Amanda Wideman's car had flipped upside down after hitting a concrete guardrail.

Amanda and her partner were driving home from a music festival. A car in the opposite lane lost control and headed into their lane. They tried to avoid it by driving along the gravel shoulder, but everything was happening too fast.

Their car spun, hit another vehicle, flipped, and was stopped by the concrete guardrail from falling down the mountain.

From Amanda's perspective, it looked like they were going to die.

When they collided with another car, the impact sent Amanda's body deep into the seat, and she decided to let go. She was a paramedic in the area, and they often never rescued people from accidents in that zone.

If an accident happened in that zone, cars would often go over the edge, and she thought that was what would happen to them. Thus, Amanda closed her eyes and welcomed her passage from this realm.

"I guess I've always heard that if you're going to die, go peacefully. Do your best to let go. So, I just let go. I leaned back in my seat as if a plane was taking off and I was going somewhere out of this world. That's what ended up happening." — Amanda Wideman

Amanda appeared in a fluffy darkness

Amanda appeared in a vast blackness that seemed infinite.

She was not scared. The space felt like a fluffy, safe, endless cave. Amanda was more concerned about how she felt very light. There was no sense of heaviness to how she experienced herself.

She was surprised and thought, "Wow, we always carry 100, 200, 300 pounds [of our bodies]."

Amanda discovered another interesting thing.

She couldn't see things because she didn't have eyes, but she was aware of everything. To her, human vision felt like how things seem fuzzy when drunk, and that awareness felt like the clarity that comes with sobering up. That mind clarity and sharp awareness of what's going on as compared to being inebriated.

Amanda also felt like this space was more real than Earth. Time passed differently there; she could absorb a lot of things in an instant.

There, everything felt infinitely peaceful.

"On Earth, even if you're in a peaceful moment, there's a part of you that knows it could end anytime or that some trouble could come around the corner. Here, there was no awareness that it could end and no awareness that any trouble could come. It was the most safe, beautiful, secure, perfect feeling I had ever experienced."

Amanda met a Divine being

As she felt perfect peace, Amanda realized the place was familiar, as if she'd been there multiple times. Then, a Divine presence approached her.

Amanda had heard terms like Oneness, the Divine, and God, but she could never relate to the reality behind these names. Then, suddenly, as the presence surrounded her, the meaning of those names made sense. She experienced God.

She felt surrounded by an infinite number of everyone and everything that ever existed. She couldn't see each one separately but felt all spirits making the whole Divine presence that surrounded her.

The presence represented itself as God. It was perfect love. It was non-judgemental. It was a never-ending perfection.

Then, a distant sound emerged.

Amanda came back

The sound became louder and louder. Amanda realized a small crowd had formed around the accident, and his partner was screaming.

People at the scene thought they were dead and were hesitant to approach the vehicle.

The paramedics came to rescue them, and people were asking Amanda if she was okay. She had pain in her shoulder, but that was all. To Amanda, everything was more than okay; she'd just checked back home and came back.

"I had gone to where everything is perfect, where we go in between lives. Even if I had died, I would be there or coming back here again in another body. No matter what happens, it's our spirit and our awareness that live in the body or out of the body, but it's still fully us."

Amanda parted with materialism

After the accident, Amanda was wrapped in a lingering bliss.

Amanda felt at ease regarding her own mortality even though before her NDE, she'd never really worried about death and what would happen after.

Another significant change she noticed was that all small worries about life concerns vanished. She knew that no matter what happened, everything would be alright.

A few years after the experience, Amanda made big changes in her life. She started volunteering at a hospice. She would chat with people who were at the terminal stage of life. They often were in and out of the other side and would tell her their paranormal experiences. This boosted Amanda's understanding of what had happened to her since she could relate to what those patients were talking about.

Amanda also lost interest in accumulating material items, comparing herself to others, and the need to be competitive.

She sold her house and most of the belongings in it. Then she bought an RV and decided to go around camping and reconnecting with certain friends she'd lost touch with because of her busy work life.

Before her NDE, she never had much time for anything else that was not work-related. After her NDE, she explored meditation, prayer, and exploring nature.

"I'm still learning, still growing, but holding on to what I learned in that experience about surrendering when something is out of my control, letting go of the outcome as often as possible, and not attaching too tightly to the material world.

I'm grateful for having my needs met." — Amanda Wideman

Two thoughts and one idea

First thought:

I understood Amanda when she said that she was taken by work. I've been struggling to juggle writing these stories and my regular job at the hospital. I love this side of me, sharing NDEs and interacting with the variety of human souls who read them. Amanda's experience taught me that it's okay to go all in activities that connect all parts of my being as a whole and make me flourish.

Second thought:

It is common to think of spiritual practices as something mental and imaginative. Spirits are intangible rather than physical. However, NDEs report that the spiritual encounters feel more physical than their Earthly experience of physicality.

To me, that's intriguing. I suspect I have lost touch with the spiritual reality by believing that it can't be physical. What would life be like if I were aware of how physical my spiritual essence is?

One idea to experiment with:

Imagine approaching spiritual texts and spiritual practices without the idea of getting something out of them. Not to do it to ensure going to heaven, being helped by God, or connecting with the Divine, but to appreciate the spiritual reality of life.