As a boy growing up in Rochester Vt, I was taken to Gifford Memorial Hospital, where I was to have surgery to remove a lump in my chest. Nurses prepped me for surgery, administered the anesthetic, and I passed out.
Soon after that, I had the experience of my consciousness rising out of my body into one of the upper corners of the ceiling of the operating room and looking down on the nurses and the doctor leaning over my physical form. I then moved along the edge of the ceiling, and out of the room, and passed into a portal or a tunnel of light.
The experience of moving through this tunnel was profoundly peaceful and non-threatening; it was life-affirming and helped me to see who I am because it was clear at that point that I was not my body, not my thoughts but a being of spirit, of conscious energy. A soul.
As I moved through this tunnel, I eventually came to a silhouetted figure that I identified as Christ. He stood with arms outstretched as if inviting an embrace, but he also was serving as a gatekeeper. Without words, it became clear to me that it was not my time to move into death or whatever dimension was behind him.
Wordlessly, I was directed to go back to my body, back to the physical plane of existence, and continue living my life.
However, that experience gave me a permanent and profound realization that I am not my body. The energetic sense of consciousness that went down the tunnel was the real me.
That experience stayed with me for life. My fear of death was gone and my sense of who I am was never the same after that.
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