...I grabbed a couple of halters and walked through the loading pen to the feed barn. It was essential to bring the horses back before they hurt themselves or wrecked the saddles. The animals all crowded in next to each other. I spun the halter ropes in tight circles to keep the loose horses that waited for their place in line from pushing me aside. What luck! The two saddled horses stood side by side and munched away. Their heads deep in the trough, they were blissfully unaware that I had arrived to bring them back. Either that or they choose to ignore me.

​

A wall of jam-packed rumps with swishing tails faced me. There were no spaces between the horses; I would have to push and shove my way up to their heads. Even though I clucked my tongue and poked their sides, they stood their ground, afraid to lose their place at the trough. I turned around and tried to force myself in backward by grabbing the stirrups and pushing my arms forward. I finally managed to wiggle my way in as far as the cinches.

​

Suddenly, my conscious awareness, my soul, popped out and stood ten feet away. "I" watched "me" continue to squirm between the horses. I did not feel any movement. I was here, in my body, one moment and suddenly over there. I watched the horses and my body as it continued to twist and turn between the tightly packed animals as if I was someone else. Shocked, all I could think was, "Wha…?" 

​

I didn't have the time to finish the thought because within a split second, somewhere close by, a horse screamed in fright, and instantly, en masse, they all bolted. The sheer power of one 1,200 lb. animal is formidable: multiply that by seven to encounter a deadly force. 

​

The scene I now witnessed happened in slow motion. As the horses scattered, they bumped into me. I spun around and my right arm slipped into the stirrup. Hung up on the saddle, I was unable to free myself. The horses shouldered me and kicked at my legs; the saddled horse felt my body and reacted with terror. He had to get away and could not if he was burdened by dead weight. He dragged me along for a foot or two, then swung his head and slammed it against me.

​

Because I left my body, I did not feel the crush as the horses bounced me around, even though I watched myself scream in pain. My head crashed into the concrete corner, my arm slid out of the stirrup, and my body hit the ground like a sack of stones. Remarkably, peace flooded through me the entire time I observed the drama. The circle of life completed itself, and there was a sense of normalcy to the whole event. This scene was the way it was meant to be: perfect!

​

Several horses ran around my battered body while I, my immortal soul, my identity, observed it all. As I gazed down at my crumpled empty shell, I knew that I was dead. I would not be getting up again. It was permanent: I knew it through and through. Yet I giggled as I looked around and thought, This is it? This is what everyone's so afraid of? I'm still here and I'm still thinking!

It appeared that I observed everything from a slightly higher perspective. Looking down, I saw that I was floating. With zero gravitational pull, I hovered a few inches above the ground.

​

I wondered what I looked like, what was left of "Lesley Cote" and looked down at myself. Was I a ghost? My hands looked the same, except they were dazzling. A thin neon-blue mist streamed off them. My jeans and boots, dirt and all, mimicked the same light. I was not see-through, but I was not quite stable either.

​

I was free! All physical constraints vanished. Previously unaware of how tight and squished one feels inside the human form, I felt fresh and completely unrestricted, like I peeled off a head-to-toe body girdle that was four sizes too small. Every cell separated into buzzing particles, and a crisp, sweet breeze blew through. With no aches and pains, I felt completely invigorated and more alive than ever before. Somehow, I balanced this new, crackling vitality with an abundant sense of tranquility. Harmony flowed through from my soul and cultivated a sense of completeness, of oneness with the world around me.

​

My perceptions intensified. I could hear everything. The horses nickered as they stirred around the feeders and crunched the alfalfa as they chewed. Birds twittered and clacked their beaks. Lizards scratched and scurried through the woven mesquite-branch fence. Every sound magnified as if a thick cotton batting fell off my ears. Instead of dissonant sounds, they all blended into a mellifluous symphony.

In contrast to my ordinarily small, limited field of sight, my peripheral vision widened to encompass the entire corral and barn. Everything was in crisp focus, not blurry. I admired how my perception instantly processed all the new and far-ranging data without any sensory overload.

​

I did not change into an oblivious ball of light or a particle in a luminous river… or even another person. I was still me, Lesley Cote, but very much alive and as light as a feather. All physical boundaries dropped, and I became breath itself; breath with consciousness. Cosmic breath.

​

As I relished my newfound buoyancy, Don O. returned from the desert with the fast ride and leaned over to open the lower gate across the corral. The last groups of guests had come back. Bill M. led his group up right behind him. Nostalgia swept through me. I knew what would happen next.

​

Don moved aside to let the riders enter and closed the latch as I had done so many times before. As he turned to lead the people up to the barn, they all noticed my body face down in the manure. He raced over as he shouted for help from the other cowboys who still were unsaddling. The guests rode over as everyone converged at my body.

​

One of the guests jumped off his horse and ran over to my body. He turned me over, cleared my breathing passages, and started CPR. Drawn to the event, and without realizing how, I moved over to watch. They gathered around my body in a circle as another guest knelt to help the man do CPR. He pushed on my body and counted aloud as the first man desperately tried to ignite some spark of life in me. Two women stood nearby and held hands as they wept. Others helplessly stood in silence. Every so often, the guest who blew into my lungs checked his watch.

​

Every breath the people took, the swoosh of their pulsing heartbeats; every whisper they uttered to each other was amplified. I stood lightly on the ground right there, right next to the people who struggled to save my life. I shouted that I felt great and to leave me alone. But no matter how much I tried, no one heard me.

As the cowboy ran to the main ranch house, the stable all around me began to change. The barn, the horses, the people, and the fences all began to fade away into an intensely bright fog. I wanted to linger, to stay where I was and see them all: the cowboys and the guests, the horses, even the manure on which my body lay. A surge of vulnerability passed through me as I watched it fade away.

​

An endless river of shimmery particles streamed past like a breeze and whooshed around me. I did not move, yet everything around me started to shift and change. Triangular patches of intense blue-white light hovered around me so that nothing bumped or jostled me. These splashes of energy appeared to be conscious, yet I could not recognize what, or who, they were. I felt the separation from the ranch increase as another world developed. I expanded again, lighter than before. A soft crackling buzzed around me, reminding me of the whooshing sounds that I had heard when I saw the Aurora Borealis in Canada.

​

As my world in Tucson gradually grew dimmer, another realm slowly emerged. Faint outlines of a thickly wooded forest, impenetrable and still, slowly took form. Large oak trees with thick branches stood fully leafed out with ferns clustered at their trunks. Bright green velvety moss partially covered the trunks and roots. Small-multicolored star-shaped flowers carpeted the forest floor. Their unfamiliar scent wafted over, pungent and intoxicating. As this new world came more into view, selfless love covered me and filled me with the purest and most intense sensation of indescribable joy.

​

Behind me, a large creek about twenty-five feet wide noisily bubbled and splashed over a bed of mottled brown rocks. Off to the left, the trees thinned, and a hollow appeared. The transition from the earth plane to this place — whatever it was — happened so seamlessly I wondered if this realm had always surrounded my life in Tucson but on another level of energy that existed beyond the human scope of perception and comprehension.

​

In spite of the thickness of the forest, there were not any shadows underneath the foliage. No sunbeams broke through the canopy. I could not discern any particular light source. On the contrary, each twig and leaf, each flower and rock glowed with iridescence, seeming to be lit from within. The entire forest shimmered like sunlight on water. Radiance shone from every plant, tree, rock, and flower which revealed vivid colors that I had never seen before. A life force flowed through the greenery, and I could see it. The forest manifested itself and danced before me. It all seemed familiar somehow, a dance I had taken part in many times before.

​

Quite unintentionally, one recurring thought ran through my mind: I have to remember this. I have to remember it all. I reached out to touch a bush right next to me; the wide green leaves were bright and slightly translucent. They glistened yet were dry to the touch. It resembled a hologram, however denser.

​

A faint rhythmic tune pulsed just beyond my hearing.I wondered if it came from somewhere in the distance. I began to move as things snapped into place around me. Moreover, in spite of the fact that my mind was still alert, I felt much groggier than I did after the accident.

​

As I moved around, selfless love hung around me like fabric, a veil of spun sugar, sticky and sweet. Even though it felt palpable, it permeated me like energy: I soaked it up from my head to my toes and embodied the essence that saturated all around me. 

​

I knew I was in Heaven or what I would come to call Upstairs. I, or some part of me — at that point I had no idea how to define myself — existed beyond my body on earth. I still was mindful of me, my mind, and that I was dead. That knowledge never left me as I looked around. I felt more at peace than ever before.

​

I knew this was real. Never once did I feel stupefied. It was not a dream; instead, I was in a heightened sense of an authentic reality. It was so ultra-real that for the first of many times, a sentence popped into my mind: This is real: earth is the dream.

​

I adjusted to the crisp, cleansing energy fields of the heavenly dimension and discovered something absent within me: all negative emotions. The fight or flight reactions that unconsciously formulated part of my human psyche — and all the deleterious reactions that were hard-wired into that system — were gloriously absent. No negative emotions registered in me: no fear, no pain, no anger, no anxiety, and no worries. Even though I was woozy, I did not feel judged or any sense of competition. I did not want to control what surrounded me nor did I feel the need to "earn" the selfless love that flowed around me. I was lovable and it was infinite; I knew there would never be an end to this. 

​

Time - that physical sense of seconds as they tick by like little soldiers on a march that drained away my future - did not exist, at least as I knew it before. A circular energy kept everything eternally present: Timeless. Nothing could age here.

​

Even the concept of space, of distance, a "here and there" was different. I encountered one consciousness that connected every particle to the whole. My distant earth-mind seemed like a ticker-tape machine, spewing things out in little lines. Here, Upstairs, all information, all movements absorbed into me instantly. My mind's ability to process all the data simultaneously astonished me.

​

I basked in the freedom from any worries or fears and trusted in the knowledge that it was permanent. Selfless love was the way it had always been: "I am Loved: I Love: I am Love." As simple as strolling in the sunlight.

 

- Excerpt from Remember, Every Breath is Precious, Now Available on Amazon.