While almost 40 years have passed since my first NDE, it's as clear to me now as if it just happened. I was 15 years old at the time, my freshman year in high school, 1984. My mother, a frequent nighttime blackout alcoholic and battered wife, had finally found the courage to leave my father, a domineering bipolar manic depressive, prone to extreme violence.  She would later go on to blame me as the catalyst for the divorce because I couldn't take our family's life of violent insanity any longer. 

While she was in the process of divorcing him, my mother and I moved into a little two-bedroom apartment in a small duplex near the beach, owned by her attorney. Nothing at that time felt safe or secure. There was always the specter of my father hovering over us as he was known to either hire people to have us followed or follow us himself. I never knew what he was capable of.

This little outdated apartment we were holed up in was dark and dank, no matter what my mom tried to do to make it feel homey. We were camping out and there was always the feeling that things would get worse. I was deeply depressed.

My mother and I were living in this little place while I was just starting freshman year of high school.  And while it was good that the violence had stopped, the damage had been done. I had been witness to extreme violence from a very early age that included my father beating my mother, trying to choke her to death, chasing her and us with a gun and one time actually breaking her neck in a bathtub.  Needless to say, I had been traumatized. Today we talk about trauma, PTSD and address mental health, which thankfully is taken seriously at home, in schools and the workplace. But this was the early 1980's. That kind of clinical language was reserved for those who had been to war or had severe mental illness, not a 15-year-old kid who grew up in a nice neighborhood. 

But a lot of damage had been done as well as untreated grief over the loss of an older brother at age 10 when I was just 6. By the time I was 15, I was already drinking or drunk regularly, smoking pot, a daily cigarette smoker, and other drugs were already finding their way into my life. Now that we were on our own, the fear of not having any money to live was a constant threat.

I had become withdrawn, even from my friends, who I couldn't share any of this insanity with. I just wanted it to stop and couldn't find any hope. There is nothing worse in this life than being truly hopeless. No matter how resilient we can be, physically or mentally, or what socioeconomic situation or other challenges you are living with, the absence of hope is an experience I wouldn't wish on anybody.

I began to look for a way "out", ultimately making a plan to take my own life with the help of a bottle of sleeping pills I knew my mother kept in her medicine cabinet. The day came. I took the bus from school that afternoon, determined to follow through. My mother would be at work for several more hours which would give me the time I needed. It will always break my heart to think of what I was going to do to this poor woman who had already been through so much in her young life. But in that moment, I couldn't see that.

I tore out a sheet of paper from a notebook and wrote a heart-breaking note to my family. There are no words that can do justice to the guilt and shame I felt while writing that note, apologizing for my actions as I told them I just couldn't live this way any longer.

I sat on the floor of our little living room in front of a record player, sifting through albums until I found Cat Stevens, one of my mother's favorite singers I had listened to all of my life. I placed it in the record player and struck the needle on "Father and Son". "It's not time to make a change, just relax and take it easy. You're still young, that's your fault, there's so much you have to know...How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again, it's always been the same, the same old story...Now there's a way, and I know, that I have to go away. I know I have to go."

I took enough pills to do the job, sitting next to that record player, my back resting against an arm chair. I placed the note on my chest and sat back, looking out the living room window at the beautiful late afternoon ocean, the sun shining across the blue sky as it slowly sank toward golden hour. I groggily waited for the inevitable.

I will do my best to describe what happened next, though I can honestly say that there really are no words to share something that is completely and profoundly not of this earthly plane. As I looked out over the ocean at what I believed would be my last sunset, something inconceivable began to happen. The sun, or what I thought was the sun, was moving across the sky very fast, directly at me. I didn't understand what was happening. It was as if the sky and ocean and land with rows of houses, including the duplex I was in slipped into the background or another dimension and the sun was not the sun. This all occurred in the blink of an eye but time had no relevance or my ability to experience every aspect of the eternal moment was clearer than anything I've ever had on Earth.

The sun was this massive ball of white light that wasn't blinding at all as I looked right into it. It came flying through the apartment and engulfed me. I can't say that I knew I was no longer in my body but somehow I knew, as I was enveloped in this massive white light orb, that my body was below me. 

I experienced purity. I was basking in pure love, pure peace, true serenity. I felt no pain, only unconditional love.  A kind of love I had never known before. Unconditional acceptance. The light was consciousness itself, intelligence beyond my wildest imagination or understanding, and I was one with it, like a parent cradling a sick child. 

I had returned home and finally felt whole. This was the creator, the source that I understood, to put a limited name on it, to be God. I want to make sure that I state this clearly. I didn't feel forgiveness for what I had attempted to do. It was that I didn't feel there was anything to be forgiven for. Here I was, this 15-year-old boy in so much pain and misery, who felt so much loss and grief, shame and self judgement at such a young age - who felt so hopeless, I couldn't bear this existence any longer and was trying to take my own life, and what I felt was not just unconditional love and grace but the light was grieving with me for the pain I was in.

I touch that feeling today and am instantly overwhelmed with emotion, almost 40 years later. To be held in light with unconditional love and acceptance was already overwhelming, but to have the creator grieve with me, showing me a love that I still don't know in this world, was beyond description. I had never experienced anything like that before, and it was the most real thing I have ever known and all I knew was that I didn't want it to end.

I then felt a voice. The best way to describe it is a vibration emanated from the light into me and I instantly understood it as language. The voice said, "It is not your time." Within those few words I felt a healing love and compassion I had never felt. And then I felt downloaded. Remember that this was 1984 and while we did have computers, they were still very new and the term downloaded was not in our lexicon but I have been explaining it that way to a few people closest to me since it happened. Vibrationally, it felt like a lot of information was being sent into me. On some level I have a knowing of what was given to me but it's as though I can't consciously access it. 

The next thing I knew, I was placed back in my body which I knew was laying on the floor below me, and the light lifted me onto my feet. The voice then told me to quickly go stick my finger down my throat. I didn't think. I just ran into my bathroom, and did what I was told. I threw up all or most of the pills.

I stood in my bedroom, in a daze, still very groggy. I couldn't fight how tired I felt so I laid on my bed and passed out. When I woke it was dark out, later that night. I was disoriented but came out from my room to find my mother in her bedroom. Nothing was said but I was forever changed by that experience. 

I believe that there's a message in my experience for others who have struggled or are struggling with underlying causes and conditions in their lives, with addictions and untreated loss, grief and shame - I was given a gift of meeting source and knowing that through self-compassion, self-forgiveness and self-love, our lives can transform and we can truly raise the consciousness of this world by sharing that same compassion and love with others.  I hope this is of help to others.