Dear Rachael,

Ah, but first, Dear Friends!

       I invite you to write to us with your insights, tribulations, rhapsodies and explorations as a result of having had any type of death-transcendent Exceptional Human Experience (an anomalous, transportive experience that opens the door for you into the direct, personal discovery/recovery/awareness of that which on this site is referred to as the "Larger-Life Reality," leaving you with the clear knowing that though the body eventually dies, one's conscious sense of self, the 'I', does not).  If you want to share your EHE in detail, perhaps we can post it in the "EHE Stories" Spotlight.   On the other hand, you can write to the 'Dear Rachael' column and let us know how the experience has affected your life.  Did it change you?  Were you supported by others who understood what you had been through at the time of the experience, or not?  How did this influence who you told about the experience/s and what the experience even may have meant to you then and now?  What insights did you gain from the experience itself?  Do you feel differently about life [and death!] than you did before the experience?  How has it impacted on your relationships with other people, other creatures?  What Gifts did you receive as a result of your EHE?  Are you now more open to other such experiences, when and should they occur?   Has the experience actually facilitated your having other similarly transportive and life-enlarging experiences?  For example, some people say that as a result, they frequently have out-of-body or mystical experiences, or they are able to perceive presences that most of us do not.  Has the experience altered the way you feel about the Earth itself?  

You may wonder, who is 'Rachael'?  As a result of several such experiences in my life, I have certainly been changed.  Over the years a number of what some would term 'mystical experiences' as well as transcendent odor experiences I frequently had as a child, and after-death communications and healings that have happened within my family have had a profound impact.  This became even more the case as I came to study the work of Rhea A. White, who created what she calls the Exceptional Human Experience paradigm.  Her focus, even as a scientist, is on meaning, rather than specific proof.  Where reductionistic science may ask, is this a controllable, repeatable phenomenon [suggesting a means toward validation within its terms of what is 'real' and what is not],  Rhea respects that your experience is your experience, which is its own validation for the one who counts, the experiencer.  Her question to us is, what meaning does your experience have for you?  

One of my favorite Rhea quotes is, "The reality we live is a phenomenological one, and within those terms, these [anomalous] experiences are real.  they can change lives.  I don't know of any p value of the parapsychologists that has changed a life, not even one of their own."

She encourages us to respect our own such experiences and to search within them to add meaning to our lives.  

You may wish to see our Dear-Rachael Archive, read a briefing on what this feature is about, or write me!