everyone has a different twinkle.

But when you look at that Milky Way and that galaxy, you say,

wow look how beautiful it is collectively.

Look how beautiful the stars are individually.

And that's how we are.

We're already that.

There's nothing to become.

I mean, yeah, if it's so good there, why be here?

I deal with a lot of people who struggle with suicide

or who have lost children to suicide.

And I have no judgment of that.

There were many times during my struggles

that I thought I'd rather just go.

Of course, I had a son here that was keeping me pretty grounded.

But I think this is the big game.

It's like, we can't experience what

we want to experience when everything's

light and beauty and peace.

It's almost like we wanted to have the opposite.

We wanted to experience what we're not so we could finally

embrace what we truly are.

I used to-- I mean, I'll go back to my old football days,

where they would draw it on the chalkboard.

And all the X's and O's and everything looked perfect.

And yet, you never knew until you got on the field,

and smelled the grass, and had someone hit into you

what it was like.

And I believe life is like that.

We wanted to come and have the experience

because our soul would expand.

And while we're here, we just think, oh my gosh,

I can't do this.

This is too hard.

But our higher self, our higher knowledge thinks,

yeah, but that's why you came.

I mean, it's easy for me to sit in a beautiful house

and say life is good.

And there's people that suffer, struggling.

I mean, I'm working with some folks that

work with human trafficking.

I mean, kids being taken and put into the sex trade

or whatever else.

There are things in the world that are heart wrenching.

And so how do we look at those and say

it's all in divine order?

How does this make sense?

I embrace it as a perfect opportunity to be love.

How can I shine light in dark places?

How can I embrace things and make a difference?

And I realize I'm just one.

I'm just one guy.

But gosh, can I make life better for somebody today?

Can I do something for someone?

And by doing it for the one, you're doing it for the all.

Even when I raise my own vibration, if I can go

meditate for a minute and get it peace, or forgive, something,

even if it's forgiving myself.

I forgive others very easily.

The hard one to forgive for me is myself.

That ripples out.

It ripples out and affects the consciousness

of all of humanity.

But it comes down to choice.

We live in fear.

We're so conditioned with judgment, or religion,

or even our parents or whoever said, well, you're a bad boy.

You don't deserve that.

That's not coming.

Well, you've got to earn that.

I mean, all these things that we have

conditioned in our mind, when in reality, we are deserving.

We are worthy always.

We're of great worth.

And the Earth is so beautiful.

I mean, now, after having the experiences I had,

I used to wonder about miracles.

You know, gosh, how do you create a miracle?

And yet now, like, I can go out and watch a sunrise,

and it's an absolute miracle.

Like, heaven's right here.

I see the flowers grow.

That's a miracle.

I mean, smell the fresh air.

Feel the rain on your skin.

And think, wow, it's so incredible to be in this realm

and to be alive.

And there is no death.

I'm having this experience.

And there is no judgment.

I'm going to move from this.

And I'll tell you, when we pass from this life,

we're going to be embraced by loving arms

and simply asked, what did you learn?

Tell me about what you learned in your experience.

What was it like to be like that?

What was it like to be you?

What was it like to have this or not have that?

And it's all going to be a collective oneness of, wow,

look what we learned.

Look what we created.

Look at the uniqueness.

And we'll realize we always were one.

We always were connected.

It was just our inability to embrace it and realize it

that held us back.

It's difficult, because so much of our society

just struggles day to day.

It's hand to mouth.

How do I survive?

You know, how do I make enough money to pay the rent

and to put groceries on the table?

There's no time or energy for how do I assist others?

How do I make a difference in the world?

I found a key for me.

And it's if I can take only 10 minutes a day--

I mean, I'd rather take an hour, but even 10 minutes

to be still, to be still and just reconnect.

Like, always be connected.

Just remember.

Remember that connection.

Remember who I am.

Remember that everything's in divine order.

And let go of the fear.

Let go of the contention.

Let go of that doubt that there's not enough.

You know, we live in such fear that there's not enough.

There's not enough money.

There's not enough food.

There's not enough time.

There's not enough love.

And yet, if we can let go of that and realize

there is enough and I think the key

for me was realizing that I'm enough.

I'm enough.

I mean, I limp around on one leg, and I do the best I can.

But I am enough by simply being me.

By simply showing up in light and love

and loving the people around me.

And taking care of those around me.

And when I say taking care of, just energetically, you know?

I will probably never make enough money,

you know, probably never have.

But then again, what's money?

It's just energy.

I've had lots of money, and I've had nothing.

And it didn't make me any happier one way or the other.

You know, I mean, there's always that, well, I want more money.

Or I need to make more of this.

Or if I only had more money, I could get that.

They're just things.

You know, they're just things.

I remember sleeping in the backseat of my car

at one point when I was young.

And I had nothing.

But I didn't need anything.

I mean, it was--

I was fine.

Money is not who I am.

And none of it is who I am.

If I really get in touch with, I'm not the car.

I'm not the house.

I'm not the job.

I'm not my partner.

I'm not the shoes or the clothes or anything else.

I am all of it.

I am that I am.

I am the divine.

I am me.

And me is enough just the way I am.

And I can be my contribution in this universe without even

trying, by just simply being.

Just being me.

I've had to let go of control and expectations

and comparisons.

I have some dear friends that are Native, Indigenous people.

And there's a beautiful story that I was told once,

because I asked about that.

How do I control?

How do I fix?

How do I make?

And this wise elder said, no, no, no.

And then he told a story.

He said when you get in the river,

when you fight the current, the harder you try to swim,

you sink.

He said, when you relax, when you let go,

when you go with the flow, the current

will take you exactly where you're meant to be.

And it's interesting.

I've been in the water.

Swimming is one of the only things I can do anymore where

I move my body, but it's true.

The harder you fight the water, the faster you sink.

And if you just let go and relax and float, it's peaceful.

It's easy.

And there is order in the universe.

We'll be exactly where we're meant to be.

And we're divine beings.

And we're here to make the world a better place

and literally create peace and joy for everyone.

I have no doubt we could do it.

We're powerful, powerful people.

Any community is very powerful when they step up and decide

and choose a difference.

I mean, never underestimate the power

of a small group of people who are focused on change.

There's thousands of examples and thousands

of barriers that have been overcome where people

find peace, they come together.

And I think humanity's awakening and actually doing it

worldwide.

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