One of the exit points I wrote into my life’s plan was a near death experience.
I was 14 years old and very excited getting ready for the school dance. My parents had agreed that I could go and rides to and from the dance had been organized. My dad would drive my three friends and I to the dance and the mother of one of my friends would be there at the appointed time to drive us home. We lived in kimberley, south africa, a quiet, dusty diamond-mining town. My father was a prominent minister of one of the churches in town and apart from my church activities; the school dance was a big event in my life.
I don’t really remember much about the dance, I am sure we all had fun together. But I do remember the ride home. My friend’s mother had a very old, heavy 4×4 – one of those really designed for life in the bush, not the softer versions that people drive in cities now. It was black and very dirty – their family spent a lot of time in the wilder areas that encroached right up to the outskirts of our town. We bundled into the 4×4, her son in the front and the rest of us in the back and drove through the deserted late night streets, dropping friends at home, until there were just 3 of us left in the car. I was sitting in the back behind the driver, which was on the right side of the vehicle – in south africa we drove on the left side of the road. The muddy 4×4 crawled along in the dark. slowly but surely. I felt it sway with that long pause between gears, each time she changed the old fashioned manual gearshift. I started to drop off to sleep – it had been an exciting night.
My next recollection was the incredible force of the impact of another vehicle smashing into the 4×4. I don’t remember feeling anything, it was more the sound and a very particular smell; a smell that I distinctly remember and have never smelt again. The speeding vehicle crashed into us on the same side that the driver and I were sitting.
It was at this moment that I realized that I was watching what was happening rather than being a part of it. I first saw my body flying around in the back of the 4×4; this old bush vehicle didn’t have any seatbelts in the back seat. I noticed my black coat, even the seam running down the back of the coat. I noticed my jeans; I had taken such care getting dressed for the dance. My patient mother hadn’t commented on the clothes left strewn around my bedroom, as I had tried on one outfit after another. I noticed my long hair flying around my head and even thought – oh it really looks good, I don’t see it from the back that often!
As I watched myself I realized that the 4×4 had spun into an electrical pole and knocked it down; the broken electrical wires were sparking around the vehicle and on the road. The other vehicle was so smashed up that it was unrecognizable, and the four teenagers in that small car did not seem to be moving. My friend’s mother was slumped over her steering wheel, her head was turned towards the window with her eyes open, but she was very still. I did not notice what had happened to my friend.
The smell and sounds were real and very present. It was like being a bird and looking down at events that didn’t really have that much to do with me. I really was the peaceful observer of the whole wreckage scene.
My focus moved back to me and away from the scene below, away from my body, and I was enveloped in white light. My best description is that it was like looking ahead into a fog with your vehicle lights on. It was a dense white mist and I was moving through it.
Everything became very quiet and muted and I felt like I was speeding ahead, but not moving my body. Similar to being on an escalator in a tunnel; I knew that I was moving, but wasn’t actually doing anything myself, just resting in the white light and knowing that I was going somewhere fast! At this stage I had no further awareness of my body or of the chaos of the car accident. I just felt good, I knew where I was going and what I was doing.
Next thing, I said out loud “I am not finished yet.” I didn’t see who I was speaking with but I did have a feeling of incredible love and peacefulness. I didn’t notice that I was answering a question, no one seemed to have asked me a question, I simply said out loud “I am not finished yet”.
My next recollection was waking up down the road from the accident, sitting on the curb and using my coat to brush away the blood that was running down my face and neck. I also have a vague memory of running down the middle of the road, but this isn’t as clear for me. A kind man and his wife, woken by the impact of the crash, shepherded me into their home for a cup of tea and called my parents.
All of the teenagers in the other vehicle died in the crash that night. My parents attended their funerals in the week that followed. The driver of the 4×4, my friend’s mother, spent almost three months in hospital recovering from her severe injuries. My friend walked away without a scratch and I suffered only soft tissue bruising, a laceration to my head and my back and spent just one week recovering physically.
As I grew into adulthood, I was careful to whom I mentioned this childhood near death experience. My fundamental christian upbringing didn’t give me any clues as to what the meaning of it could be and as I processed my childhood abuse, the contradiction of my father’s life as a man of god, in my late teens, I left the church and separated myself from this rigid upbringing. It is only since my spiritual searching revived in 1995, that this near death experience has made sense to me, that it has become part of my deep understanding that we make a plan for our life before we are born.
I did believe that life continues after we leave earth, my sunday school classes made certain that I knew all about heaven and hell. But what I have deeply come to know is that not only did I exist before I came to earth as a perfect eternal soul, but that I created a detailed plan for this life experience on earth that included my SolePath. All of us write exit points into our plans and one of mine transpired on the night of that fatal accident and I didn’t choose to end my earthly life experience at that time, I was not finished.
Truth about what happens when you die.
Understanding the recovery and retreat process when we cross over back ‘home’.