Near-Death Experiencers Panel
My Speaking Heart. Louise Livingstone will share her personal experience of spiritual awakening. In 1990, at the age of eighteen, Louise was hospitalized for three months with myocarditis. Experiencing numerous cardiac arrests, Louise was left with a pacemaker, and taking heavy doses of a medication. Over the years, Louise experienced debilitating arrhythmia; losing faith in her own heart’s ability to keep her alive and consequently descending into severe depression. In a moment poised between life and death, Louise’s heart reached out and spoke to her. This numinous, extra-ordinary experience led Louise on a two decade journey to make sense of what had happened. Revisiting her own understanding of what the heart actually is through personal reflection, and discourses including transpersonal psychology, religious mysticism, comparative religion and cultural history, Louise will speak about how her heart woke her from a deep slumber to become her greatest friend and wisest teacher; opening her to a deeper, more expanded experience of life.
Dr. Louise Livingstone has a PhD in Education specializing in Transformative Learning, and an MSc in Holistic Science. She is Founder of the Heart Sense Research Institute, offering events and contemplative journeys founded upon Heart Sense – the approach that she developed as part of her PhD research. Louise is also Co-Director of the Centre for Myth, Cosmology, and the Sacred, and in addition, works for the Scientific and Medical Network supporting young person engagement. Louise is also a thought-leader for IRewild; an institute working to engage with complex challenges to help restore a viable world for humanity and all life on Earth.
Awakening To Oneness. In 1966 Norma Edwards died on an operating table. On the other side of the veil she gained insight on love/light, reincarnation, and the Akashic Records. She was sent back with a message. A strong desire to relate to and incorporate lessons from the Akashic Records placed her on a path to practical spirituality and a fulfilling purpose driven life. Norma will examine life on both sides of the veil, share knowledge from the Akashic Records, with supportive stories from her own awakening.
Rev. Dr. Norma Edwards D.Div. is a Near Death Experiencer who has lived a purpose-driven life of service. She is the Founder and Director of Reprogram Your Life and a Certified NLP Life Coach. Dr. Edwards is also a recognized expert at merging spiritual principles into clinical practice. In 1999 her work in prisons, rehabilitation and community re-entry earned her the Linowes Leadership award (under her maiden name of Jennings). Her integrative process – Reprogram Your Life – has transformed the lives of men and women in prisons. She is the author of the book Awakening.
Don Hoes: Developing Love and Kindness for Higher Consciousness. Don had an NDE after falling into an icy pond when he was 11 years old. He experienced warmth and a pink-white light surrounding him. He began meditating at the age of 13 and immediately felt compelled to continue with a regular practice to go deeper into states of higher consciousness. He found that he was able to reconnect with the Light of his NDE regularly. As a teenager, he continued having out-of-body experiences. During meditation, he encountered and interacted with several spiritual teachers. To this day, he maintains the practice of meditating over two hours daily. He believes human beings are designed to have experiences beyond the physical world and it does not have to take a NDE to explore other realms.
Don Hoes is an author and motivational speaker from Baltimore, Maryland. Don graduated from a computer electronics school in 1979. He has practiced meditation for fifty years and is the author of Higher Consciousness through Meditation: The New Golden Age of Love published in 2012. He has presented workshops and spoken to national and international groups including the Theosophical Society. Don’s early spiritual experiences led him to a lifetime of spreading Light and Love that is available to us all. His spiritual perspective comes from traditional and contemporary Eastern philosophy and the wisdom of the great saints and mystics with some Western flavor.
3 Near-Death STEs. Lewis shares both the experiences and most importantly the learnings which can benefit others, from all three of his Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) or Out-of-body Experiences (OBE or Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs) as some might call them. On March 11, 1977, Lewis had a ‘Conversation with God’ in the Light, in which he discovered his Life’s work in Human Diversity. Then in a white water river accident on Father’s Day, June 15, 1997, Lewis sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury resulting in an eight day coma, and requiring three years of hospitalized brain injury recovery. More recently, on August 6-16, 2020, Lewis survived a Covid-19 infection under a ventilator with lung collapse and heart failure. During ten days under the Covid ventilator he was lost and saved twice with an OBE or NDE in a geodome during both losses of life until he returned to life. He was the only survivor of the souls he saw in the geodome.
Lewis Brown Griggs grew up with all the trappings of privilege, but felt called to work and serve in the field of diversity consciousness after having had a Near-Death Experience and coming back to “do the work I was meant to do in this lifetime.” So instead of rising through the ranks of industry or politics, Lewis chose to dedicate his professional life to “teaching straight white men like myself who don’t get it how to get it.” Born and raised in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Lewis earned both an Amherst BA in Political Science in 1970 and a Stanford MBA in Entrepreneurial Management in 1980. In 2012 Lewis became a Certified Professional Co-Active Leadership Coach, and for decades he has also been teaching and facilitating local San Francisco Bay Area IANDS groups after having recovered from now three Near Death Experiences.