So, this post is going to be a difficult one to put in words in a way that effectively communicates the message (difficult to put in words period!), but I decided I have to try, because lately I’ve pieced many things together that have not only begun to help me understand the full picture of why I had spiritual experiences in the past, but has massively broadened my understanding of the universe and how it works (though of course there is still much left to be understood). This made me want to show people what I’m feeling, but I’ll be honest — most people either think I’m crazy, don’t believe me, or think I’m just subscribing to some belief system.

I’ve always been a spiritually-minded person, long before I even knew what spirituality meant. You could take me to church, tell me things you thought were real, but if I had no reason to believe what I was being told, I wouldn’t. I grew up considering myself “agnostic” regardless of going to a Mormon church and a Catholic high school, and definitely did not believe in the traditional idea of God, and disliked organized religions. I didn’t have any apparent reason to believe in these things people were telling me to believe in, so I didn’t. I knew I had my own moral compass and I felt it was more appropriate for me to live by my own ideals and what I thought was right. I trusted myself to do that. It’s always taken me my own experiences or feelings to believe something.

For me, spirituality was not a belief. It was part of my brain, and it’s part of everybody’s brains. But I was aware of it. I knew and felt most things people write about in regards to spirituality (such as enlightenment, Buddhist writings, etc) before I encountered those writings. And when I did, I thought “wow! This is it! These people are like me.” Spirituality was not something I ever had to seek after or something I even did anything with. I would describe it simply as an awareness.

I also often have bits and pieces of sensations and experiences of things throughout my life. One example that started as young as 5 years old, is I never felt “real”. I remember telling my friend, “I wish I were a real girl.” And she’d go, “what do you mean?” The truth is, I wasn’t sure what I meant either. It was just a feeling I had. Then oftentimes still, I watch myself writing or doing something, anything at all, like just interacting with someone — and I’d realize that what I was doing in that moment wasn’t actually “me,” I was merely just using tools I had. Writing was a tool I had, speaking was a tool I had, etc. And I realized, the part of me that I feel is most truly “me” is not the one that is interacting and participating in things on a daily basis. I am just using tools here. I would casually notice that the part of me that I myself identified with the most wasn’t the one operating and in action on a day-to-day basis. It’s a really hard notion to describe. So then, I thought, where was the real “me”?

Everyday life to me has always felt surreal.

When I was 18, I had my first spiritual experience. It happened without trying. It just happened. I can’t describe it here, because that would take another book (you can read about the first one here: http://bit.ly/1Q9Mlyx). I also had another one in 2005. What these spiritual experiences did was introduce me to another world, a “reality between the lines” as I often thought of it. When I had my first experience, I felt like I had found something I had been looking for for “a long time,” but I couldn’t pinpoint when I would have been looking for it. It felt like a long, long time ago — something I couldn’t put a timeline on. Immediately after the experience I felt a sense of happiness more pure than I had felt ever in my life, and such a strong sense of love and a feeling of rejuvenation. But I felt like I had reunited with a part of me that was “home” to me. Even before the experience I remember writing poems about “returning home,” before I even knew what that meant! This was amazing even to me.

It also shattered my idea of what life on Earth was to me, and made my entire life up to that point feel like an illusion or a dream because I was now seeing it through the eyes of a higher awareness. Buddhists talk about this experience all this time as an “enlightenment.”

During my second experience, this time I was actively seeking out this innate part of me — the part of me I felt was “the real me,” and I did, and experienced myself as so much more massive. This is where words absolutely fail to describe the experience. By this time I knew my “ego” part of me, my sense of self, the “me” that uses “tools” like language and interaction to operate here on Earth, was limited and not the full me. But once I began to merge via meditation with my more innate, “soul” part of me, my ego kicked and screamed in fear. Because my “soul” part is so much more massive than our limited “senses of self” we have here on Earth. The actual source of this innate part of us in its true nature, like the universe, is so big that it would shatter your sense of self if you were confronted with it full on. Who you think you are and your identity would go kerplunk and your sense of self would dissolve into the universe (this usually only happens at death, and has not happened to me fully. I don’t know if I can ever transcend the ego fully while being alive. I believe some degree of “sense of self” is needed while we are on earth in order to operate and interact). I used to think the fear that it created in me was purely just because I had a tendency towards anxiety, but I’ve learned that it was much more than that. I was essentially beginning to uproot my own idea of myself and my existence, and this in a way was terrifying. It’s what I used to exist here on Earth, but at the same time I knew there was something more than that.

Remembering Where You Come From

Another important element of these experiences is that it felt like a “remembrance.” It felt like I was uncovering things that were deep inside me that I just had long forgotten. This didn’t really make sense to me at the time, but that’s what it felt like.

Needless to say from this point on (though it took a while to consciously understand this), I began to understand that our “egos” and our “souls” were separate, and kept in a constant balance while we are on Earth. This is not something I read or understood, again, it’s something I experienced. Ever since these experiences I became fascinated with the subject of sense of self vs. pure consciousness and yearned to learn more.

As a teenager and a girl in my 20s, I never really cared about normal “worldly” things to the extent that I cared about these glimpses of higher consciousness I was getting. It was fascinating to me and I wanted to follow it. It offered an experience of the world and of myself that was far more interesting and massive than the Earthly world I was in.

When I went on Prozac for 9 years for my anxiety disorder, my “spiritual” sense was blocked from me not only by the drug but by needing to focus my energy in learning to handle my anxiety. Now that I am off the drug and my anxiety is handled, my “spiritual” sense came back as it is a natural part of me.

Fast forward to the recent last few weeks.

I had always followed this prodigy girl Akiane’s work. She is a painter and poet and was considered the youngest binary genius in the two, and claims that her inspiration and skills are inspired by the divine. That a “God” was teaching her how to paint, as young as 4 years old, while her parents were atheists who were homeschooling her. So she had no outside influence on religion or spirituality. The thing is, I knew she was genuine. I had always related to her on a deep level. Because I read her poetry, watched her interviews, saw her unbelievable talent, and I felt I could feel where she was coming from. I would think to myself, “wherever she’s coming from, I’m from there too.” She sparked an understanding in me, but I wasn’t yet seeing the full picture. She would speak of visions she had (not just dreams, but visions while awake and all sorts of things) of visiting blissful realms and thousands of places in this other “dimension.” For the most part until recently, I understood and was fascinated by her experiences, but they hadn’t quite “clicked” with my understanding of the universe yet.

Up until she was age 5, Akiane’s mom said Akiane would cry every time they put music on. Her parents were getting so frustrated by this and didn’t understand her. Her mom then just broke down and cried eventually over this, and then Akiane put her hands around her mom’s face and said “Mommy don’t cry, I’m sorry I act this way, it’s just that music in this heavenly realm is so much better than here. The music here hurts my ears and head really bad. The music in Heaven is alive, you can even taste it!”

I never believed in a “Heaven,” but I was certainly curious about what she was experiencing, and what the music was like.

Akiane as a child was never a perfectionist and wasn’t that articulate either, according to her mom. But suddenly when Akiane started writing poetry, incredibly complex poems would come to her effortlessly, with a vocabulary even far beyond most adults. Many times, Akiane said, after the poem had been recorded, she didn’t even know what it meant. She often had to decipher the meaning and even look up some of the words in the dictionary. She had said in one of her experiences in the other dimension, the Light (or a “God”) told her to memorize thousands of words on wisdom scrolls that weren’t actually scrolls but looked like pure light. She looked at the scrolls then was instantly filled up with them and uses her poetry to remember what she has learned in this other realm.

Again, I never believed in a “God,” but I was fascinated with where her “divine” inspiration was coming from. I’ve always been interested in consciousness and psychology, so I wanted to get a grasp on it. But from watching her interviews I knew she was just a regular, normal girl, and even as her mom said, didn’t appear to be a “deep thinker.” She was just a normal, playful, innocent child. I could sense her family was genuine and that Akiane was not “religious.” These experiences were a natural part of her, just like my own spiritual experiences were a natural part of my own brain.

She said in her heavenly realms that there were a myriad of colors that weren’t here on Earth, that on Earth it was almost as though the colors are few and muted, but in this other dimension they are brilliant and varied. The grass and trees there were different colors, almost a fuschia color. Flowers were transparent and reflected the light, and they seemed conscious. You could interact with animals and communicate with them telepathically. She encountered the Light which she interpreted to be a “God” that sometimes took on male form, but was in its true nature sexless. She said in one of his more human forms his eyes were incredibly beautiful, but his hands were not actual hands — they did not have skin, bones, or blood — but were made of maps and events.

She said that the “Light” is love, and all that matters is Love, and the purpose of our existence on Earth is spiritual evolution and to love and help others. She also says that much of the knowledge she has forgotten, and some she could not take back to Earth. Right now the Earth is somewhat of a fallen place, with many people that are not aware and have forgotten their purpose.

The odd thing is, that when she describes these things, they sound faintly familiar. Almost as though I’ve been to this place but had long forgotten.

To many she might sound like she is just purely imaginative or creative, and that she IS just a genius, but not necessarily inspired by anything out of this Earthly world. I even questioned that myself. But, due to my broadened understanding of my own spiritual experiences, my own feelings, and learning about her in depth and watching her interviews, I know in my heart and deeply inside me she is the real deal, and so are her experiences. And, her poetry and paintings are far too complex and brilliant for them to not have significant meaning to them.

It’s all about trusting yourself. You have to trust yourself to feel things that may not be accepted or may be seen as “crazy,” if you know they are true deep within you. But you have to resonate with them first. Otherwise you’re just taking people’s word for it.

Anyhow, so I really had to think about this. I trusted her entirely, and she was a confirmation to me that there are other realms that you can experience. I don’t know what made me think of this, but I ended up deciding I wanted to look at accounts of near-death experiences to see if their visions had any parallels to Akiane’s experiences, as well as parallels to what I felt deep inside of me when more merged with my “pure consciousness.”

“I always knew I was a dust, but I didn’t know I was also a universe.” —Akiane

Near-Death Experiences and Other Realms

Like most people, I always chalked up near-death experiences to the brain dying. I mean that’s what makes the most sense to most of us, right? It puts it in terms and a logical process that we can understand and that fits within our understanding of how the world works. Well, I no longer do that. EVEN IF what people experience close to death is an electrical template of visions, what people see in those visions is extraordinarily significant, and I don’t think we have the full picture. Most people that come back from these experiences have a changed life afterwards. Some that were atheists and had these visions changed back to believe in a Light, or an afterlife, even if they themselves knew about near-death experiences and chalked them up to the brain dying. Most people that experiences these say they were more “real” than their Earthly lives, and most are now far more empathetic, compassionate, and more accountable for their own actions.

So, I came across http://www.nderf.org and I have so far read probably near one hundred accounts of near death experiences. Even a guy with Aspergers who knew you could induce near-death experiences with ketamine (and who was very intelligent) and wanted to dissect the experience, even he now believes there is another realm that truly exists that only our pure consciousness can access, even though he was purposely inducing the experiences!

Most of the near-death experiences were all incredibly detailed and had inspiration from another realm. Most of them said the same thing Akiane did: that they traveled to a blissful place where the flowers, trees, grasses were alive and there was music far more beautiful than what we hear on Earth. That there were colors beyond what they had ever seen before. And almost always there was someone giving them the decision to come back to life or to cross over. One person that committed suicide and who didn’t just have a near death experience, but was actually dead for quite some time had an exceptional experience that changed her life. During her whole life, she had never loved herself. She had decided to quit on life. Her life on Earth was hard and miserable. But during her experience to the beyond and existing as pure consciousness, there was a “being” she came in contact with that for what seemed like hours, showed her nothing but pure love and she spent the whole time exchanging love between herself and this “being.” This “being” was made purely of light but she knew it was a conscious, self-aware light, and it was intentionally showing her love she had never felt on Earth and that this being knew everything about her. It knew about her life and was trying to show her that she was worth something; that she was actually perfect as she is.

Many of these people who decide to come back end up miraculously healing when they either should have been dead because of how bad the accident they were in was, and healed far faster than what was expected by doctors.

Most of all of them also can’t describe the experience in words and that there was a certain amount of knowledge they could not take back to Earth and that they knew there was a reason for that, but they were no longer sure of why. They all also said if there was any questions they had about the universe or their lives, they knew it instantly. That all communication was telepathic since they couldn’t or didn’t need to use “language,” and they weren’t seeing with their “eyes” or hearing with their “ears” but things were transmitted to them through thought, energy and feeling. They all said that in this dimension, there was no time, but that there were so many worlds that operated where time was just different than it is on Earth. 100% of them, regardless of what they felt before the experiences, had also said after the experience that Earth was just a school and only a part of our existence. We are here to evolve our consciousness. I believe this, because I have tapped into this greater consciousness while here on Earth! It doesn’t have to be necessarily considered “divine” or “other-worldly,” it is just another facet of our existence to be tapped into, if we are ready for it.

Existing as pure consciousness, those experiencing near-death experiences often encounter other beings of pure consciousness, and they then realize that they are also existing as pure light just like these other beings are. They can recognize their essence not with eyes but feel them with their energy and recognize them this way.

There has been scientific experiments designed to try to understand near-death experiences by purposely inducing them on mice, or even on human cardiac arrest patients — some places have placed images around the room (towards the ceiling) and if the patient ends up flat-lining for any period of time and ends up having a near death or “out of body” experience, they’ve attempted to test if that person could see the images placed around the room while being officially dead. They realized though how hard it is to get data on this and all scientific studies have been inconclusive. But they have had a couple of significant cases where the person having the experience did recall something in another part of the hospital while being officially dead.

However, when you read the near-death experiences accounted on the website linked above, many of the people (including one of the suicide cases) were definitely officially dead and in another realm. And for me personally, I’m really not interested in the scientific explanation of it so much as I am in the messages themselves. Because those messages that they receive change their lives in a drastic and positive way. They make them more compassionate, and less afraid of death. The experiences also have too many parallels to each other, encounters with other beings and an intelligent sequence of events. While we have advanced scientifically in a number of ways, the universe and its worlds are massive beyond our understanding. Our science can explain some of the phenomena as it happens on Earth and how it relates to other planets and events in Space, but we aren’t prepared to measure other realms. Many of us are not yet equipped mentally to even comprehend the idea of this or the massiveness of the universe. We aren’t there yet.

And, if Akiane could have these similar experiences repeatedly without having a “near death” experience and I knew deep down she was entirely genuine (and I am oftentimes considered a skeptic), this was just more confirmation for me.

Waking Up

No matter what though, the real confirmation for me came from my own self and my own spiritual experiences. I’ve many times looked at similar information and reduced it to down to logic. But this particular set of events in the past few weeks have awakened something in me yet again, that felt like it was already there, but that I was just remembering — it was a feeling of “waking up to it” — that’s how you know it’s real. It was something already within you. And it made all of my past spiritual experiences make much more sense. It made so much make sense! Little bits of information here and there I had heard or learned in my life, little bits of people telling me visions they had, or my best friend (Cory) constantly having predicting dreams, and countless other things I felt — everything came together like pieces of a puzzle and I finally saw the big picture! It was a realization that changed my understanding of the universe and of my existence.

We are not humans merely having “spiritual” experiences, we are spiritual beings having an “earthly” experience! Our true selves belong to the beyond. Our true selves are bigger than the tools and the body we are using here on Earth.

So many of us try to interpret things that happen here on Earth, and even if we know intellectually that humans are limited and that the universe is massive, we can’t really see that we are reducing things down to try to understand them. But some things are going to be incomprehensible at this stage of time until we see the full picture. It makes sense that as pure consciousness we would be able to see colors and understand music that is far more advanced that we have here on Earth, that here on Earth we are limited by what our ears and eyes can sense, but as pure consciousness we are not limited by our Earthly “tools.” It makes sense that our understanding of time is limited, because we become so accustomed to this timeline here on Earth, but time elsewhere in the universe is extraordinarily different.

In one account of a near death experience, the person said that the “universe is awash with life, some so different than our own that they would not recognize us as living sentient beings and to us they would be great unmoving orbs. But they move at such a different rate that we would have to wait a thousand years to observe the smallest movement. To them we are like flashing sparks of electrons, we exist and then we’re gone. Some of those beings have observed our world for millions of years and the only real change they see is the huge continental drifts.” This makes so much sense to me. To me it was almost like, “why wouldn’t there be creatures like this?” The universe is too big for it not to!

REMEMBER: How the universe and our existence works is massive and beyond our current comprehension.

We already know this much. We already understand there are vast differences in time and space depending on where you are in the universe. But understanding and believing what these people are saying takes far more than an open mind and far more than belief. It takes an internal knowing.

According to many of these accounts as well as Akiane, there are thousands of realms and places in this other dimension — not just a “heaven” or a “hell.” It is vast, just as the universe is vast. However, a handful of people have reported experiencing not a blissful realm after they die, but rather a realm of pure darkness and isolation, and they related this to learning that it was due to their actions while on Earth.

Either way, so much for me has started to piece together and instead of using words to describe it, I wish I could just transmit it to people so they could see what I’m seeing. These words are so insanely limited. I can point to what I’m feeling and seeing with these words, but it by no means accurately describes or encompasses it. Again, it isn’t a belief. It’s a “knowing.” It’s not a conclusion I arrived to by deduction, belief, or purely my intellect. It was something I uncovered and realized, and certain things helped attune my mind to it. I don’t know any details, but my spiritual experiences were me tapping into a far larger existence, but I also knew that what I tapped into was only a small taste; the tip of the iceberg.

I believe that as I go on in this life I’ll begin to understand more and more, and hopefully be able to add to this picture that I have now.

This is what I do know:

We are here on Earth for a purpose. Each of us have a mission. Think of Earth as a passage, and as a school. It does not end here. Compassion and love are all that matters. Who you truly are is massive and limitless. It is only our Earthly “senses of selves” that separate us from the universe. When our senses of self die, you will BE the universe. You are so much more than your Earthly body. You will join back to where we came from when you die, and you will be reunited with your essence — or pure consciousness that we had before all of our Earthly experiences. Immediately upon dying you will feel a lifting of all your pain, your suffering, your Earthly experience, and you will rejoin with this pure energy. You will feel pure love beyond anything you can imagine, acceptance. You will feel unbelievably loved.

Again, you can tap into this to some degree here on Earth, but I don’t know how to tell you how to do it. Many people have tapped into it through consistent meditation. I truly believe that future humans will be far more “spiritually” evolved, and that that is the direction we are going in.

But it doesn’t matter what you believe here on Earth. Akiane, myself, and many of the people who had near-death experiences have said that religion is not the answer and religion can be irrelevant because it’s not about what you believe. Akiane, while she has a couple of typically Christian paintings of Jesus, states she is not a Christian, nor subscribes to any religion.

Just be good to others and be good to yourself. Have as much fun as you can here on Earth, and love others.

Treat others well, because most likely when you die, no matter what the reason, you will have a “life review” as 99% of people with near-death experiences have had that will in an instant show you the events of your life and you will become more sensitive to where you did others wrong and also feel more love for when you did good things.

Love, when it’s on a higher level (not like a “possession” type of love or a lustful type of love), but pure, unconditional love, seems to be the law in these realms that people are experiencing. It’s a love we rarely actually experience here on Earth. And I’ve realized after my experiences and having a higher sense of love directly after them, that this love is significant because it puts everything in perspective. It accepts everything regardless of what it is, it is love that accepts us no matter how imperfect we are, because our pure consciousness is perfect as it is and our Earthly lives are temporary. It is a type of love that sees what you are at your very core — it permeates you and allows you to realize where you come from.

We each create our own realities and without each one of our views the universe would be incomplete. We are unique yet we are all one.

Take comfort in knowing our deaths are not the end. It will be just a transition, a “stepping into another room,” but that room will be another dimension where we will feel limitlessness, love, and higher vibrations of things (unless maybe for those who are evil, then I don’t know!).

“Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.” – The Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

“No matter what happens around us, or to us, through love our soul reaches immortality conquering all dimensions and all destinies.
As we experience punches of sorrow and touches of joy we cross different dimensions and participate in creating our own destiny.
This is a story of choosing happiness over sadness, and choosing to close the wounds of time, instead of becoming the wounds themselves.
The hands represent our decisions and choices. They move according to our free will. One of the hands is moving in a human realm helplessly. The other hand is moving in a spiritual realm and closing the separation – the wound of earthly reality. We have to desire our future. That is why I painted the left hand holding its own chosen destiny, according to divine plan.