Jules
New
Unfortunately, I'm still stuck on "is this really happening?"
Years ago I had friends who thought that it was only how we perceived alien abductions that made them negative. This seemed ridiculous to me. So someone kidnaps you and then does invasive surgeries and that's benign? A friend of mine used to tell a joke in which an alien abducts you, gets you on the table, inserts an anal probe, and then says, "Can I talk to you about Amway?"
The fact is, though, I just don't know enough and shouldn't be closed to Rodwell's position. I really appreciated what Alex said about NDEs, how it's patently obvious that they are loving--I had been thinking that all through the show. Yet there is parallel to Rodwell's position even there. NDE researcher Kenneth Ring wrote a 1994 article in the Journal of Near-Death Studies titled, “Solving the Riddle of Frightening Near-Death Experiences: Some Testable Hypotheses and a Perspective Based on A Course in Miracles.” There, he attempted to explain "inverted" NDEs--experiences that contained the classical elements but are pervaded by fear--as a fear reaction to a naturally pleasurable experience:
"If you are still clinging to your little island of make-believe, your ego, when you enter into death, you will experience its own fear, perhaps to the point of terror. If you can let go, however…you will find yourself one with the Infinite Light of Life."
As the last part of the quote says, if someone can let go of their egoic attachments in an "inverted" NDE, the experience will then "convert" back to the more typical pleasurable NDE.
On the other hand, I know a man who had abduction experiences from a young age. Then, when an abduction episode began to unfold after many years of nothing, he found himself shouting out "I am of the family of Jesus Christ!" This surprised him as it was not his language nor the way he thought about things. However, the experience immediately stopped and never happened again. Whatever the truth is, he himself clearly saw the abductors not as his real family, but as acting contrary to the family of Jesus of which he's part.
Thanks for these comments. I am really over the - if you had a negative NDE then you must have done something wrong - type view. From my own experience and from the experience of many "light workers" I know (to use the New Age vernacular), having experienced moments of utter terror as well as "the bliss" is the norm. I don't for a minute think its an artifact of our psychology. If we are ultimately to come to an understanding of these phenomena we can't start from a "wish list" of possible scenarios to explain them. Yes, its true that you can reconcile the experience but that doesn't make it go away. The theological predisposition of us culturally and innately needs to be understood. We all want to believe in the good guys, the beings of light. But the models need to take account of the fact that most of us have encountered bad stuff too. I don't have a model yet but I know both the darkness and the light have been my teachers. I consider them both as being part of the duality of existence.
Jules