A Near Death Experience

A billion and a half heartbeats. That’s all we get. It seems like such a short time. Think about how many heartbeats you have already had. A million or so? Ten, twenty million? A couple hundred million more and your time here will be drawing to a close.

They always say “beware what you wish for.” Not long after the incident on the mount, I almost died. This was after my wife had gone through the grueling chemo and radiation therapy and was well and clear of her cancer and my son was older and my second child, my daughter, was born.
To stay in shape, I was playing indoor soccer at a local stadium. I am hyper by nature and love competition and any kind of athletic challenge. Indoor soccer can be a violent game, depending on the skill level, and I found myself shoulder to shoulder with high school and college guys every week who wanted to slaughter me. It got to the point where every week I’d come home with a new injury.
During a particularly violent and heated game, running full out, I went hard for a ball and was “body checked” from behind against the barrier, my chest striking the corner of the door to the substitution area that was left open, perfectly level to where my heart is, with the full force of body weight going top speed, behind the blow. Imagine running as fast as you can and someone pushes you from behind into the corner of a table which strikes you dead center in the chest. That is basically what happened. A freak accident.
When adrenaline is rushing through your body, you often don’t notice the extent of your injury until after you have cooled down.
I felt a pain in my chest and just figured it was bruised or cracked ribs, which I have suffered on numerous occasions. Having this injury can cause pain when you simply breathe or turn your hips.
When I arrived home later that night, the pain in the center of my chest grew sharper, like a cramp, and I felt tingling in my left arm, like it was going numb. I tried to inhale deeply but was unable to regain my normal breathing rate.
I took a hot shower to relax my overstrained muscles but nothing seemed to make the cramping in my chest subside. It came in waves. Lightly, then more intense. My labored breathing grew worse. I looked at my face in the mirror and the color was gone from my cheeks. I felt my ribs and sternum for external bruising but the pain was deep inside my chest.
I laid down on my bed and tried to read a book. My wife thought it was strange because I usually retire around one a.m. and it was not even nine thirty. I told her I was just tired and she didn’t think twice about it.
I didn’t really know anything about heart attacks and was only in my early thirties and in relatively good health. I was not overweight. I didn’t eat poorly, smoke or take drugs. How could I be having a heart attack? I had heard reports of athletes dying from heavy blows to the chest by things like softballs, baseballs, knees, a fist, but couldn’t comprehend this actually happening to me in something as innocuous as a recreational indoor soccer game.
I didn’t mention it to my wife at the time because I didn’t want to worry her. With her having recently gone through the trauma of cancer, I didn’t want to cause her any undo stress.
As I lay there, unable to sleep or breathe normally, the stabbing pain in my chest only became worse, I began to grow very concerned. Again I was at a place in my life where I grew depressed quite easily and things were just not going very well. Our finances were strained, my marriage was tenuous, I had suffered a series of professional setbacks, and this sense of darkness and general despair had contributed to a strained relationship with God. I really felt, deep down, that if this was a heart attack, then it was my time to go. God had elected this moment and method for me to pass on. And I really felt like maybe it was the only solution out of my misery. I didn’t want to mention it to anyone. I wanted to ride it out and go peacefully.
It crossed my mind to go into a panic and tell my wife to call an ambulance, but at the time, we had no health insurance to pay for it and were just scraping by as it was.
I found myself drifting in and out of consciousness, struggling with the pain in my chest. I tried to catch my breath but I could not. I was on the verge of hyperventilating. I tried standing and sucking deep breaths, but the pain grew worse. Then when I lay flat on my back again, I still had trouble breathing.
It was here that the dreadful feeling of my tenuous mortality hit me head on. I felt like I was actually about to cease to exist.
Dying or believing you are going to die hits you hard. It is inconceivable. It is a big-time reality check. It literally takes you out of your body and you step back and say to yourself, “Wait a second. I might actually die here. I might actually not be around anymore.”
I began to feel this incredible sense of losing all control, like a baby, I felt absolutely helpless.
I suddenly needed to grasp all these things in my life that brought me meaning and gave me identity, purpose, comfort, definition, security: my family; my friends; my possessions; my work; my beliefs; my dreams...but they were all slipping away like sands in an hour glass.
I felt connected to this earth by a thin line that was unraveling and spiraling off into infinity.
The inconceivable, unimaginable, horrifying thought of dying chilled me to the marrow.
Could it really be possible that this human being that was me, everything I was, this world and all that I knew, was no longer going to be here? Everything I ever was and everything I might have ever been -- gone. It’s a truly terrifying thought and one can only remotely envision what it’s like to stare directly into the smoldering eyes of death, without experiencing it firsthand.
All I could do was focus on my breathing. In my training in Zen, you are taught methods of controlling anger and stress through controlling your breath. I just tried to take long deep breaths and focus only on my breathing.
I prayed deeply to turn my will over to a Higher Power and let him take me if he must. I also prayed to let go of this little insignificant life that I had called Jay Nuzum, like a feather in the wind.
I saw the face of Jesus. He appeared to me like a vision, as I sank deeper and deeper into myself. He was hovering over the water as I drifted out in a little, run- down boat with gossamer, potato paper sail. The boat didn’t seem like it was seaworthy one bit. I was far out to sea, no land in sight.
I spoke to Jesus matter-of-factly, the blinding sunshine burning my eyes, reflected off the placid water.
“This is it, isn’t it?”
“It appears so.”
“I’m ready, God.”
“Are you?”
“If this is the time you have selected for me, then so be it. I accept.”
“What about those you leave behind?”
“That’s what hurts the most, knowing they’re going to be sad.”
“They’ll get over it.”
Jesus wasn’t being very supportive.
“Are you sure they’ll get over it? They won’t be too freaked out?”
“People are strong. They forget. Move on.”
“I’m sorry,” I began repeating this, over and over, flooded with emotion. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”
“Why are you so sorry?
“Because I messed up. I was lazy. I gave in to sin and temptation. I didn’t love my family enough. I didn’t love you enough. I didn’t work hard enough.”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“No. I am trying to accept my failings and apologize to you.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Are you sure? I feel like I have offended you by my actions and my thoughts and a whole bunch of things.”
“I am never offended by you. How could I be? We’re one in the same.”
I was growing confused.
“How are we one in the same? You’re Jesus and I’m a small and insignificant person down on earth.”
“Don’t you realize that you and I are indivisible?“
“How do you figure?”
“There are no myriad forms, in the true nature of things. Just One.”
The whole concept of a heaven and earth and hell flashed across my mind. What about the idea of God sitting in heaven, looking down on his children of earth? And the lost, dark souls who ended up in that other place? The bad place, for eternity?
“There is no bad place for eternity. It’s all good.”
It’s all good? Did I just hear Jesus Christ tell me, “It’s all good”?
I thought for a moment about it and I heard a small voice in the back of my head: “Yes, I did.”
“I have so many more questions I need to ask you.”
“Sit in silence. Listen to your heart. Get in touch deeply with yourself and you will find all the answers.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Eventually everyone does. You are no different.”
“What if I’m not as smart as everyone; don’t have the talent, the drive, ambition, all that other stuff?”
“You too will have an awakening.”
“Like when I went to Boney Mountain to die and closed my eyes and saw something I had never seen before.”
“What you saw was only yourself.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You will not find the answers anywhere but within.”
“Did I offend you by wanting to end my own life?”
“I was sad because you are not really ending anything, the pain, the sorrow, the perceived bad luck. You’re only changing your scenery.”
My little boat lifted and swayed on the swells. The flimsy potato paper sail flapped gently against the breeze. I watched the shimmering light playing off the surface of the astral water.
“Thank you,” I said finally.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
“You don’t need to thank me. Just love more, yourself and others, the rest will follow.”
“Are you really Jesus or am I just dreaming this?”
“What do you think I am?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I’m really you.”
When I finally could let go and let God, as they say, I didn’t feel so compelled to grasp onto this earthly existence any longer. It was almost as if God took me in his grasp, once I had the courage and will to let go and sail out into the vast open sea of the unknown.
He reached down, because I had begged for his forgiveness and charity, and filled me with the warming love of creation.
In my mind or in a spirit state, I don’t know which, I found myself going around and visiting all the people I had ever known and asking for their forgiveness for whatever wrong I had done to them and forgiving them for whatever wrong they had done to me. I even forgave those who hated me or abused and stole from me.
I was filled with such absolute compassion and all-consuming love that those individuals who seemed like my worst enemies, whom I had hated with a vengeance, who were only out to do me wrong, felt like my closest brothers and sisters.
I came to the eye-opening realization that we all have to swim in the same sea and ultimately we’ll all find the same divine inspiration, sooner or later. It is inevitable.
At about this point I was shot through the forehead with a bullet of piercing clarity -- a cosmic truth filled my heart and permeated my soul. The truth was: I am just happy to be walking around on this planet. The time we have here is so short and so precious, why don’t we make the best of it and stop fighting and using and abusing and complaining and just love people, help people, be kind to people and make it easier for them, give stuff away for free, volunteer our time, spend more time with family, follow our dreams however preposterous.
To just feel privileged to be a member of the human race was good enough for me. I was grateful for every single thing and every single person and every single place and every single experience and every single second on this rock. It was all heavenly bliss. It truly made me appreciate those things I took for granted so long: a great wife, loving healthy children, a roof over my head, all the right fingers and toes – all the great teachings I had learned from spiritual masters. I was so blessed just to be me. How could I be depressed? I was only depressed because of unfulfilled desires.

The next morning I awoke to the light of a new day. The pain in my chest had subsided and I was infused with a sense of pure joy in this place of all-consuming beauty and wonder -- my house, in my city of Moorpark; in my state of California; in my country, the great United States of America; in my world, the planet earth; in my solar system, the Milky Way; in my little universe, sparkling, perfect, infinite, omnigenous...
An affirmation appeared in my brain as I showered and massaged the bone-bruise at my chest. I don’t know where it came from but I began instantly repeating it: “I see, with discerning eyes, the love that surrounds me. I see the empty promise of material longings, and I see the infinite peace and everlasting joy of God and His light that wraps me and all things in heavenly, all-encompassing bliss. Amen.”