STE - Spiritually Transforming Experience

 QUESTION

“I’ve just read an article in Psychic News about your new book.  I feel a lot of what is described in terms of how children with NDEs feel about life.  However, I was wondering if it’s possible to have an NDE without the body medically dying.  I had an experience a few years ago, during a very difficult time when I had a strong desire to ‘go home.’  During this experience I left my body and met three beings who were called the ‘Shining Ones.’  I was told that these were my real family, and that I had been lost when I came to earth.  They had been looking for me for a very long time.  It was a joyous reunion and homecoming.  I’ve never felt so happy and had such a sense of belonging.  They were glowing and made of light, with long limbs.  I couldn’t make out facial features as such.  I feel like this was an NDE, except my body didn’t die, as far as I know.  I willingly chose to leave it, as I had wanted to do for a long time.  These beings found me and sent me back, knowing I was safe and not lost anymore.”

....Lois

ANSWER

Technically, that’s called an STE - spiritually transforming experience.  You have to be near death, or have a near-miss, for an experience to be called a near-death episode.  However, there are near-death-like experiences. . . where you are not near to death yet you have a full-blown near-death experience.  Some of these are called “fear-death” experiences; the rest - near-death-like experiences.

Whatever people choose to call such things, there is no doubt that a special moment when we are “ready”. . . does occur.  Something will happen seemingly without cause, that “wake us up to how we’re living,” or somehow “gets a message through from spirit that we need to hear.”

It seems to me that far too many of us have lost touch with the spiritual side of our natures.  Either we no longer attend a church of some kind, do not avail ourselves of meditative and mindfulness practices, or just live our lives without trying to solve “feelings of incompleteness,” like something is missing that needs to happen and hasn’t.

The spiritual side of life is just as important as a job, finding a mate, eating and drinking, exercise, having a social life, especially for children.  The spiritual side of life brings us a sense of completeness, a sense that we matter in the overall scheme of things, a sense that there is far more to our nature than what our senses and deeds imply.  There are wonderful metaphysical churches now (Unity and Centers for Spiritual Living), and endless meditative and spiritual groups where higher knowledge is taught or shared or studied.  The A.R.E., for instance, has a home study course you can do alone or join a group in your area.  Check this:  they have a section in the Marketplace of my website where you can get all the information you want about them (my website is www.pmhatwater.com).  By the way, Edgar Cayce groups and the overall Foundation have excellent books, classes, learning opportunities, conferences.  The best around.  

Such a blessing you had is a treasure.  Thank you for sharing your experience with me.  ~PMH