From the time that they pronounced me that was
a good 45 minutes They cut my clothes and then
they paddled my heart my heart stopped and I
could see people screaming and crying But I didn't
realize that was actually my physical body because
I was somewhere else The only thing that I could
feel if you can imagine Absolute love and peace
there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was
greeted by people I'd known in the past I'm back
home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home.
Welcome, welcome everybody to Round Trip Death
and I'd like to welcome Marilyn Hughes who's
with us for the first time today. Good morning
Marilyn. Good morning Eric. I'm so glad you reached
out and we've chatted before about what happened
to you and people are going to find this Absolutely
fascinating. Before we jump into it, I want everybody
to get to know you. Who's Marilyn? I'm just an
old grandma with you. I have three adult children.
I have two grandchildren. You know, I was raised
in mostly Ohio, although I was born in California.
I migrated to Colorado and I raised my kids there
for 25 years. I live now in Arizona. I've been
a writer. most of my life because in the beginning
of my early 20s I started having out of body
experiences which I began to journal. Loved the
outdoors, loved the mountains of Colorado and
now we have the deserts where I'm at now. I am
now Catholic but I wasn't Catholic. before these
things happened to me, the experiences that I've
had have led me to become Catholic about 25 years
ago in the Jubilee year of 2000. That's good.
You know what, let's do this. Let's start with
the near -death experience and if we have time
maybe we'll get into some of the other out -of
-body type experiences. I know that's a passion
of yours right now and you have a foundation
and we'll stick all that in the show notes for
people that want to find it and find you. But
let's go back a few years. Well this happened
in 2003 but what led up to it earlier on? Well,
shortly after my youngest child was born, I was
diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy, which
is a pretty kind of rare complication of pregnancy,
but I was diagnosed a little bit late. So I was
in heart failure. And what that means with peripartum
cardiomyopathy with associated heart failure
is your heart's enlarged and it's not pumping
right. It is one of the most cardiomyopathy.
any form of it, not necessarily peripartum is
one of the most common reasons people will get
heart transplants. By the time 2003 rolled around,
my heart was not doing very well. My doctors
had suggested, based on some of the testing they
had done and my symptomology, that they should
do a cardiac catheterization. They were gonna
have a chopper standing by, because I lived in
the mountains of Colorado, and they were gonna
send me up to the University of Colorado in Denver.
where I'd been a few times and they would take
it from there. That's where they did the transplanting.
They had a transplant hospital up there and I'd
been up there and been typed out before. And
this is what they were going to do. That was
the plan. And so the night before I was supposed
to go in for the procedure, I had some kind of
an arrhythmia or something went wrong. And all
of a sudden I was out of my body and I was standing
before the dark tunnel. with the light at the
end. I was very excited because I saw sitting
in the light, my little dog, my little dog Joy,
who was my terrier that I had for like 25 years,
most of my childhood. And so I was so excited
to see her because she was my little dog and
hadn't seen her in a long time. And she was just
very happy to see me, wanted to see me. So I
was thrilled about that. went towards this light
going down the tunnel. As I went down the tunnel,
there were a few different things going on all
around. There was the world was off in the distance.
I could see it and hear it in the distance. And
so I was up in space and I knew that because
I could see the whole earth was like a round
globe over there. And we were up here and the
Lord Jesus had appeared. and he had come and
he was wearing the robes of the Sacred Heart.
It was beautiful. It was the white and the red,
and he had the beautiful heart that he shows
in all the images that you see, and it was much
more brilliant, of course, than what we would
see on Earth in our paintings and things like
that. Off in the distance, you could see, you
could not... I could not fathom them yet, but
you could see off in the distance like these
overlapping worlds. They were all, there were
like many of them. I wouldn't say I could see
infinities of them yet, but I knew that there
were many of them from there. So now I'm walking
down the tunnel. I get to the end of the tunnel
and there's this pale light flowing barrier at
the end where the light is. And I know I have
had these out of body experiences throughout
my life. I know that if I touch that light or
try to go through it, that I will not be able
to return. This is like a point of no return.
And so I'm just thinking and stuff and I'm like,
I don't know what to do. I really wanna touch
it. I really wanna touch it. I wanna go through,
but I'm afraid that if I do that, I have to leave
permanently. And then I make the decision, no,
I'm not gonna touch it. and I start turning back.
And you had young children at the time, right?
I did. My children were very small, so my youngest
was probably about two. My kids were a little
further apart in age just because of the way
things turned out, so I had probably about 12,
five, and two. And so I had younger kids. They
all needed me. I'm walking back, and Jesus takes
my hand and We whoosh up into the sky. He takes
me beyond another barrier that I know I'm not
really allowed to go past, you know, unless I'm
not going back. But there's this sense that's
given me immediately not to worry about it. It's
all okay. Jesus is giving me some kind of permission
for this. So now I am taken into these worlds
that I saw just the outskirts of from before.
I'm like literally traveling like with him at
the speed of light, you know, through these worlds.
And so all of these are like different spheres,
realms, and each one of them has their own colors
and their own energy and vibration and pulse.
And they're all extremely beautiful. But I'm
only, you know, whisping through them very, very
fast with the lore. And then he brings me back
to the front end. of where the tunnel was. And
at the side of the tunnel is this, it's like
an old fashioned stick thing. It's like a way
to judge something, a way to meter something,
but it's with sticks. So you know how we would,
we still do when our children are young, we try
to put up little things on the wall to gauge
how tall they are, right? It was something like
this, but there were sticks. And this was different.
This was how do we gauge the development of different
souls in relation to their selflessness versus
selfishness. When the stick was at the ground,
that meant that they were totally engrossed in
selfishness. And as it moved up, the soul was
cultivating selflessness and more selflessness.
And there was a level that was about waist high,
which is what we needed to achieve in the earthly
sphere in order to kind of complete our lessons
here and move on to the next level. And so the
Lord showed me different things about people
in my life and how some of them did struggle
a lot with this selfishness, but he showed me
that my... My stick was in a good place that
allowed me, if I wished, to leave at this time.
That I could go if I wanted, but I could also,
I could go, you know, leave the planet, or I
could stay. It was kind of up to me. And then
he directed my attention to the world, which
was back here. So the world, the big blue -white
planet over here. And as he directed my attention
to the planet, I heard these shrieks, screams
and people just yelling at each other and complaining
and just, it was this horrible sound. It was
terrible. It was this sound of like, I guess
you could call it cacophony. It was the sound
of souls that were in such inner discord that
They were there. Because this was what this realm
served. It was kind of like a bathtub for selfishness.
They're trying to work it out of their souls,
right? It's a mortal realm. And we had to work
out that good and evil, that light and darkness
within each of ourselves in this realm. So I
could hear this cacophony. And the Lord said
to me, as he walked me over, standing in front
of that tunnel of light again. He said, if you
go back, that will not change. You cannot change
that. That world serves its purpose to perfection.
You can't fix it, but it's still your choice.
And I said to him, well, as long as I have a
choice, I have to go back because I have three
young children. And so I will go back Lord. and
he nodded in agreement. And he said to me, he
said, then I want you to go back and pray to
receive a heart transplant. And at that moment,
I got very kind of pensive and uncomfortable
and I thought for a few moments. And then I just
said to him, I said, I'm sorry, Lord, I cannot
do that. But what I will do is I will go back
and I will do the best that I can. with my heart,
the one that I've got, the one that you gave
me, and I will pray that the person who's perfectly
healthy, who would have to die to give me a new
heart, is spared." And all got silent. It was
all a rush of silence. It's like, you know, when
you hear that word, like in scripture or something,
you know, it was like... Everything was silent
for just a minute. And then he said, I grant
that. Very quietly, he said, I grant that. And
then he quietly took my hand. And I was so honored
when he took my hand again. And then he lifted
me up like in a whoosh, you can't believe. And
we started flying me through space towards the
earth. We headed towards what was like a way
station. But in this way station, was similar
to like a coffee shop bookstore type thing. We
got there so fast, it was almost like and we're
sitting at a table and he's talking to me and
he's very intense. There's all these books around
us, all these bookshelves of people who have
written books. They're all spiritual books, right?
And he looks at me and he says, I'm not going
to heal you. I'm going to help you. and I'm gonna
make good use of you for the time that you have
left." And then he raises his hands like this
to direct me to look up at this bookshelf that's
in front of us. So I turn my head up to look
up there and there's a whole bunch of books.
And then he's trying to indicate, look closer,
look closer. And I notice that on the binding,
that my name is there as the author. And there's
a whole bunch of them. And I'm a little bit confused
by that because at that time I had written two
books. At this point, it's more like it's becoming
now more telepathic. So I'm looking at him and
I'm thinking to Jesus, are you telling me I'm
gonna write all those? How is that gonna happen?
What are you talking about? What does this mean?
You know, that's kind of what I'm doing, right?
He just says, This he looks he points and he
looks at me like this with this intensive gaze
and Points at the books and I look at them again.
I just say okay and Then we both go back But
then he's no longer holding my hand. I'm shooting
through space He's disappeared and I'm awaking
in my body Alright, let's take a breath Okay,
that was a lot I had 20 questions along the way,
but I did not want to interrupt. Wow, let's break
this down. Where do you want to start? What part
do you want to talk more about first? It might
be good to give the final part and then break
it down, which was when I went into the catheterization
and came out. Go for it. Okay, so then I had
to hurry up and go to the hospital, right? We
got the chopper on the hospital. We've got the
doctor waiting to do the catheterization. And
to make a very long story short, I go in for
the catheterization. The plan is I'm going to
wake up in Denver. They're gonna chopper me up
there, right? But I wake up in the mountain town
that I'm living in and I ask my doctor, what's
going on? Why am I here? I don't understand.
And he says, well, we don't really know what
happened or how to explain this, but you know,
your heart, it's not cured or anything, but it's
significantly better than it was last week. And
it's better enough that we don't need to send
you up there. And so you're good. We're going
to send you home and we're going to add this
medication and we're just going to go from here.
I knew immediately Jesus said I'm not gonna cure
you but I'm gonna help you I knew he had helped
me and that's Where it ended has that been the
case ever since did you ever need the transplant
or anything? actually what ended up happening
was I went through 15 years of having the cardiomyopathy
heart failure and then 15 years later my heart
spontaneously healed which I've been told by
many doctors is not possible. And a couple of
doctors have told me, a couple of doctors of
faith have told me that's actually a miracle.
Yeah. Awesome. Depending on who you ask. They'll
say, you know, a lot of doctors don't want to
say that M word, do they? Right. And that's okay.
Cause they're, yeah, they're just trying to understand
it. And they did use medications. to get me through
it. And you know the doctors were part of the
miracle. They never want to ever forget or dismiss
that they were part of that whole miracle. Doctors
work miracles too. You know God uses them and
so they were part of the whole thing. All right
let's go back to the very beginning part. This
tunnel you're talking about is unusual and first
of all, well seems like I say this all the time,
But no two NDEs are the same. We think, oh, there's
a tunnel and you go towards the light. That really
doesn't happen that often. Okay, so yours is
really cool from that standpoint. But I don't
really understand the tunnel, how if you're in
some kind of a tunnel, you're also seeing the
world and seeing Jesus and seeing all these other
worlds. Explain the tunnel a little bit more.
Was it like transparent or This tunnel had some
transparency to it. And what's interesting, I
can just go a little farther with that, you know,
just to let the audience know that I've had the
out of body experiences for 40 years. And so
I've learned that there are a lot of different
types of tunnels that people travel through in
the mystical spheres. Quick break to thank our
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therapy that's covered by insurance. This particular
tunnel that I was seeing, there was some transparency
to it. It was like a membrane. But there are
other tunnels that are very similar, that are
dark with the light at the end, that do not have
that same transparency. And they're very different.
And so it's kind of important to know that They're
not all the same. And there are different ones
that have thin ribbing in them. And these are
not usually associated with near death experiences.
They're usually associated with traveling into
mystery realms and things like that. But this
particular tunnel did have some transparency
to it. Another part that is different when you're
in a near death experience is that you do have
this... I'm not sure, there's probably a word
for it that I'm not thinking up off the top of
my head. You do have this ability to have like
an awareness of this self here, this self looking
here, this self remembering what was back here.
And so there is this omnipresence that you have
that is different than you have in a physical
body. And so people can get confused when you're
actually having this ability in a near -death
experience or an experience of a mystical nature
to see more than one place at the same time,
but it's actually very common in mystical experience.
Besides Jesus, did you see any other people or
beings of any kind? My dog. You mentioned the
dog, yes. I didn't mean to leave the dog out.
My cute little dog. What was that like? Was that
like a big reunion? It was, I know it sounds
so petty, but it was just so awesome to see my
dog. And there was something very mystically
special about seeing her. People forget, well,
we forget this about our loved ones too. Every,
every, every remembrance we have of someone we've
loved when we cross over is a beautiful reunion.
So even with our animals, it's just a beautiful
reunion. in terms of seeing other beings mostly
not in this experience except there were others
I guess the way to put it there were no other
main characters in this experience I saw members
of my family like my current family where I was
being shown things it was being shown things
about my family that I usually keep private about
my children and things that were going to happen
to them as they grew older but they're adults
now and I like to give them their privacy. I
was shown things about my husband. I was shown
other people that were floating around and in
the way station there were other people in this
place, this coffee shop -esque kind of place,
but in terms of communicating with them, we did
not do that. Okay, next question. I want you
to think For just a second before you answer
and really go back in your memory here What did
it feel like when Jesus took your hand? It felt
like the wisdom and the breath of a thousand
fathers and mothers Whispering you into their
arms. I mean, it's the It's the epitome of falling
into the arms of the father. You know what I
mean? There is there's nothing that can compare
because the love, the unconditional love that
you are experiencing, you know, everyone, well,
I shouldn't say everyone, but most people talk
about this who have had these experiences. Some
people have had different experiences. But when
you experience that it's like falling into the
arms of thousands of mothers and fathers who
are all of infinite love and realizing that you
were never gone. It's kind of like you just left
for a while and you were never gone. I honestly
don't know how I didn't not leave. No, I get
it. It's hard to understand how it's so wonderful
and so loving and you could actually choose to
come back. But a mother's love is a super strong
thing too. Right. It is. And you know part of
that it comes mother's love and the responsibility
that we know and feel as mothers, we make that
decision. And we're there in the presence of
our Lord who is encouraging us and filling us
with that kind of strength of you can do this.
If this is for a greater good, you can do this.
You know, because wasn't that the epitome of
everything that Christ did? It was all for the
greater good of all. And he empowers you with
that strength. You definitely don't want to leave.
I often think about it and I often think, hush,
what it would have been like if I had just gone.
And it's like, you know, what would have happened
to my children? Would they be better off? Would
they be worse off? You know, you think all these
things, you wonder, you know. Those are great
what if kind of questions that yeah it's okay
that we don't know the answers to. I want to
talk about the selflessness versus selfishness.
Did you get the idea that everybody there this
is what they're learning? I think you mentioned
that it's a big part of why we're here in this
life is to learn the difference. I don't see
a lot of people as they get older, getting that
much more selfless. Explain more. How do we learn
this in this world? How do we take it with us?
What kinds of things help us learn this lesson?
Well, you know, this is ironically what most
of my books talk about, which is the path of
purification. In fact, I wrote a book called
From Selfishness to Selflessness, and it's a
comparison of ancient sacred texts from all world
traditions. the process that all world traditions
encourage us to undergo as a practice. But the
path of purification is actually what we come
here to do in a mortal world so that we will
undergo, we will enter into the process that
souls incarnate here for, which is the initiation
into, so to speak, The process wherein a soul
begins to recognize that we are in a mortal realm.
What does that mean? It's a third and fourth
dimensional realm where the battles between good
and evil go on they go on inside of us they go
on outside of us and We all have good and evil
light and dark things that we have that are life
-giving things that are death -dealing with inside
of us and so in order to actually Do something
about it. We actually have to enter into an Actual
path of purification and a path of purification.
Well, what is that? Well in some traditions like
for instance in Catholicism Mystical theology
lays it out for us You can read like the Ascent
of Mount Carmel by st John of the cross or an
introduction to the devout life by st Francis
de sails the spiritual life by father Adolf Tinkere
And these are actually textbooks on the process
of how do we do that self -intrusive examination
of identifying those things within ourselves
that we are doing that are selfish or are dark
or are moving away from God rather than moving
towards God. And when we enter into this path
of purification, we accelerate our spiritual
journey to the point where it becomes possible
for us to actually choose a higher thrust at
the time of our death, where we can actually
ascend from this realm and go to the next level
of development instead of doing the same things
over and over again, because you're absolutely
right. that most people walk through this life
blindly and they do not progress and we call
this karmic circling they just turn in circles
they can spend 20 years and not identify the
most basic of what we might call a fetter or
a hindrance or a sinful nature that needs to
be altered in order for their soul to take another
step and these are little selfishnesses right
but there are also their hindrances and fetters
and cravings and things that hold them back.
All right, let's do this. If you don't mind,
I want to take a less theoretical, less theological
approach as we talk about this for a second and
talk about more practical, real stuff instead.
Okay. Because some of that goes above my head.
I admit it. This person wrote about that path
and this circular thing and okay, I want to talk
about some real things that I believe. I think
one of the reasons, just to go back to your learning
to be selfless, I think one of the reasons that
we came here to this earth and took on these
bodies was there were things that we could only
learn here by experience. For example, I was
much more selfish before I had our first baby.
compared to after having a child. You become
selfless in many ways through an experience like
that, that maybe we can only have here. Would
you agree with that? Absolutely. Can you think
of some others like that? Absolutely. There are
all kinds of things in our earthly experience
that offer us the opportunity to become more
selfless. And it has with children, for instance,
having a handicapped child. allows us that opportunity.
Being married and staying with your spouse and
going through the illness and health. Going through
aging and the things that are going to happen
to both parties. Having children who end up with
illnesses. But it's also the day -to -day things
that we have to learn to love one another as
Jesus says, as I have loved you, even though
we're imperfect. So loving each other, even when
we disagree, even when we don't understand why
the other person thinks differently than we do,
the smaller selflessness is, right? And so one
of the simple ways that people do this is that
they recognize Like the vices in themselves like
so for instance if someone's like, you know,
I get I'm kind of mean -spirited And so then
they might say well that means I need to try
to cultivate more of a kind heart in order to
counter my mean -spiritedness and so they will
they will either engage in practices prayer meditation
spiritual reading or they will actually go out
and do something that's kindhearted. So it can
be, whether it's with their own children, they
might go volunteer at a home for the handicapped.
They might go volunteer at a home for the elderly.
They might go volunteer at something else that
they are good at where they can offer their special
gifts and they learn to give freely of themselves,
right? It can be a lot of different things. So
these things can come down to like basic things
like little vices that people have, whether it's
lust or greed or anger, things like that. And
then you look at the opposite virtues, which
would be temperance, prudence, purity, flow to
anger. And a lot of this then comes to giving
more time to understanding. Rather than focusing
entirely on, I need to be understood, realize
that you need to be more understanding. You need
to listen more so that you can also become more
selfless and actually try to understand other
people instead of just demanding that everyone
understand you, which if we're honest with ourselves,
people never understand us completely. We have
to just try to be understanding to one another.
Because we're all different, we're all so different.
There is a process that goes deeper, which is
that process of mystical theology, which really
helps you to hone that process in. But life itself,
as you said, getting married, having children,
those are part of the life process itself that
forces these teachings on us. Our aging parents,
our aging spouses, illnesses that we don't expect.
things that we don't expect, horrible things
that happen to people, accidents, violence, injury,
war, all the things that people are faced with
where they can choose their response is going
to show us opportunities where we can learn to
become more selfish or more selfless. Does this
make sense? Yeah, and maybe if we had not come
here, because people sometimes ask me, what did
we come here for? Okay, and we're talking about
one of those things. Why? Maybe a lot of these
things without the trials that we have here on
this planet, we just couldn't learn without them.
Just makes sense to me. Okay. Right. All right.
Just a couple other little things. The sounds
that you heard, which I'm going to... put words
in your mouth were they like hellish kind of
sounds you heard I forget the term that you use
coming all these voices cacophony you don't want
to know what hellish sounds sound like because
I've been down there too but the sounds I heard
coming off the earth were more of the cacophony
of people complaining screaming screaming at
each other. It's what we see in our world today,
ironically, and we didn't see as much of it at
the time that I had the vision. It was interesting
to me because I was like, really? Is that what
it's going to be like? And yeah, I guess it is.
And it's the way that we see where what we see
in our society right now, people are not listening
to one another. They're just yelling and screaming
at each other and demanding something of one
another and not hearing anything. And what they're
doing, they don't realize this is what you see
in a chaos realm, which is a purgatorial realm,
where people just kind of bump off of each other
and there's no rhyme or reason. Nothing actually
gets resolved that way. You have to actually...
Stop the cacophony. You have to stop the bumping
off of each other You have to change the energy
where people have to stop they have to step back
They have to start listening to one another Even
if you don't like what someone is saying you
have to listen long enough to understand Even
if once you understand you're like wow I understand
what they think and gosh, wow, I think that's
crazy. You need to still be willing to understand
where people are coming from. This is what you
have to have civil discourse and you have to
be able to love one another as God has loved
you. And I think it's a good mantra, frankly,
which is love one another as God has loved you.
Every time you're tempted to just start doing
that. Stop. Step back and love one another as
God has loved you. Because anytime you just start
attacking people, you're doing something that
has no purpose. It has no response that is useful.
You're wasting your time and ability to generate
and create more of the things, the qualities,
the selflessness, to cultivate a higher state
of being that you are here to do. It's kind of
like you're wasting spiritual energy that was
given to you as a gift. Being born here is not
an accident, it's a gift. What we are seeing
a lot of these days is people wasting a lot of
good gifts and they're not progressing, just
the way you originally stated it. People are
not getting more selfless as they get older.
They're not making progress as they get older.
And all these things need to happen, but it's
also happening. It's happening across the board
in the youth and in every age bracket where we're
not seeing the progressions that should be happening
as a result of incarnating into this realm and
the purpose of it being made manifest. Well,
if we were to talk about characteristics of Jesus,
you brought him up. And we could talk about selfless.
We could talk about the opposite. If you also
believe in a devil or Satan, that would be the
epitome of the selfish. And some of these things
you're talking about, I wish you would just go
to Washington and preach to all of the politicians
on both sides of the aisle and the politicians
all over the world for that matter. Let's get
back to if we just love a little more and serve
a little more and be a little more selfless,
world's going to be a whole lot better place.
Hey, why don't you leave us with just a couple
of things. One, I'm curious your level of your
fear of death since the experiences that you've
had and leave us with some kind of a brief message
of hope. I'm not afraid of death at all. Sometimes
I just have to like kind of temper my excitement
about it because you know, I look forward to
it is what I'd say. You know, the message of
hope would be that we do have the power within
us. within our hands to change the world. Every
single one of us does. It's not in the way that
I think many of us have thought. It's in the
fact that the power to change the world is in
our power to change ourselves and the way that
we interact with this world. Interact with this
world in a higher way. And the more of us who
do that, that it will change the whole world.
it will change everyone's ability and what they
have to do in order to interact with the world
in a way that matters. All right Marilyn, thank
you so very much. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks,
me too. Thanks again for listening and sharing
this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow
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at roundtrippedesk .com. If you want to share
your near -death experience, or if you have questions
or comments about the show, send an email to
eric at roundtripdeath .com. Until then, I wish
you everything good that you're looking for in
this life and the next.