Near Death Experience

Thursday, August 1, 2013: 

One of the most important revelations of the near-death experience is how it transforms the lives of those who have been through it. One man said:

            “I was transformed from a man who was lost and wandering aimlessly, with no goal in life other than a desire for material wealth, to someone who had a deep motivation, a purpose in life, a definite direction, and an overwhelming conviction that there would be a reward at the end of my life. My interest in material wealth and greed for possessions were replaced by a thirst for spiritual understanding and a passionate desire to see world conditions to improve.”

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Please, these observations are just that… not preaching; not soliciting sympathy; not an argument of any kind that is meant to contradict anyone else’s experience. I am simply laying out how it happens for more than a few of us.

My first near death experience happened when I was twenty-one. Years before then I had, at one time, many of the spiritual ideals the Rinpoche speaks of but, disillusioned (while serving in the Navy), I was lost to the despair of alcoholism. The near-death experience I had did nothing to change where I was going with my life except to sink further into my addictions after taking several stabs at spirituality. It was only after a direct experience with the Heart of Compassion that I was able to change and to build a life. When the life I had worked so hard to create fell apart, I had my second near-death experience. Instead of drawing my heart closer, I was driven further into the morass of desperation… having had faith and lost it. It took over a decade of wandering in the wilderness to get grounded once more. But this had little or nothing to do with any sort of near-death experience except by default.

I say this not to contradict the Rinpoche, but, because I have found that alcoholics and addicts are not unfamiliar with death nor do they fear or are changed by it in the way that “normal” folks are. It doesn’t necessarily work universally, or as smoothly, as any sane person would suppose. I have heard from more than a few addicts say that they could hardly wait to get out of the I.C.U. from an overdose to score another bag of whatever it was that got them there. For us, near-death experiences, sabotaging careers, abandoning families and friends, and losing all material possessions, isn’t enough to stop us.

Hitting bottom has nothing to do with losing any of those things because an alcoholic or an addict has no attachment strong enough to replace what is gotten by that momentary relief from despair their drug of choice provides. Hitting bottom is for us an inside job. The incomprehensible demoralization… the humiliation… these are what drives most of us to our knees. Getting any of those things back is not what rescues us either. It is only surrender… the surrender of humility and the grace of a loving God that has any chance of changing our lives.

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