In 2013 I had a cardiac arrest. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I was at home, relaxing before dinner. There was no warning. There were no chest pains, no time to grab my chest and call out “I’m having a heart attack”. I took a shower, laid down on the bed and died.
I was lucky, I guess. I was not alone. My life saver found me and jumped into action. It took the paramedics twenty minutes and three blasts with the paddles to revive a faint detectable hearbeat. I was subsequently loaded into an ambulance where I flatlined again, evacuated my kidneys and lay dead on the gurney.
When we arrived to the ER I was lucky to once again be revived. I was intubated, taken for a life saving procedure and put in the ICU where I hovered between life and death for several days.
I might as well tell you now…I was raised in a cult. Ours was a strict ultra-conservative upbringing. What I witnessed that day forever changed my view about life and death and life after death. I have written a fascinating book yet to be published called ‘Fearless’ that details my death experience and my struggle to fit into a world I was conditioned to shun.
I decided long ago to live my life with autonomy, free of empiricle rule or any organized belief system that restricts me or tries to manipulate me with fear and guilt. Along the way I have developed a belief system based on my own human experience and what I have seen with my own two eyes.
There is room in my conciousness to marry faith and science. I believe for instance there is a Creative Force, I’m just not convinced it’s a single being. I believe in evolution, past lives and life after death. I believe there is another dimension I call the ‘dimension of transition’ from where we pick up the ticket to our next destination based on our karmic consequences.
I feel that diversity is a human condition we should embrace so most of my work as a content creator is inclusive of characters who don’t fit into a box. Whether they be black or white, gay or straight, trans or non-binary they are treated with love and respect. And I give animals equal billing because I believe they are of a higher caliber of conciousness.
This is the belief system that inspires my work ethic. I believe we are all here on a round trip ticket with a mission to share our talent and leave something of ourself behind. That is the truth I brought with me back from the other side, from my brush with death. And I have accomplished great things so far in my bonus life.