[Music] I've literally seen the Klux Clan March up and down Main Street multiple times and it informed how I felt like I was supposed to behave here so I just started hating back my nervous system was always on edge I'm always ready to fight I'm always ready for war hypertension is a given when you always operating in an energy I'm leaving work I feel this like a sting and I knew that this isn't this isn't right I'm losing my breath it just feels like I'm suffocating we get to the emergency room they get me on
the gurnie and I just kind of casually take my attention up and when I do that instantly I'm in space there was no tunnel there was no anything everything was energy everything felt like love the pain the confusion the identity stuff was gone [Music] [Music] my name is David Williamson and I'm from a small town in North Carolina called yancyville growing up in jansville is a small town of not much more than 3,000 people um growing up there for me is like um Huckleberry fan kind of story I was uh always in the woods always
climbing trees always in nature I had really beautiful experiences as a child that made me initi view this life as magical I was deeply interested um used to dig dig in the ground and try to find fossils always everything I found even if it was just a piece of broken glass I thought it was some magical piece of treasure that I found North Carolina is beautiful but Caswell County is the county that I grew up in it's one of the poorest counties in the country it has a lot of deep rooted racial tension even to
this day is one of the highest active Klux Clan activity in the country my biological grandfather was a sharecropper and my uncles grew up on that farm when you couple all those things together it creates a lot of Dynamics where people get traumatized and it goes unresolved and unaddressed you start hearing people around you kind of um echoing the the same hate that they've received from white people around us you hear it being echoed in the houses and like like they're this way they're that way it gets reiterated and recycled and in your out your
day-to-day life in your house and school is just all of it you know and it informed how I felt like I was supposed to behave here so I just started hating back I've literally seen the Klux Clan March up and down Main Street the most busy street of the Town multiple times and I've seen the the pain and the anger from the people I'm I'm while it's happening I'm watching my aunts I'm watching my mother I'm watching and all of them just feeling so much pain so much anger and and it's it it's it's in
me it's you know it's um it's affecting me you know and um and it just makes you more Angry it makes you more angry and it justifies every negative thought that you have and you think that you can make these sweeping statements about all white people that actually make sense and it just doesn't it just doesn't makes sense because um one of the earliest memories that I have in my childhood was in preschool at graves Chapel Church Miss Mueller was one of the teachers there as a white lady and I remember her holding me in
her lap while she did Story Time and feeling her love for me and then there's other examples of white people who took interest in me genuinely just and Tred to open doors for me and um when you have this narrative that you're just recycling in your head over and over and over you ignore the the good stuff and you only Center the bad and that's where your narrative gets buttressed with not any good not any outlier the outliers don't matter at all it's just the The Narrative everything that supports the narrative is the only thing
I can see so it becomes a thing where every part of your life just confirms what it is that you want to believe you don't feel that there's anything any way that you could be wrong about it the disparity is real if the disparity is real they are doing it and that day became so powerful of a Boogeyman my nervous system was always on there I'm always ready to fight I'm always ready for war hypertension is a given it's a given when you always operating in an energy where you're waiting for him to say something
offensive so that you can explode 400 years of rage on this person you know it's so painful to be in that space all the time I didn't get to experience anything that made me happy I was miserable college is was even worse you know um still on a deep spiritual kind of Journey you know trying to understand stuff but somehow this anger this hate is still Justified even the gods justify it there are gods of Rage there are gods of Ang I can metaphysical IE spiritualize my hatred and still make room for it as if
it's real there was nothing in my life spiritual understanding um philosophical Reckoning that made hating um dysfunctional toxic not even when my body started telling me that hating is killing you and you feel it you can't eat anything and it it stays you know and your body stays comfortable you so I was spending sometimes just not eating because eating anything at one point was just it just created just disruption in my peace I was like I ain't going to eat no more then eating but I had destroyed my digestive system I'm doing what hypertension that
I'm not treating I would check my blood pressure sometimes and it would be 224 over 190 I'm just going about my day didn't pay attention to the signs that my body was giving me the whole time everything just Justified the this rigid position and identity as this person that had to fix this racial disparity and it's on me I'm the Messiah I'm the black savior I'm going to fix all of this for all of us it was February 1st 2021 I was just sitting in my garage with two of my friends and I felt this
uh pain that didn't initially I didn't feel anything in my chest at all it it was like a rip that happened in the in my back in the area behind my heart and and then my shoulder felt like it was about to just fall off you know nothing in that pain said to me heart nothing in that pain said heart but I'd already had I have seven herniated discs to torn too bulging so back pain was kind of a normal thing so what I said to my friend is I I looked at him and my
eyes were big and I said um man this back pain just shifted gears I'm leaving work I feel this like a tingle like a a sting and I knew that this isn't this isn't right so I'm sitting in my car and I'm like is this something that's just going to pass is this something you know I just sit there for a moment and and I find a level of kind of stability where it's like I can tolerate this until I get home you know so I drove home I get there the the fluttering and all
of that stinging and all of that stuff is still happening and now I'm feeling it in my heart my son's mother Trish she's working from home uh so I call up to her and I say um uh I think I need to go to the emergency room this is not getting better it's getting worse as we're in the car I'm losing my breath it just feels like I'm suffocating you know I'm just losing my breath and I'm breathing really deep to try to stay conscious we get to the emergency room I'm kind of laded I'm
walking up they get me on the gurnie and almost immediately I'm I'm asleep and I always try to make note of this fact because people say you're hallucinating right but I passed out before I went into the area area where they were working on me but I'm not dead I don't think because my perspective is on the bed like I'm looking that way but I'm not seeing anything but where the people were that were dots that almost look like a nighttime sky and that stuff was clear to me in that state but as far as
explaining it to my conscious mind and is there's no way I could know why I understood what was happening in that moment after I saw the Blackness and the dots where the people were I was my perspective shifted and I was above myself looking down and I saw the whole setup of the room I saw where the people were um they were still kind of position the way they were when they were pushing me in but I was able to see you know where everybody was at including a woman that was in the corner of
the room she was holding her face like this and she was really sad that I was dying and that was one of the initially when I left my body that was one of the things that Disturbed me the most was like what in the world is she sad for this is so beautiful this is so perfect I'm not hurting them I'm not confused that guy is dead but I'm I'm alive this is beautiful you know so to me that just clarifies that it's not a hallucination I learned while I was out of my body I
saw in real time what was happening to me and everything when I opened my eyes continued in real time there was no separation in my awareness uh gapping between what I was experiencing whether I was in the body or out of the body it was a continual flow of experience once I did leave my body and I looked down there was a lot of things that I came to understand like he's dead his body's dead the mind is dead the ego's dead and uh and after that kind of series of kind of realizations it was
like well then what's left like what am I you know and the words flooded in very clearly it was audible these words were light energy Soul Spirit uh awareness it's just a flood of words they weren't in a line like mechanical it was like a bunch of voices just say these words like but it felt like it was me explaining this to myself everything was energy everything felt like love and I felt like a part of that whole thing I didn't feel separate from it at all and everything that I looked at every question I
had the clarity was instantaneous and that process I was clear like I was what's that what's that what's that it was like a baby having a ah ah everything was a ah [Music] moment and I moved from one thing to the next with that childlike wonder and amazement at what I was seeing there was no memory of this Human Experience that I was referring any of it back there was no mind like that it was just a awareness that was beholding these things and integrating them like instantly so I'm watching everything I'm watching you know
the woman that's um that's holding her face and just just sad about me dying and um you know after a while you know I'm every paying attention to stuff and I and I just kind of casually take my attention up and when I do that instantly I'm in space there was no tunnel there was no anything I quickly became aware of what people call the light it was up and to the right of me the emergency room was down and to the left of me and I was in that angle looking forward out into space
and what was in front of me was the star foring region what was beneath me was what people call the void I felt like I was in the Blackness and it was enveloped me like velvet it felt like love it felt like every other aspect of being disembodied in that moment for me everything felt like love I felt like love I felt like the system that I found myself in was just love and I was just a part of it but it also felt like it was everything it felt like everything every possibility every past
experience everything that everything was in the void was in that black space when I looked into it it reacted it responded and if there was any kind of thought that wasn't complete it was complete instantly if there was a a notion of missing something that the satisfaction of having that I I felt it already before the missing was even fully felt the satisfaction of already having that was there there's a woman I was exchanging with who was like well I don't want to just magically forget people that I love in this life I was like
I was trying to explain that that that's a human thought it comes from a brain that comes from memory that comes from life that comes from you know but you're not going to be when you leave this body a human body with a brain that has memory that you're going to be a energy that's so connected to this experience and this this whole thing that you that experience is integrated in you there is no missing or something missing from that experience isn't gone it's always accessible every part of this experience that you have is etched
in Infinity there is no something disappearing and never and never being experienceable again like it's always there so you don't miss anything there's no missing anything you're more integrated with the system outside of the body than you are in the body and that's kind of what we are is an individual node accumulating a perspective that ultimately gets fed back into the system and becomes a possibility an option for everybody else in the system forever so your your experiences ever lost when I was in space I was interested in everything so my attention kind of just
moved all around there was a point where I was looking up at the light you know I was like kind of it's almost like I was trying to decide if I was going to even entertain it or not you know I looked back up at it and I and I um look back down into the emergency room and when my attention went from the upper angle down back to the left I went it went through me and I was just a glowing orb of light that's what I appeared to be I had never felt more
alive than when I was that glowing orb of light I had never felt more aware of what was happening on this planet in that state I understood everything the pain the confusion the identity stuff was gone we are all orbs of light we're not these bodies I experienced the orb of light as being perfect as being not it's not confused as not um being contextualized in a human sense in a way where it's going to cheerlead for one side or the other it was disconnected somewhat from the the specifics of The Human Experience it was
just aware ah you were in that body oh that body's dead it wasn't like oh you were a black activist and you need to go back and hop in that body and get to the fight more fighting that fight stuff was done [Music] I kind of just watched everything I watched them continuing to defate me but biggest image that sticks with me is the woman that was bothered by me dying holding her face if there's any small part of this experience that I was disappointed about was that in that moment of me trying to figure
out how to communicate with it I couldn't I couldn't tell her lik no don't be sad this is beautiful I'm I'm my back's not hurting I'm not confused about what's happening this is beautiful this is the most most alive that I've ever felt the people that were around me involved with the resuscitation effort some of them were kind of like mechanical they were just doing their job man they didn't have any emotional investment and I could feel all of that you know but the there was one person that was in front kind of to the
angle and uh he was really going through it like in his mind it was almost like it's he's responsible for making sure that I don't die and he didn't want he didn't want to to feel that he didn't want to be responsible for that and so when I opened my eyes I blurted out the first thing I blurted out was are you okay and I was looking for the woman you know and uh and uh and then after that blur I blurted that out I I looked up at the person that was up in front
of me to the right I said are you okay and he cut me off he said no are you okay and um and he and somebody from the right said you didn't feel that and I and I and I almost said feel what but I looked down and I saw this rubber pad that the defibrillator pads and uh were in the person's hand like they were about to defibrillate me again but I saw this rubber pad on my chest where the indention from the defibrillator pads were and and I looked down uh I was like
oh you really were dead like that's when it all flooded into my mind and my human awareness because like I saw the pad where they were defibrillating me and I saw them defibrillating me from above and it all connected in that moment when I looked down and he ask me um you didn't feel that and I was like I I didn't feel anything I didn't feel anything there was no pain no trauma at all in the process of me dying catching my breath on the way to the hospital was as deep as the pain of
my death got so it just made me you know it's like I have no fear of dying I have no fear of what's next [Music] when I came back from my near-death experience I was so painfully aware of everything around me people's pain and confusion I already kind of felt like I had these empathic kind of Tendencies even before but it was times 5,000 when I came back from the near-death experience and I think that contributed to how long it took for me to to integrate because I didn't have the opportunity to just sit and
heal as soon soon as I was able to stand up I was I had to go back to work I'm at work and I'm like I feel a little different I'm interacting differently I'm seeing better results because I'm not really playing the kind of the politics game you know because I don't have any identity stuff that's influencing my decisions and my performance I'm actually looking at work with a in a lighter kind of way you know there's no I don't have to go to work and fight over politics I don't have to go to work
and deal with white black stuff I just have to go to work and perform the heaviness and the anger and the hate I'm not carrying that around me anymore so I'm received differently um I have more graceful interactions with people uh I don't feel like there's somebody trying to block my prog progress you know none of that stuff is real none of those stories are are in me influencing the outcome what having that experience does to you is it gives you this extremely radical sense of accountability all the way down to the thoughts that you've
had sometimes we think that because we didn't actually say something that we still have a position of uh just like we feel righteous I didn't call you that but you thought it so if you thought it own that you got to own that thought you got to own that thought because that thought contributed to the tension that was created in that moment so we have to learn how to understand what we're doing in what we're choosing don't allow tension and pain and confusion to persist for too long because it'll hurt you and it'll influence your
perspective of reality in a way that's not it'll give you a bias so when you feel it fix it so that the bias doesn't sit in you so long to where it's part of you and now it's hard to get it out of you what my experience showed me is that we tend to become the emotions versus just fing them and letting them pass it's like I be came hate instead of just saying oh damn that was hateful do I want to respond and kind of you know we don't pause and be like and think
about the impact of feeling hate on your physical being the was it personal is this person just a miserable person do I have to internalize what they're saying do I have to no but when you're already on edge and you already have these biases you're already ready you're ready to jump as soon as the invitation is presented to you you're ready to respond to it you may very well be justified in your anger but and you're definitely going to feel justified in your anger right but my anger killed me so if I was able to
see what I was in in a different way instead of responding to it anger responding to it responsibility um responding to it with hope I can help change that versus using all of that energy on just hating the people who I feel are are creating the dynamic the further removed I am from feeling all of that pain for so long damaged my body made me so sick because of how I'm thinking and the only way I was able to shake the connection to those stories and those narratives is through having that reset you know and
having those narratives kind of shook shook off of me [Music] my experience occurred in such a way that it gave me some different kind of clarity and there is an opportunity for me to move forward differently period now if I don't take that opportunity that's the choice that I make but the opportunity exists you will revisit the same things that led to your death and I do I revisit the same frustration I revisit the same sometimes moments of hopelessness but now I just like am I going to choose to stay in that emotion am I
going to become hopelessness am I going to become frustration am I going to become hate no I'm going to process it let it do what it's going to do in that moment and then leave it alone let it go and move on to the next thought the next [Music] choice we just having an experience here and because of the narratives and the stories that we choose it becomes a negative experience a positive experience but it's all just stories and you don't have to choose those stories you come here already equipped with uh without without a
function here and then we're not taught to honor that in any way whatsoever we're taught who to be what to be what we are what our name is how we you know what's important who we supposed to like who we supposed to hate how we supposed to you know we told all of this stuff and then we expect people to develop into authentic human beings when they've never made a decision for themselves at all they just accepted prepackaged identities there's no choice in that that you're just selecting from among what's not even available to you
but it's actually what pushed on You by people who actually love you they're giving you this advice because they love you they're telling you to think this way because they think it it worked for them you know and it's I'm just want you to you know be okay but it doesn't work look at the world around us this thinking and these orientations that we have towards each other and his planet and this life doesn't work it doesn't work the more clear I have become about what being a human being is the mind the body the
ego and this Soul thing you know that is infinite and it leaves this place is perfect it doesn't hold on to human trauma it doesn't hold on to this stuff it doesn't but it's permanent and it's what you leave here as that's what you are we are creating our next life right now in this moment with our attention and as long as we can um own our attention and not allow our attention to be totally manipulated and and injected with a bunch of software that isn't that doesn't originate inside of us if you focus on
misery you're compounding misery if you focus on hope you're increasing the probability that other things can happen outside of the negative possibilities and if we collectively start understanding how to Galvanize our attention in different ways then we can magnify our creative capacity if an individual can focus their attention on what they want and get imagine if 20,000 30,000 a million individuals can focus their attention on unified and what they can [Music] [Music] create for
