Dr. Ingrid Honkala is a Marine Scientist, an author, a Light Worker, a Meditation Teacher, a Reiki Healer, and an International Speaker. When she was little, her parents discovered that she could see and hear things that no one else could. All this seemed to be tied up with the aftermath of Ingrid’s near-death experience (NDE) when she drowned at the age of two. Not long after, she started to communicate with the “Beings of Light” who have guided Ingrid through a journey of miracles, not just around the world but also through the barriers of time. Ingrid details her fascinating life and her experiences with the “Beings of Light” in her very compelling book titled A Brightly Guided Light: How a Scientist Learned to Hear Her Inner Wisdom.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:

• How Ingrid was able to recall her drowning and her NDE as she grew older.
• The time the Beings of Light saved Ingrid from being raped and murdered.
• How people confuse free will and choice.
• Ingrid’s health issues were healed when she accessed some of her past life experiences.

SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS INGRID:

• What did the Beings of Light look like to you?
• What did your 2nd Near-Death Experience teach you?
• What is conscious awareness?

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Listen to the podcast here

Ingrid Honkala Ph.D. – The Marine Scientist Who Drowned At Age 2 And Met “Beings Of Light” Who Have Guided Her Through A Lifelong Journey Of Miracles

I am delighted to have this opportunity to interview a truly remarkable woman. Dr. Ingrid Honkala is not only a Marine Scientist and an author, but she is also a Light Worker, a Meditation Teacher, a Reiki Healer, and an International Speaker who had an amazing near-death experience at the age of two. Ingrid, who is married and has a son, will be speaking to us from Picayune, Mississippi. Ingrid was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. After she graduated college with a degree in Marine Biology, she continued her education, receiving a PhD in Marine Sciences with an emphasis in Biological Oceanography. She is now a successful and accomplished scientist in this field.

When Ingrid was little, her parents discovered that she could see and hear things that no one else could. All this seemed to be tied up with the aftermath of Ingrid’s near-death experience when she drowned at the age of two. Not long after, she started to communicate with Beings of Light, who guided Ingrid through a journey of miracles, not just around the world but also through the barriers of times. With them, Ingrid has been able to access past life experiences of herself and others, future events, and eternal wisdom.

Ingrid describes her fascinating life and experiences with the Beings of Light in her compelling book titled A Brightly Guided Life: How A Scientist Learned to Hear Her Inner Wisdom. I’m so looking forward to talking with Ingrid about her book, the Beings of Light, her insights about the importance of healing and so much more in what is surely going to be a riveting and enlightening interview. Ingrid, a warm, heartfelt welcome to the show.

A Brightly Guided Light: How a Scientist Learned to Hear Her Inner Wisdom

Thanks so much for having me here. I feel so blessed and honored in your presence doing this incredible work of sharing your light with the world, too.

Thank you, Ingrid. We are both a mutual adoration society here. I want to begin our interview with this question because I know that you have so much to share with everyone in our audience. You have had two near-death experiences. Please tell us about your first near-death experience at the tender age of two and how you were able to recall both your drowning and that near-death experience as you grew older.

That near-death experience, being so young, opened for me the path of awakening and spirituality. It was an accident. At the time, I was in Colombia. I grew up with my parents and my sisters there. My parents had to work and they left us in the care of a maid. She was a lady who didn’t pay much attention to what we were doing when my parents were not home.

One morning, they left and the lady went to her room to do her own thing. My oldest sister was close to four. I was close to three. We look at each other and like, “No one is watching. Let’s go play on the patio.” In this house, there was a patio and in the corner of this patio, there was a big tank. The purpose of this tank was to collect water for hand washing clothes. It held about 900 gallons of water.

This was a big tank. My sister saw a ball and she’s like, “Let’s play ball.” I’m like, “I’ll cross the tank.” We climbed the tank and she sat on the flat surface that was next to the tank. It was the surface that people would use for scrubbing. She was a little bit safer there. I went to the other side and it was a thin edge. I bent my legs. At two years old, I’m like, “What is the danger? Let’s have fun.”

My sister threw the ball at me and she didn’t apply enough force. The ball fell on the water and it was floating on the surface of the water. I leaned forward, tried to grab it and when I touched it, it rolled. I lost my balance and I fell in the tank. This here will answer the question that people ask me, “How can you remember this if you were so young? How can you not forget these things?” I say to people, “It’s because there were many things that happened throughout the experience that brought a lot of contrast.” First, imagine this sense of falling in the water. The first thing was that the water in the tank was cold.

People have the misconception that because I am from Colombia, I come from a hot water country, but Bogota is up in the Andes, almost 10,000 feet. The temperature in this water that early in the morning was about 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The moment I fell into this water, there was the sense that it was frigid cold. Imagine this moment now, the trauma I experienced when I realized what happened, and why I could not breathe.

I have never been in a pool. We didn’t have a bathtub. I didn’t have any idea that if you fall in the water, you drown. Now I cannot breathe. The horror was intense. When I was in this state of absolute terror, how could I come out of this tank and breathe, I went from that state in a flash to one of absolute peace. It was quiet, calm, and serene. There was no need to breathe. There was no need to escape from the tank. There was no need to do anything. I didn’t know what happened, but it was a state of complete well-being.

The other thing that I’m bringing to you that shows incredible contrast is that there were a few things throughout this experience. The first thing, I fall in this tank. The tank was made of cement and it had a roof on top. This area was very dark. When I was in the water before I went to the state of peace, darkness was the last thing I saw with my eyes open and in a state of terror. The darkness of the space.

When I went to the state of peace, I relaxed, “This is good.” I see a light that comes from below. At this moment, that dark space turned into light. It was like the light of a candle that was lit and the light came from below and I’m like, “Now there is light.” The next contrast was that I live in a very noisy house. The last thing I heard when I was in a state of terror was my heart pounding in my chest. I could hear it in my head. Imagine when you are in that state of anxiety and terror.

It went quiet. There was no more noise. It was like I was used to the noises in the house, the noise that we usually hear from everything. At this moment, everything went silent. It’s what I call the silence behind the silence. I craved the silence for the rest of my life. Later in my life, I will go in closets, sing chapels, wherever it is, because I wanted to go back to that silence, not knowing that that was not outer silence. It was inner silence.

The other big contrast, at this moment, I’m in a state of joy and peace, and feeling great. I started to see bubbles suspended in the water. These bubbles were surrounded by light. By seeing these bubbles, I was like, “This is so cool.” I turned around and I saw a body suspended in the water. When I saw the body, I had at that moment the clear realization that it was my body.

I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t afraid. It was the sense of, “That’s normal. That already happened. I’m familiar with this.” The other contrast was that I was born as a very sick child. Sometimes people wonder why a child will be born sick. Through time and with all, I see the perfection and the symbols, how life talked to us through symbols. At that moment and later in my life, I realized that I was born sick because there was a purpose to this.

At that very moment, the purpose for the moment, I’m having this experience and realizing that, “I don’t want to be in that body because it doesn’t feel well.” I was in a state of absolute well-being. From the time I was born to the time I drowned, I always felt unwell. I didn’t even know what well-being was. Now when I’m feeling so well, I don’t want to go back there. That moment I made that decision, I look at the body and I’m like, “Uh-uh.”

“It was okay, but I’m happier over here.”

I turned around and I left the body behind. When I left the body and turned, I started to see flowers that were blooming from nowhere. I was picked up by the flowers. Now I am being carried by these flowers. I am in a state of complete relaxation. I was in a state of bliss. I said to people that the analogy is like when you are back in the womb. You don’t have to do anything. You’re being done. You are warm and cozy, and you’re good.

When I was in this state, what came next was incredible because it was the validation from other people about the experience. What happened was that in a flash like that, I appeared in the maid’s room and I was floating above her bed. I’m looking at her from above, like if I’m in the ceiling and I’m like, “That’s Maria.” She was listening to the radio, listening to soap operas. I even remember that.

You were only two years old. It’s obvious your soul, which is not two years old, just your body, was aware of everything.

I love that you mentioned that because that’s very important. People sometimes get stuck in the idea you were two years old, no.

Your soul saw everything, but that body was just a two-year-old body.

Thank you for bringing that up. I’m looking at her from above and she didn’t pay any attention. She just kept listening to her soap opera.

She had a soap opera going on in the tank, but she didn’t know that.

She was completely into her thing. She did not have any awareness of what was happening. From there, in a flash like that, I appear in my mom’s path, which blows people’s socks away because I look at my mom. I’m floating above her. She didn’t have a car and she had to walk home. She left that early and she was close to her boss’ stop.

This was a big neighborhood. She had to walk for about close to ten minutes to get to her boss. She was walking and then I met her right there. I said, “That’s mom.” The moment I said that, she stopped. She did not hesitate. She did not take another step. She knew immediately something was happening at home with her babies. She turned around and started to run back home.

She’s psychic, also. She had a gift.

She was incredible. She was very intuitive. I always say to people, “It’s not about having a good intuition. It’s about learning to listen to your intuition.” That’s something my mom did. Thank God. She went back. She was running back home. At that moment when she ran away, I changed my focus of attention and I saw a dog at the end of the road. The moment I saw the dog, I was with the dog because I love animals and I was like, “What happened?” The moment I looked at the horizon, it was like a park. I was at the park. I started to play this game of going places. I’m having fun.

It's not just about having a good intuition; it's about learning to listen to your intuition. Click To Tweet

You’re not trapped in your body anymore.

To mention time and space was the sense that it vanished. I was having fun playing when, again, in a blink like that, I appeared in a realm. This realm was made of pure, bright, intense, shiny light. It was the first time in almost three years that I felt that I was home. It was the sense that we call home. It had to feel familiar. I was back home. At that moment, even the sense that not even almost three years had passed, to give an example, it was like you leave in the morning to go to school or work.

It was the evening and you were back. The sense of time was gone. I didn’t see anybody at that moment, but it was the sense that I was being welcomed, that I was being embraced, that I was not alone. I was like, “This feels so good.” It was when I realized that although I saw my body suspended in the water, it was the sense that I was not that. It’s when I realized myself as a being of light and it was the sense that I was dissolving with the whole, but I was still having a sense of self at that moment.

Did you see yourself as a being of light or you saw the Beings of Light?

I saw myself as a being of light. I realized I am a being of light. At that moment, even these feelings changed. Even further, I felt that there was no sense of self. Some people call it emptiness. I call it nothingness. When people hear the word nothingness, they feel afraid. I say, “It was the sense of nothingness because it was nothing I knew, but it was the sense of wholeness because I was now part of the whole.”

When people ask me about what nothing means or can you explain, I say, “The moment I tell you what is, it becomes something.” I know that it only can be experienced. I can only say that sense of absolute presence and pure consciousness. When I am in this state of being, there’s nothing else I can say about it. My mom finally arrived home. This is the other incredible thing. We lived in a big house, but she knew exactly where to go.

Did she go right to that tank?

She did. She directed herself to the back of the house. This is another thing. Look at the purpose of everything. My sister was still there because she could have left the place. We don’t know. People ask me why she didn’t go to the maid. I said, “It’s because we were afraid of this lady because she mistreated us. How could she say, ‘Ingrid’s there?’”

We were in trouble at that moment. She stayed there trying to help me, but she was too little. The purpose is to show my mom, “Ingrid is there and I cannot get her.” My mom jumped into this tank and got me out. My mom worked with children. Look at the synchronicities and how amazing life is. She learned how to do CPR for children. She did what she knew to do and was doing everything she could to revive me. She said I was like a Raggedy doll. No pulse, no breathing. I was in my state of being.

You were in ecstasy. It was just your body she was working on.

I didn’t feel anything. I was completely disconnected from this reality. My mom did everything she knew to do. It was when I felt the sense of everything in this experience again and again in a flash. It was the sense that I had jumped from the tallest building in the world and there was nothing I could do to stop this. Nobody asked me, “Do you want to come?” None of that happened to me. It was like I was falling and I was being vacuumed back into the body and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was like, “I don’t want to go back there.”

I knew I was back when all the feelings of discomfort, pain, cold, and being trapped in a body happened and I was not a happy child. It was not something I wanted. Things went difficult from there because I came back with an awareness I didn’t have before. I looked at my parents and realized that they were not my biological parents. I felt them as my equals at a soul level.

You were seeing people on a soul level.

I would look at myself and say, “I’m not this child.” I was having such a hard time because I couldn’t relate to what was happening at the physical level. I will look at other children and say, “What is happening to these people? They don’t know anything.”

You had become conscious at such a young age and were aware of everything except and most of us are very unconscious in our lives. We’re given amnesia to achieve what we have to do. Your amnesia got taken away. You knew.

Imagine it was pretty hard because I would look at myself in the mirror and say, “Mom, you don’t understand. I’m not this person. I should not be here.” I felt the sense I should not be here because I felt so different from everyone else. I cried. My mom didn’t understand what was happening. Imagine, it was the early ‘70s. Nobody there in Colombia knew about near-death experiences.

The other thing that happened is that even to show things the human experience at a physical level, I started to show talents and things I didn’t have before. I was only almost three years old. After my near death, now I could read and write. I could resolve mathematical problems. I could put together complex puzzles and it continued. The sense is that when people were talking to me or teaching me things later in school, I was like, “I don’t need to learn all of these. I’m remembering.”

How long were you in that tank?

They don’t know for sure, but it could have been at least 9 or 10 minutes.

Amazingly, your mother was able to revive you. That’s the other part. There was no brain damage or anything.

There was none. Look at the perfection of everything the water in this tank was frigid cold. Later, in studying the cases like this, thankfully, this water was able to lower the amount of oxygen that the brain requires. The other thing is that thanks to God, nothing happened at the level of the brain. My respiratory conditions got worse. We can talk about that.

We’ll get to that one. What did these Beings of Light look like to you? They taught you about people being special and they had a perspective that it’s good for a soul to have a human experience.

With the Beings of Light, the experience was incredible because right after my near-death experience, I started to have what we know now as out-of-body experiences. I’m going to bring something here quickly because I always say to people that after my near-death experience, it’s like the door never closed. Not long ago, the Beings of Light said to me, “The door never closed, Ingrid, because there is no door.” Due to conditioning, all the stuff, and beliefs, we create blockages, ledgers, and a door. The sun is always shining for everyone, always. I love to bring this because we are the light. I’m having this out-of-body experience. On one of these journeys, I was surrounded by starlight figures.

Beings Of Light: Due to conditioning, beliefs, and culture, we create blockages and a door. But the sun is always shining for everyone.

Did they look human or were they lit? People are trying to imagine what they look like.

In this first encounter, they looked like stars, just bright light, but they had all different colors and they were all over the place. You could see them as if you were looking at night at the sky. They look infinite. That’s how I saw them at the beginning and I didn’t know. I’m having these out-of-body experiences and I am being back in that realm of the light. Now I’m surrounded by all these lights. It was so incredible. Imagine, right now, all I wanted to do was to sleep.

On one of these journeys, I saw one of these lights. It was shining. Imagine a bright ball, like a little sun. It was shining in pure gold. It approached me. When it approached me, it shaped itself into a human form to show me we are the same. That’s why I call them Beings of Light because, at the moment, it shaped itself. It touched me. The moment it touched me, for me to have that recognition, that knowing we are the same. I said, “You are a being of light.”

Would you say that this is the way each of us looks when we cross over, that we become a being of light?

Yes. The source that we are, we are this light. We are just wearing clothing. We are light. We are made of light.

Beings Of Light: We are light. We are made of light.

They would talk to you. They would teach you things about people being special or why it’s good for a soul to have a human experience. How did that come through? Did you have the thought in your mind and they were telling you these things?

It was beautiful because at the beginning, I only saw them as light and I couldn’t smell them. Later, I stopped seeing them in my out-of-body experiences. I was taking a shower and I saw a beam of light shining in the bathroom, like intense blue light. It shaped. I’m like, “Now the Beings of Light are here.” I started to see them here. In the beginning, I only could see, smell, and sense the presence. They smell like flowers. Nothing else was necessary because, in their presence, I felt so well that I started to heal. By then, I didn’t want to be here. I refused to eat or I was sick. I didn’t even want to be touched.

You were a doll for your mother.

My mom had to deal with a lot with me. It was a moment when my mom even apologized. “Sorry if I didn’t understand.”

What did they tell you about people being special?

Let’s get to that. There was a moment when I started to hear, to listen to them. The reason why I started to listen was because I was feeling so different from everyone else and I couldn’t relate to my name. They will call me Ingrid and I say, “Don’t call me that. That’s not my name.” When they said, “How should we call you?” I said, “I do not need a name.” It’s when the Beings of Light started to talk to me. You were asking me how it was. It was with voice. I could hear. It is the inner listening, our inner ears. I could listen clearly. They said to me, “It’s going to take time for them to understand that names are not needed in the realm of the light.” They also said to me that all the things that were happening and what was going to happen were not for me to keep but to give to others.

That is what you’re doing now.

I said to them, “I kept feeling so different from everyone else. Why me? Why is this happening to me?” It’s when they said, “It’s because you are special.” I said, “What do you mean when you say that I am special?” They said, “Everybody is special, but not everybody knows it yet.” What they meant was that everybody is the light.

They gave me this beautiful analogy. Think that you have that lamp back there, a light that has a light bulb and the light is always on. We are that light. What happened when you put a shade on that lamp, you created a layer. Now you can see the light a little less. What if you put more and more shades? That is what happened to us because we come to this world with the pureness of our being. I’m not blaming anybody. It’s who we are in the culture as humans. What happens is due to conditioning, beliefs, culture, and whatever experiences, we have layers start building or we start creating blockages. What happens if I put layers and layers to that light? There’s a point where you cannot see it.

Part of healing is to remove those blockages so that you can return to the light again and be able to perceive the light. Why do we souls choose to have a human experience? Why is that good? Why don’t we all stay in bliss on the other side? Why come over here to go through all the things we go through?

Part of healing is to remove blockages so that you can return to the light again. Click To Tweet

That’s because the whole idea is that we consciously remember the nature of who we are and we come here because of the human experience. I mentioned it throughout my near death. Contrast. This human experience is based on polarity. It’s based on contrast. This is the best place to be able to experience. How can I know or appreciate to say something healthy if I have never been sick? If I don’t know the other side, I cannot see where I am. I cannot truly appreciate the other side of it. How can I appreciate joy if I never cried or felt sad?

This is what happened. I gave a lot a whole lecture about it, how when we were babies, we stayed in that state of absolute being. There’s no appreciation for that state because we don’t know it. We were talking about the eternity of our souls. We come and live our human experiences and with every experience, we start having a little bit higher of that gratitude and appreciation for the true nature of what we are. This brings us to not just be a baby that is unaware, to say something, but to go back to the pureness of being that baby with awareness. We are becoming aware of our true nature and we are conscious, that we are aware.

As you become more and more aware, you can help other people to become more and more aware. There’s a wonderful story in your book about the Beings of Light saving your life numerous times, especially one time when you were almost raped and murdered. Could you share that story? That’s quite a dramatic story, Ingrid.

I’m glad you are bringing that up. It’s a story that can help so many because it brings us to the realization of what happens when we are connected with the light and what we call vibrating high. When we are in a state of calming the mind and being connected with the spirit realm, with the wholeness of that we are, that’s what happened in this experience.

I had an ex-boyfriend at the time and I was living in Santa Marta. This is a city in Colombia where I was in college, and it’s in the Caribbean. The idea is to go diving or snorkeling, to enjoy all these places. With this ex-boyfriend, we went to the beach and it’s incredible how the contrast again, in such a paradise, something so hard can happen.

This area had a beach. Each beach was like a cove. It was surrounded by cliffs. You had to cross these rocks and sometimes go in the water to go from one beach to the other. We did all these. It was an adventurous day. We arrived at the last beach and couldn’t cross anymore because it was a very sharp cliff that went into the ocean. The currents were strong. It was time to go back.

When we were going to go back and turn to the other beaches to go back, three people appeared. They turned around the corner and now they were there. At that moment, I had that sense that they didn’t have good intentions. I was right because, at that moment, they pushed us back to the beach and they started to take everything from us.

At that moment, we thought, “Take our stuff and let us be.” They took all our snorkeling gear. They took our clothing and left us with our swimsuits. They wanted everything. “Take it all.” They tied our hands with ropes. They pushed my friend to the beach to sit down and had knives and a piece of glass and they put this piece of glass on his neck and were about to cut his neck. He started to say, “Don’t do anything to her.” Up to that point, I never thought anything else was going to happen. The scene was so brutal. They were almost cutting his neck. You could almost already see that the glass was there in his neck. I turned around and I could not see this.

I was in an absolute state of terror. I turned around and I saw the horizon and it was this beautiful ocean. The sun was touching the water. You see the sparkle of the light. The moment I saw this, it was like what happened during my near-death. I went to a state of peace. This is one thing, Irene. I told people that after my near death, I never feared death again. The fear of death was gone.

I didn’t know how true this was until this day. It was the validation that that fear of death was gone. The moment I looked at the horizon and went to the state of peace, the first thing that crossed my mind was, “This is a good day to die.” Now I am in that absolute state of connection with what we call Source, God, or Universal Greatness. I’m just there. There was no thought in my head.

I went to that state that was again called emptiness. I didn’t feel any fear. This guy was about 200 pounds, tall and strong. He pushed me down and he laid on top of me. I was in the super state of expanded being and I could not feel the heaviness of his body. I was tied. This is the other miracle. My hands were tied. The moment the guy is lying on top of me and I’m serene. He put his hand down here to do his business. At that moment, my hand was free.

I moved my arm, grabbed his face, and put his eyes in my eyes because he was looking down to do his thing. I put his eyes in my eyes. Imagine a person that is allowed to be raped, they should be screaming, crying, but nothing. I looked at him and with this strong but very gentle voice, I said to him, “Dear, don’t do this.”

The guy pushed like a coil like that, Irene. He jumped. He’s like, “We are leaving right now.” The other two didn’t even dare to fight the guy. They all fled the scene. I’m there lying on the ground and peaceful. I stood up and I turned on my friend. At that moment, I knew they were going to come back because whatever layering he had fell at that moment. I knew his conditioning was going to come back.

I looked at my friend and said, “We have to go because they’re coming back.” I untied his hands. I explained the whole geography, and the landscaping for people to understand that we could not leave the area through the cliffs because they were too deep into the ocean. On the other side, we couldn’t leave through that side because the men had left through the other side of the beach.

We had to climb the cliff. I looked at the cliff and I said, “We have to climb.” We were young. We were athletic. We were even pushed up. We climbed that cliff. When we were at the top, I said to him, “Lower your head.” He lowered himself and the men came back and they were looking for us. They walked a while before they realized, “Why did we leave? Let’s go back.” When they came back to the beach, we were hiding in the bushes. It’s when my friend said, “How did you know they were going to come back? What happened? Why did they let us go?”

This friend was an atheist. Look at how we come here to teach each other. At that moment, I said to him, “If you didn’t believe in guardian angels, if you didn’t believe in God, this is the moment.” At that moment, we hid and went quiet. What happened incredibly that day was that guy and I touched our eyes, I was one with that person.

I couldn’t understand it at that moment, but later in my life, I realized there are no enemies. There’s only conditioning and there’s only all this layering and everything is here for a purpose. Later, who knew I could be grateful for that experience because that experience brought me to realize this wasn’t done to me. This was done for me to understand and have deeper realizations. A state of connection. That deep connection.

Beings Of Light: There are no enemies, there’s only conditioning and there’s only all these layers. Everything is here for a purpose.

According to these Beings of Light, they’ve told you that suffering is a matter of choice. A person needs to say yes to suffering before he or she can transcend it. Can you explain that to us? A lot of people are saying, “I’m doing my job, Ingrid. I’m suffering. What do you mean that’s a matter of choice?”

Incredibly, even with this experience on the beach, I say to people, “When I surrender to death, I live. When I surrender to pain and suffering, I heal. When I surrender to what is, I find myself. Why? It’s because when we are not resisting, it’s when we’re allowing everything to be as it is.” This is beautiful. I have learned this from teachings and I love when I hear pain plus resistance equals suffering. We can have many challenges in our lives and even painful experiences, but if we are not resistant to them, then suffering doesn’t come. It turns into an opportunity. I cannot even use the word challenge anymore without saying challenging opportunity.

We can have many challenges and painful experiences in our life, but if we are not in resistance to it, there's no suffering. It turns into an opportunity. Click To Tweet

Challenges don’t have to turn into suffering but opportunities for us to keep evolving, to keep growing, to keep asking new questions, and even to go deeper into the truth of everything that there is and the truth of who we are. I say to people, “If you meet your experiences, challenges, and pain with an open mind, even with the knowing, talk to your emotions.”

Talk to the whole of that you are to everything that is happening. If you’re not meeting resistance, you say this. “This too. This also belongs. This too can be here.” What you’re doing is you are embracing the totality that you are. What I always do when an emotion appears in my path, when I am turning into suffering, I put my awareness there.

Instead of repelling it, I ask, “Anger, why are you here? Fear, why are you here?” It’s because we have been taught to run away from these emotions. We have been taught that they are not good. You should not feel this. You should not feel that. What I do is sit with it. I say to people, “You can do it immediately when it’s happening.”

I name my emotions and these are very ancient Buddhist teachings and Hindu teachings. Just be with the whole of it. I’m feeling overwhelmed. Fear. Now I have clarity of what I am experiencing. If people cannot do this when they’re trapped in a situation, they can gain awareness later. Go calm your mind and invite that emotion to be present. “Overwhelm, fear, impatience, or whatever, why are you here? What are you trying to show me?”

I say to people, “This is when you have a road that is split.” If you identify with the story of me and why me and the story that you have created about anything, I call it the cul-de-sac of suffering. You get trapped in your own story and you become a victim of your story. When things change, the moment you pass, stop, and recognize the presence and the validity of that experience, why are you here? That’s the moment you are also embracing and going to the place of inquiry. Why are you here? At that moment, you realize there’s a purpose for this. What are you here to teach me? When you ask a new question, guess what? Discovery, new road, evolution, growth.

Healing because part of it is that you can choose to heal those pieces and find out what is behind them and let them go.

Irene, people ask me about free will and I said, “People don’t have any idea what free will is because people confuse free will with choice. You can choose what to wear, the foods you eat, the place you go, and what you study, but the only true free will that exists is that if you choose to stay in the cul-de-sac of suffering or if you choose the path of the light, the path of clarity, the path of asking. That’s true free will.

The only true free will that exists is if you choose to stay in the cul-de-sac of suffering or if you choose the path of the light, the path of clarity. Click To Tweet

You’ve told us so much, Ingrid. You’ve also had a few spiritually transformative experiences, not that these have all not been spiritually transformative. They brought teachings and clarity into your life and the lives of others. Is there any that you’d like to highlight for us? Anything else that you’d like to tell us before we move on to your second near-death experience of what it taught you?

There are so many teachings and experiences that, at this point, I’m like, “Which one could we call?”

I’m sure you have so many.

There’s been so many because it’s been through my entire life. There’s a very powerful one that is coming to mind right now. The most important of all these is that the Beings of Light said to me that there were always going to be witnesses. It’s important for us as humans to have validation. What happened with all of this, I always say to people, “It is not just that we become self-realized beings. We also need to become self-actualized beings.”

Ground ourselves and bring all these teachings to a place where they can be shared. They can be within the reach of everyone else. Having witnesses has been incredible because it’s always like not just a witness that could tell the story, but a witness that had healing things that transformed their lives. In one of these experiences, it was a friend of mine, another atheist. He was very angry because he was born with some genetic problem and he had blood vessels in his face.

There was a time when we were walking and in and in Colombia, there were a lot of problems with homeless people. Colombia is known for being, in many cases, a very dangerous place to be sometimes. We were walking in a street and three homeless people were approaching us. When these guys were coming again, it was the sense of, “This is not good,” because they were not coming with good intentions. They surrounded us.

At that moment, my friend was petrified with fear. I was standing there and I felt that I could not move. The men surrounded us and started to take everything from us. They grabbed his money, his wallet. I was wearing a leather jacket. I had my bag, I had a watch, but it’s like I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. He’s standing here. The guys were here. They were stealing everything. They grabbed his watch because they said, “Give us your watch.”

He couldn’t take it off. They ripped it out of his hand, scratched his skin, and then left with everything from him. I said, “Santiago, are you okay? Your arm is bleeding.” He said, “I don’t care about the arm, I don’t care about the watch. I don’t care that they took everything away from me. The only thing I care about, Ingrid, is that they didn’t take anything from you. They didn’t do anything to you because you were not here.”

You became invisible.

This completely changed his life. That moment transformed him, and he became a spiritual teacher for the rest of his life. He’s sharing his experience and even his genetic problem turned into a way to help and teach others.

The Beings of Light rendered you invisible at that moment. We would all like them to walk with us and help all of us all the time. What a blessing. What was your second near-death experience?

As I said to you, everything carries a message and a purpose, Irene. This is beautiful because, later in life, people started to ask me this question, “Ingrid, when people die in very bad accidents, they will feel the anguish of their loved ones that have left this world because of a very hard accident. If they suffer, how bad this is for them.”

Beings Of Light: Absolutely everything carries a message and a purpose.

I was amazed that my second near-death experience happened in a motorcycle accident. It was for me to bring them the peace that they didn’t feel anything. Later on, I heard many cases and people who have had near-death experiences where they validated this. Even my mom. My mom had a car accident when she was young. She said, “The car is rolling three times down the road. Ingrid, all the time, I was outside of my body looking at the accident. Throughout the accident, I didn’t feel anything. Not even fear, not even pain.”

The same thing happened to me. I was driving this motorcycle and I didn’t know how to work it well. It was my first motorcycle and I was going on a hill. A friend of mine was sitting at the back. I was fearful that day. I didn’t even want to do this ride, but he was like, “You can do it.” I wanted to prove to him that I could do it. See the mistakes we make?

I went on the right. I don’t even know what happened. I went to put on the gear and the bike jumped and I didn’t have a helmet. I was being young and silly. I was about 24 years old and the bike fell and I hit my head very hard against the ground. I never even realized I had hit the ground. I was standing in the middle of the road and again, I ran with the feeling of like, “I’m ready.”

There was not a bit of fear. There was no pain and there was no story. There was none of it. I’m there, so ready and I’m surrounded by light. When I was in there, I was like, “This is so good.” Somebody picked me up from the accident. I didn’t even realize I was out of it. This is incredible. When somebody touched my body, I touched my eyes and I only could see darkness. I realized I could not see.

I was blind. I was taken to the hospital. It took me about a couple of hours to start recovering my vision. Nothing happened to my friend that was with me, because he was able to jump. He was sitting at the back. He jumped out of the bike. He was standing there and the doctor was there. I said, “What happened?”

He said, “You lost your vision when you hit your head on the ground.” I said, “I cannot be because I was standing in the middle of the road and I saw the light. All the lights were on.” My friend looked at me and he said, “No, Ingrid. There was no light. The road was pitch black. There was no light where the accident happened. By the way, you never stood up.”

It’s your soul again. You also healed yourself with some past life regressions. Let’s talk through some of your amazing past lives. Some of the health conditions you came in with had to do with past lives.

I write about that in my book too. I went to this hypnosis event. It was this very well-known hypnotist. They invited me to be part of his staff when he did a session there. When I had the experience, I went out of the body and I was like, “This is cool.” I was interested in hypnosis. The story is long. I went to another doctor practicing hypnosis, and it was the first time he was doing his thing. I went out with a question and instead of seeing my life, I started to see his life.

The important thing about why I bring up this part of the experience is because he’s the validation that what I was going to see in the future was real. It started with instead of seeing my life, I saw the psychologist’s life. I started to see his childhood, traumas, and everything. I recalled all of this. I’ve never met this guy before. He said, “How can you know these things?” I said, “Silence. Now that you know, you can be healed.” He contacted another psychologist who was an expert in past life regressions because he was amazed at what happened.

He was so amazed and overwhelmed by what you had brought to him.

I went to this other doctor and he started to do this hypnosis thing. That day, I arrived at his office feeling very sick. Through time with all that happened, my respiratory illnesses got worse. I had asthma and chronic bronchitis. This time, I went to his office with a bad episode of bronchitis. When he asked me to go with a question, my question was, “Why am I so sick? Why do I have all these respiratory problems?”

When I was in the sessions, I remember my life since I was an infant and I saw myself when I was born in this life. I started to feel the cold of being born. He brought me to see a life where I died as a prisoner in a dungeon. In this life as a prisoner, it was cold. I was almost naked and I was in a hole almost in the ground with bars. Later, I went to Italy and I saw the place where I died.

I died from tuberculosis and I praised the moment of my death because I was suffering so much. This brought me to see more past lives. In all those past lives, I had died from respiratory problems until I reached a life where I died from a spear going through my lungs. In that experience, in that death, I drowned in my blood. How did I die in my first near-death? I drowned.

I saw all the respiratory problems and drowning. All these are related because the impact of dying from that spear was such that it could not release that energy for so many lives. Now when I am in this office, I have this clarity, and observing all this, I came back from this hypnosis and I said to him, “I know why I was sick and sad. I know why I had fear and drowned.” I knew all this. That day, after being sick for 17 to 18 years after that point, I healed. I never had another respiratory problem until now.

You answered the question for people, “Why should I find out about my past lives?” That is amazing.

I want to tell you some validation quickly so people can see this with more clarity. A couple of years ago, I had a kidney stone. I had to go to the emergency room. They did an X-ray. When they saw the X-ray, they got all startled and nervous because they saw a scar in one of my lungs, the lung where the spear went through. The doctors thought it was cancer or something. They did a follow-up for two years and nothing changed. The doctor said, “The only way you could have that scar in your lung is if you had tuberculosis.” I was laughing because I thought, “Not in this life.”

It was there from the other life. That’s amazing. We all need to think about certain things that bother us, certain markings on us, or whatever could be from past life trauma.

This is another thing. I say to people, “If you have the chance to know your past lives, of course.” Everybody has to have the same opportunity. I say to people, “You don’t need to know all your past lives. You need to know your life now. Everything that is happening in your life now is the reflection of all your lives. If you know your state of being, your emotions, your life now, you know all your lives.”

You really don't need to know all your past life. You need to know your life today. Because everything that is happening in your life now is the reflection of all your lives. Click To Tweet

That brings me to ask you because you teach and use simple but very powerful analogies, which you just did, that challenge a student’s belief system. You help expand their awareness and change their perspectives through what you do. You did that. Tell us how you teach people. Is this exactly what you do? Do you give people examples from what’s happened to you or insights you have that can help them?

The Beings of Light said to me with this clarity, “It’s not the experience, but the purpose behind the experience.” Use all that’s happening in your life to learn to see. Learn to ask the questions, bring them, and use that inquiry. What is this for? What is the purpose of it? You don’t stay at the level of the experience. I use all the experiences but always squeeze the orange. What is this for? How can I use these to help others?

You also have unique meditation techniques because you believe by calming the mind, we can connect with our inner wisdom and regain our inner power, which we’ve been talking about. Tell us about your meditation techniques because there are so many people who talk about meditation and so many different ways to meditate. What is the Ingrid method?

I wouldn’t say that is my method, but it’s all of us are able to utilize our uniqueness to pass. Let’s say that all of us can be drinking orange juice, but we all drink it in different ways from a different cup with a different taste. I receive these teachings from other teachers, which are all ancient ways to meditate. One unique thing I bring to people for anything they’re doing. I do one type of meditation that I also learned. It’s called meditation for daily stress.

You calm your mind wherever you are, in front of your computer. You don’t need to sit in a place, go to the park, or be in a center. You can be in front of your computer right there, close your eyes, and calm your mind. The most important thing is I say to people, “Say that you went for a walk-in meditation or practice from the office to the bathroom. You thought, ‘I’m going to do my meditation,’ but your head was so busy with so many things that from point A to point B, you realize, ‘I didn’t do any meditation. I was not aware of my walking or I wasn’t present with the trees, the wind, the birds. I was so busy.’”

I tell people, “What we tend to do is say, ‘You are bad, Ingrid. You couldn’t do it.’” The self-judgment. At that moment, I say to people, “Praise your awareness. Praise the fact that you were aware, that you become aware that you were not aware.” When we are ever told this, praise your awareness. At that moment, when you become aware that you were not aware, you are giving this great gift to yourself, knowing that you are good no matter what. See the goodness in you. See the goodness in things. At that moment, while you do, you stop and now you are changing the chip to think, “I am not good,” to, “I am eternally good.”

Beings Of Light: When you become aware that you were not aware, you are giving this great gift to yourself. Recognize that you are good and see the goodness in yourself and in things.

I’m aware of what I was doing or what I was not doing. That’s conscious awareness, which you talk about in your wonderful book. Many people will now want to contact you and take advantage of the healing that you offer. You offer your healing in one-on-one sessions. You have an inner circle community and you also have online monthly gatherings that enable people to understand the purpose behind their life challenges. It also helps them with grief recovery. Could you speak to this, Ingrid? People would want to contact you to get help with their healing and they have these choices that you provide.

I think about how we can help anybody with all the different budgets because I told people, “If you cannot come to one-on-one, my monthly gatherings are only $21. Come and let’s talk.” I offer a teaching and we have question and answer. It is how we can help people at all levels and we all benefit from it. During my teachings, I share meditations so we can pretty quickly teach people how to quiet the mind in 1 or 5 minutes and how to go back to that state of connection and clarity.

The beautiful thing during my sessions is that before the session, I meditate. Even at the moment, the person right to me is like the person that agreed to connect. I started having messages. I am an empath and I can feel what the other person is feeling. Before a session, I connect and it is beautiful. This is the thing. The most important about all of this is that although I receive many messages, the idea is not to disempower the other person.

I’m here to tell you all this. It’s like it’s a conversation with the other person to start realizing, “I can do this too. I am this light too. How can I do to be my super powerful me? It is beautiful because we share all that. The presence sometimes of a person on the other side can happen, depending on what the person wants to know and do.

This is separate from your one-on-one sessions and your monthly gatherings, though. Your monthly gatherings are communities of people who talk about whatever is concerning them and different ways they can go about it. In the one-on-one, one person can work with you individually. What is your inner circle community?

I have not gone that far yet. I’m creating it. It is not open yet because it requires so much work to build. It is more about the technical work than gathering the people. In my monthly mentoring sessions, I give a lecture and at the end, we have a discussion. My idea when we have the community is to have more sessions where we can do questions and answers, meditate together, and do more. Gather as a community and do things together. I am in the process of building all that the website requires. It’s more the technicality.

For $21, a person can gather with you monthly, get wisdom, and speak with other like-minded people. That’s wonderful. If they want extra special love from Ingrid, they can do that too. Ingrid, tell us all the ways that people can connect with you.

Thank you so much. One thing I would love is if people had the opportunity to read my book.

It’s wonderful. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It was fascinating and riveting.

Thank you so much, Irene. It will be my website and there’s my contact information. They can contact me through my website. It’s IngridHonkala.com.

They can find out everything about your book. They can find out about what you’re doing. As you know and everyone who reads this show, part of the mission for the show is to provide people with healing choices, which we’re certainly talking about in this episode. How does being able to truly listen to ourselves and others produce enormous healing? Ingrid, why is it important for each of us to heal in this lifetime where we are now? We came here to learn certain things.

I say to people, “Why wait? Why wait to feel good? Why wait to not just feel good ourselves, but to offer the service of feeling good to others?” That’s incredible. Not so long ago, I asked the Beings of Light, “What is our purpose and mission? Can you tell me this with clarity?” They said to me, “It is this simple. Your purpose is to be the light and your mission is to shine it.”

Your purpose is to be the light and your mission is to shine it. Click To Tweet

We’re supposed to heal and then help others to heal and pass it forward.

That’s the service. Become selfless and start having the sense that you want to do this for others. You feel so well that you want to share it with others and why listening is important. Listening is seeing. It’s when a person says, “You truly see me. You hear me.”

You witnessed that person.

They’re connecting. The purpose of my near-death experience was to bring the message of the power of connection. I asked the Beings of Light, “How come?” They say, “When you saw your body in the water and you left it behind, that was not your purpose. That was your ego mind thinking, ‘I don’t want to be uncomfortable.’ The universe had a plan for you. That’s why you’re back. That’s the reason why you went to look for the maid and your mom.”

I said, “If I was going to come back, why did I waste time in the maid’s room?” They said, “That’s where we want to show you the contrast. That’s the point because when you went to look for your mom, what happened? Look at what the communication does. Listening. You said your mom was intuitive. She was listening with her inner being. Unconditional love, absolute connection.”

“Love doesn’t have barriers. You were in the spirit realm. Your mom was in the physical realm, but she could hear you. She went back. What happened with the maid? She could not hear you because there was no connection.” This person mistreated us. There was no love. Look at what they say. When there is no love, when there is no connection, they will let you drown. When there is no connection, there will be war.

Beings Of Light: Love doesn’t have barriers.

Isn’t that interesting? That’s fascinating. I would assume the maid did not keep her job.

No.

In A Brightly Guided Life, you stated that we make the right choice when we allow ourselves to choose joy and love, which you were speaking to, as the chief motivators in our lives. Ingrid, why is that important? What is your tip, Ingrid, for finding joy in life?

That’s because that’s the nature of what we are, Irene. When we tap into the nature of what we are, that’s the emanation of pure love. I say to people, “Always ask the question because that’s what I experience. If you have a near-death experience or hear anyone who had a spiritually transformative experience when you are in the zone, what do you feel? Joy, because that’s the core that you are. Ask this question. If the core of that is that I am in love, peace, joy, and greatness, the question is what am I doing to not be that?”

When we tap into the nature of what we are, that's the emanation of pure love. Click To Tweet

At that moment, you stop and you start realizing, “What can I do to go back to the core of who I am? One of the things I can say to people to go back to that is to practice gratitude. Being grateful is the highest vibration of frequency there is because when do you feel gratitude? It’s the things that make you feel great. Great. Gratitude. To close with something beautiful, the Beings of Light said this to me, “Imagine how grateful every human being would be if they realize that for you to exist, trillions of sub-atomic particles have to be in agreement.”

They say, “Ingrid, all of you, you are a divine intention. Imagine, everything in this manifestation is called the breath of God.” This is an expression of Source. Trillions of particles are in agreement to be dispensed so I can use it. Imagine gratitude. I’m grateful for this pain. I’m grateful for the water. I’m grateful for this temple. While we’re talking about this body, I am grateful for you. Living in a state of appreciation and gratitude brings you there.

That brings joy. That’s wonderful. Thank you, Ingrid. You are helping countless people on their life journeys become aware of this deeper reality and reconnect with their inner wisdom. These teachings and your book, A Brightly Guided Life, which beautifully illuminates your compelling life adventure, confirm that we are all spiritual beings living temporary human lives. I highly recommend A Brightly Guided Life as a fascinating must-read for anyone interested in the mysteries of life after death.

Ingrid, thank you so much from my heart for this moving and transformative interview. Bless you. Here’s a reminder, everyone. Make sure to follow us and like us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. As I like to say, to be continued, many blessings, and bye for now.

Guest Links:

• Dr. Ingrid Honkala’s Website
• Ingrid Honkala’s book: A Brightly Guided Life: How A Scientist Learned to Hear Her Inner Wisdom

Host Links:

• @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram
• Irene Weinberg on Facebook
• Irene Weinberg Twitter
• Irene Weinberg – Grief, Rebirth + Healing Podcast on YouTube

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