Finding Home With Eben Alexander and Guest Co-Host Jude Hung

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by our co-host, the guest co-host, Jude Hung, and her special Finding Home series.

[00:00:16] And one of the very first people that Jude wanted to get on as part of this Finding Home series is Eben Alexander. So welcome to the show, Eben, really looking forward to our conversation.

[00:00:31] It's great to be here, Simon and Jude. I'm very appreciative of this offer to discuss this. It's a kind of a fresh perspective for me that I don't often share. So I love this kind of fresh material and where it can lead us.

[00:00:46] Brilliant. So Jude, over to you. I'll go on mute. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Simon. So, I'm going to start with Eben. I heard about Dr. Eben Alexander in 2018 through a friend and was listening to him speak about his NDE, which is a near-death experience for those that

[00:01:07] have not heard of NDE before. And it was compelling for me because I also have had that experience. So he and I shared two very significant life experiences, one being an NDE. And then as I heard him speak, he shared about the fact that he's adopted.

[00:01:25] And it was very significant in his NDE. We'll get into some reasoning around that later in the questions. But I just want to say that he is a doctor, a neurosurgeon, and he graduated from Duke in Harvard. And he is an author of four books,

[00:01:45] Proof of Heaven, Map of Heaven, Seeking Heaven, and Living in a Mindful Universe, which I just have been listening to on Audible. It's amazing. And I want to just begin, Eben, with what does home mean to you? And how has your NDE impacted that concept of home?

[00:02:12] Well, I would say it really all starts with my adoption history and the fact that I was put up for adoption when I was 11 days old. My birth mother was unwed, 16 years old.

[00:02:23] This is back in 1953. But the problem was social services had taken me for failure to thrive and I was hospitalized, but she was unwilling to sign the papers to let me be adopted.

[00:02:36] Upshot of all that was I was put into a baby dorm in Greensboro, North Carolina for four months before I finally was adopted out. And I think that so for much of my life,

[00:02:48] there was this subconscious kind of knowing that I'd been left behind by my birth mother. And it really in many ways colored or shadowed the way I dealt with the world, the amount of trust I had in the world, whether I was worthy of existence and love.

[00:03:03] Every bit of that was kind of up in the air because of that limbo I'd been in early in my life. Now, I was adopted into a wonderful loving family. I could have been more fortunate. My adoptive father, the globally renowned neurosurgeon was obviously

[00:03:17] very important in my career choice and in a lot of my life and his care and loving for patients is something that I admire deeply. But that home, that adopted home,

[00:03:29] as much as I loved it, I had an older sister, Jean, who was adopted, but then two younger biological children of my adopted parents because 18 months after I was born, they had a young

[00:03:43] sister named Betsy. And then beyond that came Phyllis. So I was in this family that was mixed, but the parents taught us always that we were chosen. That's how Jean and I were

[00:03:55] kind of selected. And so it was a very favorable languaging around it. And yet to me, I was always worried I might get thrown out again. And I know that was a huge driver in my behavior

[00:04:09] and much of what I did in that house was, in other words, not necessarily feeling like I earned that home and belonged in that home. And so that was kind of a struggle through

[00:04:20] much of my life, even though much of that was subconscious and might've been causing some issues for me that I wasn't really consciously aware of. And that's why I would say that my NDE was so profound because obviously people who've read Proof of Heaven will realize

[00:04:38] how essential it was that I met my birth family a year before my coma. That's a huge part of the story, was reconnecting with them at all. Because in fact, my first attempt to do so

[00:04:49] back in 2000 led to a rejection. And I found out later, if you reject an adopte as an adult, it really can tip them over. So that's kind of what happened. But in my NDE,

[00:05:01] it was such a profound kind of connection to the universe and sense of being one in that beautiful guardian angel. I mean, the very heart of the mystery of my journey, the spiritual guide on the butterfly wing who should have been somebody that I knew

[00:05:16] richly from life. And yet I knew her so deep deeply from the experience of our mind meld and her message to me, you're deeply loved and cherished forever. You have nothing

[00:05:25] to fear. And it turns out that ultimately, all of that is what led to my healing that NDE journey, that feeling of being in a spiritual home. It was a very brilliantly kind of illuminated sense of home, spiritual home where you belong, the memories coming back,

[00:05:49] etc. I mean, it was a very rich experience of kind of reuniting and being welcomed into the loving heart of the universe. And that's what the NDE provided. And every bit of it was kind of deeply tied into my adoption history and what I'd been through in those

[00:06:06] first 54 years of my life before the coma. So to me, the notion of a spiritual home, that feeling of being there, which is what I sensed especially in the Gateway Valley and in the core. I mean, I wouldn't trade it for anything. And yet it's also richly interwoven

[00:06:23] with that adoption story. And in so many ways, I would say the adoption story is kind of a metaphor for so much of all of our existence. All of us are separated from spirit when we come

[00:06:39] back into this realm. And I say that given the knowledge that there's plenty of evidence that our souls do tend to return. So something that we might call reincarnation is actually very much enforced as we discuss in our book, Living in a Mindful Universe. But ultimately,

[00:06:59] it's all really about love and connection and shared meaning and purpose. And every bit of that came together through my NDE to finally lead to a very wonderful and satisfying conclusion to my adoption story. Beautiful. I'm like, wow, I'm taking it all in and

[00:07:24] comparing my own experiences between the two because I would say that my NDE also resolved my adoption on what we call in the adoption community trauma. And that story and coming to a conclusion, and I do agree that within all of humanity, there is that inner

[00:07:48] longing for home. And that's why Rumi says we're all walking each other home. And my question for you now in here today in this state, since you had the NDE and you've resolved

[00:08:04] that story, is home a state of being that you can connect to and carry within you? Absolutely. Just, you know, there's that old saying that happiness comes from within. And I've become completely convinced of that from my NDE forward is that,

[00:08:22] in fact, I've come to realize based on my study of science, of consciousness as a scientist, that in fact all of the material world, the physical world, emerges from the mental realm.

[00:08:37] So it really kind of shows the importance of our soul and who we are. And that is something that, you know, is a huge part of our journey if we're adopted, because you

[00:08:52] need to kind of do some work to figure out, do you belong? Do you have shared meaning and purpose? Do you have a reason for being here? Or are you just some kind of great cosmic accident?

[00:09:03] And that's where I think my adoption history in many ways was a tremendous gift. As I've often said, one thing I recognize from my NDE is that, from my NDE is that the hardships in life are often the greatest gifts. And for me,

[00:09:23] that abandonment wound being put up for adoption by my birth mother and kind of the additional insult to injury of having to spend four months in the baby dorm waiting for adoption was all a gift because it set me up for this incredible journey of understanding

[00:09:39] that in many ways culminated with my near-death experience and then with the 15-year aftermath of trying to make sense of it all and put it in perspective. So I look at that particular hardship of my adoption abandonment wound as a tremendous gift. It has to do,

[00:09:56] I would say that these challenges in life are what define us. They are what allow us to grow and mature as souls. And certainly facing up to the challenge of that adoption abandonment wound

[00:10:09] could be a very powerful engine of growth and transformation. But it just depends on how we turn it and how we want to look at all this. And whether we see ourselves as a victim

[00:10:21] or see ourselves as a higher soul living multiple lifetimes with the ability to rise above all of this and kind of accompany humanity to the next level of understanding. And I tend to prefer the latter mode, the higher soul mode. And that is one that gives us great

[00:10:38] power in this world. And it's a power of manifesting love for others. So this is not about some egocentric narcissistic sense of control, but it's more about living our lives for the higher good and sharing unconditional love, kindness, compassion, mercy, acceptance,

[00:10:57] when necessary, forgiveness. I mean these are the beautiful lessons that I think have come from my experience of the adoption abandonment wound followed up by this NDE and its incredible lessons. But it really allows us to shift our kind of perspective and how we see ourselves.

[00:11:14] And in so many ways what my journey has shown especially, you know, as a neurosurgeon interested in the science of consciousness, it's really helping to reveal through quantum physics, neuroscience and the heart problem, the binding problem of consciousness. All of these mysteries

[00:11:31] to the conventional materialist model brain creates consciousness dissolve when you recognize there's a much grander model that involves the primacy of mind over matter or spirit over matter when you acknowledge how this mind is all unified. So it really has been a tremendous

[00:11:47] opportunity for growth. And for me, the adoption story was absolutely essential for me to get any of the major growth that I've gotten out of this whole set of experiences. Absolutely agree in my experience. And one of the archetype stories is,

[00:12:07] you know, we all have a child archetype and one of the archetype stories is the orphan child. And the orphan child is the only child archetype that has a transfer formative story into the magical child. And so I think that that is something as adoptees that we can

[00:12:25] embody. And I really love the connections that you're making to the grander, all that is that we are too weak in a way we are the portals of between these realms, between the world and the physical reality that we're living. And this realm that you and I are

[00:12:52] talking about, that is made of the fabric of love. And it we can't we don't have to wait until we transition to the other realm to experience here, it here on earth and to be that love

[00:13:12] and to feel good about ourselves. You may not know these statistics around adoptees, but I think this is why interviewing you was so important to me is adoptees have, they really do struggle, they struggle with abandonment, and there are 17%

[00:13:30] more likely to be in therapy or struggle with mental health, and they are 25% more likely to commit suicide. So it they you know, the trauma that we carry within our bodies is real and the narratives that come about, about who we are, and our belonging or purpose,

[00:13:52] and our identity get really bound up in the abandonment, the rejection, the feelings of not being worthy. And so I know that in your experience, you share about the love that you experienced through your NDE and how it helps you to resolve

[00:14:17] even afterwards, your abandonment. Can you share some more about that? I know some of it was through meditation. Absolutely. Well, that was certainly a huge part of proof of heaven was the journey where it started and that earth were my view, but then ascended through this

[00:14:36] light portal into this brilliant ultra real gateway valley. It was kind of like Plato's world of ideals, but for the individual soul. And that is where I witnessed all the thousands of beings below dancing, lots of joy and merriment. I mean, incredible festivities,

[00:14:54] and it was all being fueled because of these swooping orbs of angelic choirs above that were emanating chants and anthems, hymns that would just thunder through my awareness. But the entire ambience of that gateway valley was one of pure love. And I remember my first kind of

[00:15:10] witnessing of that was in the form of what I wrote about proof of heaven as a soft summer breeze that blew through and changed everything. Even though the elements of the scene stayed the same by description, the emotional tone was dramatically amplified. And that was my sense

[00:15:27] of love and connection. That soft summer breeze I later called the divine wind or the breath of God, because that awareness of the unifying power, that binding force of love and intelligence that is benevolent and has our best interest at heart, that God force, that was an absolute

[00:15:46] joy to bathe in and witness. And yet this was only the beginning because in fact, this gateway valley was only a stepping stone. And I remember the angelic choirs provided yet

[00:15:55] another portal to a higher and higher level until I got into what I call the core, an infinite inky blackness, but filled to overflowing with the divine love of that God force,

[00:16:06] the love of the creator for the creation, which is something we can all share. It's the very source of our joy and our bliss and our ecstasy in this world is because we're

[00:16:16] co-creating that world with that God force. And I came to recognize in the core that my very conscious awareness was completely and directly sourced in that God force. So we're never separate from that love, and we're never far from that spiritual home at all. All

[00:16:32] we have to do is go within and we can find all the echoes of it and then start reinvigorating that in our life. That's why I've used sacred acoustics of meditation by an orbit brainwave

[00:16:43] entrainment for the last 11 or 12 years, because I like to go back into the mental space because by exploring it, that's how I can enliven, enrich and cultivate my relationships with that infinitely God loving realm of the core and with the various guides and denizens of

[00:17:03] the gateway valley. So that's how I access it. And if people want to learn more about that form of binaural beat brainwave entrainment, they can go to sacredacoustics.com, but it's an incredibly powerful technique that I've used. And what it does is it helps

[00:17:18] to recover that love, that sense of infinite love and healing wholeness that is part of these journeys. I mean, that's what NDEs are all about, is coming to seek kind of completion in oneness and wholeness as a soul moving forward. That oneness with the divine is

[00:17:34] something that becomes much more accessible to us as we grow into this sense of love. And it's obviously quite different from our little material world that we've got going on here, especially in the current era with the warfare and political polarization and

[00:17:50] things like that. It's kind of shocking to realize that at the very deep essence of our mental space, we can find such peace and such a sense of harmony. But that's what we're to bring back to this world is through meditation, centering prayer. This is why I say

[00:18:07] NDEs in many ways are the tip of the spear, but the rest of us don't have to have an NDE just to learn about NDEs. And certainly as adoptees, I think meditation can give us great

[00:18:19] power to start to reunite with higher soul, to escape the kind of trog traumas of the ego and ascend to higher levels. We came here to be much grander beings. That's what life is all about is transformation and evolution. And I think as adoptees, we have an amazing

[00:18:40] kind of sense of being able to use that abandonment wound and use the energy behind it to help us grow more fully into the complete souls that we came here to be that are totally self-sufficient at

[00:18:53] home in this spiritual world that we have that permeates this world when you're open to it. You just come to recognize that deep sense of spirituality, the gift to NDEs, more than 90% of them come back not just believing in, but knowing from personal experience in a beautiful

[00:19:12] loving force at the core of the universe and intelligence that's very benevolent as I said. And by knowing this, it makes all the difference in the rest of your life and how you live that life, how you look at death. Death is not a termination. It's not

[00:19:28] the end of relationships. Our relationships with loved ones continue beyond the grave. After-death communications, deathbed visions, all of this near-death experiences, shared death, these all inform us of the grander nature of our consciousness and of its interconnection

[00:19:46] through the binding force of love. And that's why I would say that a discussion that involves the adoption of abandonment wound, especially when you extrapolate that to all sentient beings coming in from the spiritual realm and then living in this material world

[00:20:02] of ours. This is a great gift of liberation to acknowledge how much this can kind of accelerate and expand our sense of journey as a higher soul. But it's really all about love,

[00:20:15] all about manifesting that love, serving as a conduit for that love to bring it into the rest of this world. And the adoption community is in a perfect position to do exactly that.

[00:20:27] Yes, indeed. I'll say more about that, but I want to say that I have been using the sacred acoustics app for a long time and I wrote down a few that I think would be good for adoptees.

[00:20:42] So I'm going to just plug that in really quickly because these meditations do connect you with with that love frequency. So the cosmic womb has been a very healing one for me. Know yourself because of that struggle around identity, the primordial mind and heart presence.

[00:21:06] Those are my four favorites. But then I want to get back to what you're saying around adoptees and their potential for transformation in this lifetime. And I think it's really significant at a time such as this that you hinted to, we are shifting in consciousness and in awareness.

[00:21:30] The planet is in crisis. And so it's almost like this perfect storm. And what is interesting to me, I have this my own theory is that when the energetic age came into being with the atomic

[00:21:44] bomb and Einstein, that right on the heels of that is the baby scoop era. And adoptees out there will know what I'm talking about. But it was just this huge time period between like

[00:21:57] the 50s and the early 70s where there was a huge number of adoptions. So you have this primal wound as it is called in our community. And a wound at our origins, a wound at our very

[00:22:12] beginning of our story before our identity is formed that the mother wound. So as we're shifting into a more balanced, divine feminine rising and that kind of equality and flow between male and female and all these shifts in awareness, you have this group of people

[00:22:37] who are carrying not just one energetic line from their adoptive parents, but also their biological family. And so you have this increase of capacity for holding energy and really living in this kind of liminal space between families. And so we are like

[00:23:02] really primed in holding greater capacity energetically, emotionally. And I believe that as we transmute our wound and step into our wholeness that we're already moving multidimensionally and really can help facilitate healing in a greater sphere in our lives, not just

[00:23:28] for ourselves but for others. But even as just for ourselves we're templating healing for the planet. And I think that's really beautiful and I'm excited about that. And I want to get to your sister who you met in your NDE and you had not met her before. So

[00:23:49] do you mind sharing a bit about that? I think that's really significant as well. Yeah, I certainly can. Of course that full story is revealed there in the book Proof of Heaven. But to me it's the essential key to figuring the whole thing out. I mean she was

[00:24:06] an absolutely crucial catalyst for me to come to a deeper understanding of the reality of the journey. I mean it seemed way too real to be real. Those are the words I used to explain it

[00:24:18] all to my older son, Evan the fourth, who was majoring in neuroscience in college at the time. And he knew that every time you revisit a memory you change it. And so that's why he told me write everything down before you read anyone else's near-death experience. He told

[00:24:34] me that when I was two days out of the hospital, the day before Thanksgiving back in 2008. Best recommendation I've ever gotten. And so what it has to do with though is this whole kind

[00:24:48] of history as I said early in my life I was interested. I reached out to the children's home through a few letters. You know, is my birth mother out there? Does she want to reunite?

[00:24:58] And always heard the same thing back. No, she's not. Forget about it. North Carolina had very strict laws to prevent reunions. So I forgot about it until the year 2000 when my older son Evan fourth and sixth grade in Boston, Massachusetts was doing a family

[00:25:13] project school project in family genealogy. So we needed more data. And he encouraged me to reach out to the children's home. And you know, I did that. And this time I got a very

[00:25:25] surprising answer. It was very different from anything I got before. And you know, that was driving through a blizzard. I remember talking to the social worker. She had said I might have

[00:25:36] some information by this Friday. So we were driving up to go skiing and that's when I called her and she said, I do have some news sitting down. Well, yes, I was driving through

[00:25:46] blizzards. I was sitting down. She said your birth parents got married and I cannot tell you what a shocker that was. I'd never in my life thought that they'd gotten together. I mean, all the information I had, which was pretty scant, was that they'd gone their

[00:26:00] separate ways. And then the social worker said, and there's more. At which point I did pull over the side of the road and that's why she said they had three children, but your youngest

[00:26:10] sister died two years ago. That would have been in 1998 that she passed. And so it was not a good time to come back in their lives. And that's what sent me into a dark night of

[00:26:19] the soul. I stopped saying prayers to my kids at night. I stopped taking them to church. I lost faith in a loving personal God. It was really a tough time for me. Things in my career

[00:26:28] and marriage started to suffer difficulties, et cetera. It was a challenging time, but then seven years later is when walking on a beach in South Carolina, two of my sisters said, don't you think it's time you reached out to your birth family again? My first thought was

[00:26:43] no. I remembered how that had kicked me off the cliff back in 2000, but they were right. There was something missing in my life. There was a chasm that had been opened up by that

[00:26:52] perceived rejection and they were right. I needed to try again. And I did. I wrote another letter to the children's home. This time I got a positive answer. And on October 5th of 2007,

[00:27:02] I walked down a sidewalk in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And for the first time in 54 years, I hugged my birth mother. And then minutes later, I hugged my birth father that weekend, met my birth brother and sister. In coming weeks we would go to the beach together with

[00:27:17] them, aunts, uncles, extended family, incredible reunion, all this joy and bliss. And yet for me, it was always a bit bittersweet because I could sense that there was that beautiful daughter out

[00:27:28] there, the sister that I'd never known who is now gone and just wanted to know more about her. And I remember Kathy, my other birth sister promised to one day send me a picture of

[00:27:40] her in the mail. Now I'd seen a few photos of her in albums and things like that, so I had a rough idea of what she looked like. But when the picture arrived in the mail four

[00:27:49] months after my coma, that was the mind bender. And the thing is from my coma experience, I had passed through this gateway valley multiple times. She was always accompanying me

[00:28:00] as an angel on the butterfly wing. She never said a word to me. She never had to. It was always a telepathic, empathic, emotional connection. But this beautiful message you were deeply loved and cherish forever. You have nothing to fear that was always coming from her,

[00:28:16] from this mysterious person. And when I came back to the world, when my memory started coming back and then I started reading the NDE literature, I was shocked because if I had scripted my NDE, my guardian angel would have been my adoptive father. He

[00:28:29] had passed over four years earlier and yet he was nowhere to be found. So why this beautiful woman who I didn't even know? And yet I knew her so well from the experience,

[00:28:38] I should have known her in life. It was almost a deal killer for me. I really struggled with that for a few months. And that's why when that picture finally arrived in the mail months after

[00:28:47] awakening from coma, the cathie finally sent me. And I remember looking at that picture and it just brought tears to my eyes. And it was just a horribly sad moment. Put it up on

[00:28:58] my dresser. And it was really the next morning that the impact hit me. And it had to do with reading a story in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's book, Life After Death. On page 28, there's this

[00:29:10] beautiful story of a young girl who's in coma, comes out of coma and she's discussing a profound NDE, a journey to heaven she had during the coma. But she was welcomed to heaven by her

[00:29:20] brother. And that's the source of the mystery. When she wakes up from coma and is discussing it with her father, she says, but I don't understand. I don't have a brother. And he

[00:29:29] says, well you did, but he died three months before you were born. So we never told you about him. That's when I looked up on my dresser at that picture that had come in the day before

[00:29:39] and went, oh my God. In the picture, it's like she's looking at me. Betsy is looking at me as if to say, do you finally get it? And I found out that picture was taken out in California

[00:29:50] near where she lived, kind of Huntington Beach, Newport Beach area, the Balboa Island ferry about three weeks before she passed. And anyway, it's just an incredibly rich and beautiful story. But that was my realization when I got that picture in the mail from Kathy months later is,

[00:30:09] oh my God, I could finally connect the dots and realize it seemed so real because it actually happened. It just didn't happen in the spiritual space. I mean, it didn't happen in this material world. And that doesn't take away from the absolute reality of it all.

[00:30:26] And that's something I've come to acknowledge through my NDE experience and through my work as a scientist studying consciousness is we're coming to recognize major worldviews that do not necessitate the brain creating consciousness at all. But the consciousness

[00:30:41] is something more primitive and more interconnected, that God mind that we all share. And our brain serves as a transceiver filter that allows a little eddy current of that primordial mind to become our awareness. And yet when our brain and body die,

[00:30:57] that's when we reunite with that bigger pool. And as I mentioned earlier, the scientific evidence for reincarnation is really overwhelming. I didn't know about that literature before, but if you go to uva.dops.org, that's University of Virginia Division of Perceptual

[00:31:16] Studies, you'll find more than 1700 cases of past life memories in children that they've solved over the last six or seven decades. That is, they actually found the person who lived before. And so this kind of paints a much bigger theater of operations for this discussion

[00:31:32] of consciousness, brain and our material bodies, and our souls. And our souls seem to be a very real constituent that comes back after multiple lifetimes of growing towards this oneness with the divine. So it's a much bigger kind of pattern than I would have acknowledged before.

[00:31:49] And yet it's perfectly consistent with so much of what I grew up with wanting to believe in that Methodist church in North Carolina. Some of this is a little unconventional, but it makes far more sense than much of what I was taught. And that's where the NDE community

[00:32:04] makes a tremendous difference in educating us about the reality of eternity of soul, and that we have nothing to fear by death of the physical body. Wow. I know that you also, at least in the Living in a Mindful Universe,

[00:32:23] you talked about times through meditation where you have connected with your dad, who did have your adoptive father, who did have a lot of influence in your life. Would you like to share about that? Absolutely. That was one of the greatest

[00:32:38] gifts of all of this. And it came early on after my interest in meditation. After my coma, in the first two years or so, I'd read maybe 150 books on quantum physics, on spiritual traditions, East and West, trying to make sense of it all.

[00:32:56] And finally decided if you want to know anything about consciousness, you have to explore your consciousness. So I had to have an active daily program of meditation. That's when I found out about binaural beats as a neurosurgeon,

[00:33:09] neuroscientist. I found them fascinating because every sound you might have ever heard that engendered a transcendental state of conscious awareness, every chant, anthem or hymn is always processed into the acoustic cortex and the temporal lobes. These are circuits that have

[00:33:25] evolved in the last two or three million years in primates and homo sapiens. Very different are the sounds of sacred acoustics and other binaural beats. They are formed by a pure tone in one ear, a slightly different pure tone in the other ear. And the slightly different

[00:33:40] is anywhere from say 0.1 to 25 Hertz difference between the two. After that you lose the tracking and the brain stem that makes all this happen. But anyway, so you can put in different arithmetic differences between those input signals and generate very powerful kind of

[00:33:58] ignition system signals in the lower brain stem. And I think that's the magic. I won't go into more detail because we discussed that physiology and anatomy of meditation and binaural beats in great detail in living in a mindful universe. But I found out about that and

[00:34:15] that's what I started using for meditation. And that's where I met Karen, got her and her business partner Kevin Kossy to actually start putting their sacred acoustics tones out for the public. But for me, that whole adventure with my father's soul, it's interesting.

[00:34:34] I went into this particular meditation one day and this is about two and a quarter years post coma. And my intention was am I on the right pathway? That was the request. I always use a

[00:34:49] request or state of comment early in the meditation. But then my ego mind, the little voice in the head goes away time out because that's when I basically become more higher soul and that connection. And in this deep, very deep meditation, what I witnessed in answer to

[00:35:06] this question, am I on the right path? At that time, I was doing a set of what's at the Monroe Institute, what were known as lifeline experiences where we would actually go into deep meditative states and help souls that seem to be stuck at the moment of death.

[00:35:23] And we would help them to move on to the next level. So I was very used to that. I'd been doing that work all week. So now in this context, am I on the right path? I find myself

[00:35:34] going in my mental space to this beautiful marble bridge over this valley with a raging river down below. You can only hear the river. You can't really even see it. And it's generating all this mist coming up to meet the clouds. And there are all these kind of

[00:35:48] dark shadows going across the bridge. That's where we did all our rescue work. So I was used to that. But now a new question, new deeper meditation required. Am I on the right path? I

[00:35:58] found myself floating up and over going down into the chasm, into this roaring mist just floating in the air. And I look into the gorge and the side of the gorge is a checkerboard

[00:36:10] pattern. And I realized it's forming a kind of an image of a cafe. And I remember in my mind that it was a cafe model on something on the Champs-Elysees in France. I don't know

[00:36:20] where that came from. It's simply part of the story. But going down, I witnessed that there were these people sitting in the cafe and I was coming up towards two young men in their early twenties who were in this animated discussion. And as I came up behind the

[00:36:35] left side of one of them, I looked at him and he in turn looked nudge winked at me. And it was my father. It was the first time I'd seen him in six years plus months

[00:36:46] of, you know, and two years post coma. And there he was. And this look, this nudge, this wink, bam, the information comes in what I call a thought ball. It's an incredible download of information. It's not linear. It's not a narrative. It's a wham, all the

[00:37:01] information in one great package. And wow, was it a biggie? Yes, I was on the right path. Sound for meditation was absolutely essential for liberation of conscious awareness, everything about it. And I remember he also said he couldn't be apparent to me

[00:37:16] during my NDE and the double entendre of that work, he could not be apparent was so true. And he explained it. He said, if I had been there in spite of the fact of, you know,

[00:37:26] E. coli meningitis in an adult, a one in 10 million diagnosis or a one in a billion recovery where I had a full recovery over two months post coma, you know, if he had been the one there, I might have been slightly more tempted to say, oh,

[00:37:42] I guess you just see who you want to see on the way out. So it's a hallucination of the dying brain wishful thinking, forget about it. And that's why they had to swap out and put in my birth system, you know, from my, from my birth

[00:37:56] history and have her be my guardian angel. That's what got my attention. And that kind of loving sense. And but just that incredible download from him. And I haven't even gotten into

[00:38:08] kind of the heart of the story. I don't want to drag it on too long, but there's actually a fascinating aspect to it because of who he was sitting there talking with. He was talking

[00:38:18] with his college roommate and I recognize him because I'd known him. He was father of some of our friends growing up in Winston Salem, although his kids were a little older than we

[00:38:27] were. But anyway, his name was Agnew Bonson. And in the answer to this question, am I on the right path? It turns out that was a key part of it all because once I saw Agnew in

[00:38:37] this vision, I started asking mom and dad's old friends, you know, what about this? Does he have anything to do with what I'm looking for here? And they said, Sophie Cody is the one who told me yes, he was good friends with Robert Monroe. They

[00:38:52] were excellent buddies. They both were pilots. They were both in kind of radio engineering, all that kind of thing anyway. But that connection with Agnew Bonson was absolutely essential because I found out later the rest of that story is all there

[00:39:10] and living in a mindful universe. And it's a real mind bender. But it was through emails with Agnew's children that I finally was able to connect the dots and realize that he and Bob Monroe were incredibly close friends. And then in fact, his spirit, Agnew's spirit

[00:39:26] had come through to say hello to Bob several times. And he passed on those messages to the children of Bonson who I had grown up with. So all of it's a fantastically beautiful

[00:39:38] story that helped me to get on board with an understanding that my father was part of my NDE, but that he couldn't be, you know, quote, apparent to me at the time because of

[00:39:48] the risk kind of in the mind of the universe that I might use that to just dismiss the power of the story. But this is so juicy and good. But the one thing that I have seen over

[00:40:04] and over and over again, especially it was made very clear to me when I sat with my mom during her transition, is the orchestrated beauty of the universe. Like everything has meaning everything is to support us through our journeys. And like, even if we don't know

[00:40:26] it, like nothing is wasted. Like everything is connected. Everything has purpose. Everything matters. A couple of things that you mentioned that I want to make sure to hit on is you talked about practicing and exploring consciousness really on is here at home personally with

[00:40:46] ourselves. And I want to say that you have a course offering for that to really be led firsthand. And there's also a free 30 day, 33 day journey, which I just finished in meditation on your website for anybody that's wanting to explore consciousness. And I will

[00:41:09] just say that if you begin that exploration, you will connect to a felt sense of safety, felt sense of belonging and home within yourself. And then, you know, everything is frequency and energy and information. And you loved your thought ball. I wrote that down because I

[00:41:30] always been like, I got this download, you know, but it's a thought ball. And there's so much that comes through when we avail ourselves or open ourselves up to connecting with, I guess what people would say is the other side. But to our consciousness that the

[00:41:49] unified consciousness that we all are. And it is it's like these, these little thought balls that unfold. And they do resolve our, our wounds and they reconcile and bring us to a more

[00:42:09] old, a whole place of being. I'd love to hear a little bit more from you around that connection of sound, because I know that was a big part of your journey. And for me,

[00:42:28] that the, which is a big part of a lot of your the meditations on sacred acoustic was this undergirding of mine. Would you share some more about that in your experience? Yeah, well, sound was obviously a huge importance in my near death experience.

[00:42:50] Basically, it was by remembering musical notes and melodies associated with his light portals that would take me from one level to the next in these in the spiritual realms. That was a gift that understanding of, of resonance of sound vibration frequency,

[00:43:07] constructive interference. These are all very powerful concepts. And of course, sound in that realm is far more kind of potentially beautiful and ideal in its form. And people often ask me

[00:43:20] about the do I kind of hum or take out a kazoo and play that melody. And the fact of the matter is no, that that form of music is idealized. And to me, it was very important to

[00:43:34] kind of understand that sound and resonance and that principle of resonance is one of information overlap. And that's a very critical kind of thing to get about that spiritual realm. It's the reason that my soul would connect with my birth sister in that in that

[00:43:51] beautiful way that we did is through that form of resonance through that kind of sharing of common history. And in so many ways, I think that's where you know, a lot of this can be

[00:44:03] contributory to growth of the world at large, because as you pointed out earlier, adoptees have kind of a shared origin story and they have to uncover parts of their birth family origin story that might not be so obvious to them. So we're used to doing that and kind

[00:44:19] of balancing that as we grow. That's an advantage of being an adoptee. But you know, getting back to the sound vibration frequency, it was so clear to me how important that was in this journey. And for example, I know in the windbridge.org literature,

[00:44:39] the windbridge.org is a group, Julie Bichel, PhD who's done a lot of research into psychic mediums, proving the reality of at least 20 different people to get reliable psychic information. She's used the quintupley blinded protocol. The interesting thing in her protocol is the only

[00:44:59] information the psychic gets is a first name. And when you think about it, how well would any of us do trying to discern information about a lost loved one if all we had was a first name?

[00:45:11] But it turns out the reason it works is because part of the protocol is for the sitter, that's the person who's lost the loved one to invoke in prayer or meditation that their loved one who has passed over help connect the dots on the other side

[00:45:25] to show the medium the information the medium needs to see. So you're asking for help from the spiritual side and that's what makes it work. It's effective, you know, and the statistics show that it's real. It's not imaginary or made up. And so this is just

[00:45:42] another example of resonance, because that resonance is that deep principle of information overlap that would allow such things as that to happen. And that's what I use often in my meditation. And the reality of how you can use that resonance is it's feeling the kind of success

[00:46:02] of a situation like if I'm going into a meditation, I don't want to manifest a certain thing happening. Say I want to sell some vegetables or what have you in this meditation, I can focus on the emotional feeling of successfully having accomplished that. And that feeling of successful

[00:46:19] accomplishment and it's the feeling of it not just the thinking of it. So it's the emotional engagement is what allows it all to happen. But that is really where this concept of resonance and sound vibration frequency, especially when we're talking higher dimensional spaces like

[00:46:36] this world of the Gateway Valley is in a realm of eternity. I mean, it's where life reviews would happen. Life reviews, birth, death, everything in between simultaneously presented. I mean, that's what ND ears are often describing. And the best thing to know about

[00:46:54] life reviews is that something like 74% of Indy years, this comes from work of Bruce Grayson, skeptical MD psychiatrist at UVA who studied Indies for 45 years. And in a paper he wrote in the Journal of Near Death Studies in the autumn of 2021, he reported on his almost 700

[00:47:15] life reviews and many thousands of Indy cases. And 74% of them said it was like reliving the events from the perspective of everybody involved. That's very important. It's the golden rule written in the fabric of the universe. If we've been busy handing out pain and suffering

[00:47:33] to others in our life review, we have to receive that and feel what it's like. And it serves as a course correction to nudge us gently towards more love, compassion and kindness for our fellow beings. And you find out that life review to hurt another is

[00:47:47] to hurt yourself. So really this is all about learning these deep lessons of love and connection. And that's where I think adoptees are in a particularly important position because of the challenges they face with that birth, you know, kind of abandonment wound being left behind

[00:48:04] by the birth mother. And then a lot of what they've had to do in terms of work of reconciling their personal story of growth, you know, by knowing their origins and blending that into their life as they know it and making sense of it all. Because ultimately

[00:48:19] it should all add up to something that allows for transformation of the soul to a higher level closer to that oneness with the divine. But this is really all about that soul growth. And I would say that in many ways adoptees have an advantage by having this challenge

[00:48:36] of having to figure out kind of that origin story and come to this recognition of the binding force of love and kind of shared meaning and purpose with the universe at large.

[00:48:45] So it's a process of growth and transformation that's open to all of us if we, you know, have these beliefs, this knowledge and participate in this kind of work. Definitely. And I really like the resonance piece. What's coming up for me is,

[00:49:06] you know, that if we're living with a wound story, the resonance of that, the frequency of that is much lower than the true frequency of who we are. And so our journey really is about coming

[00:49:26] into harmony and peace and resonance with the truth and be able to build capacity and hold these higher states of being and the higher states of reality. And I think it is kind of

[00:49:41] a journey of resonance, right? Because we feel in our body when we're not aligned with that. I would say that's very true. That's certainly something that I've come to recognize in meditation. As I said earlier, the key in meditation is to take that little voice in your

[00:49:58] head and do not think for one moment that that voice in your head is your higher soul or your consciousness. Voice in your head is a parlor trick. It's your ego mind, but there's an aspect of you that's connected to a much grander kind of knowing of the

[00:50:13] universe to that God for us. That's your higher soul and that's what can be developed from meditation. And for me, that meditation can always begin with Eben Alexander's little ego mind asking a request, asking a question, a comment, whatever. But then I let that go

[00:50:34] and I've learned to ride those sacred acoustics tones. They can be very powerful. There's a peer-reviewed scientific study by Dr. Anna Yusum on sacred acoustics tones in February 2020. It talks about a 26% reduction in anxiety over two weeks just by listening to

[00:50:54] sacred acoustics tones as opposed to only a 7% reduction in anxiety over two weeks of standard talk therapy. So very powerful techniques. That's the kind of thing I use, but it's far more than just alleviating anxiety. And that's all happening because you're connecting

[00:51:11] to that higher soul that allows you to overcome many of the challenges of the ego. The ego is right there at the heart of addictions, fear of death, things like that. And yet as we connect more with higher soul and grow ourselves to that higher soul away

[00:51:27] from the petty little concerns of the ego, that's where we truly start to benefit from a connection to larger aspects of the universe. And that's why I encourage a regular daily practice

[00:51:39] of going within. I'm going to go out on a limb, but not for you, not for you, Evan, but maybe for some of our listeners. So there are a lot of people who are very familiar with

[00:51:53] near-death experiences. There are also people who research like a coffin cradle. I don't know if you've heard of that book, but people who research for life, kind of the in-betweens life between life and such. And so there is a school of thought out there that we choose

[00:52:13] our lessons in life and that we do have soul families and people who we travel with life after life, after life. And so it would point, if that's true, it would point toward reincarnation. It would point toward the soul growth.

[00:52:32] And it would also point toward that we really are very supported in this life. And I am just curious if you have any thoughts about that soul's purpose and the plan that we come in with?

[00:52:54] Well, I must say, you know, I was not aware of those kinds of ideas before my coma, but since coma, of course, I've heard a lot about them and read a lot about them. And it's become

[00:53:03] clear to me that our souls are traveling in families and groups, and we swap roles between incarnations and things like that. I believe there's a lot to this notion of soul agreements. Soul contracts is one word people use, I like agreements. But also I will point

[00:53:23] out that I think that most of those agreements are who's going to face what hardship and how are we going to, you know, kind of manifest his love of the universe and show it to each other

[00:53:33] or demonstrate other options. We have free will and that's what we can use as soul groups for learning and teaching. But I believe there's a lot to that. And in fact, for example,

[00:53:44] I would say in my own life that my higher soul was totally into this, you know, adoption, abandonment wound, great thing to go through. Also the fact that I struggle with alcohol, which happened to be a major cause of the demise of my beloved birth sister.

[00:54:03] And I never had any trouble with it at work, but I stopped drinking in early 1991 because I knew that I looked forward to that scotch on my night off call, a little too much. So

[00:54:16] and to me looking back on it, the alcoholism was a gift. And so it's not just the getting rid of it that's the gift, but it's going through the process and learning the lessons

[00:54:26] and feeling the pain that those kinds of things give us, you know, adoption, abandonment wound, alcoholism, and using it for growth. That's what I think a lot of that is part of this

[00:54:38] package. And that's why it's up to all of us to kind of bypass the ego mind, go deep into meditation and start getting clues from the universe about bigger sense of meaning and purpose, why we're here, how we can best contribute to love, healing, wholeness, compassion, forgiveness.

[00:54:56] Remember gratitude, every bit of that in this kind of setting of these apparent hardships, but remember that they're there as our ally to help us grow into the soul we came here to be.

[00:55:08] So I would say there's a huge amount of that that I've seen, especially in our workshops and a lot of the work we do with people around the world, seen a lot of this kind of growth

[00:55:20] through hardship. And that's what I think is important for people to remember, especially those in the adoption community, because theirs is quite a struggle, you know, that smoking crater from being left behind by a birth family can be quite severe and can cause

[00:55:35] a lot of disruption in your later life, especially if you receive another rejection like I did. And yet the seeds are there for growth, for expansion, for transformation, for deeper understanding and certainly for harvesting the love of the universe.

[00:55:51] And that's where meditation and going within is so powerful. And one other comment I'd like to make about the reincarnation scientific studies for people, most people sit there go, well, I don't remember past lives. They can't be real. Well, it turns out as Jim Tucker

[00:56:05] and Ian Stevenson who have done all that work at UVA will tell you, you have to harvest those memories before age six or seven, because after that their natural processes cover them over. They can be uncovered again through an NDE through hypnotic regression, through

[00:56:21] dreams and meditation. There are many different ways to kind of cultivate remembering those past life memories. I know I get a lot of them in my meditative work. I'm kind of entertaining to go through them and figure out, you know, what is actually

[00:56:37] part of my soul line and all of that. So it's really about expanding into these kind of sense of higher self and acknowledging the oneness of mind and that we can connect with that God mind of the universe. And that greatly enhances our ability to manifest

[00:56:54] the world of our dreams. Thank you. I'm going to take away from this talk so many things, and especially that adoption can be a particular spiral of growth towards harnessing the love of the universe. As an adoptee, love was always what I sought

[00:57:16] and was looking for outside of myself and really found it here home inside of myself for myself. But the NDE really connected me with the truth of it. Like once I felt that

[00:57:28] frequency, then I knew what I was aiming for. And then I found it inside of myself. So I really thank you that the harnessing of that. I love it. Thank you so much.

[00:57:41] I just want to say I've not had an NDE, right? I've not had an NDE, but I feel the same. That's a very good point. And Ken Ring, who is one of the founding fathers of the

[00:57:54] International Association of Near Death Studies, wrote about 30 years ago, a study he did that showed that people who just learn about NDE's, who hear about them, listen to the stories, start to gain the very same benefits. They lose their fear of death. They become much

[00:58:09] less interested in material, much more interested in the spiritual, much more and spiritual but not religious. That's the important thing is after NDE's, people are less religious, but more spiritual. And in our modern society, sometimes you have

[00:58:24] to make the distinction between them. But we can have a very powerful spirituality based in NDE's and similar kind of study of all that meditation, etc. That does not require 2000 year old scripture. Now it's wonderful when religions can contribute to kind of spiritual

[00:58:42] greatness, but anytime a religion is talking about divisiveness and exclusivity, they've lost track. They're gone. They might as well just be discarded. But to the religions that have greatly preserved notions of unconditional love, unlimited kindness, compassion, mercy,

[00:58:59] acceptance, forgiveness, etc. They're doing the right thing. So it's all about true spirituality that involves personal experience. And that's where centering prayer and meditation can be so important. But ultimately, the greatest gift of NDE's is not telling us what happens when

[00:59:17] we die, but telling us how to live each and every moment, every breath in this life, in these bodies. And that's the important part of NDE's. Yes. Yes, most definitely. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:59:34] I've let Jude's been asking the question so beautifully. I really haven't wanted to change the flow. But I've got two questions for you if I may, Eben. And they probably would better ask at the start, but they didn't occur to me. So number one,

[00:59:54] we reached out, Jude reached out to you to say, would you come on the show? And I'm just intrigued to know why. Why come on the show? Yeah. Why did you decide, yeah, I'll come on driving adoptees?

[01:00:08] One of my deepest identities is as an adoptee. That's me. That's who I am. This was incredibly catalyst in helping me to kind of process and understand my adoption and my relationship to

[01:00:22] my birth family and adoptive families. And, you know, my dad brought me up to help people. He cared a lot about people. Every single person was important to him. And that's the way I've tried to live my life is, you know, to help people and be there.

[01:00:40] And this I saw as extremely valuable and helpful to people. So there was no way not to share it. Brilliant. Yeah, I can see the tears coming to my eyes too. And I guess the next thing- Yeah, I cried when I got the email. Yes,

[01:00:54] I felt like I was opening a college acceptance letter and expecting a no. And it was yes, and I was crying and I messaged Simon. And I guess the next one is if we come up with another idea of something that we can do

[01:01:10] together, would you be up for looking at that? Sure. Absolutely. That'd be great. You know, I love talking about this stuff. There's a whole lot more to say. The only other things I would share with your audience is just to

[01:01:24] invite them to go to inner sanctum center.com. That's a website that has a lot of interviews we did during the pandemic available for free, has monthly webinars and also a mental health practitioner course. And also go to ebonyalexander.com especially for the FAQ page,

[01:01:43] recommended reading, list of videos, promotions, interviews, and sacredacoustics.com. These are all ways that people can keep in touch with us. And on your Ebon Alexander, there is the course offering for first-hand experiences and the 33 day meditation journey.

[01:02:04] Right. Exactly. I highly recommend those. And that 33 day journey has become a very popular free course. It's a workbook that goes with living in a mindful universe, but giving it out for free and also making it as a community where people can leave comments and help each

[01:02:20] other, et cetera. More than 12,000 people have taken that 33 day journey in the last few years and they all leave their comments right there. So that whole thing is a community of forming up as it goes, a very like-minded souls. So it's very instructive to people.

[01:02:38] That 33 day journey is available at ebonyalexander.com on the welcome page. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Eben. And thank you for asking the question so artfully, Jude. And thank you for staying till the end. It's been great. We will speak to you again very soon. Thanks a lot.

[01:02:59] All right. Thanks a lot.