My Spiritual Journey & Near Death Experience
My Spiritual Growth
My Childhood Near Death Experience (NDE)
In second grade, I had a near-death experience (NDE). I had a kidney infection and was treated with penicillin. From the penicillin, I had an allergic reaction to it and stopped breathing.
As I floated out of my body, I knew I was dying. I went through a very dark tunnel towards a brilliant white light. As I approached the light, all thoughts of my diseased body, time, and death disappeared. I became nothing but a clear thought of consciousness. I was liberated from all concepts, memories, and the identity of Rod. I felt a deep peace within. As I looked into the white light, I saw infinity. I was looking into a pure sphere of white light with flecks of gold on the edges and the inside of it was clear. I felt tremendous love and peace radiating from this light and it was engulfing me like a warm blanket. I was becoming one with it.
But I never entered the light fully as I came back into my body. The doctors had revived me. Why couldn't they just let me be? I was so free!
Mystical Experiences & Development
Following my near death experience, I was given three gifts.
First, after hearing the Moody Blues song “Floating,” (1969), I learned astral projection. What a wonderful feeling it is to float out of your body and still be aware of what is going on around you. Initially, my mystical experiences involved me floating around our farm, but on my last trip I went to Paris. I could see the Eiffel Tower as well as people eating at the restaurant as clearly as if I was standing there right now.
My second mystical experience is that I started to see the colors over people's hearts and eventually their auras. On occasion, I saw red, green, or blue. Most people had light grey covering their heart. I associated red with love, green with life, and blue with creativity and intelligence.
As I grew older, I could see people's auras surrounding their bodies. Most were light grey, but some people had white auras—and I knew they were very spiritual people. Sometimes I saw dark auras, and I knew that this person was going to die soon. To this day, I still see these colors and I now know that the color over someone's heart is a reflection of God shining there.
Green is Healing, life, or omnipresence.
Blue is still creativity or omniscience.
Red is omnipotent for unconditional love.
For my third mystical experience, my consciousness expanded farther and I found myself living in two worlds—one of Spirit, and one of humanity. I started to know what people were thinking, and later as a doctor, occasionally I could see inside of their bodies and what was wrong with them.
I started to see Christ and he would guide me in patient care. I started to see detailed auras of people in this world while they were still alive as well as in the etheric realm. In the emergency room when someone was dying, I would hold their hand and ask Christ to take them home for me. He always came as a red aura while the person was a white aura. They would meld together and I would see the gold doors of heaven open. They always went through and I knew that that person returned home. I now call this process, “birthing someone into heaven.”
And Beyond… Later in my adult life, I started to astral travel again—but this time, I traveled beyond the Milky Way into a vast purple realm. At the edge of this realm, Christ pulled me into the infinity of heaven.
This, I realized, is what I glimpsed during my near death experience when I was a young child looking into the white light.
Christ then became my guide, and in time, he led me to God. He picked me up and held me His arms. I felt God’s tremendous love and peace for me.
To describe God is ineffable. The best word that I can think of is "awe.” I was starting to experience feelings that I had when I had my near-death experience. I eventually wrote about these experiences in my book, When God Calls, Say Yes!.
I continue to read “A Course in Miracles” and meditate daily. I practice walking with the Divine by my side all day long using Contemplative Meditation. To this day, I feel His Divine presence and can hear His voice whenever I ask for His help.
My Medical Career
I received my medical degree from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 1988. Then, I did a three-year residency at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. I was trained in ICU and hospital medicine.
For the first nine years, my practice included general internal medicine, hospital, and intensive care (ICU) medicine. In 1998, and for the next 14 years, I worked in Maine as an emergency room physician. During the last five years of my career, I was the Medical Director for four nursing homes and a large hospice company in Bangor.
Over the course of my career as a physician, I treated between 65,000 to 70,000 patients.
I am currently retired from medicine.