I’m tired, so very, very tired! Every muscle, every cell of my body is filled with excruciating pain! It’s unbearable, truly unbearable! But I have to continue to struggle … I have to stay alive … I’m so afraid to die! God please help me? Please help me now! I don’t want to die!

I have to get out of the water … I need air. Oh God, how I need a breath of air! Please God, just one breath, that’s all I ask?

I can’t stand the pain, the fear, the cold, the ringing, and the blackness … but I can’t die! “Try Andy, damn it, try! You can’t give up! You can’t give up now!”

But, I’m so tired … so sore … so much blackness, so much ice-cold pain. I need a rest! Just for a minute! I need to stop struggling for just a minute.

Then, almost magically, I hear a voice say, “OK, Andy, you can rest, if you promise to return to the struggle? You can’t die now. Do you promise?” And I respond to myself, “Yes, I promise.”

I’m a chunk of black, frozen, excruciating, panic and terror. I stop struggling. I let go …

The second, the very instant, the exact moment that I let go … I am hurled into a black tunnel. “What’s in the hell is happening?” I scream to myself!

The freezing cold is gone! I AM WARM! The pain is gone! I FEEL WONDERFUL! The ringing in my ears and head is gone! I CAN HEAR THE SILENCE! The blackness is gone! I CAN SEE A LIGHT!

I look back and I can see my body in the weeds at the bottom of the lake! “Is that really my body?” “How can I see it through the blackness?”

I look up and I can see a Light! It’s bright, so very bright. It looks like a thousand suns all exploding at the same time! I am staring into the Light, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes! No pain, there is no more pain! There is no more terror, no more panic, no more fear. I feel warm and I feel loved. Is this crazy or what?

I am rushing toward the Light, and for some unknown reason I have no fear, and I love the Light. Oh what a wonderful, beautiful, enchanting, warm and loving Light. I’m getting closer and closer, it’s as if I’m being drawn into the Light by a gentle, giant magnet. Closer and closer…

“What now?” “Where am I?” I’m inside an immense sphere! And the inside of the sphere is like an enormous, unending movie screen. Everything is going on at once, all around me … left, right, up, down … wherever I look I see my life. I cannot only see it, but I can also hear, feel and experience every event in all of my lives … past, present and future. There is no beginning! There is no end! I can observe all of the moments of my lives all at the same time, all around me. Strange, there is no fear or judgments; it’s just my life’s experiences as they are occurring. What incredible feelings, I can relive every thought, word, and action whenever I focus on any one of them. What a wonderful, fantastic, incredible experience being in the Eternal Now!