The near-death experience of Jane Thompson

Prior to my NDE, I was a real estate agent. I was very focused on work and career. I was happy, I would say, but looking back now, I see that my life was missing something. It was still lonely and a little bit empty. And my NDE was on August 22nd, 2009. I was 34 years old. I woke up with a tremendous amount of pain. Excruciating pain. And I was burning up with a fever of 106 degrees and we didn't know what was going on. A family member took me to the hospital and they were running tests and trying to figure out what was happening. I remember when I was in for my CT scan, they were trying to adjust my IV. I could feel myself detaching. I could feel myself coming out. And I would drift out almost the way you see a balloon start to drift away into the sky. But that pain kept pulling me back in. And after my CT scan, they brought me out into an area in the emergency room where we were just waiting for what was next. And that's when everything started happening, when I really started dying at that point. I started convulsing and I could feel the veins on my head popping out. The pressure in my head and in my body was tremendous. The pain was excruciating. My fever was high, so I was burning up, but I was also freezing cold all at the same time. And I remember convulsing with my eyes closed and I had the thought of, I don't know how much more of this I can take. I don't think I can take any more of this pain. It was at that moment that I completely disconnected from everything that was external and outside of me, the people that were around me, the medical staff, the machines that I was hooked up to at that point. I had no connection to it. I lost the knowing that it was even there. And I was still experiencing some of the pain, but not to the same degree as I had been. And I started doing internal scan of my body. It felt like I was watching a movie. I could see the blood pumping. I could see my cells. I could see my internal organs. And it felt very factual. I didn't really have any emotion attached to it. And then I had that awareness of, I'm dying. This is what it feels like. And at that moment, I popped out of my body. And the next thing I knew, I was on the ceiling looking down at myself and everyone around me. And I could see that there was no life left in my body. I knew that that was me, but I didn't see me there anymore. My soul was no longer a part of that shell of a body that I saw on the hospital gurney. It was very real. I knew that it was happening. And I knew that it was happening in that moment. Everyone and everything was very clear and in focus, but it did feel like I was a little bit detached from it. And as I was taking all of that in, I started to very gently, very slowly start floating up and backwards. And everything that I was looking at started to become smaller. I felt that I was looking down at the hospital and I saw these little balls of energy buzzing all around. Those were souls that I was seeing. And they were all connected by this very thin iridescent line, the way that a spider web looks if you catch it just right in the sunlight. That's what it looked like, which I now realize is oneness and the way that we are all connected. And I remember the way that these souls were buzzing around didn't make sense to me because I thought, why are they all running around like that? I didn't understand why they were all so busy. And as I continued to float backwards, I was moving a little faster at this point. It was happening very quickly now where I felt like I was in this void or in outer space. It didn't feel scary, but it was black. Then I immediately felt myself go into the tunnel and it was very black, very dark in the tunnel. I wasn't scared at all. I was moving very fast. It was exciting and it felt exhilarating. The tunnel ride was very quick and I popped right out of the tunnel and I was immediately in the white light. The light was so bright and beautiful and powerful that it took me a minute to adjust and understand what was going on there too. As soon as I started to settle into it, I understood that it was heaven. I started to feel the light more and feel the energy of what that was. And I immediately felt this overwhelming sense of unconditional love. Love like I have never felt before, no matter what I had been through in my life, no matter what I had done. It was just complete love for me. I was bathing in it. It was wrapped around me and it made me feel valued, appreciated, and accepted. The next thing I felt was an overwhelming sense of peace, that everything was okay and that everything was right, that all is well. I was getting a healing. I started to notice all the areas in my soul or in my energetic space where there were wounds or there were holes. And all of those areas were starting to get filled in and they were getting filled in with love. I was being replenished and it was the best feeling. It just made me feel like this is who I am. This is who I'm supposed to be. This is what my soul is all about. And as that was happening, I was also getting the sense that this white light that was all around me, that was taking such loving care of me, that I am that white light. I'm not separate from it. I just had the illusion that I had always been separate from it. And so while I was a part of it, I really sensed that separation being healed as well. I knew that I was dead. I knew that my physical body was no longer working and that I was no longer a part of it. And I was fine with it. It didn't scare me. It just felt like this is how it's meant to be. And it almost started feeling like my life was becoming a distant memory. It felt so much like home to be in that light that there was no other place I wanted to be at that point. There's no place that feels as good as that light feels. At that point, I wasn't thinking a lot about the people that I had left behind. I wonder if I had stayed longer, if that would have come into play. You know, at the time of my NDE, I wasn't a mom yet. And I'm a mom now. And I wonder a lot how that would feel different to have a child that I had left behind. And there's just a sense that everyone's going to be okay. Everything's happening the way that it's supposed to be happening. And we're all taken care of and that it's all perfect the way that it's happening. Even when I say that now, now that I'm back in a body and I'm back in this physical world, when I say, I knew all was well, there's still that part of me that goes, what? It doesn't make sense to me as a human being now. But when we're out of our bodies, you have a 360 degree perspective. You're not limited by your body. You're not limited by your brain. You're not limited by your ego because all of that is stripped away. And when you do have that broad 360 degree perspective, feeling that all is well makes sense. You understand that everything happens for a reason. Everything is happening exactly as it should be. And there's a lot of peace that goes along with that. And that need to control completely disappears. You just allow everything to be what it is. After I was bathing in the light for a while and really soaking that up and starting to feel really good, I did start to notice what I think were other souls coming in around me. It felt like a crowd coming toward me. It felt like a friendly crowd. I wasn't scared or intimidated, but I didn't have enough time to understand exactly what that was because at that moment I heard that inaudible voice say to me, you need to go back. And that's not what I wanted to hear. No, no, no, I don't wanna go. Please don't make me go back because it was so beautiful there. And then I heard the voice again and I get emotional about it even now. I heard the voice again. It said, you need to go back. And it was loving, but it was a firm voice letting me know that this is not a negotiation. It was time to go back. And I persisted with the protesting. I said, no, please don't make me go back. And right at that moment, I felt almost like I was nudged back into the tunnel. And I went backwards very fast into the tunnel, very quickly back into my body. And I entered my body through the top of my head and it felt like I was being sucked back into my body. And I felt the pain returning, but it was very quick. It was just enough for me to know I'm back in, I'm back in this world. And then I don't remember anything for several hours after that. When I woke up in pre-op, this was on a weekend and it was very late at night. I think it was at about nine or 10 p.m. That part of the hospital was very empty. I knew that I had died. I knew that I had gone into this beautiful white light that loved me. But when I opened my eyes, I was receiving last rites. And I thought, this is odd. And it didn't make sense to me. And I was also trying to understand what was going on around me. I was trying to figure out what the physical world was about because it was almost like I had lost the memory of what these machines were and what all these people were doing. But I wasn't able to communicate verbally at that point. But as I was receiving last rites, I had all these people around me. And the way people look at you when they think you're going to die, I've never been looked at like that before in my life. Family members and my doctor, my surgeon, I remember especially the look that they get in their eyes. I've never seen that before. And I remember feeling their pain and concern. And I wanted to say, what are you guys worried about? If I was supposed to die, I would have been dead before. I wouldn't have been sent back. But I wasn't able to communicate that at that time. And the next morning when I woke up, my fever had been 106, but it went down to 94 degrees, which is very dangerous. The doctor explained to me that I had a kidney stone that had become lodged in my ureter and it was stuck. And so everything, all of the toxins that were meant to filter out were going back into my bloodstream. My entire blood supply had become infected and I had gone into septic shock. They were saying the next 24 hours were critical. We needed to watch what was going on with my internal organs. And again, I just wanted to say nothing, everything's fine. I'm going to be fine. I know that or I wouldn't be back here. I was still very sick though. I was still having a lot of physical pain and a lot of physical problems. But I was having this dance with myself where I was kind of floating out and then I would float back in. It was almost like I was trying to work my way back into my body fully. And I was uncomfortable with everything around me that was man-made. The machines that I was hooked up to, the supplies that were there in the hospital. And the only thing that felt okay to me at that point were the people that were around me. I could identify with other souls. And I was very fortunate to have a big window in the hospital room that I was in that had beautiful trees outside of it. And I spent a lot of time just staring at those trees because that was what I was truly connecting with. That nature is what felt the most like that white light to me. I was sick for about three months after that. I had surgeries that followed. My adrenal system was really taxed by everything it had been through and I was experiencing extreme exhaustion because of that. I was also still taking a lot of pain medication. And I had the effects of my NDE. I was recalling what had happened and I knew that it was very real. And I tried to talk to a couple of people about it. Two people that I was very close to and they rejected. They rejected it. I think it's because when your family or someone that loves you watches you die, that's very traumatic for them. And then they see you recovering and see you starting to feel better. I don't think that they wanted to hear about death and they didn't want to hear about the white light. And then I also made the mistake of mentioning it to my surgeon and he laughed at me. And so I just kept quiet about it during that time. And doubts started to creep in. I was on heavy duty pain medication. And I thought, you know, maybe I'm having these recollections and these experiences as a result of the pain medication. Maybe once I'm off the pain pills, life will just go back to normal again. But as soon as I was fully recovered, fully off the pain medication, things became more intense. The memory of the white light, the memory of everything that led up to going into the light became more intense. And what I now realize is pain medication was clouding everything for me and muting everything for me. And as soon as I was off of all of that, things started to become crystal clear and the memory of what happened and how extraordinary it was really started to sink in. I started noticing the morning after my NDE that I had these increased sensitivities. People that were coming in and out of my room, I was picking up on their thoughts. I knew what they were thinking. I could feel what they were feeling. In a way, I didn't know if I was making that up or if I really was picking up on these thoughts and feelings of other people, if I really was an empath. I would have conversations with other people and I would say something to them and they would just look at me. They'd go, how do you know that? I started realizing the experience that I was having was different than what the people around me were having. But I was picking up on thoughts that were accurate because they didn't know how I knew that that was what was going on with them. And that was a lot, a lot to navigate. The hardest part was, and still is, feeling what everybody else feels because it can be very overwhelming at times. I was having a harder time going out, leaving the house. It was too chaotic there energetically for me. I was becoming so overwhelmed by everything that was going on around me and I had no idea how to manage the loudness of the world. It just, everything felt so loud and amplified to me that I started staying home more and more. I only left really for work and that was when I absolutely had to. But I was only 34 at that time and I knew that I had a lot of years ahead of me and I knew that I couldn't spend that time at home. I had to figure out how to be a part of the world again. I lost a lot of relationships after my near-death experience. I was a completely different person after that happened and they didn't know who I was. I didn't know who I was at first. And so when you become a completely different person, it's really hard to relate to people. Relationships start to change and I had this really big, extraordinary thing that happened to me and I realized that I couldn't talk to the people that were in my life and that's very sad, that hurt. We all drifted apart, friends, family members. It was very difficult, very complicated and I needed to make a career change at that point. Selling real estate, I see the significance in it, helping people find a home to raise their families in but the business world, I couldn't stomach the business world anymore. It was a little too harsh for me. I was no longer competitive at all. I went from being a competitive personality to someone who just wanted to collaborate and to love and there's not a lot of space for that in the business world. I knew I needed to make a career change. I didn't know what it would be so I did some hospice work as I was in the middle of moving into healing work and hospice, that was a great training ground for me and it was also a great way for me to get back into that white light because when I was working with patients that were especially pretty active or actively getting ready to transition out of their bodies, that white light is all around them and light beings and that presence of love is so much a part of what they're experiencing. They all had different religious beliefs and they were all different ages with different backgrounds and it's not uncommon for people to have that fear of letting go of their bodies and they all have various reasons for that. Sometimes they're very attached to the physical world. Sometimes they may be worried about some of the ways that they live their lives and so they have fear of what could be next for them but no matter what, as soon as they're 24 hours out from passing, they're all peaceful and they're all beginning their transition at that point and they're feeling that love. They're in process at that time and the peace really sets in. I remember I worked at an inpatient hospice facility and I would always go at night on the weekdays because it was very quiet then and that's when I liked to go in to work the most but there was one morning, I think it was a Sunday morning where I got a call from the director. She said, Jane, is there any way that you can come in? We've got a gentleman here who hasn't had a single family member or friend come to visit him. He's been alone this whole time and we feel sorry for him. Can you just come and sit with him and hold some space for him? And she said, he's not conscious but I know that he'll feel you there. And I remember when I walked in the room, I could feel that peace. I could feel that love. I could feel that presence there for him and we knew that he would probably pass probably by the end of that day. We knew it was very soon. When I walked into the room and I felt that presence, I felt like I needed to stand back because what I was feeling and sensing around him, I felt that if I moved in too closely that I would almost be interfering with this beautiful experience that this man was having. He didn't feel alone. He could feel all of the love around him. I wasn't needed at that point and I watched for a little while and then I felt like it was my time to walk out of the room and to let his soul have that moment because he didn't have anybody coming to see him. So he must have led some type of a lonely or isolated life and there's pain that goes along with that. But what I saw him experiencing at the end was that he was completely loved and he's completely welcome into that love. And that was one of the most beautiful moments that I experienced doing hospice work. I needed to do my own healing work and experience my own healing before I was able to fully move into this. I was still dealing so much from the pain of isolating after my NDE and so I learned a lot by going through that experience myself. And I started realizing that I was able to move energy and that scared me at first. I didn't know what it meant and I didn't know how to do it and I didn't know who to talk to about it. And a therapist that I was seeing, I remember her saying to me, she said, Jane, when you talk, I can feel that white light. I can feel the qualities of that white light coming out of you. And she said, I bet you one day you're going to be able to fill a whole room with the energy of that white light. I was intimidated by that but I thought that would be amazing if I could do that. And she said, you need to start practicing. And I thought, I don't know what that means to start practicing but I just started playing around with it and filling up a corner with white light, just channeling really but feeling that come through me and trying to fill up a space energetically with it. And it took a lot of practice and fine tuning but once I was able to do that, I started to realize that I could do that with my own energetic space and with other people's energetic space. And I wanted to be really responsible about it. And so I took classes with healers that I really trusted, healers that are very ethical and Reiki was the first thing that I did. I just learned how to use my body and my nervous system almost as a map for what other people are experiencing and then learning how to move out what's not working anymore, what's low vibration or what's harmful or what is trauma, how to process that and move it out and then fill it back up with love. That's what I got during my NDE. And it took me, I would say at least a few years of really diligent practice to start feeling okay with doing that for other people. So that's how it got started and then it just evolved in ways that I couldn't have dreamed up if I had tried. It was donation only healing work and people started telling me, you need to start charging and I was very resistant to that but they were saying that because they were sharing with me how this energy work was making them feel better. And maybe they had done years and years of talk therapy but this was the missing piece, this was what was lasting. The energy healing that I got during my near death experience, that was what really worked and really changed and impacted my life. The white light has the answers to all of our questions, questions that we didn't even know that we had. Once I got into that white light, a lot of the questions that I had didn't even seem to matter anymore but the answers were still there. Everything just made sense and all of that love, that is a part of who we are and where we came from. That's the answer to everything because love is the best healer that there is. So any way that we can tap into that white light, what we're doing is we're tapping into love and we're tapping into healing and we're tapping into peace. All of our worries just melt away there. The intuitive and psychic part of the healing work that I do, it all goes hand in hand. I couldn't do the energy work that I do without having heightened or sharpened intuition because I'm really tapping into the subtleties of everybody's energetic space and feeling into everyone's blind spots, seeing there what they don't see, what is deeply unconscious or subconscious for them and that's why the intuition is so important in my work and intuition has become a very important part of my life too because that has helped me live more from a heart-centered space and drown out the voice of ego that led me astray so many times and really caused a lot of destruction in my life. So step one for tapping into your true self, the wisdom of your true self and your higher self or your soul is to quiet everything else down. We didn't come into this world with egos. We came in as our true self but we had to develop the ego to survive and so ego is always talking to us. It's who we think we are and there are all of these running scripts and unconscious, subconscious reels, thoughts that are going on. It's mental chatter and a lot of it is on autopilot and once you can start listening to that, you'll start to realize that those messages ego is feeding you aren't helpful. Ego talks over that intuitive voice and so learning to name those thoughts as ego is step one to getting closer to your true nature and the intuitive voice because once you can drown out the voice of ego, that subtle and peaceful and loving intuitive voice gets a chance to be heard. So any type of quieting practice that you can do, there are all different forms of meditation. Mantra meditation, that's what I like to do. I use a mantra. That's not for everyone. Some people like to do meditative prayer. Breath work is a form of meditation. Anything that you can do that's a quieting practice to still your heart, to quiet your mind, that will bring you so much closer to the light, so much quicker than anything else that you can do. It's a little bit every day and it will change as you change and as you heal and evolve and grow, your quieting process will evolve right along with you and the more you practice getting quiet, the easier it is to get there each time. That's when we can notice the messages, the synchronicities and we can get in the flow of the natural processes of life. But if our minds are busy and if our bodies are busy, it's very hard to tap into those subtle but powerful messages that are always there for us. That's how we can get closer to that white light here on earth and get closer to our true self and what we were put here to do. A lot of times people will ask me if God or if the light is so good and so loving, why is there suffering here? We won't fully know the answer to that until we get to the other side fully. But the one thing that I do know is some of our suffering we can control by stripping away ego as much as we can and getting into that space of love as often as we can. Other times for reasons that aren't always clear, there is some suffering that we just have to endure and it's painful for me to say that because I don't like to see people experiencing devastation and suffering. So what you can make better, try to do that. That's when you always pray or you do whatever you need to do to get through it or help the people that you love get through it and know that with every breath you take, your life can change. And so when things feel really good now, soak that up and enjoy it and when things get hard, know that that can change too. That's where faith is important. I do believe that we are ultimately meant to come here and experience abundance and joy and love. It's not a punishment to be here in our bodies and it's okay to feel happiness and to have fun. Part of this earth game that we're all playing, it's not meant to be serious all the time and so look at the bright side too when it's there. Acknowledge everything that's going on because simultaneously there's suffering, there's pain and there's joy and there's love and there's humor. It's all happening at once and to see the whole picture as much as we can is part of how we get through it. Somewhere along the way, we started thinking that there is strength or action in being in a fearful state, but really when we're in fear, we're stuck. Fear is resistance and fear is glue and there's no flow there and it's very hard to find solutions when you're in a space of fear. So thinking that fear gives you power or means that you're taking action or paying attention, that's an illusion because there are very little possibilities in the space that fear sits. So I consistently clear my energy because I know that if I'm stuck in a low vibrational space or if I have something in my nervous system or in my emotional space that I need to process, that I'm hanging on to for whatever reason, I'm constantly working to heal and clear that because that lightens me up enough where I can more easily focus on the positive aspects of what are going on. And gratitude, gratitude and self-love and self-gratitude, very important because whatever you're focusing on, that's what you're going to see. Whatever you're paying attention to, that's what you're going to see more of. And a gratitude practice is really important first thing when you wake up because you are in a state of mind where you're going to really absorb whatever's happening. And if the first thing you do is reach for your phone and check your emails, you're probably going to have a chaotic day. If you, when you wake up in the morning, can lie in bed and think of five things that you're grateful for, that sets the tone for the entire day. And I don't know why it's so hard for all of us to get into that practice, but give it a try because I've noticed the days that I do that, it's better. And I can see more of the positive and things just start to happen and things just start to flow my way better than I could have even tried to create for myself. And that's why gratitude is important. Self-love is incredibly important too because whatever is in your heart is what spills out to others. And if you're telling yourself awful things about yourself or being critical about yourself, that spills out into the world. And so taking some time to appreciate yourself and notice the beauty in yourself. We are in a dark time in the world right now. It's very challenging. There are a lot of traumatic events that are taking place and it feels like we're going to be stuck in this place for a long time, but I don't see it that way. I see it as we need to go through this chaos in order to hit that reset button. I see this as we're coming out of it. It's just going to take some time. And the more you can go inward when you feel those triggers from the outside world, the more you can heal and get into a space of love and get into a space of light. And that ripples outward. And the way that all of us can make a difference in the world is just by being yourself, exactly where you are today. Do your healing work and do everything you can to get back to your true self. Where you are today is exactly where you're supposed to be. And you are in your sole purpose exactly where you're supposed to be today. And I could look back at my life five years ago or before my NDE, and although I'm in a much different space now, I look back and I know I was in my sole purpose then because I needed to go through that to get to where I am today. And so offering yourself the love and acceptance every day, honoring where you're at, and continuing to learn and continuing to grow and continuing to love, that's how you can make a difference in this world.