Dying to really live by Duane Smith

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Dying to Really Live The first book of a trilogy chronicling the real life and death experiences of Duane F. Smith

Volume I

Foreword

This book is the first of a trilogy of books about my original NDE and the five times my Soul Guides returned me to the Afterlife for further instruction. It is the story of what I saw, learned and did, during and between those six trips. It also is about my struggle to learn the art of Inner Guidance, enabling me to do finally what I was sent back to accomplish. This first volume, Dying to Really Live, tells of the events leading up to my original NDE and what it was like to die. It is the story of those I met the first time I went to the Afterlife and what happened while I was there. It is also the story of my why I was reluctance to return to this life, as well as why I finally did. And how, at first, what I found here, was a bit like the paraphrase of an old, post WW I song,” How ya gonna keep’em down on the farm, once they’ve seen gay Paree.” However, once I did begin to internalize something I learned over there, things quickly got better. What I learned was that, Heaven and Hell aren’t places; they are a state of mind, and what we experience is a choice, in this life or afterward. Since the first volume covers universal principles of life and death that should be free to all, I’m being told to give the first book away, to anyone interested, allowing the reader to decide if the trilogy is for them, or not, before buying the other two Volumes. Volume II, Beyond Death and Back, available immediately after Volume I, is the continuing story of what I experienced, and learned, during the five times my soul guides took me back to the Afterlife, in the two years following my original Death. Volume III of the Trilogy, Living in a New Tomorrow will be available following the publication of Volume II and is about one

of my last major learning assignment, to write of a what is ahead for humans in a few areas, such as: 

How a small change in our schools will empower every child to reach his or her God-given potential.



If God Lives within us all, what is the purpose of allowing “our” body to suffer sickness?



How individual mastery of Inner Guidance is the key to happiness, and what’s ahead.



How God’s perfect plan of creation will bring the return of the Edenic Millennium to earth far sooner than most think possible



How a Great Soul Divide ahead will be different than organized Religions, believe.



How we can achieve Heaven on earth as we wait for the unfolding of God’s perfect plan.

By Duane F. Smith. To follow the future writings of the Author or to follow his blog, Go to the Author’s Website, http://www.DuaneFSmith.org

Contents CHAPTER 1................................................................ 9 FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE CHAPTER 2 .............................................................. 13 THE EARLY YEARS CHAPTER 3 .............................................................. 18 MY EARLY LIFE CHANGES CHAPTER 4 ..............................................................22 GIVING UP ON LIFE CHAPTER 5 ............................................................. 26 A LIFE CHANGING COINCIDENCE CHAPTER 6 ..............................................................32 WAITING TO DIE CHAPTER 7 ............................................................. 34 DÉJÀ VU OR SOMETHING ELSE CHAPTER 8 ............................................................. 39 MY LIFE CHANGES AGAIN CHAPTER 9 ..............................................................45 THE 4 HORSEMEN COMETH CHAPTER 10 ............................................................ 51 LEARNING TRUE GRIEF ABOUT VOLUME II ................................................. 58 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ............................................. 60 A SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT ........................... 64

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Chapter 1

FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE “The world is a fine place and I would hate, very much, to leave it.” Ernest Hemingway In my late 30s, my life took an unexpected turn. Just when it seemed to be coming together as planned, something seemed vaguely off key. It was nothing I could put a finger on, just a vague feeling that I had missed a turn somewhere. Then, over the next year or so, I slowly entered what St. John of Cross, a Carmelite of the 16th Century, referred to as “The Night of the Soul.” Later, I would realize this was the beginning of a new phase in my life. At the time, my business and professional life had progressed to the point where my wife and I could afford what we thought, at the time at least were the things for which we had dreamed, worked, and planned. These were all the things we assumed, and society had taught us, would bring us happiness. Early in my life, I had watched people who had money and nice things and decided I wanted to be rich. I assumed that people with boats, cars, airplanes and all of life’s toys had to be happy, right? So when I was young, 9

FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d always replied “a millionaire.” Now, our wonderful little family consisted of two pre-teen daughters, around whom our lives revolved, the family dog, and independent cat. We were happily ensconced in a beautiful old Cape Cod, our home in the idyllic Shakespeare mecca of Ashland, Oregon. In our garage were the requisite “his and her” Mercedes. Mine was a sedan and hers a sports model purchased for her last birthday. Out at the airport were two airplanes just looking for ways to prove their worth to the family, one for local flying and one for long distance. With a posh ski area just a few miles outside of town and sailboat for the lake, we seemingly had it all. I had to be happy, right? It was icing on the cake that my “other family,” kids from the experimental program where I taught school after getting out of the Army, were mostly doing well also. The program had been for kids who struggled with school and often had challenges at home. For quite a few of the students, our classroom had become somewhat of a surrogate family, and many had stayed in touch. Even the most broken of the bunch, a little girl named Teresa, seemed to be on her way to getting her life figured out. As I looked at my life, I seemed to have it all, and what I didn’t have was within easy reach. Early in my life, I had discovered the power of goal setting and in my late 30s I had achieved almost all of my life’s goals – yes, even the millionaire part, several times over. We had been building bigger houses and took longer and more extravagant vacations. For several years now, I had felt we were just one step away from happiness; just one more “something” and we’d finally be there, we’d be satisfied and happy – ready to really enjoy life. All the same, even the last six-week family vacation in Europe, although perfect, still hadn’t scratched the itch I always felt. Now, I began to suspect that the next bigger and better “something” wasn’t going to do it either. And, of course, it never did. In fact, what made it worse was the growing realization that I 10

DYING TO REALLY LIVE really didn’t have any idea what real happiness was, or how or where to find it. I had come to realize that happiness was more than another new boat or bigger, faster airplane, or longer vacation somewhere. Then, when my wife began talking about how our next new house needed to be smaller to be perfect, I knew she was sensing the same unspoken frustrations as I was. About this time, to make matters even worse, something that had started out as a minor health annoyance took a turn for the worse. Fortunately, a doctor from The Stanford Medical Center in California took on my case. After a thorough examination, he seemed optimistic. He said they were developing a new operation and it was going to be the breakthrough they were seeking in the treatment of my apparently untreatable condition. Furthermore, he said they were about to do another test-case operation and thought I might be an excellent candidate for the new procedure. While characterized as major surgery, it could offer significant relief if all went well. And if it didn’t work, my prognosis wasn’t good anyway. To my wife and me, there was no question of our decision because, without the surgery, where would I be? More testing began and I was poked and prodded everywhere and relieved of bodily fluids I didn’t know I had. In spite of what the doctors had said, once all the tests were completed, it seemed the prognosis wasn’t so bright after all. The doctors, as a group, felt that my condition had already deteriorated too far to survive the operation. Furthermore, even if I were willing to risk the new procedure, no doctor wanted to operate on a man who they felt might just die on the operating table. Clearly, though they didn't admit it, they didn’t want to jeopardize their whole program, and new experimental procedure, by having one of their first with the patient dying in the process. Their advice to us was go home and get my affairs in order as I had, at the most, only five months to live. I was only 41, and someway it really didn’t sink in at first. We knew we had hit a rough patch of sailing in our life, but we didn’t really realize what 11

FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE was ahead. So, I suppose that was why their verdict had less impact on me than I would have expected. Maybe it was because of the bonenumbing fatigue I was feeling, after months of little or no sleep. Maybe it was because, in some vague way, the fatigue aligned with other feelings I was having. While I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t actually ready to give up, even before I realized I was in trouble, I had been wondering if what we had was all there was to life? But, as time went on, I did begin to give up. I remember thinking that a thousand years from now, it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter anyway; dead is dead. Then, I gradually became used these new feelings. Partly, perhaps, because the detached feeling of being so very tired made life seem devoid of meaning. It was as if part of me was dead already, but I was still walking around. So the days went on, and death became more inviting all the while.

Chapter 2

THE EARLY YEARS There is no place so magical as this world to a small child Born on a farm along the banks of Williams Creek in rural southern Oregon, I lived for the first six years of my life in a small, white house happily nestled under spreading oak and willow trees. We had a small farm halfway between two general stores in the wee hamlet of Williams, Oregon. Across the main road from our house was a small sawmill where my dad and granddad, along with 10 or 12 hired men, cut lumber for the war effort. In those days, if you owned a mill you also owned the timber, did the logging and hauled the logs to the mill. After cutting the logs into lumber, you hauled it to the railhead for shipment to some Army Depot. Until I was six, the farm and sawmill were my playgrounds and the universe, as I was amazingly free to roam them at will. When the war was over, we sold the mill and moved to a ranch not far away. My earliest memories are of waking up in my attic bedroom above the kitchen as the cozy smells of bacon, eggs, and pancakes came wafting up the narrow stairway. Then, the sounds of my granddad’s booming laughter would rattle through the house as he and my father came into the kitchen from the barn. Each morning before breakfast, they milked and fed the cows and harnessed the two teams of horses, used later at the mill. I would descend the stairs wiping the sleep from my eyes, where my granddad and best pal, Amos, would scoop me up and hoist me to his shoulders. He wasn’t actually my granddad. He was my dad’s uncle who raised Dad, but he was my favorite 13

THE EARLY YEARS “granddad.” Overall, as a child I was lucky to have two loving grandfathers in my life. Amos, a big-hearted man whose laughter was infectious, always dressed in clean bib overalls, except when he went to church, which wasn’t often. He was a natural magnet for kids and dogs everywhere he went, a regular Pied Piper. He was a larger-than-life person in a small community and I adored him. He also seemed to have a special affection for me, maybe because he had no children. Amos had a large impact on my world and helped shape the person I became as well as the values I embraced. He was someone who paid little attention to money, but seemed to have a natural ability to make it by the wheelbarrow load and gave it away as fast as he made it. In retrospect, my other granddad, on my mother’s side, was one of the oldest souls I ever met. If he wasn’t a real, honest-togoodness saint, he didn’t miss by much. With his bemused, enigmatic smile always playing across his face, it seemed impossible for him to see, or believe, any bad in any person or situation. Only much later did I come to realize what he already knew before I was born, what would take me 40 years, and a Near Death Experience, to begin to parse apart. Later, I realized these two men were part of, almost, a magical force at work in my life – the first of a number of elderly men who were always in my life, at the right place and the right time. At that tender age, I had no way of understanding how lucky I was to have two such grandfathers living around me as I grew up. My memories of those early mornings were always about the same. I would eat my breakfast with my dad and granddad as Mom plied us with course after course, fresh each morning, while my dad and granddad were out tending the livestock. She saw it as her duty to ensure that her family wouldn’t face the day on an empty stomach. There was always plenty of fresh-squeezed juice, real oatmeal, pancakes, ham or steak, eggs, biscuits and toast, topped off with something baked, maybe a cinnamon roll or coffee cake, 14

DYING TO REALLY LIVE and plenty of milk fresh from the barn, with a cream line partway down the pitcher. That was the way breakfast was in those days. It had to be substantial in the days before machinery replaced muscle power. Men consumed piles of food when it was available, and you rarely saw anyone overweight. The time-period was in the mid-1940s, during World War II, in an era when men did hard physical labor 10 to 12 hours a day. Having three hearty meals was just a normal part of the day. My mother saw it as her part of the daily workload to prepare, from scratch, three full meals with all the requisite baking. In addition, if she needed a chicken for dinner, she would catch and kill it, and then scald it in boiling water to pluck its feathers before cutting it up in frying sized pieces so that we could have fried chicken for dinner. Often, mother would milk the cows when dad had to be at the mill or in the woods. In his later life, my father never understood why people joined health clubs to “work out,” being from a generation when men did eight to ten hours of demanding physical work, and then had several hours of chores at the barn when they got home. After breakfast, my dad and granddad would follow the path across the field and climb the stile straddling the fence alongside the highway. Across the highway, the path led to a log pond where it became a series of chained-together floating logs hewn flat as a walking surface. Once on the other side, they entered the mill and began the second part of their day. Back at the house, I would finish my breakfast and then get dressed and hurry after them, following along the path they had taken over the stile, across the road, and to the log pond. Here, I would pick up the little pike-pole one of the men had cut off for me and cross the log bridge. When I arrived at the mill, I would usually go underneath it where my Uncle Harry already had a roaring fire going in the steam boiler. He was “getting up a head of steam” as we called it, so that at 8:00 he could blow the whistle and start the steam engine, which drove the saws and moved the log carriage back and forth across the saw blade. 15

THE EARLY YEARS In that era, if something moved, it took horse or man-power to do it. If they wanted a log rolled over or a piece of lumber moved, it was done by the muscle power of either a man or a horse. The steam engine, which seemed as large as a locomotive to a five-year old boy, but was the only source of power in the mill, other than muscle power. While there were a few electric light bulbs in our home, at first, there wasn’t even an electrical line to the mill. But when more lumber was needed near the end of World War II, Uncle Harry rigged a single-light bulb over the Sawyers station so that we could see before full daylight or as the light faded at night. This way, the mill could operate a few more hours each day, doing its part in the war effort. The underbelly of the mill fascinated me. I wanted to know what made it all work. But, after a while of watching and asking Uncle Harry all the questions I could think of, I would go on to other parts of the mill, driven by an insatiable boy’s curiosity. For the rest of the day, I usually had free run of most of the mill and mill yard, though certain places were absolutely offlimits. I was never to go near the burning sawdust piles and was amply supplied with stories of young children falling into their smoldering craters of burning sawdust. Later, as an adult, I question whether I would have allowed a son of mine such freedom at such a young age. I questioned for a while whether my parents had been negligent or not. It was only later that I realized my parents weren’t negligent; I had probably just fallen in the crack between Mom’s world and Dad’s… at first anyway. Mom sent me off to the mill to go to my Dad, assuming he would keep an eye on me, which he probably did. Then, sometimes, he would send me back to the house. But sometimes I would stop and see Amos along the way. As time went by, Mom probably thought I was with Dad and Dad would think I was with Mom. After a while, they decided, since I hadn’t been killed yet, I must be fairly safe. Soon, I was free all day long. Now, as I look back, it is easy to believe something or 16

DYING TO REALLY LIVE someone was watching over me. I had been given so much freedom, at a young age, in what was a potentially dangerous place. However, I believe it was with this freedom that I learned to get myself out of the little jams and troubles I managed to get myself into later. I suppose itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like the way the few remaining Native American families would fireproof their babies. As infants, their babies were allowed to crawl unprotected around a fire. At first, they were safe because they couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t move much. As they became slightly more mobile and were able to inch slowly toward the flame, they naturally learned that it becomes uncomfortably warm at some point, and so they stopped. In time, they become more mobile and braver. Inevitably, they occasionally got a red spot or even a small blister here or there. But eventually in small, age-appropriate doses they fireproof themselves. The children who get into trouble are those who are hovered over, or are overly protected around fires and not allowed to experiment or play with it. Because of my freedom to roam, I developed confidence in my own abilities and a healthy dose of self-respect for life, which was to carry me through the spirit-crushing experiences in store for me as my dyslexic tendencies came to the surface.

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Chapter 3

MY EARLY LIFE CHANGES On every life a little rain must fall I entered school on top of the world, eager to learn to read. In an era before teachers knew of dyslexia, my natural confidence and verbal abilities carried me well until fifth grade. My teachers seemed to accept me and my odd style of writing. I had developed a method of printing because cursive writing was impossible for me. My fingers just wouldn’t cooperate. I did my homework as required, and usually received As or Bs in most subjects. Nevertheless, in the fifth grade, my charmed world came crashing down around me. Here, I met a teacher who was a real life changer – in a negative way, or so it seemed at the time. I remember her as a self-righteous, frustrated woman who thought the way to motivate children, little boys in particular, was to shame them into better performance. Her way of inspiring and motivating me was to hold up my struggling attempts at writing in front of the whole class, ridicule it, and then post it on a special bulletin board for all to examine as an example of what she didn’t want. If her efforts created a negative reaction, the pressure was only increased. Her favorite punishment was “detention sentences” for work not meeting her “standards,” and mine never did, try as I might. As a punishment, she would write a sentence consisting of 30 to 35 words in length on the blackboard, tailored to admonish me for the error of my ways and sloppy penmanship. (Penmanship loomedlarge in her mind, and with no messy printing allowed!) For the first offense, she would have me copy, in longhand, 100 of these sentences, all to be written during my recesses or noontime. For a young boy of 10, who struggled to shape each letter individually, 18

DYING TO REALLY LIVE one at a time, the punishment of a hundred such sentences, seemed like capital punishment. In addition, any sentences not completed the first day carried over to the recesses of the next. Sometimes she would reject the whole assignment if she thought my penmanship looked like I “wasn’t trying hard enough.” By the time I completed the first 100 sentences, I usually had earned another 200 or 300 sentences. The magical life I had experienced until then began to turn gray and dark. But, the worst of it was that it all seemed to be my fault. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough or maybe I was lazy. My older sister had been in her class a few years earlier and received straight As. One thing I heard too much of was “why can’t you be like your sister? You’re capable, you just aren’t trying hard enough; you don’t care.” To make matters worse, often I would grasp an assigned problem and figure out my own way to the answer, only to be accused of copying the answer from someone else, because I hadn’t done it the way the teacher thought it was supposed to be done. When reports from my teacher came home of my “not applying myself” and saying that I was copying the work of others, I began to question myself, to think maybe it was all my fault. Maybe I wasn’t working hard enough and I began to question why I couldn’t do things “right;” I begin to wonder what was wrong with me. For a while, I would start each day determined to try harder and work harder. However, try as I might, I just couldn’t make the letters on the paper come out right or in their proper order, and often I couldn’t come to the right answer, in the same way other kids did. And, my right answer would cause me further grief when I couldn’t always articulate the often circuitous way in which I arrived at my answer. To make matters worse, by the time I had struggled over the paper for hours, it was smudged, messy, and many times ripped from the erasing. Often, I couldn’t even read my own writing, no matter how hard I tried or how determined I was to do better. Slowly, I began to give up. Whatever the cause, as I gave up to the shame and anger, it all 19

MY EARLY LIFE CHANGES turned into resistance, and then rebellion. By the sixth grade, I no longer even did classroom work unless the teacher stood over me and forced it. Homework was out of the question. Looking back on it now from a metaphysical viewpoint, what happened to me at the time was perfect, considering what it would head me toward, later. However, I certainly could not see it at the time. While this teacher triggered my anger and rebellion, she also sent me in the direction necessary to have the experiences for which I had come to this planet. While writing, grammar, and spelling were nearly impossible for me, reading came easily. Because of my good verbal skills and reading ability, I was carried on through the grades into high school. In high school, the results of my written work were much the same. Classes that required writing continued to be extremely frustrating. Math, science, and physics were easy for me, but I still had trouble seeing how others got the same answers that I did. However, I would usually receive As and Bs for my work in those classes, if the teacher wasn’t big on homework. However, my attitude problem carried over and I refused to do anything outside of the classroom. If I couldn’t do it during class time, I didn’t do it. Somehow, I was able to graduate on time, albeit in the bottom third of my class. Moreover, since I came from a family of Scotch and Irish forefathers who were either hellfire and brimstone preachers or schoolteachers, there was no doubt that I would go to college. That concept was so thoroughly ingrained in my upbringing that I really didn’t even question the idea. Nonetheless, after a short stint in college, my inability to write and study, along with my partying, finally caught up with me and when the dean asked me to leave for the second time, I knew something had to change. By now, my father also realized the futility of attempting to have me reinstated, yet again, and quietly said, “Son, I think you better go into the Army and grow up.” Little did he know at the time that what he said was received with a sense of relief and would lead me to exactly where I needed to be for the next of a series of life lessons, setting a pattern that would be 20

DYING TO REALLY LIVE repeated over and over in my life. The Army appealed to my sense of adventure, so I agreed to “Join the Army and See the World,” as was the recruiting slogan at that time. However, I left college for the Army feeling like I had a big “D” for “Dumb” branded across my forehead; feeling like maybe I was the dumbest person in the world. I guess I knew innately that I wasn’t actually that dumb, but I had no idea how to do some things the way others did and my self-esteem had been beaten down and was about as low as it could go. But, looking back on it, I can say that I hadn’t lost my fighting spirit; that would come later in life.

Chapter 4

GIVING UP ON LIFE Sometimes a person can be lost in the deluge To my wife, as I lost my interest in life, my changing attitude felt like abandonment. Of course, it is easy to see why she would feel that way. Nonetheless, I was unsure what to do about it. She felt we should be fighting harder somehow, but I didn’t know how to do that. We were already in the hands of the best medical team, working on the cutting edge of this recently discovered new field of medicine. Moreover, they were in contact with similar medical teams all over the world. Who were we supposed to go to? Perhaps some rumored South American healer or witch doctor? The only consolation I had was that she and the girls would be in good financial condition. Over the years, I had morphed from building student apartments to commercial office buildings, which were all on longterm leases. They were easy to manage and my attorney would handle whatever my wife couldn’t or didn’t want to deal with. Always a bright woman, she had actually become very knowledgeable of the business from managing our student apartments. Strangely, I kept thinking she might be better off without me; she could then get on with her life. In spite of it all, at some level neither of us really understood the finality of what was happening in our lives or inside my body. I wasn’t sick; I was just tired, in a way that was hard to explain. I was suffering from an extreme case of Central Nervous System Sleep Apnea compounded by a second form, Obstructive Sleep Apnea. The first form of sleep apnea occurs in only 15% of sleep apnea cases and is akin to Crib Death in newborn infants. For some unknown reason, at least at that time, with this type of apnea, 22

DYING TO REALLY LIVE the body just forgets to breathe during deep REM sleep, a critical part of the sleep cycle. The trachea is a bundle of muscles held open by muscle tone. When some part of the autonomic nervous system “forgets” to maintain muscle tone in the trachea, the trachea simply collapses. Breathing through a collapsed trachea is a little like trying to breathe through an old-fashioned paper straw that collapses when saturated. The unknown part is the reason why the autonomic nervous system fails to keep its muscle tone in the trachea to begin with. There is a second form of apnea, Obstructive Apnea, usually caused by obstructions in the throat, which block air passage during normal nighttime relaxing. With this form, it is obvious what the problem is, with just a simple examination. Now, doctors can usually relieve this type with surgery, however at the time, it was this surgery, they were attempting to develop. But Central Nervous System Sleep Apnea usually isn’t so easy to detect during an autopsy. Both are deadly, and I had them both. This was in an era before medical advances brought us the lifesaving C-Pap machine. These compact little “breathing machines” save thousands of lives each year by simply putting positive air pressure into the trachea. It works on the principle that blowing through a collapsed paper straw is easy; however, it is impossible to suck air through a collapsed straw. People with sleep apnea usually develop a condition called Pulmonary Hypertension, which is a deadly form of high bloodpressure in the circulatory system, which serves the heart and lungs with the normal blood pressure in the rest of the body. This is why people with sleep apnea usually die of a heart attack or stroke. However, this is also why there are no telltale signs of their impending fatality. I looked dead-tired, as if I might be dying to get some sleep . . . and I was. I spent most of my time falling asleep and trying to breathe. Yet, there was almost an unreal quality to it all. I could be talking with my wife at the dinner table one moment, and suddenly fall asleep with my face landing in my plate of food. Driving was out 23

GIVING UP ON LIFE of the question when I started wrecking cars faster than the insurance company could, or would, repair or replace them. Being tired from the lack of sleep is uncomfortable. Being tired from lack of sleep over days or months is torturous. During the Korean War, both sides used sleep deprivation as a very effective way of breaking men down and getting them to talk. Even today, it is one of the most powerful ways to get information from prisoners. In some ways, I guess we kept expecting a miracle. However, I did begin putting my affairs in order. I spent many hours in a semi-awake state, looking back over my life, trying to understand where I had gone wrong. How could I have all of these “things,” after having accomplished all that I had, and not care particularly whether I lived or died? Was it a lack of sleep or something else? It was hard to say and at this point it didn’t seem to make much difference.

Chapter 5

A LIFE CHANGING COINCIDENCE Sometimes we think we are in control of our destiny As with many young men who struggle in school, the Army proved exactly what I needed. And now, looking back from a different perspective, I can see the perfection of what led up to me finding a place in the Army. Furthermore, the Army was where my self-esteem began healing. And it was where I began to question some of the false assumptions about myself and schools that I had learned from my time in the school system. Probably, the first morale-booster was the induction process, and the testing done by the Army before any training began. At the time of my enlistment, I found out that half the draftees called up for testing fail the Armyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s entry-level testing. It seems half of the draftees couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pass a high school equivalency test. After three days of rigorous testing, to my surprise, I scored reasonably well. In fact, in a few areas, I ranked in the 97 percentile. However, in one area relating to Language Assimilation, I failed miserably, ranking in the lowest three percent of those taking the test. Apparently, this was the same part of the intellect, which tripped me up in school. However, perhaps the largest boost to my morale was something else the Army does well; that is, to get things mixed up. For some odd reason, I found myself assigned to the University of Maryland as a Teacher in an experimental program. It would be years before I realized that this stroke of fate was again an intervention by Providence, assuring I was in just the right place, providing just the learning I needed, for the role I had chosen to play in this incarnation. 26

DYING TO REALLY LIVE The Army, in conjunction with the University of Maryland, was experimenting with a group of draftees who had managed to avoid school altogether. The Army drafted 350 of these men who lacked any formal schooling and were assumed to be illiterate. They (the Army) were interested in seeing how quickly these men could be educated to high school equivalency. They had already attempted a similar program on groups of high school dropouts and those who couldn’t pass the entrance tests, but that had failed miserably. The University of Maryland had designed a program they felt would work, where the other programs had failed, for one reason and one reason alone. These men were interested in learning, whereas the dropouts already knew they hated school and weren’t interested in more of it. They had developed an attitude toward school similar to mine. It was my good fortune to be at the Army base where the University of Maryland planned to work with one of their experimental training groups. Then something happened that was to shape what I thought and believed about education, and it changed my life forever. I had gotten to know the sergeant in charge of the University of Maryland’s on-base learning center. Then, for some reason, he asked if I would be the math instructor for 30 of the men in one of their test groups. When I tried to tell him that I wasn’t qualified, he just said not to worry about it. But when he told me I would be removed from the KP roster and and guard duty, I went along with the ruse. However, what he knew but I didn’t, was that the instructor didn’t have to know the subject. The material put together for this program would do the teaching. The instructor was only someone to sit in the classroom and hand out the material, plus keep an eye on the clock. For that, apparently I qualified. The first surprise was how regular and normal these supposedly illiterate men were. In general conversation and by all appearances, they were just like everyone else I knew, but apparently the Army seemed to call everyone who hadn’t attended 27

A LIFE CHANGING COINCIDENCE school illiterate. By that definition, I didn’t miss it by far. In addition, many of history’s great thinkers and leaders, including many of the founders of our country, would have been called illiterate. The next thing that surprised me was how simple and logical the material was and the way it as presented. They called the method Programmed Learning, and the men took to it immediately. In essence, the workbook would present a single fact or piece of data in a sentence or two. Then the next sentence would ask them a question about what they had just read. Whether they answered the question correctly or not determined which line (lines were all numbered) they went to next. If they got the answer wrong, the material was presented in a different way. If they got the answer right, they were presented with new information. And so it went: a fact or two and a question, a new fact and a new question. Sometimes there was a picture and question; sometimes a short story and a question. So they worked their way through the material at their own individual pace, with plenty of breaks and no pressure, in a relaxed and congenial atmosphere. There was little need for me to do anything, but hand out the day’s workbook, occasionally show a movie, and stand there looking wise. The key was the material and how it was presented. The fact that I wasn’t qualified to teach math didn’t matter because the subject matter wasn’t dependent on me as a teacher. The material, and its arranged was the key. It was simple and direct, and the men loved it. Was it because these men had something I had lost by the fifth grade? That learning was fun, exciting, and interesting. The men didn’t even want to quit at break time! But then, they hadn’t been put through this same math day after boring day. Maybe that was why this program had little success when used on high school dropouts. Dropouts had resisted it from the very start. To them, it was just more of the same old BS so they wouldn’t give it a chance. As we know, there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. I worked with these men an hour a day, and the rest of the day they took other high school equivalency classes. As the days 28

DYING TO REALLY LIVE turned into weeks, probably what impressed me the most, was the sheer excitement and enthusiasm they had for the material that was rather basic. As they went down the page or through the material, the questions would include not only what they had just been given, but a review of the material in the paragraph above, and sometimes there would be a question or two on material earlier in the presentation. The farther they went, the more comprehensive the tests became, but it didn’t seem to bother them. The magic seemed to happen because of the immediate need to repeat information they had just learned in the previous few minutes. Maybe that made it easier to remember later because, in a couple of minutes, they were asked to repeat it again. By the time they were asked to repeat it three or four times, it seemed it was locked in their mind. The results didn’t surprise me. By the time, we reached the end of the 90 days allotted for the class; 92% of them had passed. These men conquered the equivalent of 12 years of math while, at the same time; a full range of other subject materials also. They earned a high school GED diploma, covering grade 1 through grade 12, in just 90 days. And, that was the way they felt too, like they had conquered something. I don’t believe I have ever met a prouder bunch of GIs. They had just slayed a large, personal dragon, in 90 days. The men were normal in all respects: they had listened to the news as they grew up, traveled, and been part of the workplace. They were not illiterate as the Army had assumed. In fact, most of the men found the material relatively easy. As these men were assimilated into the larger part of the Army, I know they felt really great about what they had accomplished. And, I felt really great about my little part in their success. During that time, I was left feeling cheated and conned. If these men could get the equivalence of a high school education in 90 days, it made me question the 12 years I had spent in dull, boring classes. When I thought of what I learned in my 12 years, I didn’t seem to have anything these men didn’t have, except a bad attitude and hatred for schooling. 29

A LIFE CHANGING COINCIDENCE But those 90 days were pivotal in what was to come after the Army. In addition, they did a lot to restore my belief in myself and to shape my future attitudes toward education, for now I knew there was a better way. Later I was to discover that this was part of the reason for which I came to this planet. NOTE: If you find reading at the computer difficult and would rather read a book or read this on your Kindle, Noor, Pad or Smart Phone, this book is now available on Amazon for 99 cents as an eBook, or in a print version for $9.99. Click Here to Share it, Post it or Buy it on Amazon

Chapter 6

WAITING TO DIE There is a time when death comes as softly as a dove in the night, whispering sweet things to those who wait. At the time I got the bad news from the medical team, I had never heard of Sleep Apnea as it was a new condition on the medical horizon. However, they told me it had been eroding my health for a long time, making me a prime candidate for a stroke or heart attack. During the first night I spent in the sleep lab, I stopped breathing over 200 times for durations of up to 3 1/2 minutes at a time. One can do the math. During the seven or eight-hour night it doesn’t leave much time for breathing or sleeping. Any joy in my life was long gone and matters only got worse with time. Sleeping in a bed was impossible. The only way I could get any sleep was upright in a chair. My life became a gray haze of pain and hopelessness as I waited for the end. Eventually, I came to terms with my death, if for no other reason than the sleep it promised. By this time, I was beginning to make peace with the fact that this world could go on without me. I knew my wife to be tough, resilient and a hard worker and with what we had already accumulated, she and the girls would be fine. After a brief period of mourning, they would get on with their lives without me. By now, I had “put my affairs in order” as my doctor had advised. Since I held no spiritual beliefs, it was easy to imagine it would all be over soon and I could finally sleep for a long, long time. It was amazing how appealing that thought had become. In my more lucid times, I seemed to derive pleasure from drifting back through old memories of earlier days when the future 32

DYING TO REALLY LIVE ahead of us was bright and life seemed alive with promise. It seemed that, looking back on my life, all the years I had been so focused and sure of my goals, I really didn’t begin to understand what was and wasn’t crucial. In fact, now as I was facing death, most of what I thought was important now proved trifling and insignificant. During this time, sometimes on the edge of sleep, an odd kaleidoscope of old memories about three seemingly unrelated experiences kept swirling through my mind. It was like, “Hey, you need to look at these, they are important.” But why, after all these years, would these three experiences keep bubbling up and how could they be important now? I had no idea. However, because they were always there, just on the edge of sleep, I found myself using them as a distraction, as an escape, and then wondering how they could possibly be relevant to what my reality was now. The three recurring thoughts were, (1) the 5th-grade trauma when my education came to a screeching halt because I could not “learn” the way other kids did. (2) my realization in the Army, that education did not have to be painful after all. And, (3) my epiphany when I later became a teacher myself and was able to test child-directed learning with excellent results. I finally realized that these three events were, in fact, related to one another and that each of them had been essential for my life journey and part of the purpose I was here to accomplish.

Chapter 7

DÉJÀ VU OR SOMETHING ELSE We never know when true magic is afoot It was also during my time in the Army in the sixties, 15 or 16 years after WWII, when I began to experience incidents that I later realized were beginning cracks in my cosmic egg, and were the beginning of my remembering who I really was and my reason for being on this planet. After splitting with the church of my childhood, I hadn’t given much thought to spiritual matters, at least not beyond the message spoon-fed to kids in Sunday school. However, in Germany, I kept having soul shaking incidents of déjà vu, which left me seeking answers to questions I had yet to formulate and would never find answers to in the old Southern Baptist Church I had known as a child. While in Germany, I encountered situations that my Sunday school teacher could never answer. Why, at six in the morning, would a 20-year-old GI carrying all his military gear, suddenly be crushed by waves of fear and grief by just stepping off the night train from Bremerhaven to Frankfurt, on his second morning in Germany? Why, later would I suddenly, without a thought, dive for cover at the first sight of a German Army Tank, while on NATO Maneuvers? Why did I keep meeting German citizens 10 or 15 years my elder who seemed very beyond familiar, and we would realize that we both felt inextricably drawn to each other. Many times we could barely understand the other’s language, but draw was there. Moreover, why did strangers often seem to appear out of nowhere, offering help just when I needed it most? Furthermore, 34

DYING TO REALLY LIVE why did a series of seemingly random, albeit synchronous, events keep happening to me, which now, 40 years later, define my life? At the time, I didn’t think much about these incidents. I just relegated them to some little used part of my mind where I stored things that really didn’t make sense. It was only later, as they began to stack up that felt compelled to consider them. Now I realize that those people were part of a larger soul group, from an earlier German life. But, I was far from being ready to understand or believe such things at that time. That understanding would come in another 25 years, when I had seen this world through a far different lens; acquired from an after-this-current-life perspective. Since then I have wondered what my years in Germany would have been like, had I realized that my feelings of Déjà Vu were correct. I had been there before. However, at the time, I had no answers. Considerably later, it became apparent that this was all preparation for what was ahead. It was a way to open my mind to new information on a topic I had trivialized and thought irrelevant, at least to life as I knew it. However, in many ways, those three years in the Army and Europe were essential to who I was and what was to become of me. However, perhaps the most important of all the serendipitous things that happened occurred after my scheduled tour in Europe was completed. Just before my departure date, the Berlin Crisis flare-up extended my stay in Germany by six months. It was during this time that one Friday night another Sergeant and I went out on the town to bury our sorrows over having our tour of duty extended an extra six months. Late that evening, as I was driving back to the base, my friend wanted to stop for a late night pizza and one last beer. I tried to dissuade him as I didn’t need another beer, and wasn’t hungry at the time. I just wanted to go to bed. However, my friend wasn’t to be denied, so I agreed. Little did I realize that was a life altering decision! While we were eating our pizza, I noticed a pair of beautiful dark eyes from far across the room. Somewhere deep inside, I 35

DÉJÀ VU OR SOMETHING ELSE knew that something was happening at that deep level. In a moment, the girl waiting for me back home lost all her charm to a girl I hadn’t even met. That evening I asked around and found that this girl’s parents forbade her even to talk to GIs. Because of that, it took me nearly two months to even meet her, let alone get a date with her. However, I knew from that first night that the die was cast. Once again, something larger than I, was at play. Had not a whole series of events lined up in just the right order, at the right time, everything in my life would have unfolded differently. And, without some of the events that it all led to, my Near Death Experience would have just been my Death, after which I would have never returned to the life, and this book you are reading would never have been written. At the time, I had no way of knowing that a late night, spur-ofthe-moment decision to stop for pizza would change my life forever, and now 50 years later, the ripple effects of that quick decision, are still altering my life. However, since you are reading this book, that decision made so long ago, will now alter your future in some small way, whether you agree with its topic or not. Let me explain. After reading for a while, you may decide to stop and go to the store. At this point, when you choose to stop reading seems your choice and an arbitrary one at that. However, depending on your whim you might or might not meet an old friend on the way. You may talk with them for a few minutes, or longer. Either way, the whole of the rest of your day will probably unfold differently, than if you had stopped reading five minutes later. . . or earlier, and missed your friend. In addition, when we “accidently” bump into different people, we also change their seemingly random patterns also, and eventually they affect everyone they meet. Some may avoid an accident they might have been envolved in, and some may have an accident they wouldn’t have had, had they been a minute earlier or later. And the ripple effects continue, outward, forever. Consider this if you will. Eventually, your seemingly 36

DYING TO REALLY LIVE insignificant choice of when to stop reading affects everyone around you. Furthermore, it is not only when you stop reading; it is the 10,000 other little snap decisions we make every day, without thinking or noticing. Each starts a ripple effect that eventually come back to us. It has been said, by someone far wiser than I that the sum of our life is the quality of all of our little decisions we all consistently make. We all put a great deal of thought in our major life-decisions. However, the actual essence of our life is built on the thousand small choices we make daily; choices that are made by our-egodriven monkey-mind, OR, from a place of quiet consideration and inner guidance. God created us in his image, as infinitely powerful beings who change the world with each thought, or action. And, our choices are the only thing we mortals do, that lasts forever. We live with the results of our little choices for the rest of our lives and on into eternity. One canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but wonder what this world will be like, when we all are operating from a conscience place of inner guidance. When I was in the Army in Germany, I believe that I and I alone controlled my choices. I no longer believe that. I have come to realize that thousands of minor synchronous coincidences every minute of our lives shape our choices. I have come to understand that we all are far more powerful than we realize. Every little decision keeps on affecting us, and those around us, for years, either positively or negatively. As my old, new age friend says, what goes around, comes around and pats us on the back, or bites us in the butt.

Chapter 8

MY LIFE CHANGES AGAIN To really live you must almost die –Gary Cooper Six months after finally receiving my discharge from the Army, I went back to Germany and married that wonderful German girl. Now, again with the hindsight of an after-life perspective, I realize she was the reason I had gone to Germany in the first place – to meet her. Then, after a time there, we returned stateside, settling in a small college town of Ashland, Oregon, where I worked at various jobs and eventually decided to finish college. I migrated to the Psychology Department, probably in an attempt to understand what was wrong with me that had made grade school so difficult for me. I eventually ended up in the Education Department. Here, classes in early childhood development and alternate methods of learning started to shed some light on my problems. While in college, I started a small construction company and began converting old houses into student apartments. By the time I graduated, I had accumulated a number of college rentals and a nice monthly cash flow. In addition, I was still adding extra apartments as I could afford it. Nevertheless, the itch to teach was growing. I began thinking of turning the day-to-day operations of my small business over to my right hand man. I just wanted to teach long enough to test some of my theories. So, with a diploma in hand, I started looking for a job. Of course, once again, at that time, I had no idea that providence was shuffling me to exactly where a higher part of me wanted me to be. Of course, all the while, I thought I was operating strictly on my mortal mind’s free will. 39

MY LIFE CHANGES AGAIN Soon, I was a first-year teacher with a room full of fifth graders. I immediately began implementing a rather unproven and unorthodox bag of tricks. Out went the desks; in came worktables, a few old sofas and rugs, as well as an ancient, but working, refrigerator and hot plate. By Christmas, the principal had enough of my methods and made no bones about it. One afternoon, the principal, along with the superintendent, paid my room an unexpected visit. As they left, the superintendent asked me to come to his office after class. With that, I knew my days as a teacher at that school were over. After school, I packed up the few personal things I would take with me, some mementos of the kids, and a few pictures and put them in my car. I entered the superintendent’s lair like a condemned man, where his secretary eyed me as she spoke into the intercom. Then she gestured down the hall and I took that to mean I was to walk the last mile alone. The superintendent met me at his office door and motioned for me to sit in the chair in front of his desk as he took his oversized chair behind it. He sat there and just looked at me for a few moments as if he wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed. Then he threw me a curve ball saying, “What are you going to do next year?” Being just before Christmas, I assumed he meant in January after he had fired me. “Well,” I said, “I own some apartments and a small construction company, so I will go back and build some more apartments.” With that, he sat and looked at me some more. I wanted to say, “Come on, let’s get on with this. Fire me and get it over with.” Instead, I waited and he finally said, “If you could do anything you wanted with a classroom of kids, what would you do?” I didn’t know where he was going with that question, but it didn’t sound too promising. I assumed he was talking about my unorthodox approach to teaching and wondered just how weird I 40

DYING TO REALLY LIVE would get if I had the chance. Tentatively I said, “You mean with a class?” He nodded, and I jumped in. At least I would get in a few jabs on the way out the door. My grade school memories were popping up again. I had a lot of heat built up around the topic of teachers, schools, and how they operated and I let the Superintendent have it with both barrels. For the next 25 to 30 minutes, I went on about all the things I believed kids could be doing, indeed should be doing, in school instead of what they were doing now. There was no stopping me. The superintendent sat through it with a bemused, enigmatic smile as I rolled out all my guns. I had waited a long time to tell a teacher-type person what side of the toast the butter was on, and I was going to make the most of it. I wasn’t delivering my tirade to a teacher; I had hooked a superintendent. He let me rant on, and when I finally stopped, he just sat there looking at me with that damned enigmatic smile. After several minutes, he quietly said, “You got it.” Then, it was my turn to sit there. I had no idea where this conversation had gone, but it had definitely left me behind. “I got what?” I asked in surprise. The superintendent looked at me as though he were a patient man dealing with a slow child and said, “If you come back next year you can have a class of kids and you can do all those things.” I looked for flecks of foam around the corners of the man’s mouth. Nothing he said made any sense, as I was scrambling to get a handle on where this conversation had gone. I guess he could see the bewilderment on my face, so he simply said, “If you will finish this year and then come back next fall, you can have a class of kids you can work with in any way you want.” Then he went on to say, “But there is a caveat; most of the kids you get will be ones who are bored or failing. You’ll get the three kids out of each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade classrooms. Some may be bright but bored, some will be troublemakers, and some are just kids the teachers have given up. 41

MY LIFE CHANGES AGAIN The teachers won’t care what you do with them in your class, if we do it this way, and it will keep the principal off your back.” That afternoon, instead of getting the ax, I met a person who would change the direction of my life once again, placing me exactly where some higher part wanted me to be. Nevertheless, I had no idea that what I had just signed on for, was for the rest of my life. Or, that its influence on my life would last long after I left teaching. Here was a man giving me a chance to prove what I thought schools could be, instead of what they had been for me. I now wondered if I could really help kids who struggled, as I had. Was it really possible that most rebels and renegades were actually just dyslexics, ADDs, and ADHDs as I now suspected? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure, now that I was faced with the reality of putting up or shutting up. But I felt that this man was also offering to help. What we discovered during the next five years was gratifying. However, when a community to the north hired Henry, as I new knew him, to start a Community College based on the same principles we believed in, it all changed. He invited me to go with him to help him build the college and become the Director of Adult Education. However, it would have met uprooting my family and taking the girls out of school. So instead I left education, stayed in our beloved Ashland, and continued developing. What I had no way of knowing was that my tenure working with kids who struggled in school was yet another unfolding event leading up to the underlying reason some deep part of me chose my Near Death Experience. There, I would learn the real reason why I had chosen to be a teacher in this incarnation, long before I was born. NOTE: If you would rather read this in print, or on your Kindle, Noor, iPad or other pad, it is now available on Amazonfor 99 cents as an eBook, or at $9.99 for the print copy. Click Here for a copy on Amazon

DYING TO REALLY LIVE

Chapter 9

THE 4 HORSEMEN COMETH Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, were they deaf that they did not hear? Alfed Noyes One early morning, as I sat struggling to breathe just before dawn, I sensed the end was near. It no longer made any difference; all I wanted was relief. Then, suddenly, somewhere between snatches of sleep, one moment I was gasping for breath and in the next I was falling through space. And I just kept falling, tumbling through a black sky. Gripped with paralyzing, stark-naked terror, instead of waking up, as I had in other â&#x20AC;&#x153;fallingâ&#x20AC;? dreams from the past, I just kept on falling and falling, tumbling out of all control as I fell. As I tumbled, I became aware of a soft light in one part of the black sky. Some part of my attention was drawn to the light and whenever I could glimpse it, the attraction grew. As I struggled to keep the light in my vision, I noticed that seeing it calmed me. The more I focused on it, the calmer I became. Then I realized I was falling towards the light. The closer I came to it, the brighter it grew and the calmer I became. A warm feeling began in the pit of my stomach and spread upward through my entire body as deep, warm peace settled over me and the tumbling slowed. On the distant horizon from where the light was coming, I saw what looked like a line. As I drew closer, the line grew in size and I realized it was a line of people walking toward me, silhouetted by the light. I knew them all. Some I knew from my life on earth: my grandfather with my favorite dog Butch, his tail, wagging in greeting, and my othe r wise old granddad with his bemused, wry grin. There was my sweet old Aunt Eleanor and favorite Uncle, Sidney. There was a man who lived on a ranch up the river from us 45

THE FOUR HORSEMEN COMETH who had always been nice to me. Also, there was a school teacher and various people who had played a part in my life, but had gone on ahead. Then, there were the others. They were entities I had known and loved in other times and other places, not in my current life. In addition, there were entities who were also part of my soul group (souls we had reincarnated with over and over), but not of this earthly world, however, who were as much a part of my extended being like those of this Earthexperience. As we all met, I was flooded with the most intense feelings of love I had ever known. As it flowed through the core of me, in a very small way it was a little like the â&#x20AC;&#x153;going home feelingâ&#x20AC;? I had experienced on Earth as a young man returning home after being in the Army in Europe for three years. I remembered as I drove up that old familiar road to the ranch where Mom and Dad waited that I had experienced a similar warm deep love. However, to compare that feeling from then with this now was like comparing a drop of seawater to the ocean itself. Now, wave after wave of intense love rolled over me like the waves of a great flood itself. It was a happy, joyous love full of anticipation, closure, and promise. No words were exchanged, just thoughts moving instantaneously, with perfect clarity, from one mind to the other without the ability to withhold or judge anything. It was all an expression and celebration of love that would on earth, have been unfathomable. It was between members of an ancient soul group, celebrating my return home once again. As I was shown around, it was explained how most of our celestial, eternal knowledge is blanked-out during our short life spans on Earth. We must temporarily forget most of what our higher self already knows so we can believe in the roles we have chosen to play in our different lifetimes. Furthermore, they said that it would take a while for our memories to all to come back. They went on to say that life on Earth is a little like an extended visit to a big theme park, with thrilling rides and various 46

DYING TO REALLY LIVE adventures. And brother, sometimes it does get scary, but we humans wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, why else would we leave the celestial realm, but for excitement, adventure, and entertainment? As one entity jokingly said, if the eternal, the God part, grows tired of singing and playing harps, thousands of other universes exist for our amusement and entertainment. The God part of us is there providing choices for all eternity – and eternity is a long time. As my orientation went on, it was explained how on this celestial side of the veil anything we want is instantaneously provided. We just need to feel a desire to have something, and it is fulfilled. But there lies the reason for all the realms outside of Heaven. Having everything we want, all the time, develops within us a need for variety and change, for a challenge. It would be like a card game where everyone is always dealt a perfect hand. Soon the game would become boring and we would look for another, more challenging one. Somehow, all this sounded familiar. And, to familiarize myself with the process, one of them asked me to think about something I really wanted. Thinking back on it, what I chose seems odd for such an esteemed place, and such an occasion, but suddenly I had an urge for a piece of my mother’s famous homemade dark chocolate cake, with her special fudge frosting. As soon as I thought of it, my mother was handing me the biggest piece of dark chocolate cake I had ever seen. Dare I say it was heavenly? Although she appeared there with us, I knew some part of her was still back on Earth because she was not one that had gone on before. My guess is that she, at that same moment, was probably asleep, dreaming of lovingly making her son a piece of her divine chocolate cake. After what could have been a few minutes or hours of orientation, a deep silence began descending over everything, and an all-encompassing “Presence” overshadowed the soul group and 47

THE FOUR HORSEMEN COMETH its members faded into the background. It was a little like being in a supermarket where music is playing in the background as you shop when the volume fades and a voice overshadows the music saying, “Shoppers, on aisle #7, there is a great special on Red Delicious apples.” As everything else faded, a voice, which really wasn’t a voice at all, said in resonating tones, “Welcome home, son, you have done a great job and welcome back.” I was bathed in yet an even deeper, more profound sense of love and acceptance which kept just grew stronger until the voice went on to say, “But as long as you still have a warm body back on earth, would you like to get ‘another one’ out of the way?” I knew instantly what was being asked, even though at the time of my death I hadn’t believed in any form of reincarnation, or anything else religious or spiritual. In spite of that, I instantly knew I was being asked if I wanted to get more life lessons out of the way. Now my Sunday school teacher had always told us that there is no pain in Heaven. I can tell you now, at least in that case, she was wrong. I can still hear the agony of my echoing “Nooooo,” still rattling around somewhere in those Celestial Realms. I knew in my heart of hearts, in the deepest core of my soul, that after escaping “the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God,” as one poet put it, I wanted to stay. After experiencing what I was experiencing, in no way did I want to go back to that place, any time soon. They could have any part of my “unused ticket,” they wanted. I was finished with that petty, trite, hellhole of a world-game, even though I had people there whom, in earthlyterms, I had loved as dearly as earthly conditions allow, or at least as well as I knew how to love at the time. From that vantage point, I could see how trifling the world I had left was. Here, on the other side, I would always be with souls who have all loved me forever and will do so for eternity. Plus I knew that momentarily, the loved ones who lagged behind on Earth would join us. It might be years to them, but it would only be 48

DYING TO REALLY LIVE moments in reality. Time is funny that way. Then “the Voice,” with a tone of infinite patience and wisdom, went on to say, “One of the reasons you went to that planet to begin with was to bring your daughter on board. She has some very important work to do. Would you leave her fatherless, at her young age?” What can a father say? Even if I had seemed to detach already from that life, apparently there were deeper cords than I was aware of and I knew instantly I would be returning whether it was what I wanted at this moment or not. Then, as I went out of the door, metaphorically, “the Voice” continued, “Since you are going to be there for awhile, there are a couple of things you could do while you are there.” However, it would be a while before I knew anymore, and several years until I knew what the statement meant.

Chapter 10

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF The darkest part of the night comes just before dawn, when no man yet knows what the day will bring. Humans, for the vast majority, believe grief comes with death. In my case, true grief came with my return from death. As soon as I realized I was returning, I was instantly back, in my body, in my chair, clutching at my throat, trying desperately to breathe. When I finally got my first gulp of air, devastating grief replaced the joy and euphoria I had been experiencing. I had left the place of purest, profound love, only to be back in what I had seen as a sad, tired world, a great part of which seemed to be full of loss, pain, and fear. I don’t know how long I sobbed in my grief, but eventually my wife heard me when she got up and rushed downstairs, fearing something tragic had happened. As I struggled to tell her, it brought it all back and I sat there choking on my sobs. Gently, she took my hand and with a look of caring concern, put her finger to my lips. She seemed to understand it wasn’t a death in the family or other tragedy and said, “I’m not sure what happened, but it must have been profound.” Then she just sat with me in comforting silence. What happened over the next few days is a blur. Every time my mind went back to it and where I had been, waves of grief came over me. I had no interest in anything down here, but I knew I was here for a long time to come. I alternated between anger and despair. Nothing seemed to ease the pain, and I couldn’t see how anything ever could, except my going home again. I would have considered suicide but, someway, I knew that was not an option for 51

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF me, anymore. After all, I had already been there and accepted an assignment that precluded any going back for some time. What I didn’t know at the time, was that I would shortly begin to understand why life on earth had been so painful for me, as it is for so many others. I would learn that Heaven wasn’t a place at all, but a state of mind. It was a state of mind that I could learn to create here, or I wait until I died to enjoy. The choice was mine. However, until this became part of my knowledge and understanding I was back in, what seemed to me to be, a wretched, timeworn old world. Furthermore, I soon would understand that everything our egos create turns to dust eventually. And, there is only one thing we do that is lasts forever. That is any choice we make. Furthermore, it is the choices we make, good and bad, added to our bliefs we hold about the reality around us, that create the quality of our lives while we are on earth. However, in the time I was figuring all that out, In addition to the loss of the celestial joy I had experienced, I also had another grievous loss with which to contend. I had lost many deeply held personal beliefs that made my life here on Earth make sense. Prior to my death, I was comfortable with the general belief that after death, oblivion ended it all, forever. So, holding that belief, all I had to do was worry about my life prior to death itself. After death, nothing mattered anyway, right? Prior to my NDE, one of the tenets I loosely subscribed to was one commonly held by many young American males: “He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.” According to that belief, I had been doing pretty well. I now knew that none of those things mattered and most of the things I had accumulated meant nothing at all. Now, this world was as empty and hollow as the proverbial tinkling brass of the Bible. What did that leave me? I suddenly had nothing. Even what I had learned in Sunday school was far, far short of the mark and of no help. Worst of all, while I was over there, they gave me nothing to replace my earthly beliefs with, 52

DYING TO REALLY LIVE except a knowledge, I would go home again, someday in the future. In the meantime, I had no idea how to play this now new, old game, To give you an idea how I felt when I got back to this life, let’s say I had been a poverty-stricken man living in a poor ghetto. Suddenly the Fairy Godmother appeared and transported me to Paris. Suddenly, I had great wealth and the ability to speak perfect French. In Paris, I was presented as an esteemed part of society and they accepted me as such. For a year or so, I fulfilled every indulgent whim and wish; then, suddenly I am sent back to the ghetto, broke and no longer able to speak French. In addition, when I got back I was unable to speak even my native language. That’s the way I felt – utterly hopeless, destitute, and lost. In addition, I now felt a far greater despair than when I had known I was dying because I saw no end in sight. As I sat in blackest despair, for some reason my mind kept returning to memories of my earlier years. How could that life lead me to this? At the time I had been surrounded by loving people, some of whom I now knew were actually spiritual guides. I had been unquestioningly loved and nurtured and I loved in return. What kind of a cruel God would lead a person from that beginning, on to the privileged life, only to then allow them to experience celestial ecstasy and send them back to this? At least now, for some reason I was able to breathe when I was asleep. As you can imagine, my rejection of this life had a profound impact on those around me. Some just thought I had been playing football without my helmet, but for my wife, I can only imagine the rejection she must have felt. And, my girls, to this day I am not sure what they thought. Luckily, they were in high school and absorbed in their teen culture and it seemed to lessen the impact. However, as days turned into weeks, the self-pity seemed to wear itself out. I had been over all of those questions before and none of it changed anything. The only thing that did change was that the same kaleidoscope of old dreams and memories that had 53

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF haunted me prior to my death came back to haunt me again. This time, they seemed almost a welcome relief to the litany of woe and self-pity I had been wallowing in. Furthermore, it was beginning to dawn on me that this whole experience wasn’t about me dying or returning, it was about something far bigger, and three memories held the key as a place of beginning. It was all connected in some way, and understanding that part would lead to more and my real purpose for being back. The first of these old dreams was about a year I was in the fifth grade with my old nemesis. Even later as an adult, whenever I thought of her, my mood would darken and I’d find my fists clenched and my pulse pounding. Strangely enough, while this dream always started out that way, since my NDE, it would begin that way and then morph into a situation where she and I would be laughing and working on something, as if we were planning something together, as equals. The second dream that kept recurring was about the Army, when they miscast me as a teacher in the program for illiterates. In this dream, I kept morphing from the teacher into a role of one of the students, enjoying school. Of course, the dreams of those times were a kaleidoscope of happy faces and experiences. In the tortured time prior to my NDE, they had just been confusing and seemed meaningless. Now they seemed meaningful, but I didn’t have any idea why. It was the third of these dreams that seemed prophetic. It was all mixed-up with warmth and good humor. There were memories of doing something meaningful, something important. I was always with my old friend Henry the Superintendent, in our experimental classroom for renegades and misfits. In the dream, we were discovering and doing something important. Sometimes, I would tie these three dreamlike fragments together and for a brief moment, they would remind me of something I had just experienced over there. For that moment, a touch of relief from the suffering I was now experiencing would bloom in my mind, but it never lasted. 54

DYING TO REALLY LIVE In life, a great many people experience the death of others as inconsolable loss and desolation when they lose those they love. However, we can’t tell from this side how it is experienced by those we lose. In my case, and I expect in most cases, death had been only a small bump in the road. What I was now experiencing on my return was true desolation and loss, loss of an indescribable celestial love that I had found and now lost. About the only bright spot in my return was that for the first few weeks following my NDE, for whatever reason, I wasn’t bothered with the sleep apnea. Whether it was just a period of grace or something else, I don’t know. However, in time, my breathing problems came back with a vengeance. I had no idea where to turn, so I went back to the original doctor who had treated me. I told him I was ready to sign any kind of a waiver, but I needed that operation. Apparently, by now the operation was no longer experimental and they willingly consented to the treatment. While the operation was a success, initially the cure was almost as bad as the problem. Their only solution at the time was a dire form of throat surgery where the interior passages of the throat and trachea were completely restructured. In my case, after the cutting and reshaping was completed, it took 48 stitches to put it all back together. The stitches became important when I awoke, as I had been told that as soon as I could swallow normally, I could go home. When I woke up, I discovered that swallowing was a luxury, not just the normal activity it had been prior to surgery. The pain was excruciating. Swallowing was something I actually planned for in advance; minutes in advance! At the time, although I hadn’t realized it before, swallowing was something I found I could do without for extended periods of time, and drooling was preferable to swallowing, at least then. However, regardless of how painful it was after surgery, the relief it offered to my sleep apnea was immediate, and for a while, I slept up to 20 hours a day. I guess I had a lot of catching up to do. As my sleep deficit dissipated, I began to realize that the reason I 55

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF had not wanted to be on earth after experiencing the after-life was more the way I had been living my life, not Earth-life itself. Now, I realized I had the tools to make life anything I wanted it to be. Slowly, over time, life began to improve once I came to realize that how we experience life is somewhat like we experience Heaven when we arrive. At first, Heaven is exactly as we expected it would be. In the same fashion, life becomes what we expect it to be. If I didn’t like my life, if “things” weren’t giving me the joy and pleasure I was hoping to find, then I would have to make better choices and look for where joy and happiness really reside. The great shift came when I first realized the goal was happiness, not things. Somehow, I had equated “things” with happiness. My freedom came what first I realized, happiness was a state of mind, and if I could be happy, things were unimportant. Therefore, I set out changing what I wanted out of life. Happiness became the goal, instead of things, and I already knew how to achieve goals. I just used the goal setting techniques I had used to get all the material things I had thought would bring me happiness. With that realization, I began looking for what actually brought happiness, instead of what I had thought brought happiness. Perhaps one of the most profound truths I received during my trip to the other side was the realization that our essence are feelings, not things. That doesn’t change because we temporarily live in a material universe, and material things are a novelty at first. However, this novelty wears off over time, as our soul matures. If I could feel euphorically happy, would it matter what I was doing? After all, wasn’t that the real difference between how I had felt “over there” and how I had felt before I died – just feelings. I began to understand what the old Tibetan Lama, meant when he said, “Happiness in chains is preferable to torment, while free.” I was finally realizing that he was saying that happiness is not dependent on circumstances. Now that I had the key to experiencing Heaven on Earth, all I 56

DYING TO REALLY LIVE had to do was to learn to apply it, and that was a choice. But, that is the subject of the next book, <><><>

NOTE: If you enjoyed the book, help us spread the word by rating it on Amazon. Click Here (Look for the link under the Authors name, directly under the title.)

THEN: To email this free book offer to a friend Click Here ALSO: Post the video offer for a free copy of this on Facebook, tweet it,or pass it on in any other way you share ideas with likeminded people. <><><> Now, turn the page for a few words about the 2nd Volume of the trilogy, Beyond Death and Back

ABOUT VOLUME II

Beyond Death & Back Unique Near Death Experience with Multiple return trips to the other side Volume II chronicles what the Author saw and did on his fivereturn trips to the the Afterlife, in the two years following his original death. In it he also deals with his disappointment immediately following his return to this life, and what he learned about happiness. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll also learn about his struggles to follow his inner guidance, in doing those assignments he was sent back to accomplish. To be order a copy of the second book in the trilogy, Beyond Death and Back, Click Here To follow the future writings of the Author or to follow his blog, Go to the Authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website http://www.DuaneFSmith.org

About the Author

Duane F. Smithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unusual background and life experience provided a unique perspective about the time we chose to be on this planet. Born dyslexic himself, he found his early schooling a challenge. Barely finishing high school, he left to join the Army and had his life changed forever. In the Armyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infinite wisdom, this man who had, himself, struggled in school was assigned to teach in an experimental program designed by the University of Maryland, for the Army. The University had developed a teaching technique that they called Programmed Learning and were experimenting with 350 illiterate draftees who, for whatever reason, had never attended school. The University had designed the program to take these men from grades 1 through grade 12, thereby allowing them to qualify for a high school GED, which was the minimum standard required to serve in the Armed Forces. However, the goal of the program defied any conventional logic at the time. The program was to take these men from the 1st grade to passing a 12th -grade equivalency test . . . in 90 days! Surprisingly, the program worked, with over 90% of the men receiving their GED in the allotted time. It was this experience that left the author angry and frustrated about his 12 boring; torturous years wasted, accomplishing the same goal. The experience also convinced him that there was a better teaching method than the one-size-fits-all, method being used almost exclusively at all levels. After the Army, he moved to Ashland, Oregon, and there began renovating old houses into college rentals. Meanwhile, in an attempt to understand why his school had been so hard t for him, he enrolled in a psychology class at what is now Southern Oregon University. Eventually, he received a Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Degree in Education, with a focus on early childhood development. 60

DYING TO REALLY LIVE

Later, during a minor recession, when no money was available for building apartments, he decided to teach for â&#x20AC;&#x153;a year or two." While not sure teaching was his lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, he hoped to be there long enough to see if some of his theories about alternate methods of teaching, worked, and he quickly found a teaching position in a local school. However, within a few months, when he was about to be fired by his principal for unorthodox teaching methods, he came to the attention of Henry O. Pete, the extremely innovative school superintendent of the district where he was teaching.. They soon found they each shared a belief that there was a better way. Together they developed an experimental program for putting their theories into action. In it, a blended class of 4th through 6th graders were allowed to work at their pace and in their areas of interest. They became to refer to their method as Child-Centered, or Child-Directed, Learning. As the program thrived, they began to unravel a puzzle on which they both were to spend most of their lives pondering and studying. However, after a few years, a new community college was forming in the town to the north of where they lived, and that group hired Henry to be its Founding President, and develop its curriculum based on his learning theories. Henry asked the author to join him in his new endeavor, as the Director of Adult Education at the new college. However, the author made the decision not uproot his family to follow Henry, and he left education. At the age of 30, he went back to his thriving apartment development business. With the fledgling base his company had built while he was in college, the business had thrived. In a few years, it seemed, to the people in the community, that he had it all. Furthermore, to add to his feeling of success, the kids from their original program, with whom they stayed in contact were, doing well. At this point, an ongoing, medical problem worsened, and the author underwent the most profound of life changes. At the age of 41, a doctor from Stanford Medical Center gave him five months to live and sent him home to â&#x20AC;&#x153;to get his affairs in order." He eventually had what some refer to as a Near-Death or After Death 61

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Experience. Regardless of what one calls it. he died, crossed to the other side and then returned to his body. However, in his case, in the following 18 months he was taken by his soul guides, back to the other side on five separate occasions, and he didn’t even believe in God, when he died. What he experienced and learned was almost beyond words. And, it was here that he learned that as many other people who were surviving NDEs, were being sent back to tell their stories, to let people know that one’s death isn’t the end of anything, it Is just the beginning of another adventure. Suddenly everything in his life changed, and his priorities shifted. Gradually, he was once again, drawn back to his fascination with the mind/brain connection, and how it affected how children learned. In time he realized that many new discoveries in that field verified much of what he and Henry discovered in the classroom, years before. Feeling compelled, he began writing about what they had discovered about the learning process, over the years. Renegade Teacher, his 1st book, is about their original program, what worked in the classroom, and what didn’t. Then, he wrote Renegade Class, the story of what became of the kids from the first book, over the next 40 years. When those were published, his guides to him that it was time to write about his trips to the afterlife. First, he wrote Dying to Really Live, about his original Death, being on the other side and then of his return. Then, he wrote Beyond Death & Back, the story of his five trips to the other side and what he saw, learned and did, and what it lead to when he afterwards. When he had finished his 2nd book, he began writing Living in a New Tomorrow, about what he has been told to expect in the coming decades. It is about education, why, if God lives within, does he allow sickness in the body he shares. Then, it tells of the Great Divide which is ahead for us all.

DYING TO REALLY LIVE

To follow the future writings of the Author or to follow his blog, Go to www.NDESurvivor.org

A Special Acknowledgment

Perhaps it was the old Jewish Rabbi who, after reading a rough draft called to say, “This book must be finished and published,” then,came from California, to my home in Oregon, to work with me on the manuscript. Or perhaps it was the editor and publisher who drove from San Diego to Oregon to help work out the rough spots, or perhaps it was the Mormon philosopher who said, “Now I understand some passages from the book of Mormon which have always eluded me.” Then again, perhaps it was the born-again, retired teacher of dyslexics who, after reading the first draft said, “it needs work, but it must be published for the sake of our kids.” Regardless of whom they were, each appeared just when they were needed, just as it should be. Therefore, thanks to Rob Schlosser, Joan and David Vokac, Joe Holley, Sandy Spaulding, Peggy Hill, Dianne and Jim Sesma and the others, who helped in ways beyond my abilities. Then there are my old friends, Dee and Barb Selby, who put up with me when I am sure they would have preferred that I wasn’t quite so focused on my book. Furthermore, a heartfelt thanks to my two wonderful girls, their husbands, and my grandkids that I have sometimes neglected in the process of writings. To them all, I owe a debt of gratitude. Also, a special thanks to Peggy Mitchell whose understanding and critical eye helped me work through the rough spots. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Rebecca Howard, Ann Scornavacca and finally Dr. George, the editors who followed behind this amateur writer, proofing and editing with infinite patience, as needed.