A Seattle IANDS Near-Death Experience Story

The Walls Came Down by Kyle Crafton

The parts of my life that help explain why I reacted as I did to my near-death experience go back to a couple of incidents in my early life in the church. As a youngster I was pretty seriously involved in the church my family belonged to. Communion had drawn me strongly as a sacred act in which I wanted to participate. One day when I asked if I could attend I was told that I didn't qualify. I hadn't attended enough classes, nor had I gone through the required levels of understanding. I was crushed. I felt that I wasn't good enough to commune with God. In turn this led me to feel a great sense of exclusion from God's sanctuary. Although I still attended church, something changed that day.

When I was 14, I was attempting to make it through a "confirmation" process. At the same time, just to confuse things a bit, my grandfather, who was one-half Crow Indian, was sharing with me his understandings of life. It was the 1970's, and I had grown really long hair, which my sister used to braid for me. My confirmation teachers strongly hinted that wearing my hair in this way was not what a good Christian did. Rather than stopping me, however, these remarks sparked a rebelliousness that prompted me to even add feathers to my braids.

One day in confirmation class my teachers told me directly that my ancestors were Godless heathens until the Spanish came. My anger overflowed and I decided there was nothing I could learn from these people. So I quit. In my eyes these were small-minded people hanging onto small ideas. But my life changed. Until then life had been great and made sense, from that time on everything got very ugly. Through the rest of my high school years I became more and more angry. I became a drug and alcohol user, and started practicing the martial arts, not for the art, but as a way of taking out my anger on people.

At 18 I joined the Army. I was good at my job, so it was easy to conclude that that was what I was meant to do. I wasn't in long, though, before I became aware of all the problems the Vietnam vets were carrying around. Not wanting to be like them, I left the service the first chance I got. I didn't realize, though, that in some ways I was worse off than they were. They were the way they were because of Vietnam. I, on the other hand, had turned into a cold, angry person out of choice. I wanted to be that way. I continued my martial arts practice and was spending three or four days per week at the rifle range. I really wanted nothing to do with people emotionally.

After the Army I worked for an industrial company for about six months. Bored with the work, though, I decided to return to the Service. At least I sensed I fit in there. On a Friday I went to a recruiters office and requested all the paper work for re-entry. The following Tuesday my hand was cut off at work in a hydraulic press. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was a blessing in disguise.

My hand was reattached and for years I had additional surgeries and therapy done to it. At this time not only was I still an angry person, but I was withdrawing from people even more because I concluded no one could possibly know what I was going through inside.

Three years after that injury I met my wife. Why she wanted anything to do with me I'm still not sure. But I've talked to her since about this and she has said that she could see a good side to me. Apparently that surfaced once in a while.

We waited about four years and then had our first child. The morning she was born I was right there watching the whole thing. It was like getting hit with a tidal wave of emotions. I was standing there bawling like an idiot. I had no idea why. Within about a day, however, the walls went back up.

It was real easy to convince myself that anything my daughter needed she could get from her mom. So I just removed myself from any emotional attachment to my daughter. I could hug my daughter, and I loved her; but I wasn't going to outwardly show any kind of emotion to anyone.

Then in 1989, I had a simple surgical operation that removed masses of scar tissue from my hand. Later that night it started to hurt to the point where it was excruciating. Ever since my initial injury with my hand I had gotten used to blocking the pain in it, but for some reason, after this operation, every inch of my body was screaming. I put in a call for my nurse, and when she and a doctor arrived he prescribed some morphine. It must have been a pretty substantial dose because the nurse seemed a bit shocked. After they gave me the injection, though, nothing happened. Nothing. Then the pain got worse. After waiting a while I called the nurse again for help. But in the meantime my nurse had gone to lunch and another nurse had come on shift. She came into my room, and unaware that I had already received one shot, saw the doctor's prescription and gave me a second shot of morphine.

Immediately, I slipped into what seemed like a coma. It was a great feeling, like being so tired that you could throw yourself onto a pile of rocks and go to sleep. The next thing I recall is noticing that I was sitting on the foot of my bed--looking out into the hallway. I didn't even realize that I was out of my body at that point. I was just sitting on the bed, noticing how dark the hospital seemed--even with all the lights on.

Then my regular nurse returned from lunch and walked into my room. I remember sitting there, laughing to myself because this woman was so physically tiny. She walked in confidently as though everything was under control. However, somehow I was able to feel all her emotions and knew she was extremely panicky. I watched as she tried calming down my wife and told her to keep talking to me.

What threw me at first was that when I looked at my physical body I didn't recognize it, because it wasn't exactly like the mirror image of me I had come to know. This situation struck me as being extremely funny, and I was feeling so good that I couldn't have cared less about my body in the bed.

Then I got up. For some reason I had gotten a fix on the lights down the hallway. Staring into the hospital I saw darkness and gloom, and like a moth I was drawn toward those lights. I stood up from the bed and started to take a couple of steps. Then it seemed that I was in three places at once. I was still in the hospital room looking down the hall. My body was still on the bed. But my consciousness now was also in an underground parking garage. There was a man down there who seemed to be in his 50's. He had jet black hair and I could feel that he was in extreme pain because of a back injury. I could tell that he was working because of financial problems and I felt incredible sorrow for this guy. I knew he was working himself to death.

The next thing I knew I was completely immersed in darkness. It was so dark that it was beyond imagining...solid blackness. I didn't feel as though I'd gone a great distance, but had just taken a step sideways into the darkness, like going through a doorway. My sense was that this darkness had always been there, right next to our world, but that we don't know about it. This had no evil, tainted feel to it, though. I was relaxed and in a state of great peace.

I was also aware of the sound of chimes. Oddly, I didn't hear these chimes, I felt them. This was more intense than hearing. The feeling I got from them was of a warm refreshing summer day with a slight breeze blowing. This may be hard to believe, but my consciousness, even then, was capable of sarcasm, and I thought, "Oh, great, elevator music."

Off in the distance, I saw a pinpoint of white light. It was coming toward me, but with such subtlety that I couldn't tell it was moving until it completely enveloped me. It felt like I was floating in a semi-reclined sitting position when the light enveloped me. Then I realized that it was more like being held, as though I was a child.

The Light was so brilliant that I put my left "arm" over my eyes. I was shocked that this didn't make any difference. The Light went right through my arm. The Light went right through me. With some panic I thought that this Light was so intense that I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I'd vaporize or disintegrate. Somehow It must have known this because It softened.

I had a feeling of being naked which went beyond physical nakedness. It was like God was seeing through me and knew me better than I knew me. It was like being complete. There wasn't anything to hide any more because I was all known. Every thought, every nuance, every crazy aspect of me was out there, all known. God knew it, I knew it, and it was all accepted, unconditionally accepted. I felt complete, entire, in a way I've never felt. And while I was myself, I was also part of the One. In relationships with people there are limits to intimacy; this was a feeling of intimacy where there were no limits.

I strained to look into the center of that Light, which was above me and to my left, as though I should recognize something. There was a strong sense that I should keep trying, trying desperately to see what was in the center of that Light. Then I got a feeling that was almost like words that seemed to say: "I know it is hard to be human, so just rest a while." I gave in to the rapture of my condition. I was still in a semi-reclined state as though someone was holding me. I just let go and soaked it all up.

I got the definite sense that there is no time in that other realm, and peculiar as this may sound, however long the Universe has been changing, be that 5 billion or 10 billion years, these periods of time only have meaning for us. It means nothing in those other dimensions.

At some point, I remember looking down at my thighs and being shocked. For years I'd worked out, never achieving the development to my legs or arms I had wanted. Now when I looked down at them they were the way I had always wanted them to be! I knew that the legs I was looking at weren't literally physical legs. In some way they were made out of light, golden light, and they glowed. Then it dawned on me that what I was seeing was somehow an extension of what I wanted. I remember noticing how my tattoos and scars stood out vividly. I noticed that every scar felt warm and that my legs felt warm.

But by way of contrast the sensation of being enveloped in Light was a warmth way beyond even trying to explain. I remember soaking this up, laughing to myself and thinking, "How could you ever feel this kind of warmth?" It was so intense that I imagined myself sitting by a fireplace, wearing a robe, and four sweaters and drinking a cup of coffee with a big pair of fuzzy slippers on. But I realized that wouldn't really do it. It was just a different kind of warmth.

I was confused because I couldn't understand how you could have warmth without heat, and perhaps I was also confused because I wasn't really a warm person at that point in my life. Since then I have come to realize that that warmth was actually compassion. I was basking in compassion. Even "compassion" is inadequate to describe what held me. When we say a word, there are limits we have in mind on what that word can mean. This was "compassion", but it was also so far beyond the limits of that word that I cannot explain it even today. What I know is that in God's Vastness, God Cared. I was overwhelmed and I laughed and I gave into the love around me.

The whole time this was going on, I could hear my wife. Except that it wasn't her voice I heard. Instead I was hearing her feelings...all her anxiety and all her fear. This was very painful to hear/feel. I just wanted her to stop because somehow it was preventing me from going on, and I didn't want to return to my body. And where was I, the me, in the midst of this? Perhaps I was in two places simultaneously, because my wife's voice sounded to me as though it was thousands of miles away. But it also sounded like it was right next to me. I could experience her feelings...f.o.r.e.v.e.r... There's nothing I can compare this to.

Just before returning to my body I went through extreme teeth clenching, gut wrenching disappointment with myself. I was looking at the previous twenty years of my life. I re-experienced how I had mistreated people out of my mistaken belief that people had no value. This was horrible to go through.

Then, almost six hours after it began, I remember myself slamming back into my body and it was a physically painful experience, like being crushed into a little box that you can't fit into. This was all so startling that I immediately sat up in bed. I still had residual feelings of disappointment with myself. "Well, I'm back here now," I remember thinking. I was angry toward my wife because I thought she was the reason I was back, and I didn't want to be back! I was disappointed beyond explanation to open my eyes and realize I had returned. The pain of returning lingered for probably a minute. At that point what I had gone through was so vivid that there was absolutely no doubt in my mind about what had happened to me. Within about five minutes, however, I had managed to rationalize the entire experience away. Then I very successfully sublimated the whole thing. It had immediately challenged everything that I knew and everything that I was. It had to go.

For roughly five years I was on sort of a roller coaster ride. Much of that time I was angry and disgusted with people, the "normal" me. But other times I would turn the tables and get real severe with myself and ask, "Why was I being so hard on those people?" Then I'd wonder, "Where did that come from? I've been angry with people practically all my life. Why should I start caring now?" I went back and forth frequently, not understanding what was happening to me. During that time my daughter was the only one who was able to bring my wall down a bit. When she was sick she wanted to be held, and I'd walk her in the hallway all night. Other than her, I didn't want anybody too close to me, not even my wife. I don't know how she was able to put up with it.

For the five years following my near-death experience I pretty much succeeded in keeping the experience at bay. Although it kept trying to intrude into my awareness, it was fairly easy not to acknowledge it. Somewhere inside I knew that if it returned to my consciousness, my NDE would confront me with the falseness and irresponsibility of my life. These were all issues I wanted to avoid, so I stuffed the NDE away somewhere. It was almost as though I buried it under a heap of the familiar understandings of what I thought I was.

That worked until April of 1994, when my wife and I had a son. On the morning he was baptized, we were standing up in front of our church. As the baptism took place I suddenly felt like I'd been hit by a tidal wave of memories as everything I'd gone through in my near-death experience came flooding back through me. It was all I could do to keep from crying right there in front of everyone.

I found I was no longer able to live in my non-emotional exile. The walls came down and I started feeling everything more. My spiritual life opened up and began to grow. For about a month I felt really alone with these new memories of my death, thinking that I couldn't tell anybody about them, even my wife. Finally I decided to open up to the pastor of our church about them. I wasn't too sure how he'd react, but for some reason I felt that I could do this. What I didn't realize was that studying Near-death Experiences was one of his hobbies. Telling him was like getting rid of a thousand pounds off my shoulders. So when I got home I decided to tell my wife as well about my NDE. I began by sharing with her how it seemed like her voice was in my experience the whole time, drawing me back. "Don't you remember?" I asked. "You were there." As soon as my wife looked at me, as though I'd slipped off the deep end, I dropped it and didn't tell her anything more.

Then about three months later, my wife and I were shopping at a Fred Meyer and I decided to wander over to the hardware section. As I was taking a short cut past a little book section, I noticed Betty Eadie's book Embraced by the Light. "Naw," I thought, "I don't really want to buy it. I think I want to just kind of hang onto my own experience." So I walked around the store four or five times, came right back, bought the book, and went home and read it. It was great, because I realized then that maybe I wasn't insane.

Perhaps a month later I drove out to an archery range where I practice regularly. As I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a religious book store nearby that had been there forever, but which for some reason I'd never seen before. Then the thought came to me to walk on over and see what they carried. There were two big glass doors in front and as soon as I walked up to them I looked through and for some reason focused on a book way at the back of the shop. Moved by something I don't quite understand, I opened the door and made a bee line for that book. Luckily I had enough money for it; I got back in my car, forgot about the archery range, and drove home and read the book that night. The book was about the life of Jesus.

At this point in my life I wasn't sure any more about what to believe in and what not to believe in. All I knew was that there was something very awesome out there. I read all that night and began to make more of a connection with The Man. But what it felt like was that He was actually right there with me, while I was reading. Something unusual was happening because I was able to read more into that book than was really there, which provided me with a clearer sense of who He was and some of His intentions. As a kid I'd had to read material wrapped up in dogma and church stuff that I couldn't relate to. I had been raised to believe Jesus was a serious, devout Jewish man, but that was almost a two dimensional image. From that book, and whatever guidance I received, I gained a greater understanding of Him as a person who worked hard, something I could identify with. One of the most profound things that came to me immediately that night was that He was also bold, a rebel who had a real sense of humor.

About 11:00 that night, sitting in my little chair in my reading room, I nodded off. I woke up about 3:00 in the morning with the sensation that somebody's hand was on my head, except that nobody was there!

Suddenly pictures and images, some of which I had seen previously in my near-death experience came floating into my mind. Probably the first thing communicated to me was that in some form:

We have always been.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I wondered. Bewildered, and almost overwhelmed, I got up and sort of stumbled into the rec. room. My wife had left the TV on, and it was showing a program on astronomy. As soon as I walked into the room, I heard the program narrator say that:

Energy never dissipates and never dies. It only changes form.

"That happened to me!" I exclaimed. I was stunned. It was like someone had hit me over the head with a shovel. More pictures started coming into my mind.

I was shown a picture of the creation, dominated by a "huge" representation of God as children might understand Him to be, looking very much like Zeus of ancient Greece. But this was almost a chalk-board rendition, shown to me as a symbol of God, an illustration made for instructive purposes, and I was very much the student watching this. Although this was just a drawing in the Universe, it was extremely vivid - a hyper real drawing. By "huge" I mean that this drawn image was vaster than you can possibly conceive of. Imagine looking at a figure larger then the Universe. This is what I was gazing at. Him, alone, nothing else. This is how it all began.

Then I saw this enormous Being cut off His little finger. That, I "knew", represented His creation of all things spiritual. He cut off another finger and, again, I "knew" that this represented the creating of all things physical. After about a week it dawned on me that I had been shown that all of us physically and spiritually are a part of God. We are not the horrible, wretched lowly mortals I was taught to believe we are in my early church education.

In the midst of all these images, another communication I recall being given to me was:

When you look in the mirror, you're not who you really think you are.

Though this may not seem profound, this has, since that time, caused me to totally re-examine my understanding of who and what I am. I was also told, if you want to call it that, that:

You are born into a world of adversity and it is meant to be that way. If there wasn't adversity, there would be no reason to be born here.

The next couple of days at work I was absolutely useless. I ended up taking some vacation time because I found I was just sitting at my desk staring at the computer screen. New thoughts about eternity, my immortality and God kept moving through me. Nor did it seem that I would be allowed to stray far from these awarenesses. New stuff kept jarring me. A few days later, for example, I happened to be watching a television program about the Book of Thomas. The program talked about how this book is considered to be a "lost gospel" by some experts, although it also mentioned that when Constantine was the emperor of Rome, the Book of Thomas was examined and determined to be non-biblical. Then they read a few passages from the Book of Thomas, including this one, which startled me:

In Heaven was where we were created, and Heaven is where we will all return.

Here I was, watching this program that was, in a way, talking about me, and I was in awe of how things fall into place. When I look back over the last 25 years of my life and consider the things I wrote off as silly coincidences, I now don't believe any of them were coincidences. Somehow they all fit together. They happened for a reason, to get me where I am right now. Even the time I spent in the Service, a time when I was angry with people in general, has given me a perspective most people don't have. Somehow it all fits together. To have come out of that anger has been a challenge. I feel really sorry for those who are still trapped in it. Unfortunately, a lot of people are. But what I have gained in this journey I would never give back.

The things I saw and sensed the night I read about Jesus, and the days following, were like pieces to a puzzle, except that initially they didn't match up. With time, however, I've found that these pieces are slowly fitting together.

Finally, because of the flood of memories that came back to me during my son's baptism, I was forced to take the painful look that I'd been putting off for years, a painful look at me. I had known from the time I had had my NDE that I had to do this. What I saw hurt. It hurt a lot. When you look in the mirror and you realize that the way you've been leading your life goes against the nature of who you really are, and what you really are, and that you've wasted a lot of years, well, it hurts deeply.

I will add that while I am ashamed of many of the things I have done in my life, I know that as a result of those incidents I have learned valuable lessons. Those learnings, in fact, may be some of my most important. This causes me to return to my awe of a Creation that has woven into it so much caring, hope and support for us, that even when we've walked down the wrong path, we still are given opportunities to stop, to turn things around and to grow out of wherever we've wandered.

It took me almost six years to come to grips with the entirety of my near-death experience and the other spiritual experiences that followed. Even simple things like trees have become different. Trees were always green, but now they're greener. The sky is even bluer. The way I view other people, though, is probably the most profound difference in my life. Since I was 13 or 14 years old I have never had patience with anyone. After my near-death experience this changed markedly. Now my wife tells me at least four or five times a week how different I am. It doesn't seem dramatic to me, but I guess outwardly the people who are closest to me have noticed a big difference.

One of the things I've noticed in myself is that ever since my near-death experience I can express love more easily. But the love I feel now is hard to explain. From it, or because of it, I realize how important my children are, far more so than I am myself. Then it just kind of snowballs. I'm able to show love a lot more openly to my wife. And toward the people I care for showing affection has also become a lot easier. But I still struggle. I spent so many years pushing people away from me that I made it difficult for myself to be really open or close to people.

When I reflect on my near-death experience and its lessons, and I think this is true for men more so than women, I realize that our perceptions of the world are often deceptive. For instance, what we judge to be strength is usually weakness. I had always clung to this idea of strength being outward strength. Then I came to grips with the fact that I was using outer strength to hide a lot of my pain. There is so much about this subject and it's inner complexities that it's hard to put into words. What was awesome, though, was when I realized the opposite -- that what we often perceive as weakness -- love, is actually strength.

I have had a variety of spiritual experiences including some that have their roots, I am sure, in my Native American ancestry. My grandfather, being Crow, hung onto a little bit of what his mother had told him. Since he lived in Texas, I didn't see him a whole lot. When I did I was impressed that this was a man who had dropped out of school in the fifth grade, but who knew about life. So I always was a little torn between his Native American understandings and the church's.

I was torn until my near-death experience, that is, which enabled me to see that both traditions fit together like pieces to a larger puzzle. An example of this large perspective is a TV program I saw recently that pitted creationism against evolution. What I could see, based on the experience I had gone through, was that both of these theories were correct, and actually fit together like meshing gears. One explains what took place. But it doesn't explain what made it take place.

My enlarged awareness, gained from my near-death experience, is that all spiritual teachings from around the world, whether you're talking Native American, Catholic or otherwise, fall a bit short, but do contain elements of truth. I've observed many people discard all spiritual teachings, except for a single one they embrace. But if I fit all spiritual teachings together carefully, I end up with a larger picture that begins to have a wholeness I find quite awesome.

I think one of the things that holds back people's spiritual growth is fear, in particular the fear of other spiritual paths. However, when I recollect the NDE I had, I know that God, or whatever name we wish to call It, is vaster than our understanding will ever be capable of grasping, that God is beyond a single path, and that if your primary goal is to establish a closer relationship with God, that there's no way you can go wrong. My recommendation is to let go of your fear. Trust that which is Greater, which Loves us, to help you find It, although, in addition, I would find myself asking for help in creating that spiritual relationship. Occasionally, I also encounter people who have an intense desire to find the faith that is the Right faith, so that they can be right. Unfortunately, I think this has a tendency to lead to self righteousness.

Somehow, into the Big composite picture of all faiths and beliefs fits an experience I had a few summers ago. When I was a kid, my grandfather talked a lot about how certain animals were messengers. I honestly wasn't sure how much I believed this. But on this day, a few Julys back, I had been working in my back yard digging out a large terraced area. I had been out there all day so I was feeling hot, sweaty and exhausted, but good. In recent years I had still been overwhelmed with all the near-death stuff I'd gone through. On this day though it was almost like the world made sense again.

It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a large crow sitting on a chain link fence not far from me. I didn't pay it any attention but kept working, because crows are all over the neighborhood. Then it dawned on me that this crow was very big, and I stopped and looked up. He was huge. He just stared at me, from less than ten feet away. Not knowing what to do, I turned to go back to my work when it was as though I heard a voice. I don't know if it was something this bird actually said to me, or if it was just something that came into my head, but what was communicated to me with great force and urgency was, "Kyle, help!" I was shocked. My wife was at the kitchen window, which was open, and I glanced quickly at her to see what her reaction was to this, but it was obvious she hadn't heard it. It had been conveyed to me some other way. I couldn't comprehend this. This didn't make any sense. My immediate reaction was, "No, I don't think so."

He flew from the fence, heading toward the east. I ran up onto my deck to follow him and I could see he was still going east. He didn't stop at any trees. He didn't land anywhere else. He just kept going in a straight line until he disappeared out of sight. To this day I am still affected profoundly by this experience. Those words were crystal clear. I know this happened. What I don't know is what it means. What am I supposed to "help"? That started my search, and "helping" has become more a part of my life.

You live in a world like ours, where problems are everywhere, and you ask, "Where can I begin to help?" or "What should I help?" Perhaps the answers don't come out of thinking, or an analytical process. Perhaps we should allow our hearts to speak about these things to us. I think the Creation talks to us as well, that it's still unfolding, still happening, and that we can turn away and hide from it, or we can become a full playing member and get involved.

Sometimes I think that animal was talking to all of us.

TO ALL CREATION

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GIFTS OF LIFE.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO FIND REASSURANCE IN THE DIFFICULTIES THAT THIS WORLD CAN BRING.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO FIND MEANING IN JOY AND SORROW.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO FEEL FOR A YOUNG RABBI WHO LIVED LONG AGO.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO SEE THE VOID THAT LIES WITHIN ALL.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO SEE HIS WORD ENGRAVED UPON YOUR SOUL.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO WALK UPON HIGH.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO HAVE AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST TO REVEL IN HIS LIGHT.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS INTENSITY BEYOND A SUPER NOVA, AND THE GENTLENESS OF A DOWN FEATHER DRIFTING ON NEW FALLEN SNOW.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO KNOW AWESOMENESS LIES BEYOND THE HUMAN IMAGINATION.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO SEE THE MOMENT BEFORE CREATION.

TO TOUCH THE FACE OF GOD IS TO SEE THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF OUR "DAD".

KYLE CRAFTON

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