It was September 2009 when I arrived home completely frozen after a jog. I was cold and wanted to make a fire in our fireplace. I noticed that my wide sports pants had caught fire. I tried to knock out the flames with my hands, but that didn't work - on the contrary!

The supplied air seemed to make them climb faster and stronger, so that soon not only my pants but also my jacket caught fire. When I look back on this moment today, I'm always fascinated anew, because I didn't feel any fear at the time!

It just happened and somehow I was “just” a silent observer of what was happening to me. I didn't yell or call for help...it all seemed surreal, almost remote controlled to me.

I remember very well the moment when I realized that I could no longer control the fire. It had meanwhile eaten higher and higher through the synthetic clothing and its flames were now slamming into my face with full force. When my long hair finally caught fire and I couldn't breathe due to the rising flames, an all-changing "AHA effect" set in and I suddenly realized:

"That's it now! ….. Give up! Now you die!”

Breathing was no longer possible and any chance to call for help was gone.... no more control, nothing I could "do" anymore.

The most impressive thing about that moment was that I didn't feel any pain and I don't remember any fear either. That moment was just this all-encompassing realization... "Now you're dying!"... and realizing, "It's ok!"

From today's perspective, this moment was the greatest gift of my life! I gave up! Stop fighting!

Did nothing more because nothing more could be done…. and thereby made one of my most important DECISIONS: to let it happen! Accept!

Now, eight years after this experience, it is extremely difficult for me to find the right words for these feelings and insights. It's also not something that can even be roughly described or explained in any way with human words. It's a moment that contains EVERYTHING... and at the same time NOTHING! Complete inner silence and waiting for what will happen now - and at the same time it is the most wonderful realization of the ABSOLUTE!

However, my life did not pass me in a kind of time lapse (as many people who do an NDE describe it). Rather, I was filled with an inner realization that my previous life was just as right and good as it was.

Without melancholy and without worry, nothing that should be "completed", no "obligation".
Just a point.

I seemed completely "absent" from the feeling of "time", because all these deep impressions opened up to me in a very limited period of time, which is normally needed for three to four breaths. At the same time, it felt like an all-encompassing, wondering eternity.

I could write pages and pages about what was happening inside me in that "moment"... and yet it was "just a moment".... in which I had to give myself COMPLETELY and above all CONSCIOUSLY into the hands of (my) higher authority. I had absolutely NO CHOICE anymore.

I gave up all human control... and let go.

This body, in which I had just found myself with my consciousness and my full attention, I suddenly perceived from a kind of "observer's perspective".

A sense of neutrality settled as I watched him from the outside as he slowly but surely began to stagger, flailing his arms around helplessly. He couldn't keep this state for much longer! That was absolutely clear to me at that moment.

My neutral observation of what was happening to my body suddenly turned to joy when my son suddenly stood in the door. At the age of 14, he grasped the precarious situation in a flash and reacted with quick-wittedness by rushing towards my body, tearing it to the ground and managing to extinguish the flames with a carpet which he managed to grab.

I myself seemed to be somewhat detached from what was happening and followed his efforts to help me relatively neutrally, as if I was "just" an uninvolved bystander. I watched him rush to the phone and watched the paramedics arrive and the rescue helicopter land.

My consciousness had separated from my body and I seemed to be next to it, watching... like a spectator or rather a "bystander". But nothing drew my attention away from him, no departed loved ones to give me a loving welcome...no bright light to perceive...no dark tunnel or other changes...nothing like that!

Instead, I was able to watch the nice emergency doctor in the helicopter taking care of my body, which was lying relaxed on a kind of couch on wheels.

The rush only started when paramedics took my body from the helicopter to the hospital, doctors rushed over and they unerringly pushed it towards the emergency room. Bottles and hoses were on his stomach and yet he seemed to be fine... he seemed to me as if he were sleeping deeply and relaxed.

All the excitement I heard around him baffled me. I heard the paramedics talking to the doctors, saw what they were doing to my body and how they were taking it to an operating theatre, …. but no one seemed to take any notice of me and that really confused me! NOBODY on this "human level" could perceive me.

Neither my son nor the ER doctor on the helicopter, let alone the busy doctors in the hospital, gave me any answers to my questions... and no matter what I tried, no one seemed to see or hear me. This was really the only thing that really irritated me the whole time.

"Am I dead?" My body just lay there while I was able to look at it in peace for the first time since being admitted to the hospital. In the meantime, he had been moved to a quiet double room in the intensive care unit and, apart from the beeping of some machines, it had become quiet around us.

He seemed to be well taken care of, because many devices watched over his functions and countless hoses provided him with everything he needed. However, he gave me a very strange image, lying there with his chest rising and falling on a ventilator. His hands and his entire head were wrapped in bandages, so that only a narrow mouth opening was visible, from which hoses belonging to some equipment hung out.

He just lay there, like a lifeless shell without content and seemed to wait peacefully in his own way....

I, on the other hand, "sat" at the foot of his bed and countless thoughts spread through me. What does that mean for God's sake? I was HERE! I almost feel alive! Why don't I feel what he feels? and most importantly, if I’m really dead now, why am I still here? Why don't I break up with him? What am I waiting for?

Almost reconciling myself to this strange, "raptured" state, I suddenly heard a warm, soft voice behind me.

Someone seemed to have entered the room who seemed to see me very well…. and when he appeared, the energy in the slightly darkened room suddenly changed!

"You're not dead, Anke!" I heard a soft voice.

As I turned around, I looked into the loving eyes of a rather large, male luminary who seemed to fill the entire room with his presence.

"Don't be afraid my love... you will get answers to all your questions! There's nothing here that's relevant to you right now, so I'd like to show you some things, if you'd like."

And so began the most adventurous journey of my life.

This light figure led me away from my body and I was shown what CONSCIOUSNESS "is" and what it is composed of.... I was taught and trained... asked 1000 questions and got 10,000 answers! I became aware of connections that I would never have suspected before, and my patient "teacher" led me into all areas that were important to me.

I experienced how our human body is connected to higher vibrational levels, what it really means to integrate "soul parts", to release blockages... how soul mates are connected.

He taught me what it REALLY means to expand your CONSCIOUSNESS.... how our "human I" is related to it and countless more. I was given the opportunity to EXPERIENCE everything I had always suspected ... !

Time does not exist in these realms and everything, absolutely everything, happens at the same time! Parallel and with an unbelievable intensity.

Again and again we "visited" the room where my body lay in a coma and my teacher also taught me what it means to really accept the physical body for what it IS: a vessel that enables us here as HUMAN to have our experiences to be able to do in duality. A vessel that wants to be "inhabited" by our high consciousness and longs for connection.

During one of these visits to the sickroom, my Spiritual Teacher asked me to tune into my physical body... to feel into it and get in clear contact with it...! I felt his NARROW .... its HEAVY.... I noticed his LIMITATION, but also his creativity …. its constant renewal, its incredible possibilities .... his very own way of communicating with me.

I was allowed to explore him and let "his stories" tell me for the first time.

Again and again my teacher led me back and forth between the levels. I EXPERIENCED what we describe as UNCONDITIONALNESS....but it is so much more than can be squeezed into human words. A love for ALL THAT IS, a love that knows absolutely no differences and above all, a love that EXISTS IN ALL OF US. It is EVERYWHERE PRESENT... in every grain of sand, in every cell, in every thought... all encompassing.

Space and time played absolutely no role, and this experience was also phenomenal, because EVERYTHING, REALLY EVERYTHING "happened" AT THE SAME TIME! What we call the past or the future does not exist, or rather, really ONLY exists for us humans. We ALWAYS and in every moment have the CHOICE of which future we want to create for ourselves, because the future as such DOES NOT EXIST. All we have to do is shift our perspective, direct our attention in a slightly different direction, and EVERYTHING changes.

As he brought me back to the level where my body was in a coma, he asked me the most important question I've ever been asked in my life:

“You can now make a DECISION Anke! IT'S YOUR CHOICE …. Do you want to return to this, your body, or say goodbye to it here and now?”

From today's point of view, I don't believe that it was ever about dying and leaving these levels... but rather about the incredible realizations, about the realization of the DECISION.... of CONNECTION …. the EFFECT …. the truth! It's always been about my "YES" TO MYSELF.

I was allowed to CONSCIOUSLY say "YES" to myself... to my "BEING human" and to my body. I was allowed to CONSCIOUSLY merge back into him, connect...flow into his cells.... feel its limits and its density ... a gigantic feeling!!!

I accepted him for who he was...even if he wasn't "perfect" at the moment. I accepted him and everything in me (him) filled me with pure gratitude. Gratitude that he was still available to me, that I could stay HERE, gratitude for this indescribable training... THANKFUL to myself... my courage and my strength... and above all, my unshakable trust.

EVERYTHING has been different since then. Life around me is going on in the same wonderful way as before. But I am DIFFERENT! Even today (eight years after this experience), I seem to stand in amazement like an observer next to everything and since then have had the gift of ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE having this perspective of the soul. I am fully here in my body, but also SIMULTANEOUSLY in the unconditional state of my soul - looking at all of this "down here" and just smiling.

I have shifted my focus. Don't search anymore... and only find. No more pressure ... no MUST and SHOULD ... but instead an unconditional "YES" to me and my WORLD as I can experience it so wonderfully. All fears are gone. Fear of death or any other event has completely disappeared. I'm no longer afraid of pain or suffering.