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My Song In the summer of 1984 if you had asked me the question do I believe in life after death? I would have said no, definitely no. When you're dead, you're dead. My mother had died in 1974 ten years before, and it was so undignified. It was so terrible. That was the one person who I loved more than anything in the world. What I went through with her dieing of cancer, and what our family went through, knowing that I couldn't help her. I didn't know how. It was something that was not taught to me. I still held that pain that summer, when my son was coming home from school. I had promised to get him scuba diving lessons. That was going to be his graduation present. So I planned the whole summer for him to go and take scuba diving lessons, and when we got there to the class, the instructor said to me, "Why don't you take lessons with your son? That way you can go on vacation together." I thought I can't learn. I'm too old. I don't know how to swim properly. I'm too weak. He said, "If you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it." So I jumped in the class with a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds, and I had an incredible summer. Then at the end of the summer after Labor Day, he went back to school, and I continued diving. It was on the 28th that my cousin called me and said, "Let's go to Catalina." (It's an island not far from Los Angeles.) I had asked my cousin if she knew anybody who could dive. She had a friend in her ski club who was a diver. So, we buddied up together for a dive at Catalina. It was during those September days when there is a lot of turbulence in the water. We caught the boat at 6:00 in the morning, and I with a hang over of all things! The boat trip over was terrible. It was stormy that day and we were all sick. The boat was rocking back and forth, so we were all very happy when we got off. The 2 of us, my diving buddy and I, held hands and walked looking around for a dive shop where we could rent equipment. I had only brought my mask and my personal gear with me. We needed wet suits and tanks, and all of that. We went in and out of dive shops. The weather was starting to get a little warm. Finally we found a dive shop that had a ¼ of an inch bottom and an1/8 of an inch top, and nothing seemed to fit. This was a new kind of jacket called a horseshoe. I put it all on and asked, "How far is it to Casino Point?" (which we were going to dive from) And was informed, "Only a block away." So I kept my wet suit on and carried these very, very heavy tanks and a weight belt. I chatted with my buddy, and we talked about his experience diving. He hadn't dived in a long time. We sat on the rocks where we were going to go diving. The water was slapping up against them real furiously, and the rocks looked slippery. We decided that we would sit and count the waves of water as they slapped up against the rocks, because there is a pattern. We waited for the pattern to change, we figured after 6 waves, or 7 waves. I don't remember how many, but the pattern changed, and then we both decided to go in. He said, "Let's not dive down immediately. Let's swim out away from these rocks." I said, "OK." So we stayed on the surface for a while swimming. I got so terribly exhausted that I said, "This is ridiculous!" I motioned to him that I wanted to go under. It would be much easier swimming under the water than on top. I signaled with my thumb down that I was going in. He signaled back to me that it was okay that we could start our dive now. Normally I'm very buoyant, so it takes me a lot of effort to move down to the first level of diving. This time when I signaled that I was going down I went under and I started sinking like an elevator, so fast. There must have been a piece of hair in my mask because the water zoomed into it and filled it all up. In order to get the water out of your mask you have to sort of blow through your nose and clear the mask. I was moving down so fast, yet had to somehow do the same thing, and I had to hold my nose and let the air out of my ears, because otherwise I'd get an air squeeze. I kept doing that, (but then the mask filled with water,) releasing my ears and releasing my ears. I hit my BC button, which is a button on the jacket that inflates it to stop my descent, and nothing happened. The jacket didn't open. I hit it again, and the jacket didn't open. So I signaled to my buddy who was not far from me. I signaled to him that I was in trouble. I couldn't get my jacket open and I didn't like the way that I was descending. It was much too fast. I hadn't asked the dive master who told us where the dive was how deep the bottom was. Normally you could sort of lie at bottom and adjust all of your equipment, but I didn't ask, so it could have been 200 or 300 feet. It could have been only 60 feet. Who knows? I didn't know. It was mistake. I signaled my buddy, and he signaled back to me that he was okay. All of a sudden I saw his fins leaving. He had left my visibility. My goggles were filled with water, and the water was so turbulent that I couldn't see him anymore. Then a strange thing happened. I started to hyperventilate. It only took three breaths. That's all it took, when my feet and my hands started to feel like they were mush, almost jelly-like. I had become totally paralyzed in 3 breaths, sinking like an elevator deep down into the ocean. I didn't know what to do. I was in total, total panic. I was telling myself at the time that I was sinking so fast, I was saying, "Darlene, Darlene please take it easy. Calm down." I knew that I was dieing. Voices came from my cells from the bottom of my feet that were now mush, and from my arms, screaming out like lobsters being thrown into boiling water, "You're dieing, you're dieing!" in this terrible, terrible scream of terror that came through me. Then there was another voice, another voice almost like God's saying, "It's going to be okay. It's all going to be all right. It will be okay." That kept me conscious during this entire time, conscious of my death, conscious through this dieing period. Then as I sucked water into my mouth because I couldn't hold onto anything, as I sucked the water in, there was a moment that I was totally, totally exhausted, and I gave up. I said to myself, "I guess this it. I guess this is it!" And I surrendered into death. It only took a hundredth of a second, it seemed, from all the pain and fear and panic. (The pain in my ears had been so terrible) It only took a second, and everything had gone. It just left. There was no more pain. There was no more fear. There was nothing except total wonderment. I was still conscious and I saw, I thought I saw my scuba diving bubbles, because I didn't get it that I was dead. I thought they were scuba diving bubbles, but they were gorgeous, beautiful bubbles that looked like soap bubbles, or lights moving so fast, and I was moving fast with them. It was like a quantum leap into another realm. I moved with these lights and I could see on all sides of me. I could see behind me, in front of me, underneath me, on top of me, and I could see that I had no body, only it was still me! I was still me! I was moving with these bubbles, with these lights, these living things…fast, so very, very fast. Then finally we came to a place where we stopped. It wasn't like a dead stop. It was like a tai-chi type of movement, soft and beautiful. And what I heard was billions and billions of voices, like harmonic singing, going right through me, the song of Love, the song of beauty… And I was singing with it. I was singing my story, my life story. I was singing the first time that I touched snow and stepped on it, the first time I kissed somebody, the first time… I was singing firsts and loves of my life… And it all became my melody. It felt orgasmic in quality, like I was on top of a billion orgasms all at once. There was no time. I was just there. I was in an experience of timelessness, and yet could feel more than I ever felt. I could touch more than I ever touched. Everything went through me. The feeling of love that I felt around me, that I was part of, that I was, was with me. I was in the now, the timelessness and yet the incredible beauty, and the incredible love. And I understood, I understood what my life was at that moment and why I lived. I understood everything. Everything was given to me, all of the reasons. It all was given to me. Through all of this I knew what was happening to my body. It was sort of like ESP. It was another dimension, like being on another channel of a television set that if you flipped you would know what was happening. And I could flip and know what was happening to my body, that it was being rescued from under the water, that my buddy had found the weight belt, had gotten to it and had brought it up. Yet, I was still in the light. I was still there. I wasn't attached to my body. It was only a body. It wasn't me. I was in the light. They brought my body up over the rocks, the slippery rocks, and they cut through the wet suit. They started with mouth to mouth, and CPR. They couldn't find any vital signs. I even thought how funny that they were trying to save this wet suit and were cutting the seams, and I wasn't in it. I wasn't in my body. I was far, far into another place, a place that I call heaven. They brought my body to the hospital, continuing the CPR. I was never asked; I was never asked do I want to go back, because I certainly would have said no. Before I knew it I saw my body, but this time not the way I saw it before. It wasn't an ESP experience. I saw it very clearly, and "Pop!" I was back into it. Now the work really began, for this moment of enlightenment that I had been honored to experience was so shocking to my system. It was something that… It was a total paradigm shift in thinking. And yet I didn't ask for it. I never wanted it to happen. I couldn't possibly have asked for this type of an experience at that point in my life. So it took seven years of looking for answers in order to find my answers and to integrate all of this together. It took a long time. Most of the things that I kept asking God were, "Why does he want us in a body?" Why are we living in time, when there is no time in heaven? What is he giving us? Why is he doing this for us? What kind of gift is he giving us that we can change, that we can forgive, that we have the power in body to create our lives, to create our song, to create our experience in heaven, that we have at this moment the ability to do that? He has slowed us down, but really he has made it go much faster then things in heaven. It's sort of like a motion picture camera. If you speed it up, it becomes slower and slower. We quantum leaped into something. What he's done is he's given us the opportunity to edit, to change our lives, to change our song, to forgive, to forgive ourselves. He's given us that. How beautiful! I love you my dear friend. For sure, we all are going to die. For sure, we all will go. Now is a chance for us to change and grow. It is going to be such an incredible, wonderful experience, this metamorphosis that we go through. We do not die. We never die. This is only a gift. It is a gift that we probably do many, many, many times in order to give to other people, and to enjoy our lives, and to have giggles and live in the now. I love you so much. Be happy and know that I am always, always going to be with you and that you will always, always be part of my heart and my song.
....................................................................................... This story was transcribed by the web designer from a recording made in 1993 by Darlene Jaman for her dear friend, Jerry Florence at his request. Jerry was a professional singer and songwriter who was dieing from an AIDS related complex at the time. ....................................................................................... About the Experiencer Darlene Jaman is a bodywork/healing practioner in Los Angeles.
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last modified on 05/28/06
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