and dropping back to Earth and I hear this people like this part of the story I hear this from God good answer it's I'm falling back what the heck is that I snap hello family welcome back to the explore the extraordinary podcast my name is Betty and today I'm joined by Donna and Donna is a near-death experiencer she's a podcast host her podcast is called exploring Consciousness with Donna she's a raike ma Master a sports medicine acupuncturist and she was a CO community college professor for 30 years very amazing very impressive titles I love titles
um I got to meet Donna at our most recent in-person Ian conference we're recording this in 2024 we met in Phoenix Arizona she absolutely blew me away her story was filled with humor and wit and spirit and love and I'm so excited for willingness to come and serve our community on this platform Donna so I'm going to toss it right over to you well thanks Betty you pardon my voice uh part of my story was I drowned in a lake and sometimes my voice goes in and out so I'd like to apologize in the beginning
for that I met Betty there and she the the people at ions were REM unbelievable remarkable and Betty was special to me so I want everyone to know that um so my near-death experience was I was out on a lake in Northern New York with my family at it during a vacation and we decided to go rafting it's like a it's a raft called a bullet so it looks shaped like a bullet with two pontoons and it's towed with a tow rope and the idea behind it is two people get on the bullet and you
you know race around the lake and get knocked off and you laugh and you do all this but one of the things that happened was um when we were we got knocked off we got on the boat then back on the bullet and we ready to go again when my brother-in-law the driver of the boat said yelled back at us get off the bullet the boat is sinking so I looked behind me my my big sister was behind me and I watched which way she threw the Rope she threw it to the left and we
both rolled off the bullet into the water on the right and immediately um you know once you get up we had our life vest on I looked back make sure she was okay but I looked down and saw the toe rope that is a nylon toe rope that's meant to float was somehow got caught under my leg so it made a loop and came up and strangled my leg above the knee to the Bone when my I could hear the boat start to take off and my brother-in-law thought we were okay because the the bullet
kind of wandered in his sight line and he he only saw the bullet not me he takes off and I go oh this is going to hurt this is really gonna hurt and immediately when that bow took off it strangled my leg to the Bone and that was the most unbelievable pain I've had in my life and it dragged me underwater and I was being dragged underwater and I knew he didn't know I was there and so the my thought process was oh my God I know how I'm going to die he doesn't know I'm
here the power of the boat hit my chest and was hitting the air bubbles out of me and I was like oh my God I could use that air you know then it went to to oh what are they going to do are they going to bury me in Arizona or New York or what's going to happen here when all of a sudden I popped out of my body I I knew I was going to drown I didn't know when and I went through this Saran Wrap thin veil and popped out and I went oh
I'm dead I knew I was dead and it's it's like you said Betty when we talk about these stories is as if we had a body over there even though we know we didn't physically one it felt like we did I could see I had feelings and immediately I went oh there this is eternity Time and Eternity are very different things and and when we're near-death experiencers it's very difficult for us to explain this except I knew this was eternity I knew I was dead and all of a sudden all the cells of my body
started laughing and vibrating and smiling and giggling and I I looked down I go what what are you guys doing and they were going they were they were looking looking at me and they were saying we're going to see him we're going to see him going to see the creator of the universe and I was like what and I slowly looked up because I was looking down at my body and I slowly looked up and it was the edge edge of the Earth and I could feel this this unbelievable amount of energy coming up from
the edge of the Earth when all of a sudden exploded into this Aurora Borealis kind of you know took up the whole universe it it was energy like the Aurora that's the closest thing I could say and I was like oh my God it's the creator of the universe and when you're on the other side you talk in terms of telepathy which means the person talking to you or the being talking to you immediately is in your head and you it's like this message that explodes in your head and you you immediately know what they're
saying even though you're not really hearing that it's like an immediate knowledge it was like I am the creator of the universe so as I'm feeling of going toward him floating up and toward him this being said to me I started looking back to earth like oh no and as I started turning my head I could hear don't worry about them and when I turned back all everything of Earth was not in my Consciousness it was dedicated TOS talking to the creator of the universe and we're floating and talking and I'm gaining knowledge and understandings
and but what really was remarkable here Betty was I felt like love was shooting through all my C like I just overwhelming power of love and I get up to the Creator where wherever he is even though there's not a place or time and I get up to where he is and I just kind of just leaned into this unbelievable hug and I felt as if everything in the universe or multiverses or whatever was created just for me in other words myself and the being the creator of universe because I can't say he she it
it's so demeaning to the power that I felt the immense creation the creator of the universe and it just was love and I just was in This Love Fest of oh this is just beautiful when I heard and again it's a telepathic hearing well Donna what do you want to do here and I I like telling this part of the story you know it's one of the as a community college professor I taught in five subject areas and one of them was psychology so we learned active listening and active listening you say back to the
person what you think they're saying so I go so God is when I hear you asking me I mean I'm doing active listening with God the creator of the universe who does that so I'm just said so so what I'm hear you saying is that you want to know if I want to live or I want to die and then this big crackling smile across the whole universe like the love that the creator has for each one of us is to come back and tell people it's just unbelievable this love and and I just said
something then I couldn't believe I said I said well since you made me I give the choice to you and then everything stopped everything Stood Still and there in eternity there's no time so I I didn't know if it was three seconds or three million years it there's no time I just knew I as soon as I said it I now have to wait I have to wait to see if I'm staying or going and I knew to my right there was a line over there a demarcation line and I knew if I was staying
I would pass that line so I'm just waiting and I hear you will go back and tell everybody about choice now it didn't dawn on me said when you go back so I'm still kind of waiting like you know okay what what going to happen here and then I became unhinged as if I was hinged there in front of him is the only thing I could think of and I became unhinged and dropping back to Earth and I hear this people like this part of the story I hear this from God good answer as I'm
falling back what the heck is that I snap back into my dead body I'm drowned and my brother-in-law later said that he felt a tap on his shoulder he looked back and he saw the bull not moving correctly or you know he's like what is this so he turned the motor off and when he did that I started reaching up to the surface and I felt human hands under my arms Lifting me and my thought was how are they going to get the Rope out of my leg it's embedded in my leg and when I
get to the surface it's no one's there and I have to get rid of all this water out of my my lungs so I'm getting rid of all this water and the Rope came undone and I was just like what the heck was that what was happening now my sister was back at the place where we originally went in the water and she says I'm watching my husband kill my sister it was very traumatic for her so she's swimming toward me you know like superwoman 100 miles an hour but when I first got up she
wasn't there and so the it came on done I could hear the boat start up and take off and I looked down at my leg and I thought it was cut in half but it was just a the Rope strangled my leg to the Bone and so I thought if I kicked it I would kick off my leg so I grabbed my calf because I want to have it in the emergency room maybe they could reattach it so my sister comes swimming up and she goes I go don't look at my leg don't look at
my leg she looked at my leg and we both screamed and I said well you know I'm about to go into shock here's how you help me and just to you you can hear my story in a couple of different if you do YouTube searches you can hear the long story but I know you want to get to some stuff Betty but basically I lived and uh it wasn't amputated it was strangled to the Bone so when the Rope came off it started swelling and I I had a couple years of hard hard time trying
to keep that leg thanks for sharing Donna yeah I I love your story I and yeah definitely we'll put a link to a long form of your story in the liner notes of this episode so can listen to the full thing because it's got so much in it um but I do want to ask a couple questions about this you know um what was your integration process like how long did it take you to understand that you had a spiritual experience when did you start sharing about it that's a great question Betty it took a
very long time I didn't know that there was something called near-death experience I didn't know what that was you know I like when I as soon as I got back into my body the integration started because I started saying what was that what the heck was that it took a long time for me to even talk about it you know I talked a little bit about it to my best friend you know like what what was this what could this have been and I had to go back and I was teaching at the time so
I I went right from that experience back to Arizona back into the classroom and I it it just was like trying to process that and I didn't know there was help for processing I didn't know what it was I didn't start sharing it until about 2018 and that was about um 20 years after the experience so for 20 years I was just kind of you know I would I started doing a lot of things out of the love out of the choices that I heard um so I started living a life of doing hundreds and
hundreds of things while I'm here taking Vantage of being back on Earth but it wasn't I didn't start saying it publicly until I was at the Monroe Institute about 2018 so it took a long time thank you for sharing that because I think that people who watch the podcast whether they experiencers themselves or there are people that want to know what happens in Life After Life you know the idea that we come back from these experiences and we're just like out there sharing them super bravely is not always the case for a lot of people
it takes years and years and I just I wanted to also mention that while you were speaking at the conference which you know having to hear these experiences in person definitely carries a different frequency with it because you're really feeling the person's raw vulnerability as they're sharing their most sacred experience with an audience of people but when you said the line God created the whole universe just for me I just began weeping and even now like I'm so emotional thinking about it and I don't get emotional girl okay like I am super detached from The
Human Experience but it's just it like resonates so true to me because yeah God did create the whole universe just for you God created the whole universe just for me God created the whole universe just for the people listening and it's such a beautiful thing how did you carry that me message with you throughout you know the rest of your experience well it was it changed my whole look at the cosmology and cosmology is looking how the universe is set up and structured and in in religious or um physiology or all these different terms so
it it it came to my awareness about this this love and this choices and so I took that into the classroom and I don't I don't know that I reacted much different in the classroom because I always felt a good connection with my students I taught usually freshman and sophomores in college and just the reason I was teaching there is I love those students I love the youth and so it it it slowly crept into everything the fear of talking about it the fear of ridicule or what are some people going to say or what
did I see what did I experience over time all those fears broke down to where toward the end in my classroom I could start saying saying more things about love and how to how to act and react wow that's really beautiful I yeah those seeds being planted who knows how they came to fruition in the students that you were touching that's amazing I also was a chaplain and I I started volunteering all over the place so my dog and I uh I had a German Shepherd she had a a two catastrophic illnesses had a death
you know like a shared death with her and so we started volunteering every Wednesday for four and a half years at a local hospital and so that that's another thing that I started doing is looking really paying more attention to signs from my angels and Guardians and saying yes to a lot of things so you begin living your life so differently so totally different so I know that my watching my dog and the kids were really important too wow yeah I definitely I want to I want to ask about stie that was such an amazing
part of your presentation um I also just want to ask this question what was the relationship like with your brother-in-law after this experience where you died that's a great question for 26 20 25 and a half years I couldn't wear shorts I had to wear long pants when I was up in Buffalo because seeing my wound really hurt him it it just made him going to a shell and I didn't want to do that and we never talked about the experience when I started telling my near-death experience around at the Monroe Institute and since then
The more I've told people about it it was really difficult to have my family turn their backs in the way on what I was saying you know and and a lot of people that didn't have this don't have this experience say things like it's a figment of your brain or it's chemicals or it's it's all this stuff or you were hallucinating so there's that's important the ion the research part of it and the people that are doing the research saying this is not possible it's it's you you it's where is consciousness come from it's not
generated from the brain so it took a long time to kind of figure out a way that I can talk to people and I never did with him so we just didn't do that in April of this year April of 2024 he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer out of the blue he was doing just fine and he got this diagnosis and he was going down fast so I I flew up to Buffalo and there's a point at which he was doing a Life review you know he knew he was dying soon within the
month and he wanted to sit down and talk with me and so I I did and he said I hurt you that day and I said don't even don't even start that we're not even going to go there um I've had 25 years where I've been able to bring this to people to my students to individuals maybe not out in public but privately I've been able to do a lot of good work out of this you can't you can't possibly hold that going into your next life and he wanted to know about the afterlife because
he was having a tough time a lot of fear of dying a lot of remorse and so we I I got to sit and tell him what was on the other side what is it like to to meet the creator of the universe what it was like and then I'm a teacher so I gave him homework you know he had like two two weeks to live and I gave him some homework and I said anytime that you start thinking or worrying or you know see you know I'm going to be punished I'm there you know
this it's going to be awful I started telling them your homework is to design a a table a long table a banquet table what are you going to have for eating what's centerpiece going to be like who do you want there and it's going to be all about love and that's what I want you to concentrate so to take the fear out of dying is really another thing that I would been called to do individually and he died and I asked for a shared death so did you receive that shared death experience with him I
I did it's not the way I wanted so Heaven Wasn't the way I thought it was goingon to be it's just wasn't I don't think that it'll ever be the same experience again I've done some regressions where I did a regression with somebody where you go back into your near-death experience and I was like all right be me up let's do this I want to go back into my experience and it was a totally different experience which was was also very beautiful but definitely not the same he the creator of the universe so loves us
it's it's going to be a designer death that's why everyone has a different near-death experience you know people are people say Well it can't be true because it's not all the same and I go well there's seven billion people are we all having the same experience here so you think we're have the same experience there yeah so um I I thought I would get to walk them around and show them my friends you know this is where this is this is where that is that's what I thought sheer death was going to be but instead
I woke up the night I I had to come back before he died and I woke up the night he died I knew he was going to die that night and I woke up to see him going up in a tunnel and like this Superman post like he was getting out of here and I was like wait I thought I was going to show you around and he goes you did your job you did your job I'm ready so just that preparing someone in that way it wasn't up to me to what the sh death
was going to be and that that was stunning for me it is so I I'm covered in Goosebumps that's so beautiful and I think that that might be why we're called to share our experiences too to to give people kind of that peace of mind so that that when they cross over they can go in that Superman pose without fear because they've heard our stories you know like somebody hearing your story hearing that God has a sense of humor that everything is going to be okay that is so you know it's so Comfort to somebody
who might be living in a state of fear around death yeah so I I volunteered to be a chaplain in a local hospital and I got to talk to a lot of people that were afraid of death so to know that you know talking to people about you know got about the love and the designer death and don't be afraid and just give them homework it's not it's not just just tell them that but to to start helping them in their mind what they would like to see yeah just to rewire that whole thought process
I really like that so something that you mentioned was you talked about connecting with your angels and I'm wondering if maybe you can share a little bit about that can everybody connect with their Angels do you have any helpful tips to for other people I've been uh and and my guides have been with me since in my Consciousness since I was four years old so I've known them I in that way and so uh this was a um my gifts like your gifts just change through the years as you mature your gifts mature your conversation
mature so yes anybody can do it and it really the biggest thing is what gets in the way is your belief system so Thomas Edison said if you think you can or if you think you can't you're probably going to be right so if you're sitting there talking to me and say I don't believe that I can't believe your story I don't believe anything well you're going to be right it's it's your belief system so it's what I what they've asked me to to come back and talk about choices so I started on my YouTube
channel I have a PowerPoint presentation because I'm a teacher and it's on choices and it's it's going to turn into um a course of choices very similar to a course of Miracles but it's going to be a book a workbook a YouTube channel on how you think about things how do you how do you start with your belief systems so my freshman and sophomores would always come into my my uh office hours and the biggest thing that we talked about is what do you believe what what do you believing and and a lot of times
freshmen are coming into college going I'm not sure what I believe I didn't know I believ that I did I had this experience I don't know how to deal with it so a big thing for me in my mission is to help people look at their belief system and choices that they're making and how they can do a better job perhaps I really like that and before we started recording you asked to talk about of course Miracles a little bit so let's do that so that's where I you know I was listening to I think
it's really important to know your audience know your students know your interviewer so Betty I looked at your um YouTube channel and I was looking at your nde and your life so impressed because I really like talking to young people especially one of the one of the courses I taught was substance abuse and behavior and how not to how not to do that and a lot of times people young people don't know what the belief system is or had a horrible experience or don't have the skills or don't don't have that so I know that
I've heard of the course of Miracles and when you said it I got chills and I and it my guide said change yours into a course of choices very similar to um what Helen did with the course of Miracles so I I need to find out about what her course was but I definitely am being channeled into what a course of choices is so I want to thank you for that for that thank I love that I love that title I mean it's not Helen's stuff it's Jesus is Jesus is the author of A Course
in Miracles but I love the idea of us and yeah we are channeling we're channeling information from somewhere I mean I know I am like I'm this is way above my pay grade I know that the information that I have access to is not not mine it's it's infinite you know it's like this beautiful spiritual information and how how do you do it you asked me how to do it and I tell people you start treating your guides as if they're your best friends you don't say hi i' like to know you buddy and then
don't talk to them for months that's not how you develop a relationship so you have to have your what do you believe about what you hear well I don't believe I can hear my angels okay but it's not it's not a schizophrenic I hear voices it's it's it's being open first to signs and signals so if you're going along and you have a a music on your radio on you're going down the street and you're you're listening to the radio and you hear a song that's really meaningful to you what's it saying in your heart
you know where is it at that point in your life so it could be a Psalm a book a person a you know you said um if a leaf falls out of this tree at midnight you know and and it does you know so you keep asking for these signs and wonders that's how you be you can begin uh lessening the veil between you and your angels and a lot of times people say well how do I know it sounds like me how do I know if it's their voice or not their voice and you
start off going okay well you know why don't you just think it's your voice and it's not like it's it's the voice of love and kindness and empathy and it's the the voice of the good not you know punch that guy in the mouth for saying something you know it's not that voice it's it's you know your angels and guides are going to talk to you about making better choices or how can you think about this different or you know it's it's learning how to be open to that and anyone can start doing that yeah
I I absolutely agree with you 100% nodding my head in agreement uh yes you know I and it's true whatever you believe that's what becomes your reality our thoughts and beliefs are truly shaping our reality so if you believe that Angels don't exist then guess what the universe hears you and say says okay Angels don't exist for you like I do believe that if I see a feather on the ground walking down the street I go oh my God an angel but my boyfriend will say no that's a dirty New York pigeon feather that's not
an angel but that's my belief and his belief and that's okay because we're all entitled to our own so I love that cultivating trust just like you would in a friendship that's what I hear you saying and I know that my angels and guides are always talking to me in a much calmer voice than my own my own is kind of frantic and Urgent and it's something that you would you would have thought of if you're going along and so I teach my students about how you you have an eight track mind you always have
things going on in your mind that voice that's saying you know I got to do the groceries or I got to do that homework or you know I got to do this so you're busy you're busy in your mind but when something comes out of the blue and says oh look over to your left maybe it's not a pigeon feather but maybe there's something you and your boyfriend have been talking about and there's an affirmation it can be that so you're just going to be open to things what we call coincidences I call God incidences
so it's a god incident I love that so I want to shift the conversation a little bit I you know I see a lot of comments in videos like these About Pets and I want to talk a little bit about Sadie and you said that you had a shared death experience with your dog and so if you could share a little bit about that with our audience yeah um I didn't know that you could I didn't I didn't know if you didn't ask me I said I don't know that dogs have souls you know I
don't know if dog All Dogs Go to Heaven I wouldn't have said that but in a when she was going through her um terrible illness in the hospital um I had a that night I was doing a meditation had an out of body out of body experience and in it there was sad and I was like you can't dogs aren in an experiences and so it it was this is very vulnerable for me to talk about um so I knew that sad had passed and I just was pleading with the God that I met during
my nde could you please save this dog please I promise to do wonderful things with this dog and I just held on to her and kind of snaap back into my body and I go what was that and I ran the the next day after class I ran over to the vet and they said yeah she had a tough night but she came through it and I just said okay we're going to do something you're going to make it so every day after that I was just in there holding her head going you're going to
make it we're going to do things with kids and we ended up being a pet therapy team up at the local hospital every Wednesday four and a half years with these kids does that answer your question yes yes so beautiful and I think that that's also very affirming for people who have pets as well so what was your experience like after your years of service with stie and when stie actually did eventually transition completely yeah you're going to have to ask in a different way my experience with the kids or with Satie yeah with stie
I feel like a lot of people um yeah are like eer for information about pets yeah yeah so she also comes you know she and my friends who are psychics also see her and talk to her and tell me things about her and they haven't met her and they they don't even know that she's a German Shepherd of what she looked like and would describe her and it would be the work she's doing with kids and Suzanne geesman um evidential mediumship commander and chief assistant you know and I asked her about STI and I said
when when her kids pass so she passes and then the kids that were in the hospital the reason they're in the hospital they have terminal illnesses does stie greet the kids on the other side when they pass and then she said absolutely absolutely so I see her as a a greeter just like she greeted kids and families in the hospital she's doing that on the other side I it's so when kids are passing and that's tough for parents you know there's a saying a parent should never have to bury their child but SES over there
is a greeter that's that's what she signed up for is greeting mostly kids so I in my meditations I see her on the other side and we get to have conversations that's so beautiful thank you for sharing that do you feel like pets can ever be incarnated into human form or do you feel like the souls are different in some way well that's uh something I studied way before my my near-death and that's transmigration of Souls and so I was looking at the literature on that and I you know my personal feelings are that no
but again that's my belief system so that's probably why I feel that way you know I might in my real death find out that that's different but um to me it seems as if they're come back as as pets pets are pets but I don't I don't know that to be true that could be different it could I'm open to whatever I don't I don't have the knowledge of the Universe on that one yeah just just personal opinion I got a lot of personal opinions myself there you go so I think I think do stay
dogs I don't know that I think that like the energy the loving energy of an animal is so different from from the loving energy of a human which let's face it is not always super loving energy so I do think that maybe at some sort of higher vibration I just was just wondering your thoughts about it too I don't there's you know people know thing they think that we went over and we saw God we know everything well you know we saw a lot and I was learned a lot but there's so much knowledge you
know and like you said you know we we still are grumpy I can still be grumpy even though I teach about choices I can still make stupid choices I just try to you know and I try to recover fast from my stupid choices I was like oh well that didn't do go so well there oh man I've so talking with you today jna I just want to give you some space to share to feel more complete about our time together if there's anything else that you'd like to leave us with well for the young people
the big thing for me when you first go on my choices um presentation is about keeping young people alive and there seems to be in among the young people either great um hope for the future or those that are great hopelessness and so suicide is really important to me in that um in in a suicide you know what if the possibility is you have to come back and do it all over again that you pick the same packets of experiences so in your pre-birth choices you wanted to have this experience and you bail out here
to me when I talk to people especially I'm one-on-one with people about choices is do you want to go through this again don't you want to come out of that experience a better person and keep evolving your consciousness so for the young people that are feel that hopelessness you know you can see that I have white hair you see that I'm I'm made it through uh up to my 72nd year I'm 72 and so life is hard life is tough you have Peaks and valleys and so if you if you tend to be in a
valley and you think that you're hopeless to find a group or find a community or reach out to others and suicide is that your pain is greater than your resources so if you're in pain young people and you don't know what to do there's on my website there's suicide hotlines or to just to get with people to say help help me you know and I say to them do you don't want to go through this again you want to keep evolving and evolving your soul so for the young people that feel that there are there
are resour resources out there at school or in your community or you know just get through it if you can get through it with resources know that you're you want resources greater than your pain you don't want pain greater than your resources thanks for sharing that Donna you can also reach out to Donna or me if you're struggling with some some sort of thought like that we also have sharing groups on ions uh if you go to isgo do.org you'll find that we have like 13 sharing and topic groups a week or something like that
maybe I'm OV exaggerating that could be a month but we definitely have resources here so if you're feeling alone please feel free to reach out and connect connection is the antidote to that feeling absolutely and hear Betty's hear Betty's story hear hear stories of people that have have been you know I didn't have those skills I didn't know I didn't know that there was a life better than this Betty survived that that's really important for you to to hear those stories we are resilient yes and God created this whole experience for us right now and
it's to it's beautiful I'm so grateful to connect with you thank you again for your service to our community and we'll see you next time thank you thank you Betty [Music]