NLS 656: What HAPPENS When We DIE? A Doctor REVEALS the TRUTH No One Talks About with Dr. Martha Jo Atkins

Summary

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Next Level Soul Podcast with Alex Ferrari

Episode NLS 656: What HAPPENS When We DIE? A Doctor REVEALS the TRUTH No One Talks About

Date: January 13, 2026 | Guest: Dr. Martha Jo Atkins (Death Doula & End-of-Life Specialist)

Episode Overview

In this deeply compassionate episode, host Alex Ferrari sits down with Dr. Martha Jo Atkins, a “death doula” and end-of-life counselor. Together, they explore the mysteries of dying, the phenomena observed at the threshold of life and death, and how our understanding of consciousness can be expanded through being present with death. The conversation interweaves personal stories, spiritual insights, medical experiences, and practical advice for anyone facing the loss of a loved one or contemplating their own mortality.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Demystifying the Dying Process: Exploring what really happens at the end of life—physically, emotionally, spiritually
• Deathbed Phenomena: Sharing and interpreting common experiences, visions, and metaphors expressed by the dying
• Consciousness & Afterlife: How experiences around death inform views on consciousness, spirituality, and the continuance of the soul
• Support for the Dying and Their Families: Tips and stories to support loved ones through their transition with empathy, presence, and respect

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Facing Death: Personal Journeys

• Early Experiences:
  Dr. Atkins recounts not being drawn to death as a child—initially aspiring to work with animals—but her career evolved after contact with dying children as a hospital intern ([07:09]).
• Family Loss as a Catalyst:
  The sudden death of her brother Jim at age 37 shifted Dr. Atkins’ trajectory and opened her to questions about dying, grieving, and spirituality ([10:30]).
• Spiritual Curiosity:
  Raised in a Methodist, religious (but not spiritual) environment, Dr. Atkins started questioning the religious narrative of heaven after personal loss ([13:47]).

From End-of-Life Counselor to “Death Doula”

• Job Description & Branding:
  The term “Death Doula” is heavy and mysterious, but essentially means someone who stands with the dying at the threshold, supporting their transition ([14:04], [14:35]).
• Direct Witnessing:
  Her mother’s and father’s dying processes involved deathbed visions—encounters with deceased loved ones, unexplained stillness, and mystical visitors ([15:09]).

Deathbed Phenomena and Metaphors

• Common Experiences:

  • Seeing deceased loved ones: “Daddy Charlie and Aunt Lala…and I said, where’s Jim? And she said, ‘Oh, he’s been here.’” (Dr. Atkins, [16:13]).
  • Shifts in Awareness: Her father experienced “traveling,” seeing people and places, engaging in activities from earlier life (e.g., singing, eating Sonic hamburgers) ([17:51]-[23:29]).
  • Reaching Up: Physical gestures (“reaching up”) often precede death, signaling a nearing transition ([25:29]).
  • Symbolic Language: Requests for suitcases, tickets, maps, and phrases like “I need to go home” often appear as people prepare for death ([51:42]).

• Individualized Transitions:
  Deathbed visions and the metaphors used are often “customized” to the individual’s life and psyche, designed to comfort or help them let go—for instance, seeing supportive guides from their own background ([43:15]-[44:08]).

• Agitation and "Surges":
  Some people alternate between restful and energetic periods in the last days/weeks—a phenomenon Dr. Atkins calls “surges,” suggesting that the soul is sometimes off “elsewhere” before the final transition ([26:00]-[27:34]).

Interpreting Death and the Evolution of Consciousness

• Beyond Hallucinations:
  Such experiences are often dismissed as confusion, but Atkins emphasizes that for the dying, these realities are deeply meaningful. “There’s got to be…it seems that there’s something else happening.” ([18:58])

• Consciousness & Evolution:
  Dying invites us to reconsider the nature of consciousness, suggesting we are fractals contributing to humanity’s collective growth:

  “We are part of this evolving consciousness. You’re doing your work…that’s adding to what comes next… We are our little fractal part of that.”
  (Dr. Atkins, [36:37])

Family, Grief, and Meaningful Support

• Honoring the Dying Person’s Reality:
  Family can create profound meaning by participating in the symbolic requests of the dying—bringing luggage, a pocketknife, or fulfilling final wishes such as mailing taxes ([51:10]-[53:30]).

• Compassionate Presence:
  Encouragement for family members to prioritize the emotional/spiritual needs of the dying over their own grief, allowing for authentic and peaceful transitions ([53:06]).

Shared Death Experiences & Crossing Over

• Definition and Examples:
  Shared Death Experiences (SDEs), per Dr. William Peters’ work, are when loved ones or caregivers “join” the dying in visions, dreams, or “out of body” moments, experiencing a piece of the crossing ([69:22]-[70:51]).

• Tools to Facilitate Connection:
  Meditation, intentional memory sharing, and establishing “signs” or telepathic links can enhance meaningful SDEs and provide peace to both dying and surviving loved ones ([76:51]-[78:46]).

Spiritual & Cosmic Reflections

• Karma, Past Lives, and Soul Purpose:
  Dr. Atkins reflects on the possibility of choosing her vocation as a learning experience about death, possibly influenced by past lives and soul contracts ([89:46]).

• Role of Family in Soul Growth:
  The possibility that family (like her brother Jim) participates in our soul’s blueprint to catalyze our purpose and growth ([95:09]).

The Relativity of Legacy and Importance

• Perspective on Worrying & Legacy:

  “In a hundred years, there’ll be strangers living in your house. Anyone who remembers you will be dead.”
  (Alex Ferrari & Alan Watts paraphrased, [105:02])
  Encouraging listeners to focus on what truly matters and find joy in life now.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dying as an Opening, not an End:

  “You have your first experience with dying in the way that you get to sit with somebody you know… and you watch them have an experience that you’ve not seen before and try to put all that together.”
  (Dr. Atkins, [15:09])

• On Support for the Dying:

  “I started changing my language to, 'We’re here with you until you’re ready to go. We’re right here with you whenever you’re ready, but we’re right here with you.' Instead of, 'it’s okay for you to go.'”
  (Dr. Atkins, [45:16])

• On Family Dynamics at the End:

  “People who are watching a loved one pass…if they can be empathetic for that moment and help…like, go get the pocketknife, put it in their hand…these kind of little things…make it more special.”
  (Alex Ferrari, [53:06])

• On Deathbed Phenomena:

  “When the car is packed and ready to go and you can’t find the car keys, the person is in a…dying experience of some kind. When they find the car keys, they're gonna go.”
  (Dr. Atkins, [38:19])

• On Shared Death Experiences:

  “People who share death experience…You have an experience of crossing with your mother…they were up out of their body. She could see her mother…was asking her mother where the dad was. She could hear the dad in the distance.”
  (Dr. Atkins, [69:22])

• On The Grand Tapestry of Life:

  “It’s just grand tapestry…it is of the human experience, of the soul’s experience.”
  (Alex Ferrari, [97:40])

• On Integrating Death in Life:

  “My calling is to do end-of-life work, and it’s okay. For a long time, I wasn’t sure it was okay—it felt a little weird and odd… But when I think of myself in a bed dying…I hope I get to see people I love.”
  (Dr. Atkins, [107:48])

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Highlighted Timestamps for Key Segments

• Background & Early Experiences – [07:09]
• Catalyst: Brother’s Death – [10:30]
• Spiritual Upbringing & Shift – [13:47]
• Deathbed Phenomena in Her Family – [15:09]-[18:00]
• Defining the Death Doula Role – [14:04], [14:35]
• Common Deathbed Metaphors – [39:33], [43:15]
• Deathbed Agitation and “Surges” – [26:00]-[27:34]
• Customized Experiences at Death – [43:15]-[44:08], [45:16]
• Consciousness and Spiritual Growth – [36:37], [76:04]
• Supporting the Dying Person's Reality – [51:10]-[53:30]
• Shared Death Experiences – [69:22]-[70:51]
• Reflection on Purpose, Past Lives, and Soul Planning – [89:46]-[95:09]
• Practical Tips for Families – [51:42]-[53:25]
• Perspectives on Worry & Legacy – [105:02]

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Takeaways and Guidance

• Witnessing death can be a profound, sacred experience when approached with openness, presence, and empathy.
• Dying often comes with distinctive metaphors and visions; honoring them helps both the dying and their loved ones.
• Everyone’s transition is unique and shaped by their beliefs, life stories, and relationships.
• Shared experiences—dreams, visions, synchronicities—can bring peace and connection across the threshold.
• Facing death honestly can transform how we live, lend deeper meaning to our connections, and demystify our greatest fear.

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Further Resources

• Dr. Martha Jo Atkins: Website | Book: Signposts of Dying
• Next Level Soul TV: Streaming platform for spiritual content
• Further Reading: “Final Gifts” by Maggie Callanan & Patricia Kelley (landmark book on deathbed phenomena)

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Are you ready to awaken to your soul's highest path? On Next Level Soul tv, you'll discover a sacred space for transformation, truth and deep inner awakening. It's like Netflix and Audible for your soul. Streaming content that feeds your spirit and elevates your consciousness. Explore Next Level Soul originals, soul stirring films and series and enlightening audiobooks from spiritual masters. Dive into masterclasses and courses that guide your growth and join live events that connect you with the global community of seekers. Whether you're just beginning or deep on your path, everything here is designed to help you remember who you truly are. Just go to www.nextlevelsoul.tv next levelsoul tv where your soul goes to grow.

[A]

Welcome to Next Level Soul, the place where we deep dive into the mysteries of existence, uncover hidden layers of consciousness, and explore the journey of the soul. I'm your host, Alex Ferrari, and every week we sit down with the world's leading spiritual teachers and mystics, scientists and truth seekers to illuminate the path towards awakening. Here we ask questions that truly matter. Why are we here? Where are we going? And how do we elevate our lives, our purpose and our consciousness to the Next level? This is a space for transformation, a space for expansion. A space to remember who you really are. So take a deep breath, open your mind and prepare to step into your Next Level Soul. Now, if you're ready to take your spiritual journey to the Next level, explore Next Level Soul TV Our streaming platform filled with exclusive movies, docs, original shows, transformative series, guided meditations, channeling sessions, audiobooks, and deep spiritual teachings you won't find anywhere else. New content drops every week, helping you expand your consciousness and live from your highest potential. Start your journey today at Next LevelSoul TV. The views, opinions and statements expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or positions of Next Level Soul, its host, or any of the companies they represent. Now let's dive into today's episode. I'd like to welcome to the show Dr. Martha Jo Atkins. How you doing, Martha?

[B]

I'm great, thank you. So glad to be here.

[A]

Thank you so much for coming. I had a few of you on the show before. You are a death doula and a end of life counselor, essentially. Right. Or specialist. Not something that everybody wants to talk about, but I'm fascinated with it. Cause I have aging parents, obviously, and I think everybody is. We're all going, we're all going to get there. As they always like to say. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but just not right now, basically. So it's something we're all going to have to deal with. But so many people, most people don't want to think about it because we're in this little world and our little bubble and we're going down this bullet train of a life. And you don't want to think where the track's going to end. And it's much more comforting not to think about it because I have work to do, I have things to do. I have things to do. But sometimes you really do kind of have to think about it, especially when you have parents or especially when you have ailing parents, ailing friends as we get older. I remember when I was younger, I didn't have anyone die in my life until I was in my late 20s. I was very blessed that way. I have other family members who parents died early on, things like that.

[B]

Can I ask who it was?

[A]

It was my grandfather or my grandmother. My grandmother died first, then my grandfather died six months later, seven months later. Then my other grandmother died. And then my early grandfather died a year after I was born. So that was it. And I still have both my parents, but they're older and they're still good rock and roll, still holding the good fight. But then I started having friends die.

[B]

Yeah, that sucks.

[A]

That's when it really starts to kick in. So as you get older, you look around and you're like, God, I just was working with that person. Or oh, God, I Just, you know, oh, my God, they were younger than me and they died. You know, and sometimes it's accident, sometimes it's health. It's just. So you start to think about this. And in the world that I'm in here, I talk about it all the time. Between mediumship and the other side and the scope of the world, the. The universe, why we're here, karma, reincarnation. So I'm constantly thinking about it, and it actually has made it, for me at least, much more palatable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that your take as well?

[B]

Makes sense to me. I get to talk about it a lot. I am most often with people who want to talk about it. Every now and again, I get somebody who comes along with somebody else, and that person is reluctant and, like, I'll have conversations with you and the other person is listening, and maybe they'll pipe up and maybe I'll hear something a couple weeks later that something was opened. But I just. I'm at the point where I just trust the process and I trust the person. And we open to things we need to open to when we're ready, I think. And.

[A]

And sometimes when we're not.

[B]

Well, yeah, yeah, that's.

[A]

That's the sledgehammer of life, to call it.

[B]

It does come along that way sometimes.

[A]

So tell us a little bit about your background. Like, how did you get into. I'm assuming at 5 year old, at 6 years old, you're like, you know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to be a death doula. And your parents would be like, what the hell is a death doula?

[B]

I wanted to be a veterinarian. I want. I loved animals. And I. And I would get the. Remember the Tic Tacs? Yeah, of course you'd get the Tic Tacs and I'd put little pecans in the Tic Tacs. And I'd make medicine and I'd give the animals medicine. I know, that's. That my thing. That was awesome. I was not particularly interested in dying. I understood about it. I was interested in hospitals. I was interested in working with children. Had an opportunity to go to Children's National Medical center when I was in college and do an internship in psychology on a children's floor. And I worked on a orthopedic floor, and one of my friends was on a floor where there were other things happening, and I was interested in those other things. But it was a great. It was a great experience for me that summer. And that is the first time I met a child who I Knew was dying. The kid had hiv. He was a foster kid, and the foster mom had, like, the gym mats were on the floor in the hospital room, and she was on the floor with him, and they were playing, and he was able to pick up his head and big, giant brown eyes. And I. I didn't have much interaction with them. I was leaving the hospital one day, and there's a people mover at that hospital at the time. And they were on the people mover. And I was standing still, and I was watching him go by. And that little guy picked his head up and looked at me. He didn't wave, but there was a contact there. And it was the first time I thought, I won't ever see him again. But I'm not going to see him again. Not because I'm not going to see him again, because he's going to die. And I don't know that I took it any farther than that. But as I sit here four years later, that had an impact on me. I tootled along. I got to go work at children's hospital in San Antonio. I worked in intensive care unit as a child life specialist. Job of a child life specialist is to help kids cope and adjust to hospitalization and illness.

[A]

You already. That's the gateway drug. It's the gateway drug, as you will.

[B]

I went. Yeah, I went right in. You know, somebody who's been sedated and missed Christmas. So we did Christmas in February. We redecorated the whole unit, and Santa Claus came in and the whole. There were two kids. It was great. Another kid who'd been sedated for a long time and trying to come back in, and shaving cream and painting with shaving cream. She had one hand. She could use those kinds of things. And then kids who were sick and going to die or sick and had died. I had the opportunity to do handprints and footprints. I had a really amazing mentor named glee who taught me about being with families and being with myself and how to honor and how to be with these grieving people. I was young. I was 20, 22, 23. And went on vacation with my family. And we got a phone call in the middle of the night that my brother Jim had died. He was 37 and I was 24.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah, it was pretty. It was. Yeah.

[A]

You're not. That's not supposed to happen.

[B]

No, it's not supposed to happen. And we were a family that didn't do feelings. And then you have to. You have to. That's a sledgehammer That's a sledgehammer. So that sledgehammer at 24 woke you up? Woke me up. And it changed the. Well, it opened the trajectory. I don't know that it changed it, but it opened it.

[A]

I've heard that from a lot of people in your. In your world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That there's a thing. There's a moment that something happens. More likely it's a family member.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or some tragedy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That kind of makes them rethink. Well, wait a minute. Is. I always use Uncle Bob. My Uncle Bob always makes an appearance on the show. Is Uncle Bob. Okay? What did Uncle Bob go through? Where is Uncle Bob? Now? Before these revelations and before you started getting into it, how spiritual were you? How. How. What understanding did you have? Did you even think about the afterlife? Did you think about souls or either reincarnation or what happens when you die? Did you think of any of this?

[B]

So I had an Uncle Charlie. I also had an Uncle Bob, but Uncle Charlie was the one who. Uncle Charlie was interested in past lives, and Uncle Charlie was interested in reincarnation.

[A]

Oh, he's a woo woo guy.

[B]

He was a big woo woo guy. And he also probably was bipolar. He would take off and be gone for several months, and then he'd come back. And he's a fascinating guy.

[A]

But we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

In. In conversations with him and. And my Aunt Betty, his wife. I had a little taste of that and a little bit interested in it. We were also Methodist preacher family. And there are rules and regulations and ways you're supposed to be in West Texas and West Texas method. You act, you. Yeah. Some things you talk about and some things you don't. And I had this patriarchal system that I lived in. And these are the ways you're supposed to be. And this is what religion is supposed to do. Is it programming? Yeah. And then I had these little nudges of. This is. This is. Let's think about this. But I didn't. I didn't have. What there was to fall back on when Jim died was that Jim was a good guy and Jim went to heaven. And I began to unspool that story and think about what that meant and what it meant for me. My family was trying to figure out what dying was to them and where he was. And it was a. And then we were sad. We were grieving. We missed him terribly. So that. That opened. That opened many, many things for me. So, no, there was not a lot of spirituality There was religion. There was not so much spirituality. Spirituality came after college.

[A]

So it was the dogma of whatever the. That. That flavor of Christianity that you had.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So then. At what point. So when you start going into becoming End of Life Counselor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you have the tag of Death Doula.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is a. Interesting name, to say the least.

[B]

It is. I don't like it.

[A]

It's. It's an interesting. You know, that's. It's not great branding. No, not great brand. End of Life Counselor is a little bit better than Death Doula.

[B]

Just.

[A]

It's like something out of the Middle Ages. Like, bring in the Death Doula.

[B]

It. It is. It has such a. It's heavy gravitas. Yes. Heavy energy.

[A]

Very Henry energy. Because the word death alone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is heavy. Then you think the doula. You're like, wait a minute. But Doula, like, oh, I like Thresholder.

[B]

I like this idea of somebody standing at the threshold with somebody as they're moving across. And that has a little different resonance for me.

[A]

Right. But. But we need a brand anyway.

[B]

We need a brand. We need a brand.

[A]

End of Life Counselor. And of Life Counselor. Yes. So when you start going into that.

[B]

World.

[A]

What was it about it that drew you there? Like, you know, I think I want to do the rest of my life. I want to go down this space. And then what did you start seeing that started to shake your foundations and your programming?

[B]

So my mother had deathbed visions. My mother had metastatic breast cancer, and we had conversations about what she might see. At some point. I had done. I was working on my doctorate in doing lots and lots of research on deathbed phenomenon and deathbed visions. And so I had this. I had all this in me. And then here she is moving into this experience, and we got to talk about things. She had lots of restlessness, and then there was some stillness. I didn't understand what all that was at the time. You have your first experience with dying in the way that you get to sit with somebody, you know, and you watch them have an experience that you've not seen before and try to put all that together. And that's what I was doing with her. She got still and she got peaceful. Her face just relaxed and her eyes relaxed, and I was watching her watch something under her eyelids. And I said, mom, what do you. What do you see? And she said, daddy Charlie and Aunt Lala and a couple other people. And I said, where's Jim? Jim's my brother who died. And she said, oh, he's been here And I had had a dream that Jim was sitting in a chair reading a book. One of his favorite things to do is to read. I called my brother John and was telling him about it. And he had had a similar dream. So when mom said that, I had this really beautiful image that I have a little emotion, as I think about it, of him sitting in the room, just kind of hanging out and waiting for her. And I took that experience and grabbed hold of it and thought, there's something here that I want to learn more about. I read Final Gifts by a couple of nurses. It was written in 19 or published in 1992. And mom did a number of the things that those nurses were talking about. There's a lot of metaphors and behaviors. And I then got more interested and more interested, continued to do coursework. And then my dad got sick. And I watched him do the things that I was reading about in these research papers. And they kept telling me he was getting well and he was not getting well. And I would say to the doctor, but he's doing this and this. And she said, no, it's no. No big deal. Don't worry about it. And I said, can we. Could we change the antibiotics? I just. I'm not sure it's working. They ended up changing antibiotics three times, I think. And he. He did reaching. He saw people off the side of the bed. He saw my mother. He saw people around the corners of the room. He was way far away. He would get annoyed when people came in the room because he was off somewhere. The woman came in to bring his tray to eat. And she said, I watched him put his stole on. That he saw in his. The rest of us couldn't see, put a stole on. And he probably opened his Bible, and he was about to do something. And she said, pastor, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bother you. And he said, I'm about to teach Sunday school. So he was off somewhere. And what I imagined about that, he was back in time somewhere. So I started watching and listening to him and pattern tracking. I'm an introvert. I have that thing where I really pay attention and see how things fit together. And the other part of this was I was probably scared out of my mind. And if I could track patterns, maybe I could make sense of this thing that felt really out of control. So I watched and watched and watched. And I would put that against the research that was in my brain and started seeing these patterns emerge and got super, super fascinated by it. He didn't die. He came Back one morning, my brother said, dad, where have you been? And he said, traveling. He couldn't remember where he'd been, but he did say traveling. He was off with a bunch of people singing. At one point he let us know that there was some gathering and he was with these people and he was singing. And all of those other people look at that and say, oh, he's confused. And these hallucinations and, and, and, and, and, and, and none of that made sense to me. That there's got to be. It seems that there's something else happening. And so I have pursued that. That's been my lifelong goal, spirituality. Move from religion to spirituality into this bubble that's in this larger field of dying. And there's a bunch of us that are, that are in this particular field, field of energy, that are surfing it and learning and making sense of it. And you have, you have these people on your show and it's really, it's fun for me to listen to where other people are plugging in and what they're learning and what they're taking back and how it's helping. Yeah, super fun.

[A]

Yeah, it is. And, and not only this field, which is the end of life, but then I do that with a lot of different fields and.

[B]

Yes, you do as well.

[A]

So it's like, okay, so here are all the Buddhists, and here are all of this. And here is the psychics, and here are this. And here's Atlantis and all this kind of consciousness. Yeah, exactly. Well, let me ask you, what is your take on consciousness now? Because the story you just said, I mean, I lean towards, I'm a storyteller, so I lean towards the stories and the mystical and the, the bigger ideas because they make sense to me. So when he's like, traveling, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't even. I didn't, I don't hesitate.

[B]

Makes complete sense.

[A]

Obviously he was traveling, but Mike. But obviously because of my understanding of not only metaphysics, but just my experiences with gurus from India and mystics and all these things that they talk about, these ideas.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So from my understanding, the story that he's saying, like, oh, I was gone, but it's fascinating. They came back. So he didn't have a near death experience. He had something else happening to him because he didn't die. He was just on the brink. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

He was on the brink. I will bet money on it.

[A]

So he was traveling and he was going to either. Now we're going to go a little.

[B]

Yeah, go.

[A]

We're going to go a little deeper. It could be alternate realities. It could be past lives, it could be parallel lives. It could be the future, the past. You know, all of this stuff. And he's exploring all of it. But when the veil gets so thin where he was on the brink, the silver cord, as they call it, is being tugged all so tightly.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

He's able to then go and do these things where it was almost like a dreamlike state.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But a conscious dreamlike state. So it was interesting.

[B]

It seemed to be conscious to him. Correct. I mean, we're sitting. I'm watching. I'm watching him reach for things. I'm watching him.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So he was open.

[A]

So it wasn't just like, oh, no, he was here.

[B]

Sometimes he was away, and sometimes he was here, and he's doing this, and he's licking his hands.

[A]

So it's the holodeck.

[B]

I said, what are you doing? And he said, it's a sonic hamburger. So if you're in Texas, we have sonic. Friday evenings, we go have sonic hamburgers. So he had opened the wrapper, and as he was want to do if there was something on the wrapper he needed, he would lick it off the wrapper. So in his reality, in that moment, he'd gone back to a time where he's licking off this wrapper. So I'm watching him. And as he. My experience, my meaning making was as his body was moving further and further into sickness, further and further into shutting down, these other things started happening. So he's getting sicker, and he's putting his stole on and having a Sunday school class. He's getting sicker. And he says, does anybody else see the blue angel? And this is what I got to talk to William about, because he was able. William Peters on the show, he talks.

[A]

About shared death experiences.

[B]

Yeah. So there's a whole thing about a very particular kind of guide that comes in. And he got very. The researchers got very excited about this blue angel. And I guess this is something that comes up every now and again. So dad is sicker, and he sees the blue angel, and then he is sicker. And my mother's there and she's cooking something in the corner. She's here on the ground. The angel was up a little bit, and I just paid attention to all those things. So he was. He was going. And I was sitting by his bed one night, and I watched him reach up like this. This kind of reaching is not far from going. When somebody has the energy to reach like that, it's a big deal. I recognize now because they're dying. Because they're dying. He had the energy to do that. But it's this straight up something here. This is different. This is a little before you get to here, but.

[A]

So here is the portal opening up, if you will.

[B]

Yeah, we were abode. We had the second room in abode. There were several guests that came in one after another. I keep looking up like it's there. There's a light in the ceiling. And we didn't tell the guests about the person who was there before who saw a light in the ceiling. They would talk about it. I was like, wow, okay, so the portal is in room two right now.

[A]

And it's staying there.

[B]

It's. I. For whatever reason. So I make up that dad was seeing something and I was videoing doing a phone. How old am I videotaping? Yeah, filming. Filming. There we go. And I. I heard my inhalation when he reached up like that. Because I thought, oh, crap, we're. We're far. We're far here. He's going to die. And I called my brother and wondering about, do we get hospice in? And it was this whole thing. And then he got better and then we had this like, gosh, we shouldn't have told people. And a little embarrassment about that, which I was also able to share. And people came back to me and said, oh my gosh, we were there too. Our person was right at the edge. Our mother was right at the edge. And then they came back. So I've gotten really fascinated about that too. And there's this conversation in hospice around. I call them surges. So these surges of energy that people have and they're up and then they go down and they're five days, seven days, nine days, they're not talking. And then they come back for a little while. And I was with a woman named Glee who did that over a couple of months. And I started tracking her surges on post it notes. I've got a. Had a whole wall of. She's down today. She's slept this much today. She's been awake for four days. And it was like she had all this energy and she'd go down and rest and rest and rest. And then she'd come back when she was resting.

[A]

What was happening? Yeah, that's the question. Because it seem like she's. From my understanding, from what I. My experience is that when they're going down that way, that they are off somewhere.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, and I've heard of this through. I've heard the same thing happen to people with dementia.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Dementia and Alzheimer's. And that they're. They're here, but they're not here.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They're alive, but they're not. They're not actively here, but they are somewhere.

[B]

They're in a different reality. Yeah.

[A]

And there is definitely activity. I'm not sure if there's been any scientific research done on that. Like, they put something. Yeah. I would love to see, like, if they're gone, like, what's going on. Are they dreaming? Are they. Yeah. Something going on of what's happening during that time. And then they. Then they come back. But it's interesting, like, on a soul level, why. I mean, I guess every case is different. So, like, why are you going through this? It's up to. It's really up to the soul and why they tend to do that. You've no idea why? I'm being taken to the brink and then coming back. So. Great example. When your dad came back.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Did you have conversations like, dad, what did you see?

[B]

I did. And he didn't remember. He doesn't even remember saying to my brother that he had been traveling. And I.

[A]

It needs to be. Huh.

[B]

This signpost of dying that I wrote was from watching him. And it's one thing to do. You do your work with dying people. You're in and out of a house. Maybe you go once a week, maybe you go twice a week at abode. Where? Our hospice house in San Antonio. You see people every day. You are in a different kind of intimate space with them. So there's a different kind of learning in inpatient unit. Same kind of thing. You're still in and out of the room. And you may recognize some things and not recognize some things, but when it's your family member and you. You know how they are and you're interested. Some people are not so interested. There's a different level of awareness that can happen there. And for people who do hospice work, it's a whole different animal when you're with your own people.

[A]

Oh, of course.

[B]

Whole different.

[A]

Yeah. There's emotions, there's anger, there's peace, there's love. It's all of it.

[B]

There is all of that, and there's all this knowledge you have or you think you have about what dying looks like. And then you start to see the layers of it, and you hold it differently, and you feel things differently because. Talk about the field again. You're in a Field. Field of energy with your family, which is different than anybody. Anything else. And if you have that kind of connection, you feel things, and you may know or may not know what's cooking. But because of those experiences with my dad, which went. They happened a lot. He was in and out of hospitals. That particular instance was. It was powerful for both. It was powerful for all of us.

[A]

Do you mind me asking, is he still with us?

[B]

He's gone. He died in 16.

[A]

Okay. And was it end of life or was it quick?

[B]

It was end of life. I went to.

[A]

So how did that differ?

[B]

So fascinating. I have a friend who does energy work, and she was working with a kid who had down syndrome and who was dying. And she said. Called me and she said, his web of life is just tatters. And I said, tell me what that means. And she said, think of a spider web. She said, I can see a web inside of him. I can see yours. She said, his is just. It's falling apart. Yeah, because he's got a web in the wind. Exactly. I loved that imagery. So I went to visit dad, and he was awake for about five minutes, and then he went to sleep. And it's the first time that had ever happened. And I knew that we were close not long. And he. I got a call from his. I got a call from his assisted living. He'd been at the hospital. He was back home, but they didn't think he was okay. And I went to visit him, and his kidneys were failing. And I said, you know, you can go to the hospital. We can take you back to the er. If you stay here, you're going to die. And I said it like that. And he said, I don't want to die. And I said, well, we got to go to the er then. So went to the er. This very kind man came in and said, if. If you were my grandpa, which made me laugh. Dad was 40 years older than me. I would tell you to go home and be with your family.

[A]

So we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

He wanted to be at the hospital that night. He got some fluids. I went home to take care of the dog. A woman from somewhere in the hospital came in and visited with him and gave him some kind of peace. He told me he was not afraid to die. But something happened in that exchange. I never found out who that woman was.

[A]

Was there a woman?

[B]

Was there a woman?

[A]

Was there a woman?

[B]

So they came in to draw blood, and they couldn't get blood from him. And I said, dad, you don't have to get blood draw. And he said, I don't. And I said, no, you don't ever have to get a blood draw again. And he said to her, I don't want a blood draw, man. They were in that room, Mr. Atkins, if you don't have blood draw, you know, there's no treatment. You're going to die. And he said, it's okay. So we went home. My brother and I tag teamed. Dad was at an assisted living in Taylor down the road. And that experience was different in that I could feel, if you think about the web of life, the energy was so different, the breath was different, the movement was different.

[A]

But you could feel it.

[B]

I could feel it, yeah. I could feel it.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And. And, yeah, that. And it was hot. It was summer in Texas. And. And. And you. He let me videotape him, and I taped a lot of it for research for. Yeah. I said, you want to teach? So he agreed, but he would say things. And those things ended up being things that were in the book that I read when mom died from the hospice nurses and things that folks I've worked with have said. And there's this. There's this common trait, common trait that I think is in the zeitgeist. Not in the zeitgeist, in consciousness. There's this language.

[A]

Well, yeah, it's like the near death experience.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

So near death experiencers have key things. It doesn't have. Everything doesn't happen for everybody. But there are a group of, you know, six to eight things that are common. Some are, you know, less common, more common. So same thing happens when someone's dying. They go through these stages. From your point of view, okay, so you've gone through this process. What do you think of consciousness at this point? What is consciousness from your point of view, from all the experience of you seeing people pass? Because it has to open up, has to open up a different idea. Now, of all of this and in the concept of reincarnation and souls, does that play any part in this?

[B]

Yeah, I have been on a search. I spent time in Peru. I listened to the shaman talk about the true God and my ears perked up and I thought, what's. What's the true God, the real God, and not the God of religion and not the God of your parents? And. And on that went. And I thought, okay, maybe I can get behind that. And. And then this idea that we are all pieces of consciousness. We are. We are part of the universe, we are Part of this evolving consciousness. You're doing your work in the world that's adding to what comes next. I'm doing my work that's coming. That is adding to what's next.

[A]

And when you say what's next, you're talking about the evolution.

[B]

Evolution of consciousness, the evolution of the world, of humanity. Of humanity. We're. We are our little fractal part of that. And what we do matters. And that feels. That feels right.

[A]

So from your some. I mean, we've spoken about your father's passing and his experiences were. Which are interesting. It's on a experimental standpoint to see that as a researcher, to see that firsthand, those two elements, one when he actually passed, but the other one that we thought he was going to pass. And being able to compare those two is pretty fascinating.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For you.

[B]

So, yeah, it was.

[A]

That was the kind of. It seems like it was a foundational for sure. Part of your journey.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

So now, since then, you've probably been witness to so many other passings as a death doula.

[B]

I started calling myself a death doula because other people were calling themselves a death doula, so might as well. Right, right.

[A]

It's branding. I get it. So as an end of life counselor, you've seen so many people. There you go. As you've seen so many people pass and go through that transition, what's some of the phenomenon that you're seeing? Deathbed phenomenon that you're seeing? That stuff that I'm assuming at this point you're not surprised at anything because you've seen so much, but there are moments then you're like, well, yeah, this happens, and Uncle Bob shows up and this and that, and Uncle Charlie's there too, and all of this stuff. Right. But at certain times you're just. Just like, oh, yeah, this is new.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what are some of the common. And what are the. Some of the outliers?

[B]

Well, let me. So, Aunt Betty.

[A]

Oh, I love this. Uncle Charlie, Uncle Bob and Betty, they're.

[B]

All together and they're all. They're all over here. Yeah. I got a call from my cousin, Aunt Betty. She said, I've got something here I want to read to you. And she started to read me this letter that said, I got the car loaded and ready to go. I can't find the car keys. I'll call Charlie. So at this point, I sat down. Uncle Charlie's been dead for 20 years. When the car is packed and ready to go and you can't find the car keys, the person is in a. I estimated in a dying experience of some kind. And there's a little hitch in there, but when they find the car keys, they're gonna go, I'm in Conroe. So she's back in time. She'd been in Conroe 40 years before they worked for Exxon. It looks different than before. This woman is with her. I don't know her, but she's nice. She's smoking a cigarette, which made me laugh because I think of this person as a guide and that Aunt Betty had a guide who smoked crack me up because she didn't smoke or drink or any of those things very.

[A]

But that made sense to her in that.

[B]

So she's. She's written all this out. Kathy says, I called mom this morning. I couldn't get her to answer the phone. We found her in the chair. She'd had a heart attack. She'd had a stroke. She's alive. We've got her at the hospital. Betty died Friday. She said, I think this letter's for you. I think this is, you know, this is your work. I think she wrote this for you. And she. Aunt Betty had tried to date it. She had gotten the month, but she, she didn't get the year. But it's in her hand and it's a deathbed phenomena experience that she wrote for me. And I get to use that for teaching. And it. That documented.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

That was powerful for me. Of course. Super powerful for me.

[A]

It's rare. Like you don't.

[B]

It's really rare.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I, I have that and when I go and talk to people, I'll share that sometimes. And that, that opens people's memory to things that somebody said somewhere in one of their paths. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know that's what it was. I didn't know. I thought they were confused, but maybe they weren't confused. They were talking about this. They were talking about a jet on the Runway that didn't have any doors or they were talking about the train. That's the train's been by. Next time the train comes, I'm going to get on it. That's one that I hear a lot.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah. So. And is it, is it consciousness? Is it our internal self trying to make sense of dying and our body is doing whatever it's doing? I just think it's fascinating. And the more stories I hear, the more interested I get.

[A]

Well, what's interesting from this, it's the same concept of the scientific argument for near death experiences that it's Just your brain doing something, your chemicals going off. And I'm like, well, then they all should be the exact same thing. They're not.

[B]

Yeah, they're not.

[A]

They're not. It's all very custom. But what I find fascinating about what you're saying is that it seems like in a, in a end of life thing, not an accident, but in an end of life situation, when there's time for the soul to transition, it seems like the universe is, or I'll use the term universe, God, whatever you want to call it, the other side is constructing a Runway in a way for them to be comfortable, to take the ride. Because this is a jarring coming out of this and going into their place. Again from a lot of near death experience conversations. It's in near death experiences, after interviewing 150 of them at this point, the understanding is you get a customized experience.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What is pleasurable for you? What is going to calm you? Who's going to be there? You know, if you're, if you're Christian. Jesus generally is the hardest working man in show business. So he does show up. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. But there is a rare occasion that Krishna will show up for someone who never was a Hindu. It happens. But generally speaking, whoever's there, it's either a deity, it's either. Sometimes it's the substitute teacher in second grade that you had a connection with which is like, wow, that's random. But those are the people that kind of are placed there, characters that are placed there. And then the environments are very customized. So that's in the near death experience.

[B]

Yes. And I find the same thing in deathbed. In deathbed phenomenon.

[A]

I hadn't heard that one before.

[B]

Yeah, that's one of the things I wrote about in my dissertation was it is. I didn't use the word customized, but it's that it's specific to the person and what they need. One of the examples of that was a gentleman who wasn't letting go and his family was getting kind of like, you know, what's the issue here? And he didn't want to see his father. His father had beaten him. He knew people came to help. Yeah, it was trauma. And after he said that, after the family was made aware, his wife came in one day and the man was talking to somebody beside him. And it was a little boy. And that little boy ended up staying with this guy for the next couple weeks. And that was his, I'll call it his transition Partner.

[A]

But that was not in reality. That was in his reality.

[B]

It was in his reality.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

But that. And that transition partner was who helped ease the way. I didn't hear any other story about any other kid that showed up in that particular. In that kind of way to help somebody. Other people. You. Well, people will see people they don't know and then begin to see and hear people they do know. And it may be people from a long, long time ago. Butch was a South African soccer player, and his soccer team came in one day. You know, he was in his 20s when all that happened. And he was, I don't know, 85 or 88. And he was mad, and his family didn't know what was cooking. And he said, the team is here, but they left. And they left ladders in the room. So he's seeing things in the ceiling, left ladders in the room, but the ladders are too short, and I can't get up them to get away. I get to leave. So it's that. I call it almost ready. But like, there, there, there are.

[A]

The train passed. I. I didn't jump on.

[B]

There's some hindrances or not. They're just not quite ready to go yet. And I think about that in terms of our ideas of somebody should be ready to go and why can't they let go? We don't know. We don't know what needs to get sorted. And I watched this guy at abode. I swear, probably 15 people came in and said, it's okay for you to go. You've got to give permission. And I thought if 15 people came in and told me that it was okay for me to go and just to leave, I would be so sad. So I switched that. Because of that experience, I started changing my language to, we're here with you until you're ready to go. We're right here with you whenever you're ready, but we're right here with you. Instead of, it's okay for you to.

[A]

Go, like, get out of here.

[B]

Get out of here. Get out of here. So I don't. It's beautiful that inside there's something that's just not quite ready yet. And I love that metaphor. Sometimes they took the ladders all the way away, but his were too short. There's a rope, but the rope is too short.

[A]

There's a lot of that. Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'll tell you a story, if you don't mind.

[B]

Tell me.

[A]

Yes. So I was speaking to a medium, as one does.

[B]

Yes, one does.

[A]

And she told Me a story of someone who was dying and he wouldn't go.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the family knew her and, like, can you come in and just let us know? He's been here for a few weeks now, and he just won't go. I mean, it's tearing us apart watching this. We don't want him to suffer anymore. What's the problem? So she came in and she had a conversation with him because she's able to talk to him on the other side. And she goes. She tells the wife or the daughter. She's like, listen, can you go to his office in his house? She's like, okay, there's the daughter, and the wife's still alive. She goes to the house. She's like, oh, go to his desk in the. It's funny when I tell this story because it's so ridiculous, but it meant a lot to him. And he wouldn't go before this. Yes, you would think. But go to the right. Top drawer. Open it. There are his taxes. They're filed. They have a stamp on it. You just need to put it in the mailbox. And he can't go until that is done. And she's like, are you kidding me? My father is hanging around for taxes. Literally. Death and taxes. Seriously. And she's like, do it. And she's like, look, it's no harm. Just put it in the mail. She put it in the mail. He died within hours.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He left.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It was that simple. And she's like, I can't believe he was holding on to make sure the taxes go. But it's fascinating what a soul, a personality and a soul will do in this reality.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So we are so ingrained in our mask, in our character.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And of these worldly things, which mean truly nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. But in our experience and our soul's journey, it's extremely important. But that tax. That tax example.

[B]

It's a great one.

[A]

It makes no sense whatsoever to us outside. But in his world, that meant something. So I'm thinking about, like, my parents and things that mean something to them that is insane to me. But in their world and in their experience, that's super important. Like, if my dad's not watching baseball on Saturday and Sunday.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, it's the end of the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To me, it's like. It's a game.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, but for him, there's a meaning to it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Just like when I'm going, I'll probably. There'll probably be some sort of movie stuff going On.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'll probably be like, you know, I'm in the theater, honey.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Steven Spielberg's here. And that. That would be my experience, probably. I'm just throwing that out there. But like something that is meaningful. And then also Yogananda's here as well. So, like, what is happening? So, like, those would be, you know, George Lucas is here. Is this Star. Am I in Star Wars? Right. That would be something that would be really meaningful and impactful to me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As my soul journey. But to the outside, advice like, dad, are you watching a movie right now?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Kind of thing.

[B]

So it's. It's really fascinating if your family knows. Your family knows you.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And knows what you love and don't love and what drove you crazy and all that stuff. As you begin to. As your web begins to dissolve and the metaphors begin to happen and the language changes and the behaviors changes, they can see things that will make sense in terms of your life that other people don't. So hospice folks are. Are fabulous and wonderful, and they don't know you the way your family does. So there's some things that you're doing. They. You know, he's patient in bed force doing some things. It's no big thing. But if you. If you as a family member can see that and hold that a little bit differently, it makes the dying experience different. So I. I talk about going back in time. So if you as a family member are watching and you hear something like, I. You might say, I need to. I need the suitcases. That is a classic piece of language that. That people say they'll come up out of a sleep. They've been sleeping for nine hours or 10 hours, and they'll see. I need my. Get my bags. I need my luggage. I need the map. I need. My dad wanted his knife. His pocket knife.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. These little idiosyncrasies.

[B]

Yeah. And you either blow that off or you go, yeah, all right, let me go find your pocket knife and find your pocket knife and put it there. We had adult sons who went home and got the suitcases and brought the suitcases. So when the dad woke up, even just for a flash, he could see the suitcases were by the end of the bed. A beautiful picture of those suitcases and the dad's feet at the end of the bed. And it's black and white. I love that picture. And I love that they. They did that for him.

[A]

They honored.

[B]

Wasn't just a thing. And I think that's the part of the dying experience. That I want more people to understand so that it can be meaningful in a different way and maybe a deeper way and maybe make it more special.

[A]

Because a lot of times the relatives and family members are only thinking about themselves and how they're grieving the situation. Which I get.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But for them to step out of themselves just for a moment and make sure that the person who's dying, what do they need? Yeah, I know you're. You'll have time to grieve. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. And. But there's so complex. There's so many different emotions. There's so much like I hate him, I love him, I did he. Trauma. No trauma. You know, like he was great. He was horrible. Like this whole. It's just this. That's what human humanity is. This. This beautiful soup of stuff.

[B]

Beautiful soup of stuff. That is exactly right.

[A]

So. But. But people who are watching a loved one pass, if they can be empathetic for that moment and help like that per. That's a beautiful story about the luggage.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like to go get. Or go get the pocket knife.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And put it in their hand.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

These kind of little things to get over the pain that you're going through. If you can put it aside for a minute and make sure that they need. What they need is there for them. And it's not just being in a hospice unit sometimes it's about going through the theatrics of. Let's go get his bags.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Let's go get the pocket knife.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Let's go mail the taxes.

[B]

Go mail the taxes. Here's the.

[A]

Look, look. We're mailing it. We're mailing it. And by the way, it wasn't in the room. He just knew on a cosmic or, you know, quantum field level that that was in. She didn't walk in and go, dad, I already know. The second she did it, he knew. I think it was 30 minutes later the call came in from the doctor. Yeah. He's gone.

[B]

That's the part that I love. Those. Those pieces of wisps of energy that pass between us. I'm like somebody you thinking about and then the phone rings and it's them. That makes sense to me in terms of dying too. There are things that happen that get sent across airwaves and people know and the person comes to say goodbye in California before they feel them beside the bed. All that stuff, those after death communications.

[A]

A classic one is like, you know, Uncle Bob came to Visit me?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Aunt Jenny or Aunt Betty showed up.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's a week before they pass.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they were talking to me like, it's okay. I'll be here for you when you're ready. And all that kind of stuff.

[B]

Stuff.

[A]

I'm gonna tell you another story that happened to me. This is my. This is one of my deathbed situations that happened to me when I. I wasn't near her when she passed. But my aunt. We were. I mean, I wouldn't say we were close, that we talked all the time, but I loved her tremendously. She had a lot of love for me. And anytime I saw her, it was. You know. But she did help, you know, when I was. When I was a young boy, we spent a lot of time together.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Went over and played with my cousins, all that kind of stuff.

[B]

Stuff.

[A]

So I had a connection with her, more so than a lot of my other relatives that I. That grew up with. So I. There was a lot of love there. And I loved her. Her black rice. So she used to make congre. It's called congre in Cuban Spanish. So it was the dark rice with beans and stuff that she used to always make for me. So we had a deep connection. So when she passed, I heard about it. I was in LA at the time, and she was in Florida, and she passed. And then three days later, I was doing a project, a filmmaking project where I was. I needed, like, some VHS footage, like textures and stuff like that was creating something for a project that was doing. So I was, like, filming vhs, like, you know, tracking, you know, the old.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All that kind of stuff to apply it to current footage, to make it look more vhs, you know, that kind of stuff. So I was creating all of that.

[B]

That.

[A]

And I was, like, going through my archives of stuff, and then all of a sudden, I press play, and there's this scene that I shot for 30 seconds a minute. I was testing out a. I never forgot it. I was. My first job. I had a Steadicam Junior, which is a gimbal, essentially what a gimbal used to be. And I had a high eight camera.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I was testing it out at Thanksgiving, and they were all there. I'm getting chills thinking about it. And she was there. My grandmother was there. My other aunts were there. And it was so. I had forgotten. It was lost to time. And just three days later, that video showed up. And I was like, son of a. Yeah. And I sent it to my parents, I sent it to my family, and everyone was Crying. And it was like, oh, my God. I'm like, like, I. I mean, it was literally a minute of footage. It was a test. Some test footage.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they were all there. And it was like my dad was there when he was like, I think probably my age now. So it was. But she was there smiling and everything. And it was. I think it was just a way. The way what I like to believe happened is that she. She was trying to tell me I'm okay and send me a little kind of love. Love letter to not only me. Because she knew I would send it to everybody else.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I was the only one that could do it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Or would do it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I did it. And this is years before Next Level Soul. This is years before I'm having these insane conversations. All of this stuff, it was so beautiful. But I always was like, oh, it's love. Yeah. But it was just so specific, so random. The timing, it was just. Come on.

[B]

Except not exactly like, come on.

[A]

This is, you know, so one other. So as far as death phenomena go, there's the grabbing up, there's the trains, there's the ropes, there's the thing. All that kind of stuff is there Julie Ryan, who's a friend of ours, she's. She deals with a lot of this stuff.

[B]

There's Julie. Yeah.

[A]

No, she's not.

[B]

Oh, Julie.

[A]

She's a. She's a psychic medium and a healer.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But she does. She wrote a whole book about the stages of death.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So I'm looking forward to having you guys having a conversation. That should be fun. But she talks about every day. There's like a 12 day pro. There's like, there's different phases of things. Like on if this happens, then like, you're a few days away if this happens, you're a few days away if this happened. And it's getting closer and closer. So the relatives, the animals, the deities, the. The experiences you're talking about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There is this. There's a systematic thing. What is your experience for that?

[B]

There is. I call it a trajectory. There's a trajectory of experiences that happen. Everybody's different.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you can look at somebody and think their pulse is what it is, their breathing is what it is. They're gray. You are certain they're going to die in the next three hours. And they come back and they're there for another two weeks. I listen to seasoned hospice people who will not say it's going to be. You know, families want to know it's going to be in the next couple hours, next couple days, we're going to. I'm going to. It could be here. It could be here. This is what I'm seeing. But I was hesitant for a while, several years, to talk about the trajectory of experiences as I saw them, because I didn't want people to take them literally, because sometimes you just can't. You can recognize them as signposts, which is what I. You talk about mile markers in life. And. And that's what these are. And it doesn't mean this kind of reaching. I hear somebody said they're going to go in 24 hours.

[A]

You can't.

[B]

No, I don't think it works that way. Not mechanical. No. No. If they have the energy to reach like that, they might be close maybe. Yeah, I wouldn't. If they're reaching like that and they're on hospice and there are people to call that need to come or want to be with the person, I would.

[A]

Call them because it could be a day, it could be a week.

[B]

There's different kinds of breathing. You know, the physical things that happen. That's different. When my dad said, he kind of came out of a haze, and he said, lift me up. Lift me up, up, up. And my brother and I dutifully went to the bed and scooted him up in the bed. And he said, well, that's one way. And when he said that, I realized he wasn't on our plane. He. He's trying to figure out how to get out of here. Lift me up, up, up. How do I go? Take the. Take the chains off. He kind of mumbled. I said, what? He said, take the chains off. And I said, okay. So I reached down and I touched his hand and rubbed him a little bit, and I said, they're off now. He said, okay. You could see his whole body. Just this relaxing happened. So how do we. How do we get out of this suit? How we get out of this body? And those little pieces of language, to me are indicators that they're. They're working to get out. And my opportunity as another human who is coming along, somebody who's dying, is to sit in that space and be peaceful and let that peaceful energy be in the room. Frank Ostosteski's a Zen. He started Zen Hospice in San Francisco. And he talks about having. Best case scenario, you have somebody that works with the body, takes care of the body, and there's somebody that takes care of the spirit. You have those two people in the room or a bunch of people in the room that do those kinds of things. That's a beautiful way to accompany somebody as they're leaving. So when I worked at Abode, I often would sit. There was a couch that was up against a wall and then the bed was there.

[A]

We'll be right back after a word from our SP sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

And I got to a point where I would recognize when I needed to be on the couch or when I needed to be beside the person. And I don't know that I could always tell you what that was. When you, when you get to a place where you know something, well, you take it in with your whole senses. And that's what I do. When I walk into a room with somebody's dying now and I can't. I don't separate it anymore. It's just. There's a knowing and it's the smell, it's the feel, it's the movement in the room with the other people there, it's the way the bed looks. All of those things are pieces of information that guide me about what's the best way I can be helpful.

[A]

You know what's really interesting? You're a doctor and you've been in the counseling doctor, Counseling doctor, but a doctor nevertheless. But you've been around many doctors, and hospice and end of life is a very interesting aspect of the medical field.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because, you know, doctors in general, when I've spoken to doctors who are not in this field, they look at it as almost an oddity. Many times some love it and really want. Or they're confused by it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're just like, I don't know what's happening there. But then someone like yourself, obviously an educated woman, you know, someone who's gone through stuff and you're speaking articulately about very woo woo stuff. Like you're like, I feel the energy, I feel this, I feel this. The web. It's hard for them to wrap their heads around it because they are. Are so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not only programmed, but trained in the physical as they kind of need to be for the work that they do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like I always say, if I'm shot, don't rub a leaf on me. Don't do that. Take me to an urgent. Take me to the emergency room in a trauma center, please.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Don't like, okay, it's time to get some sage out. No, please, for God's sakes. But anything long term, I always like to go more natural. Homeopathic if I can.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But there's places for both in the medical field. And the healing in the healing arts and so on.

[B]

I think so.

[A]

Exactly. But looking at hospice in general and speaking to doctors, they just look at it as an oddity. Almost like, I can't. It's over there. Yeah, it's down to hospice. Yeah, they can't because it's kind of like they can't wrap their head around it. It's really interesting. So I imagine that you've had to encounter that in your work over the years of other people in the field, in the medical field who are just not dismissive of it. I can't. I don't. I mean, I find that very rude if it beat someone being dismissive of it because something is happening but nobody really knows what it is.

[B]

Yeah. I think there, there are people on the planet who have a very materialistic view of the world and very three.

[A]

Dimensional, as we like to say.

[B]

Three dimensional. And then something happens, if you're lucky and there's a little bit of an opening and you start to make meaning of things that maybe didn't mean something to you earlier. An example I can think of is when I talk about deathbed language. Some people get it. Some people are like, yeah, okay, whatever. If you went to an emergency room emergency department and said, I feel like I've got an elephant on my chest, or I feel like I've got a. That means something to the people behind the desk and they're going to take you back and check your heart, see if you're having a heart attack. Deathbed language is the same for me. When I hear somebody say, lift me up, up, up, or how do I get out of here? I want to go home. That makes sense to me. Or somebody standing in the corner.

[A]

Or there's a blue angel.

[B]

There's a blue angel. Like, great, I see a light. I see light. Yeah. All stuff in the realm of that, that all makes sense to me. And it's part of my. I was going to say constitution. I think it is part of my constitution at this point. This is, it's just part of how I see the world and how I experience dying and this, this field that people are in. And yeah, some people don't. They're not in there. I did. Doctors say about this guy, he's just, he's not in there. And he did a sternal rub and he was looking in the guy's eyes and I asked him not to do that again. I said, you know, he's here for a conscious dying experience. He didn't want all of that. Please don't do that again. We got mad and eventually was able to come around, and that man who was dying in the bed, who was so far away, and, you know, this is all for. He came back and opened his eyes, and it was 30, 45 seconds. But those two had a moment. I was having a moment. I don't know what it took for that guy to come back. I mean, I imagine it took a lot. A lot of energy to come back, to be able to open his eyes. He couldn't speak, but he looked at him. But he looked at him and there was.

[A]

There was something there.

[B]

It was. I have goosebumps to talk. It was incredible.

[A]

Did it change him?

[B]

Yeah, I think. I imagine it did. In that moment, he was. You're here.

[A]

You know what's fascinating, too, is that you're talking about people who are very in the material, and I get that in the material world and understand that. But all of us will have to deal with something supernatural in our lives at one point or another, which is that death, because it's beyond what we are now. It is an unknown question. So it's whether if your parents die or something like that. And some people will see that experience that you just explained, and they just put it down somewhere, and I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to think about it. But others, like you said, it's a crack. It's a slight opening that will open their idea, their perspective of life. And some doctors that we've had on the show, like Dr. William Peters, he. He went all in.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because he was fascinated. And so let's bring his work into this a little bit. Shared death experiences. Have you had a shared death experience? And what. Can you explain to people what a shared death experience is as opposed to near death?

[B]

So the way William talks about shared crossings, shared death experiences are experiences that witnesses. You're at the bedside with somebody who's dying, and you and the person who's dying have an experience where. An example that William gives. He was reading to a man that's in hospice, and William said, we were out of our bodies. He said, the guy who's in the bed is up here, and I'm up here, and we're looking at each other. The guy who's dying in the bed is. He's up here. He's just grinning at me. And I look down, he's in the bed. I'm reading the book, and I'm looking here and looking here, and I'm thinking, what in the world is Happening. That's a share shared crossing experience. People who share death experience. You have an experience of crossing with your mother. A woman talked to me about sitting beside her mother, having an experience of seeing her mother. They were up out of their body. She could see her mother, and she was asking her mother where the dad was. And she could hear her dad in the distance. This was a shared experience. William's research expanded what shared death experiences included to include dreams. So dream with your brother. Dream with my brother would have been one.

[A]

Your other brother had the same dream.

[B]

And my other brother had the same one. Exactly.

[A]

So that's exact perfect example of that.

[B]

And I really had not thought of that until right now. So thank you for that.

[A]

You're welcome.

[B]

I thought of one on the way over. A person who was at abode who was not going for whatever reason. I really didn't think about it like that. But they were there in the bed and still for a long time. And I had a dream that they were in a parking garage, a cement parking garage. And I walked down and found them. They were facing this cement wall. And I found them and brought them out. And I don't remember where I took them, but it was out of the garage and. And that was a shared death experience. There was some kind of hindrance for them. I wouldn't have thought that until I heard William talk about his work. I got to talk to a person this week who will be accompanying their spouse with medical aid and dying in a state that allows that. We don't have that in Texas.

[A]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

The spouse has been working with a Buddhist scholar and meditating the. So this is not. Death is imminent because the, the cocktail will be happening in days. The end of, end of this year. Yeah, days. So offhandedly, the person I was talking to said about their person who's dying. They're seeing people in their meditation who they don't know. And I got all excited. I kind of leaned into the computer and I said, tell me more. And she said, well, that's what I can tell you. I, I, there's just these people are starting to show up. And I said, that's what happens when somebody's dying in a hospice situation. So I am fascinated that with this practice that there's some kind of similarity there, even with medical aid and dying. And I know the person is dying, they're on their trajectory, but they're not supposed to go, supposed to go anytime soon.

[A]

As you're talking about these. That's fascinating.

[B]

I think it is, too.

[A]

That's fascinating. I haven't heard about the meditation stuff because that's generally in the west, it's not something that is done, I'd imagine, in the east, it's probably something that's done a little bit more than here in the West. But what I find fascinating as you're talking, like in my gears are.

[B]

All.

[A]

The experiences, all the conversations I've had about this stuff is that there seems to be on a soul level, and this is going to go deep. So we're going to get into some deep weeds here.

[B]

I'm not scared of you.

[A]

I know. I know you're not. I know. I definitely know you're not. You're definitely not. But on a soul level, you know, if you believe in reincarnation, in soul blueprints, in soul contracts, that we come down here to learn something and this is our life, and that there's a soul group with you. There are certain souls that just. Just keep hanging around you and interacting with you. In multiple life, just play different partners. Sometimes you're my wife, sometimes I'm the wife. Sometimes you're my son. I'm daughter, that kind of stuff. So if you believe that, let's say I'm the daughter or I'm the son and you're the mom, let's say. And. And you're on your deathbed and I'm meditating, and all of a sudden I start seeing Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then I'm also seeing people I don't recognize who are dressed in 50s clothes. I don't know, whatever.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Something like that.

[B]

That.

[A]

That's a deep connection. Because as a son and a daughter or a mom and a dad or son, you know, I'm talking about like a relative. That that connection is so deep that in the death scenario, I'd imagine that that connection would stay deep if you're open to it. So something like a meditation, if you're open to it, is the very key point of this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

If you're open to it, you can actually really connect with. With your loved one in a deep way. Meditation is a great way to do it. Dreams is just another way. It's another opening. But meditation is a way for you to kind of control or at least have an opportunity, open the space for something like that to happen, where you can actually be given kind of not only a glimpse at what's happening to your loved one, but also give you peace. That is something that most get when a loved one passes, generally speaking. But just saying that when you're saying that, I'm like, oh my God. That would give me a lot of peace if I didn't already believe everything I believe and my experiences. But if I was scared, like, is mom going to be okay? Like, where is mom going to go? And if you're meditating about it and you see things starting to come in, it's almost like you're opening up. This is now. Now we'll get into the quantum world, which is the frequency.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We're opening our vibration or our frequency up to a level that can open and see these things. Hence a shared death experience is they're now raising their frequency so high that they're leaving this space. Masters have done this. All the masters on the wall have done this. They elevate their frequency to go beyond the third dimension. And as a relative connected to that, you already have a very deep, deep vibrational connection to that person. So if you're able to raise your vibration or frequency through meditation, which happens, you'll be able to connect to that experience and get information that will be not only beneficial for the loved one, but beneficial for you in this journey as well. Because this is a two part scenario. Does all of any of that make sense and do you agree with any of it?

[B]

It does make sense to me. One of the things I love about William's work is that he's got a. A protocol now where he works with the person who's dying and whatever family members want to work with them and they do meditations and it's kind of like seeding the space. So when the person is at the point where they can't talk anymore and they begin to leave their body, the opportunity for some kind of connection, which might be telepathic, which might be something, a sign that, that we see in the physical.

[A]

Yeah. Butterflies.

[B]

Butterflies or dreams. There's a likelihood that those kinds of things can happen. I like this because it gives the family. From a psychotherapist being here present kind of conversation, gives the family an opportunity to talk about the dying experience. This person is really going to die. And there's this kind of call and response he does about a memory. You find a shared memory and you tag it. And when I think of this memory, I'm going to know that you're okay. And so that experience, along with meditating together, thinking about what dying is, thinking about that. I'm going to miss you thinking about that. I may come back and give you a sign and then that sign happens or some kind of experience happens, gives the person, the people who are left and gives the person who is dying opportunity to really be in the experience, to have some grief moved, some energy moved. And then if one of those experiences happen, there's a whole other level of, I'm going to say goodness, or it's not even goodness.

[A]

It's beyond that.

[B]

It's, it's.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's love.

[B]

It's unconditional love. It is love. So when the person experience. I can think of that they did the protocol, had the experience. And when the person died, the sister saw swirlies, some kind of swirlies or something, whatever. Yeah. And it gave her so much peace. And nobody else in the world needs to believe or understand, but between those two, yes, it mattered. And that kind of experience is something that I hope more people will do. And I think about these maid deaths, which I think are going to happen more in our country. I think the medical aid and dying people are able to, to make a choice about when they want to leave. And so there's more planning. There can be thoughtfulness around meditation and these kinds of things. Yeah, that's a whole other.

[A]

That's a whole other podcast to talk about. But I agree with you, I agree with you. Have you in your work run across someone who's passing, who has such a strong programming in them about what hell is, what heaven is, and that they are so terrified of dying because they were bad, Whether that might be a prisoner in jail or someone who was abusive to their family or something like that. And they're like, at the end, they're like, oh my God, am I going to go to the other place?

[B]

For sure.

[A]

What's your experience with that? And does that transition into a peaceful place? Or sometimes they just need to go through that, like in a near death experience. There have been hellish experiences. They're not often, but they do happen. And the people I've spoken to said I needed to go through that because I believe I needed to go through that.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

I believe that I had to go through seven days in my mind of a dystopian hell where demons and lower energy beings were torturing me until I finally said, said, God help me. Yeah, Jesus helped me, or something like that. And then all of a sudden a light shows up, everyone scatters and they're saved. But they had to make the decision, but they had to go through it. And then when they came back, they're like, it was all bs. There is no hell. There is no this. It was just something I needed to go through because I believe I needed to go through it. So what's your experience with that?

[B]

I have seen people who struggle. There's a point where people aren't able to talk anymore, and there's a lot of mumbling, but there can be a lot of moving. And we call it terminal agitation. But for some people, there's no medicine, no amount of medicine that's going to keep that angstiness and that movement and that agitation away. And when that happens, I have a doctor friend named Heather, and she talks about that. That's how I know somebody's in an existential crisis. There's something in them that has to get worked out. And I give them as much medicine as I can give them. And we circle them and hold them until it ebbs. And sometimes it takes several days for it to ebb. I don't know what to do. There are people who would, say, call in a priest and an exorcist. And. Yeah, we call, you sing and you. There's. I don't know. I don't know how that works. That's interesting. And I've seen it.

[A]

But do they go, have you seen them leave like that? With that kind of energy in them? Like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, I'm. Or is it like, finally, I'm good. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

I have not seen. I've seen one time where a person has left and nobody was comfortable. Nobody in that room was comfortable when they left that way. It was. It was. It was awful. And they. They were suffering, and we somehow imagined they were suffering. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. It sure did look like they were.

[A]

And you feel it?

[B]

I. Yeah.

[A]

Well, you seem like a very empathetic person most days. Yeah. You pick up on people's energies.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Pretty pretty easily. So you can feel it out. When you walk in a room, you're like, oh, yeah.

[B]

And I don't. Yes. Yes. And most of the time when somebody says to me, somebody's struggling, I walk in and it's. That's not my experience. My experience is they're trying to leave. It's not a. A. It's not a. There's not a fight. And I think because I've seen so many people, and most people see two, three or four people die in their whole life, and that's their image, whatever it is they see, that's Their image. So there's just such a continuum about what bodies do and what I imagine spirits are doing in the body to release and stillness and movement and sound and all of that.

[A]

So in. In the. In your experience as well, do these emotions or guilt or things like that come up? I mean, obviously, when they're at a stage, they can still talk.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is there like, oh, my God, I see. I see Aunt Betty. And I used to beat Aunt Betty, you know, like. Or I used to have some sort of. I did something bad to that person or I did something bad. It's almost like Christmas Carol. Marley shows up with the chains and it's like, oh, God, I'm looking at what I did to these people and it's their projection of them.

[B]

Do you see that every now and again? I think the thing with that is when something like that is said out loud, it's got to be said to a person who. The person who's saying it trusts enough to hold it, and they won't be judged or they won't be left or abandoned or whatever it is. So. People would come into abode and there are stories that people tell for the last time. And I would watch who among the volunteers or the staff would connect with that person and what story was told for the last time to that person. And there were a couple of those people who would get those kind of those really hard stories.

[A]

Because they needed to get it off them.

[B]

They needed to get it off their chest, off their heart. And. And those. They're two guys I'm thinking of in.

[A]

Particular, and they can handle it.

[B]

They could do it, and they can sense that. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. There's. There's so many things here that there's no.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's hard to wrap your head around because it's not tangible. None of. None of.

[B]

It's.

[A]

None that you could hold on to. Martha, I have to ask you, how the hell do you do this?

[B]

Oh, I love it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think. I think what I love about it is the intimacy of it. I mean, you and I have had a conversation today that is pretty powerful and pretty deep, and that's what I get to do. It's fast you and it's heart to heart, and when somebody's ready and we can both sit in that space together, there's a. I will say it energy. I know there's a feeling, and that feeling is nourishing and it is peaceful and enlivening, and I like it. And so to be able to be in spaces where other people Might have a hard time. This is just what I'm built for. There are other places I can't be. There's places I would not want to be in a million years. But this space is. It works for me.

[A]

You were built in a spiritual factory for this work.

[B]

I stood in that line before I came in.

[A]

You're like, I'll do that. That seems interesting. I'll do it.

[B]

Yeah. And it is. No, dying is the same. We have these little things along the way, but all the nuances of it and what you learn and the love.

[A]

I have to ask you a woo question.

[B]

Oh, let's hear it.

[A]

I have to ask you a woo question. So on a soul level.

[B]

You're so funny. Okay. On a soul level.

[A]

On a soul level, this kind of work is very giving. You are, you are helping many, many people throughout the course of your life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're providing a service very much like a nurse would, a doctor would, even spiritual leaders and teachers that they're more so with death though. Like, it's constant. It's like we were saying, it's recession proof. You're not going to lose your job anytime soon. It's going to always be. Fortunately, you always have work to do. But it's an extreme version of giving in a normal life. A normal life, people don't give this much on a daily basis. So this is an extra, extremely giving scenario. I mean, you give to your family, you give to your, to your work and things. But this is different. You are in a very different stage in this human's or this soul's experience. And you're helping them again and again and again. So on a soul level, if you believe in reincarnation.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Why do you think this is the life you chose? In this life, is it a karmic thing that you have to give back because I did a whole lot of other stuff, or is it that like, no, I want, this is what I want to do because of. Out of love and out of this. Or I need to learn about death. And this is going to teach this to me. I mean, I told you we're going to get in the weeds here.

[B]

So when you said I want to learn about death, I could feel some emotion come up. And so that makes me like, there's something in my body that resonates with, with that. I need to learn about that. I have wondered from this life. Jim died. I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know what to do with my family. And I have imagined, I'VE been on this path of sorting out his death and being in relationship with him after his death. What does all that mean? And I have thought about past lives and have had some conversation, as one.

[A]

Does with a medium here and there.

[B]

With a past life regressionist. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

They're fascinating, aren't they?

[B]

They are fascinating.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

I, you know, one of them told me I was a nun in some life. And that makes sense.

[A]

Oh, you have none energy.

[B]

Oh my gosh.

[A]

Not in a bad way. Not in a ruler. Not in a ruler way. But when I think of a nun, I think of a piece. A lot of peace.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Except if you're a Catholic nun in the 80s, that's a whole other conversation. I had a different experience, this one. Nuns in the 80s.

[B]

I've heard tales. Oh, my goodness, my goodness.

[A]

But that, but that makes, that makes sense.

[B]

And I worked with children for a long time and I've never. I don't have my own children in this life. And the.

[A]

In the past life you worked with children.

[B]

No, in this life. In this life I worked with children for. Ran a children's bereavement center for seven years. So I was with kids all the time who were bereaved. And a woman went to see the psychic and she said, who are all these people around you? And I said, I have no idea. And she said, what is it with these kids? And so I told her a little bit about what I do and she talked to me about a past life where I had a bunch of kids and some of my kids died and then I ended up dying under horse. And I don't know, you know, I heard that and I took it in and I thought, okay, whatever. And there was more to it than that. But I have wondered.

[A]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

I have wondered about what. What past influences land now? And I don't know. And I don't think about very much because until someone asks. Because I'm here. Yeah.

[A]

Until someone like me asks you, it's.

[B]

Kind of fun to think about.

[A]

Well, it's interesting. What I mean, again, I live in this world, so I'm constantly in these kind of conversations. So I obviously do a lot of self reflection on, like, what's the point?

[B]

What do you think? What's got you here?

[A]

Oh, I. That's a long story for another time. I know exactly why I'm here and what I'm doing and the reasons why I'm doing most of it. Not all of it. I know, all of it. But, like, perfect example, I was talking to somebody the other day, and they asked me, what did you want to be when you grew up? Like, when you're a kid? Like, you said, you want to be a vet?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So we all have those, you know, the early ones. So the first one I can remember. There's two in my early stages of my life.

[B]

Life.

[A]

One was an astronaut because I wanted to see space. I don't know why. I just wanted to explore.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Second one was a priest.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because I saw a priest walk in on first in first grade, and I saw the power and the prestige and the respect. They might. That seems cool.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then when I told my mom that, she's like, oh, Jesus. And then the third one was a filmmaker. So you combine the. The three. An explorer.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

A religious leader of some sort or teacher or, you know, someone who's interested in spirituality, and a filmmaker to tell stories.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I was like, oh, that. That make I. When someone says, like, oh, God, that's right. That does make a lot of sense, because it's really. Those are the only three. I'd never had any other. I never had any other inclinations other than, like, business. I like business. I like building businesses and things like that. But I never. There was no other career other than those three that have ever come into my mind. Like, it took me forever to figure out if I want to be a filmmaker. And I only learned that because I worked at a video store for five years. And then when I got out of high school, like, I gotta do something. Like, there's 3,000. VHS is around me, apparently. I like movies, so I'm gonna be a director.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It was that simple. It was like, all right, I'm gonna be. I'll go into filmmaking.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, which was a very steady job, obviously. And you can make millions back then.

[B]

Then.

[A]

Not at all. My father's like, what?

[B]

He's going to do what?

[A]

He's just going to run off with the circus? I'm like, I am. I am. And look where I am now.

[B]

You do your own circus.

[A]

I've created my own circus.

[B]

Beautiful circus.

[A]

No, thank you. But I'm always fascinated about that. Because if you start looking at it from a cosmic soul purpose, you know, do you believe that there are people who come into your life who are there for a reason? It sounds to me. And I'm just gonna. I'm gonna be the psychotherapist here for a second. Go for sounds to me that Your brother came into your life and he was a motivating factor into your life's work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, there's just. I mean, you. You can't deny that. It's like that's exactly what happened.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So to me, on a soul level, you guys were talking up in the cloud somewhere, wherever you're at, and you're like, man, this life, I want to learn about death. Hey, I'm going to help you with this one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'll come down here as your brother this time. Last time we were married, but this time we're going to come down as a brother and sister. And I'm going to be. I'm going to come ahead of you, so I'm going to learn a whole lot more and I'm going to get things prepared for you. And then on my exit point, this is going to spawn your entire life work, and I'm going to do that for you.

[B]

You.

[A]

And I don't want you to cry.

[B]

I'm not gonna cry.

[A]

But I feel that it's so much love there.

[B]

I feel it too.

[A]

It's so much love, and it's so beautiful. And we all do that. All of our families play those parts in different things. I'm just using your brother as an example because it really has spawned your entire life work. And I've heard that again and again from people like, my mom died and did this, or I had my sibling die early on, and it changed me, you know, all these things. And it just seems like, yeah, I. I'm going to do that for you in this life, you know, and that's a. And this is a positive one. I also believe on the negative side as well, where people are like, you know, I need to learn about this. I'm like, well, I'll be the a hole to come down and do that for you. And. And I'll have to learn a whole lot of stuff along that side as well. Did you. Does that make sense to you?

[B]

It does, it does. And I like that. Meaning making as I've gotten older because it gives more elbow room to breathe and think about life in a different way and to not create more suffering for myself. It's good.

[A]

Yeah. It's the equivalent of a soul on the other side. Like, you know, I've never been famous. I want to know what that's like. And they come in, they're like, okay, how famous do you want to be? Do you want to be like local community theater famous, or do you want to be Tom Cruise famous? Like where do you want to go? And then you go, you know, Tom Cruise famous would be interesting.

[B]

Like, all right, buckle up, buttercup.

[A]

Buckle up, buttercup. Where are you going to be? Oh, is it going to be Bollywood or is it going to be Hollywood? And what year are you going in? Like, okay. And like, that's when I want to come in. And then all of a sudden, oh, this is not what it's all cracked up to be. I needed to learn what that was like. Like, other ones. Other people come in. Like, I need to learn what addiction's. Like. I need to go over that. Or I need to learn what this pain is. Or I need to know what it's like to just not worry and come in Rich.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you're like, oh, but you don't worry about this, but you got other things you got to deal with. So it's just grand tapestry. It is of the human experience, of the soul's experience. And we haven't even gotten into parallel lives and multiverses and all that stuff that makes my head hurt when I start hearing about. About that stuff, which makes sense to me. I understand on a quantum level, on a Vedic. You know, the Vedic. The Vedic teachers of the past spoke about multiverses and how many. You know, there's multiple lives. Multiple. Not only multiple lives, but multiple versions of this conversation happening right now in this universe. As a human, let's not even talk about what else is on the galaxy.

[B]

That makes my head hurt.

[A]

It makes my head hurt, too, because. Because it's not something our head's capable of comprehending.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I get that.

[A]

Have you ever heard the concept that everything is happening all at once?

[B]

Everything? Yes, I have.

[A]

That there is no past, there's no future, that we're all. All our lives are happening at the same exact time? Yeah, that.

[B]

That's okay.

[A]

Sure, sure. Why not? Why not?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The best example of that, though, I've heard, because I've asked this question, some mistakes and some. Some big spiritual teachers, and I go explain this as a layman, like, I'm a child. Explain that concept. I just told you. And what I've gotten in that. This one's a really great one. Is like, well, you have a tv, right? Yeah. It's like, well, when you're watching a tv, what show are you watching? I'm like, oh, I don't know. Watching South Park. Okay, great. Well, you know, the Simpsons are on another channel. You know, reruns on Friends are on another channel. You know, Big Bang's on another channel. Oh, great. Escape from the 50s is on the other channel. There's a thousand channels going on and they're all happening at this moment. But what are you tuned into? I was like, ooh, that I could wrap my head around.

[B]

That makes sense to me, right? Yes.

[A]

Isn't that a great analogy?

[B]

It is a great analogy because it's.

[A]

All happening right now. The signals are all going out.

[B]

Yes. And where are you tuning yourself to? What are you tuning yourself?

[A]

And if you want to take that analogy to the next level, it's like, well, on YouTube, how many videos are uploaded on a daily basis? Well, they're all playing. They're all up there. What are you tuning into? So those are all different lives, all different experiences, all different entertainment, if you will. And they're all at the same time out there being played billions and billions of times a day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's. And that's even a speck of the universe.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[A]

Martha, this has been so fascinating. I absolutely love you. It's been great talking to you.

[B]

You are a delight. Look at that laugh. I told you. I've been listening to you last couple days. It's really fun. Your laugh is great.

[A]

I appreciate it. People think it's fake, but please tell.

[B]

Them it's not fake.

[A]

Please tell people. He can't be that happy. He can't be always laughing. I'm like, I laugh all the time.

[B]

So I did a meditation before.

[A]

Did Aunt Betty or Uncle Bob show up?

[B]

No. It's a way to. That I learned from a friend of mine to attune to a situation I'm going to be in. And you know, it's pull you up in. And sometimes when I pull the person up, they're kind of like, it's a square. Sometimes they're in the back of the box. You are right in the front of the box with this big. That face. That is the face. And I did it twice and you came in the same way both times. And I thought, oh, this is going to be interesting. Oh, really?

[A]

So you kind of, you were, you were testing the waters to see where it was going.

[B]

I think if it's imagination and seeing this happy, seemingly connected guy in this box and thinking that I was gonna get to spend some time and doing my best to be grounded and connected and then what could we co create together? And that's, it's a, it's a nice way to move into an interview. So thank you.

[A]

Wow, that's awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

[B]

So this. So this. Yes. This is all real?

[A]

This is all real?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I had someone come to our event and walk up to my wife and she's. They're like, is he really this? Is he really who he is? I flew from, God knows, thousands of miles. She said, I just wanted to make sure he was real.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And I was fascinated by. She didn't ask me the shots, but like, my wife would say, notes that you should run, but she's like, no, that's. He laughs like that. He's all. He's happy generally all the time. I mean, don't get me wrong, I.

[B]

You're human.

[A]

I'm a human. And I have children.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Teenagers as well. Well, so of course I'm not always happy, but I generally am. You know, I do have a good time with life. I try. I try.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

[B]

Has it always been that way or did you. Is it. It's change? Yeah. Yeah. I'm. That's my experience.

[A]

Too angry. For the longest time, I was like, why isn't my film career going, oh, my God, I want to go. Wasn't going where I wanted it goes. Oh, I was angry. I was bitter for a good decade.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'd be. I'll be honest with. I mean, yeah, there was elements of this. I was always a class clown. I was always joking and that's who I am. But the. I was really bitter because I would help other filmmakers fulfill their dreams and. And I was saving their movies and I couldn't get one of my movies off the ground the way I wanted it to. So it was really interesting. But I don't know, I can't remember the moment that it clicked off, but I think it was obviously when I started meditating about eight years. Seven. Eight years ago, I started meditating. Meditating, not little two minute meditations.

[B]

It matters.

[A]

No, no, no. And when I started to meditate, I started to calm a lot more. My life became. And my wife saw it. She was like, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it. Because she saw it. She's the close. Your spouse is the closest. Closest observer of your life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're the witness.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

More so than your parents.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Your. Your spouse is your witness because they're with you generally all the time. They see the good, the bad and the ugly all the time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And she. She felt it. My kids actually felt it as well. They just. The med. So I've Been become a much more chill dude over the years. When I was a young man. Forget Jesus.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, God.

[B]

We. We evolve happily.

[A]

Yeah. I was pissing vinegar boy. Oh, Jokey. But Pissing vinegar joke. Jokey. You know, I am a Gen xer from the 80s, so I watched a lot of movies and I. The wit will pop off, but it was something. Yeah. That was. It wasn't always there. It was. And as you get older, you start to kind of let go of a lot of. A lot of things that don't matter anymore.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because at the end. At the end of the day, none of it really does in the scope of what we give importance to it. I'll end our conversation with Alan Watts.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

I love Alan Watts. And he said. He said this, and it was so profound. And I'm going to paraphrase, but he goes, in a hundred years, there'll be strangers living in your house. Anyone who remembers you will be dead. Maybe. Maybe you've done something in your life that someone will remember you for. But in 500 years, in a thousand, think about it. How many Roman millions of Romans during the Roman Empire of a thousand years? How many do we remember? How many do we actually think about? Usually the emperors, usually key players in certain dramas that happen to be written down, but there were millions that no one remembers, you know, at all. So when you look at things like that, then you start like, oh, maybe I shouldn't worry much as much as I used to about these little stupid things. It's not easy.

[B]

It's not.

[A]

It's not easy. But when you look at it from that perspective, you just kind of like.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Maybe I should do things that make me happy 1000%.

[B]

Well, and for me, when a couple of my contemporaries died, that was one of the big shifts. Like, oh, they were the same age. And she's not here anymore. She's done.

[A]

The game is over.

[B]

The game is over. And my game could be over tomorrow. Could be over in five years. And what am I going to do today to feel alive?

[A]

That's so beautiful. Last question. What has all of this work done for you on your soul journey? Meaning that you are more aware than most that death is coming. And it could come, like you just said, tomorrow, or it can come in 10 years, 20 years, whatever. How has this changed your perspective on the dying process in your own life? Because you've been an observer of death and the transitions for many years now. But how does that register with you now? How you want to go, how you are opening like how does that work for you? Because I have a very clear idea of my exiting this video game. I have a clear idea of how I want to do it and, and I might even have seen what will happen. Who knows in a meditation, who knows what shows up? But I have a clear idea from this work because I can't do this work without thinking about it. I talk about it all the time. So you've had to have this kind of meditative thoughts about yourself. How does this affected you?

[B]

I didn't think about my own dying for a long time and I was very much in the. Let me, I'm going to do this work and I'm going to be of service and did that to my detriment and did that in some places, those places inside of ourselves where we want to save and we have the wholeness of every feeling, thought, emotion in us. I think. And I've had to or gotten to really look at my shadow and look at my light. And I think in the last five years especially have really been able to hold both of those. So as I do this work now, I do it from that perspective that I am a human and I'm fallible and, and there are things that I love and there are people I love and I make mistakes and the calling I feel is to do end of life work and it's okay. For a long time I wasn't sure it was okay. It felt a little weird and odd. And as we have talked about past lives and all those things, that was all part of the. Do I say these things out loud? Because those things got to be more and more. I can't talk about dying in the feeling of somebody who's died standing behind me without thinking about consciousness and what does this all mean, what's really real, all of that. And so when I think of myself in a bed dying, if I am lucky enough to do that, if I don't get hit by a truck that I think, wow, I hope I get to see people I love. And I am doing things now to take care of my body and take care of my spirit that I wouldn't have done 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Taking breaks and going to nature and those kind of, those kinds of things that are nourishing and help me stay in myself. And I hope that when I'm dying I can be in myself too and have the, have the, just have the experience of it. Whatever the experience is, I don't know what it's going to be. I don't want to Hurt. And I think we'll have opportunity for that not to be. And there are particular people I want to have around me who will care for me and care for my body and care for my spirit. And I'm very clear about that. I'm clear about the energy I want around me, and I think that's transferred into regular life. You pick who you want to spend time with. I've gotten pretty choosy.

[A]

As we do, as we get older.

[B]

Yeah, we're allowed.

[A]

As the funny comedian Nate Berghazi says, He's like, when you're in your 20s, your friend calls you and goes, hey, man, we're going, where are we going? What are we doing? You mean burn a house down? Let's do it. 30s, you're like, where are we going? 40s, you're like, I'm driving. I'm driving separately. So true. So chat. 20. You're like, I'm down to clown. Let's go.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But as you're, like now, you're like, no, I think it's Tom Papa, the other great comedian, Tom Papa. He's like, one of the greatest things in my life is canceling on plans. Oh, my God. Like, it's just like, I have. Oh, we have a dinner date with another couple. Oh, yeah. Oh, I could cancel.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I just want to stay home in my pajamas and just. It's like. It's a great. And as you get older. You know what? It's so true.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It's so true. Martha, where can people find out more about you and the amazing work you're doing?

[B]

My website, MarthaJoatkins.com.

[A]

Simple as that.

[B]

Simple as that.

[A]

And you have a book out, right?

[B]

I have a book. Signpost of Dying and working on a second book. I'll say that out loud, so spur myself on to get that finished. Been working on it for a while. Yeah.

[A]

It's been such a pleasure talking to you about things that are not pleasurable as a general statement, but they can be.

[B]

They absolutely can, because it's part of.

[A]

This whole system of what we're doing. And I appreciate you being. Not only being here and helping the planet in the way that you're helping humanity, but I appreciate the work. I appreciate the empathy, the love that you do the work with. With. And I hope that this conversation does help others who are going through this as well. So I appreciate you so much.

[B]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[A]

Thank you for spending this sacred time with us today. If you feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll find the show notes for this [e-mail]656 and if your soul is craving an even deeper journey, step into Next Level Sound Soul tv, our streaming sanctuary for spiritual films, documentaries, original shows, guided meditations, channeling sessions, audiobooks, and transformative teachings. It's a space created to support your awakening, your healing, and your return to the truth of who you really are. Begin your journey at Next LevelSoul TV. Until next time. Keep expanding, keep seeking, and keep walking your path path towards the next level of your soul.