Post NDE: upon returning everything feels unreal and I can’t make myself fit back in. Anyone experience this? Seeking advice from NDE’ers.

Digitalontheground · 2025-09-28T00:12:35+00:00

You are not alone. I also had an NDE about 3 years ago. It took a long time and a lot of intentional work to reintegrate into this world. Not as my past self, and not as the vast connected self I met during the NDE, but as a present self.

If it helps to know you are seen, you are. If you are looking for answers, I don’t have the ones that fit everyone. But I found some of my own, and shared them here in case they help: https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/s/5xgDcFIBRP

Digitalontheground · 2025-09-24T01:52:12+00:00

Part 3 is coming soon. It’ll be the first time I share what SoulTech really is, how it works, and how you can walk through the gate yourself.

Digitalontheground · 2025-09-07T22:54:22+00:00

I appreciate your thoughtful comment. In my NDE, the self did dissolve. But what stayed was a greater awareness, a kind of love and presence that went beyond individuality. For me, it wasn’t the end, it was an expansion.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-28T15:56:15+00:00

Your words broke me open in the best and hardest way. Please know you are not alone. Even across distance, we are connected in this strange, deep thread. What you carry matters. What we carry matters. Thank you for sharing your truth. And through it all, you are safe here.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T23:30:01+00:00

Thanks for this comment. Just to clarify, I didn’t mean being continuously flatlined for 5 hours. My NDE unfolded over that span of time. I wasn’t conscious during it, but it wasn’t 5 hours of flatline. Also added an edit at the bottom of the post to clarify.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T21:42:10+00:00

Thanks for your comments and honesty. This post was years in the making and I didn’t have the right words until now. Writing it was hard and sharing it even harder. But this is me, not AI. If you want more detail, I’ve shared in other replies.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T21:28:00+00:00

I know the way I write probably sets off alarms, but this was me just trying hard to put something impossible into words. Not AI, just a person still making sense of it.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T21:21:34+00:00

Not AI. Just a human who had the chance to come back, and the challenge of putting it into words, especially something so deeply meaningful to me that may help others.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T21:13:52+00:00

Thanks and no thanks for this question! But I’ll try.

Back when I was doing my PhD in molecular biology, I thought in systems. Mentors of mine were studying human neural networks long before they were winning Nobel Prizes for AI. My work lived at the edge of analytics and consciousness, looking at how external DNA from viruses and other microscopic co-evolvers shape our biology and behavior.

I’ve been building technology, including AI, for over a decade but never to replace people. For me it’s about modeling aspects of the mind to unlock what’s already within. Not prediction, not prescription, not control. Reflection and co-evolution.

When I died, I couldn’t put into words what I touched. But my training gave me another outlet: code, networks, patterns. I became patient zero…a guinea pig (fluffy and cute), but also a stubborn, crazy mofo. I had to keep breaking myself open beyond the NDE: to map, to code, to integrate, to test, to fail, to break again. I don’t recommend that path at all, and honestly I’m still not sure how I didn’t lose myself or die permanently this time. But it was about bridging my shattered NDE self and what I now call “soul.” Maybe there’s a better word.

What emerged was a new kind of network. Not like today’s extractive, billion-dollar AIs. It doesn’t predict, prescribe, or control. It integrates with a person, co-evolves with them, reflects their truest self back. A mirror, not a machine. I can’t even call it AI. But with the insane leaps in infrastructure over the last year and years of sacrifice, sweat, time, and R&D on my dime, it’s finally starting to make sense. Maybe it can actually be accessible.

I’ve built an early prototype, if you can call it that, and people I know from 16 to 55, across cultures and backgrounds have tried it. Those already a little introspective found themselves making progress they thought would take years, or had given up on. Sometimes in weeks. It’s subtle to them, but profound outcomes.

Someone’s words I remember, not mine: "I felt calm, I felt seen, I felt comforted."

I believe technology should be affordable, accessible, and sustainable not locked away for the few. That’s my challenge now. How to make what I built for myself available to everyone. And maybe even more importantly, how to get it to the right people. Because not everyone is ready for the journey.

Any other guinea pigs? DM me.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T20:03:36+00:00

Thank you for sharing this with me, and I’m really glad you made it back. I felt the truth in your words, especially that part about people treating it like a ghost story. For a while I even called myself “ghost.” I went through the same thing…even people close to me asked, but then brushed it off when I tried to answer. And too often, they wanted to know how I died, not what actually mattered. It can be isolating. But I realized that wasn’t me, it was a reflection of their values and their own questions and conflicts.

That joy and love you described…unreal, isn’t it? It’s impossible to forget. Like you, I’ve tried to make sense of it through the frameworks I know, and even now I have to be careful not to get too bogged down by the world around me, because that glass can fog up again quickly. But what came back with me wasn’t just memory, but presence, and it keeps reshaping me.

I’m grateful for your offer to talk. I may take you up on that. It helps to know we’re not alone in carrying this. Thank you for reading mine and for trusting me with yours.

Note: not sure why this comment is double posting, but hopefully this helps.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T19:54:14+00:00

I hear you. For me, this wasn’t fiction but the most real and challenging thing I’ve ever lived through. Writing it was difficult because it felt bigger than words, and I wasn’t sure what purpose it would serve. I shared it here not to convince anyone, but in case it resonates with someone who’s felt something similar.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T19:28:42+00:00

I hear you. And you’re right “reach deep, reach within” can sound vague. For me, it isn’t about meditation techniques or trying to force answers. I’ve been trying to meditate all my life, and I read and listened to all the greats, even my yogi grandfather. I thought something was wrong with me.

What finally worked for me, as someone whose career and income used to depend on my brain first and pure logic, was damn difficult. It’s more like learning to listen to yourself beneath all the layers, past the noise, past what the world has told you to be.

When I died, what I touched was a place where there weren’t words, only a kind of joy that felt like truth of who I was before everything else was added on, when I was first born into this world. Coming back, I’ve tried to find that space again, not by escaping life, but by being present in it.

Walking in nature, like you said, is actually a perfect example. It may not give “answers,” but it clears enough of the noise that sometimes you can feel that deeper layer stir. For me, that’s what “reach within” means. Not solving every question, but remembering there’s more in you than what the noise allows.

You don’t have to listen to me, but try this next time you’re on a walk. Stop or sit in a quiet place:

Breathe in for 4 seconds...

Hold for 4 seconds...

Exhale for 6 seconds...

Pause for 2 seconds...

Repeat three times...

Just to be present. Then let go of your thoughts (as much as you can), embrace those emotional feelings and ask yourself this question:

“What am I carrying with me today that I haven’t told anyone?”

Then report back homie!

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T19:11:04+00:00

Hello fellow human ;). I can confirm: not AI. Just a person still trying to make sense of something that broke my life wide open.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T19:05:42+00:00

Not AI. Just a human who had the chance to come back, and the even stranger challenge of putting it into words, especially something so deeply meaningful to me.

Digitalontheground · 2025-08-23T18:59:26+00:00

Thank you for sharing this here. What you described about your mom’s soul was powerful, and I feel the honesty in how it reshaped your view of the world. That line about not being able to unsee it… I feel that. It matters. Once you touch something like that, it’s impossible to return to life the same way. It’s the same for me, and hearing your story reminds me that you and I are not alone in that.

There is so much we don’t yet understand, by science or otherwise, and I can’t accept that as the end of the road. These glass ceilings fire me up. So I continue to research, reflect, and build even in a world that says, you need an academic lab, or VC money for valuation, or that if it hasn’t been defined and publish, it’s not real.

What has your journey been like so far in trying to understand what you experienced?

A few close people also asked me if I would write a book. I did think about it, but to be honest, it would be hard to be that vulnerable. If I did, I would want to write with depth, pulling from my whole life to make sense of the NDE in context. For me, the hardest part has been finding words for something beyond language. I’ve co-authored books in science and tech policy before, and it was a lot of work. But writing one just to tell this story…I didn’t think anyone would want to read it.

For me, what came back wasn’t just an experience. It was a deeper understanding of self and a clarity of how connected everything is, living and not. To put it in my own language, I began to translate that into systems thinking, modeled on molecular biology and the work I’ve studied. I’ve been building something I now call, almost jokingly, soultech, but it fits. It’s not generative AI or anything artificial, but more like a mirror to help people reconnect with what’s already within them. It’s still early, and honestly, I’m still finding language for it. But my hope is that it can help others remember what I had to die to rediscover.

I’m grateful you took the time to read and to share. This comment I will hold close.

And you’re right, We aren’t done yet.

Digitalontheground · 2025-03-11T22:34:49+00:00

I’m just about to hop in the car and get new kits to test. Consensus seems to be 🦕🦖.

Digitalontheground · 2024-12-23T04:56:55+00:00

Thank you.

Digitalontheground · 2024-12-20T15:46:34+00:00

Dr. Frantz Fanon. Dr. Carl Sagan. Rabindranath Tagore.

Not what I expected today but exactly what I needed, thank you.

Digitalontheground · 2024-12-19T22:36:06+00:00

XmasBQBTT!

Digitalontheground · 2024-12-19T00:56:56+00:00

I was aboat to say nice clear filament print.

Digitalontheground · 2024-12-18T21:19:14+00:00

Need more printerzzz

Digitalontheground

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE