Jeffery Olsen is a truly remarkable man with an incredible story of perseverance, inner strength, grief and rebirth. Jeff survived a car crash that killed his wife and young son, as well as hurt him badly. He had 18 surgeries, lost a leg, and had to heal physically and emotionally. Professionally, Jeff is a gifted Creative Director with many accolades to his credit. He is a Spiritual Leader, Mentor, Author, Shaman, and Speaker. They wrote a book called “KNOWING: Memoirs of a Journey Beyond the Veil and Choosing Joy After Tragic Loss” which tells their story and confirms that life continues after we die.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- Jeff’s incredible Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences brought him insights not common in today’s world.
- What Jeff experienced when he was given a Life Review on the Other Side.
- There is nothing to forgive and every soul chooses and creates his or her own journey here.
- When and how Jeff began to heal from his overwhelming trauma and grief.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS JEFF:
- What was your profound experience of not looking at a person’s appearance but instead to feel his or her soul?
- Why as a soul do we come into this world, and why can life be so hard?
- What prompted you to become a Shaman?
YOUTUBE INTERVIEW:
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Email: jefferycolsen@gmail.com
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Jeffery Olsen: His Profound Out Of Body, Near Death, And After-Death Communication Experiences
I hope this finds you very well. I am speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to interview Jeffery Olsen, a truly remarkable man with an incredible story of perseverance, inner strength, grief, and rebirth. After a horrific automobile accident that took the lives of his wife and youngest son, also inflicting multiple life-threatening injuries to him, including the amputation of his left leg, Jeff found the courage to survive over eighteen surgeries, and eventually heal both physically and emotionally.
His extraordinary story inspires international audiences. I know all of you and our audience will be inspired as well. Jeff will be speaking to us from Salt Lake City, Utah. Professionally, Jeff is a gifted creative director with many accolades to his credit. He is also a spiritual leader, a mentor, an author, a shaman, and a speaker whose latest book titled, Knowing: Memoirs of a Journey Beyond the Veil and Choosing Joy After Tragic Loss tells his amazing story that will surely leave you with a new appreciation for the gift of life we each are living.
It also confirms that when we take that last breath, life is not over. I’m looking forward to asking Jeff about his journey through overwhelming trauma and grief to joy, purpose, and gratitude. His out-of-body, near-death, and after-death communication experiences and his profound spiritual insights for what is surely going to be an incredibly enlightening memorable interview. Jeff, a warm and heartfelt welcome to the show.
Thank you, Irene. It’s so good to be with you.
It’s such a pleasure. We’re going to have a lot of fun. It’s going to be interesting. Jeff, could you please describe your childhood, your marriage to your beloved wife, Tamara, your son, Spencer and Griffin, and what you were thinking as you were driving before that horrific accident?
That’s a lot of questions, but let’s start with my childhood. My mother and father divorced when I was very young. That created a very strong bond between me and my brothers. My parents were great at co-parenting. Even though they were no longer married to each other, they were both extremely committed to their children. I grew up on a little family farm. We had a dairy farm. We also had some beef cows and that’s where dad resided. We’d spend every weekend with dad, and then my mother moved to the city.
I would spend my weekdays in the city and my weekends on the farm. Eventually, my mother remarried. He is a wonderful guy. I loved my stepdad, but in her remarrying, we went and lived full-time with my father on the farm. It was a great rough-and-tumble place for kids to grow up. We had so much fun and we worked hard. It was wonderful but I ended up going to college. I got a football scholarship. I was a Division 1 football player once upon a time.
That was a gift and a blessing too, but the coolest thing that happened in college to me when I was a sophomore at the university was I met Tamara, who became my wife. It’s important to point out that when I say I met her, I was shy. I didn’t talk much. I wasn’t that outgoing, but when she came into the room, I didn’t even know her name. It was like a lightning bolt hit. It’s like I knew. There was the knowing, and it was beyond love at first sight. It was a deeper knowing.
Sure enough, we became friends, and then it was a courtship, a relationship, and a marriage. We had two boys. Spencer, my oldest at the time of the accident was seven, and Griffin was just a toddler. He was only fourteen months old. It had been a challenge to get him here. He was our miracle boy. As you asked about what went through my mind before the accident, we had been on an Easter vacation to visit her extended family, her parents, and her grandparents.
When that was over, it was interesting because we were just getting ready to leave. We’d had Easter Sunday and Monday came around. We had said our goodbyes. Everybody was in the car, and I was pulling away from the curb, and Tamara stopped me. She said, “Wait a minute.” I stopped the car and she said, “I want to go say goodbye to mom and dad one more time.”
Isn’t that interesting?
It’s those strange little things and that whisper. At the time I thought, “Women. We’ve said goodbye. We’re in the car. I got to get back to work. Let’s go,” but something in her consciousness said, “I want to go say goodbye one more time,” and she did. I stopped the car, and I noticed as she ran up, and not only hugged her mom and dad, but she kissed them both. I noticed that. It was hindsight. That would’ve been uneventful had things not played out the way they did. That was the last goodbye given the events of that day.
There are many commonalities in our story because the night before he died, Saul said to me, “I’m so lucky and thankful to have you in my life,” which was not a typical thing that Saul would emote or say or do. I thought, “That’s wonderful.” The day that we had the accident, he felt the need to go visit his daughter. She had her own little cottage in the mountains, and it’s so similar. It was a goodbye, not that we knew it at the time. It was amazing. Didn’t you have a real moment while you were driving of gratitude when you were thinking about how lucky you were and you had this beautiful family?
I did. In fact, that was after I’d watched this last goodbye. Tamara jumped back in the car and we hit the Interstate. I cranked the cruise control up to 75 as fast as I could legally go. I’m racing up the interstate, attempting to get home a little bit earlier. I was thinking about all the work I was missing, and that to-do list. It’s interesting these moments and these whispers, and you mentioned Saul. If there’s anything for the audience to take away, when you get that little impression, that little hit, “I think I should go see my daughter. I want to say goodbye to mom and dad one more time,” follow that. Honor that and do that.
As I was driving, there was this moment of gratitude. It was nothing to do. I was simply looking in the rearview mirror to check traffic. It was a glance. It was a moment but I glanced in the rearview mirror to see what traffic was doing. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road that day but as I glanced in the rearview mirror, Griffin, my little son caught my eye, my toddler. He was sound asleep in his car seat. I noticed that, and there was this reverence that was like, “There’s my little miracle boy. We weren’t even supposed to have another child, and there he is.
I noticed details. I noticed how his hands were folded up on the little car seat barrier that was in front of him. I noticed how long his eyelashes were just at a glance. It’s almost like time stopped. As I noticed that, I heard Spencer, my seven-year-old. He was playing with action figures that he had gotten in his Easter basket. He was a Star Wars nut. He had some of the new action figures, but I heard all the delightful noise of a little boy having the grandest lightsaber battle in the universe. I thought, “Look at these children.”
I then glanced at Tamara, who had also reclined her seat back, and she was sound asleep, but she was still holding onto my hand. There was this moment of absolute gratitude. I thought, “We’re ten years into this marriage. We’ve had two children. We’re racing against our careers.” She was a high school teacher. She loved the students but I thought she was still holding my hand the way she did back when I had a couple of extra bucks and took her to a dollar movie. I was a starving college student.
You were still in a love story though.
There was this absolute moment of profound gratitude. It’s like, “Look at what I’ve been blessed with.” That was the bottom line. My attention went back to the road and we drove, but it was about an hour after that it all came apart.
Do you want to tell us about that and how it affected each of your family members and the injuries you sustained from the accident?
It’s been 24 years.
That’s interesting. It’s been 24 years for me too.
It was in ’97. It was strange. There were reports of crosswinds. There were reports of a red pickup truck that was driving erratically on the Interstate. The most difficult thing to talk about is I believe I may have dozed off for a moment at the wheel. I believe I nodded off for a second. When I did that, I swerved to the right. I over-corrected to the left, and the car began to roll. I lost control, but it began to roll not off the road, but down the road at 75 miles an hour.
It was a horrific automobile accident. The accident report said a car probably rolled 6 to 8 times. I blacked out for a lot of that actual rolling. When the car came to a stop, I was completely conscious and very aware that the first thing I heard was Spencer, my oldest son who was seven years old. He was crying hysterically in the backseat. As a father, I thought, “I’ve got to get to my son. I’ve got to get to my boy,” but that’s when I realized I could not move.
I was pinned either to the floorboard or the seat. I couldn’t tell. There was all the broken glass. There was the rancid smell of gasoline. I was unaware of my injuries. I knew I was in intense pain, and I was struggling to breathe but what had happened is both of my legs had been crushed and shattered. My left leg was eventually amputated above the knee. My back had been damaged. My ribcage had been damaged. My lungs were collapsing. My right arm had almost been torn off, and then the seatbelt had cut through and ruptured all of my organs. I was a mess.
I wasn’t aware of all of that. All I knew was my son was crying, but that’s when the brutal reality hit that no one else was crying. That’s when I became acutely aware that Griffin and Tamara were gone. They were killed instantly in the accident. That’s probably the worst hell a man could be in. There I was and half the family was gone. I’ve got a hysterical seven-year-old. I’m trapped and pinned. I can’t move and I’m losing consciousness and yet, I was driving the car. The guilt and the regret. I kept thinking, “I want those three seconds back. What happened?” That was a pretty brutal moment.
They got you to an emergency trauma center and you had some amazing experiences that were not typical.
At the scene of the accident, the last thing I remember being in the body in the accident was I was attempting to calm Spencer. I said to him, “It’s going to be okay.” I thought that was a lie. It’s not okay. I was well aware of what happened. In that dark moment, a light came and it felt like light surrounded me. It felt like this light was comforting me. It felt as if I was rising above the accident scene as if I was being delivered from it, so to speak. People did arrive at the scene. I had to be extricated from the car, and then I was airlifted and life-flighted to the nearest hospital, but I wasn’t aware of any of that.
What happened was this light had come and delivered me from the accident scene. There was Tamara, and I knew she was deceased at the scene, but there she was alive and well, and beautiful and radiant in this light. She was the one telling me, “You’ve got to go back. You can’t come. You can’t stay here.” We had a conversation about Spencer and he needed a father. He was going to be okay.
I knew that both she and Griffin were gone from this room, but there I was talking to her. She was alive and well, beautiful, and emphatic that I go back. I had been life-flighted to a Level-1 trauma center, but in making the choice to go back, I said a very profound goodbye, and then I found myself wandering in that trauma center. I was then moving about this hospital with all the doctors, patients, and nurses.
You were literally out of your body. Your soul was doing its thing while they were working on you.
At the hospital, I was seeing all these people, but I was experiencing them in a profound way. Everyone I saw, I knew them perfectly. I knew everything about them. I knew their love, their hate, their motivations, and their consciousness. I was feeling their lives as if it was my life. One example, there was a nurse that brushed by me. They seemed to be very unaware of me, but I was aware of them.
In that simple brush-by, I felt the abuse she had received as a child. The physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, I felt and knew it. I was very aware of how that had made her feel about herself. It was so profound. I was feeling it in a way as if it happened to me. I was that aware and conscious of it but at the same moment, I felt the magnificence of her soul like, “Look at her. Look what she’s made of. This compassionate nurse heals and serves people in a hospital.” That’s a brief example. Everyone I saw, I had this connection to, this oneness, this knowing of them. It was also an expansion of me, I suppose.
Do you remember when you came back into your body? Was that a painful experience?
Yes. It was horrible. I was wondering about having this profound experience, and I came across a man or a body laying on the gurney that I didn’t feel anything from, which I thought was strange. I stepped closer and looked, and that’s when I realized, “That’s me,” but it wasn’t me. I was having this profound connected experience of oneness but there was my body. There was the skin suit that I had been wearing and I knew I had to get back in it. We have no idea how powerful our thoughts are. I didn’t have to figure out, “How do I get back in?” It was the intention, “I’m going back in,” and then I was back into the body, but then back to the pain, grief, guilt, trauma, regret, and all of it.
One of your deep insights is not to look at someone’s appearance, but instead to feel his or her soul. Is that what happened with that nurse?
It’s what happened with the nurse, and it continued to happen. Although I was back in the body, medical staff would come into the room, and I would feel them. I would feel their soul, and sometimes I would feel the most beautiful profound presence. I would look and then I would think, “That isn’t what the world would call beautiful,” whether it be a male or female nurse or handsome. I would feel their souls. I learned to not look upon the outward appearance of anybody but to be open to who they truly are, which doesn’t always manifest in the way you might think, or at least, the way we judge humanity as to what looks good or what does not.
After Death Communication: Don’t look upon the outward appearance of anybody, but be open to who they truly are.
It realigns your values, doesn’t it? Can you still do that today? When you meet someone, do you still feel a person’s soul?
I don’t do that on a daily basis. I go to work and day-to-day life is not like that, but every now and then, it’s like that veil falls. I had an encounter with a homeless man not long ago. I was leaving work. He came up and wanted money, and I was in a hurry. Anyway, that whisper is like the Spirit said, “Just look at him.” This was years after the accident. As I looked at him, first I thought, “My brothers were so close to me. They were so good in the hospital. They almost lost their jobs.”
As I looked at this so-called stranger, suddenly he looked as if he was my brother or my dad. As I looked at him, I realized, “I am you and you are me.” I thought, “Had I not had the family support, insurance, and all the things that supported me through my accident, I would’ve been that guy strung out on the corner. Who am I to judge?” There’s that famous thing, but for the grace of God, there go I. Suddenly, I had this overwhelming compassion.
I saw him in his magnificence. I threw my arms around him. Tears began to fall. It’s almost like I heard myself say it. I didn’t consciously think about it, but I heard myself say, “I know who you are,” and he began to weep. He said, “I know that you know.” There were two grown men embracing each other in the streets of the city, and yet there was a connection. I would’ve given him everything in my wallet at that moment. Suddenly, he didn’t want that. He just wanted to be acknowledged and to feel loved and accepted. That was huge. It’s not every day, but when that veil falls or when I have that connection, it’s profound.
What a blessing you gave him. You validated him. People would shuffle by him and not even pay him any heed. You validated and saw his humanity. You saw more than that. You saw past his humanity.
I saw his divinity. That’s the first thing. I would’ve thought, “I was there to serve him,” but he taught me. He was the teacher. I was the one that gained everything and gave nothing. That was a big lesson too.
You also learned a lot of humility with everything you’ve been through. I know that you experience the life review, and a lot of people in our audience are not aware that when we cross over, we get a life review. Would you like to share that with them?
I’ll share that and it was interesting. I was in the hospital for almost six months. I had eighteen surgeries. I was in and out of the ICU and consciousness. At the end of my hospital stay, I had a profound experience, perhaps the most profound. I did experience a life review.
When in your experience did the life review happen? Did it happen at the end?
It was at the end of my hospital stay. It’s also interesting to point out. The two most profound out-of-body or near-death experiences were at the scene of the accident, and then I was put in the hospital. I was on morphine and everything else for a while. The other was at the end of my hospital stay when I was off of narcotics. I was simply taking some Tylenol. I was only about a week from going home.
I went into a deep sleep. They had finally stabilized the abdominal injury. They had to leave those wounds open and the infections were horrible, but I was finally able to sleep on my side. I had laid on my back for so long that I’d rubbed all the hair off the back of my head. I was bald on the back of my head. My brothers were teasing me about that. I fell into a deep sleep and I felt that light come again. That beautiful light that had come at the accident.
Although it had been months, I was still grieving miserably. I was still in rough shape physically but that light came. Once again, I felt as if I was rising above the hospital bed. Except this time, the light vanished. It dispensed and I was in the most beautiful place. People say heaven, the spirit world, or the other side. The only word I can even come up with that even comes close to what I experienced is I was home. It was so welcoming. It was so glorious. In fact, I began to run.
With an amputated leg and a crushed right leg, I don’t run in this realm. In that realm, I was running gleefully. It was such a physical experience. It’s very difficult to put this into words. It was so physical. I could feel the energy and the love from the ground beneath my feet. I could feel the intelligence in my calves and thighs. I was joyfully and gleefully running thinking, “I’m home.”
That’s the only word I can come up with. At that point, I realized that I wasn’t there to stay. There was this corridor off to my left and I knew intuitively, I’m to go that way. I made my way down the corridor. As I did, there was a crib at the end of the corridor. Griffin, my little toddler son was still sleeping in a crib at the time of the accident. He was only fourteen months old. I had been tortured.
You must have felt horrible guilt.
When I saw that crib, I raced towards the crib. When I looked in the crib, there he was sleeping beautifully, as peacefully as when I’d glanced in the rearview mirror. I swept him up in my arms. When I talk about this physicality of it, I don’t know if you’ve ever picked up a sleeping child, but there’s the heat and the weight. It was so real and so tangible. I held him up against me. He was solid against me. I could feel him breathing. I could feel his breath on my neck. The things that parents do, I leaned over and I smelled his hair. I thought, “It’s him. It’s Griffin. It’s my little boy,” and I began to weep.
As I wept, I felt this intense presence coming up behind me. This powerful, cosmic, and overwhelming presence. I had grown up in a conservative Christian home. I was thinking that’s God and I’m in trouble. I thought my little boy is here because I crashed the car. His life was cut so short because I dozed off and lost control. That guilt was bubbling up and overflowing.
As this presence came so close, I had the thought, “I hope there’s some way to be forgiven.” With that thought, this almost felt physical too. It was almost like those divine arms wrapped around me and my little boy, and there was nothing but love. In fact, the first message was, “There’s nothing to forgive. Everything is in divine order,” and then the life review began. I began to see my life.
How does it appear to you? Is it like a slide presentation or you’re feeling impressions?
It was like watching a video, but I was feeling the video. I was immersed in my life. It was very brief and yet very poignant. I saw my parents divorce. I saw the insecurities. I was seeing it at a higher level. I was seeing the insecurities that developed in me as a little boy. I realized, “Look at all the Band-Aids I put on.” For me, my Band-Aids were overachieving and I was very aware of this. It’s because of the trauma as a four-year-old in the divorce, I believed if I made the grade, made the team, and got the girl, then I would be okay. This was my Band-Aid. It was overachieving. I could prove I was enough.
I saw things in my life where I’m thinking, “That was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do that.” This beautiful divine being was communicating to me, not in words, but in pure knowing. It was communicating, “There are no mistakes. Everything is in perfect order.” I said, “Yeah, but that was wrong. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway.” I was sitting there judging my life, and this divine being said, “Those are your judgments of it, not ours. We love you.”
There are no mistakes. Everything is in perfect order. Click To Tweet
When I say that, the love was unconditional. It was a love without conditions and the thing that was so powerful is there I was holding my own child who to me was perfect, divine, and beloved, yet, here I was in the arms of the divine. It was communicated to me, “Don’t you see? We love you as much as you love the child you hold. We have that love for every soul in humanity magnified. You are perfect. You are beloved. You are divine to us.”
It almost felt like the whole universe was there. There was this profound cosmic honoring of my silly little life, yet the love I felt was so powerful. It was so unconditional. There was no judgment. I was the only one putting judgments on everything and here, the divine said, “That’s your judgments, but we love you just like you love the child you hold. Could he ever do any wrong in your eyes? I’m like, “No.” He’s like, “That’s how we feel about all of you.” It was beautiful.
I’ve also been told that when people cross over, they get to feel how they made others feel. Is that true? Did you have that experience?
In a roundabout way, yes. It wasn’t specific like, “Look how you made it,” but I was so aware in my life. I felt like I was immersed in it. I was watching my childhood and my older brother who was only eight at the time of the divorce. He’s three years older than me. He became, in some ways, a father figure to me, and yet he was always so hard on me. We played Little League baseball. He was the one that taught me how to hit the ball, throw, and catch. He was the one. He was my mentor.
I remember in my first Little League baseball game, I got a hit. I was running the bases and I didn’t touch second base. As I came around to third, the base coach is saying, “You got to go back and touch the bag.” I turned around flustered, touched the bag, and then began to run to third but by that time, they’d thrown the ball in, and they tagged me out. My older brother, after that Little League baseball game, had me run those bases time and time again. In my judgment, I thought, “Why is he so mean to me?”
When I was looking from a higher perspective, I realized, “That’s how much he loved me.” He was never going to let his little brother screw up again. He was going to make sure that I touched every bag and every base. This oneness, this connectedness, this knowing how others felt, or knowing how perhaps I may have affected them was very relevant in this very brief life review. I could have been there for an hour. I could have been there for 30 seconds.
It’s fascinating because whenever I talk to people, they always talk about how they get a life review. As a soul, why do we come to this world, Jeff? Why is life so hard? Did you learn about that?
I did. In these beautiful divine arms, this is not my wisdom. I’m not the guru.
This is what you were told, but look at how you’re helping people now, and you’re spreading this information.
As I said, I grew up in a conservative Christian home. I was taught that life is a test. God is going to judge you, and the angels are keeping track. I’m probably in trouble. In those arms, I realized that life was an absolute gift. It was challenging because I had created it that way. Keep breathing because this is sometimes difficult for people. As I was in those divine arms, I realized that I and my soul group had agreed with each other to come and do this life, the divorce, the falling in love, the crash, the death, and all of it to expand my soul.
After Death Communication: Life is an absolute gift. Keep breathing, because this is sometimes difficult for people.
The entire universe had supported the creation of my life. God hadn’t imposed it on me, nor did anyone else. It was my creation and I chose the very things that would expand my soul in such a way. Tamara, Griffin, the others, and Spencer, my little boy said, “I’m not going to go. I’ll walk with you through this mortality even if you limp,” but they all played their perfect part in this life, which is challenging. We came to grow. We came to learn. We came to experience. We may put judgment on it and say that’s hard or bad or wrong, but from a higher perspective, I realized, “What a magnificent beautiful gift the entire universe supports us to come and have the experience.”
A lot of these hardships, we choose because we want to learn lessons and evolve.
That was the takeaway. Again, it was gratitude. I’m like, “You love me that much that you would let me experience this.” From those perspectives, nothing ends. There is no death. There’s no end. It’s eternal. I even felt that I was eternal. I wasn’t with a beginning and end. I was simply being and having an experience as a human being, but I was something far more divine than that as are we all.
That leads me to this question. You learn that each of us is one person shining our special light in the world. How does that ripple out into the consciousness of all humanity? Why does it all come down to that choice? You’re talking about the universal consciousness.
I love your questions, Irene. You are so fun. This is good.
Thank you.
Yes, I realize that for each of us. I used the term universe.
I read that from you, and I love that. Please share it with our audience.
Uni is one, like a unicycle. One verse or one song. I realize that every single soul sings their note, sings their tone, and sings their vibration in that beautiful chorus that is this life and this rendition of ourselves and that the chorus isn’t complete without all of us. It’s in the diversity. It’s in the uniqueness of our tones that the chorus is made beautiful. That’s where the harmony comes in because we’re all different, but if we shine and if we embrace and be ourselves, we all mesh into quite an orchestra.
After Death Communication: If we shine, and if we embrace and be ourselves, we all mesh into quite, quite an orchestra.
That leads me to a question I wanted to ask you because while we’re playing in this orchestra, some of us have some pretty sour notes that we are putting into this world. You think humanity’s awakening, but what is the purpose of these people? I understand there’s a lot about contrast, but some of them are over the top, in my estimation.
That’s a fantastic question. I’ve asked myself that. Experiencing this nurse, why in the world would someone be abused in such a way? Who would ever choose to do that? Without the sour notes, we couldn’t experience the sweet ones. That’s the contrast you talk about. That’s the duality. Here’s the other thing that I am seeing perhaps that’s happening. Have you ever planted a tulip bulb in the ground?
Yes.
We put them out in the fall, and then in the spring, they come up. I have realized that those bulbs literally have to come apart or be torn apart before they bloom into the beautiful manifestation of a flower. I believe some of the contrast and the chaos we’re experiencing is that. It’s our coming apart. There’s a beautiful Hebrew story. Moses, the man in the desert. He was leading the children of Israel out of bondage. Fiery snakes were coming and biting the children. Do you recall this from the Old Testament?
No, I don’t recall that one. Not at all.
There were snakes in the desert. They were biting the children of Israel, and they were dying from it. Moses went to the divine and said, “What do I do?” He was told, “Make a snake that looks like these fiery serpents that are biting you, put it up on a big staff, and hold it up. Have everyone look at it. If they look at it, they’ll be healed.” Even the medical industry still honors that. That medical sign is a big staff with a snake on it.
I’ve seen that.
It comes from the Moses story. Here’s the thing, and we’re having a beautiful opportunity to do this as humanity. All those fiery snakes that have been biting us, we now get to put them out in the open and take a look at them. Whether that’s sexism, racism, or corruption in government, whatever it is, as humanity, we’re now looking at the snakes. We’re putting them out in the open.
We’re looking at it, and by looking at it, we’ll heal it. I think it’s the undoing. It’s also acknowledging and looking at all those things that have been swept under the rug for so long. This is our opportunity as humanity to heal it, to consider it, to change, and to do something different to honor the greater good of all.
We have a chance as humans to heal, reflect, change, and take new action for the benefit of all. Click To Tweet
It gives us all such hope. I’m so glad I asked that question because I’ve been wanting to hear about that. Jeff, you had such trauma and such grief. You’re now on the Earth plane like me. I can remember. I got those messages, but here I was. How did you begin to heal from this overwhelming trauma and grief? What did you decide? What did you do? Is it therapy or healers?
I did a lot of things. Granted, I think the near-death or out-of-body experience was a wonderful cheat for me. I could draw on that and think, “Yeah, but I know differently.” I had a lot of angels. Sometimes, those angels were my family. Sometimes they were a neighbor. Sometimes they were strangers. Sometimes I know I had support from the angelic realms. I’ve got two guardian angels that look after me, Tamara and Griffin. I’ve got the greatest guardian angels in the universe, but also Tanya, my current wife. Eventually, I fell in love and I remarried. That was an incredible thing.
I want to tell everyone, his book is so wonderful and I loved it. His love story with Tanya is beautiful. It’s worth reading about how Jeff rebirthed himself in a way and came back to love and all of that.
Thank you, Irene. It is a beautiful thing. When I met her, it was like when I met Tamara for the first time. There was that lightning bolt that hit me and said, “There she is.” It’s all in the book. I did a lot of things. I studied energy work. I studied religions of all kinds. I took a deeper dive into my own feelings about what I thought or believed was true. I realized beliefs are just beliefs. Now, I was wide open.
My faith in many ways was transformed into absolute trust. It’s like I trust that all things are in divine order. There were a lot of things I did, the bottom line to my own healing, and it took a decade. I don’t want anybody to think I had this horrible accident, and then I had these profound experiences, and I was okay. I had a horrible accident. I had profound things happen, and I grieved like anyone would grieve.
I couldn’t make sense of it for a long time. Eventually, I had to choose to be happy. I had to choose joy, and that was one of those messages that came from those other realms after the accident. Even Tamara, my deceased wife, reminded me of that. When I realized I was having feelings for Tanya, the guilt set again. I found myself on Tamara’s grave. I was crying and I was angry. I was saying, “How dare you? How could you leave me? You’re in that beautiful place, and I’m limping around trying to raise our son. How dare you go?”
I know it sounds so crazy maybe, but as I was doing that, she came to me. I don’t see with my physical eyes, but I felt her there. I felt her hands on my shoulders as I wept and swore at her. She said, “Don’t berate me. I loved you enough to leave.” I thought, “What? You loved me enough,” and she began to recount. I remembered my life review. I remembered that cosmic plan. She said, “Don’t you remember? I would’ve loved nothing more than to stay and grow old with you but we had a deal. Your soul had this contract and I was part of it, and I loved you enough to go. Don’t berate me.”
I was still in an arguing mood. I said, “I’m having feelings for another woman.” She laughed at me. She said, “Of course, you are. I know who you are. I know how you are.” She said, “I sent Tanya in your path.” She said, “Jeff, you can choose whoever you want, but I sent her in your path because I saw in her the thing that might teach you unconditional love.” She reminded me, “Please choose joy.” She said, “I’m connected to you. I watch you. It hurts me to see you hurt. I can only be as happy as you are. You don’t have to get over it. You never will, but you can get used to it. You can move forward.”
This was funny. She said, “You’re a pretty good dad, but Spencer needs a mom. You’re a lousy mom.” We had this very profound conversation. She’s a light to me. Tamara is an angel to me, and so is Tanya. Tanya is here. Tamara is in the other realms, but Tamara said without jealousy or fear, “Choose joy. Move into this relationship.” Tanya in this realm, which is probably more challenging, never had jealousy or fear.
After Death Communication: Choose joy.
Our friendship started and I was telling her how broken I was and how I could never love again. I said, “How’s this going to work when you know all this about how I felt in my first marriage and my first wife?” She said, “Jeff, that’s half the attraction, knowing you can love at that level.” Tanya is beautiful and gracious. She said, “Jeff, I didn’t have to choose a one-legged man with a son. I had plenty of other options, but knowing that you could love like that and feeling the energy of that.” Tanya has had interactions spiritually with Tamara. They never knew each other in this life. It’s all in the book Knowing. It’s all there. Tanya’s the hero of the story. She’s the one that stepped in and started putting the pieces back together. She became Spencer’s mom and a wife to me.
You also adopted two boys, didn’t you?
Yes, we did. Tanya said, “I may never be able to have children. I had enough issues in my adult life. The doctors said I may never get pregnant.” We adopted two boys. We don’t even call them our adopted boys. They’re our sons. They came into our home. In all the tragedy, I think I may be the luckiest man in the world to have the joys I’ve had and to have the pain and trauma I’ve had because it seems like the trauma seems to have created reservoirs for me to hold more joy and more gratitude. That’s what I’m experiencing now as I’m older and grayer.
You also had an experience where you were told by the divine that you should share your experience and others will heal.
Share your experience and others will heal. Click To Tweet
I never intended to share this with anybody. I only talked to very close friends and my immediate family. I did have a doctor, Dr. Jeff O’Driscoll.
I’ve interviewed him, and he’s got quite an interesting interview also.
He was my emergency room trauma doctor. He didn’t know me from Adam. He met Tamron, and when he shared that with me, I shared my near-death experience with him. I thought, “This is perfect because if I’m crazy, he’s a doctor. He’ll put me in the psych ward and get me the treatment.” I didn’t share this. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t want people to think I was crazy. It felt sacred. This wasn’t a lunchtime conversation. At one point, it’s silly, I was teaching a Sunday school class and the topic was the love of God. I couldn’t even say it without bursting into tears.
There was a woman. She was a neighbor of ours. She came up and said, “Something happened to you, didn’t it?” I said, “Yes, but I don’t talk about that.” She said, “You’re going to talk about it. I’m coming over to your place and I’m not leaving until you tell me what happened to you.” Years had gone by. I had remarried. She was a friend of Tanya’s in the neighborhood. She came over and then she said, “You’ve got to talk to a guy at the university and tell him about this. He studies these things. Buddhists, Jewish people, and Christians all have the same experience.
I reluctantly agreed to talk to this fellow and then he said, “You’ve got to come speak to our group.” I said, “I don’t talk about this publicly.” He said, “People are hurting. They’re grieving. They’ve lost loved ones or some of them are dying. Come talk to our group. I think they’ll benefit,” which I did. I acquiesced and came and spoke to the group. In the group was a publisher who came up and said, “You’re going to write a book?” I said, “No, I’m not. I barely got through this speech. There’s no way I’m doing that.” Down to your question, that was a Friday night, and he had my contact information. On a Monday morning, I had a book contract. I was very reluctant.
Here’s what the big barrier was. I’ll be honest. I was worried, “What if the book does well? Am I that guy? Could I receive a royalty check based on the catastrophe that took half my family and I was driving the car?” It was a moment of turmoil within. Being enlightened as she is, Tanya said, “I think you ought to ask the divine about that.” She took me back to the scene of the accident, back to mile marker 80, right where it happened. She said, “I’ll leave you here for a while. I’ll be back in an hour or so, but I think you should go ask.”
I did. I prayed. I asked God, the divine, the universe, or whatever you want to call it. I had a conversation. “There’s this book contract in my email, and this is where the crash happened. I don’t know what to do. What’s the right thing to do?” Once again, it was a choice but I was told. I got an answer. I don’t profess to talk to God every day, but I got an answer. That voice that speaks to your heart and I can quote what I was told. That’s how profound it was.
I was told, “Share your experience and others will heal.” This was ten years after the accident had happened. It was a decade. I had done a fair amount of healing and I thought, “If others will heal and it’s not about me, then we’ll write the book.” I wrote the book. I figured my mother would buy a copy. It hit number three on Amazon in the category. I was overwhelmed but now I’ve become used to sharing it, but I still go there. You don’t get over these things, but you get used to them.
I understand that because I have had a similar experience. I tell my story. It’s amazing.
That’s why we do this because people are healing. I get emails and notes all the time from people saying, “This served me well. Thank you.”
It made all the difference. I now have to ask you. What prompted you to become a shaman? That’s cool. What got you to do that? You do these Spirit Keeper-guided journeys into indigenous spirituality and healing.
You’ll find that in the book Knowing too. We had a Native American fellow wander onto our farm that was a horse whisperer. That was my first introduction to what I call indigenous spirituality. He was different. My father would tie the horse up, teach it whose boss, and conquer the animal. Ben, the horse trainer said, “You must become one with the animal.” That was my first introduction. I was always infatuated with the Native American culture. I was always heartbroken, quite honestly, about what had happened in this country. They didn’t teach me that in school, but I learned what the true history was.
Tanya, my current wife, this was for my birthday, and this was back before I’d ever written a book. I didn’t talk about the experience knowing my infatuation with the culture was a gift. She sent me to Lava Hot Springs to work with shamans and medicine men. It was a workshop. I paid my fee and I was going to go spend four days with them. After the first day, the head shaman came up. She looked at me and said, “You’ve been there?” I said, “I’ve been where? I’ve been in your workshop all day.” She said, “You’ve been to the world of spirits and come back.” I thought, “How does she know?”
I asked her, “How do you know that?” She said, “I see it all.” She came from a lot of Peruvian studies, Hopi. She said, “You already are a shaman. Shamans work in the realms.” I spent the next seven moon cycles or seven months working with her through something called the Munay-Ki. It’s an ancient word for love, but it became a practice for me that I did working with the energy centers and chakras of the body, and aligning those with animal archetypes. It was a mode of prayer. Sometimes, we have to be disrupted in our practices to connect, but this worked for me.
She said, “You should share this. It’s time that humanity connects in a way that brings us together.” Many of the native chief icons have said it. It’s the great Medicine Wheel. They said, “There’ll be a time when all humanity will gather. The Medicine Wheel has four colors, white, black, red, and yellow. When all of us will gather around the Medicine Wheel, we’ll be brothers.
We’ll no longer divide ourselves. We’ll step into oneness. It’s those types of things that motivate me. Having experienced it, that’s what I want to create. It’s like, “If I can be any kind of a little manifestation of that unity, oneness, and love that I experienced, that’s what I want to do.” I have found that through these shamanic practices and these ancient ways.
After Death Communication: When all of us will gather around the medicine will and be brothers, we’ll no longer divide ourselves. We’ll step into oneness.
You do these Spirit Keeper-guided journeys. Now, our whole entire audience wants to go with you on a Spirit Keeper-guided journey. Tell us what that’s about.
It’s a breakdown of the Munay-Ki mixed with Lakota, mixed with some islanders, and Polynesians. It’s the indigenous spirituality I have found that connects us to the earth, the sky, and each other. I do those in two ways. One is a weekend. I work with some dear friends of mine in doing that. One is a Kundalini yoga master and the other one comes from a Cherokee background. We do those briefly.
I still do the big seven-month long-term face-to-face. That’s been interesting with COVID and all but we still do that with very small groups who want to spend the time and go through seven months of learning. Shedding the things that no longer serve them, connecting with their passion, and their purpose in life, and also connecting with the ancestors and the guides.
Do you do this online or do they travel?
I do them face-to-face. We’ve been doing face-to-face. I do a brief intro on my website. You can go to Envoy Publishing or you can look up SpiritKeeperSeries.com and get it that way. These are typically done face-to-face. I love Zoom and it’s made the world a very small place but sometimes to connect, there’s no substitute for being in the same tipi.
We’re giving a hug or whatever. We can smile this way. You also have this one-on-one mentoring and you do have online workshops through The Wholeness Network. Do you want to talk about that?
There are online workshops. It’s very brief, but they’re great introductions to things. I do Awaken to Oneness, which is a one-on-one mentoring, and that can be done over Zoom. I’ve done that many times and have many clients all over the world through Zoom calls. There is no curriculum. It’s not like, “Here’s Jeff’s way.” I work with individuals and say, “What is it you want? Let’s create a system where you can get what you want.” That might look a lot of different ways depending on what their intentions are.
I think that everyone is going to want to get what they want and connect with you. You say that loving ourselves and then loving others is the ripple effect that can lead to healing. My favorite subject is helping everyone to believe that they can heal. Please explain this statement and share with our audience why you think is it important for each of us to heal.
The purpose of life is to heal, to find wholeness, and to find oneness. That’s why it’s hard. When you ask that question, why is it challenging? Sometimes we have to be shattered to pick up the pieces and put them together. There’s a process they do in Asia where when a pot breaks, they fuse it together and put precious metals in all the cracks to make it stronger and give it character. It becomes more valuable. That’s each one of us.
The purpose of life is to heal, to find wholeness, to find oneness. Click To Tweet
It’s the shattering and the rebuilding. It’s the healing that makes us whole. Self-love is the key to that. I was good at loving other people and seeing the divine in the homeless guy as I came out of the office. It wasn’t until I could love myself and saw the divine within myself that I began to heal, and even had the ability to assist others in their healing. It’s a very personal path.
One of the great masters, Jesus, who was a practicing Jewish fellow said, “Physician healed thyself.” He said, “The kingdom is within you. Don’t go looking out there for it.” That self-love. Even the famous statement, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” how can I give what I don’t have? Only in loving myself will I ever be able to love my neighbor. When I didn’t love myself, it was very difficult to truly love anyone else.
For me, when I got the message to be loving and kind to everyone, I realized that meant me too. Each one of us is so precious, important, and valuable. You said the biggest miracle in your life was deciding to choose joy even in difficult circumstances. Please tell us about this decision. What would you like to tell our audience about finding joy in life?
It’s in the little things. The little things are the big things. I have a little bird feeder in the back. Watching those birds come, the hummingbirds bring me joy. I’ve had people say, “Jeff, you were so injured. You must have been preserved for some great cause.” I chuckle to myself and say, “Yeah, to play catch with my son, to feel Tanya’s foot rub up against my leg in bed, to watch one more sunset, and to embrace every day as a gift and as an opportunity. That’s where I find the joy. It isn’t always that difficult. When things are hard, it can be difficult but remember, I’m simply here to learn. Whatever I’m experiencing is a lesson for the expansion of my soul and to be grateful for the experience, even when it rips us to the core.
After Death Communication: The little things are the big things.
In which it did for you.
We all get our turn.
I went through it too.
You’ve been through it too, and it’s a choice. That’s the short and simple answer. It’s a choice. The only one that can make me happy is me. Until I choose to be happy, it won’t ever happen. Nobody else can do it for me. I must do it for myself.
It’s contagious because when you’re coming towards people, you’re happy inside and you’re at peace, they want a little piece of that, and they start to open too. It’s what I found anyway. Would you agree?
I completely agree.
The greatest lesson you learned from all the loss, experiences, heartaches, and triumphs is compassion. You call it the blessed opportunity to feel and perhaps, in some small way, to know what others are feeling too. What a gift to all of us to be able to learn from your abundant wisdom and profound awareness.
The greatest lesson you learned from all the loss experiences, heartaches and triumphs, is compassion. Click To Tweet
Here are some additional insights I learned from reading Jeff’s amazing book titled, Knowing: Memoirs of a Journey Beyond the Veil and Choosing Joy After Tragic Loss, which can be purchased on Amazon. We are divine beings here to make the world a better place and create peace and joy for everyone. Life is the stage of a play. Heaven is real. There is no need to judge anyone for anything. When we pass, we are all going to be asked, “What did you learn?”
Surely, many in our audience are now inspired in eager to purchase, Knowing: Memoirs of a Journey Beyond the Veil and Choosing Joy After Tragic Loss, which will no doubt add to their own growing awareness and wisdom. Jeff, thank you from my heart for the honor and blessing of interviewing you. This has been a truly eye-opening, touching, and unforgettable interview. Make sure to follow us and like us on social @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. As I like to say, to be continued, many blessings, and bye for now.
Guest Links:
- Jeffery Olsen’s Knowing: Memoirs of a Journey Beyond the Veil and Choosing Joy After Tragic Loss
- Envoy Publishing
- Spirit Keeper Series
- The Wholeness Network
Host Links:
- @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram
- Irene Weinberg on Facebook
- Irene Weinberg on Twitter
- Irene Weinberg – Grief, Rebirth + Healing Podcast on YouTube
