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Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out.
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My name is Jim Bennett and I am once again very grateful to be joined by the unsinkable Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I'm...
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I'm doing okay.
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I'm doing okay, Jim.
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Unsinkable is probably an appropriate word for this podcast for sure.
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Well, it comes from the unsinkable Molly Brown, who was a passenger on the Titanic, and she survived and went on.
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and uh as i thought about this i could i when i did my solo podcast although i had oprah winfrey join me i don't know if you if you noticed that that was it i did that was a great book yes well um oprah was really grateful to be here but was really looking forward to your return uh all i said in that podcast was ian wilkes is under the weather and i said he will Um, I will leave it.
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I don't feel like it's my place to say how under the weather he is, or, you know, I will leave that to him when he returns and he will return and you have returned.
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Uh, but, uh, I was, uh, well aware that that was considerable understatement for what you've gone through in this past week.
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And, uh, And I've asked if you'd be willing to share that because I think you've got some experiences that will help people.
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And as we go on, I want to make sure that you recognize that you should feel free to say as much or as little as you are comfortable saying because I think this has been a tremendously personal experience.
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And so I don't feel like you should feel any obligation to provide any level of detail that you don't want to provide.
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But as we've talked about this, it seems very clear that you are game to tell the whole story.
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And so can you let the listeners know where you've been and what you've been doing this past week and what's been happening to you this past week?
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Of course, I
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will.
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It's good to be here.
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In fact, it's good to be anywhere.
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uh right now um on the podcast you did last week uh it was brilliant one of my favorite podcasts and uh i listened to it while i was in hospital that's where i've been the last week so i only came out of the hospital yesterday i was admitted just over a week ago and the podcast uh greatly with me and actually uh Made me laugh.
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And as you know, and I've shared with Alyssa before, I'm a deeply private, personal individual.
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I've shared reasons why I feel a bit more confident now talking about my life and talk about many of the topics that we discussed.
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And I've gained a level of hopefully humble confidence, as President Banks would term it, where I feel a bit more confident now.
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We've done, what, 30-odd podcasts now, and I wrestled with the idea about even doing such a thing and opening up and talking about all kinds of experiences.
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But this whole podcast experience has strengthened me enormously, Jim, and I'm grateful to you for that and certainly the amazing support and feedback we've got from many other listeners.
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And most importantly, I think, the fact that our podcasts– hopefully continue to help others and strengthen others and build others up.
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And that's the reason why I thought of doing the podcast in the first place.
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It's been also very therapeutic.
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And so this week's podcast is different.
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It's unusual.
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It's strange.
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It's otherworldly.
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It's supernatural.
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It's extraordinary, for me at least.
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And I hope those listening will enjoy gain some strength and some hope and faith.
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For those who have faith in the hereafter and life, power beyond the grave, this will just confirm probably what you already know.
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And those who perhaps are asking questions, I'm not sure.
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We're also looking for answers to questions about why.
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I'm not saying I've already answered by any means.
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I don't have any of the answers, of course, but I think my experience hopefully will strengthen, give hope to those who perhaps have questions in terms of what happens or do something happen after we die.
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So where and how do I begin with this experience?
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And I've asked myself, should I share this experience?
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Will it help others?
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The answer is an easy yes.
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And I asked myself, should I share this experience now?
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And again, the answer is an easy yes, because it's so fresh and very clear in my mind.
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And probably now is the time to do that.
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Again, I still can't believe I'm actually here talking about this.
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So without further ado, I'll get into this.
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So I mentioned earlier before we started recording about the last week has been without doubt the most extraordinary week of my life.
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my entire existence.
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And for the first time in my life, I had the experience or part of the experience of dying.
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And perhaps maybe the best way to describe the experience is on the brink of death or right on the edge or very edge of this life.
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And looking over into at least having a glance, even for a short moment, of what it looks like on the other side probably in a very narrow way, in a very small, minute way.
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I'm always cautious, Jim, about using the term near-death experience because that means perhaps different things to different people.
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And there are many definitions, of course, of what that is, what is a near-death experience.
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And one definition is an unusual experience.
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I'm just quoting here from source on the internet here.
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There's many definitions.
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One definition is an unusual experience taking place on the brink of death and recounted by a person after recovery, typically an out-of-body experience or a vision of a tunnel of light.
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So what I'm saying is that I did have, in hindsight now, as it's fresh in my mind, a near-death experience.
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Definition of that is a little bit different, perhaps than some, in that technically, from a physical perspective, it was medically a near-death experience.
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Medically, it was a near-death experience.
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Emotionally, as I thought, what does that mean emotionally?
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Well, I actually felt and believed for the first time in my life that this was it.
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This was my time.
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My time was up.
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I mean, really.
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and not just a passing thought that actually this is it.
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This is where it all ends.
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This is how it's going to end.
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And this is it.
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This is my final few moments.
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And actually believe that.
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Some people have these experiences and they may or may not be close to physical death, but they might believe they are.
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And is so believing they it brings them to that emotional uh level and that despair of my goodness i'm not going to get through this so this this is that this is it and that was that was that for me and this was the first time i never experienced that i mentioned earlier before we recorded that i'd met countless people you yourself you could speak from your own experience across your life your mission and other people that you've loved and known over the years who've gone um would pass beyond the veil.
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And you've heard their experiences.
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You've seen from your own experience, you've heard their experiences and so on, have come back and not gone as far as they thought they were going.
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And you've heard those experiences.
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That's one aspect of this.
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The other one is actually going through it yourself.
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And what happened to me, I thought that was it.
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So physically, technically, medically, under those definitions, it was minutes away.
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Emotionally, I thought I was actually going to die.
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Spiritually, complete opposite.
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I've never felt more alive in my entire existence.
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And mentally as well, interestingly, like a catapult or springboard into extraordinary a mental expansion, going from something very, an experience of mentally ending, you know, my whole mental well-being or state was coming to an end, but then quickly bouncing back into something far greater and far grander.
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So let me get into the details here.
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So last, a week last Monday, so this is fresh.
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This is extremely recent.
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I headed out from where I am right now to do a regular daily walk of 6K.
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There's a walk near where we live.
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We live around some arches, and there's lots of trails and hikes and walks.
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And there's a few hills, and it's a fantastic place just to go walking straight out from where we live right now.
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About 50 meters into the walk.
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And if I went to my window right now, I could see, and this is quite...
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upsetting in some ways or uncomfortable in other ways, I can actually see the moment and the spot where this experience happened to me.
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So as I headed out for my walk, about 50 meters into the walk, literally just up the road from here, I suddenly felt sharp pains across my upper part of my chest.
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The pains were just intense, so intense it stopped me in my tracks.
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And within the second or two I was curled over in agonizing pain.
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I've never felt pain like it, Jim.
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At the same time, I experienced a sudden loss of breath.
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I couldn't, I was, I remember trying to breathe deep.
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I had to slow my breathing, but I just couldn't catch my breath.
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I just, something was stopping me from breathing.
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And, you know, as I...
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Think of the experience now.
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It was just so sudden and so extreme.
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And again, at the same time, all these things happening at the same time, I began to feel dizzy, faint, and my head began to pound like someone was beating on a drum.
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This happened within two, three, four seconds of this pain, the arrival of this pain on my upper part of my chest.
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I also began to sweat.
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I remember touching my forehead and feeling quite a bit of sweat on my head, not dripping, nothing like that, but it was quite damp.
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And then a few more seconds in or a second to it, I knew there was something seriously wrong.
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I remember saying to myself in my mind, you know, you're having a heart attack.
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This is like all the hallmarks of a heart attack.
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and the pain just intensified, and I curled over and was still standing at this point, although my knees were somewhat bent, and there was a grassy knoll just to the right of me, and I moved myself slowly over towards that, and as I moved towards the grass area and began to try to lay down, before I could lie down, I actually remember vision going it went from it went to like blurred to gray and then to black to darkness and i i think it was passing out i think i passed out um i know i was only there for a short short time and i'll explain why i think that later but as i passed out again i remember my my sights um i you know, disappearing.
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I could still hear things around me, but I couldn't see anything.
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I don't remember actually hitting the grass or that last moment before I was crouching down and trying to, you know, lie down or sit down on the grass.
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But what happened next was, I don't know what word to use.
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I don't have a word to use.
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You're better at words than I am, but interesting is one word.
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I can think of other words for it.
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interesting and extraordinary the only words i can think of i'm still trying to make sense of it all um so so many questions and so many thoughts going through my mind and so um what happened next was as the um as quickly as the um the darkness of the blackness was i couldn't see that he rather went dark it went black um A moment later, I saw this light, Jim, this light all around me.
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It wasn't like a tunnel of light.
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I didn't see a tunnel of light as people describe going into a tunnel, nothing like that.
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It was just like an all-around light, like the sun was coming up, but coming up quickly.
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You know those cameras where they do speed up the sunset or the sunrise?
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Yeah.
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But imagine that happening very quickly.
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It was something like that.
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So the sun just appeared, bright light.
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It was a white light.
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It was not yellow light.
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It was a white light.
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And it happened quickly.
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It just appeared almost instantly.
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And then in the distance there, I could see a phase-y or blurred shape of a a meadow, I could make out trees, and it came with a little bit of focus, and I could make out the shapes of trees.
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I want to be, as I thought about this and trying to describe it as accurately as I can, it was the shapes of things that I saw and not necessarily the detail.
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I could see trees, there were obviously trees, the wildflowers, I could see the colors.
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It was like a I've looked on the internet and I found a couple of pictures that look very similar.
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You know, a meadow, like a Scottish meadow with all the wildflowers and a beautiful sunny day, which is quite rare in Scotland, isn't it?
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But, you know, the rain's gone, it's a beautiful day and the flowers have come out and I could hear birds singing.
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I could feel nature.
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It was a meadow of beautiful wildflowers.
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Like a beautiful summer's day.
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It was warm.
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I felt this soft breeze on my skin.
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And interestingly, I smelled wildflowers, Jim.
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I could smell the beautiful, absolutely beautiful wildflowers.
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Yeah.
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It reminds me, the smell was what you emphasized more than anything else.
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Yeah.
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It was just, I've smelled that smell before, you know, many times.
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And it just, It was just like that.
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It was just like an experience before.
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And it was just like, I think most significantly is how I felt.
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I know listeners will want to know how I felt at this time.
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And I came back from that experience with feelings that are still with me right now.
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This is very fresh in my heart, my mind, and in my emotions.
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And I felt, and it sounds a bit cliché, as we hear these experiences.
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And we read that scripture in Galatians 5.22.
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It talks about the fruits of the Spirit, which is love, joy, and peace.
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But that's exactly how I felt.
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Exactly how I felt.
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I felt love, peace, completeness, joy in a way that I'd not experienced before.
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And the closest I've had that experience is...
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some of the moments in life on my mission and my experience that I had with Paul, my brother, who passed away, where I had a glimpse, if you like, into his, you know, what happened to him after he passed away.
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You know, so kind of looking at that experience, a part of it through, you know, through his life or the last few moments in his life.
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And so it was an incredible feeling.
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And again, it reminded me of...
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that scripture, actually.
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One of my favorite scriptures on my mission in Alma 36, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, he said, he talks about, I know what joy and what marvelous light I did behold, and yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain.
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He talks about this joy and this marvelous light that filled his soul, and I think that, well, I know rather, that's how I felt.
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It completely overwhelmed me.
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I didn't feel any pain, by the way.
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My mind didn't catch hold of any pain whatsoever.
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At the time, I didn't think like this.
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I didn't think, oh, I'm not in any pain.
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I just didn't think about it.
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As I look back and I remember, well, I never felt any pain as I reflect upon the experience.
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I didn't feel any sadness at all, only joy.
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And the experience continued because in the distance in this meadow that was gradually coming into a little bit of focus but still not clear.
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I knew I was outside or in nature and it was a meadow.
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I could hear voices and the sound of the voices drew closer.
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I could make out some shapes, human-formed shapes.
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They were bright like the sun, but I couldn't see them.
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I couldn't recognize the people.
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What happened is the voices drew closer.
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I recognized them to be my mother and my brother and a good friend of mine who passed away a long time ago.
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They were one of the three voices that I recall.
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There were other voices, but I don't remember those.
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It felt familiar, but I can't place them.
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I don't know why that is.
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But I certainly placed three of the voices.
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They were very clear and very distinct.
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And they knew me, and I knew them, though certainly weren't strangers to me.
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And the other thing as well, as I look back, and I didn't think this at the time, A lot of these things I wasn't thinking of at the time.
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I just was having the experience.
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But as I look back, I remember, I don't think I heard things through my ears.
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I know that sounds weird and strange and bizarre.
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How do you explain something like that?
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I actually felt what they were saying, if that makes sense.
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It probably didn't make any sense at all, but I could feel I could feel them communicating to me through some feelings, but I don't remember.
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I never said anything.
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I never said anything emotionally or spiritually to them.
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And I never said anything with my mouth.
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My mouth didn't move.
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So I didn't have a conversation with them.
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It was them speaking to me.
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I didn't make out the words, but I recognized the voices.
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And I do not know what they were saying to me.
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I have no memory of,
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no knowledge or memory of.
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Did you have, I don't mean to interrupt, did you have a sense of your body?
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I mean, were you you?
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Were you a person there?
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Were you just kind of a being of light?
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Right.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Great question.
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I didn't have, it never came to my mind about my own physical or spiritual state.
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And actually, I've not thought about that as I've tried to write this down, make notes, try to remember as much of this experience as I can.
00:22:03.255 --> 00:22:17.088
I haven't, and there's still probably more that will come to light, but I haven't thought about, didn't think at the time in the experience about that, and haven't thought about that or even asked
00:22:17.128 --> 00:22:17.689
that question.
00:22:18.049 --> 00:22:24.589
I've just always wondered that when I hear about near-death experiences, is that people talk about And it's like, what are you?
00:22:25.070 --> 00:22:28.678
I mean, you're not in your body or you're out of your body.
00:22:28.759 --> 00:22:33.489
Are you still, you know, two legs, two arms and that kind of thing?
00:22:35.251 --> 00:22:35.913
The only thing,
00:22:35.973 --> 00:22:36.756
it's a good question.
00:22:37.036 --> 00:22:47.866
And again, so I want to be as accurate as I can on my memory, at least, is I don't remember having any thoughts along, you know, this question, looking down at my body.
00:22:47.906 --> 00:22:48.768
That just didn't happen.
00:22:49.429 --> 00:22:51.811
And I haven't thought or asked that question since.
00:22:52.432 --> 00:22:53.854
It's a really interesting question.
00:22:54.434 --> 00:22:58.961
I just remember that I was me.
00:23:00.182 --> 00:23:01.222
You know, I was still me.
00:23:01.943 --> 00:23:04.887
You know, Ian, the personality, the character, right?
00:23:05.888 --> 00:23:07.049
The spirit, Ian, if you like.
00:23:07.069 --> 00:23:09.313
I don't even...
00:23:10.369 --> 00:23:14.374
remember thinking if I was in spirit form or not, or even was in a physical, just did not...
00:23:15.516 --> 00:23:16.317
Certain things I just...
00:23:17.458 --> 00:23:18.378
It was like normal.
00:23:18.439 --> 00:23:19.559
It was like it took it for granted.
00:23:21.602 --> 00:23:25.666
Part of it was kind of normal.
00:23:30.672 --> 00:23:32.114
Like coming home, sort of?
00:23:32.674 --> 00:23:36.878
Yeah, it was like this is how it is kind of thing.
00:23:36.939 --> 00:23:38.240
This is how it's always been.
00:23:38.260 --> 00:23:39.162
This is how it is.
00:23:40.066 --> 00:23:42.548
I didn't ask any questions.
00:23:42.628 --> 00:23:44.369
I didn't look down on my body, nothing like that.
00:23:44.509 --> 00:23:48.493
I don't remember having any thoughts about whether I was glowing or not.
00:23:48.694 --> 00:23:57.143
I just know that I was still me in spirit form, presumably in the same shape.
00:23:58.084 --> 00:24:01.027
It didn't come to mind, but I didn't think anything.
00:24:01.067 --> 00:24:02.288
It wasn't unusual.
00:24:02.327 --> 00:24:02.989
It wasn't...
00:24:03.849 --> 00:24:07.574
It was...
00:24:09.250 --> 00:24:11.952
It didn't even enter my mind because it was like an ordinary thing.
00:24:11.972 --> 00:24:16.497
I know it sounds strange, but it was just like a regular thing.
00:24:16.518 --> 00:24:17.858
It was like it was supposed to be.
00:24:17.898 --> 00:24:19.200
This is how it is, how it's meant to be.
00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:24.144
And maybe this is how it's always been, in a spiritual way.
00:24:24.506 --> 00:24:31.373
But I remember communicating spiritually, emotionally.
00:24:31.573 --> 00:24:46.656
Again, I'm struggling for words here, but emotionally, spiritually, telepathically, I don't know, I'm struggling reaching out for words here, but we communicated through feelings.
00:24:47.377 --> 00:24:49.780
And that felt very normal, by the way.
00:24:51.523 --> 00:24:59.776
Right now, as I've had my own experiences in my life, I felt, you know, I've shared my experience, passing away, I've had other experiences, and you've had your own experiences.
00:25:00.817 --> 00:25:08.990
There are many people out there who have had experiences where they, you know, there was no, maybe physical communication, but they felt what was being said.
00:25:10.178 --> 00:25:15.025
You know, like a small voice.
00:25:15.345 --> 00:25:19.471
It's hard to describe the relationship of experience.
00:25:20.292 --> 00:25:31.028
We communicated without, I don't remember actually speaking, you know, making the effort of physically opening my mouth and words coming out of my mouth.
00:25:31.048 --> 00:25:33.311
In fact, I know that didn't happen.
00:25:33.372 --> 00:25:35.314
My memory is clear enough to know that that did not happen.
00:25:35.755 --> 00:25:39.015
It was, I don't know, I don't
00:25:39.036 --> 00:25:39.596
know what the word
00:25:39.675 --> 00:25:39.736
is.
00:25:42.039 --> 00:25:48.689
People who go through near-death experiences often say that the near-death experience is more real than reality.
00:25:49.609 --> 00:25:50.872
Was that kind of your experience?
00:25:51.173 --> 00:25:52.334
How real was this?
00:25:52.413 --> 00:25:59.744
Was this like a dream, or was this like, this is really happening, this is real, and this is maybe even more real than...
00:25:59.785 --> 00:26:01.247
Yeah,
00:26:02.067 --> 00:26:04.171
it's a great question.
00:26:04.211 --> 00:26:08.992
And again, you'll have questions on this that I can hold my questions to the end.
00:26:09.053 --> 00:26:10.114
I'm sorry to interrupt.
00:26:10.173 --> 00:26:10.795
No, this is good.
00:26:10.815 --> 00:26:16.362
I think these are good-ass questions at this point because I think it's important to ask this question.
00:26:16.382 --> 00:26:18.403
And some of these questions I can answer.
00:26:18.503 --> 00:26:27.015
Others, I will have heard the question the first time, and that will get me thinking about the question and what was the experience.
00:26:27.375 --> 00:26:30.778
So your question was, was it as real there as it was here?
00:26:30.818 --> 00:26:32.981
Yeah.
00:26:33.182 --> 00:26:33.942
Well, the answer is yes.
00:26:33.982 --> 00:26:34.564
For me, it was.
00:26:35.585 --> 00:26:36.185
It was...
00:26:36.642 --> 00:26:47.364
And this, talking about right now, it's very unusual, strange, bizarre, weird experience, extraordinary experience.
00:26:47.984 --> 00:26:50.249
There, it was ordinary, normal.
00:26:50.650 --> 00:26:52.153
It was wonderful.
00:26:52.192 --> 00:26:54.919
It was coming home.
00:26:54.999 --> 00:26:58.326
You said coming home, and I know we've heard that many times, but it did feel...
00:26:58.882 --> 00:27:00.683
distinctly coming home.
00:27:00.743 --> 00:27:01.484
It's where I belonged.
00:27:01.664 --> 00:27:05.009
I was with the people there or people trying to communicate to me.
00:27:05.029 --> 00:27:07.051
I knew them or some of them.
00:27:09.714 --> 00:27:12.278
There wasn't all these people coming up to me, nothing like that.
00:27:12.578 --> 00:27:15.061
And again, I could only see the shapes, make out the shapes.
00:27:15.301 --> 00:27:16.544
I didn't see the detail.
00:27:17.345 --> 00:27:26.655
But I felt extraordinary love and peace and my mind was, it was a whole different dimension, a different world.
00:27:26.695 --> 00:27:35.172
And I don't, remember feeling anything different than I do inside spiritually.
00:27:35.211 --> 00:27:37.493
Like it was my spirit and form, I think.
00:27:38.596 --> 00:27:39.997
I don't know.
00:27:40.057 --> 00:27:42.400
I've not given that a great deal of thought.
00:27:42.440 --> 00:27:49.326
I don't know if I had a physical body, Jim, in that experience, you know, if that was what I was experiencing.
00:27:50.048 --> 00:27:51.048
I just don't know.
00:27:51.750 --> 00:27:52.911
I just don't know on that.
00:27:54.012 --> 00:27:57.557
And so there are some things I remember are clear.
00:27:57.636 --> 00:27:58.116
Other things...
00:27:59.362 --> 00:28:29.055
know i don't and and some things i may never know i don't but uh and please i think you should jump in with your questions because i think they're really poignant and they'll be timely so so as i say i i could you know i couldn't make out there were others there but i couldn't make them out they were further away i mentioned that i could hear them i could feel them i didn't say anything to them they it was it was like a one-way uh communication It came through feelings and not through any other means.
00:28:30.436 --> 00:28:40.894
But I remember, and I don't think I shared this with you when we messaged back and forth, I tried to move towards them, Jim, and I couldn't.
00:28:43.076 --> 00:28:44.118
The summit was stopping me.
00:28:44.538 --> 00:28:45.359
I was being prevented.
00:28:45.461 --> 00:28:47.763
I just couldn't move forward.
00:28:48.085 --> 00:28:55.067
And I remember feeling disappointed and frustrated that I couldn't move forward.
00:28:55.086 --> 00:29:03.377
And that was interesting because it didn't diminish from the joy that I was feeling, but I remember that I couldn't go to them.
00:29:05.421 --> 00:29:11.390
And I couldn't move towards those shapes.
00:29:11.430 --> 00:29:12.191
Something wouldn't let me.
00:29:12.832 --> 00:29:21.022
And at that point, the image began to fade and disappeared.
00:29:21.042 --> 00:29:32.824
And At that point, I think, that's the last thing I remember at that stage, at that point.
00:29:33.865 --> 00:29:37.048
I remember a moment or so, I remember opening my eyes.
00:29:37.588 --> 00:29:45.557
So it went from that, this whole image just disappearing.
00:29:46.558 --> 00:29:47.460
And I opened my eyes.
00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:49.142
I remember looking up at the blue sky.
00:29:49.162 --> 00:29:51.304
I was a bit confused as to where I was.
00:29:51.805 --> 00:30:01.396
But I remember when I To the right of me, on this grassy part, there were some cedar trees.
00:30:02.076 --> 00:30:06.262
So as I opened my eyes, I could see these cedar trees on the right of me.
00:30:06.723 --> 00:30:09.366
And I thought, oh, I remember this.
00:30:10.648 --> 00:30:11.309
I know where I am.
00:30:11.349 --> 00:30:12.270
I remember where I am.
00:30:12.971 --> 00:30:20.501
And I remembered, again, in a fairly short moment, that I was at the point where I'd remember the last time passing out.
00:30:22.018 --> 00:30:31.328
And as I came to, the pain in my chest came back to me.
00:30:31.509 --> 00:30:33.652
It was like it had not left.
00:30:33.932 --> 00:30:35.913
It suddenly rushed back.
00:30:35.953 --> 00:30:37.115
The pain was still intense.
00:30:37.836 --> 00:30:40.579
And I remember I was actually lying on my back at this point.
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:48.128
As I fell, I must have, I don't know, rolled on my back and just passed out and woke it up.
00:30:49.665 --> 00:30:51.488
seeing the sky, seeing the trees on my right.
00:30:51.907 --> 00:30:59.296
And I remember again trying to, I remember taking big deep breaths and still scared.
00:30:59.636 --> 00:31:00.917
And the fear came back.
00:31:01.519 --> 00:31:11.910
I went from that experience, the feeling of that, to this fear again that I was in trouble.
00:31:12.330 --> 00:31:16.194
And again, this pain came flowing back.
00:31:16.694 --> 00:31:22.301
And I did some more deep breaths And I think I lied there for a few minutes.
00:31:22.362 --> 00:31:24.806
A few cars, I saw some of the cars driving past.
00:31:24.925 --> 00:31:30.394
I was conscious enough to hear the cars driving past near the path.
00:31:30.994 --> 00:31:33.298
The path is next to a road in this grassy area.
00:31:34.138 --> 00:31:35.260
But I took more deep breaths.
00:31:35.520 --> 00:31:42.330
And as I did, I seemed to get a little bit of strength.
00:31:42.791 --> 00:31:46.877
And I stood up and I walked very slowly.
00:31:47.842 --> 00:31:50.925
taking deep breaths, and I walked towards the house.
00:31:51.886 --> 00:31:57.393
I called my wife, and my wife said, you know, get back to the house and lie down.
00:31:57.413 --> 00:32:01.498
I said, I think I need to go to the hospital.
00:32:02.439 --> 00:32:09.887
And so I knew something awful had happened.
00:32:09.948 --> 00:32:13.576
I was in, you know, Serious trouble still at that point.
00:32:14.076 --> 00:32:15.578
And you're still in pain for all this?
00:32:15.598 --> 00:32:16.240
Still in pain.
00:32:16.279 --> 00:32:18.423
You're still in intense pain and discomfort.
00:32:18.942 --> 00:32:24.691
I walked back to the house and still quite dizzy, sweating, but still managed to move.
00:32:24.852 --> 00:32:28.876
And instead of doing the smart thing, I feel a little stupid sharing this.
00:32:30.519 --> 00:32:35.086
Instead of calling 911, I actually drove myself to the hospital.
00:32:35.125 --> 00:32:37.788
Oh, wow.
00:32:38.630 --> 00:32:38.851
Yeah.
00:32:39.171 --> 00:32:39.711
Like an idiot.
00:32:40.854 --> 00:32:41.054
So...
00:32:41.665 --> 00:32:46.530
Even then at that point, I thought, I was so confused.
00:32:46.550 --> 00:32:53.077
I knew in one sense it was serious, but was it serious enough to call 911?
00:32:53.097 --> 00:33:01.748
And yes, it was serious enough to call 911, but I did the stupid thing by just driving to the hospital.
00:33:02.409 --> 00:33:10.740
I got to the hospital and I went in and I said, look, I think I've experienced, it could be a heart attack.
00:33:10.780 --> 00:33:11.122
I don't know.
00:33:11.182 --> 00:33:14.546
I'm in a lot of pain and discomfort.
00:33:15.227 --> 00:33:17.990
I was moving slowly, taking very slow steps.
00:33:18.171 --> 00:33:20.333
She told me to sit down and just wait.
00:33:20.512 --> 00:33:21.875
I think I was there for like 10 minutes.
00:33:21.974 --> 00:33:25.019
And then I was like, no, this is not good.
00:33:25.078 --> 00:33:25.599
I need to see.
00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:26.480
So I stood up again.
00:33:26.540 --> 00:33:28.383
I said, look, I need to see something now.
00:33:28.784 --> 00:33:30.365
I think I could have another heart attack.
00:33:30.726 --> 00:33:31.686
You need to see me right now.
00:33:31.968 --> 00:33:33.068
And so I'm just like, you know.
00:33:33.710 --> 00:33:35.632
So within a few minutes, someone came out.
00:33:36.093 --> 00:33:36.773
They took my...
00:33:37.218 --> 00:33:50.231
brought me in, in this emergency room, took my blood pressure and some quick tests, and they knew I was in trouble.
00:33:50.313 --> 00:34:02.925
So they moved me to take some blood work, do some blood work, and I was lying down in this bed, in this room, do some blood work, et cetera.
00:34:03.467 --> 00:34:05.950
They gave me oxygen, so that was good.
00:34:06.529 --> 00:34:11.898
Got me to do some deep breath, still in quite a bit of pain, but not quite as much, but the oxygen helped.
00:34:12.619 --> 00:34:14.583
And then they said, you can't pay anything on the blood.
00:34:14.603 --> 00:34:15.766
I think it was there for about an hour.
00:34:16.226 --> 00:34:18.050
We're going to take you for a CT scan.
00:34:18.150 --> 00:34:19.753
So they, I went on pretty quickly.
00:34:19.773 --> 00:34:20.815
I was really impressed, actually.
00:34:21.456 --> 00:34:26.083
So within an hour and a half or so, I went through the CT scan.
00:34:26.744 --> 00:34:31.954
And then I came back into this waiting room and sat on this bed.
00:34:32.898 --> 00:34:40.269
leaning up on this bed, and then maybe half an hour later, the doctor came and said, you have blood clots on your lungs.
00:34:40.831 --> 00:34:45.880
You've suffered or experienced a pulmonary embolism.
00:34:49.085 --> 00:34:58.942
And it's extremely serious, and in fact, it's a, sorry to tell you, but it's a saddle pulmonary embolism.
00:34:59.617 --> 00:35:02.862
And if you don't know what that is, I don't know how much you know about that, Jim.
00:35:02.882 --> 00:35:05.445
I knew nothing about this a week and a half ago.
00:35:05.465 --> 00:35:26.349
So what happens is a blood clot is released from a part of the body, often the legs, not always, but often the legs, and it finds itself, it goes through the veins, in my case, the molary vein, and it can go to the lungs, and it can...
00:35:27.329 --> 00:35:30.273
significantly livid breathing, so it clots in the lungs.
00:35:31.353 --> 00:35:40.501
If you're lucky, you get just one small clot, which can block a part of a lung or one lung, but the other lung functions, so you're okay.
00:35:41.182 --> 00:35:45.867
But in a saddle ulnar embolism, it's a big clot, and mine was a big one.
00:35:45.907 --> 00:35:47.548
They said it's a big one.
00:35:47.608 --> 00:35:50.771
That absolutely terrified me, actually, when they told me what it was.
00:35:51.353 --> 00:36:28.135
And it comes round, I'm using my hands here to describe, but it comes round, the clock comes up the pulmonary system and then it's so big it blocks you know as the lungs come into the central connector part of the um i'm not a medical expert we know the trachea where the lungs connect where the lungs actually converge that's the word at the converging point where the lungs come together that's where in my case are in the saddle pulmonary embolism that's where the clock um gets blocked so the effect is blocking uh all air uh you know coming in into the lungs.
00:36:28.797 --> 00:36:56.619
And what happens if you can't breathe, the heart tries to compensate and essentially goes into overdrive, nothing happening because it's blocked, panics, goes into turbo, nothing happening, and then you suffer a stroke or a heart attack and either serious injury or often It's a fatality.
00:36:59.021 --> 00:37:00.902
And you can research this.
00:37:01.342 --> 00:37:10.731
People may have had their own experience here, but it's very easy to find information on mortality rates of pulmonary embolisms.
00:37:11.213 --> 00:37:12.293
It's extremely serious.
00:37:12.534 --> 00:37:22.603
And if not treated immediately, it can cause lifelong injury or it could kill you.
00:37:23.503 --> 00:37:24.806
They put me on blood thinners.
00:37:26.146 --> 00:37:33.375
heparin, I think that's how you pronounce it, mispronounced that, and the blood thinners actually thin the blood.
00:37:34.956 --> 00:37:38.320
The blood thinners, by the way, don't break down the clot.
00:37:39.663 --> 00:37:44.688
Some of the nurses at the hospital said it breaks down the clot, but the doctor said no.
00:37:45.650 --> 00:38:00.668
The anticoagulant, mispronounced that, the anticoagulant, The blood thinners limit or reduce or remove further risks from clots.
00:38:01.389 --> 00:38:10.422
But the body itself, through the chemistry of the blood, actually breaks down the clot.
00:38:10.722 --> 00:38:14.248
In fact, our bodies recycle blood all the time, as you probably know.
00:38:14.288 --> 00:38:15.929
Our skin is recycled.
00:38:16.231 --> 00:38:16.992
Our blood is recycled.
00:38:17.032 --> 00:38:19.936
There's lots of parts of the body or some parts of the body that gets recycled.
00:38:19.996 --> 00:38:21.338
But blood is no different.
00:38:21.666 --> 00:38:41.027
So if we hydrate healthily, good diets, et cetera, and our bodies function properly, our blood is recycled and cleans itself up in order to maintain full functioning capacity, capability of the blood and the heart system.
00:38:42.449 --> 00:38:46.293
And it's the body that breaks down the clot, but that takes time.
00:38:46.313 --> 00:38:47.054
That could take months.
00:38:47.713 --> 00:39:00.827
So right now, as we speak, I've got a saddle clock, size clock, which is big, you know, half an inch, if you like, on top of my lungs, which is breaking down.
00:39:01.588 --> 00:39:03.829
I'm not out of the woods right now, by the way.
00:39:03.869 --> 00:39:05.911
You might be solo again next week.
00:39:05.992 --> 00:39:06.853
I shouldn't joke.
00:39:07.213 --> 00:39:08.554
Oh, don't say that.
00:39:08.614 --> 00:39:09.135
I shouldn't joke.
00:39:09.615 --> 00:39:11.677
No, we should probably cut that out.
00:39:11.737 --> 00:39:13.280
That's probably not appropriate.
00:39:13.320 --> 00:39:15.621
But...
00:39:16.385 --> 00:39:21.695
Yeah, the body breaks it down and the thinner actually removes any, reduces any
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.
00:39:23.557 --> 00:39:26.442
So that was my week.
00:39:26.521 --> 00:39:27.364
That was my week and a half.
00:39:27.724 --> 00:39:29.047
And so I'd been in the hospital.
00:39:29.106 --> 00:39:36.318
I came out yesterday and every day they do, throughout the day they do vital, test your vitals.
00:39:37.059 --> 00:39:41.065
The first day, first two days I was there, my bowel signs were very unstable.
00:39:41.686 --> 00:39:42.487
I was on oxygen.
00:39:44.161 --> 00:39:46.744
I was 24 around the clock care.
00:39:47.244 --> 00:39:49.927
Nurses check in infrequently because it was pretty close.
00:39:50.387 --> 00:39:54.231
What happened, there's always a risk of happening again, right?
00:39:54.331 --> 00:39:57.576
Because the body do break down the clot immediately.
00:39:57.596 --> 00:39:59.476
It takes weeks, months, actually.
00:40:00.518 --> 00:40:02.981
And the thinners, they take time as well, right?
00:40:03.181 --> 00:40:08.746
And you can have another clot break off from part of the body.
00:40:08.806 --> 00:40:11.789
And so you've got to be on around the clock.
00:40:12.289 --> 00:40:12.971
watch.
00:40:13.711 --> 00:40:15.673
They did regular checks.
00:40:15.693 --> 00:40:17.215
I was on thinners, oxygen.
00:40:17.235 --> 00:40:20.780
I was in a special care unit.
00:40:21.460 --> 00:40:22.603
I was in the cardio.
00:40:22.682 --> 00:40:28.128
They took me to the cardio unit, which is a very specialized unit.
00:40:28.449 --> 00:40:29.130
There was a risk of...
00:40:30.572 --> 00:40:32.375
I asked, why am I here?
00:40:32.434 --> 00:40:33.976
They said, well, there's a risk of heart attack.
00:40:34.556 --> 00:40:39.704
If you can't breathe, the heart's trying to...
00:40:40.625 --> 00:40:41.244
It was panicking.
00:40:41.284 --> 00:41:11.307
It can't know uh trying to get oxygen there's no oxygen oxygen getting to it and it it has an attack it goes into that the doctor said i was going into and i caught them into uh an arrest it was like a a lung arrest a lung attack and then what happens immediately after that is actually a heart attack because the the heart can't function without the lungs right so so That's where I've been the last week and a half.
00:41:11.489 --> 00:41:12.610
I've been in hospital.
00:41:13.791 --> 00:41:15.855
This first 40 hours was touch and go.
00:41:17.016 --> 00:41:23.125
My vital signs improved significantly, actually, within, you know, I think the third and fourth day.
00:41:23.164 --> 00:41:24.626
And I just got stronger and stronger.
00:41:24.666 --> 00:41:27.070
And, well, I'm not out of the woods.
00:41:27.871 --> 00:41:37.425
I did get some messages from some people who were, you know, some of the members who heard about my condition, which is wonderful, actually.
00:41:37.445 --> 00:41:39.427
They They put my name on the temple.
00:41:39.827 --> 00:41:43.391
They knew I don't go, and they asked me, okay, if we put your name on the temple.
00:41:43.472 --> 00:41:44.693
And I see that, Jim.
00:41:44.733 --> 00:41:58.849
I don't believe in the endowment, the mechanics, if you like, of the endowment, the physical mechanics of all those symbols, all those rites and different rituals.
00:41:59.769 --> 00:42:07.358
But behind that, with these people, of course, it's the same, I think, with everyone who puts names on it.
00:42:08.097 --> 00:42:09.559
you know, in the temple or the altar there.
00:42:10.201 --> 00:42:11.943
It's an act of love and kindness.
00:42:12.503 --> 00:42:13.925
And I see that, and I recognize that.
00:42:14.045 --> 00:42:15.507
And it is an act of faith.
00:42:15.726 --> 00:42:17.809
It's the, you know, the Mormon
00:42:17.869 --> 00:42:20.233
version of demonstrating faith.
00:42:20.253 --> 00:42:26.721
Well, were these people people that have been in touch with you since you've left, or are they some people that you hadn't heard from in a long time?
00:42:26.740 --> 00:42:27.440
Both, both.
00:42:27.822 --> 00:42:28.402
Interesting here.
00:42:30.364 --> 00:42:31.166
That's a great question.
00:42:31.226 --> 00:42:37.853
So there were people who hadn't reached out who I spoke to since I left the church who hadn't reached out, which is nice.
00:42:38.434 --> 00:42:39.775
And I was deeply grateful.
00:42:39.815 --> 00:42:45.240
He was kind, he was extraordinary act of love and faith in that, and sincerity.
00:42:45.280 --> 00:43:00.297
And I was grateful that my name was on, if he was a temple around the world, which is, I think that's the, the last time I was in a temple was on a, in a bag, a name on a piece of paper in a bag on the altar recently.
00:43:00.317 --> 00:43:11.166
But I, you know, that does not take away at all the fact that these people did that because they loved me and were very prayerful and worried about me.
00:43:11.206 --> 00:43:16.152
And so, I mean, that's where I've been.
00:43:16.193 --> 00:43:18.335
That's what I've been doing.
00:43:19.056 --> 00:43:23.003
And so I was grateful to get out also because the food absolutely sucks.
00:43:23.083 --> 00:43:23.864
And I'm not joking.
00:43:25.266 --> 00:43:26.246
I did not eat the food.
00:43:26.708 --> 00:43:35.027
My wife and my family, of course, were there and we had some friends visits and they brought a little bit of human food and you know, to survive on.
00:43:36.829 --> 00:43:40.432
And the nurses there at the hospital were extraordinary.
00:43:40.472 --> 00:43:41.733
The doctors were just amazing.
00:43:43.516 --> 00:43:47.380
So that's where I've been.
00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:49.961
That's been my life the last week.
00:43:53.826 --> 00:43:57.150
Well, I appreciate you sharing that.
00:43:57.309 --> 00:44:00.934
I mean, that's, you know, health scares and health...
00:44:01.793 --> 00:44:04.938
I have never had an experience that's comparable to that.
00:44:06.001 --> 00:44:20.041
I have never been in an experience where I personally, a knock on wood, where I personally have felt at risk or certainly not anywhere I've had anything that could be described as a near-death experience.
00:44:21.123 --> 00:44:36.867
The most time I spent in the hospital was when my daughter was injured and I slept on the couch and while she had a spinal cord injury and she was being rehabilitated and I slept on the couch and I ate the hospital food and it was good.
00:44:37.909 --> 00:44:39.331
So maybe that's the difference.
00:44:39.431 --> 00:44:47.123
Maybe Canadian food is, but is that the reason Americans don't have universal healthcare is our food in the hospital is too good?
00:44:47.143 --> 00:44:50.829
Is that the- That's probably the only reason, absolutely.
00:44:51.210 --> 00:44:51.731
That's the
00:44:51.972 --> 00:44:52.452
only reason.
00:44:53.114 --> 00:44:53.474
Absolutely.
00:44:54.695 --> 00:45:01.204
Yeah, so- I was grateful for the help.
00:45:01.284 --> 00:45:02.806
It was good to get out.
00:45:06.132 --> 00:45:11.822
I want to say this, Jamie, for me.
00:45:12.623 --> 00:45:22.860
I'm having this conversation on this day here, and I still have a sense of foreboding, a sense of fear.
00:45:24.034 --> 00:45:26.175
I'm still scared even now.
00:45:26.215 --> 00:45:27.838
I might not sound it, but I am inside.
00:45:28.159 --> 00:45:31.322
I'm still not out of the woods by any means.
00:45:32.844 --> 00:45:33.425
I'm hopeful.
00:45:34.045 --> 00:45:35.126
The prognosis looks good.
00:45:35.847 --> 00:45:39.431
But my fear, and I want to be clear about this, my fear is not of dying.
00:45:39.452 --> 00:45:46.159
My fear is the impact it has on my family because I...
00:45:54.722 --> 00:46:10.844
I saw for the first time, in the most extraordinary way, the impact that my absence would have on my family and close loved ones in a way that I didn't understand or appreciate before.
00:46:12.286 --> 00:46:17.956
I remind myself of my favorite movie, actually, A Wonderful Life.
00:46:17.976 --> 00:46:19.277
I love that movie.
00:46:19.818 --> 00:46:20.800
I try to watch it each year.
00:46:20.820 --> 00:46:22.181
I try to watch it each year, but the kids...
00:46:22.594 --> 00:46:23.695
The kids are not interested.
00:46:23.855 --> 00:46:24.635
They think it's boring.
00:46:25.056 --> 00:46:28.119
I watched that and I just love that movie.
00:46:29.161 --> 00:46:31.623
It's, you know, what's his name?
00:46:31.722 --> 00:46:32.523
Bedford Falls.
00:46:33.824 --> 00:46:34.346
Jimmy Stewart?
00:46:35.007 --> 00:46:35.666
Jimmy Stewart.
00:46:35.686 --> 00:46:36.648
I can't remember the characters.
00:46:36.728 --> 00:46:37.369
George Bailey.
00:46:37.829 --> 00:46:38.730
George Bailey.
00:46:38.829 --> 00:46:39.351
My gosh.
00:46:39.371 --> 00:46:41.492
I think many of us know and love that movie.
00:46:41.934 --> 00:46:42.914
What a great movie that is.
00:46:43.675 --> 00:46:50.101
And he gets the opportunities to see what his life is like or the life of his family and friends.
00:46:50.882 --> 00:46:52.724
what that looks like without him in their life.
00:46:53.284 --> 00:46:59.393
And he doesn't appreciate the significance or the impact that he's had on their lives.
00:47:00.293 --> 00:47:04.059
Well, I saw that in very stark ways this last week.
00:47:04.139 --> 00:47:12.369
I didn't really understand or appreciate the positive impact that I have on my family and some friends.
00:47:13.490 --> 00:47:25.431
And in particular, my son, who it really affected him I'm very close to my family and I have a special bond with each of them.
00:47:25.753 --> 00:47:37.483
And my youngest was, I wouldn't say traumatized by the experience, but he was very upset and emotional in a way that I've not seen before.
00:47:37.523 --> 00:47:41.327
And he's just not stopped hugging me or telling me how much he loves me.
00:47:41.789 --> 00:47:45.431
He's just tried to come out most of all.
00:47:46.492 --> 00:47:57.693
So we sometimes take for granted, I think, the impact or the loss that ourselves can have on our family.
00:47:57.733 --> 00:48:04.460
And we perhaps don't see the significance of the role that we play in the lives of our family members and our friends.
00:48:05.320 --> 00:48:10.447
Maybe we don't see that until something happens.
00:48:11.668 --> 00:48:16.833
So for me, that was very striking and very significant.
00:48:17.505 --> 00:48:28.217
And a very significant learning experience for me to be able to see that in the lives, in the words, in the actions of my family.
00:48:28.737 --> 00:48:41.192
I hope you never experience this, but I hope my message brings, I think as I thought about this, Jim, I thought, well, what is the value of sharing this?
00:48:41.291 --> 00:48:45.175
I thought, well, no, there is some value because, you know, live healthily.
00:48:45.215 --> 00:48:46.416
You know, we all know that, right?
00:48:46.536 --> 00:48:46.938
Live right.
00:48:48.001 --> 00:48:49.603
Exercise, eat right.
00:48:50.025 --> 00:48:53.068
You will probably get fed up hearing that all the time, but it's important.
00:48:54.451 --> 00:48:56.653
Go for regular tests and checkups, et cetera.
00:48:57.494 --> 00:49:04.905
In my examinations, by the way, in the test, they tried to identify the source of the clock.
00:49:05.125 --> 00:49:06.306
Where did the clock come from?
00:49:06.666 --> 00:49:07.327
Why did it occur?
00:49:08.009 --> 00:49:08.610
What happened?
00:49:08.670 --> 00:49:09.269
Why did it occur?
00:49:09.311 --> 00:49:09.971
Could it happen again?
00:49:10.452 --> 00:49:14.237
In my case, it came from an injury I had on my lower left leg.
00:49:15.233 --> 00:49:24.246
many months ago, we think that soft tissue injury caused some damage to some internal tissue there, we think.
00:49:24.505 --> 00:49:25.027
That's what we think.
00:49:26.168 --> 00:49:31.275
In fact, the British show this what happened, and it's quite common actually to get a clot from an injury on your leg.
00:49:32.436 --> 00:49:35.481
And in my case, the clot kind of broke off and it went up into my lungs.
00:49:36.422 --> 00:49:41.568
But what they do, they do a process of deduction where they take you for all these tests, and they also take you for cancer tests.
00:49:42.561 --> 00:49:52.434
I had this extensive second CT scan for cancer, because cancer could be a factor in how clots occur.
00:49:52.755 --> 00:49:54.858
There's other reasons, but that's one of them.
00:49:54.878 --> 00:50:00.184
And they have to eliminate the causality of the clot.
00:50:00.505 --> 00:50:05.672
And they come down to, in my case, it was by deduction, it was my injury on the lower level.
00:50:05.692 --> 00:50:07.173
They had that assumption that it was.
00:50:07.353 --> 00:50:12.103
And so the test, by the way, revealed I am cancer-free.
00:50:12.364 --> 00:50:13.686
I have no traces of cancer.
00:50:14.628 --> 00:50:14.989
All good.
00:50:15.550 --> 00:50:17.112
So, and that's official.
00:50:17.313 --> 00:50:23.161
So, again, that's, you know, when we get to our age, you're supposed to go, I'll go back to what I was saying.
00:50:23.181 --> 00:50:24.804
I thought, you know, what's the value of these messages?
00:50:25.085 --> 00:50:33.077
You know, as a man or adult, just go get, you know, when you reach your 50s, you and I are pushing 60, you know, I'm even older than you.
00:50:33.277 --> 00:50:34.278
Speak for yourself.
00:50:34.659 --> 00:50:36.081
I'm still a young pup.
00:50:36.418 --> 00:50:37.139
You're a young pup.
00:50:37.259 --> 00:50:37.699
You're a young pup.
00:50:37.739 --> 00:50:38.739
I think you're two or three years.
00:50:38.780 --> 00:50:39.420
Two or three, yeah.
00:50:39.701 --> 00:50:41.143
Two or three.
00:50:41.242 --> 00:50:46.047
But when you get our age, you know, go for a regular checkup, right?
00:50:46.547 --> 00:50:47.528
Go get your heart tested.
00:50:47.568 --> 00:50:48.429
Go get your lungs tested.
00:50:48.469 --> 00:50:49.170
Go some blood work.
00:50:50.411 --> 00:50:51.932
You know, go do a test for prostate cancer.
00:50:51.992 --> 00:50:55.056
I've come up clear, which is wonderful.
00:50:55.677 --> 00:50:57.518
That's wonderful to know.
00:50:58.400 --> 00:50:59.960
You know, cancer affects so many people.
00:51:00.402 --> 00:51:03.905
But go and get regular checks, especially at our age, right?
00:51:04.085 --> 00:51:04.565
Eat well.
00:51:05.121 --> 00:51:08.346
live well, obviously, exercise.
00:51:09.387 --> 00:52:15.197
If something happens, and this is something that my wife asked me to highlight on this podcast, she said that if this had happened to her, she would not have listened to her body and she would probably be dead because my wife is tough, strong, deal with almost anything, and takes the time know the tougher stance if you like uh in terms of these kind of issues and she said to me repeatedly um how uh extraordinary it is that i uh in fact she said to me uh jim um and i made a note here um um she said that uh When I called her, when I was on the way to the hospital, or just before I went to the hospital, so I called her just before I went to the hospital, before I drove myself to the hospital, she said, just go in and just lie down, you'll be okay.
00:52:15.778 --> 00:52:24.489
But she now says to me, knowing how serious it was and researching it, that she's grateful that I, quote, listened to my own body, end quote.
00:52:25.170 --> 00:52:28.414
And actually, it made the decision to go to the hospital.
00:52:28.675 --> 00:52:30.217
Yes, I should have called 911.
00:52:31.458 --> 00:52:36.606
a full lot, but at least I took myself there.
00:52:37.186 --> 00:52:42.375
So if you experience pain or anything you're not sure, it's always best to be on the safe side.
00:52:42.815 --> 00:52:52.228
Listen to your body, go get checked, go get tested, and just err on the cautious side.
00:52:53.010 --> 00:53:01.478
So the messages are, I said earlier, near-death experience is For me, my definition, my experience was, was it physical?
00:53:01.599 --> 00:53:01.840
Yes.
00:53:02.501 --> 00:53:05.105
Emotional, I thought I was a goner.
00:53:06.246 --> 00:53:09.612
Spiritual, I had no fear on that.
00:53:09.931 --> 00:53:12.996
It was quite a, I actually wasn't surprised.
00:53:13.177 --> 00:53:23.172
That's something else that, you don't ask me a question on this, but if you ask me, was I surprised to have this experience or was I surprised when I was having that experience?
00:53:24.034 --> 00:53:26.057
No, it was normal.
00:53:26.626 --> 00:53:28.088
Isn't that weird to say that?
00:53:28.148 --> 00:53:33.514
It was completely non-extraordinary and normal as it was extraordinary.
00:53:33.574 --> 00:53:34.615
And that's a strange thing to say.
00:53:34.717 --> 00:53:39.081
Oxymoron, is that the right word?
00:53:39.963 --> 00:53:40.244
Yeah.
00:53:41.485 --> 00:53:47.693
Well, so what does this do to your spirituality going forward?
00:53:48.655 --> 00:53:53.961
Everything I've read about near-death experiences, and people, they talk about they're a changed person.
00:53:54.722 --> 00:54:27.639
uh their perspective on life changed and so and the fear of death i mean you talk about the fear or the concern the love really that you have for your family and your friends and you're scared of what your absence would mean but uh i've read a lot of people talking about near-death experiences who say it it completely removes The fear of death, the fear of that there's nothing beyond this life because you kind of have an assurance that there is.
00:54:27.679 --> 00:54:29.983
Is that where you are?
00:54:30.003 --> 00:54:30.043
No,
00:54:31.065 --> 00:54:31.965
no, it's not.
00:54:32.065 --> 00:54:47.146
For me, from the experiences I've had, you know, one of the podcasts we talked about, my brother Paul, who I still wish, I go into quite a bit of, well, some detail, and that was a difficult podcast for me, but a necessary one and quite emotional.
00:54:48.907 --> 00:54:49.769
It was difficult to...
00:54:50.786 --> 00:55:22.878
share that but i felt it was it would do more good you know to help with this but i've had a number of experiences jim in my life you know in the church and out the church that i've confirmed not many experiences i've had some which have confirmed beyond any doubt that i there's there is definitely something after this life and i i actually you know if people stand up and bear the testimony and we complain sometimes outside the church or people who are against the church or You get these snide comments from some people like, how can you stand up and say you know something?
00:55:22.918 --> 00:55:23.858
You don't know, right?
00:55:23.898 --> 00:55:27.764
You're standing up and you're saying you know that God lives or you know this and this and this.
00:55:27.804 --> 00:55:28.565
You don't really know.
00:55:28.626 --> 00:55:30.208
You should say you believe, right?
00:55:30.869 --> 00:55:35.376
I mean, that may or not be the case depending on the individual.
00:55:35.416 --> 00:55:43.088
But if I stood up and I said I knew, I don't bother what people think about that.
00:55:43.148 --> 00:55:45.711
They can agree or believe it or not.
00:55:46.273 --> 00:55:46.793
But I know.
00:55:47.329 --> 00:55:51.175
I know that there is a life after this life.
00:55:51.775 --> 00:56:03.648
There is a power beyond our power, a power so greater than we are that exists, that is very real, and an energy, a force, a love.
00:56:03.869 --> 00:56:06.652
I didn't see God or Jesus Christ, nothing like that.
00:56:06.672 --> 00:56:10.137
I don't mean to sound disrespectful.
00:56:10.157 --> 00:56:13.081
I didn't see Jesus or God or anyone like that.
00:56:15.458 --> 00:56:19.302
I want to show reverence because I do believe in a God, in a being.
00:56:19.663 --> 00:56:22.306
I don't know all the details of what that would look like.
00:56:22.346 --> 00:56:33.259
I don't think that's the Mormon God per se, but a being or beings that have this power, this energy, this love that permeates the universe.
00:56:33.378 --> 00:56:33.940
I believe that.
00:56:35.260 --> 00:56:38.025
And I know, I'll go further and I'll say I know that.
00:56:38.405 --> 00:56:42.230
That is real because I've experienced it several times.
00:56:42.786 --> 00:56:55.719
But this experience, this last experience, did not teach me anymore now than I knew before in terms of life after life or life after death, and didn't teach me anymore in terms of knowing what I already knew.
00:56:55.780 --> 00:57:02.588
It gave me, in terms of the spiritual side I'm talking about, the visual side was distinctly different.
00:57:02.608 --> 00:57:04.369
So that was a whole new experience.
00:57:05.110 --> 00:57:07.652
The fear of death, that's not changed whatsoever.
00:57:08.034 --> 00:57:10.175
You could be questioning about your perspective.
00:57:10.255 --> 00:57:11.838
How's my perspective changed?
00:57:13.282 --> 00:57:22.811
If what I experienced was a spiritual or near-death experience in spiritual terms, then it's something that is just glorious and wonderful.
00:57:23.411 --> 00:57:33.061
Is it my brain firing, you know, chemicals right at the last moment or on the, again, I use the word brink of death, you know, if I was a few minutes away.
00:57:33.081 --> 00:57:35.523
I don't believe I died, by the way.
00:57:35.543 --> 00:57:37.824
I do not believe I actually died.
00:57:37.844 --> 00:57:41.027
I know I didn't die.
00:57:42.849 --> 00:57:44.652
You know, my heart didn't stop.
00:57:44.711 --> 00:57:46.954
There's no evidence in the hospital that my heart stopped.
00:57:47.476 --> 00:57:49.539
My heart survived pretty well, actually.
00:57:49.858 --> 00:57:53.264
It came under intense pressure, but I came out pretty well physically.
00:57:53.804 --> 00:57:56.989
I saw my heart on a monitor, and it looks pretty good, right?
00:57:57.650 --> 00:57:58.650
But I didn't die.
00:57:58.670 --> 00:58:06.061
I know I didn't die, but it was near death, or it was a glimpse into whatever that next experience is.
00:58:06.141 --> 00:58:24.875
It's like looking through a, like a, like a curtain, if you like, just a transparent curtain where you can just, if you get closer and your face just passes through, just your face or your body rather.
00:58:25.596 --> 00:58:34.847
And you just stood there right at the veil, at the veil, glimpsing in through it, part of your body's through it.
00:58:34.867 --> 00:58:41.938
And you have a glimpse, just a moment, a glimpse of what that looks like, what the eternal looks like.
00:58:42.657 --> 00:58:46.021
I believe that's the best way I can describe it at this time.
00:58:46.202 --> 00:58:52.467
How I articulate it, as I think about it further, it might change or I might find better words to describe it.
00:58:52.967 --> 00:58:56.731
That's the best words I can use right now to describe that.
00:58:57.032 --> 00:58:57.753
But I didn't die.
00:58:57.773 --> 00:59:00.436
I haven't come back from the dead.
00:59:02.518 --> 00:59:05.240
Was it chemicals firing in my brain at the time?
00:59:05.260 --> 00:59:07.422
I don't believe that.
00:59:08.184 --> 00:59:10.025
Am I afraid of death?
00:59:10.722 --> 00:59:13.385
I wasn't afraid of death before the experience.
00:59:13.846 --> 00:59:14.547
I saw things.
00:59:16.068 --> 00:59:18.110
You could argue, well, you thought you saw things.
00:59:18.150 --> 00:59:20.134
It could be your imagination, right?
00:59:20.173 --> 00:59:22.396
I have no way of proving that.
00:59:22.936 --> 00:59:26.442
All I remember is what I saw and how I felt at the time.
00:59:27.222 --> 00:59:46.251
My perspective has changed, specifically in the area I was talking about before where the impact that my absence would have on my family and some friends would be significant in a way that I never saw or understood before, Jim.
00:59:47.112 --> 00:59:49.556
That's new, a new perspective.
00:59:49.938 --> 00:59:52.422
Did you have that perspective during the experience?
00:59:53.623 --> 00:59:54.364
No.
00:59:54.405 --> 00:59:58.711
That's something that sort of comes since the experience?
00:59:59.614 --> 00:59:59.893
Since the
00:59:59.914 --> 01:00:00.835
experience, yeah.
01:00:01.597 --> 01:00:02.699
Great question.
01:00:02.759 --> 01:00:05.583
At the time, I didn't think about my family in the experience.
01:00:05.623 --> 01:00:11.666
I could see shapes of people that I couldn't recognize.
01:00:11.746 --> 01:00:12.327
It was the voices.
01:00:12.387 --> 01:00:13.248
Family was there.
01:00:13.289 --> 01:00:14.070
Your mother was there.
01:00:14.150 --> 01:00:14.550
Paul was
01:00:14.590 --> 01:00:14.771
there.
01:00:15.271 --> 01:00:18.034
Yeah, but only through their voices that I recognized.
01:00:18.356 --> 01:00:19.998
I couldn't, it was so far off.
01:00:20.539 --> 01:00:25.826
I could see the shapes, human form, but I couldn't see the detail at all.
01:00:26.226 --> 01:00:27.307
It was too far off.
01:00:27.347 --> 01:00:29.931
And I tried to approach them and I just couldn't.
01:00:30.032 --> 01:00:32.295
It was, you know, some people have needed experiences.
01:00:32.335 --> 01:00:33.996
They go right into it, right?
01:00:35.099 --> 01:00:36.460
They're able to move forward.
01:00:37.262 --> 01:00:37.342
Yeah.
01:00:37.570 --> 01:00:45.278
They're able to talk to people close up and get the detail and have conversations and look around them.
01:00:45.659 --> 01:00:51.887
And I mean, those experiences, I know they're not all real.
01:00:51.907 --> 01:00:52.626
I know that.
01:00:53.568 --> 01:01:11.030
Sometimes people may, I don't know, are going to have their own, you know, they might exaggerate I think people out there that would or might exaggerate, so maybe not as truthful on these experiences.
01:01:11.871 --> 01:01:21.981
Others who are genuine and sincere, it's hard to know the difference sometimes, but some of those experiences are very close and very detailed, and they go into quite a bit of detail.
01:01:22.322 --> 01:01:23.302
Mine wasn't like that.
01:01:23.362 --> 01:01:24.744
Mine was quick.
01:01:25.184 --> 01:01:26.467
It was fleeting.
01:01:26.527 --> 01:01:27.266
It was a glimpse.
01:01:27.427 --> 01:01:29.208
It was a moment
01:01:29.329 --> 01:01:29.789
only.
01:01:30.230 --> 01:01:50.632
Well, in one of your messages, you describe that sort of there was a kind of out of time like oh my goodness your sense of time was distorted you didn't know if it was an instant or for it was a month yes
01:01:50.972 --> 01:02:00.599
yes that's a great great point yeah thank you for bringing that up because i think i messaged you on that so as i thought about this some more and so There's two parts to this.
01:02:00.619 --> 01:02:28.606
I believe that I was lying on my back physically on the grass at the side of the path for, oh, I don't know, 10 seconds, I don't know, 20 seconds, maybe 10 seconds, you know, trying to, I think maybe as I lie down and and not moving and my body was able to recover.
01:02:28.726 --> 01:02:30.588
I mean, I'm guessing this is what happened.
01:02:31.489 --> 01:02:39.016
As I'm lying down there flat and passed out and my breathing kind of improves, obviously I didn't die.
01:02:39.036 --> 01:02:46.864
I suspect, I think rather that probably was just, I don't know, maybe a few seconds or 10 seconds.
01:02:47.304 --> 01:02:51.570
But the experience on the other side was longer.
01:02:52.130 --> 01:02:54.552
It wasn't a month, nothing like that.
01:02:54.992 --> 01:02:57.496
It wasn't that.
01:02:57.596 --> 01:03:01.039
It was maybe a couple of minutes.
01:03:02.961 --> 01:03:05.844
If that, maybe a minute to two minutes.
01:03:05.925 --> 01:03:24.326
But the thing I came back with was the time difference was that he seemed like there was quite a few things happening, albeit it was in a very short frame, time frame, compared to what was happening on this side, if that makes sense.
01:03:26.409 --> 01:03:27.710
So things were happening.
01:03:27.731 --> 01:03:33.679
It seemed like I was there for longer, but in reality, I wasn't.
01:03:33.900 --> 01:03:41.711
And I know that I wasn't because I think when I came to, I could remember falling onto the grass and then passing out.
01:03:42.572 --> 01:03:44.976
And then I woke up and lying on my back.
01:03:45.458 --> 01:03:48.922
And I don't know, but I mean, I don't know.
01:03:49.623 --> 01:03:50.646
I think it was probably...
01:03:50.945 --> 01:03:55.550
I'm guessing here maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 seconds like that or a few seconds like that.
01:03:55.971 --> 01:03:59.494
But the experience on the other side was quite a bit longer.
01:03:59.534 --> 01:04:07.342
Not a month, I'll say, like that, obviously, but nowhere near, obviously, but we're talking just maybe a few minutes.
01:04:08.885 --> 01:04:09.784
But very different.
01:04:09.985 --> 01:04:15.692
You know, it was two very different time dimensions.
01:04:16.672 --> 01:04:16.853
Odd.
01:04:17.313 --> 01:04:18.014
I know it sounds odd.
01:04:18.657 --> 01:04:22.362
I'm struggling to explain it, but it was very different.
01:04:23.063 --> 01:04:28.052
Time there, having the experience, ran differently than here.
01:04:29.614 --> 01:04:29.974
Okay.
01:04:31.195 --> 01:04:34.221
Well, we'll let that...
01:04:34.440 --> 01:04:43.914
We're coming up on the hour here, so in terms of time, I just want to say how grateful I am that you're back, how grateful I am.
01:04:43.974 --> 01:04:48.748
I know you say you're not out of the woods, and We'll continue to pray for you on this end.
01:04:49.570 --> 01:04:58.722
And I'm thrilled to hear that you have loved ones that care enough about you to put your name on the temple roll, even if you don't believe in the temple anymore.
01:05:00.204 --> 01:05:02.106
You recognize that as an act of love.
01:05:02.586 --> 01:05:07.833
And I think there are a lot of people who love you and would very much miss you if you were gone.
01:05:07.873 --> 01:05:12.920
And I appreciate your courage and your willingness to share this with everybody.
01:05:13.880 --> 01:05:14.101
So,
01:05:14.849 --> 01:05:15.811
And I want to thank you, Jim.
01:05:15.891 --> 01:05:21.056
I want to extend my love and gratitude to you for your prayers.
01:05:21.697 --> 01:05:27.023
And I want to thank you for that wonderful gift that you and your lovely wife sent today, arrived today.
01:05:27.063 --> 01:05:28.224
Oh, yeah, good.
01:05:28.784 --> 01:05:32.530
I came today, and it was just wonderful, and I was very grateful.
01:05:33.851 --> 01:05:37.255
Well, it was a lot cheaper than it looked because they took the booze out of it.
01:05:37.775 --> 01:05:38.496
There was nothing.
01:05:39.356 --> 01:05:41.199
Yeah, I'm a cheap date.
01:05:41.298 --> 01:05:41.800
I don't drink.
01:05:43.905 --> 01:05:48.972
It's Canadian dollars, which is like, you know, it's
01:05:49.032 --> 01:05:49.913
not real money down
01:05:49.952 --> 01:05:50.032
here.
01:05:50.293 --> 01:05:50.514
I know.
01:05:50.574 --> 01:05:55.780
I was just grateful that you spent the$20 Canadian dollars putting that little footpath together.
01:05:55.820 --> 01:05:57.380
I really appreciate that.
01:05:57.460 --> 01:06:03.288
So, no, it meant the world to me, and it just brought a tear to my eye.
01:06:03.307 --> 01:06:06.512
So thank you for your prayers and to your lovely wife and your family.
01:06:06.672 --> 01:06:19.398
And again, to all those who've been praying for me, I appreciate I'm still trying to make sense of it, and I think I'm through the hard bit.
01:06:22.121 --> 01:06:23.583
I also loved your last podcast.
01:06:23.623 --> 01:06:27.427
I think it was my favorite, and I wasn't in it, so that's fun.
01:06:29.610 --> 01:06:32.333
Well, glad I could lift your spirits, but I think you did.
01:06:32.353 --> 01:06:33.514
A lot of spirits here.
01:06:33.695 --> 01:06:35.697
You made me laugh, so thank you.
01:06:36.257 --> 01:06:40.068
Well, thank you, and we'll leave that to be the last word.
01:06:40.369 --> 01:06:42.514
And thank you all for listening.
01:06:42.554 --> 01:06:44.719
We hope to see you next time on Inside Out.
01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:46.605
Thank you, Ian, and welcome back.
01:06:47.427 --> 01:06:47.867
Thank you, Jim.
00:00:01.985 --> 00:00:17.025
Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out.
00:00:17.065 --> 00:00:25.617
My name is Jim Bennett and I am once again very grateful to be joined by the unsinkable Ian Wilkes.
00:00:26.739 --> 00:00:27.600
Ian, how are you, sir?
00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:29.341
I'm...
00:00:30.018 --> 00:00:30.859
I'm doing okay.
00:00:31.039 --> 00:00:31.780
I'm doing okay, Jim.
00:00:32.182 --> 00:00:38.110
Unsinkable is probably an appropriate word for this podcast for sure.
00:00:38.591 --> 00:00:48.768
Well, it comes from the unsinkable Molly Brown, who was a passenger on the Titanic, and she survived and went on.
00:00:49.698 --> 00:01:18.703
and uh as i thought about this i could i when i did my solo podcast although i had oprah winfrey join me i don't know if you if you noticed that that was it i did that was a great book yes well um oprah was really grateful to be here but was really looking forward to your return uh all i said in that podcast was ian wilkes is under the weather and i said he will Um, I will leave it.
00:01:18.743 --> 00:01:28.439
I don't feel like it's my place to say how under the weather he is, or, you know, I will leave that to him when he returns and he will return and you have returned.
00:01:29.621 --> 00:01:39.959
Uh, but, uh, I was, uh, well aware that that was considerable understatement for what you've gone through in this past week.
00:01:41.141 --> 00:01:48.572
And, uh, And I've asked if you'd be willing to share that because I think you've got some experiences that will help people.
00:01:49.612 --> 00:02:07.750
And as we go on, I want to make sure that you recognize that you should feel free to say as much or as little as you are comfortable saying because I think this has been a tremendously personal experience.
00:02:08.770 --> 00:02:15.878
And so I don't feel like you should feel any obligation to provide any level of detail that you don't want to provide.
00:02:16.038 --> 00:02:22.628
But as we've talked about this, it seems very clear that you are game to tell the whole story.
00:02:22.669 --> 00:02:31.802
And so can you let the listeners know where you've been and what you've been doing this past week and what's been happening to you this past week?
00:02:33.145 --> 00:02:33.885
Of course, I
00:02:34.187 --> 00:02:34.387
will.
00:02:35.868 --> 00:02:37.050
It's good to be here.
00:02:37.070 --> 00:02:39.014
In fact, it's good to be anywhere.
00:02:39.265 --> 00:03:03.823
uh right now um on the podcast you did last week uh it was brilliant one of my favorite podcasts and uh i listened to it while i was in hospital that's where i've been the last week so i only came out of the hospital yesterday i was admitted just over a week ago and the podcast uh greatly with me and actually uh Made me laugh.
00:03:04.283 --> 00:03:11.431
And as you know, and I've shared with Alyssa before, I'm a deeply private, personal individual.
00:03:11.491 --> 00:03:21.040
I've shared reasons why I feel a bit more confident now talking about my life and talk about many of the topics that we discussed.
00:03:21.140 --> 00:03:30.430
And I've gained a level of hopefully humble confidence, as President Banks would term it, where I feel a bit more confident now.
00:03:30.593 --> 00:03:39.205
We've done, what, 30-odd podcasts now, and I wrestled with the idea about even doing such a thing and opening up and talking about all kinds of experiences.
00:03:39.264 --> 00:03:49.498
But this whole podcast experience has strengthened me enormously, Jim, and I'm grateful to you for that and certainly the amazing support and feedback we've got from many other listeners.
00:03:49.579 --> 00:04:00.745
And most importantly, I think, the fact that our podcasts– hopefully continue to help others and strengthen others and build others up.
00:04:00.805 --> 00:04:06.372
And that's the reason why I thought of doing the podcast in the first place.
00:04:06.413 --> 00:04:07.935
It's been also very therapeutic.
00:04:07.974 --> 00:04:12.121
And so this week's podcast is different.
00:04:12.381 --> 00:04:13.021
It's unusual.
00:04:13.042 --> 00:04:14.865
It's strange.
00:04:15.365 --> 00:04:16.326
It's otherworldly.
00:04:16.346 --> 00:04:17.208
It's supernatural.
00:04:17.387 --> 00:04:21.153
It's extraordinary, for me at least.
00:04:21.553 --> 00:04:27.357
And I hope those listening will enjoy gain some strength and some hope and faith.
00:04:28.980 --> 00:04:39.216
For those who have faith in the hereafter and life, power beyond the grave, this will just confirm probably what you already know.
00:04:39.255 --> 00:04:42.339
And those who perhaps are asking questions, I'm not sure.
00:04:42.360 --> 00:04:46.607
We're also looking for answers to questions about why.
00:04:46.646 --> 00:04:48.569
I'm not saying I've already answered by any means.
00:04:48.670 --> 00:05:03.156
I don't have any of the answers, of course, but I think my experience hopefully will strengthen, give hope to those who perhaps have questions in terms of what happens or do something happen after we die.
00:05:03.216 --> 00:05:08.362
So where and how do I begin with this experience?
00:05:08.862 --> 00:05:12.166
And I've asked myself, should I share this experience?
00:05:12.807 --> 00:05:13.487
Will it help others?
00:05:13.827 --> 00:05:15.490
The answer is an easy yes.
00:05:16.831 --> 00:05:19.074
And I asked myself, should I share this experience now?
00:05:20.129 --> 00:05:24.697
And again, the answer is an easy yes, because it's so fresh and very clear in my mind.
00:05:24.778 --> 00:05:26.581
And probably now is the time to do that.
00:05:27.562 --> 00:05:31.610
Again, I still can't believe I'm actually here talking about this.
00:05:32.451 --> 00:05:36.298
So without further ado, I'll get into this.
00:05:36.639 --> 00:05:45.374
So I mentioned earlier before we started recording about the last week has been without doubt the most extraordinary week of my life.
00:05:47.041 --> 00:05:48.142
my entire existence.
00:05:48.663 --> 00:05:55.391
And for the first time in my life, I had the experience or part of the experience of dying.
00:05:55.432 --> 00:06:06.305
And perhaps maybe the best way to describe the experience is on the brink of death or right on the edge or very edge of this life.
00:06:07.507 --> 00:06:23.411
And looking over into at least having a glance, even for a short moment, of what it looks like on the other side probably in a very narrow way, in a very small, minute way.
00:06:25.694 --> 00:06:33.221
I'm always cautious, Jim, about using the term near-death experience because that means perhaps different things to different people.
00:06:33.261 --> 00:06:39.107
And there are many definitions, of course, of what that is, what is a near-death experience.
00:06:40.127 --> 00:06:45.252
And one definition is an unusual experience.
00:06:45.353 --> 00:06:48.730
I'm just quoting here from source on the internet here.
00:06:48.870 --> 00:06:50.413
There's many definitions.
00:06:51.233 --> 00:07:01.944
One definition is an unusual experience taking place on the brink of death and recounted by a person after recovery, typically an out-of-body experience or a vision of a tunnel of light.
00:07:04.146 --> 00:07:12.214
So what I'm saying is that I did have, in hindsight now, as it's fresh in my mind, a near-death experience.
00:07:15.425 --> 00:07:26.458
Definition of that is a little bit different, perhaps than some, in that technically, from a physical perspective, it was medically a near-death experience.
00:07:26.658 --> 00:07:27.819
Medically, it was a near-death experience.
00:07:27.939 --> 00:07:31.843
Emotionally, as I thought, what does that mean emotionally?
00:07:31.884 --> 00:07:37.951
Well, I actually felt and believed for the first time in my life that this was it.
00:07:38.370 --> 00:07:39.091
This was my time.
00:07:39.172 --> 00:07:39.733
My time was up.
00:07:40.033 --> 00:07:40.574
I mean, really.
00:07:41.985 --> 00:07:45.271
and not just a passing thought that actually this is it.
00:07:45.432 --> 00:07:47.975
This is where it all ends.
00:07:48.016 --> 00:07:48.956
This is how it's going to end.
00:07:50.098 --> 00:07:52.382
And this is it.
00:07:53.464 --> 00:07:54.826
This is my final few moments.
00:07:54.906 --> 00:07:58.432
And actually believe that.
00:07:58.793 --> 00:08:07.788
Some people have these experiences and they may or may not be close to physical death, but they might believe they are.
00:08:08.209 --> 00:08:40.394
And is so believing they it brings them to that emotional uh level and that despair of my goodness i'm not going to get through this so this this is that this is it and that was that was that for me and this was the first time i never experienced that i mentioned earlier before we recorded that i'd met countless people you yourself you could speak from your own experience across your life your mission and other people that you've loved and known over the years who've gone um would pass beyond the veil.
00:08:40.416 --> 00:08:42.859
And you've heard their experiences.
00:08:42.899 --> 00:08:53.315
You've seen from your own experience, you've heard their experiences and so on, have come back and not gone as far as they thought they were going.
00:08:53.375 --> 00:08:54.677
And you've heard those experiences.
00:08:55.116 --> 00:08:58.883
That's one aspect of this.
00:08:58.942 --> 00:09:00.666
The other one is actually going through it yourself.
00:09:01.667 --> 00:09:05.052
And what happened to me, I thought that was it.
00:09:05.131 --> 00:09:12.938
So physically, technically, medically, under those definitions, it was minutes away.
00:09:13.278 --> 00:09:15.422
Emotionally, I thought I was actually going to die.
00:09:16.102 --> 00:09:17.884
Spiritually, complete opposite.
00:09:18.086 --> 00:09:21.590
I've never felt more alive in my entire existence.
00:09:22.171 --> 00:09:56.611
And mentally as well, interestingly, like a catapult or springboard into extraordinary a mental expansion, going from something very, an experience of mentally ending, you know, my whole mental well-being or state was coming to an end, but then quickly bouncing back into something far greater and far grander.
00:09:57.452 --> 00:09:59.736
So let me get into the details here.
00:09:59.797 --> 00:10:02.740
So last, a week last Monday, so this is fresh.
00:10:03.601 --> 00:10:05.705
This is extremely recent.
00:10:06.817 --> 00:10:12.806
I headed out from where I am right now to do a regular daily walk of 6K.
00:10:13.547 --> 00:10:14.648
There's a walk near where we live.
00:10:14.827 --> 00:10:18.432
We live around some arches, and there's lots of trails and hikes and walks.
00:10:19.134 --> 00:10:24.120
And there's a few hills, and it's a fantastic place just to go walking straight out from where we live right now.
00:10:25.142 --> 00:10:27.183
About 50 meters into the walk.
00:10:28.046 --> 00:10:33.072
And if I went to my window right now, I could see, and this is quite...
00:10:35.841 --> 00:10:45.274
upsetting in some ways or uncomfortable in other ways, I can actually see the moment and the spot where this experience happened to me.
00:10:45.833 --> 00:10:57.168
So as I headed out for my walk, about 50 meters into the walk, literally just up the road from here, I suddenly felt sharp pains across my upper part of my chest.
00:10:58.269 --> 00:11:02.655
The pains were just intense, so intense it stopped me in my tracks.
00:11:03.836 --> 00:11:09.434
And within the second or two I was curled over in agonizing pain.
00:11:09.956 --> 00:11:11.778
I've never felt pain like it, Jim.
00:11:12.659 --> 00:11:16.024
At the same time, I experienced a sudden loss of breath.
00:11:16.104 --> 00:11:21.530
I couldn't, I was, I remember trying to breathe deep.
00:11:21.551 --> 00:11:25.436
I had to slow my breathing, but I just couldn't catch my breath.
00:11:25.696 --> 00:11:28.500
I just, something was stopping me from breathing.
00:11:30.523 --> 00:11:32.085
And, you know, as I...
00:11:33.250 --> 00:11:34.311
Think of the experience now.
00:11:34.410 --> 00:11:40.999
It was just so sudden and so extreme.
00:11:41.038 --> 00:11:53.532
And again, at the same time, all these things happening at the same time, I began to feel dizzy, faint, and my head began to pound like someone was beating on a drum.
00:11:53.552 --> 00:12:01.821
This happened within two, three, four seconds of this pain, the arrival of this pain on my upper part of my chest.
00:12:02.529 --> 00:12:04.732
I also began to sweat.
00:12:04.874 --> 00:12:14.048
I remember touching my forehead and feeling quite a bit of sweat on my head, not dripping, nothing like that, but it was quite damp.
00:12:14.467 --> 00:12:19.556
And then a few more seconds in or a second to it, I knew there was something seriously wrong.
00:12:20.017 --> 00:12:23.883
I remember saying to myself in my mind, you know, you're having a heart attack.
00:12:24.303 --> 00:12:28.309
This is like all the hallmarks of a heart attack.
00:12:29.090 --> 00:13:24.667
and the pain just intensified, and I curled over and was still standing at this point, although my knees were somewhat bent, and there was a grassy knoll just to the right of me, and I moved myself slowly over towards that, and as I moved towards the grass area and began to try to lay down, before I could lie down, I actually remember vision going it went from it went to like blurred to gray and then to black to darkness and i i think it was passing out i think i passed out um i know i was only there for a short short time and i'll explain why i think that later but as i passed out again i remember my my sights um i you know, disappearing.
00:13:25.147 --> 00:13:29.010
I could still hear things around me, but I couldn't see anything.
00:13:29.030 --> 00:13:37.239
I don't remember actually hitting the grass or that last moment before I was crouching down and trying to, you know, lie down or sit down on the grass.
00:13:38.679 --> 00:13:45.606
But what happened next was, I don't know what word to use.
00:13:46.488 --> 00:13:48.450
I don't have a word to use.
00:13:48.470 --> 00:13:51.653
You're better at words than I am, but interesting is one word.
00:13:51.673 --> 00:13:53.053
I can think of other words for it.
00:13:53.761 --> 00:14:31.375
interesting and extraordinary the only words i can think of i'm still trying to make sense of it all um so so many questions and so many thoughts going through my mind and so um what happened next was as the um as quickly as the um the darkness of the blackness was i couldn't see that he rather went dark it went black um A moment later, I saw this light, Jim, this light all around me.
00:14:31.596 --> 00:14:33.078
It wasn't like a tunnel of light.
00:14:33.139 --> 00:14:36.903
I didn't see a tunnel of light as people describe going into a tunnel, nothing like that.
00:14:37.745 --> 00:14:41.068
It was just like an all-around light, like the sun was coming up, but coming up quickly.
00:14:43.292 --> 00:14:49.460
You know those cameras where they do speed up the sunset or the sunrise?
00:14:50.120 --> 00:14:50.621
Yeah.
00:14:50.721 --> 00:14:53.024
But imagine that happening very quickly.
00:14:53.043 --> 00:14:53.705
It was something like that.
00:14:53.764 --> 00:14:56.807
So the sun just appeared, bright light.
00:14:57.668 --> 00:15:00.532
It was a white light.
00:15:00.611 --> 00:15:01.833
It was not yellow light.
00:15:01.913 --> 00:15:02.715
It was a white light.
00:15:03.676 --> 00:15:07.158
And it happened quickly.
00:15:07.178 --> 00:15:09.701
It just appeared almost instantly.
00:15:10.623 --> 00:15:28.812
And then in the distance there, I could see a phase-y or blurred shape of a a meadow, I could make out trees, and it came with a little bit of focus, and I could make out the shapes of trees.
00:15:28.831 --> 00:15:38.621
I want to be, as I thought about this and trying to describe it as accurately as I can, it was the shapes of things that I saw and not necessarily the detail.
00:15:38.642 --> 00:15:45.408
I could see trees, there were obviously trees, the wildflowers, I could see the colors.
00:15:45.489 --> 00:15:50.975
It was like a I've looked on the internet and I found a couple of pictures that look very similar.
00:15:51.014 --> 00:15:59.464
You know, a meadow, like a Scottish meadow with all the wildflowers and a beautiful sunny day, which is quite rare in Scotland, isn't it?
00:16:01.245 --> 00:16:08.254
But, you know, the rain's gone, it's a beautiful day and the flowers have come out and I could hear birds singing.
00:16:08.333 --> 00:16:12.639
I could feel nature.
00:16:12.739 --> 00:16:15.241
It was a meadow of beautiful wildflowers.
00:16:15.874 --> 00:16:17.256
Like a beautiful summer's day.
00:16:17.717 --> 00:16:18.698
It was warm.
00:16:18.919 --> 00:16:20.383
I felt this soft breeze on my skin.
00:16:20.403 --> 00:16:23.708
And interestingly, I smelled wildflowers, Jim.
00:16:24.250 --> 00:16:27.817
I could smell the beautiful, absolutely beautiful wildflowers.
00:16:28.258 --> 00:16:28.457
Yeah.
00:16:28.619 --> 00:16:32.605
It reminds me, the smell was what you emphasized more than anything else.
00:16:32.666 --> 00:16:32.986
Yeah.
00:16:33.126 --> 00:16:37.054
It was just, I've smelled that smell before, you know, many times.
00:16:37.134 --> 00:16:40.259
And it just, It was just like that.
00:16:40.279 --> 00:16:42.482
It was just like an experience before.
00:16:42.903 --> 00:16:48.152
And it was just like, I think most significantly is how I felt.
00:16:48.773 --> 00:16:51.316
I know listeners will want to know how I felt at this time.
00:16:51.375 --> 00:16:58.466
And I came back from that experience with feelings that are still with me right now.
00:16:58.506 --> 00:17:02.572
This is very fresh in my heart, my mind, and in my emotions.
00:17:03.313 --> 00:17:10.596
And I felt, and it sounds a bit cliché, as we hear these experiences.
00:17:10.635 --> 00:17:12.518
And we read that scripture in Galatians 5.22.
00:17:12.538 --> 00:17:20.006
It talks about the fruits of the Spirit, which is love, joy, and peace.
00:17:20.246 --> 00:17:21.606
But that's exactly how I felt.
00:17:22.488 --> 00:17:23.509
Exactly how I felt.
00:17:23.608 --> 00:17:29.535
I felt love, peace, completeness, joy in a way that I'd not experienced before.
00:17:30.655 --> 00:17:34.559
And the closest I've had that experience is...
00:17:37.057 --> 00:17:52.132
some of the moments in life on my mission and my experience that I had with Paul, my brother, who passed away, where I had a glimpse, if you like, into his, you know, what happened to him after he passed away.
00:17:52.873 --> 00:17:59.298
You know, so kind of looking at that experience, a part of it through, you know, through his life or the last few moments in his life.
00:18:00.780 --> 00:18:03.323
And so it was an incredible feeling.
00:18:03.423 --> 00:18:05.505
And again, it reminded me of...
00:18:06.817 --> 00:18:09.221
that scripture, actually.
00:18:10.002 --> 00:18:26.989
One of my favorite scriptures on my mission in Alma 36, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, he said, he talks about, I know what joy and what marvelous light I did behold, and yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain.
00:18:28.191 --> 00:18:39.390
He talks about this joy and this marvelous light that filled his soul, and I think that, well, I know rather, that's how I felt.
00:18:39.509 --> 00:18:42.673
It completely overwhelmed me.
00:18:43.814 --> 00:18:45.394
I didn't feel any pain, by the way.
00:18:47.336 --> 00:18:49.499
My mind didn't catch hold of any pain whatsoever.
00:18:49.979 --> 00:18:52.721
At the time, I didn't think like this.
00:18:52.781 --> 00:18:54.423
I didn't think, oh, I'm not in any pain.
00:18:54.483 --> 00:18:55.444
I just didn't think about it.
00:18:55.964 --> 00:19:01.690
As I look back and I remember, well, I never felt any pain as I reflect upon the experience.
00:19:02.471 --> 00:19:05.374
I didn't feel any sadness at all, only joy.
00:19:06.145 --> 00:19:22.763
And the experience continued because in the distance in this meadow that was gradually coming into a little bit of focus but still not clear.
00:19:22.784 --> 00:19:27.930
I knew I was outside or in nature and it was a meadow.
00:19:29.090 --> 00:19:34.156
I could hear voices and the sound of the voices drew closer.
00:19:36.097 --> 00:19:39.402
I could make out some shapes, human-formed shapes.
00:19:39.541 --> 00:19:43.487
They were bright like the sun, but I couldn't see them.
00:19:43.547 --> 00:19:46.029
I couldn't recognize the people.
00:19:46.830 --> 00:19:49.394
What happened is the voices drew closer.
00:19:49.414 --> 00:20:00.228
I recognized them to be my mother and my brother and a good friend of mine who passed away a long time ago.
00:20:02.210 --> 00:20:04.573
They were one of the three voices that I recall.
00:20:04.593 --> 00:20:07.016
There were other voices, but I don't remember those.
00:20:07.096 --> 00:20:10.921
It felt familiar, but I can't place them.
00:20:12.103 --> 00:20:13.464
I don't know why that is.
00:20:14.226 --> 00:20:16.729
But I certainly placed three of the voices.
00:20:16.788 --> 00:20:18.872
They were very clear and very distinct.
00:20:19.813 --> 00:20:24.638
And they knew me, and I knew them, though certainly weren't strangers to me.
00:20:24.659 --> 00:20:33.317
And the other thing as well, as I look back, and I didn't think this at the time, A lot of these things I wasn't thinking of at the time.
00:20:33.396 --> 00:20:35.719
I just was having the experience.
00:20:35.778 --> 00:20:45.348
But as I look back, I remember, I don't think I heard things through my ears.
00:20:45.368 --> 00:20:48.031
I know that sounds weird and strange and bizarre.
00:20:48.571 --> 00:20:50.013
How do you explain something like that?
00:20:50.934 --> 00:20:55.019
I actually felt what they were saying, if that makes sense.
00:20:55.078 --> 00:21:04.028
It probably didn't make any sense at all, but I could feel I could feel them communicating to me through some feelings, but I don't remember.
00:21:04.470 --> 00:21:05.751
I never said anything.
00:21:06.211 --> 00:21:10.518
I never said anything emotionally or spiritually to them.
00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:13.583
And I never said anything with my mouth.
00:21:13.962 --> 00:21:15.585
My mouth didn't move.
00:21:15.605 --> 00:21:17.188
So I didn't have a conversation with them.
00:21:17.387 --> 00:21:20.692
It was them speaking to me.
00:21:20.712 --> 00:21:24.979
I didn't make out the words, but I recognized the voices.
00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:27.342
And I do not know what they were saying to me.
00:21:28.450 --> 00:21:30.833
I have no memory of,
00:21:31.834 --> 00:21:33.516
no knowledge or memory of.
00:21:33.736 --> 00:21:38.101
Did you have, I don't mean to interrupt, did you have a sense of your body?
00:21:38.121 --> 00:21:40.042
I mean, were you you?
00:21:40.343 --> 00:21:41.765
Were you a person there?
00:21:41.805 --> 00:21:44.307
Were you just kind of a being of light?
00:21:44.968 --> 00:21:45.228
Right.
00:21:45.308 --> 00:21:45.628
Okay.
00:21:46.230 --> 00:21:46.390
Okay.
00:21:46.450 --> 00:21:47.049
Great question.
00:21:47.451 --> 00:21:53.758
I didn't have, it never came to my mind about my own physical or spiritual state.
00:21:54.625 --> 00:22:03.234
And actually, I've not thought about that as I've tried to write this down, make notes, try to remember as much of this experience as I can.
00:22:03.255 --> 00:22:17.088
I haven't, and there's still probably more that will come to light, but I haven't thought about, didn't think at the time in the experience about that, and haven't thought about that or even asked
00:22:17.128 --> 00:22:17.689
that question.
00:22:18.049 --> 00:22:24.589
I've just always wondered that when I hear about near-death experiences, is that people talk about And it's like, what are you?
00:22:25.070 --> 00:22:28.678
I mean, you're not in your body or you're out of your body.
00:22:28.759 --> 00:22:33.489
Are you still, you know, two legs, two arms and that kind of thing?
00:22:35.251 --> 00:22:35.913
The only thing,
00:22:35.973 --> 00:22:36.756
it's a good question.
00:22:37.036 --> 00:22:47.866
And again, so I want to be as accurate as I can on my memory, at least, is I don't remember having any thoughts along, you know, this question, looking down at my body.
00:22:47.906 --> 00:22:48.768
That just didn't happen.
00:22:49.429 --> 00:22:51.811
And I haven't thought or asked that question since.
00:22:52.432 --> 00:22:53.854
It's a really interesting question.
00:22:54.434 --> 00:22:58.961
I just remember that I was me.
00:23:00.182 --> 00:23:01.222
You know, I was still me.
00:23:01.943 --> 00:23:04.887
You know, Ian, the personality, the character, right?
00:23:05.888 --> 00:23:07.049
The spirit, Ian, if you like.
00:23:07.069 --> 00:23:09.313
I don't even...
00:23:10.369 --> 00:23:14.374
remember thinking if I was in spirit form or not, or even was in a physical, just did not...
00:23:15.516 --> 00:23:16.317
Certain things I just...
00:23:17.458 --> 00:23:18.378
It was like normal.
00:23:18.439 --> 00:23:19.559
It was like it took it for granted.
00:23:21.602 --> 00:23:25.666
Part of it was kind of normal.
00:23:30.672 --> 00:23:32.114
Like coming home, sort of?
00:23:32.674 --> 00:23:36.878
Yeah, it was like this is how it is kind of thing.
00:23:36.939 --> 00:23:38.240
This is how it's always been.
00:23:38.260 --> 00:23:39.162
This is how it is.
00:23:40.066 --> 00:23:42.548
I didn't ask any questions.
00:23:42.628 --> 00:23:44.369
I didn't look down on my body, nothing like that.
00:23:44.509 --> 00:23:48.493
I don't remember having any thoughts about whether I was glowing or not.
00:23:48.694 --> 00:23:57.143
I just know that I was still me in spirit form, presumably in the same shape.
00:23:58.084 --> 00:24:01.027
It didn't come to mind, but I didn't think anything.
00:24:01.067 --> 00:24:02.288
It wasn't unusual.
00:24:02.327 --> 00:24:02.989
It wasn't...
00:24:03.849 --> 00:24:07.574
It was...
00:24:09.250 --> 00:24:11.952
It didn't even enter my mind because it was like an ordinary thing.
00:24:11.972 --> 00:24:16.497
I know it sounds strange, but it was just like a regular thing.
00:24:16.518 --> 00:24:17.858
It was like it was supposed to be.
00:24:17.898 --> 00:24:19.200
This is how it is, how it's meant to be.
00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:24.144
And maybe this is how it's always been, in a spiritual way.
00:24:24.506 --> 00:24:31.373
But I remember communicating spiritually, emotionally.
00:24:31.573 --> 00:24:46.656
Again, I'm struggling for words here, but emotionally, spiritually, telepathically, I don't know, I'm struggling reaching out for words here, but we communicated through feelings.
00:24:47.377 --> 00:24:49.780
And that felt very normal, by the way.
00:24:51.523 --> 00:24:59.776
Right now, as I've had my own experiences in my life, I felt, you know, I've shared my experience, passing away, I've had other experiences, and you've had your own experiences.
00:25:00.817 --> 00:25:08.990
There are many people out there who have had experiences where they, you know, there was no, maybe physical communication, but they felt what was being said.
00:25:10.178 --> 00:25:15.025
You know, like a small voice.
00:25:15.345 --> 00:25:19.471
It's hard to describe the relationship of experience.
00:25:20.292 --> 00:25:31.028
We communicated without, I don't remember actually speaking, you know, making the effort of physically opening my mouth and words coming out of my mouth.
00:25:31.048 --> 00:25:33.311
In fact, I know that didn't happen.
00:25:33.372 --> 00:25:35.314
My memory is clear enough to know that that did not happen.
00:25:35.755 --> 00:25:39.015
It was, I don't know, I don't
00:25:39.036 --> 00:25:39.596
know what the word
00:25:39.675 --> 00:25:39.736
is.
00:25:42.039 --> 00:25:48.689
People who go through near-death experiences often say that the near-death experience is more real than reality.
00:25:49.609 --> 00:25:50.872
Was that kind of your experience?
00:25:51.173 --> 00:25:52.334
How real was this?
00:25:52.413 --> 00:25:59.744
Was this like a dream, or was this like, this is really happening, this is real, and this is maybe even more real than...
00:25:59.785 --> 00:26:01.247
Yeah,
00:26:02.067 --> 00:26:04.171
it's a great question.
00:26:04.211 --> 00:26:08.992
And again, you'll have questions on this that I can hold my questions to the end.
00:26:09.053 --> 00:26:10.114
I'm sorry to interrupt.
00:26:10.173 --> 00:26:10.795
No, this is good.
00:26:10.815 --> 00:26:16.362
I think these are good-ass questions at this point because I think it's important to ask this question.
00:26:16.382 --> 00:26:18.403
And some of these questions I can answer.
00:26:18.503 --> 00:26:27.015
Others, I will have heard the question the first time, and that will get me thinking about the question and what was the experience.
00:26:27.375 --> 00:26:30.778
So your question was, was it as real there as it was here?
00:26:30.818 --> 00:26:32.981
Yeah.
00:26:33.182 --> 00:26:33.942
Well, the answer is yes.
00:26:33.982 --> 00:26:34.564
For me, it was.
00:26:35.585 --> 00:26:36.185
It was...
00:26:36.642 --> 00:26:47.364
And this, talking about right now, it's very unusual, strange, bizarre, weird experience, extraordinary experience.
00:26:47.984 --> 00:26:50.249
There, it was ordinary, normal.
00:26:50.650 --> 00:26:52.153
It was wonderful.
00:26:52.192 --> 00:26:54.919
It was coming home.
00:26:54.999 --> 00:26:58.326
You said coming home, and I know we've heard that many times, but it did feel...
00:26:58.882 --> 00:27:00.683
distinctly coming home.
00:27:00.743 --> 00:27:01.484
It's where I belonged.
00:27:01.664 --> 00:27:05.009
I was with the people there or people trying to communicate to me.
00:27:05.029 --> 00:27:07.051
I knew them or some of them.
00:27:09.714 --> 00:27:12.278
There wasn't all these people coming up to me, nothing like that.
00:27:12.578 --> 00:27:15.061
And again, I could only see the shapes, make out the shapes.
00:27:15.301 --> 00:27:16.544
I didn't see the detail.
00:27:17.345 --> 00:27:26.655
But I felt extraordinary love and peace and my mind was, it was a whole different dimension, a different world.
00:27:26.695 --> 00:27:35.172
And I don't, remember feeling anything different than I do inside spiritually.
00:27:35.211 --> 00:27:37.493
Like it was my spirit and form, I think.
00:27:38.596 --> 00:27:39.997
I don't know.
00:27:40.057 --> 00:27:42.400
I've not given that a great deal of thought.
00:27:42.440 --> 00:27:49.326
I don't know if I had a physical body, Jim, in that experience, you know, if that was what I was experiencing.
00:27:50.048 --> 00:27:51.048
I just don't know.
00:27:51.750 --> 00:27:52.911
I just don't know on that.
00:27:54.012 --> 00:27:57.557
And so there are some things I remember are clear.
00:27:57.636 --> 00:27:58.116
Other things...
00:27:59.362 --> 00:28:29.055
know i don't and and some things i may never know i don't but uh and please i think you should jump in with your questions because i think they're really poignant and they'll be timely so so as i say i i could you know i couldn't make out there were others there but i couldn't make them out they were further away i mentioned that i could hear them i could feel them i didn't say anything to them they it was it was like a one-way uh communication It came through feelings and not through any other means.
00:28:30.436 --> 00:28:40.894
But I remember, and I don't think I shared this with you when we messaged back and forth, I tried to move towards them, Jim, and I couldn't.
00:28:43.076 --> 00:28:44.118
The summit was stopping me.
00:28:44.538 --> 00:28:45.359
I was being prevented.
00:28:45.461 --> 00:28:47.763
I just couldn't move forward.
00:28:48.085 --> 00:28:55.067
And I remember feeling disappointed and frustrated that I couldn't move forward.
00:28:55.086 --> 00:29:03.377
And that was interesting because it didn't diminish from the joy that I was feeling, but I remember that I couldn't go to them.
00:29:05.421 --> 00:29:11.390
And I couldn't move towards those shapes.
00:29:11.430 --> 00:29:12.191
Something wouldn't let me.
00:29:12.832 --> 00:29:21.022
And at that point, the image began to fade and disappeared.
00:29:21.042 --> 00:29:32.824
And At that point, I think, that's the last thing I remember at that stage, at that point.
00:29:33.865 --> 00:29:37.048
I remember a moment or so, I remember opening my eyes.
00:29:37.588 --> 00:29:45.557
So it went from that, this whole image just disappearing.
00:29:46.558 --> 00:29:47.460
And I opened my eyes.
00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:49.142
I remember looking up at the blue sky.
00:29:49.162 --> 00:29:51.304
I was a bit confused as to where I was.
00:29:51.805 --> 00:30:01.396
But I remember when I To the right of me, on this grassy part, there were some cedar trees.
00:30:02.076 --> 00:30:06.262
So as I opened my eyes, I could see these cedar trees on the right of me.
00:30:06.723 --> 00:30:09.366
And I thought, oh, I remember this.
00:30:10.648 --> 00:30:11.309
I know where I am.
00:30:11.349 --> 00:30:12.270
I remember where I am.
00:30:12.971 --> 00:30:20.501
And I remembered, again, in a fairly short moment, that I was at the point where I'd remember the last time passing out.
00:30:22.018 --> 00:30:31.328
And as I came to, the pain in my chest came back to me.
00:30:31.509 --> 00:30:33.652
It was like it had not left.
00:30:33.932 --> 00:30:35.913
It suddenly rushed back.
00:30:35.953 --> 00:30:37.115
The pain was still intense.
00:30:37.836 --> 00:30:40.579
And I remember I was actually lying on my back at this point.
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:48.128
As I fell, I must have, I don't know, rolled on my back and just passed out and woke it up.
00:30:49.665 --> 00:30:51.488
seeing the sky, seeing the trees on my right.
00:30:51.907 --> 00:30:59.296
And I remember again trying to, I remember taking big deep breaths and still scared.
00:30:59.636 --> 00:31:00.917
And the fear came back.
00:31:01.519 --> 00:31:11.910
I went from that experience, the feeling of that, to this fear again that I was in trouble.
00:31:12.330 --> 00:31:16.194
And again, this pain came flowing back.
00:31:16.694 --> 00:31:22.301
And I did some more deep breaths And I think I lied there for a few minutes.
00:31:22.362 --> 00:31:24.806
A few cars, I saw some of the cars driving past.
00:31:24.925 --> 00:31:30.394
I was conscious enough to hear the cars driving past near the path.
00:31:30.994 --> 00:31:33.298
The path is next to a road in this grassy area.
00:31:34.138 --> 00:31:35.260
But I took more deep breaths.
00:31:35.520 --> 00:31:42.330
And as I did, I seemed to get a little bit of strength.
00:31:42.791 --> 00:31:46.877
And I stood up and I walked very slowly.
00:31:47.842 --> 00:31:50.925
taking deep breaths, and I walked towards the house.
00:31:51.886 --> 00:31:57.393
I called my wife, and my wife said, you know, get back to the house and lie down.
00:31:57.413 --> 00:32:01.498
I said, I think I need to go to the hospital.
00:32:02.439 --> 00:32:09.887
And so I knew something awful had happened.
00:32:09.948 --> 00:32:13.576
I was in, you know, Serious trouble still at that point.
00:32:14.076 --> 00:32:15.578
And you're still in pain for all this?
00:32:15.598 --> 00:32:16.240
Still in pain.
00:32:16.279 --> 00:32:18.423
You're still in intense pain and discomfort.
00:32:18.942 --> 00:32:24.691
I walked back to the house and still quite dizzy, sweating, but still managed to move.
00:32:24.852 --> 00:32:28.876
And instead of doing the smart thing, I feel a little stupid sharing this.
00:32:30.519 --> 00:32:35.086
Instead of calling 911, I actually drove myself to the hospital.
00:32:35.125 --> 00:32:37.788
Oh, wow.
00:32:38.630 --> 00:32:38.851
Yeah.
00:32:39.171 --> 00:32:39.711
Like an idiot.
00:32:40.854 --> 00:32:41.054
So...
00:32:41.665 --> 00:32:46.530
Even then at that point, I thought, I was so confused.
00:32:46.550 --> 00:32:53.077
I knew in one sense it was serious, but was it serious enough to call 911?
00:32:53.097 --> 00:33:01.748
And yes, it was serious enough to call 911, but I did the stupid thing by just driving to the hospital.
00:33:02.409 --> 00:33:10.740
I got to the hospital and I went in and I said, look, I think I've experienced, it could be a heart attack.
00:33:10.780 --> 00:33:11.122
I don't know.
00:33:11.182 --> 00:33:14.546
I'm in a lot of pain and discomfort.
00:33:15.227 --> 00:33:17.990
I was moving slowly, taking very slow steps.
00:33:18.171 --> 00:33:20.333
She told me to sit down and just wait.
00:33:20.512 --> 00:33:21.875
I think I was there for like 10 minutes.
00:33:21.974 --> 00:33:25.019
And then I was like, no, this is not good.
00:33:25.078 --> 00:33:25.599
I need to see.
00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:26.480
So I stood up again.
00:33:26.540 --> 00:33:28.383
I said, look, I need to see something now.
00:33:28.784 --> 00:33:30.365
I think I could have another heart attack.
00:33:30.726 --> 00:33:31.686
You need to see me right now.
00:33:31.968 --> 00:33:33.068
And so I'm just like, you know.
00:33:33.710 --> 00:33:35.632
So within a few minutes, someone came out.
00:33:36.093 --> 00:33:36.773
They took my...
00:33:37.218 --> 00:33:50.231
brought me in, in this emergency room, took my blood pressure and some quick tests, and they knew I was in trouble.
00:33:50.313 --> 00:34:02.925
So they moved me to take some blood work, do some blood work, and I was lying down in this bed, in this room, do some blood work, et cetera.
00:34:03.467 --> 00:34:05.950
They gave me oxygen, so that was good.
00:34:06.529 --> 00:34:11.898
Got me to do some deep breath, still in quite a bit of pain, but not quite as much, but the oxygen helped.
00:34:12.619 --> 00:34:14.583
And then they said, you can't pay anything on the blood.
00:34:14.603 --> 00:34:15.766
I think it was there for about an hour.
00:34:16.226 --> 00:34:18.050
We're going to take you for a CT scan.
00:34:18.150 --> 00:34:19.753
So they, I went on pretty quickly.
00:34:19.773 --> 00:34:20.815
I was really impressed, actually.
00:34:21.456 --> 00:34:26.083
So within an hour and a half or so, I went through the CT scan.
00:34:26.744 --> 00:34:31.954
And then I came back into this waiting room and sat on this bed.
00:34:32.898 --> 00:34:40.269
leaning up on this bed, and then maybe half an hour later, the doctor came and said, you have blood clots on your lungs.
00:34:40.831 --> 00:34:45.880
You've suffered or experienced a pulmonary embolism.
00:34:49.085 --> 00:34:58.942
And it's extremely serious, and in fact, it's a, sorry to tell you, but it's a saddle pulmonary embolism.
00:34:59.617 --> 00:35:02.862
And if you don't know what that is, I don't know how much you know about that, Jim.
00:35:02.882 --> 00:35:05.445
I knew nothing about this a week and a half ago.
00:35:05.465 --> 00:35:26.349
So what happens is a blood clot is released from a part of the body, often the legs, not always, but often the legs, and it finds itself, it goes through the veins, in my case, the molary vein, and it can go to the lungs, and it can...
00:35:27.329 --> 00:35:30.273
significantly livid breathing, so it clots in the lungs.
00:35:31.353 --> 00:35:40.501
If you're lucky, you get just one small clot, which can block a part of a lung or one lung, but the other lung functions, so you're okay.
00:35:41.182 --> 00:35:45.867
But in a saddle ulnar embolism, it's a big clot, and mine was a big one.
00:35:45.907 --> 00:35:47.548
They said it's a big one.
00:35:47.608 --> 00:35:50.771
That absolutely terrified me, actually, when they told me what it was.
00:35:51.353 --> 00:36:28.135
And it comes round, I'm using my hands here to describe, but it comes round, the clock comes up the pulmonary system and then it's so big it blocks you know as the lungs come into the central connector part of the um i'm not a medical expert we know the trachea where the lungs connect where the lungs actually converge that's the word at the converging point where the lungs come together that's where in my case are in the saddle pulmonary embolism that's where the clock um gets blocked so the effect is blocking uh all air uh you know coming in into the lungs.
00:36:28.797 --> 00:36:56.619
And what happens if you can't breathe, the heart tries to compensate and essentially goes into overdrive, nothing happening because it's blocked, panics, goes into turbo, nothing happening, and then you suffer a stroke or a heart attack and either serious injury or often It's a fatality.
00:36:59.021 --> 00:37:00.902
And you can research this.
00:37:01.342 --> 00:37:10.731
People may have had their own experience here, but it's very easy to find information on mortality rates of pulmonary embolisms.
00:37:11.213 --> 00:37:12.293
It's extremely serious.
00:37:12.534 --> 00:37:22.603
And if not treated immediately, it can cause lifelong injury or it could kill you.
00:37:23.503 --> 00:37:24.806
They put me on blood thinners.
00:37:26.146 --> 00:37:33.375
heparin, I think that's how you pronounce it, mispronounced that, and the blood thinners actually thin the blood.
00:37:34.956 --> 00:37:38.320
The blood thinners, by the way, don't break down the clot.
00:37:39.663 --> 00:37:44.688
Some of the nurses at the hospital said it breaks down the clot, but the doctor said no.
00:37:45.650 --> 00:38:00.668
The anticoagulant, mispronounced that, the anticoagulant, The blood thinners limit or reduce or remove further risks from clots.
00:38:01.389 --> 00:38:10.422
But the body itself, through the chemistry of the blood, actually breaks down the clot.
00:38:10.722 --> 00:38:14.248
In fact, our bodies recycle blood all the time, as you probably know.
00:38:14.288 --> 00:38:15.929
Our skin is recycled.
00:38:16.231 --> 00:38:16.992
Our blood is recycled.
00:38:17.032 --> 00:38:19.936
There's lots of parts of the body or some parts of the body that gets recycled.
00:38:19.996 --> 00:38:21.338
But blood is no different.
00:38:21.666 --> 00:38:41.027
So if we hydrate healthily, good diets, et cetera, and our bodies function properly, our blood is recycled and cleans itself up in order to maintain full functioning capacity, capability of the blood and the heart system.
00:38:42.449 --> 00:38:46.293
And it's the body that breaks down the clot, but that takes time.
00:38:46.313 --> 00:38:47.054
That could take months.
00:38:47.713 --> 00:39:00.827
So right now, as we speak, I've got a saddle clock, size clock, which is big, you know, half an inch, if you like, on top of my lungs, which is breaking down.
00:39:01.588 --> 00:39:03.829
I'm not out of the woods right now, by the way.
00:39:03.869 --> 00:39:05.911
You might be solo again next week.
00:39:05.992 --> 00:39:06.853
I shouldn't joke.
00:39:07.213 --> 00:39:08.554
Oh, don't say that.
00:39:08.614 --> 00:39:09.135
I shouldn't joke.
00:39:09.615 --> 00:39:11.677
No, we should probably cut that out.
00:39:11.737 --> 00:39:13.280
That's probably not appropriate.
00:39:13.320 --> 00:39:15.621
But...
00:39:16.385 --> 00:39:21.695
Yeah, the body breaks it down and the thinner actually removes any, reduces any
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.
00:39:23.557 --> 00:39:26.442
So that was my week.
00:39:26.521 --> 00:39:27.364
That was my week and a half.
00:39:27.724 --> 00:39:29.047
And so I'd been in the hospital.
00:39:29.106 --> 00:39:36.318
I came out yesterday and every day they do, throughout the day they do vital, test your vitals.
00:39:37.059 --> 00:39:41.065
The first day, first two days I was there, my bowel signs were very unstable.
00:39:41.686 --> 00:39:42.487
I was on oxygen.
00:39:44.161 --> 00:39:46.744
I was 24 around the clock care.
00:39:47.244 --> 00:39:49.927
Nurses check in infrequently because it was pretty close.
00:39:50.387 --> 00:39:54.231
What happened, there's always a risk of happening again, right?
00:39:54.331 --> 00:39:57.576
Because the body do break down the clot immediately.
00:39:57.596 --> 00:39:59.476
It takes weeks, months, actually.
00:40:00.518 --> 00:40:02.981
And the thinners, they take time as well, right?
00:40:03.181 --> 00:40:08.746
And you can have another clot break off from part of the body.
00:40:08.806 --> 00:40:11.789
And so you've got to be on around the clock.
00:40:12.289 --> 00:40:12.971
watch.
00:40:13.711 --> 00:40:15.673
They did regular checks.
00:40:15.693 --> 00:40:17.215
I was on thinners, oxygen.
00:40:17.235 --> 00:40:20.780
I was in a special care unit.
00:40:21.460 --> 00:40:22.603
I was in the cardio.
00:40:22.682 --> 00:40:28.128
They took me to the cardio unit, which is a very specialized unit.
00:40:28.449 --> 00:40:29.130
There was a risk of...
00:40:30.572 --> 00:40:32.375
I asked, why am I here?
00:40:32.434 --> 00:40:33.976
They said, well, there's a risk of heart attack.
00:40:34.556 --> 00:40:39.704
If you can't breathe, the heart's trying to...
00:40:40.625 --> 00:40:41.244
It was panicking.
00:40:41.284 --> 00:41:11.307
It can't know uh trying to get oxygen there's no oxygen oxygen getting to it and it it has an attack it goes into that the doctor said i was going into and i caught them into uh an arrest it was like a a lung arrest a lung attack and then what happens immediately after that is actually a heart attack because the the heart can't function without the lungs right so so That's where I've been the last week and a half.
00:41:11.489 --> 00:41:12.610
I've been in hospital.
00:41:13.791 --> 00:41:15.855
This first 40 hours was touch and go.
00:41:17.016 --> 00:41:23.125
My vital signs improved significantly, actually, within, you know, I think the third and fourth day.
00:41:23.164 --> 00:41:24.626
And I just got stronger and stronger.
00:41:24.666 --> 00:41:27.070
And, well, I'm not out of the woods.
00:41:27.871 --> 00:41:37.425
I did get some messages from some people who were, you know, some of the members who heard about my condition, which is wonderful, actually.
00:41:37.445 --> 00:41:39.427
They They put my name on the temple.
00:41:39.827 --> 00:41:43.391
They knew I don't go, and they asked me, okay, if we put your name on the temple.
00:41:43.472 --> 00:41:44.693
And I see that, Jim.
00:41:44.733 --> 00:41:58.849
I don't believe in the endowment, the mechanics, if you like, of the endowment, the physical mechanics of all those symbols, all those rites and different rituals.
00:41:59.769 --> 00:42:07.358
But behind that, with these people, of course, it's the same, I think, with everyone who puts names on it.
00:42:08.097 --> 00:42:09.559
you know, in the temple or the altar there.
00:42:10.201 --> 00:42:11.943
It's an act of love and kindness.
00:42:12.503 --> 00:42:13.925
And I see that, and I recognize that.
00:42:14.045 --> 00:42:15.507
And it is an act of faith.
00:42:15.726 --> 00:42:17.809
It's the, you know, the Mormon
00:42:17.869 --> 00:42:20.233
version of demonstrating faith.
00:42:20.253 --> 00:42:26.721
Well, were these people people that have been in touch with you since you've left, or are they some people that you hadn't heard from in a long time?
00:42:26.740 --> 00:42:27.440
Both, both.
00:42:27.822 --> 00:42:28.402
Interesting here.
00:42:30.364 --> 00:42:31.166
That's a great question.
00:42:31.226 --> 00:42:37.853
So there were people who hadn't reached out who I spoke to since I left the church who hadn't reached out, which is nice.
00:42:38.434 --> 00:42:39.775
And I was deeply grateful.
00:42:39.815 --> 00:42:45.240
He was kind, he was extraordinary act of love and faith in that, and sincerity.
00:42:45.280 --> 00:43:00.297
And I was grateful that my name was on, if he was a temple around the world, which is, I think that's the, the last time I was in a temple was on a, in a bag, a name on a piece of paper in a bag on the altar recently.
00:43:00.317 --> 00:43:11.166
But I, you know, that does not take away at all the fact that these people did that because they loved me and were very prayerful and worried about me.
00:43:11.206 --> 00:43:16.152
And so, I mean, that's where I've been.
00:43:16.193 --> 00:43:18.335
That's what I've been doing.
00:43:19.056 --> 00:43:23.003
And so I was grateful to get out also because the food absolutely sucks.
00:43:23.083 --> 00:43:23.864
And I'm not joking.
00:43:25.266 --> 00:43:26.246
I did not eat the food.
00:43:26.708 --> 00:43:35.027
My wife and my family, of course, were there and we had some friends visits and they brought a little bit of human food and you know, to survive on.
00:43:36.829 --> 00:43:40.432
And the nurses there at the hospital were extraordinary.
00:43:40.472 --> 00:43:41.733
The doctors were just amazing.
00:43:43.516 --> 00:43:47.380
So that's where I've been.
00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:49.961
That's been my life the last week.
00:43:53.826 --> 00:43:57.150
Well, I appreciate you sharing that.
00:43:57.309 --> 00:44:00.934
I mean, that's, you know, health scares and health...
00:44:01.793 --> 00:44:04.938
I have never had an experience that's comparable to that.
00:44:06.001 --> 00:44:20.041
I have never been in an experience where I personally, a knock on wood, where I personally have felt at risk or certainly not anywhere I've had anything that could be described as a near-death experience.
00:44:21.123 --> 00:44:36.867
The most time I spent in the hospital was when my daughter was injured and I slept on the couch and while she had a spinal cord injury and she was being rehabilitated and I slept on the couch and I ate the hospital food and it was good.
00:44:37.909 --> 00:44:39.331
So maybe that's the difference.
00:44:39.431 --> 00:44:47.123
Maybe Canadian food is, but is that the reason Americans don't have universal healthcare is our food in the hospital is too good?
00:44:47.143 --> 00:44:50.829
Is that the- That's probably the only reason, absolutely.
00:44:51.210 --> 00:44:51.731
That's the
00:44:51.972 --> 00:44:52.452
only reason.
00:44:53.114 --> 00:44:53.474
Absolutely.
00:44:54.695 --> 00:45:01.204
Yeah, so- I was grateful for the help.
00:45:01.284 --> 00:45:02.806
It was good to get out.
00:45:06.132 --> 00:45:11.822
I want to say this, Jamie, for me.
00:45:12.623 --> 00:45:22.860
I'm having this conversation on this day here, and I still have a sense of foreboding, a sense of fear.
00:45:24.034 --> 00:45:26.175
I'm still scared even now.
00:45:26.215 --> 00:45:27.838
I might not sound it, but I am inside.
00:45:28.159 --> 00:45:31.322
I'm still not out of the woods by any means.
00:45:32.844 --> 00:45:33.425
I'm hopeful.
00:45:34.045 --> 00:45:35.126
The prognosis looks good.
00:45:35.847 --> 00:45:39.431
But my fear, and I want to be clear about this, my fear is not of dying.
00:45:39.452 --> 00:45:46.159
My fear is the impact it has on my family because I...
00:45:54.722 --> 00:46:10.844
I saw for the first time, in the most extraordinary way, the impact that my absence would have on my family and close loved ones in a way that I didn't understand or appreciate before.
00:46:12.286 --> 00:46:17.956
I remind myself of my favorite movie, actually, A Wonderful Life.
00:46:17.976 --> 00:46:19.277
I love that movie.
00:46:19.818 --> 00:46:20.800
I try to watch it each year.
00:46:20.820 --> 00:46:22.181
I try to watch it each year, but the kids...
00:46:22.594 --> 00:46:23.695
The kids are not interested.
00:46:23.855 --> 00:46:24.635
They think it's boring.
00:46:25.056 --> 00:46:28.119
I watched that and I just love that movie.
00:46:29.161 --> 00:46:31.623
It's, you know, what's his name?
00:46:31.722 --> 00:46:32.523
Bedford Falls.
00:46:33.824 --> 00:46:34.346
Jimmy Stewart?
00:46:35.007 --> 00:46:35.666
Jimmy Stewart.
00:46:35.686 --> 00:46:36.648
I can't remember the characters.
00:46:36.728 --> 00:46:37.369
George Bailey.
00:46:37.829 --> 00:46:38.730
George Bailey.
00:46:38.829 --> 00:46:39.351
My gosh.
00:46:39.371 --> 00:46:41.492
I think many of us know and love that movie.
00:46:41.934 --> 00:46:42.914
What a great movie that is.
00:46:43.675 --> 00:46:50.101
And he gets the opportunities to see what his life is like or the life of his family and friends.
00:46:50.882 --> 00:46:52.724
what that looks like without him in their life.
00:46:53.284 --> 00:46:59.393
And he doesn't appreciate the significance or the impact that he's had on their lives.
00:47:00.293 --> 00:47:04.059
Well, I saw that in very stark ways this last week.
00:47:04.139 --> 00:47:12.369
I didn't really understand or appreciate the positive impact that I have on my family and some friends.
00:47:13.490 --> 00:47:25.431
And in particular, my son, who it really affected him I'm very close to my family and I have a special bond with each of them.
00:47:25.753 --> 00:47:37.483
And my youngest was, I wouldn't say traumatized by the experience, but he was very upset and emotional in a way that I've not seen before.
00:47:37.523 --> 00:47:41.327
And he's just not stopped hugging me or telling me how much he loves me.
00:47:41.789 --> 00:47:45.431
He's just tried to come out most of all.
00:47:46.492 --> 00:47:57.693
So we sometimes take for granted, I think, the impact or the loss that ourselves can have on our family.
00:47:57.733 --> 00:48:04.460
And we perhaps don't see the significance of the role that we play in the lives of our family members and our friends.
00:48:05.320 --> 00:48:10.447
Maybe we don't see that until something happens.
00:48:11.668 --> 00:48:16.833
So for me, that was very striking and very significant.
00:48:17.505 --> 00:48:28.217
And a very significant learning experience for me to be able to see that in the lives, in the words, in the actions of my family.
00:48:28.737 --> 00:48:41.192
I hope you never experience this, but I hope my message brings, I think as I thought about this, Jim, I thought, well, what is the value of sharing this?
00:48:41.291 --> 00:48:45.175
I thought, well, no, there is some value because, you know, live healthily.
00:48:45.215 --> 00:48:46.416
You know, we all know that, right?
00:48:46.536 --> 00:48:46.938
Live right.
00:48:48.001 --> 00:48:49.603
Exercise, eat right.
00:48:50.025 --> 00:48:53.068
You will probably get fed up hearing that all the time, but it's important.
00:48:54.451 --> 00:48:56.653
Go for regular tests and checkups, et cetera.
00:48:57.494 --> 00:49:04.905
In my examinations, by the way, in the test, they tried to identify the source of the clock.
00:49:05.125 --> 00:49:06.306
Where did the clock come from?
00:49:06.666 --> 00:49:07.327
Why did it occur?
00:49:08.009 --> 00:49:08.610
What happened?
00:49:08.670 --> 00:49:09.269
Why did it occur?
00:49:09.311 --> 00:49:09.971
Could it happen again?
00:49:10.452 --> 00:49:14.237
In my case, it came from an injury I had on my lower left leg.
00:49:15.233 --> 00:49:24.246
many months ago, we think that soft tissue injury caused some damage to some internal tissue there, we think.
00:49:24.505 --> 00:49:25.027
That's what we think.
00:49:26.168 --> 00:49:31.275
In fact, the British show this what happened, and it's quite common actually to get a clot from an injury on your leg.
00:49:32.436 --> 00:49:35.481
And in my case, the clot kind of broke off and it went up into my lungs.
00:49:36.422 --> 00:49:41.568
But what they do, they do a process of deduction where they take you for all these tests, and they also take you for cancer tests.
00:49:42.561 --> 00:49:52.434
I had this extensive second CT scan for cancer, because cancer could be a factor in how clots occur.
00:49:52.755 --> 00:49:54.858
There's other reasons, but that's one of them.
00:49:54.878 --> 00:50:00.184
And they have to eliminate the causality of the clot.
00:50:00.505 --> 00:50:05.672
And they come down to, in my case, it was by deduction, it was my injury on the lower level.
00:50:05.692 --> 00:50:07.173
They had that assumption that it was.
00:50:07.353 --> 00:50:12.103
And so the test, by the way, revealed I am cancer-free.
00:50:12.364 --> 00:50:13.686
I have no traces of cancer.
00:50:14.628 --> 00:50:14.989
All good.
00:50:15.550 --> 00:50:17.112
So, and that's official.
00:50:17.313 --> 00:50:23.161
So, again, that's, you know, when we get to our age, you're supposed to go, I'll go back to what I was saying.
00:50:23.181 --> 00:50:24.804
I thought, you know, what's the value of these messages?
00:50:25.085 --> 00:50:33.077
You know, as a man or adult, just go get, you know, when you reach your 50s, you and I are pushing 60, you know, I'm even older than you.
00:50:33.277 --> 00:50:34.278
Speak for yourself.
00:50:34.659 --> 00:50:36.081
I'm still a young pup.
00:50:36.418 --> 00:50:37.139
You're a young pup.
00:50:37.259 --> 00:50:37.699
You're a young pup.
00:50:37.739 --> 00:50:38.739
I think you're two or three years.
00:50:38.780 --> 00:50:39.420
Two or three, yeah.
00:50:39.701 --> 00:50:41.143
Two or three.
00:50:41.242 --> 00:50:46.047
But when you get our age, you know, go for a regular checkup, right?
00:50:46.547 --> 00:50:47.528
Go get your heart tested.
00:50:47.568 --> 00:50:48.429
Go get your lungs tested.
00:50:48.469 --> 00:50:49.170
Go some blood work.
00:50:50.411 --> 00:50:51.932
You know, go do a test for prostate cancer.
00:50:51.992 --> 00:50:55.056
I've come up clear, which is wonderful.
00:50:55.677 --> 00:50:57.518
That's wonderful to know.
00:50:58.400 --> 00:50:59.960
You know, cancer affects so many people.
00:51:00.402 --> 00:51:03.905
But go and get regular checks, especially at our age, right?
00:51:04.085 --> 00:51:04.565
Eat well.
00:51:05.121 --> 00:51:08.346
live well, obviously, exercise.
00:51:09.387 --> 00:52:15.197
If something happens, and this is something that my wife asked me to highlight on this podcast, she said that if this had happened to her, she would not have listened to her body and she would probably be dead because my wife is tough, strong, deal with almost anything, and takes the time know the tougher stance if you like uh in terms of these kind of issues and she said to me repeatedly um how uh extraordinary it is that i uh in fact she said to me uh jim um and i made a note here um um she said that uh When I called her, when I was on the way to the hospital, or just before I went to the hospital, so I called her just before I went to the hospital, before I drove myself to the hospital, she said, just go in and just lie down, you'll be okay.
00:52:15.778 --> 00:52:24.489
But she now says to me, knowing how serious it was and researching it, that she's grateful that I, quote, listened to my own body, end quote.
00:52:25.170 --> 00:52:28.414
And actually, it made the decision to go to the hospital.
00:52:28.675 --> 00:52:30.217
Yes, I should have called 911.
00:52:31.458 --> 00:52:36.606
a full lot, but at least I took myself there.
00:52:37.186 --> 00:52:42.375
So if you experience pain or anything you're not sure, it's always best to be on the safe side.
00:52:42.815 --> 00:52:52.228
Listen to your body, go get checked, go get tested, and just err on the cautious side.
00:52:53.010 --> 00:53:01.478
So the messages are, I said earlier, near-death experience is For me, my definition, my experience was, was it physical?
00:53:01.599 --> 00:53:01.840
Yes.
00:53:02.501 --> 00:53:05.105
Emotional, I thought I was a goner.
00:53:06.246 --> 00:53:09.612
Spiritual, I had no fear on that.
00:53:09.931 --> 00:53:12.996
It was quite a, I actually wasn't surprised.
00:53:13.177 --> 00:53:23.172
That's something else that, you don't ask me a question on this, but if you ask me, was I surprised to have this experience or was I surprised when I was having that experience?
00:53:24.034 --> 00:53:26.057
No, it was normal.
00:53:26.626 --> 00:53:28.088
Isn't that weird to say that?
00:53:28.148 --> 00:53:33.514
It was completely non-extraordinary and normal as it was extraordinary.
00:53:33.574 --> 00:53:34.615
And that's a strange thing to say.
00:53:34.717 --> 00:53:39.081
Oxymoron, is that the right word?
00:53:39.963 --> 00:53:40.244
Yeah.
00:53:41.485 --> 00:53:47.693
Well, so what does this do to your spirituality going forward?
00:53:48.655 --> 00:53:53.961
Everything I've read about near-death experiences, and people, they talk about they're a changed person.
00:53:54.722 --> 00:54:27.639
uh their perspective on life changed and so and the fear of death i mean you talk about the fear or the concern the love really that you have for your family and your friends and you're scared of what your absence would mean but uh i've read a lot of people talking about near-death experiences who say it it completely removes The fear of death, the fear of that there's nothing beyond this life because you kind of have an assurance that there is.
00:54:27.679 --> 00:54:29.983
Is that where you are?
00:54:30.003 --> 00:54:30.043
No,
00:54:31.065 --> 00:54:31.965
no, it's not.
00:54:32.065 --> 00:54:47.146
For me, from the experiences I've had, you know, one of the podcasts we talked about, my brother Paul, who I still wish, I go into quite a bit of, well, some detail, and that was a difficult podcast for me, but a necessary one and quite emotional.
00:54:48.907 --> 00:54:49.769
It was difficult to...
00:54:50.786 --> 00:55:22.878
share that but i felt it was it would do more good you know to help with this but i've had a number of experiences jim in my life you know in the church and out the church that i've confirmed not many experiences i've had some which have confirmed beyond any doubt that i there's there is definitely something after this life and i i actually you know if people stand up and bear the testimony and we complain sometimes outside the church or people who are against the church or You get these snide comments from some people like, how can you stand up and say you know something?
00:55:22.918 --> 00:55:23.858
You don't know, right?
00:55:23.898 --> 00:55:27.764
You're standing up and you're saying you know that God lives or you know this and this and this.
00:55:27.804 --> 00:55:28.565
You don't really know.
00:55:28.626 --> 00:55:30.208
You should say you believe, right?
00:55:30.869 --> 00:55:35.376
I mean, that may or not be the case depending on the individual.
00:55:35.416 --> 00:55:43.088
But if I stood up and I said I knew, I don't bother what people think about that.
00:55:43.148 --> 00:55:45.711
They can agree or believe it or not.
00:55:46.273 --> 00:55:46.793
But I know.
00:55:47.329 --> 00:55:51.175
I know that there is a life after this life.
00:55:51.775 --> 00:56:03.648
There is a power beyond our power, a power so greater than we are that exists, that is very real, and an energy, a force, a love.
00:56:03.869 --> 00:56:06.652
I didn't see God or Jesus Christ, nothing like that.
00:56:06.672 --> 00:56:10.137
I don't mean to sound disrespectful.
00:56:10.157 --> 00:56:13.081
I didn't see Jesus or God or anyone like that.
00:56:15.458 --> 00:56:19.302
I want to show reverence because I do believe in a God, in a being.
00:56:19.663 --> 00:56:22.306
I don't know all the details of what that would look like.
00:56:22.346 --> 00:56:33.259
I don't think that's the Mormon God per se, but a being or beings that have this power, this energy, this love that permeates the universe.
00:56:33.378 --> 00:56:33.940
I believe that.
00:56:35.260 --> 00:56:38.025
And I know, I'll go further and I'll say I know that.
00:56:38.405 --> 00:56:42.230
That is real because I've experienced it several times.
00:56:42.786 --> 00:56:55.719
But this experience, this last experience, did not teach me anymore now than I knew before in terms of life after life or life after death, and didn't teach me anymore in terms of knowing what I already knew.
00:56:55.780 --> 00:57:02.588
It gave me, in terms of the spiritual side I'm talking about, the visual side was distinctly different.
00:57:02.608 --> 00:57:04.369
So that was a whole new experience.
00:57:05.110 --> 00:57:07.652
The fear of death, that's not changed whatsoever.
00:57:08.034 --> 00:57:10.175
You could be questioning about your perspective.
00:57:10.255 --> 00:57:11.838
How's my perspective changed?
00:57:13.282 --> 00:57:22.811
If what I experienced was a spiritual or near-death experience in spiritual terms, then it's something that is just glorious and wonderful.
00:57:23.411 --> 00:57:33.061
Is it my brain firing, you know, chemicals right at the last moment or on the, again, I use the word brink of death, you know, if I was a few minutes away.
00:57:33.081 --> 00:57:35.523
I don't believe I died, by the way.
00:57:35.543 --> 00:57:37.824
I do not believe I actually died.
00:57:37.844 --> 00:57:41.027
I know I didn't die.
00:57:42.849 --> 00:57:44.652
You know, my heart didn't stop.
00:57:44.711 --> 00:57:46.954
There's no evidence in the hospital that my heart stopped.
00:57:47.476 --> 00:57:49.539
My heart survived pretty well, actually.
00:57:49.858 --> 00:57:53.264
It came under intense pressure, but I came out pretty well physically.
00:57:53.804 --> 00:57:56.989
I saw my heart on a monitor, and it looks pretty good, right?
00:57:57.650 --> 00:57:58.650
But I didn't die.
00:57:58.670 --> 00:58:06.061
I know I didn't die, but it was near death, or it was a glimpse into whatever that next experience is.
00:58:06.141 --> 00:58:24.875
It's like looking through a, like a, like a curtain, if you like, just a transparent curtain where you can just, if you get closer and your face just passes through, just your face or your body rather.
00:58:25.596 --> 00:58:34.847
And you just stood there right at the veil, at the veil, glimpsing in through it, part of your body's through it.
00:58:34.867 --> 00:58:41.938
And you have a glimpse, just a moment, a glimpse of what that looks like, what the eternal looks like.
00:58:42.657 --> 00:58:46.021
I believe that's the best way I can describe it at this time.
00:58:46.202 --> 00:58:52.467
How I articulate it, as I think about it further, it might change or I might find better words to describe it.
00:58:52.967 --> 00:58:56.731
That's the best words I can use right now to describe that.
00:58:57.032 --> 00:58:57.753
But I didn't die.
00:58:57.773 --> 00:59:00.436
I haven't come back from the dead.
00:59:02.518 --> 00:59:05.240
Was it chemicals firing in my brain at the time?
00:59:05.260 --> 00:59:07.422
I don't believe that.
00:59:08.184 --> 00:59:10.025
Am I afraid of death?
00:59:10.722 --> 00:59:13.385
I wasn't afraid of death before the experience.
00:59:13.846 --> 00:59:14.547
I saw things.
00:59:16.068 --> 00:59:18.110
You could argue, well, you thought you saw things.
00:59:18.150 --> 00:59:20.134
It could be your imagination, right?
00:59:20.173 --> 00:59:22.396
I have no way of proving that.
00:59:22.936 --> 00:59:26.442
All I remember is what I saw and how I felt at the time.
00:59:27.222 --> 00:59:46.251
My perspective has changed, specifically in the area I was talking about before where the impact that my absence would have on my family and some friends would be significant in a way that I never saw or understood before, Jim.
00:59:47.112 --> 00:59:49.556
That's new, a new perspective.
00:59:49.938 --> 00:59:52.422
Did you have that perspective during the experience?
00:59:53.623 --> 00:59:54.364
No.
00:59:54.405 --> 00:59:58.711
That's something that sort of comes since the experience?
00:59:59.614 --> 00:59:59.893
Since the
00:59:59.914 --> 01:00:00.835
experience, yeah.
01:00:01.597 --> 01:00:02.699
Great question.
01:00:02.759 --> 01:00:05.583
At the time, I didn't think about my family in the experience.
01:00:05.623 --> 01:00:11.666
I could see shapes of people that I couldn't recognize.
01:00:11.746 --> 01:00:12.327
It was the voices.
01:00:12.387 --> 01:00:13.248
Family was there.
01:00:13.289 --> 01:00:14.070
Your mother was there.
01:00:14.150 --> 01:00:14.550
Paul was
01:00:14.590 --> 01:00:14.771
there.
01:00:15.271 --> 01:00:18.034
Yeah, but only through their voices that I recognized.
01:00:18.356 --> 01:00:19.998
I couldn't, it was so far off.
01:00:20.539 --> 01:00:25.826
I could see the shapes, human form, but I couldn't see the detail at all.
01:00:26.226 --> 01:00:27.307
It was too far off.
01:00:27.347 --> 01:00:29.931
And I tried to approach them and I just couldn't.
01:00:30.032 --> 01:00:32.295
It was, you know, some people have needed experiences.
01:00:32.335 --> 01:00:33.996
They go right into it, right?
01:00:35.099 --> 01:00:36.460
They're able to move forward.
01:00:37.262 --> 01:00:37.342
Yeah.
01:00:37.570 --> 01:00:45.278
They're able to talk to people close up and get the detail and have conversations and look around them.
01:00:45.659 --> 01:00:51.887
And I mean, those experiences, I know they're not all real.
01:00:51.907 --> 01:00:52.626
I know that.
01:00:53.568 --> 01:01:11.030
Sometimes people may, I don't know, are going to have their own, you know, they might exaggerate I think people out there that would or might exaggerate, so maybe not as truthful on these experiences.
01:01:11.871 --> 01:01:21.981
Others who are genuine and sincere, it's hard to know the difference sometimes, but some of those experiences are very close and very detailed, and they go into quite a bit of detail.
01:01:22.322 --> 01:01:23.302
Mine wasn't like that.
01:01:23.362 --> 01:01:24.744
Mine was quick.
01:01:25.184 --> 01:01:26.467
It was fleeting.
01:01:26.527 --> 01:01:27.266
It was a glimpse.
01:01:27.427 --> 01:01:29.208
It was a moment
01:01:29.329 --> 01:01:29.789
only.
01:01:30.230 --> 01:01:50.632
Well, in one of your messages, you describe that sort of there was a kind of out of time like oh my goodness your sense of time was distorted you didn't know if it was an instant or for it was a month yes
01:01:50.972 --> 01:02:00.599
yes that's a great great point yeah thank you for bringing that up because i think i messaged you on that so as i thought about this some more and so There's two parts to this.
01:02:00.619 --> 01:02:28.606
I believe that I was lying on my back physically on the grass at the side of the path for, oh, I don't know, 10 seconds, I don't know, 20 seconds, maybe 10 seconds, you know, trying to, I think maybe as I lie down and and not moving and my body was able to recover.
01:02:28.726 --> 01:02:30.588
I mean, I'm guessing this is what happened.
01:02:31.489 --> 01:02:39.016
As I'm lying down there flat and passed out and my breathing kind of improves, obviously I didn't die.
01:02:39.036 --> 01:02:46.864
I suspect, I think rather that probably was just, I don't know, maybe a few seconds or 10 seconds.
01:02:47.304 --> 01:02:51.570
But the experience on the other side was longer.
01:02:52.130 --> 01:02:54.552
It wasn't a month, nothing like that.
01:02:54.992 --> 01:02:57.496
It wasn't that.
01:02:57.596 --> 01:03:01.039
It was maybe a couple of minutes.
01:03:02.961 --> 01:03:05.844
If that, maybe a minute to two minutes.
01:03:05.925 --> 01:03:24.326
But the thing I came back with was the time difference was that he seemed like there was quite a few things happening, albeit it was in a very short frame, time frame, compared to what was happening on this side, if that makes sense.
01:03:26.409 --> 01:03:27.710
So things were happening.
01:03:27.731 --> 01:03:33.679
It seemed like I was there for longer, but in reality, I wasn't.
01:03:33.900 --> 01:03:41.711
And I know that I wasn't because I think when I came to, I could remember falling onto the grass and then passing out.
01:03:42.572 --> 01:03:44.976
And then I woke up and lying on my back.
01:03:45.458 --> 01:03:48.922
And I don't know, but I mean, I don't know.
01:03:49.623 --> 01:03:50.646
I think it was probably...
01:03:50.945 --> 01:03:55.550
I'm guessing here maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 seconds like that or a few seconds like that.
01:03:55.971 --> 01:03:59.494
But the experience on the other side was quite a bit longer.
01:03:59.534 --> 01:04:07.342
Not a month, I'll say, like that, obviously, but nowhere near, obviously, but we're talking just maybe a few minutes.
01:04:08.885 --> 01:04:09.784
But very different.
01:04:09.985 --> 01:04:15.692
You know, it was two very different time dimensions.
01:04:16.672 --> 01:04:16.853
Odd.
01:04:17.313 --> 01:04:18.014
I know it sounds odd.
01:04:18.657 --> 01:04:22.362
I'm struggling to explain it, but it was very different.
01:04:23.063 --> 01:04:28.052
Time there, having the experience, ran differently than here.
01:04:29.614 --> 01:04:29.974
Okay.
01:04:31.195 --> 01:04:34.221
Well, we'll let that...
01:04:34.440 --> 01:04:43.914
We're coming up on the hour here, so in terms of time, I just want to say how grateful I am that you're back, how grateful I am.
01:04:43.974 --> 01:04:48.748
I know you say you're not out of the woods, and We'll continue to pray for you on this end.
01:04:49.570 --> 01:04:58.722
And I'm thrilled to hear that you have loved ones that care enough about you to put your name on the temple roll, even if you don't believe in the temple anymore.
01:05:00.204 --> 01:05:02.106
You recognize that as an act of love.
01:05:02.586 --> 01:05:07.833
And I think there are a lot of people who love you and would very much miss you if you were gone.
01:05:07.873 --> 01:05:12.920
And I appreciate your courage and your willingness to share this with everybody.
01:05:13.880 --> 01:05:14.101
So,
01:05:14.849 --> 01:05:15.811
And I want to thank you, Jim.
01:05:15.891 --> 01:05:21.056
I want to extend my love and gratitude to you for your prayers.
01:05:21.697 --> 01:05:27.023
And I want to thank you for that wonderful gift that you and your lovely wife sent today, arrived today.
01:05:27.063 --> 01:05:28.224
Oh, yeah, good.
01:05:28.784 --> 01:05:32.530
I came today, and it was just wonderful, and I was very grateful.
01:05:33.851 --> 01:05:37.255
Well, it was a lot cheaper than it looked because they took the booze out of it.
01:05:37.775 --> 01:05:38.496
There was nothing.
01:05:39.356 --> 01:05:41.199
Yeah, I'm a cheap date.
01:05:41.298 --> 01:05:41.800
I don't drink.
01:05:43.905 --> 01:05:48.972
It's Canadian dollars, which is like, you know, it's
01:05:49.032 --> 01:05:49.913
not real money down
01:05:49.952 --> 01:05:50.032
here.
01:05:50.293 --> 01:05:50.514
I know.
01:05:50.574 --> 01:05:55.780
I was just grateful that you spent the$20 Canadian dollars putting that little footpath together.
01:05:55.820 --> 01:05:57.380
I really appreciate that.
01:05:57.460 --> 01:06:03.288
So, no, it meant the world to me, and it just brought a tear to my eye.
01:06:03.307 --> 01:06:06.512
So thank you for your prayers and to your lovely wife and your family.
01:06:06.672 --> 01:06:19.398
And again, to all those who've been praying for me, I appreciate I'm still trying to make sense of it, and I think I'm through the hard bit.
01:06:22.121 --> 01:06:23.583
I also loved your last podcast.
01:06:23.623 --> 01:06:27.427
I think it was my favorite, and I wasn't in it, so that's fun.
01:06:29.610 --> 01:06:32.333
Well, glad I could lift your spirits, but I think you did.
01:06:32.353 --> 01:06:33.514
A lot of spirits here.
01:06:33.695 --> 01:06:35.697
You made me laugh, so thank you.
01:06:36.257 --> 01:06:40.068
Well, thank you, and we'll leave that to be the last word.
01:06:40.369 --> 01:06:42.514
And thank you all for listening.
01:06:42.554 --> 01:06:44.719
We hope to see you next time on Inside Out.
01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:46.605
Thank you, Ian, and welcome back.
01:06:47.427 --> 01:06:47.867
Thank you, Jim.
