It was a very short experience, but it changed me quite a bit. The power that nightmares can have over you can be terrifying.

The realisation that your nightmare was not really a nightmare and a near death dream can be confusing, and after your thoughts settle, relieving and fairly transforming. Here is the narrative of what happened.

There was nothing terrifying that happened earlier that day to act as a direct precedence to justify the nightmare.That night, in the wee hours of the morning, around 2:30 am or so (my memory of the exact timing is unclear as of now) in my dream, in the dark, I was lying awake on the bed. I sat up, and in moments I felt a terrifying evil presence behind me, with breathing very faint. I felt it getting closer and closer behind me. I was frozen and experiencing overwhelmimg fear, and the sound of my own breathing and heartbeat were completely mute. It was, for a moment, like I was alive but without a heart beat or the need to breathe. I was fearful for my life, and in that moment something of the nature of a very young child's hands* pushed me from behind, making me fall flat on my face. (*This aspect was a more recent realisation, on recalling and attempting to identify the nature of the dream.)

In that moment, I woke up, lying on my bed, breathing heavily, absolutely terrified, my feet and my hands extremely cold and shaking. This dream haunted me for years. It has been five years since this dream and I came to a realisation, as I looked back on this dream, that the nature of the dream was actually that of saving me from something terrible before it had the chance to get to me.This dawned on me when I finally identified and separated the nature of the hands that pushed my back.They were gentle, kind, and gave me a sweet, protective nudge. I felt relieved that I finally realised that. That transformed the effect the dream had on me by a 180 degrees. Now I realised that God truly never leaves your side, and that little cherubs, or angels as you may call them, are always by your side when God Himself is tending to other things, and if you are truly innocent, and your karma allows it, you will experience miracles truly unimaginable and unexpressable to anyone in mere words.

I had this revelation about the true nature of my dream just a day before I came across this website and concluded that my experience could be considered as an NDE. (I have a budding interest in theosophical theories, which is how I came across this website.)