Tricia Barker, Life After Near Death Experience Ain’t Always Easy |469|

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Tricia Barker, Life After Near Death Experience Ain’t Always Easy |469|
by Alex Tsakiris | Oct 27 | Near-Death Experience
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Tricia Barker helps Near Death Experiencers deal with the gifts and challenges that come next.
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photo by: Skeptiko
[Clip 00:00:00 – 00:00:27]
That’s from the movie Wonder Woman and I think we have somewhat of a wonder woman today. Tricia Barker has an amazing near-death experience to talk about, but she has so much more to talk about. This is one of those non-linear level three conversations that I so, so enjoy.
Tricia Barker: [00:00:46] And I saw, quickly after that moment and this life review, how the things that mattered the most is when I was peaceful and happy in nature, when I was kind to others, and the thing that I needed to change were exactly those moments. The people that I worked with, who I judged, who actually went home and prayed for me. They were Catholic and they just included me in their prayers. And I thought, wow, their hearts are really lovely, they’re just beautiful people, and it doesn’t matter who they are, like look into the hearts of people, and create a kind environment wherever you go. Like, that may be the most important thing we do, wherever we work, wherever our feet hit the ground, if we’re kind to people around us, then life is going to work better.
And I did not want to leave, that’s when I was like, “Oh, broken body on that operating table. Why don’t we forget about that and why don’t I stay here where I can feel good?”
This voice said, “Look down,” showed me a river and all these souls were covered with either light or darkness. And I knew this to be fear, the darkness was fear, the light was just a consciousness that was connected to God. So we either walk around in fear or we walk around connected to God. It seemed very simple, as if I could tell all the people who had darkness around them, “Hey, just connect to God. It’s that simple.”

(later)
Yeah. so I didn’t really want to go here, but I guess I’ll go here. We live in a porn saturated environment, and little kids are seeing violence as their first exposure, violence against women as their first exposure to porn. Does porn cause rape? No. But does a saturation of it and a continued saturation of it make people see people as objects? Yes. And so it’s dehumanizing. So do Asian men get most of their pornography from the United States? Yes, they do. Are we not having enough conversations about what pornography is doing to the brain? You know, I think there’s a lot of men who want to talk about it, who wants to say, “I want away from it to a degree, I want to real open tantric experience with a woman. I don’t want to end up using virtual reality for the rest of my life and having sex with a screen.”
 
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I think Alex is failing to look at the bigger picture here when discussing Richard Schwartz. I think like Tricia said...things are much simpler on the other side. If we could step back and look at our lives compared to infinity, even the most horrendous events would seem pretty small. However, like Tricia added, we have to show compassion and understanding when people are going through grief. We have to be mindful of our audience and understand that we're all on a journey and are in different stages of learning. If we never truly die, then any event here pretty much doesn't touch us. That's sounds horrible if you have the perspective that this life is all there is but if we understand that this present life is just a blink of an eye of our totality, then we can be free to live our lives without fear.
 
Tricia came across as a wonderfully well grounded individual, who talked in a very direct way about her remarkable NDE.

BTW the Indonesian disaster was caused when an earthquake caused a tsunami. It seemed amazing that David Ditchfield would discuss this subject and not know what had happened!

I hope she will join the forum and talk to us all.

@Alex The link at the top of the page is still not right.

Also, I am a bit confused regarding that little section about the harmful effects of pornography - it didn't seem to fit in with the discussion. At first I thought I was listening to a porn star that had had an NDE.

I think I would agree that there is way too much of it about now. How you gt rid of it is another matter, because as soon as you let the tech companies block it, they get into more general censorship, as we all know right now.

David
 
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I think Alex is failing to look at the bigger picture here when discussing Richard Schwartz. I think like Tricia said...things are much simpler on the other side. If we could step back and look at our lives compared to infinity, even the most horrendous events would seem pretty small. However, like Tricia added, we have to show compassion and understanding when people are going through grief. We have to be mindful of our audience and understand that we're all on a journey and are in different stages of learning. If we never truly die, then any event here pretty much doesn't touch us. That's sounds horrible if you have the perspective that this life is all there is but if we understand that this present life is just a blink of an eye of our totality, then we can be free to live our lives without fear.
Yes, but why then are people subjected to such awful treatment over here? I mean, if it is no big deal, why do people come here to learn how to behave to others in much, much more minor ways?

David
 
Yes, but why then are people subjected to such awful treatment over here? I mean, if it is no big deal, why do people come here to learn how to behave to others in much, much more minor ways?

David
I'm sorry but I don't understand your question.
 
Lovely show.

On the tsunami and its implications:

It's exactly this kind of thing that puts me off the 'life school' theory. Same goes for the amount of pain and suffering that's built straight into nature and it's functioning. Sure, at a meta level, nature is all interdependence and cooperation, but, in the day to day grind, life perpetuates through suffering and death, and it hurts, badly.

Far more existentially satisfying to me is the idea that things weren't meant to be this way.

On purvy shamans and gurus:

Maybe we need to separate being 'enlightened' from having a mastery of spiritual technologies.

Also, perhaps there are kinds of spiritually transformative experiences that mirror some of the hallmarks of the enlightenment experience, even imparting fantastical paranormal abilities, but are not the real thing. I'm thinking here of dodgy gurus.
 
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Lovely show.

On the tsunami and its implications:

It's exactly this kind of thing that puts me off the 'life school' theory. Same goes for the amount of pain and suffering that's built straight into nature and it's functioning. Sure, at a meta level, nature is all interdependence and cooperation, but, in the day to day grind, life perpetuates through suffering and death, and it hurts, badly.

Far more existentially satisfying to me is the idea that things weren't meant to be this way.

Suffering is difficult but I think it allows us to take those difficult experiences and do something great with it. If Tricia didn't go through those experiences, would she be helping kids today? I think suffering actually shows us Oneness in that we're all suffering together, until we're not. The idea of the bodhisattva is a good example of this. I think it's just difficult for us on this side to be intellectually satisfied with how life functions.
 
Thank you for the interview Alex,

I’d like to pick up on the discussion about Ian McCormack:

I think this demonstrates a weak spot in NDE research. Because we know beyond doubt that NDEs are a thing that happen, we are inclined to take seriously any anecdotal account. This leads us to a point where we are seriously discussing how to understand Ian’s experience, absent any real evidence his story is true. I’m not saying he’s lying, I’m just concerned that by taking anecdotes seriously, NDE research becomes open to a small number of fabricators poisoning the well.

It may be that as a matter of course people reporting NDEs should present medical records, not because we necessarily suspect them of lying, but because it stamps out fabrication across the field.


I attempted to set up an interview with Brion Melvin, who has a similar story and also transitioned from atheist to evangelical. He was cordial to begin with but when I sent him my questions I never heard from him again (I later heard him boasting that he ignores people who send him ‘clever’ questions). I find none of these people can face the implications of what they are claiming—that the greater majority of the world go to Hell for all eternity. I don’t think it’s really possible to believe that and remain sane.

If we do accept these kinds of experiences occur, then I think we won’t understand them till we understand the attraction of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. For many people the most powerful and transformative idea they ever encounter is that Jesus Christ died to pay the debt of their sins. This gets into deep themes of justice and forgiveness and I think it is by examining people’s core beliefs around these that we will make progress in understanding why people’s experiences manifest a certain way.
 
It may be that as a matter of course people reporting NDEs should present medical records, not because we necessarily suspect them of lying, but because it stamps out fabrication across the field.
I understand your intention. However, I think you are mistaken. The NDE phenomenon occurs across a wide range of circumstances from severe medical emergency where the brain is totally non-functional, to a healthy person with no medical issues whatsoever. In the latter case for example a mountaineer falling from a great height or a person whether driving or passenger in a vehicle about to experience a crash. These cases are widely reported, going back to the 19th century at least, it in not appropriate to dismiss them all as fraud. Because we cannot dismiss cases with no medical trauma, we can do two things:
1. use our own judgement in assessing such cases.
2. use the occurrence of NDEs without physical trauma as evidence that they are not caused by such sceptical ideas as loss of oxygen or indeed any other material cause.
 
I understand your intention. However, I think you are mistaken. The NDE phenomenon occurs across a wide range of circumstances from severe medical emergency where the brain is totally non-functional, to a healthy person with no medical issues whatsoever. In the latter case for example a mountaineer falling from a great height or a person whether driving or passenger in a vehicle about to experience a crash. These cases are widely reported, going back to the 19th century at least, it in not appropriate to dismiss them all as fraud. Because we cannot dismiss cases with no medical trauma, we can do two things:
1. use our own judgement in assessing such cases.
2. use the occurrence of NDEs without physical trauma as evidence that they are not caused by such sceptical ideas as loss of oxygen or indeed any other material cause.

I'm not sure if I've understood your point correctly, but to be clear I'm not questioning the NDE phenomenon, I'm saying that when we start to examine the meaning of NDEs, individual unverifiable anecdotes taken on disproportionate influence.
 
I'm not sure if I've understood your point correctly, but to be clear I'm not questioning the NDE phenomenon, I'm saying that when we start to examine the meaning of NDEs, individual unverifiable anecdotes taken on disproportionate influence.
We all have our own perspective, yours is ok, However only a small proportion of NDEs are able to be accompanied by certified medical evidence. Even if there was a medical trauma, it may not be documented. I don't see rejecting 99.9% of NDEs (which might be a consequence of your proposal) as a useful or practical way forward.

Look for example at the work of Dr Sam Parnia in the AWARE and AWARE II studies. I highly respect Dr Parnia and applaud his efforts. But it could take decades, perhaps centuries, to accumulate a useful body of material that way. So what do we do in the meantime, while we live out whole lifetimes waiting for results?

More important, as I said, not all NDEs are accompanied by any medical or physical damage. It is important to value these MORE, not less, because they help us to understand the nature of the NDE phenomenon from a different perspective.

In the end, I think the only way forward is for each of us to use our own judgement, certainly I've read NDE accounts which are obviously fraudulent, and others which are just so "far out" that the mind-boggling nature of the experience makes me pause and consider it as maybe just a vivid imagination or creative fiction. In my experience, these represent only a small proportion, maybe 5% or less of the material I've come across. The vast majority tend to be somewhat mundane, rather boring little incidents which people describe. Now I don't mean to do anyone a disservice in describing them that way. Each one is special. But they just don't seem like fabrications whether deliberate or unintentional. There is a vast body of material which just seems to be ordinary people describing their lives. I think we owe it to these large numbers of people to listen to them.
 
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Also, perhaps there are kinds of spiritually transformative experiences that mirror some of the hallmarks of the enlightenment experience, even imparting fantastical paranormal abilities, but are not the real thing. I'm thinking here of dodgy gurus.
yeah that's tricky :)

regarding the tsunami.... I'm just unconvinced by anyone who claims to know the mind of god about such things
 
Thank you for the interview Alex,

I’d like to pick up on the discussion about Ian McCormack:

I think this demonstrates a weak spot in NDE research. Because we know beyond doubt that NDEs are a thing that happen, we are inclined to take seriously any anecdotal account. This leads us to a point where we are seriously discussing how to understand Ian’s experience, absent any real evidence his story is true.

hi richard... I was totally with you right up until the end :-)

I don't think the problem with the anecdotes is "real evidence" I think the problem is understanding the difference between bit dreamlike state of an nde versus the dreamlike state of our consensus reality. I mean, isn't that what we keep hearing over and over --- our mistake is to think that this is something other than a dream?
 
I tend to recoil at the classification of those in the God --or Love--camp and those in the fear camp. Surely the former feel fear.
I read Ramakrishna's bio and he chronicled his journey of feeling human emotions and then healing them (with divine help).
The great Rumi revealed that he felt fear whenever bandits attacked--but he said this drove him back to his practices.

In my earlier life I came upon New Agers who made this Love-fear distinction all the time, and it seemed to me to be awfully simplistic, and phony holy. Then I came upon the Jungians, who talked about the Shadow. Marion Woodman talked about the cellar below the cellar, and all the baggage that is down that deep--and of how much fear is felt in taking it on.
 
I tend to recoil at the classification of those in the God --or Love--camp and those in the fear camp. Surely the former feel fear.
I read Ramakrishna's bio and he chronicled his journey of feeling human emotions and then healing them (with divine help).
The great Rumi revealed that he felt fear whenever bandits attacked--but he said this drove him back to his practices.

In my earlier life I came upon New Agers who made this Love-fear distinction all the time, and it seemed to me to be awfully simplistic, and phony holy. Then I came upon the Jungians, who talked about the Shadow. Marion Woodman talked about the cellar below the cellar, and all the baggage that is down that deep--and of how much fear is felt in taking it on.
That's the point Tricia is making...PEOPLE complicate things. On the other side it's much simpler. Obviously it's more complicated here bc human emotions and feelings are all over the place, from our programming. Over there, we would understand how short our individual lives are and could see the bigger picture. This idea of love and fear is everywhere in the literature... NDEs and OBEs. It may sound too simplistic to us bc we can't handle simple things... we're not taught that.
 
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