they told me make sure that you hold very still during this process they started the table and I started feeling somewhat funny and I thought what's going on here I feel like I'm going to faint um wow you know and I'm laying on the table and nobody's really watching me unfortunately the X-ray tech that was pushing the button on the table was pushing the wrong button and he didn't realize it I started hyperventilating I couldn't control my breathing and the extra leaned over my face and saw that my eyes were rolling back and then the
last thing that I saw was he leaned back to look to see where his thumb was and he made this face like and then that was it I was out of my body looking down at the whole scene and up there on the ceiling it was this feeling of being wrapped in this beautiful blanket of love and acceptance I just felt absolutely [Music] wonderful my name is Barbara barol and I grew up in West Salem Oregon I had four siblings three that were older than me and one that was younger we wrote our bikes everywhere
my little sister and I and we were wild and happy girls and we just had a lot of fun camping with my dad and mom and it was really a nice place to grow up after I graduated from high school I went to City College and enjoyed you know working and earning my own money and had an apartment ended up moving down to Santa Barbara California when I was about 27 years old and so I was moved away from my family and support system up there and I ended up marrying someone in Santa Barbara that
unfortunately had abuse issues and I got into the abuse situation where I couldn't get out his anger with his job and anything else that occurred he was very controlling and if my son and I didn't do exactly as he had asked us to do then we were in trouble and I realized it was really dangerous for both of us I had asked him to go to counseling I'd asked him to go to a pastor of a church he had rejected everything and I tried just everything I could think of to try to help him with
his anger issues but nothing worked he ended up calling me outside on our patio and he had a a 2x4 underneath some bags of cement that had a couple of 2x4s underneath the bags and so these bags of cement were quite heavy and this 2x4 was underneath them and he had his shoulder underneath it and he said come over here and I said what are you doing and he said come over here and he ended up pulling on my left arm and pulling me over underneath the 2x4 then he removed his shoulder and the 2x4
came down onto my shoulder cuz he was taller than me and the weight of the bags of cement ended up heating my shoulder and and that's what burst my disc in my lower back and it felt like I had just been shot in my lower back and I crumpled to the ground so I ended up having problems walking at after that point and the first doctor that I went to see to find out what had happened he said you've got sciatica problems because of this disc that's been blown out and he said I don't think
that I can actually fix this I think this is going to be something where you're not going to be walking anymore and so um I had a girlfriend at work and she told me no no no don't believe that you need to talk with a neurosurgeon so I called a local neurosurgeon that she suggested that I call and I got in to see him he was looking at the x-rays up on this lighted board and he said oh I can fix this and so I really wanted to believe him CU I was 31 years old
with a now my little girl was 5 months old and my son was 8 years old and I really wanted to have my life and so he scheduled surgery for me in December of 1987 he and the orthopedic surgeon had decided that I needed to have a myogram done and a myogram is injecting iodine Dy into my spinal cord and they had me on an X-ray table and then they had explained to me that they were going to tip the X-ray table with my head up and my feet down so that the die would run
down my spinal cord and they could see if the spinal cord had been chipped when the disc blew out because if that was the case it was going to be a much bigger problem they told me initially that if you move it all during this process uh you could have headaches for months afterwards so make sure that you hold very still both the doctors were in the room the orthopedic surgeon and the neurosurgeon and two x-ray Tex and a nurse and so they started the table they injected the D in and they numbed the area
right behind my neck but no other anesthesia or anything else they started the table moving and it was going very slowly and it was making this sound and I started feeling somewhat funny and I thought what's going on here I feel like I'm going to faint um wow you know and I'm laying on the table and nobody's really watching me and the nurse is over a table by the door and the two doctors are talking to each other and the X-ray techs are talking to each this is just a normal myogram for them nothing no
big deal but unfortunately the X-ray tech that was pushing the button on the table was pushing the wrong button and he didn't realize it and what happened was that as I was feeling like I was going to faint I started hyperventilating and I couldn't control my breathing so that's when the two X-ray techs heard me going H and so he they stopped talking to each other and the X-ray tech with his finger on the button leaned over my face and looked at my face and saw that my eyes were rolling back and that I was
hyperventilating and then the last thing that I saw was he leaned back to look to see where his thumb was and he made this face like and then that was it I was out of my body looking down at the whole scene and the Panic that I was feeling in my body was gone and up there on the ceiling it was this feeling of being wrapped in this beautiful blanket of love and acceptance and just I just felt absolutely wonderful and I looked down at what was happening down below he' started calling cat blue and
I calmly said huh if if I'm up here and my body is down there and he's calling code blue I think I just died and right when I said that there was this feeling of a being that was right next to me and the being felt to me like I had known him forever it felt like it was God I felt the absolute acceptance and the absolute love and the Absolute Comfort I felt like when he was next to me that I was a pure being I was a pure spirit and he loved me so
much it was just incredible it was lifechanging to have that feeling of him being right there and I felt that feeling of connection all the way prior to my life here that I had been on the earth for 31 years at that time but I felt it was way beyond that that I began in my Consciousness talking to the being and I was looking down and watching everything from above and they were all panicking down below the doctors were yelling out orders and the nurse was calling on the phone for a defib unit the two
X-ray techs had gone into CPR and I said to the being I really need to go back because I knew that my husband if he had full control over my children that those children would be abused I had already seen the abuse to my older son already and I knew that my little five-month-old daughter would encounter that as well I need to go back I need to go back to protect them and so I was saying that to him while I was watching everything down below and they had brought in an oxygen cart and they
had an oxygen mask on my face the the two X-ray techs were just switching off every 2 minutes doing chest compressions one of the other things that happened was this man brought in this box and he um put it on this ledge that was next to the X-ray table and he was peeling off these white circles and they were putting them on my chest and as I was watching all that from above I stopped saying to the being that I wanted to go back and for a moment I watched and then I said what is
that he's doing and I was moved from the ceiling right in front of the box I watched as the man's hand went between where I my Consciousness was and the box and he flipped a toggle switch and This little light lit up in that screen and it started going across the screen in a straight [Music] line I watched it go all the way across the screen and all of a sudden it came to me what it was and I said oh it's a heart monitor that's my Flatline and and the second that I thought that
I was immediately back up on the ceiling again next to the being and I felt him next to me again and I realized that I had asked that question and he had put me down there to answer it for me and the neural surgeon who was over with the orthopedic surgeon said too much time has passed she's going to be brain dead we need to do something and so then the orthopedic surgeon said stand clear so the two exer Texs that were doing this see they stepped back away from the table and the orthopedic surgeon
took two steps forward took his fist from behind his back arked it over his head and pounded it into my chest and I watched my body when that happened I watched the whole thing from above and my body kind of went like this and kind of jerked from the hitting of me and I didn't go back into my body but up on the ceiling as I was looking down the being finally spoke spoke to me and in this beautiful voice that was just so amazing said but if you go back you'll still be in your
marriage what will you do and then I saw all these little film clips that just went flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash flash and they were all incidents that had been happening in the years that I'd been married to this person that I was married to and it was all of the abuse that I had been enduring and after each event that he would hurt me then he would apologize he would try to bribe me with taking me out to dinner or bringing me flowers or something and he would
always say that it was not going to happen again but of course they would happen again and so I was reminded of all the incidents with all these little flashes and then I was given time to think about all the things that I had done to try to help him change and I thought about this you know eight-page letter I had written about staying that I couldn't take any more of the abuse and that if he continue to do this that I would leave him and you know the marriage family therapist and the pastor of
the church and um the times when I you know told him I'm not doing this I this is not going to be who I am I saw it all and I realized after I watched it all it wasn't him that needed to change it was me I needed to stop trying to change him I needed to get away so I said if you let me go back I promise you I'll get strong enough to leave him and the second I said the word him the doctor did the second precardia thump and it restarted my heart
and I opened my eyes and I was back in my body with the oxygen mask on my [Music] face they were all astonished that I was opened my eyes I looked at him and I said what just happened and the nurse and over me said stop don't talk we need to stabilize you and so for 20 minutes they did whatever they had to do to stabilize me and then they took the oxygen mask off and I said to all of them were looking at me and I said what just happened I was up on the
ceiling and I could see and hear everything and the neurosurgeon who was standing next to the table I was laying on he went oh [Music] brother and that made me completely recount what had just happened so I said no I'm telling the truth she was calling on the phone for the defib unit and that lady brought brought in the oxygen card and that man brought in the heart monitor I watched my Flatline and these two guys were doing CPR and then when she brought in the oxygen cart they just switched to every two minutes switching
off the chest compressions and you said to him too much time had passed that I was going to be brain dead and then he did two strikes to my chest and then I came back well that just freaked the neurosurgeon out completely he as I was talking he clenched his fist like this pulled him up next to his body and then he went I am not going to stand here listen to this and he stormed out of the room which was really good because then the orthopedic surgeon took my hand and with everybody else listening
said tell me again what did you see how did it feel what was it like he was interested in it and he understood what had just happened so then they put me on a gurnie they put me up in my room they were going to do the surgery the next day anybody who came into my room I would say what was that that happened when I I was having my myogram and everybody would look at their chart and go I I'm sorry I don't see anything I don't know what you're talking about so the next
day when they took me down to surgery they did do the surgery on my back it was a laminectomy disectomy on my L5 S1 vertebrae the doctors came out after the surgery and they started walking towards me in the recovery area and I immediately said what happened last night during the myogram and the neurosurgeon went I am not here to talk about that I'm here to talk about your surgery and so for 4 days I was in the hospital no one would talk to me about it I had no idea it was called a near-death
experience I'd never heard of anything about that I'd never meditated I wasn't you know in in that way of of looking at my life when my then husband came in that afternoon after the surgery um I told him what happened and he said oh that couldn't have happened you probably hallucinated that well I never did drugs because my mom was a police officer I didn't drink I still don't I never did anything I was a clean kid and I've never had hallucinations and that would be very weird and I knew that wasn't the truth and
so I just zipped my lips and didn't talk about it I didn't know who to talk to that would believe me it was as real every time I thought about it as if I was just happening like when I talk about it right now if I were to shut my eyes I would see down where the table is where the people were I I can see the whole room but there wasn't anybody to talk to and so I kept it inside me for about 12 years and I went on with my life I I got
away from the husband it took me a while to get away because he had really highly insured me and I was afraid he was going to kill me so I waited until it was the right time he was on a business trip to go to Canada and I realized that for a week he wouldn't have access to me and I got a restraining order against him and let the police department know that I was in a dangerous situation and that was what helped I got through a divorce and moved on how I look at it
is that my near-death experience was planted in my life to get me out of that situation and to help me grow Beyond it I spent 2 years working and supporting my children and I thought I'm not sure I ever want anybody else in my life I'm scared I don't know if there's any nice people out there nice guys so what I started was a little book next to my bed that I would look at at night and I would write character traits positives only that I would want if I ever let anybody else into my
life if I ever trusted anybody again and every night when I would look at that book and read through the character traits I would say God I don't know who who this person is but I know that you do one day my son who was in 8th grade brought home a girl from the neighborhood and they wanted me to go to a movie they ended up asking me to come over to her house to pick them up so I went over and the door opened when I knocked on it and it was a 7ot tall
guy and I said hi I'm here to take uh your daughter and my son to the movie and he said well that's weird because they asked me to take them to the movie and I immediately knew what they were doing was putting their two parents together and I was very embarrassed and we went to the movie and we went to dinner afterwards with the kids and I got a chance since we had both had two children each we got a chance to go out and do fun things with our kids and after about 4 months
I realized that I'd been writing all those character traits about him and it's 6 months after our meeting we got married and now it's been 30 years and he is still the person I wrote about the reality of my near-death experience and how it helped me change my life was really clear to me by then and how I looked at death and how I looked at Consciousness had all changed and I'd never been taught anything I'd never read anything but that mde helped change who I was in major ways and helped me to understand much
more than I'd ever understood before it happened then what ended up happening was that my daughter she was about 12 years old and she was in a gymnastics program and the woman that was sitting next to me was a friend of mine and she was telling me she was a nurse at a hospital in Santa Barbara where we live and so I ended up talking to her and telling her about it and she ended up telling me it was called a near-death experience and that was the first time I'd heard that term and she said
oh there's Barbara you know the internet's come up there's lots of information online look it up there's there's information for you it was like three days worth of like looking online and reading other people's nerde experiences before I like wow this is real [Laughter] when you open the door to the other side it's amazing how they'll come through for you in so many instances I think that the other side is listening all the time reaching out to them and asking for help I think that that's what brings it to you understanding that they're all here
and they're all ready to help everybody but a lot of people close their doors and when they get an intuitive hit they think it's their intuitive hit instead of message from the other side helping them so I really wish everybody understood it's not someplace far away it's they're here they're with us I see in many ways the other side was teaching me all along and they were planting me in places where I could grow where I could get to the point where I could talk about this without worrying about anybody's um Judgment of it or
anybody's you know non-belief I can talk to anybody about this so that's what I do every day trying to find anybody everybody and trying to give that gift [Music] away what I want to see and what I hope everybody wants to see is positive things at the end of their life and they can say I did a lot of good stuff I touched a lot of lives I helped a lot of people feeling that joy that you get from helping somebody else is super positive in your own life even just smiling a little baby in
a shopping cart and helping somebody with groceries or volunteering I would pull my children and we pick up trash off the beach I try to find ways every day that can be something that will help somebody else my near-death experience was the most beautiful gift in my life understanding what it tells us about death Consciousness life itself is so valuable I'm really hoping that people understand the gift of not worrying about death understanding that yes we're going to miss the person that passed away but you can still talk to them and love them you think
of them and you say to them I love you still and you're still with me I adore you and I hope you're having fun understanding that our Consciousness survives death who we are and all the experiences that we have our precious soul is being grown with every time we come here I feel that we choose to come down here and I think that we set different challenges and aspects in our life that are going to grow Us and how we behave and how we act we see at at the end of our life and we
see how we did well or we didn't do well and then we come back down again and we set more challenges and we grow our souls I think that's what all of us are doing here we're here many times and we're setting up all these different situations that will teach us how to rise above Being Human and instead become something much more beautiful [Music] [Music]
