The near-death experience of Tricia Barker

When I grew up in East Texas, I was an only child in the country and I grew up extremely poor. We had a house that the roof leaked and there was black mold on the floor and I didn't have too many friends over so there was a certain amount of embarrassment about growing up in poverty. So a lot of my drive and ambition as a young person was to do well in school, get to a good college, and eventually become a lawyer. I wanted to make money and most of my drive was focused on ambition. So I got into a great university, got a lot of scholarships, but I fell apart when I was at college. There was this sense of I finally got there, now I'm an adult, and yet there was something at my core that was missing. I was agnostic. My romantic relationships were not successful and there was this moment in college where I really just thought this is hopeless, you know, my life is maybe I'm not going to be able to be as successful as I wanted to be. Maybe I'm not going to make it and maybe I'm just a deeply damaged person and that was a thought that I had. So I attempted suicide. I took a bunch of pills, I fell face forward into my mattress and I ended up vomiting and waking up 36 hours later and that was a wake-up call. This was a moment in my life where I thought, you know what, I have to change. And so I started running, I went to see a counselor, I did yoga, and I was kind of on a better track. I was 22 years old and this was leading up to this big race in Austin. But the night before the race I had all these dreams and in one dream I heard my dad screaming, watch out Tricia, and then I heard my mother saying, oh no I can't believe this happened. And they seemed like dreams that were somehow outside of time and it seemed very strange and I thought I didn't get good sleep, I was really kind of out of it, and I got in my car to run this race and this is where I had the accident and this is where the story begins. I'll never forget that. I passed this 7-Eleven and as soon as I went through the first yellow light I gunned it and at that moment the next light was red, I was already in the intersection. I don't understand how the other car was going as fast as he was going but he was in a very big vehicle and we collided almost at a head-on collision. It was a curved intersection so we hit one another both going 65 miles an hour. I didn't even have time to put on my brake and wrecks at that speed they said immediate death. There were no airbags, there was nothing. I remember the car just crunching up around me and I fell over to one side. When the police finally showed up I couldn't move and there was a nurse who finally came along. Three cars passed us by and this nurse stopped and she was holding my hand and the man I was in the accident with he was holding his daughter and they were bleeding but she kept telling me that I was far worse and that my injuries were pretty bad. She didn't know if they were neck or back but I was going to be put on a board and I needed to stay very still but I didn't have health insurance so I overheard once I got to the ER the nurses talking and one surgeon let my case go and the nurses were talking about this that he wasn't going to come in because he may not get paid so I really started to freak out. The nurses kept coming by and squeezing my foot and I just didn't feel anything and so 17 hours with no painkiller, nothing to numb the pain because I had internal injuries and the woman who ended up operating on me had been on duty for 40 hours and so when she took my case she was very tired herself but she decided to operate anyway and it was going to be a long surgery. They were going to have to pick a lot of bone fragments from my spine so I was wheeled in for surgery and then I don't know how long into the surgery but probably long enough for them to open up my back and my hip. My spirit form left my body and I remember getting just so excited. I saw the body on the operating table. I thought we go on like this spirit form, this part of me continues on after death and I knew this immediately. It was almost like I was up in the corner of the room and I had this knowing of my spirit form as this mirror image of my body but it was light. It was composed of light and I was looking down at the surgeons working and I remember thinking there's so much blood. Why is there so much blood? And the blood seemed to be spilling onto the sheet and it looked really gruesome. I later found out that the cause of death was I bled to death and that was basically you know there were internal injuries that were spilling over and so I looked at that but then I looked up and there were these light beings. Now I call them angels. They were just these intelligent beings and they were unlike anything I'd ever imagined or thought. I didn't think of angels like this. Normally we think of angels with wings but these were just they looked like they had shimmery robes and they weren't male or female. They sent telepathic messages to me. They said you'll be fine. You'll walk. You'll run. Don't worry about this. We've got this and then they almost playfully said watch this and they sent this blast of energy through the back of the surgeons into their hands and it lit up my whole body. So I knew that they were participating in this healing. The neurosurgeons were great and talented but I remember thinking they're so smart and I bet they have no idea that light beings are working through them. The experience felt real. It didn't feel like a dream. This felt like an added reality to this reality. So the way we're looking at everything and it looks 3D, it felt like I'd opened up 4D, 5D, 16 or whatever. It just felt as if I'd opened to see what happens beyond the veil. These angels were participating with my surgeons but they were just there in another realm that the human eye can't pick up on but the spirit can. And then the monitor flatlined and I remember thinking I'm really dead now so I don't want to see this. How are they going to revive me? So I left that room and the spirit form can simply go through a wall. So it's like your consciousness decides what you want to do and I was like I will leave this room now as they revive me and I saw my stepdad getting a candy bar out of a vending machine and I thought that's funny that he eats candy bars because he's always bragging about what a vegan he is and a health nut and you know all these things and later I asked my mom if she saw him get a candy bar and she said that at that moment her and my dad were on their knees praying and they were certain that I died in surgery and then he came back in with this candy bar, offered them some of the candy and made a joke and I was like well I was dead at that moment mom. That's the moment that you felt I was dead and I truly was but I had no fear and then I flew into the night sky and I remember like we all want to fly. If you've ever had a lucid dream you want to be a bird. You want to fly above everything and you want to see the world and that's how I felt. I felt as if I was just floating in this beautiful night sky and I began to feel this connection to everyone I had ever met. Sometimes near-death experiencers talk about a tunnel that they go down but I was in the night sky then very quickly I was just in the stars and when I was in that place I began to feel a deeper sense of peace because I felt this consciousness coming toward me that was like the light of God perhaps. It was a light that was full of intelligence and peace and joy. These messages started coming toward me and the messages are very simple. One was love is all that matters. It's all that we take with us when we go. The other was remind them to go to nature and then I started to see little images of myself playing as a kid in nature and how happy I was and then I thought okay maybe adults get too serious and we need to go play in nature more often and then that light, I call it the light of God, showed me more of my life. There were some elements that I didn't like as much. They weren't the parts that most people would judge me for. It wasn't the drinking or the partying. It was when I judged people and when I was rude to someone. That's what God showed me was not right because I wasn't looking at the heart of people. I wasn't looking at who they were inside. I was judging them based on where they went to college or what clothes they wore or if I deemed them cool enough to be my friends and there was this one couple I worked with who actually prayed for me. They knew that I was depressed and maybe they knew even that you know there was something that they picked up on that their hearts went out to me so they kept me in their prayers. Maybe they were even a part of why I didn't die with that suicide attempt. Their love was an observant love but it was a love that participated in my life and I saw oh I missed out on some really good friendships because I was superficial and judgmental and lost in my own pain and darkness instead of looking at people around me and I was like I'll never do that again. I'll always look, I promise, into the hearts of people and that was my big lesson in the near-death experience and then everything transitioned into this beautiful landscape where there's a quote that I love by Thomas More and it said there is no pain on earth that heaven can't heal and what I felt like is everything that was dead was now alive. So my grandfather showed up and he looked beautiful. He had died in his 70s but in heaven he just was glowing with light and he came towards me. He had this look in his eye that communicated with telepathy much like the angels and we spent some time together and I saw this light farther away that kind of looked like a sun and he very quickly said do you want to go there and I said yes and my soul just flew towards this light and as I got closer to that light everything that had been painful in my childhood, the poverty, the neglect, the emotional abuse, all of that seemed to wash away. That wasn't your fault. You're loved. You're perfect. You're fine. You're a child of God. You are loved completely. Earlier in the near-death experience I had heard be like a little child and at that moment I felt like a little child. I felt like I was loved deeply by God. Nothing could harm me. I felt completely free and I didn't want to leave that realm because you can't imagine that love. It's so intense and we don't feel anything like it here. We feel glimpses of it here. Loving a child, loving your parents, loving you know your spouse, it's all just a breeze. It's not the same. This is complete and those are just pieces is the only way I can describe it and that love just boomed through me. I felt people's prayers trying to pull me back and so people always ask what if you pray for someone and they die. They still hear it. It's like my soul heard that I was in surgery and they were trying to get me to stay and I remember thinking that's sweet but I'm really fine. I'm safe. I'm taken care of and the closer I got to God the more I thought I don't want to go back. This is not for me. I want to stay here because I've never felt this good. There is nothing to compare to this. I want to get closer and closer to this all-knowing love but at some point I was stopped. It was like there was a barrier and I felt this booming voice and people always say well is the voice masculine or feminine? It was booming. That's all I know. It just kind of rattled inside of me as if the voice was talking through me and the voice said look down and then suddenly I saw like a place on earth and there was this river. I saw it as a metaphor. This was the river of life and I was also given a message that I was going to teach and that mission has been incredibly powerful. God was right. I actually teach at a college called Trinity River and out of many of the classrooms you look out the windows and there's a river. I take my students to go meditate down by the river. So from what I felt in my near-death experience I was given a life mission to teach and to remind students to turn on their lights. When I was in that realm this seemed like a metaphor like very easy to do. You just come down to earth, you teach and you remind people to be their best self and to be open to light and whatever you want to describe light as. Since I'm an English professor I try very hard to describe what I saw with words but how can you describe this light that comes up at you and fills you with a feeling of peace. I was told that I was going to go back and teach and I argued with God because you know I wanted to make money. Growing up poor I was like no way and when I said that God kind of hurled me back into my body and it was like this darkness took over and the first thing I remember is you know when you're outside of surgery they ask you your name and my throat felt dry but I had read about near-death experiences so I knew what happened to me and I also knew that I wasn't just in my body like this massive experience had just happened and I was having trouble feeling like all of me was in my body. My energy was expanded and so I thought of myself in third person they asked me several times what's your name and I said her name is Tricia I guess I have to come back and be her you know but in my mind I was like I'm so much more you know like I'm not just this physical body I'm a consciousness that touched something so much more than this particular body and I was kind of sad to be in this broken body to know that all those emotional wounds were healed in the presence of God but now I still have to get along with these family members and I still have to process what happened in my life and I remember some sadness about having to come back to being me because it was a lot more fun to be connected to God and connected to everyone. So they put me in the ICU for three days and they were checking on the internal injuries and my back and I was pretty badly broken then I just kind of rested and I knew I was different as family members and friends came in to visit me I had a different way of being I had a different way of perceiving energy I could tell when people were worried and so much of my life had been so self-focused before that that I wasn't intuitive but I knew that now I felt connected to other people and I came back with no fear of death. I stayed in the hospital for nine days and by the end of that time they'd put me in a body cast from my neck down to my hip and I knew that I'd be in this cast for four to five months and I would have to have a lot of rehab to learn to walk again it was going to be a long road to healing but I also felt as if I might be assisted by those angels who had helped in surgery I knew that the angels were sending me messages that might take a while to evolve within me so and I think perhaps these messages stayed inside of me until I started talking publicly in 2008 and then in 2016 a whole lot more and I know this to be real because I still communicate with them you know after this accident a lot of near-death experiencers have these after effects where they see the dead or they become mediums or they just understand that there's another reality that they can perceive so that's what I felt like happened we've spent all this time thinking about how smart we are when we don't even realize there is a consciousness that can work beyond the intelligence that most of us use there's intuition and it's real so immediately I just felt like the brain was a limiter of experience and that outside of body I was just picking up on what it's like to live in a realm without time what it's like to travel at the speed of light what it's like to experience some of the mysteries beyond this life like this life felt limited my body felt limited and that experience felt expansive so I went back to college and I finished up the courses I needed for an English degree to get my teaching certification and then I went right into a classroom that first classroom that I was in was magical and I just told them the story of my near-death experience I said I didn't want to be here but I'm going to tell you about how I died and my mission and then we're going to talk about how this relates to literature and we're going to do all kind of exercises to help you get clear about what you're doing with your future and these kids were you know in shock you know they're they're in 11th grade and they're like okay this is unusual but it was a ton of fun and they opened up to me and from the beginning teaching was magical so after the near-death experience I immediately learned how to lucid dream and so I would leave my body at night and I would still fly around the stars and then I would come back to this badly broken body and I would feel the angels participating and I would ask them to help me but I was also getting psychic flashes that were fun at times but they were also a little unusual I didn't know how to hone them or use them for any true ability like that I for instance I would know when a song was on the radio and I would walk across the room and I would start singing the song and by the time I turned the radio on it would be at that exact spot on the radio and I thought okay but this doesn't win me the lottery so you know I mean what good is this and and I was like uh what's the use of it it's a outside of time since I had touched eternity maybe there's some part of me that's a little bit ahead of time so I asked that it be taken away and only given to me in dreams because it was disorienting sometimes I would know what was going to happen 10 minutes from when it happened a lot of times if there's emotional upheaval or even societal upheaval I'll get a sense of it before it happens I think a lot of people do get these dreams there's there's been several examples of people who dreamed of say their brother dying before their brother died so that their souls are prepared ahead of time and it was many years after the near-death experience when my own father died that I opened up this ability to talk to him in the afterlife and I thought well if I can do this with him can I do this with other people's loved ones and can I hear from others so I just tried with people who had lost children people who really wanted that connection and I realized that I could that you know there's a part of me that can simply be open to what is in that other realm and see images get impressions and then communicate these feelings to other people and that it was very healing for them and now I do some readings it's not what I do full-time I still teach but I think that there is a healing aspect to giving medium readings especially when someone's in deep grief in 2008 my father was diagnosed with brain cancer he called me from the ER and he said hey I think I have food poisoning and it was so unusual for him to be in the ER and I lived two hours away I just got in my car and I started driving there and I asked for a sign I said and the minute I asked I asked my angels I said is this food poisoning or is this something more and I looked and I saw a sign for funeral services and I just felt this intense weight that he was going to die and when I got to the ER they had already done a cat scan and then they pulled me aside and told me about the brain tumor and he died within a month so he was 64 I believe and he was running the week before and then he simply just died within a month I spent as much time as I could with him but I was teaching nine classes at a community college so that's a busy schedule and I'd been there for 24 hours the day before but I missed it when he died and I felt my grandparents come to me in a dream and they were hovering there above the bed and they said it's okay he's with us now don't worry we have him he's he's wrapped in our love and I thought oh they came for him and my grandfather had come for me when I had died so I knew that my dad was fine and he was with him and then a few nights later my father came to me in a dream and he said don't worry that you were busy I saved up all my energy just to be with you those evenings and to talk with you and I slept most of the day in the hospital when we weren't together so I don't want you to feel guilt so I knew he was just trying to relieve my guilt but it still felt good to connect with him but then I started to follow his journey in the afterlife I thought how is the death experience different from a near-death experience what I saw was it was a little more extended so as I had done this quick life review in my near-death experience he did this really long life review and it almost looked like purgatory or something and I thought dad this isn't cool you know and he's oh no no it's fine I'm still encased in love I'm still held in love but I'm just reviewing what would have happened if I would have made this choice or this choice then I kept following his soul and eventually he transitioned and felt this incredible freedom this incredible flying around in the stars and he wanted to understand everything from the inception of time until now but his soul wanted to reincarnate I remember thinking no stay up there you've got to help me you know for all these years and so he stayed with me and I've communicated with him but he tells me that he will reincarnate and it's not a big deal that I don't have to worry about that but his particular soul wants another life here and wants to do it again it's usually a loving message that comes from the other side something that elevates you so if you hear this person does this and we should all ostracize this person you know that may not be a message from your guide your guide would probably say take care of yourself protect yourself send love to others there might be a different message than gossip you know or or something a little random from from a guide so I think guidance usually elevates your life in some way connects you to a higher purpose so I tell people to not fear to know that they're always in the light and so you can always ask for the protection of angels say just protect me that anything that is not of the light don't let that become a part of me and there's so many moments of healing energy that can come from our loved ones there's so many near-death experiencers even with abusive parents who have talked about how when they have transitioned to the other side they finally understand each other and there's great forgiveness and deep love and deep understanding but if anyone ever feels that they have encountered something negative you can always ask for it to be taken away to be sent to the light and if you stay focused on the light of God and you stay focused on goodness then you're not doing something just for your own benefit but you're helping the world in some way and so there's a lot of confusion about well what is narcissism this is a big topic in society today well there's healthy narcissism where you love yourself take care of yourself have a 401k a roof over your head you know dress well you know there's there's that basic taking care of yourself but then there's unhealthy narcissism which is harming others manipulating others uh because of a wound inside of yourself and something that you don't feel like you have enough of one of the things I saw that you can always do is just ask for healing from God from your angels from your ancestors that healing is available to all of us you don't have to manipulate people to get what you want you can simply ask that wounds inside of you be healed so that you lead a better life so do all souls have a mission do all souls have a purpose before they come in I think that there's a basic purpose that perhaps we all have and this basic purpose is to remember that we're more than this physical form and to remember that there's inspiration from that other realm and to remember that this life is very short and that love is all that matters if we do something with love not are we loved but do we add love to this world do we make someone's life better by doing something kind by smiling at them by helping them in some way by being a support in their life by helping others feel like they're part of a community that they matter that they have inspiration to move their own lives forward if we can inspire people in some way to do that then we're helping but what is our purpose when you see someone really on fire and just like in the zone whether they're an athlete or whether they are creating a new business or whether they're excited about having a child or whether they whatever it is that this person is really on fire about then their soul must want that on some level there's something that's pushing them forward so don't overthink it people go to a psychic or they go to someone and they say what's my soul purpose it's like well it's going to unfold for you and you can find this more through meditation so i believe that our higher self can look back and give us a little bit of a hint of what to do and many times it's just to express the best version of yourself maybe to transcend your own wounds or your ego at times to go you know what i'm going to be calm in this situation i'm going to be aware i'm not going to react in a way that's going to cause pain to anyone i'm going to remind them of their connection to something beyond themselves and my connection to something beyond myself and we're going to be our highest and best selves in this moment and when you're able to do that in times of difficulty then you feel like oh i've touched my purpose you know i'm learning i'm growing so perhaps our souls are really on a mission here to remember who we are to remember that we're light to remember that we're love to shine the light of who you are and sometimes that light it doesn't even have to be religious it can just be a passion for music or for art or for film or for running or anything you know that if you have passion for life then somehow you're connected to a light that's greater than yourself and one of the things i do to stay motivated in my own life is i think about the end of my life that future life review and i think what do i want to accomplish and am i working towards that and am i going to be excited about what i've done right now when i'm at the end of my life and any time i'm doing something to help others because i know it's not about me it's about the person watching this who is in hospice or just lost a kid or who is dying or is hurting and if my message helps someone feel more at peace or feel more connected to nature or more connected to this idea that we go on and there's so much more magic out there than there you could ever dream of then i've helped people live a better life so one of the things all people can do is think this life goes by so quickly what is it i'm doing right now in the middle of my life that's going to make me happy when i look back this is the toughest question of the interview so one of the things i saw in my near-death experience was to remind people to turn on their lights and what that means to me is that when everyone is in the flow of goodness then they're going to create a better world so it doesn't matter what time period you live in or what country you live in if you are working from inspiration if you're working from this place where you connect with a peace and a desire for humanity to be more connected to do better to feel better then i think you're working in the right direction and i love programs that teach meditation to kids teach meditations to people in prisons that this type of work helping traumatize people find balance in their life helps all of society love is all that matters and all that we take with us so are you helping someone live a better life look at the needs of this world and try to creatively fulfill these needs one thing that i would like to add to that is i hope that people take from near-death experiences less fear about dying and i hope that we make death a more sacred process that there's a movement of death doulas in many parts of the world and i think that's wonderful any anything that you can do to create ease around dying to create a peace around that transition is important and for people just to remember that life is short and to embrace your passions and to do as much good as you can in this world i think that was one of the things that hit me after the near-death experience is that this is all very short this time period it really goes by a lot quicker than you realize so go in the direction of your joy and bliss if you don't like something move in the direction of something that gives you joy and happiness tell someone that you appreciate them that gratitude amplifies your life and anger and hatred dampens your own light so part of my message is reminding people to turn on their lights so if you are listening to this turn on your own light and find something in this world that gives you excitement and happiness and go in that direction