Soul Boom - What Does Death Actually Feel Like?

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

What does death feel like? Near-death experiencers Vinney Tolman & Betty Guadagno reveal what they saw during their NDEs. From a body bag and overdose to heaven, life reviews, and unconditional love, their stories redefine life after death. What if death teaches us how to live? SPONSORS!👇 🛒 ZocDoc 👉 🛒 Get 25% OFF Cowboy Colostrum with code SOULBOOM 👉 ⁠http://cowboycolostrum.com/soulboom 🙏 Fetzer 👉⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠ This episode was made possible with support from the Wennett and Cader-Frech Foundation. To continue this conversation with your family and friends, download Soul Boom's discussion support guide here: ⁠https://soulboom.com/discussionguide⁠ MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.com/store⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for our newsletter! ⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.substack.com⁠⁠⁠ SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom! ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW US! Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠ Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Executive Produced by: ⁠⁠⁠Kartik Chainani⁠⁠⁠ Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. What did you learn about life having experienced death? I didn't want to come back to the planet because it felt like every one of the trillion of cells on your body was having a trillion or... It was like the most lit feeling ever. I'm a homeless drug addict. I'm a prostitute.

I'm a pimp. I'm a liar. I'm a manipulator, I'm a thief, I'm an orphan to suicide. Like, this is the kind of person that's being bestowed with this kind of grace. Why? And I just keep crying out. Why? Why? And they're saying, because you're worthy of all the love in the universe.

I'm going to go back into this glitched broken body because I cannot start from zero. Mine starts with a body bag. I was found in a fast food restaurant bathroom dead. Now, of nowhere, this really loud voice goes over my shoulder and it says, this one's not dead. From the time declared till my heart started, it was 47 minutes. The world thinks life is a courtroom, but it's always been a classroom. I started to see all of my interactions with people,

and I could feel everything from the other person's perspective and from my perspective. The only things we take with us when we die is our relationships, what we learn, what we build in our mind, in our character, in our soul. There is no such thing as condemnation. There's no such thing as judgment from anything that really matters, right? Like in our life reviews, we weren't experiencing judgment from God or from some deity. We're experiencing the truth. Your soul is the effervescent spark of source energy.

It's just a spark of unconditional love. I'd say I learned how to live by dying. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, in idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. A quick shout out to our sponsors. Zok-Doc, Cowboy Colostrum, Fetzer, links and promo codes on the screen and in the description. Enjoy the show. Hi, guys, welcome to Soul Boom. Hello. Here's my question for you. What did you learn about

life having experienced death? I'd say I learned how to live. How's dying? How so? I learned how much we kind of throw away with our experience here, that we can bring heaven here. We don't have to wait until we die. That was a big part from what I learned from dying. How do we bring heaven here? Use our intention, our thoughts, our choices. Like what the mind can conceive, the mind can also believe, and the mind will then achieve. Yeah, I bring heaven to earth by embodying spiritual virtues.

So the more that I act in an honest, open-minded, willing, patient, tolerant way, a service-centered way. It feels like heaven. Connection to other people feels like heaven. Connection, yeah. Coherence, connection, alignment. Did your relationship with love change? And both of you and your stories have talked so much about love, not just as like

something I feel in my heart a little bit towards someone that I'm close to, but as a force, as an energy, as a power. Tell me more about that. It is a force that's bigger than our entire universe. It's a force that I always say if you can bring a blade of grass from actual heaven here, it would be bigger than our universe in power and energy. That love is a tremendous force. here we carry it inside of us behind a lot of layers and as we get older and older we turn to run away from it and in my experience I learned that love was the functional matter that runs everything and that when we can tap into that we can change our lives change the lives of those around us yeah I think it's challenging to put what unconditional love is like into words

I mean, then he just did a great job. It's, and of course, in miracles, it talks about holy relationships versus special relationships, meaning I will hold someone at a level of love depending on who they are to me, right? So like a person would love their child more than they would love the grocery store clerk. But I think the lesson from heaven is that everyone is worthy of this unconditional kind of love and that we don't have to put hierarchy on how we distribute that love. Like how can be worthy of the sunshine? You can't. How could you earn it? You can't.

Right. That's what love is. What does humanity need to learn about love on a global scale? And then what can individuals do to increase it? There's a part of me as a spiritual experiencer and a teacher that has this, you know, I have an affirmation that I need do nothing. I don't need to do anything. I don't need to teach humanity anything. Does humanity have to learn stuff, I think that we're in the process of learning it. It just doesn't look the way that some of us want it to look. Like right now it looks like suffering and destruction and betrayal and those things are the path. They take you to the pathway to love. Like when you look at the scale of consciousness at the bottom, there's like grief, apathy, fear. But then like that's how you climb up. It's like

you start to slowly make your way into courage, acceptance, willingness, unconditional love, peace, serenity. So I don't know if there's like some carefully constructed sentence that we can say to say this is what humanity needs right now. I think, you know, it's been documented in all great spiritual texts. Like just treat each other how you'd like to be treated and then everything will be okay. Yeah, well said. Well said. We come to this world as children and we think that all energy is positive as kids. any energy that comes into your body, you just want to run around, you want to give hugs,

you want to be kind, you want to love. And then at some certain point that that energy that we call excitement as a kid all of a sudden becomes anxiety. And it's because we don't know where to put the energy at that point. And so there's a switch inside of us as children slash adults or adolescents that we are now not believing the story inside. We're believing this story outside of us. And as children, they only believe this story that's inside.

You could say you're a purple crayon. They're like, okay, go grab something purple and run around, right? And it's like the child is so full of that love. And we're still children inside of us. We put those layers on us and we get so distracted with the show in front of us. We forget what's inside. So to me, if we can start inviting some of that inside out, you know, inviting the you inverse, you become the universe. You open that up. You become the universe.

Yeah. I guess what I'm looking for is, and I don't think there is an easy answer, but it's like we're so lost right now as a species on this planet. And maybe we're just going through exactly what we need to go through. And maybe we need to kind of blow things up a little bit before we can put it back together by spiritual means. But I just look at the news sometimes and what's going on in the world and not just on the world, just in the freeway or in the shopping mall or in the Trader Joe's parking lot or whatever. Like we're so off track from this kind of love juice energy that is God, that is all spiritual tradition, that is our truth. I'm just like, where do we go wrong? And how do we correct it?

And I think that people that are experiencers, is that what they would call you guys? Yeah, experiencers, yeah. Experiences that have had a taste of the other side and come back to talk about it, have a very special kind of prophetic role and to help heal. So that's what I'm kind of grasping at here. Yeah. See, that's not my reality, right? Because I choose where to focus my energy.

Wherever I focus my energy is what I will create. create, right? So my energy is all focused in spiritual community, healing, helping, being of service. And so that's the world that I see. I know that there's stuff going on in the outer illusion, right? But if I, I diminish my ability to be of service to others when I take on the suffering of 8 billion people. There's nothing that I can do about the world. I can impact my community. I can impact the people around me. But I can't take on the suffering of the whole world because then, yeah, I can't do anything. But you are doing something. You're you're kind of tasked spiritually with being of service to others, sharing your story, coaching them, helping them, inspiring them, and hopefully ever widening that circle, right? So maybe that's what we can all put our attention toward. Yes. Well, it's weird. And, you know, in our ancestors, the communities were very small and mostly very positive. and as we become a world community,

it's like that that bohemoth of community has lost that whole value of being community. And so it's like we need to find that community and there we can find love. We can. And it is so much power with just our choices, with our intentions, what we look for we'll find.

I love that. Let's cut to the stories here because this is all theoretical, but I think when the audience is able to kind of of hear what both of you have been through, especially your near-death experience and what you've learned, Vinnie. And Betty, your life experience and how your near-death experience has influenced, you know, one of the greatest, like, 180-degree changes in a human being's life that I've ever seen. I'd love to hear your story, too. I don't know who wants to go first.

Ladies first. All right, Betty. Aliens over body bags. So yeah, I grew up in like a very chaotic dysfunctional home. My whole family is this perpetual cycle of addiction and poverty and sexual trauma. And so all throughout my life, I was dealing with a tremendous amount of pain. And so the second that I could get my hands on drugs and substances and boys and anything to take my mind off of all the pain that I was experiencing, that's what I did. And so I stayed strung out on drugs for 20 years of my life. I watched my parents and their addiction just progressed over the course of their life. In 2007, in the height of the OxyContin epidemic, my parents committed suicide with each other

because the pain of their addiction and the pain of poverty and the risk of being evicted for the hundredth time and there was no lights on and there was no gas in the house and all of those things. It was just this tremendous weight, the pain of withdrawal and detox. So I experienced this insane trauma in my life. and I made a decision that I was going to be a perpetrator in people's lives after that because I had felt victimized my whole life. And I didn't even know that there were other roles to play other than victim and perpetrator. I thought that was it.

What do you mean you wanted to be a perpetrator? I wanted to hurt people. Oh, wow. All I wanted to do was just like hurt. I wanted everybody to be as miserable as I was. You had been taken advantage of you wanted to take advantage of other people. How did you do that? Well, you know, throughout the course of my active addiction, I would get every partner,

every friend that came across me, I would get them strung out on drugs. One of my boyfriends ended up dying from a cocaine overdose. And I went to his funeral, like totally loaded with another guy. I like brought a date to my boyfriend's funeral. It was like insane, right? And I didn't even realize that I was a menace to society. I didn't, I had no awareness because I was so wrapped in self-centered fear from my addiction. Like everything was just about me.

Everything was happening to just me. So my addiction just kept progressing. I became a prostitute. I could no longer hold a job anymore. So my whole life just became immersed in this just like totally twisted way of looking at the world. I would manipulate other women. I would get them strung out on drugs. I would prostitute them to make money for my addiction. So that's saying that hurt people, hurt people, that was like my whole identity. Hurt people, hurt people. And then in March of 2019, I experienced a drug overdose. Not my first. I had overdose before and I would just wake up in a random hospital bed, not knowing how I got there.

But in this particular overdose, I had a near-death experience. How did it start? Like, talk me through it. Yeah. So basically I just, like every day I was using an insane amount of drugs. This particular day, I decided to do a little bit extra because I had to go do laundry. And I was like, might as well be real wavy for some mundane human task like laundry. And I just took a little bit too much.

and it just made my body collapse. And it was the first part of my experience was like a life review. Like it felt like I just went into blackness and then all of a sudden like a movie screen came up. And I started to see all of my interactions with people. And it went from like a 2D movie screen to like a 4D. Like I was immersed in the scene. And I could feel everything from the other person's perspective and from my perspective.

And like I said, I caused a lot of harm. So like that's all that I was experiencing was all of these. terrible ways that I made other people feel. And so it kind of felt like I was trapped in hell. And then while I was in this space, I started to hear my father's voice. And my father had been dead by suicide for 11 years. And his voice starts ringing out to me and he's saying, you are worthy of all the love in the universe. You are worthy of all the love in the universe. And of course, I didn't believe that because I'm just seeing this whole scene of what a terrible human being I was. But I trusted his voice. And so I followed him. And that's when I landed in the light

of the experience. As soon as I accepted his voice, I started to go into the light. And in that light, I was shown that I had chosen my entire life. I was shown my pre-birth planning, that I had picked every adversity, every partner, every experience. It had all been predetermined before I ever came to Earth and was born. And I was like very grateful for the information. And I definitely did not want to come back to Earth because heaven feels amazing. A lot of near-death experiences have a hard time describing it. But you always hear that like I had this choice and like, I really, I would rather. It feels amazing. Let me, let me continue on this journey. But they feel some responsibility or some pull back to the planet. I didn't want to come back to the planet.

Because it felt like every one of the trillion of cells on your body was having a trillion orgasms. It was like the most lit feeling ever. This episode is brought to you by Zoc Doc. Finding a new doctor usually happens at the most convenient possible moment. Right after you change insurance or suddenly notice your body is doing something weird that it's never done before, then begins the search. You open 17 tabs, read conflicting reviews, and eventually convince yourself the symptom is probably just you being alive. Well, Zoc Doc makes the process much easier.

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Get a small 99-cent Frosty until longest second and participating Wendy's Texas Extra. I was like, I would like to stay in this. Life down on earth doesn't feel anything like this. And they told me that I had to go back. I didn't have a choice. My only choices were to go back into this body that I just came from or to be reborn into a baby. And that that baby would be taking on all of my life challenges. And I would have to start from zero because like these life challenges demanded to be experienced. Wow. And so I just like kind of threw my hands up in the air. And I said, if those are really my only choices, I'm going to go back into this glitched broken body because I cannot start from zero.

That's impossible. And when I woke up from my experience, I just thought that it was drug-induced psychosis. Because all I knew was that I took a bunch of drugs. And then I thought I was talking to God. And I thought I planned my whole messed up life. Yeah. And I just went right back to living my life the way that I had always been living it, prostituting, using drugs, lying, stealing, manipulating people.

Wow. So what changed to make you this? kind of like a spiritual warrior. So all of these, all these divine synchronities. So you didn't receive some kind of charge when you were up there to kind of like, hey, go back into your body, but you have an opportunity to change, to shift, to bring light to the world. The message that they told me was that the first part of my life.

You say they, who's that? That's just the beings. The beings that exist. Today is like this universal term for the light. Okay. So I experienced source energy as like this pillar of life. light. Then that would be like a God kind of energy? It felt like a higher consciousness. You can call it Christ or Krishna or Buddha. It doesn't matter what you call it. It's just like this higher

consciousness completely loving, accepting, almost like commanding, but in a very gentle way, like strong, a lot of strength. And then I had a team, like the beings of light that was like these four beings and yeah, they were kind of like coaching me through this experience. Was your dad one of them or no, that was separate. Yeah, that was something separate. Okay. His voice was what got me there. And then he just kind of faded.

But when you think about the oneness of everything, like everything is connected. My mind was just creating these images so that I could have a little acceptance over the scenes and a little bit of a deeper understanding. So the beings of light told me that the first part of my life was boot camp and nobody likes boot camp, right? You're like doing a thousand pushups in the mud. It's raining sideways. There's a ball guy screaming in your face. It's gross. But the second part of my life was going to be carrying out my.

my divine mission. And I was going to have soulmates and kindred spirits and teachers and mentors and community and I was going to be living in spiritual awareness and I'd have access to them. And they were like, just trust us. It's going to be amazing. And I was like, I don't even know you, bro. I do not trust you, right? And that's like when my awareness came back into my body. And so I was kind of given this information that my life was going to be different. But the way that my life was, there was no way that I could even conceive how that could happen. And then like one day all my drug dealers just decided to stop selling drugs. And every time that I went out on the street to go buy substances, like they would be fake

or they wouldn't work or it would start raining and they would get wet and I couldn't use them or there'd be a hole in my pocket. And like it was just impossible. It was impossible for me to keep living my life the way that I was living it. So you were protected in a way? It didn't feel that way at the time. Yeah. But then did you have some kind of vision or what made you realize that this was not some drug-induced psychosis, but something real and more tangible?

So while I was going through heroin withdrawal because I couldn't find drugs that worked, I experienced- And you just went on your own, just like cold turkey, you go to some rehab or something like that? I had no choice. I was just like trapped on my bed. I still looking for people to come and bring me drugs or like whatever I could do. But at this point, I was on day three of withdrawal. which is like the worst day. You're like sick all over yourself from both ends. It feels like your blood is made of lava, like your skin is made of broken glass. Everything hurts. Everything hurts. And I just had this moment of I'm going to have to kill myself. I don't know how I'm going to get through this. And then I heard this voice and it said that I could request what I wanted fixed. And I was like, I was in the throes of desperation. So I was like, okay, strange voice,

I want to no longer be in pain. And they had me lay back and count backwards from 10. And as I did these two little men appeared in my mind's eye and they were wearing these white lab coats and they had these bulbous noses and they had little lawnmowers that manifested in front of them. And I watched these two men take off in separate directions. Now that sounds like drug-induced psychos. Yes. Yes. Mature men with lawnmowers. I'm sorry. I've not heard that from a near-death experience. No psychedelics in love. Yes. This is three days, no drugs. Yeah. These two little men, they take off in separate directions inside my mind. They start walking through every crevice of my mind. And as they do, I feel these intense hot tingles.

And when they were finished, I felt a plunderer go on the crown of my head. And as it plunged down and came back up, there was this bright white flash. And in that moment, I was instantaneously healed from day three of heroin withdrawal. Like moments before I was sick all over myself welcoming death. And then all of a sudden, I was completely well and healed and fine. And I threw myself on the ground and I'm crying out to a God that I do not believe in. And I'm saying, how could this be happening to me? I don't believe in this.

I don't believe in you. You could not have picked a more unworthy subject to bestow this kind of grace on. And again, for the contrast, at the time, I'm a homeless drug addict, I'm a prostitute, I'm a pimp, I'm a liar, I'm a manipulator, I'm a thief, I'm an orphan to suicide. Like, this is the kind of person that's being bestowed with this kind of grace. Why? And I just keep crying out, why, why? And they're saying, because you're worthy of all the love in the universe.

You're worthy of all the love in the universe. And so after that experience, I thought that I was Jesus. And so I went out all over New York and I was like, I have the power to heal people because I have been healed. And so I was. And did it also heal your addiction? Like the phenomenon of craving was healed at that point or did you want to use again? I did end up wanting to use again. Like the mental addiction wasn't gone, but the physical dependency had been lifted from me.

Yeah. And I didn't look this way when all of this was happening. When this was happening to me, I had no teeth. These are paid for. I had huge holes all over my face and my arms because every time that I got high, I thought that bugs lived inside me. And so I would pick myself to pieces trying to get the bugs out of my skin. And so I walk into this women's meeting and this 12-step fellowship.

And a woman grabs me as soon as I walk in and she hugs me so tight. And I hadn't been touched in a loving way in a really long time. So like it kind of made me recoil a little. And then she leaned in and she whispered in my ear and she said, you are worthy of all the love in the universe. You are worthy of all the love in the universe. Oh my God. And I just melted into this woman. And I rested my head on her big boobies for as long as she would let me. And I surrendered. I, like, I mean, this deep guttural cry came out of me. And that was the turning point for me. And I went into a long-term rehab and I got clean. I

stayed there for a year and a half. And I learned how to be a person. I mean, I didn't even know how to wake up and brush my one good tooth without being high first. I literally I really had to learn everything all over again. And that's also where I developed my spirituality. And I just cherry-picked all these things that I liked out of each sacred text that I was devouring at the time. And now you see this wonderful spiritual experiencer and teacher now. Well, you put a lot of those photos on your website, which was pretty amazing that you

have a lot of before. I've seen a lot of before and after photos in my day, usually like for diet pills or something like that. But this is for like recovery and spiritual enlightenment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Did you ever see this movie that I did called Super? No, I haven't.

By James Gunn? Because when you're describing the little men with the light, the lawnmowers, my character and super has a vision and his skull is lifted up and the finger of God touches his brain. No way. That's amazing. And instills him with a mission. So we can check out that. At least that scene from it.

It reminded me of that crazy thing. What a cool synchronicity. That's so cool. I didn't know that. Yeah. It's amazing. What's really neat is where you felt that plunger and where you filmed that spot. There is a meridian right there.

And if you have long hair, you can take your little piece of long hair right there and pop it and you'll actually see light in your eyes. You'll see it. It's like an activation. I don't have any hair up there anymore. You might have to just go a little bit further back. I love how you had a number. you had a number of spiritual experiences. You had this vision. And then, and I think this is really important for the listener to understand, is like, then you went to work, right? So then you went to,

like, I'm going to learn how to live again. I'm going to kind of put my life together. I'm going to study the world's faith traditions and find teachings that speak to me and propel me forward. And that was a period of time where things just didn't fall into your lap, that you were rolling up your sleeves and taking care of yourself and getting new teeth and putting yourself together and getting into shape and learning how diet and nutrition work and dealing with your mental health. The catalyst was the near-death experience. The catalyst was the healing, right? But like my whole transformation has taken place through structure, consistency, and discipline.

It's not because I had this experience. it's because, again, I put in the work and I do it on a daily basis, you know. I don't feel like I'm free from addiction. My addiction manifests in all these other ways today. You know, I don't manifest in the form of control or working too much or judgment or eating disorders or like, you know, scrolling incessantly. Like there's all these other things. So I have to be very vigilant with the way that my spiritual practice is so that I can

maintain recovery in all areas of my life. And it's not individual to me like anybody can experience transfer. I think it's inevitable for all of us. We will all experience some kind of transformation in our life. Vinnie, I've heard your story several times online. We got to speak on the phone a while back now. It was like two years ago. Yeah, yeah. Tell us why you're here and what you went through. Well, I'm here to help remind us where we come from, who we are and who we can be and who we can remember we are. Where do we come from? Such an amazing place. But it's very hard to see it outside ourselves here unless we're serving others, then we can.

But we can find it very easily inside here. And mine starts with a body bag. I had aspirated. I was found in a fast food restaurant bathroom dead. They pronounced death. Was this from drugs or just a stroke? I had taken a, I was in amateur bodybuilding at the time. So I'd taken this supplement that it was normal if you got it from the United States,

but if you bought it from overseas, it was an extract. Okay. We couldn't read the language on the bottle. So we just took our normal little liquid bottle cap of this stuff, but it was like taking 20 of the American bottle cap. Oh, wow. It was just way too much. And it worked like, it worked to help the body relax so the muscles could recover faster.

But that much of it, it'll kill you. And yeah, we took it, both of us, me and my best friend. We instantly knew something was bad about it. So we thought maybe if we went and got something to eat, we'd feel better. And we barely made it to the restaurant. I went into the bathroom, single-use bathroom, locked the door. I got dizzy. And all of a sudden, I heard this, like, loud wop.

And it had to be my head, either hitting the counter of the sink or hitting the ground. And next thing I know, I'm in like, I'm floating in darkness. And my buddy who made it into the dining room, he collapsed on a dining booth and like vomited all over it. Well, the manager of the restaurant saw him. So they called 911 and took him away. And about an hour later, a customer was complaining that he couldn't get in the bathroom.

So the manager went in that bathroom, unlocked it. And there was I dead on the floor. And I was already starting to get cold to the touch. So the 9-1-1 operator told people not to touch the body, wait for medics to get there. The medic got there. They did try preliminary resuscitation, but nothing worked. So they went ahead and bagged the body. But the crew that came to do it that day had a rookie on the team, and he was a third man.

And so they tasked this rookie with babysitting the body in the body bag in the back of the ambulance. Well, they got witness test, like witness statements and paperwork filings. out in the restaurant. So they're doing all this and I'm sitting here what I feel like kind of like floating. I feel settling down into this this very comfortable electrical feeling, almost like I'm sitting in the most comfortable chair ever. And in the darkness, I could see a light just like you saw. And in that light, it was getting closer and closer and closer. And I was looking at this scene of this like fast food restaurant. And I watched them take my friend away in an ambioles. And I remember thinking, oh, good, he's going to be okay.

And when I looked over to the bathroom, I see there's a dead guy in there, but I didn't think it was me. I really didn't. I thought, well, I'm up here. That poor dead guy, they better get somebody to help him. Oh, my gosh. And so I was watching that. I watched the medics come. I watched them do chest compressions.

I watched them put like a mask thing over the mouth. nothing was working. I watched them pronounce death. They even announced the time of death. They bagged the body right there, took it in the back of the ambulance, and just racked it on a gurney with that rookie. And I'm watching all of this.

And I wanted to watch the other two medics go do the paperwork stuff to see what they were going to say because I could hear everyone's thoughts as if they were an outside voice. Like literally any of thought that someone had there, you would just hear it out loud. because there's not this this veil of separation in that space. So you just hear everything.

And so I was hearing everyone's thoughts. And I was I was kind of laughing that the customer was complaining about the bathroom. He just was sick of the conversation he was in with his spouse. So he wanted to keep saying he had to go to the bathroom. He couldn't get in there. So that's what caused him to tell the manager. Oh, gosh, that's fine. And I wanted to go hear more about it.

For some reason, I just wanted interest. I just wanted to hear more. And but it was weird this force like forced me to stay above the body. Even when they took my friend away in his ambulance, I tried to go with him and it pulled me back and it kept me above the body. But still, ignorant Vinny had no idea. It's kind of like pulling up to a stoplight and you see your car over there and you see a guy driving it looks just like you. You're like, but that's not me. I'm right here in my car.

Right, right. So it's like that's what it felt like. I just knew it wasn't me. I knew I was right here. Yeah. So watching all of this, they finished the paperwork, they leave the scene. They're headed towards the medical examiner, which is about 10 miles away, 10, 15 miles away. And on the way, it takes them right in front of a hospital.

So they're not even taking you the hospital. No, taking me the medical examiner. Yeah. Well, just as they pulled away from the scene. You have no pulse. No pulse. Cold, in a body bag, covered with sick, slimy. My chest has, or my neck has swollen.

sometimes in aspiration your neck will swell and my neck was the same width as my jaw so it was like it looked like as a he man character or something wow so i again just watching all this and i noticed this rookie i could hear him like berating himself why didn't you speak up you know there's more you could do you could do this you could do this and he was like going through all of his checklist that he had just learned he was like why didn't we do that i know protocol says not to but why not try? This might bring him back. And out of nowhere, this light starts to form in him, like inside him, in his heart. You're seeing. I'm watching. You're floating above. I'm watching it. It's like glowing out of his heart. And I'm like, what is this? And out of nowhere,

this really loud voice goes over my shoulder and it says, this one's not dead. This episode is brought to you by Fetzer. You know, there's this tendency in modern life to believe that every problem has a material solution, more technology, more productivity, more money, more apps reminding you to breathe while you ignore the fact that your soul feels like a raisin. But the folks at the Fetzer Institute believe something deeper. They believe that behind humanity's biggest challenges are spiritual ones. Loneliness, division, disconnection, our inability to see each other, the planet, or even ourselves, as sacred. And they're asking a really beautiful question. What if shared flourishing begins with the sacred? Fetzer supports stories,

communities, and spiritual solutions from people around the world, our healing division, caring for the earth, and creating deeper human connection through faith, spirituality, and reverence for love itself. Not dogma, not forcing one belief system, just the radical idea that, hey, maybe the soul matters. Honestly, that's a conversation we care deeply about here at Soul Boom. You can explore their spiritual solutions library and learn more at Fetzer.org. That's Fetzer.org. Thanks, Fetzer. Summer heats up in Fex's The Sharr. Set in 80s, Los Angeles, the Shards follows a group of beautiful, privileged prep school students who are preyed on by The Trailer, a serial killer targeting teenagers across the city.

This fever dream of youth, beauty, sex, and mystery is a must see. FX's The Shards, streaming August 5th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Sign up now at Disneyplus.com. I knew he heard it. I just, I knew he didn't believe he heard it, though. because as soon as he heard it, he goes, that's just your imagination. He said that in his mind. And as we kept going down the road, we were about a half block away from this hospital. The light got even brighter. And all of a sudden, the voice came again really loud. And this time,

he knew he heard it. He took action. He unzipped the body bag. He had to undo some straps. So wasn't your voice. It was some voice above me, like up and over me, yeah. divine voice, some urging from the other side, propelling him to action. It felt like a director, honestly. It felt like a director. And action. This one's not dead.

And action. Yeah. So he fell into action. He broke protocols, undid the straps, under the body bag. He felt around for a pulse. He couldn't feel one at the neck. He felt under the arm. He couldn't feel one.

He was feeling for any sign of life anywhere. And he got to a point where the last place he knew from his training was down on the femoral artery, which is inside the leg. And so he undid one of the second or last straps so he could get in the body bag to fill down on the leg. And when he pushed down in, when he made contact with like the femur bone inside my leg, there was an ignition of a spark between him and me sitting where I was watching all this. Like we both jumped.

And with that jump, I had this inkling like, dude, this isn't just a movie. This is real. Like this is happening. When I felt that, I was like, well, this is something more than a movie. This is very different. And so I just was very invested with what was going on. And when he felt that, to him, that was enough of a sign to go ahead and use DFIB and use their different technologies to try to bring the body back, the two veteran medics

were just laying into him, just cussing him out, saying you're going to get fired before even a full EMT. You're an idiot, that kind of stuff. And he just wouldn't listen. He acted like he couldn't hear him. He kept going. He got the DFIB hooked up. He got a single first round of shock going and nothing.

Second round of shock, he got a single heartbeat. And that single heartbeat put a mute button on the other two medics. When they heard that heartbeat, they stopped what they're doing. And the driver was right away saying, we need to go to that hospital. And the third round of shocks, heart started. And so, you know, from the time declared until my heart started, it was 47 minutes, but likely dead almost an hour before that. So hour, hour and 47 somewhere in there. But still, ignorant Vinny up here.

Yeah. Thinking I'm not driving that car. But that whole time, you're just observing this. Observing, yeah. Yeah. Then they get to the hospital. One of the big miracles is where that heart started. It was, you know, maybe 200 feet from a hospital.

hospital. So they were able to pull in and it was a brand new hospital. So there's lots of people with nothing to do. So there was like two teams there ready to meet them. They met the medics. They transferred the body from the gurney onto the hospital bed and or ICU bed. And as they did that, I saw the body going into seizures. It was really, really just terrible. Like some of the color was changing in the face of the body. There was like a bright yellow splotch right here on one of the cheeks and there was like like purple bruising all around the neck i don't know why it just looked like really bright purple and it just like horrible and the body was starting to vomit well and and foaming from the mouth while it was in seizure and and so the the team at the hospital started strapping down the

body so they could secure it to work on it and as they did that they got to the left arm and i felt someone strapping my left arm. And that was the first, I ended up breaking that strap. I resisted and I broke that strap. You were a bodybuilder after all. Amateur. I was no Ronnie Coleman, but I was pretty good. I was tough. And they came put another strap. They put a leg strap on my left arm and put it down. And I couldn't move it. But I was sitting here in this, what I felt like was a chair with my arm. I couldn't move. And that's when it's like, okay, idiot, do you know you're dead yet? Come on. And that's the first time I knew. I knew that, oh, my God, I've been watching my own death this whole time.

And so I had this big wave of fear. And this is where I started to see my life of you, too, is I started to think, like, you're such an idiot. How could you not know? You're watching your own death? You had no idea? Like, how could you not know? I just didn't understand how I couldn't know that.

And so I started thinking thoughts like, you're such an idiot. You can't do things right. And then I started seeing all the negative things I ever did in my whole life, all the negative things. From age zero to 25, I saw everything negative. And I saw it from my perspective. But then I also had to simultaneously experience it from the perspective of who I was doing bad too. Even if it was just like mean or bullish, just not kind, just like bad energy. Wow.

And so I felt it all. I could not handle that. I could not handle the life review where I'm just looking at all bad shit that I did, how I hurt people. Well, as soon as I got... It must have been torturous. It was. And if there was a hell in my experience, I would say it's here and in that life review, the first half.

But then as soon as you get through the dirty part of life, then they invite in your good side of life. Again, same they. Yeah, same they. I didn't know who they were yet. But yeah. Some beings of light, angels, guardian, angels. guardian angels or something. Yep.

And they started showing me my, like all the good that I ever did. They started showing me, even as a kid, I would randomly like walk up and say something kind to a stranger. And how, like that would change people's lives, something so dumb. And they're like how much good that did. And I'm like, what the heck? I didn't know there was any good. Truly I didn't.

As a, I was a pretty bad abused kid myself. And I had a hard time believing there was good inside this shell. and got to the end of that and I started feeling this love just pour over me like from behind me. It felt like a waterfall of warm electricity just flowing over me from behind me

and I knew that was something very precious and somehow I knew what it was and I remembered I wanted that. I wanted it so bad and when I had done drugs that's what I was seeking because right when you first try that drug that first time you're getting a little little glimmer of what that is, then it's gone. And then you're chasing that forever with the

drugs. And I'm like, this, this is it. This is who I want. So I turned around. I see this guy, this like very tall man. He's like all just in white. He's got like a white robe on, but it's over like a white suit. And he's got a long white beard, long white hair. And his skin was like pink sand that like glistened with light. And I'm just like gazing at this. being. And, you know, I had, I had my American child raising in the culture. I'm like, this is God. As soon as I thought that, he goes, he goes, no, son, I'm not God. And I was like, well, are you Jesus? Like what? Yeah. You know, that's the only other thing I could think of. And he said, no, son, I'm not Jesus. I'm your guide. I'm here to help you go wherever you want to go. He said,

I can take you back to your body, or I can take you anywhere you want to go in the universe. And so I look back at my body right then. It was, again, still in a terrible situation. They were just stabbing some stuff into the chest of the body. And I was like, nope, don't want that. I know I don't want that. I want to go with you. He goes, where you want to go.

And I thought about it for a moment, just for a moment. And all I could think about was, again, that love that I was feeling pouring off him. So I said, can we go where that love's coming from? I know that it's coming from you, but does it come from somewhere else through you? And he said, yes, that's our home. That's my home. That's your home. We can go home.

And I said, well, that's what I want to do. Let's go home. So we began this journey. He explained to me that it was going to be a journey of not just distance, but it was going to be a journey of like vibration or frequency. that even though heaven almost simultaneously exists with us, we can't exist there because we would explode. It's such a high vibration there.

So he was going to help me get to that high vibration so I could go there. And first he said, you need to know why you're here, Vinnie. And I said, well, I know I'm here. We're here to be tested. You either thrown away to hell or you're saved in heaven to just hang out forever. And he like smiled and he looked at me with like this. this parent smile. And he goes, I love that you think that's what it is.

But it's not. And he helped express to me that life is a school. Life is a place that we did most of the hard work before we got here. And here is like part of the elite of the universe that can get through a lot of the preparations to get to Earth, which we go rigorously prepare to get here. That if we make all those proving grounds, we can come to Earth. as a reward, but we had to earn that right. It wasn't just like freely given and we worked hard to get here.

And then once we hear we don't want to be here. And he explained that this school is really just like a playground. It's for us to come and learn how to play and learn how to create and learn how to remember who we are and learn how to love and learn how to build relationships. And that those are the only things we take with us when we die is all those things. But that's why that's all we take with us when we are. we die. It's our relationships, what we learn, what we build in our mind and our character, in our soul. That's what we take. And he explained that and said, you know, Vinnie,

the world thinks life is a courtroom, but it's always been a classroom. And that was a big, aha. And that's interesting. I haven't heard that before. Why courtroom? Because we're here to be, what do you think he meant? We're here to America, not America, but the Western culture, we're judged. We're here to be judged. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel that too sometimes. You know, I think you can't.

Oh, I judged, but I judged myself. Yeah. But that was the only judging. That was the only courtroom I got. Yeah. I didn't like my public defender. Especially for that first part. That was rough.

But yeah, and he explained that, you know, we're here to love. Love is the power that runs the universe. Love is the power that can change the universe. Love is the power that can heal the universe. And that love is this. this foundation, but also the fluid medium for us to get from point A to point B. And so I said, okay. And he said, you don't have to believe everything I tell you. You just have to believe it's possible. And as long as you believe it's possible, we can continue our progression.

So he went through and just taught me so many things. You know, he taught me about prejudice. He said, you know, Vinny, you can't have prejudice in heaven. Do you have prejudice? And I was like, I don't have prejudice. And he's like, okay, I love that you think that. He goes, how do you believe about prejudice people? And I went off. I was like, I hate prejudice people. And I grew up with two sisters in another race that were adopted and they would get bullied.

So I had a lot of anger and I got fights all the time about that kind of stuff, beating people up over just racism, simple racism. And sometimes it's just little boy teasing, but I wouldn't handle it. I would make sure I took care of it. And he showed me that I had to release even that. I had to be okay with people being who they are and that that's their story. And then I'm not their director. I can be their inspiration. I can help inspire them, but I'm not their director.

They need to be their own director. And he helped me understand that relieving me of all prejudice allows me to get one my first keys to get into that place that we call heaven. And so I did. I released it. And it was a huge, huge adjustment for me. And he helped me understand, this happened 2003, so a few years ago, 23 years ago. He helped me understand that technology is going to eventually replace religion. And that as it replaced religion, people weren't going to choose, like, I'm not going to go to church, I'm going to stare at my technology. Just the technology became the brighter light. the flashier show. And so they lean away from their religion and that eventually that technology

would morph into being like false gods that people would like worship it. They would false idols. False idols, yeah. I said, you know, in 2003 we all had, most of us had PCs. Flip phones. Yeah, flip phones. Motorola. I think blueberries were in development back then. Blackberries, yeah. Blackberries, yeah. And it's like all this tech was still not even out. people are still using palm pilots to remember who their friends were. It was just such a different age back then. Yeah. MySpace.

Yeah, MySpace. Yep, MySpace. Facebook wasn't even a big thing yet. Google wasn't a thing yet. So it was really a different space back then, but he was just kind of giving me a heads up. And ignorantly, I didn't take that as notice that, dude, you're going to go back. I should have taken that as notice. I didn't.

I'm like, okay, okay, like a little puppy dog. Okay. Let's go to heaven. Come on. And so we kept learning. He helped me understand that there is purpose and evil, that for there to be an evil option, it gives us the choice to have a good option. But then it gives us the power of choice.

But if we take away the evil option, then we take away the power of choice. And choice is how we grow here in the playground. But our universe loves us so much. they put this barrier, what we call a veil, around the earth, so that we can come here, get dirty, banged up, beat up, and still be okay when we get back through the veil. That veil washes off a lot of the harm that the earth puts on us in our journey of discovery.

And so I said, okay, I guess I can accept that. And then he helped me understand that we're all one. We're all one. We're all fingers on a universal hand. and there's no way for me to hurt another finger and not have it hurt me. It eventually hurts my bloodstream, my cell structure, my skin, that we cannot hurt each other and not hurt ourselves. It's not possible.

And that includes animals, includes nature, includes all of the universe. I was like, okay, I can understand that. And at that point, I was seeing this far off place, and I could see it was like surrounded by this mist. And as we got closer and closer and closer, he let me see in that mist was just this compilation of these big orbs, like really big, like larger than human orbs. And he showed me then these orbs when we're pursuing heaven or pursuing going back home, when we're still lingering on something like prejudice or something like that, we will get caught up in one of these pearls until we can release it. It's kind of like a rehab for the soul. Just comfortably and softly release it.

Let us let that darkness out of us so that we can cut ties with it and embrace who we really are. So we made it through all that. And I would call that the pearly gate because they are pearls. And it looks more like a mist, not a gate, but yeah. And so when we got through that, I could see like this tremendous space, this big mountain, like all this grass and greenery. And it felt like it was a planet that was, it feels like much larger than our sun.

Like it feels like our earth could be minuscule in this place. But everything's bigger there compared to us here. We're like tiny Tim compared to, you know, the giants. And we're spiritual giants. We are. All of us are. Our souls are. So I get there.

I come down. I touch down with grass. And when I did, my toes, which I have toes there, we all have toes. I had energy toes at least. You have heavenly toes. As they came down and touched the grass, it was like I felt this reunion, this like celebration. I felt a pulse of energy come off of me and the grass. And instantly I could taste like the grass.

I could taste love. I could taste sweetness. I could taste almost a sweet aroma. And I could see all these like rainbows. of light coming off of every blade of grass. And I could also see that every blade of grass was a specific individual consciousness, that it wasn't just one hive consciousness. It was like all individuals.

And I could feel all of them hugging me through my toes. Okay. And I'm... You should have introduced them to the little lawnmower guys. They were probably, that's maybe the groundskeepers for heaven. Right. Yeah. But they were super tiny.

Yeah. Yeah. But I felt just so loved. And all I could think was, why me? Why me? There's no way I could be worthy. I felt like I could be a perfect person, a hundred lives in a row, and still not be worthy of the love that they give you there.

There's just no, it's just like being worthy of the sunshine. We can't be. We can't be. We just have to appreciate it, love it, enjoy it. And so as I'm embracing this love, I ask them like, why me? Like, why me? And they were like, because you're you. you're Vandy.

And I'm like, but why me? I just didn't understand it, you know? Yeah. And Drake, my guy, his name is Drake. He'd introduced his name as Drake by then. Not the singer Drake. Not the singer Drake. This is long before.

Yeah. And it was an old name from an ancestor. Yeah, I found out later. But yeah, so this Drake guy, he says, if you really like that grass, you should see the flowers. Wow. And so he took me over to my consciousness over and put me on a flower.

I saw this flower. I was freaking out about it. There was like liquid light inside every, every pedal of the flower and everywhere that I would move. I would see the light move. And like I would feel these loving connections between me and the flower

as we're just communicating, just direct communication. And that's when I started to notice that there I was light. So that light that was showing up inside that medic, it's almost like it was his soul. starting to come out, and that our soul is light. And that there, I look down, I'm like, oh, I'm light.

And just then Drake came up and he put his arm around me. And he said, Vinnie, this is going to be hard, but it's going to be worth it. And as soon as he said that, he brought me in for this hug. And to this day, that hug is the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my existence. I felt like the arms of God, the arms of the universe, the arms of source itself were wrapped on me. And I could feel just this, this like weeping release come out of me. And I felt these two big pulses of energy come off of us as we were hugging. And I felt our two souls like unify for a second.

And those two pulses happened. And just then in my right ear, I could hear my brother on earth saying a prayer over my body. And I could hear his words saying, I command you to be healed, command you to return to your body. And as soon as he said that and completed that prayer, I felt this tug, this yank from, it felt like in the umbilical. area and it just yanked me back. It yanked me back. It hurts so bad. That would be probably the other hell as being forced back. And at some level of my own consciousness, I had to be okay with it. But from everywhere I could touch in my consciousness, I was not okay with it. I didn't want to go back. But as they were taking me back to my time, I noticed that time is like this stack of discs.

and they had to find the right disc and like place me into my time. And it's almost like a big spiral noodle time. And they had to find the right piece of the spiral to put me in. But I could also see that side of the other spiral and that side of the other spiral. Like that there's so many repeated patterns here. And that that's what we see a lot of on earth is we repeat things so often. Huge patterns. And then I wake up.

And I wake up in my body. I wake up at 1.11 in the morning. I was necessitated on January 18th. I woke up from a brain-dead coma for three days on January 21st. And I woke up completely fine. No residual effects. I did end up having to replace a lot of my molars because of all the seizures. I did out fracturing.

Like I couldn't see the fractures yet. They showed up later. But other than that, no residual effects. other than my purpose has changed substantially. But my life became the very, very rough part at that point. I wanted to go back. Everything within me wanted to go back home. January 21st, I checked out.

And then in April, after looking for very dangerous jobs to try to kill myself without doing it, you know, I figure you get a really dangerous job, you come in accident, you're not a suicide. So I was pursuing that route. that was my life goal at that point. I wanted to just go back to heaven. I met Andrea, which you know, Andrea. She's, you know, she was, when I first met her, she, she invited heaven to live stronger inside me.

And I could see that and receive that and respect that. And I could see that I could also see heaven in her eyes. And, you know, we met in April. And without even going on a date, we knew we were going to get married. we in fact our first date was after we were pretty much unofficially engaged and we got married that august but a month before we got married Andrea forced me to go to a family reunion because that was her kind of thing not my kind of thing and we're sitting this little reunion in Wyoming and we're sitting at a high school in afton star valley Wyoming and at this high school they're doing a historical presentation about all the founders of the town and the city and and the local area. And they're doing a kind of a big slide show

with a big projection screen up front. And they're showing the different founders. Well, about four or five pictures in, I saw Drake. I saw Drake. But it says, name is Charles. And I've always been, I don't believe lost stuff. I've always been someone who wants to really investigate something

before I believe it, right? And so I didn't even believe my own experience yet at this point. It was all there. I wept about it almost every day. So I just wanted to go back. But I still didn't know if I believed it because I had a neurologist tell me that that was my brain filling in the missing time. And but here I was, I see Drake. Says his name is Charles, but it's my Drake.

And he's a founder of this town in Montana. Yeah, Wyoming. Yeah, Afton, Wyoming. Okay. And he was one of the first clergy, one of the early clergy. in the town. He ended up working as a surveyor there. He ended up working in Wyoming government, city and state. In that family, he was kind of a big deal for that era. He was, I'm sure, an important man of his time. Well, I'm sitting here looking at him, and all I can think of is he

has the same last name as my grandmother's maiden name. So I couldn't even drive at this point. I had to have Andrea drive me to my grandmother's house, which is only a couple miles away. She drove me. We left the reunion. We left the play. We went straight to my grandmother's house. And I said, Grandma, tell me about Charles Cazer.

His name is Cazer. And she goes, oh, great grandpa Drake. He's kind of famous. And I just, I just wept. I, like, collapsed into a puddle on the floor. She's like, what's wrong with him? And Andrew's like, she's like, I'll explain in a minute. I just wept for like 10 minutes.

Yeah. Because now, you know, I did some digging. my intellectual side needed to do the due diligence and do the digging. Come to find out his middle name was Drake. He went by Charles officially on everything. So everywhere people will call him Charles, but if you called him Drake, he knew you were family. So only family called him Drake.

And it was just really neat to see that someone who I'd never met, never seen, never even a picture in my life did I see his. I now knew I could you know my my grandmother had heard so many of the stories of how he was and I could sit there and talk to her for hours and like confirm yeah that's how he is like I know I didn't seem that long ago grandma like it was just really amazing to me and finally my brain accepted that this is excitement and not anxiety my brain accepted that this was a gift a really hard one But it was a gift, and I needed to start figuring out why it was a gift and what the gift is. That's a story.

Wow, I have so many questions. I love the way that Vinny's imagery is. It's so vivid and it's so detailed. And that feeling of reunion is definitely what I experienced. That feeling of just like you can just relax, like the biggest exhale. Like, oh, I'm finally home. Like not home where all your stuff is. like a home that I have no way of describing.

Yeah. So connected. And that longing to go back, that's all that I wanted. I just wanted to go back. But I knew that I couldn't kill myself and make it back there. Like I knew that I would just wake up and be at a reset point in the game. And so I had to eventually, through all of my spiritual integration, I realized what Vinnie has already said is that it's not about going back to heaven.

It's about bringing heaven here. And so the way that I do that is. through connection to other people, through community. Like, I created a community because I couldn't find one that fit exactly what it was that I want. I wasn't complete. There was something else that I needed. And so I created it.

And I've been able to just really deeply connect with so many people that are on this path. And like, we all have little pieces of the puzzle and everybody's stories are different and everybody's beliefs are different. But somehow we all have this common thread of hope and resilience and prosperity. I imagine a lot of people are watching with jaws dropped, but there might be some people watching skeptical like, yeah, okay. That's okay. You were on drugs and you were oxygen deprived and you all hallucinated.

It's all great because it's all about spreading love and that's great, but I don't know if I buy this. But how can you bring data and study to this field? What's neat is that at the IAN's organization, it's an annual conference this year. it's going to be in Seattle. They bring together the science side and they bring together the experiencer side.

And now there's this new middle ground of spiritually transformative experience. There's become kind of a middle ground that appreciates both sides. And the science side is really neat. The Bigelow Institute, which studies a lot of our brains, they've done multiple research studies

on experiencers showing that their brains after experience function differently. They light up differently in different ways in different areas than they did than to say a scan of someone normal who hasn't had an experience. Even someone who thinks they may have had an experience but they can't remember any details,

they can see on their scans. If it's lit up, they probably do. They could probably go get hypnosis and maybe get that experience brought out of them. But it's really neat. That's just, you know, a few years back, what four years back, They're one of our sponsors of our conference.

But there's many doctors, many book writers, many scientists that go every year. And they just gather data. And the one thing you can't run from is the data. If we're all crazy, how come we're all crazy in the same experience points? That's where you can't run from the data. And what are those experience points? They're universals of pretty much anyone. We have mirrored experiences where people will see a tunnel of light.

They'll be greeted by a loved one who's crossed over. Some people experience their pre-birth planning. They'll be greeted by a guide. They'll see, yeah, they'll see a tunnel. Those are some of the mirrored experiences. Family members sometimes ushering them forward in some way you heard the voice of your father. And do these near-death experiences, are they universal? Like if you went to Namibia, would they be the same or Bangladesh?

They're different. Every culture is different. Yeah. Are there the same universal things or are they totally different? So just the deity name changes. That's the only, everything else stays the same. Yeah. But the deity name that they're associating to, that's the only thing that changes.

Yeah. And sometimes not even, right? Like there's Muslim experiencers who see Jesus. There is. There's Christian experiencer who experience Muhammad. Like, it can really, I think that the near death experiences are a bridge to a universal understanding that it's just not one thing. It's everything.

And yeah. And so there's space. for that too. I think that the soul doesn't necessarily know what it needs and the soul ends up seeing what it needs. Just like that fingerprint effect that each experiencer is a little different, but those same trending points happen in all of them, that that's the data you can't run from. And that's data that lines up every culture, every, every society, all over the world that they've experienced these. We haven't surveyed aliens yet with that. But once we get contact, with them, maybe see if they haven't been.

You guys have near death experiences? What was it like for you? Maybe they dream about us. And you know, it's the same thing happens with plant medicine, too. People who have plant medicine journeys, like they all have mirrored experiences too. And so there is something that's going on that's much greater and there is a common thread. You know, psychedelics are extremely effective with PTSD, especially in clinical trials and clinical studies. but because it can't be pharmaceuticalized, it gets ostracized, thrown out, objected,

revolted. And something that happened yesterday is something that I know for a fact saves soldiers is something called Ibegene. And this is something that you used to have to go to, well, it's still currently until the law gets changed. You have to go to Mexico to get these. treatments, but I've seen soldiers that multiple suicide attempts, you know, lashing out at loved ones, you know, blowing up their own life, go and get one or two or three treatments. And they become

the human, the child that they were before all that trauma. And it's really neat. That's nature. We've had that. We've had ibogaine. We've had psilocybin. We've had all of these these nutraceuticals on this planet from the beginning. But we started to believe this show. We started to believe what our eyes were seeing. And we turned away from that. Definitely, I think psychedelics and their healing properties when kind of, you know, properly contained under supervision

and can have incredible effects. I've heard it so many times from addicts, from people with trauma. Absolutely. Absolutely. Do either of you feel like since you went through what you did that you have deeper intuitions, do you ever have like what you would call like psychic experiences? Do you have richer dreams because you were once kind of tapped into home? Yeah, definitely. I have a lot of intuitive gifts. They've changed over the course of integration. So like when I first had my awakening experience, I could see. energy and trees. I had a little bit of synesthesia where my senses were all mixed up and I could like see music or, you know, like I could taste nature and everything was kind of all jumbled like that. You know, I had to figure out how to be a human. That was like my first task. Like learn how to be a

human without using drugs. And that seemed like such a huge task for me. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll do like this psychic thing later. But for right now, can I just figure out how to be a person? And now my intuition comes in the form of being able to help people through trauma. I can see the shadows that are holding them back. We both do that. We both carry trauma, both very different than each other, but a lot of similarities too. And in those trauma come keys to help others out of their cages. And so because we've been able to unlock and be unlocked out of our cages, we can help others.

And same thing with me. My intuition is on way too strong. because we're wired for survival. Right. And then we're going to look for danger, anxiety, what we lack, where potential threats are coming from, what we don't have. Our brains are naturally wired in that direction because a lot of animals are wired, you know, in a fight, flight, kind of base brain, amygdala kind of stuff.

Yeah. And not even day by day, but hour by hour gratitude can reshape. how we see the world. You talked about changing, you know, how your thoughts shape what you do and your actions then shape your thoughts and kind of that dance. Yeah. So I have this analogy that my mentor gave me that I love. So we all come to Earth with this two gig flash drive. That's all the information that we can hold while we're here, right? Even people who have experiences, we can be downloaded with infinite terabytes of information, but we only have a two gig flash drive to bring it back on. So all throughout our lives, we're being programmed. And our little flash drive is getting all filled up

with like limiting beliefs and lack mentality and survival mode and trauma responses and all that stuff. So in order to reprogram myself, I not only need to find the new information that I want on the flash drive, but I have to delete the old information off of it because I can't go shoving five gigs of information on a two gig glass drive. You've got a clear space. Right. And that takes consistency, right? Because my brain is wired on like this Formula One race track of a neural pathway. Like, I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. So now I have a new belief that I want to come in. I'm worthy of all the love in the universe. I got to knock the little race car off the track and start building a new track. And that takes time. Right. I believe in miracles. I think that people can have shifts in perception instantaneously. But for most of us, we're taking like the slow and steady journey of reprogramming. And so just like on a computer, if you had a virus on your computer, you'd have to like install math. and like continue to renew the malware all the time so that the virus can be not active. So what I get to do with people is we reprogram their two gig flash drive. What do you want on here?

Let's figure out what it is that we want. And then what do we have to get rid of in order to upload those new beliefs? What do people usually need to get rid of? Just self-limiting beliefs and self-hatred and guilt. Old stories. Guilt. Shame. You know, like addictions.

Anything that childhood. trauma, resentment, apathy. Victimness, too, is a big one. Victimness is probably the biggest one. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, huge. What if you have been a victim?

We all have. Of course, yeah. Victimized from racism, like we talked about that and, you know, been bullied or abused. I used to work with an amazing woman called Delorese. She's a senior and actress. Touched by an angel, too. Yeah, I worked on that show. Oh, great.

I was a PA on that show for a couple of years. You've seen an angel and you were a PA on the show touched by an angel. Well, that's why I didn't think it was real because it looked just like the shoots we were shooting. That's hysterical. Yeah. What did Delorese? Deli used to say, you know, Vinnie not forgiven is like drinking poison and hoping they get sick. And the first time she told it to me, I was like, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Thanks, Della. And then she told to me another time, and that second time it really stuck. And I started to live by that, actually. That's when some big changes started happening in my life, started getting cleaned up. And instead of using my trauma as this heavy hammer to slam down on people or to act crazy and be a fighter or whatever, I was starting to use it as this place to unlock, this place to heal. And it started with forgiveness. And forgiveness isn't for the people who did any wrong to us.

It's for us. Because forgiveness is the cage we choose to live in. If we can't forgive, we're putting ourselves in a cage. We are only limited by unforgiveness. And we can forgive others whether we think it. helps them or not, but it 100% will help us. We have to forgive others. Yeah, I think breaking victim mentality doesn't mean that like you weren't wrong or that the bad thing didn't happen. It just means that I don't have to be shackled to it. I don't have to be a prisoner of.

We live in an unjust society that might treat certain people of color or women or people in a certain class or position terribly. Yes. And unjustly. And that the answer is a reality. That's the reality. I think the solution to it, is bringing the opposite into the scene, into the environment, bringing an unconditional love, forgiving all, but also not necessarily expecting them to forgive you, but being willing to unanimously forgive all and build from today.

Stop letting the rearview mirror get so big that it's as big as your windshield. Like make it be small so we can see the gift of the present so we can, you know, we can engage the present. Yeah. That's a great image too. Yeah, really good. That's amazing.

I think also to the show of the office is an outlet for people. Totally. And it's very much an entertainment built towards the child, not towards the adult self, but the child self. That's why Michael is like that inner, that little child that's run in the whole office. And like everyone really connects to the whole thing because it's like a child's story. in grown-up's bodies. And that's why I think so many people all over the world now,

just really love that show. Yeah, it's really big in countries that don't speak English. Yeah. You would never think would, I've talked about this before, but like Brazilians love the office. And they don't speak English when they're like, I don't understand how they relate to Dwight and Michael and that crazy menagerie.

But apparently they do. Yeah. So I'm so thrilled and honored to be a part of something, to have been a part of something that has brought joy and solace to people's lives. And I meet people every day. And they, they watch it before going to bed. It's their comfort show. It's, you know, something they watch with their family or their significant other. And that's not what we set out to do when we made it. But I feel so blessed to have been a part of something. That's so cool. Yeah. You know when people watch TV shows over and over and over again, which like the office is one of those shows that people watch over and over and it's because that show makes their nervous system feel safe. So like those characters,

you guys as actors, like make people feel safe. And that's why they watch it repeatedly. But there's also a real under under the surface sense of family there. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's always getting together at places you would never to go to a coworker's baby's baptism or like you just never would. Right. You see your own family. Yeah, but you see it's like it's like it's like it's. It's a quasi family there, and that's what the kind of the safety in it is. Yeah. People love that. That's why community, just to like bring it back to the spiritual conversation, but like, that's why community is so important. Well, Vinnie and Betty, this is, we've been talking about this for a long time, and I'm so glad.

We got to have you in the studio and have this incredible conversation. It's really mind-blowing. It's removed my heart. It's gotten me thinking. and where can people find you? Yeah, I'm on all social media. My handle on everything is Buddha, Betty. It's a play on words. I'm not really a Buddha. Not yet. And I'd love to connect with anybody.

I also have a community at we are thewheel.com. We do international retreats and conferences, and we have virtual meetings and in-person community as well. Oh, great. Yeah. What about you, Vinny? I have an amazing community called Living God's Life. It's a nonprofit. It's an amazing community of just beautiful people all over the world, not religious,

but in embracing all people of all beliefs and lifestyles so that they can come and find that that looking for a higher place to be connected to. And that's what that is. So living godslight. And then live in God's Light? No, living God's Light. Living God's Light. Dot org, yeah.

Dot org. Okay, great. Thanks so much for coming on Soul Boom. Thanks for having us. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.