Today, I am excited to feature an incredible near-death experience story by Barbara Harris Whitfield. Barbara’s profound journey from atheism to experiencing divine love during her NDE offers a transformative perspective on life, spirituality, and the power of unconditional love.
Name: Barbara Harris Whitfield
Age: 81
Location: Florida
Barbara’s Story:
No Wonder. No Wonder. No Wonder.
Even though I had been an atheist for years, I felt God’s love. This love was holding me. It felt incredible. There are no words in the English language, or maybe in this reality, to explain the kind of love God emanates. God was totally accepting of everything we — God and I — reviewed in my life.
In every scene of my life review, I could feel again what I had felt at various times in my life. And I could feel everything that everyone else had felt as a consequence of my presence and my actions. Some of it felt good and some of it felt awful. All of this translated into knowledge, and I learned. Oh, how I learned!
The information was flowing at an incredible speed that probably would have burned me up if it hadn’t been for the extraordinary Energy holding me. The information came in, and then love neutralized my judgments against myself. In other words, throughout every scene I viewed, information flowed through me about my perceptions and feelings, and the perceptions and feelings of every person who had shared those scenes with me. No matter how I judged myself in each interaction, being held by God was the bigger interaction. God interjected love into everything, every feeling, every bit of information about absolutely everything that went on, so that everything was all right. There was no good and no bad. There was only me — and my loved ones from this life — trying to survive… just trying to be.
I realize now that without God holding me, I would not have had the strength to experience what I did. When it started, God and I were merging. We became one, so that I could see through God’s eyes and feel through God’s heart.
Together, we witnessed how severely I had treated myself because that was the behavior shown and taught to me as a child. I realized that the only big mistake I had made in my thirty-two years of life was that I had never learned to love myself.
God let me into God’s experience of all this. I felt God’s memories of these scenes through God’s eyes. I could sense God’s divine intelligence, and it was astonishing. God loves us and wants us to wake up to our real selves, to what is important. I realized that God wants us to know that we only experience real pain if we die without living first. And the way to live is to give love to ourselves and to others. It seems that we are here to learn to give and receive love. But only when we heal enough to be real can we understand and give and receive love the way love was meant to be.
When God holds us in our life reviews and we merge into One, we remember this feeling as being limitless. God is limitless. God’s capacity to love is never-ending. God’s love for us never changes, no matter how we are. God doesn’t judge us either. During our life review, we judge ourselves by feeling the love we have created in other’s lives. We also feel the pain we have caused in other’s lives. This may be a kind of Cosmic Equalizer. I did not see an old man with a white beard who sits in judgment of us. I only felt limitless divine love.
God only gives. God interjected love into all the scenes of my life to show me God’s reality. And the most amazing part of all is that God held nothing back. I understood all that God understood. God let me in. God shared all of God’s self with me: all the qualities of gentleness and openness, and all the gifts, including our own empowerment and peace. I never knew that much loving intelligence and freedom could exist.
At this point, God and I were merging into one Sacred Person. It felt as though I lifted off the circle bed and We went to the baby I was seeing to my upper left in the darkness. Picture the baby being in a bubble; that bubble was in the center of a cloud of thousands and thousands of bubbles. In each bubble was another scene from my life. As we moved toward the baby, it was as though we were bobbing through the bubbles. At the same time, there was a linear sequence in which we relived thirty-two years of my life. I could hear myself saying, “No wonder, no wonder.” I now believe my “no wonders” meant “No wonder you are the way you are now. Look what was done to you when you were a little girl.”
My mother had been dependent on prescription drugs, angry and abusive, and my father wasn’t home much of the time and did little to intervene. I saw all this again, but I did not see it in little bits and pieces, the way I had remembered it as an adult. I saw and experienced it just as I had lived it at the time it first happened. Not only was I me, I was also my mother, my dad, and my brother. We were all one. Just as I had felt everything my grandmother had felt, I now felt my mother’s pain and neglect from her childhood. She wasn’t trying to be mean. She didn’t know how to be loving or kind. She didn’t know how to love. She didn’t understand what life is really all about. And she was still angry from her own childhood, angry because they were poor and because her father was sick almost every day until he died when she was eleven. And then she was angry because he had left her. She didn’t know what to do with her anger so she gave it to my brother and me. Her anger boiled up all the time and then she physically abused us or she made us listen to all her resentments. Her list went back to her early childhood. Everyone had hurt her. I don’t think that she, through her numbness and drugged state, understood how she was doing the same thing to us.
Everything came flooding back, including my father’s helplessness and confusion at stopping the insanity. I could hear myself saying, “No wonder, no wonder.” And then the benevolent Energy that was holding me held me tighter and with even more love.
We continued watching my mother in pain, always seeing doctors and always receiving prescription painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquilizers. My only feeling during this time was loneliness. I saw myself down on my knees by the side of my bed, praying for a doctor to help my mother. I saw how I had given up “myself” in order to survive. I forgot that I was a child. I became my mother’s mother. I suddenly knew that my mother had had the same thing happen to her in her childhood. She took care of her father, and as a child she gave herself up to take care of him. As children, she and I both became anything and everything others needed.
As my life review continued, I also saw my mother’s Soul, how painful her life was, how lost she was. And I saw my father and how he put blinders on himself to avoid his grief over my mother’s pain and to survive. In my life review, I saw that they were good people caught in helplessness. I saw their beauty, their humanity and their needs that had gone unattended to in their own childhoods. I loved them and understood them. We may have been trapped, but we were still Souls connected in our dance of life by an Energy source that had created us.
This was when I first realized that we do not end at our skin. We are all in this big churning mass of consciousness. We are each a part of this consciousness we call God. And we are not just human. We are Spirit. We were Spirit before we came into this lifetime. We are all struggling Spirits now, trying to get “being human” right. And when we leave here, we will be pure Spirit again.
As my life review continued, I got married and had my own children and saw that I was on the edge of repeating the cycle that I had experienced as a child. I was on prescription drugs. I was in the hospital. I was becoming like my mother. And at the same time, this Loving Energy we call God was holding me and let me into Its experience of all this. I felt God’s memories of these scenes through God’s eyes, just as I had through my grandmother’s eyes.
As my life unfolded, I witnessed how severely I had treated myself because that was the behavior shown and taught to me as a child. I realized that the only big mistake I had made in my life was that I had never learned to love myself. And then I was back here, in this reality.
How did your NDE/OBE change your perspective on life and death (and reincarnation if applicable)?
Next year will be my 50th anniversary of my NDE. I still remember it as clearly as when it happened. Its values have ruled my life just as strongly today as back then when it happened.
How has your experience affected your spiritual beliefs or practices?
I went from being a neurotic denier of Spirit to KNOWing God. I have written 6 books on it and co-authored six more after working on the research with Bruce Greyson MD at the UConn Medical School for 6 years.
Have you noticed any changes in your personality or abilities since your NDE/OBE? How has your experience influenced your relationships with others?
My transformation feels like a miracle to me. I went from being a victim of child abuse to thriving after adopting the work of Charles Whitfield MD who I married in 1994 and spent 32 years writing and practicing with. First the NDE research which Ken Ring and I worked on; i.e. exploring NDErs history of child abuse, trauma and neglect.
What was the most challenging part of integrating your NDE/OBE into your everyday life?
I had to completely change my life, divorce and move from Florida to Connecticut to assist Bruce Greyson where I had the wonderful opportunity to validate my changes.
Do you feel a sense of purpose or mission as a result of your NDE/OBE? If so, please elaborate.
Of Course! This is what my books are about, the research and all the synchronicities that have guided me through this time where I am full of gratitude for all the help I received from God, Dr. Greyson, Ken Ring, and my husband Dr. Charles Whitfield.
What advice would you give to someone who is skeptical about NDEs/OBEs?
Listen to people who have had them and then decide — stay open!
Did you gain any specific insights or important messages during your NDE/OBE that have stayed with you and you would like to share with others?
Every experience, joyful or painful, has a lesson and God is my/our partner in learning. HUMILITY is my guide.
Are there any resources you would recommend to someone who has had an NDE/OBE but is still new to this topic? Any advice for them?
My book Spiritual Awakenings (1994) is a summary of my NDE research. Dragon Energy that my husband and I wrote together is our last book filled with what we have learned. The Power of Humility is our breakthrough book for us personally and from our readers’ feedback. It is a map for living with peace and contentment with God as our partner.
Website/Social Media Links/Contact Info:
barbara-whitfield.com
