I was driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike from western Massachusetts to Boston in a borrowed car. I was an inexperienced driver. I was accelerating in the left-hand lane up an incline to pass a school bus, when suddenly the bus pulled out in front of me. I reacted by slamming my foot on the brakes, and lost control of the car. In a frantic effort at regaining control, I grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it around, causing the car to swerve all over the highway. I could see drivers in other cars out of the corner of my eye looking concerned as they slowed to avoid me. I began to panic and realized I had lost control…that this was the end. My panic increased and suddenly left me entirely. My vision blacked out.

I felt lifted out of the car--over the scene-- and then felt an overwhelming sense of love and homecoming. I thought, "So this is the end of this particular chapter." I felt elements of my identity drop away from me one by one--blond, tall, female, and violinist. I realized that in the life just lived I had forgotten the truth of who I really was; I was returning to that truth, and felt glad. I thought of my parents with regret, realizing how devastated they would be, but then I felt the comforting knowledge that they, too would come to know the truth at some point, and that it was not really that long a time.

I wish I could say that this comfort and serenity stayed with me forever after, but it wasn't the case. I suffered from PTSD and to this day have a phobia about driving on highways (for which I am now being treated with EMDR). However, I have been interested in mysticism all my life, and last year began an intensive meditation practice.