Ingrid Honkala: And I went on to the other side of the
tank where there was this thin edge and I was like
leaning there so precariously but hey we're just having
fun so what is the danger?
And she grabbed the ball and she threw the ball but she
didn't apply enough force.
The ball fell.
And it was floating in the water, and I just thought, of
course I can grab it, and then I leaned forward, and when
I tried to grab the ball, it rolled on the surface of the
water, and I fell in the tank.
Rod Bland: My guest today is Ingrid Honkala a marine
biologist and former NASA oceanographer among her
many other accomplishments.
But more interesting to me though, is the many near death
experiences that she's had.
The first one occurring at three years old and
Ingrid is here to talk about those today.
Ingrid, welcome.
And thank you so much for coming on the show.
Ingrid Honkala: Thank you so much for having me, it's
an honor and, oh gosh, it's incredible to be able to be
here sharing with you and your audience, thank you.
Rod Bland: It's my pleasure.
I've, been having a great time reading your book actually,
and I wish I'd started a couple of days ago, cause
now I can't put it down.
I'm always in the middle of reading three or four
books, and now I've started with yours, I'm going
to have to finish it.
But you've, I've got so many questions because you've lived
such an interesting life.
I thought when I, as I was reading about your
story, you're like a modern day Lara Croft.
Does anyone ever mention Lara Croft to you when
they read your story?
Ingrid Honkala: I don't remember that.
Rod Bland: No?
Okay.
Yeah, it's, Lara Croft is a fictional character from a
video game called Tomb Raider, which was turned into a movie
and I forget the lead actress.
Anyway, that's who you reminded me of, but a real
one, not a pretend one.
So how about we start with the time that led up to your first
NDE when you were very small and then we can go from there.
Ingrid Honkala: Yes, oh.
That was the, of course, the experience that, from
that point on, opened for,
I would just say, led me to my path of spirituality,
let's call it that way, or discovering who I truly was.
And we were going to think, what, you're talking
about Ingrid when she was close to three years old?
Yes, I was a little child when my first near death
experience happened.
And it all happened in Colombia.
I was born in Bogota and there I was living with
my parents and my sisters and they would leave us
at the care of a maid.
And she was a lady that didn't pay attention to us when
my parents were not around.
And one morning they left for work and she went to
do her thing and my oldest sister and I decided let's
go play in the patio.
And no one is watching.
And then...
Once in the patio, we saw a ball and decided let's
play catch across the tank.
So the problem about this patio or the scare about it
was that there was a big tank.
And the purpose of this big tank was to collect water for
hand washing clothes, and it was like about 900 gallons of
water, so it was a big tank.
Wow.
And she and I decided, nothing less dangerous than,
let's go play in the tank!
And then, because the tank was big, we climbed the
wall with some stools, and then she sat on the flat
surface for scrubbing.
And I went on to the other side of the tank where
there was this thin edge and I was like leaning
there so precariously but hey we're just having fun
so what is the danger?
And she grabbed the ball and she threw the ball but she
didn't apply enough force.
The ball fell.
And it was floating in the water, and I just thought, of
course I can grab it, and then I leaned forward, and when
I tried to grab the ball, it rolled on the surface of the
water, and I fell in the tank.
Imagine Rod, the first feeling was, people have
the misconception that because I am from Colombia,
I come from hot weather country, but Bogota is
very high up in the Andes.
That's about I think Bogota is close to 3, 000 meters.
It was pretty cold out there, yes.
Very early in the morning, the temperature in that
tank was probably three to four degrees Celsius.
The first feeling when my body touched that water
was that sense of GASP!
This water is pretty cold.
And the next thing was that, oh, what is going on?
Why I cannot breathe.
I had never been in a pool.
We didn't have a bathtub, so I never had the
head under the water.
I didn't know that if you fall in the water, you drown.
Didn't know you couldn't breathe.
So imagine that a scare when why I cannot breathe.
And I am in that state of absolute horror when
the miracle happened.
I went from that terror...
Just like that, ah, to peace.
It was peace and calmness and serenity and like, whoa.
I didn't know what happened, but I didn't need to
escape out of the tank.
I didn't need to breathe.
I didn't need to go anywhere.
It was just peace.
And there's one thing, Rod, people always ask me,
how can you remember this?
Come on, you were just so little.
And I said, because it was so much contrast that happened
throughout the experience.
And people say, what do you mean with this
thing of contrast?
The first thing, imagine going from a state of such shock
and horror to that peace.
Second, this space was very dark.
It was an enclosed tank, it had a roof, it was made of
cement, it was early in the morning, so the last thing
I saw with my eyes open was the darkness of the space.
And the moment I went into this space of calmness and
serenity and just peace.
Light.
I saw light that came from below.
And this light was like the light of a candle, but it
was able to illuminate the whole watery surrounding.
So it was going from darkness to...
Now there is light.
The next contrast is that I live in a very noisy house.
There was sisters and cousins and dogs and birds.
And then...
The last thing also I heard with my, at the moment of
that I'm drowning in that moment of terror was my
heart beating very loud.
And I could hear in my head like boom, boom, boom, boom.
And the moment I entered into the peace, Silence.
Absolute silence, but it was that silence that came
with so much peace, Rod.
I call it the silence behind the silence, to the point
that this just didn't end there for the rest of my
life after this experience.
I craved this silence, and later in my life I would
hide into closets under the bed, go in to chapels.
I was like, I wanted that silence, and I didn't
know where to find it.
So imagine, these things are just, that, big huge about
this experience for me.
And then, this is the other thing, now I am in
the tank, I'm seeing the light, I am experiencing
the calmness, and then, I started to see bubbles.
And these bubbles were surrounded by light.
And it was by like, Oh, imagine now the child like,
Oh, this is what is going on.
And it was by looking at these bubbles that I turn
around and I saw a body suspended in the water.
And when I saw the body, it was like, oh, it
was the realisation of like, this is my body,
Rod Bland: Whoa,
Ingrid Honkala: not the sense of fear or the sense it was
like oh it was more like the sense of familiarity, it
was something like, oh this
already happened before, like it wasn't something
that I felt that was very strange to me.
And it comes the other contrast, and it was that I
was born as a very sick child.
And sometimes we will wonder why a child is sick, but in
my case it had a purpose.
And the purpose was to be able to experience
again these contrasts.
If I would have come from a body that was experiencing
complete well being, then I don't know the difference.
But coming from a body that had been unwell for
almost three years, I didn't even know how to
feel other than sick.
And then in this moment Rod, imagine I am in the state
of complete well being.
And I'm like, wow, it's new, it's good.
This feels amazing.
So the moment I saw that body, I'm like, I'm
not going back there.
And this is the other
Rod Bland: that one's done.
that.
And I had the awareness that I could do that, that, oh, I'm
not going back to the body.
And I turn around and I left the body behind.
And the moment I turn around, I started to see
flowers, and these flowers were blooming from nowhere.
And this is the other thing, it's like I lost the sense
of dimension because then now I was picked by the flowers.
And the flowers started to just carry
me, and I'm like, oh.
And I said to people, it's that, the analogy of it's like
going back to the womb, and you just, you don't have to
do anything, you're just being done, being carried, just, oh.
And then when I am just in the...
This joy, this bliss.
In just a blink like that, I appear in the
maid's room, where she was listening to the radio.
She's listening to soap operas.
And I'm looking at her from above and I'm
like, that's Maria.
And then Maria is so unaware, she's just into
her soap operas that she did not realize anything.
In another blink like that, I appear in my mom's path.
My mom didn't have a car and she had to walk and she was
close to her bus stop and it was like, I would just say
maybe about 10 minutes walk.
And then the moment that I appear, this is what, one,
validated the experience.
And two, I think that's what blows everybody's minds
away, is that the moment Rod, that I saw my mom from
above, like there floating, I said, Oh, that's mom!
She stopped.
She did not give another step.
She did not hesitate.
And she, it's like she knew at that moment something
at home is happening with one of my babies.
And I sometimes mention, and I think it's important
to mention that she had got a new job.
The ego mind or the mind is going to be more settling, oh,
I have to go to my new job.
Forget about this mind thing that is telling me to go home.
I have to say two things.
My mom was a very intuitive person.
And second, my mom listened to her intuition.
So at that moment, she stopped, turned around, and
started to run back home.
And then I'm looking at her from above and I'm
like, wondering like, why mom is running?
And then when, at that moment, I just look at
the horizon and I saw a dog, and I love animals.
And the moment I felt the sense, oh, I want
to be with this dog.
And just that desire brought me immediately
to be with the dog.
And I'm like, whoa!
And then I changed my view and I saw a park.
And in the moment I have the desire to be in the
park, I am in the park.
So now I'm like, whoa, this is so much fun!
And now I am playing this game.
And it's when I imagine, it's that realization
that anything I knew about time and space changed.
And now I could be anywhere at any time, and I'm
like, having so much fun.
And it's like having fun playing like, this
game of going places.
And then when I'm like having fun, I'm playing
like, in another flash.
It was like, everything in this experience was
like in a blink like that.
I appeared in a realm.
And this realm was made of pure, bright,
intense, shiny light.
And that was the first time in almost my three years of
life that I felt, I am home.
I'm finally home.
And it was that sense of, again, familiarity.
And home is that sense where you, the place where
you feel embraced, and you feel welcome, and you feel
hugged, and you feel good, and I'm like, oh gosh,
it's so good to be home.
And then...
Something amazing happened at that moment.
Although I had seen my body suspended in the water up
to this point, I didn't have the realization, the clarity
that was not who I was.
So at this moment is when I just realized
I am not that body.
I am not that.
And it's when I realized myself as a being of light,
and then it was the sense that I'm still having a sense of
self, but it was that feeling of, dissolving, melting.
And this sense of self, even vanish, Rod.
It was, I experienced what I call nothingness and
some people get scared with the word nothingness.
Some call it non self, some call it emptiness, but to
not sound scary is I give the analogy of imagine a big
stadium and in the middle of the stadium there's a little
box and all you thought that you were was that little box.
All your knowledge, all you knew about the world.
And imagine at three years old, my box was very small.
And that's what I thought I was.
And suddenly, I'm all of it.
So it's nothing because it's nothing you
knew, but wholeness, totality, connectedness.
So I guess the only words I could use, I was...
And learning and many years later, of course,
at that moment, I didn't have any language, but I
could say it was a moment of pure consciousness
and presence, and bliss.
I was just like, whoa.
I would just say in reality, there's no
words to describe this.
It took me many, many years to just put it together and say,
this is what it seems it is.
See?
But it is just wow.
And then when I am in my state of, wow, bliss.
My mom finally arrived home and this is the
other incredible thing.
We live in a big house and she knew exactly where to go.
Because this is the other thing, if she is wasting time
going to any other room, the body only can take so much.
So my mom is she knew where to go and she directed herself
to the back of the house.
And my sister was still there, and people ask me, why your
sister didn't go to the maid?
Guess what, Rod?
We did not supposed to be in the patio.
That was out of limits because of the tank.
So when you're a child, you have the intelligence
of knowing if I go there, I'm going to get scolded.
So she wanted to help me out, but she couldn't.
She was too little.
And then, like I said, she was close to four.
And the moment she saw mom, she's like mom, Ingrid is in
the tank and I cannot get her.
My mom jumped in the tank.
She got me out.
Another incredible thing, call it synchronicity,
amazingness of life.
My mom worked with children and she knew how
to do CPR for children.
So she knew at that moment what to do because she said
when she pulled me out of the tank, I was completely pale,
my lips, my nails were purple.
She said no breathing, no pulse.
She said I was like a raggedy doll.
And my mom started to do anything she knew
to revive this baby.
But at this point, I didn't feel anything.
I was completely disconnected.
I was in my world of bliss.
And I'm just there.
And the thing what happened is that...
Again, this experience, everything like that, and
in just a blink is like I had jumped from the tallest
building in the world, and that was that sense of there
was nothing I could do to stop this, and I felt like I
was being pulled, like I was being vacuumed back and it
was this fall and I started to, it was that sense of no!
And I didn't want to come back.
So once I'm back in the body I know I'm back
because the sense of being cold, the sense of feeling
unwell, that illness of the body the sense of like
the, I lost that freedom.
The sense of anger, I don't want to be here and I know
that I just say to people that at this analogy, imagine
your child is in an amusement park having fun and it's time
to go home and he's like, you put the child in the
car and he's nah, you cry, you're angry, you throw a fit.
That's how I felt.
I don't want to be here.
So it was difficult.
It was really difficult.
Yeah, and from there, it was that, sense of
not wanting to be here.
And for my parents and for me, it was very hard
because I stopped eating.
And incredibly, although I was so young, there was a
before and an after Ingrid.
And I can say this with all clarity because the
moment I looked at myself, I said, I'm not this person.
I'm not this child.
And I will look at myself in the mirror and cry and come
to my mom and say, understand, mom, this is not who I am.
I'm not a child.
And then I said, this is not my name.
This is not who I am.
And I will look at my parents.
And I didn't, it's just, I experienced
a sense of oneness.
So for me, they were not just my biological parents.
I felt them as my equal.
And I became very rebellious because I was
like, why do I have to listen to these people?
And then imagine looking at other people,
at other children.
I came back with all that awareness.
And when I would look at other children, I said, What
is happening to these people?
They don't know anything.
So I couldn't relate.
And then it was that sense of, I don't belong.
I don't belong here.
And the other thing that also validated that this
child definitely came with other kind of awareness is
because like I'm mentioning to you guys, I'm just about
to be three years old.
And now after the experience, not long after
I can read and write.
I
Ingrid Honkala: can resolve mathematical problems.
I can put together complex puzzles.
I can paint.
I develop a more complex language.
Although, I did not have the capacity to explain
what was happening.
So I was very frustrated, very angry, stopped eating.
I reached the point I refused to even,
I didn't even want to be touched.
But thankfully for me,
Rod Bland: The
Ingrid Honkala: help that I needed brought him in
the most remarkable way.
And this way was the other thing that happened is that
after my near death, I started to have what we know today
as out-of-body experiences.
And then, during these out-of-body experiences,
I started to go back to the realm of the light.
It's oh, I have a space to be.
I have a space to be.
And although at the beginning, it was, I would just say...
It felt hard for the body and for the mind because
I was experiencing colors, movements, sounds, things
that I have never experienced in my human experience
to, to say it that way.
And then, but every time I went to that realm of
the light, I imagine it was like, oh, I'm home.
I am home.
And The way that the help came is that, in one of
these journeys one day I was completely surrounded
by Starlight figures and they were shining in all
different colors and that was like absolutely magnificent.
It's whoa.
Imagine walking outside at night and looking at the
most beautiful universe, but imagine this was all
a white space with lights shining in all colors.
And I was like, and now at this point in my life,
of course they fired that lady let me drown.
Yeah.
And then they hired a new lady, but I spent a
lot of hours sleeping.
And if you don't have to take care of a baby because she's
sleeping, oh, that's good.
So she let me sleep.
And I slept a lot.
And in another one of these journeys, one of these
starlight figures that was shining in gold, shaped itself
into a human form to show me, look we are the same.
And it touched me.
And it's when I said, you are a being of light.
That's the reason why I call them beings of light, because
as a child, and that's what I saw, a being of light.
And then I woke up that day and I'm like, Whoa,
imagine now I wanted to sleep all the time.
I'm like, I want to be with the beings of light.
And we need balance.
Of course, I could not be the child that slept forever.
So this balance happened.
Not long after, one day, I am taking a shower.
I'm very relaxed in the bathroom taking this shower
when right there in the bathroom a blue intense
shiny light appear and I'm like whoa now the beams of
light are here and although at the beginning they didn't
say anything or do anything just their presence I started
to see them everywhere.
And now I just felt this sense of oh, I am, I feel good.
I feel home.
And this is very important, Rod, because many years later,
I started to truly understand that concept of home.
And it was that realization that, oh, I get it.
Because I always remember I wanted to go there.
And once the beings of light started to manifest
here, I started to feel the sense I want to eat.
I want to play with my sisters.
Ah, I feel good.
I feel at home.
So realizing, oh, I get it.
Home is not a place.
It's a state of being.
And this is the other thing I always say to people when they
ask me, again, how can you remember if you were so young?
I already mentioned all the contrast and stuff.
But I always say.
With all this, it's like the door for me never closed,
because I kept having the out of body experiences, now
communicating with beings of light, and I always say it's
for me, the door never closed.
It's not that near that, and ended there, but it kept going
and going and going, and so for many times, I kept saying
the door never closed, and years later, the being so
light said to me, Ingrid, of course the door never closed.
They said because in reality, there are no doors.
They said what we call consciousness, God, the
kingdom of heaven, the light is here for everyone, always.
We are the ones that due to conditioning, that due
to beliefs, that due to experiences, fears, whatever
traumas we want to call it, we create layers, we create
doors, we close the windows.
But...
It's nice to make that decision at any moment to
open up those doors again.
And then, this is all beautiful because now in
that state of feeling home, I started to play with
my sisters, communicate more, be more of the
world, but I was still throwing like big tantrums.
Because I could not relate with my persona.
I could not relate with my name.
The experience, was it marked my life so strongly
and the out of body experiences and everything
else that I kept feeling, again, I'm not this child.
This is not who I am.
And like I was mentioning up to this point, I
could feel the presence of the beings of light.
I could see them.
I could smell the smell of flowers.
Every time they were present, it was like there was
flowers blooming everywhere.
And the first time I was able to hear them there was a day I
threw a big tantrum and it was one night they were calling
me for dinner and they're like Ingrid, come to dinner.
I'm like, oh that name, that's not my name, I
would get aggravated.
And then the lady came, Ingrid, we're calling
you for dinner, and I said, stop calling me
like that's not my name.
And she said, so what is your name?
And I said, I do not need one.
Imagine this right?
So it's
oh, yeah, you go to bed.
Come on, what do you do with a child like that?
And early seventies, they didn't understand
anything about what was happening to this child.
And then I went to bed, I was feeling, of course,
angry and sad, and I just started to cry.
And this went for the first time I was able to hear,
and it was this sweet, like this compassionate, loving,
kind voice that said to me:
it's going to take time.
Like in a whisper, like to me.
It's going to take time for them to understand
that names are not needed in the realm of the light.
And they said to me like, you already know.
So it was like, oh, I'm not crazy.
I know why I don't need a name.
So it was that clarity and that understanding that
labels are not needed in the realm of the spirit.
And of course Rod, later I understood that
names are beautiful.
They are needed in our human experience.
They carry energy, whatever it is.
But at the core of the being, I knew I don't need a name.
And that's why later when the people ask me, who
are the beings of light, what are their names?
What are these?
I said, it never was important to me because I
learned to knew them at the place of no name, no label.
And this is the other thing they said to me,
look, your experiences and the ones that are coming
someday you will share.
None of this is for you to keep, but the time will come.
For now you have to be quiet.
And for me it was like, what is not to understand?
I mean, this is my experience.
But yeah, pretty soon I realized they're right.
Because when I would talk about it, it would
be like, she's dreaming, she's creating a story.
Especially with children, we're always like, Yeah, she's
making all this fantasy world so people didn't believe,
but they say there will be people in your path to guide
you and to teach you and you will never be alone.
And incredibly, it was like that.
And the first person who validated that I was
seeing things and validated what was happening to me
was, thankfully, my mom.
Because otherwise I would have been taken to who knows
where, to some, oh god, like medication, who knows why,
because look at what is this child, it's just not okay.
But my mom, what happened is that I
started to go to school.
My mom was also very compassionate, very
loving, very caring being.
And then when I started to go to school, the beings of light
told me not to talk about it.
Okay, I understand,
but they never said not to paint about it.
Rod Bland: Hehehe.
You gotta work around.
And I started to paint beings of light everywhere.
So it was like I was painting books and everywhere.
And so the teacher being really curious, she's
like, Hmm, Ingrid, are these stars, the sun?
And I said, No, these are my friends, the beings of light.
And the teacher like, Hmm, she's having
imaginary friends.
And then she called my mom and my parents, but
my dad couldn't call, my mom came to school.
And then she's showing all these drawings and it's
when we also discover on the conversation between them
that about the paintings is later we realized that
I could also see Auras because all my drawings were
painted with auras around.
And then it's when I am so desperate for
someone to believe me.
Imagine this child that feels I'm not crazy and I
want someone to validate me.
And I looked at my mom and I'm like, mom, these
are my friends, the beings of light, and these are
the colors that we wear.
And then my mom made this mom face like this 'be
silent' because she didn't want me to be in trouble.
She was a teacher too.
And she told the teacher, this is just a phase we're going to
work at, nothing is happening.
And then we left the school and now I'm like really sad.
No one believes me.
I'm alone in this.
And when we are on the way home, my mom
said, I believe you.
And it's when she opened up to me and she said, I believe
you because I also see things that others cannot see.
So imagine, you know, I knew later that I was born in the
bloodline, I was supposed to be born to support my
experience because it wasn't just my mom, but in my
family, there was a lineage of psychics and mediums.
And so my mom revealed to me, she could see these things
called spirits since she was a little child, but she has
been told never talk about it.
So she, in that moment, she said to me not
to talk about it.
So I, it was like listening to the beings of light.
Okay, she's telling me the same thing.
And, but the thing is that later in my life I
started to also see what we call the spirits.
And it's when I had that realization, I was six
years old when I saw the First Spirit, and it's
when I told my mom the spirits and the beings of
light are not the same.
Because when I had the experience with the first
spirit I will not talk about because it's too long, but
it's written in the book.
Hehehe.
Yep.
Ingrid Honkala: I went into panic, like serious scare.
And then I, that's when I told my mom that
they were not the same.
And then my mom started to ask me to explain more,
explain what I was seeing.
And when I explained, my mom went into cry and she's I
think that you see angels.
And I said to her, Mom, I don't know.
I don't think they're angels because they don't have wings.
All we knew was the Catholic teaching.
So she, but she said, they have to be your
guardian angels.
So she taught me she, she, it was beautiful she taught us to
pray and the power of prayer.
And then it's when, because I've been talking to the
beings of light for a while, I'm like, okay,
I better just ask them.
And then, there was two important
questions I asked them.
First, I asked, what is with these dark spirits?
And I called them dark because I was descriptive.
I was a child.
I saw them as like a dark silhouette.
And because I felt fear, so for me, it
represents something dark.
And they said to me that you call spirits, you, us, in
essence, we're all the same.
I was expecting to hear, yeah, we're all different, be
aware, no, we're all the same.
And they say the difference is the level
of awareness that you have about who you truly are.
And they said, and some of these beings, they're just
not aware who they are, and they get very attached to
the matters of this world.
And they lose their way.
And it's when I realized that, of course, the fear I felt was
because when I was connected with the beings of light,
I was vibrating very high.
When I encountered one of these beings, it was
a matter of frequency.
They were just vibrating lower.
And that's what created the fear, but there was
nothing wrong with them.
See, so it was, now that I had that understanding, that part
of thinking that they were bad or anything just went away.
And they said, you, all of us, can help any being that
is lost by just raising our vibrational frequency and
just by knowing who we are.
And the other question I asked them is my mom
said that you are angels.
Is that what you are?
And the answer was, this answer was actually
very beautiful, because they said to me, we are
what you want us to be.
And it's when I, it's just, it's that realization of the
universe is so compassionate, that is going to give us
things in the way that is good for our growth, that
is for our own evolution.
So it, it will present in the way for me at that
moment, I was ready for what I was experiencing.
So that was the path of my evolution.
And later in life, when I asked them and started
to learn about Ascended Masters, I just said,
are you Ascended Masters?
They said, again, at the core of our being,
we're all the same.
And this time they added, the difference is Experience
and awareness, how much experience you have and
how much awareness you have gained through your
experience, how much mastery is what makes you master.
So this is just absolutely beautiful.
The other thing, Rod, I want to share with you is that my
path could not have been the way it is if my grandmother
did not come into my life.
My Father's Mother was a very spiritual person.
Because through time I came to understand it's
not the experience, but the purpose behind
experience it, we just get attached to the experience.
There's experiences of everything and we don't
have understanding.
But my grandmother brought to my life the understanding.
So it was like, now she brought to my life
spirituality deftness, and then she started to,
I, she came to visit she was living in Venezuela.
She was not there all the time.
She, and she was raised as Catholic, but she started
to look for all different ways because she always
thought there has to be more.
And she joined an order called the Rosicrucian
Order, then she started to just study Hinduism,
Kabbalah Buddhism the chakras, all kind of stuff.
And she brought these teachings.
And at the beginning it wasn't to me because I was
little, but she brought it to my parents and I'm there and
she's talking and I'm like,
Grandma's talking like the beings of light.
And grandma and I became best friends.
And grandma at eight years old, taught
me how to meditate.
And I started to meditate, and it's when I had my
first Kundalini experience.
I woke up in the middle of the night and the whole
house was shaking after she taught me how to pray, how
to meditate with the Om, and then from that point on and
I started to have many more deep spiritual experiences and
my grandma brought me books and by the age of nine I'm
reading the Bhagavad Gita, books of self realization,
books of discernment, all kind of stuff like that opened the
path of spirituality, that was just all complemented.
It was just amazing.
Rod Bland: That's quite a a reading repertoire for
a nine year old to have.
can remember when I was about, I think I was eight
actually, and my mum and dad asked me what I wouldn't,
wanted to, for my birthday.
And there was this really thick book that was called
Explaining the Unexplained.
And I said, that's, I want that book.
And they didn't really blink an eye to their
credit actually.
So it's good that you had parents and grandparents
that didn't think that was particularly weird.
That was all quite normal.
Ingrid Honkala: That was, and like the beginning, so
like I said, these people will be put in your path to
guide you and to help you.
So I just felt the guidance.
But the other thing Rod is that maybe when I mentioned
it like this, it all makes seem like easy, but it wasn't.
Because even though I was having my grandma, my
mother, and I mentioned the abilities, I mentioned all
these things, it all seemed too good, but in reality...
All that also kind of be really good turned into
a big burden because I did not fit in the world.
I could not relate with other children.
At school I was being bullied.
I, for my age, I didn't know while other children are
playing with all different other things, I'm in this
other world where I feel I don't belong and I would
cry and I would look at the sky and ask God and say to
God, What is the manual?
Why you brought me like this?
Why I cannot be like anyone else?
And it was very difficult.
So in terms of trying to belong and trying
to have a human experience was very hard.
I could not ground.
It was very difficult.
So it's that part where there's a lot of
good, but there's also a lot of challenge.
And growing up with all these made me, just feel very I
would just say disjointed and separated from the world.
And to the point that at the age of 12, I
told my grandmother that I wanted to die.
I developed existential depression.
I didn't want to be here because I didn't
feel that I belonged.
And then my grandma, of course, is so worried.
For my birthday, my 12th birthday, look, imagine a
girl that I am nine years old, going back a little
bit, and I'm doing my first communion and my love for God,
while for other girls was the dress, the party, the thing.
I was honestly, truly, deeply in love with God.
So for me, it was like the deafness of it for me
was like, now I can just dissolve and disappear.
See, I, and I wanted, because I was in a Catholic school,
I wanted to become a nun because I thought that was
it, and then I go to the priest at a school and I
started to talk to him and mention things that they
didn't understand and said, you cannot talk about fear
because fearing God is wrong.
God is love, how can you fear the one that
loves you the most?
The priest at the time didn't understand.
He was not there to listen to this child and he's I,
so at that moment he was mad at me, put me to pray.
Those are the words of the devil.
So it was that place where I even feel I don't even
belong to these people.
How can I become a nun?
This is not my path either.
So imagine I fell, there's no place for me.
And my grandmother was so worried.
I was 12, about to be 12.
For my birthday, she brought me to this little
Zen Buddhist temple.
And it was unheard in Colombia.
It was like this little place in the middle of nowhere.
Because 98% of the population at the time was Catholic.
And she, or 95, I don't know, but a very high number.
And she brought me there, and then...
When I entered this place, I felt, oh, I felt
that sense of peace and I was being welcomed.
And then my grandma talked to the monk and he
taught me this breathing meditation technique.
And it was there when I just felt, oh, that
sense of home again.
And then at the end I told him, I don't think, and
I was so worried, I don't think I can come back
because my grandmother is a very busy woman.
And it's when the monk turned to me and he said, you never
need to come back because you already have a temple.
And I said, what do you mean?
And he said to me, you are the temple.
So wherever you are, you can do this meditation technique.
Wherever you are, you can become the master
of your own temple.
Oh, that was huge.
And now it's it's when I got practice of even and it's when
I started to really feel the importance and the love and
the respect for this temple.
But again, I was very disjointed from the
other people, from the school, from all the other
staff and my sisters.
Now is the time where we're growing up having boyfriends
and parties and things and they were trying to just
putting me the hair and the makeup and the clothing.
And Ingrid, you have to belong.
And I'm like, okay, I didn't know what to do.
And it was very difficult.
It was hard.
So when I started college was the time when I
said, Oh, I have to be like everybody else.
My need to belong was such Rod that I was like,
I just, I have to fit.
I have to fit.
If I didn't, I think I felt I could not just stay here.
It was that, that really deep feeling of I need
to belong to this world.
And it's when I had an experience where it's
all in the book, but I felt like dissolving with
the whole, going to that space again of wholeness.
And then It's when I, the beings of light in those days
asked me if I wanted to teach.
If I wanted to do this work of teaching what this spiritual
path, and I said, no, I don't want to teach anything.
I don't want to do this.
I want to be like everybody else.
I just want to belong.
I was tired not to belong.
And then I, and the other thing happened when I
came back from that very profound experience,
I had two questions.
I said, when did we stop being one with the whole,
and how is it possible to forget who we truly are?
And it's when the beings of light said, in 20
years you will understand.
Because at this moment I wasn't ready.
My sense of wanting to have this human
experience to belong was greater than anything.
So I told them that I just needed to do my own thing.
And that's the compassion of the universe.
They said, okay.
And then they said for now on, you will not see
us or hear us the way you have been doing it.
And people ask me, how could you do this to
the beings of light?
And I said, how could you leave home?
When I give the analogy of when you go to college,
you leave home and you leave your parents behind.
How could you do that?
It's the same thing.
The parents, the beings of light became like my parents.
So my analogy is I left home, I went to college,
but your parents are always one call away.
Same thing, it's not like I deleted the beings of light
from my life, it's like that close relationship I had of
being with them right there needed to have some distance
and that was needed for me.
And I picked a career as a scientist, I needed, I picked
at that moment marine biology.
It was a career of science.
It helped me ground and it was what I needed at the moment.
And I started to pick friends and the first boyfriend I
had were very grounded with parties and life and things
that I needed to ground.
So that was important at that moment.
And I think that's what I needed.
And the other thing that I said is that I give the
analogy of imagine that I was in a room with the lights on.
And for 19 years, the lights, although I had many
challenges related with my inner being, it was a
different kind of challenges.
The moment I just imagine, I put the example of a room like
this and the lights are on.
You can see the furniture when the lights are on.
The moment I left home or I told the beings of light, bye
bye, let me go do my life.
It's like the lights in the room turned off.
And now the room is full of furniture with no lights.
You start tripping with everything.
So for the next few years in my life, many challenges,
big challenges started to happen in my life.
And a lot of sufferings and it was a very hard and
difficult terrain that I had to face after that.
Yeah.
So you'd foregone that support that you'd had all
that time because you felt like you just, you needed to
do your own thing and then there was this period where
You had that experience that you weren't expecting that
you would have, but that I guess that was something
that needed to occur.
So at what point, it sounds like there was some, obviously
there was some reconnection with the beings of light.
Was that when you, because I haven't got that far
in the book yet, so this is all unknown me now.
Was that when you had your next near death experience
or how did that come about?
No when I had my second near death experience, it
was the time where I was already going through, wow,
big challenges in my life.
I was you will go to the part where I was almost
raped and murdered.
The part where I had relationships that were very
difficult, even relationships of almost just abuse, and
then I fall into after that relationship, it was, things
were so hard in my life, and I had a motorcycle accident.
It was like, that shook my life at that moment.
It put a stop in that moment in my life for
me to change direction.
And in that motorcycle accident.
What happened was that I will not tell the whole story.
It's too long.
It's in the book, but it's I was fearful of motorbikes
because it was my first one.
And I was going in and up in a mountain and I was, somebody
was sitting behind me.
We're driving the bike.
And then I don't know what happened, but I just,
I guess fear of being, going up a hill and I just
lost balance and we fell.
And then when I was going to change gear, I just the
bike did a jump and I got scared and then I didn't
even know what happened.
But next, all I see is that I am standing in
the middle of the road.
And again, it's the sense of no pain, no
fear, nothing wrong.
There was nothing, and I will just already bring
it to clarity that this experience is been so
important in my life later on when people ask me what
happened when somebody, when a person you love died
in a traumatic accident.
Or in a very bad accident like that.
I can tell you with clarity from the experiences of many
other near death experiences that there is no pain, there
is no suffering, there is no fear, there is not, none
of it, you just, again, it's that sense of freedom
and home and openness and it's just oh, there's There
was not emotions there.
That was even later is when my mom was like,
how is it possible?
Because it was just none of it.
And when I'm experiencing and I am seeing light and
again I'm walking home is when somebody picked me up
in the scene of the accident.
And now I can feel a body.
And it was so scary because at that point, just to
that point, is when any emotion came into play.
Fear.
Because I can feel someone touching me but
I cannot see the person.
And then I started to touch my face because I don't know why
I cannot see this person and I realized that I was blind.
Because what happened is that I did not have a helmet and
my head hit the ground so hard that I had a head concussion.
And then I was picked, brought to the hospital.
And only in the hospital, I started to recover my
vision little by little.
It was a big head trauma.
And then, being at the hospital with the doctor
later is that imagine the fear of like blind.
No I mean like wow.
So, I'm there later with my friend, who was,
nothing happened to him.
And we're with the doctor, and he said to me that, I...
lost my vision the moment I hit the ground because
I probably at that moment my optic nerve just
disconnected, and I said, it cannot be possible.
I said, it cannot be possible because when I'm standing in
the middle of the road, and I am seeing light, and I'm
feeling the sense of being home, I'm doing extremely
well, I see the light.
And it's when my friend said, Ingrid, you could
not have seen any light because first, it happened
at night, and second, the road where the accident
happened was pitch black.
It was not light.
And he said, and second, you never stood up.
Different from my first near death, I didn't have the
awareness that I left the body like that, but I was like
I said, you never stood up.
So it's when I realized I was seeing the light
with the eyes of the soul.
And this is another incredible experience because it's
the proof that I was seeing with my eyes, losing the
physical eyes because I was blind at that moment.
Show me, look, you are seeing with your spiritual eyes.
And from, now I knew because from, since I was little,
seeing, hearing, beings of light being and all this
taught me, oh, I am hearing with my spiritual ears,
seeing with my spiritual eyes.
And that was all day.
Later on, understanding these abilities and how to
work with all these, but that's what happened with
that motorcycle accident.
And at that moment, I was living in an island
and my life was there.
And this was the turning point for me to leave the island
and go to move to Europe.
And I was in Europe for a couple of years.
So this completely changed.
This made just a turn in my life.
And that's when, all that experiences
came in the future.
I came back to Colombia after being in Europe,
moved to a war zone.
I was already a marine scientist, marine
biologist, and I went to work with the Colombian
Navy, moved to an area that was pretty dangerous.
There has been an oil spill and they hired me to do an
environmental work in this area as the head of the
biology and ecology department for the Colombian Navy.
But I was born in a country at war, but it was very different
to live in the capital, in the city that was protected
than go live in the jungle.
And now I am facing the fears of the war.
And for three years, On my life, I didn't know if I was
going to be alive next day.
And, one thing I have to say after my two near death
experiences is that after the first two is that I
lost the fear of death.
And I have proof of that with other experiences I,
I talk about in the book, but it was not fearing
death when I am in the war zone, it's fearing what
they're going to do to you.
If you get kidnapped, if you get, what they will do to
you hold you hostage rape you you never see home again.
It's terrible.
So imagine being in this stress for three years.
Then finally in, in all this time I had the possibility
to meet my husband.
We fell in love, and then I moved to the United States
and here I did my PhD, and started to work as a scientist
and oceanographer for NASA and then for the Navy.
And it was in this time of my life that, although all
these incredible things were happening for me, I had been
so disconnected now from my inner so disconnected
from the beings of light, so disconnected and I felt
through time for and you reading the book because
people said, how can your book is brutally honest.
How could you because you will read more of oh my God, how
could you write about that?
I was like, I had to be transparent because it was
the way to show how healing can happen because at this
point in my life, for many mistakes I made, I felt I
wasn't deserving of God.
I wasn't deserving of the beings of light, I wasn't
deserving of spirituality.
And then again, life brought me back to the path.
And when I am living here in the United States, I
have the possibility to go meet the Dalai Lama.
Wow.
I spent, yeah, and I had the incredible opportunity to
go to India and spend one week in Dharamsala, India,
receiving his teachings.
So that was like, again, like the door and what
happened in the opening of the door was that I felt,
this is contradicting, but at the beginning I fell
into a deeper depression.
But it was not caused by him, it was because the
moment I'm sitting next to him holding his hand.
My mind is like in 10 million places.
What can I ask you?
What can I tell you?
Blah blah blah blah blah.
And it's when I said, it's stop.
My consciousness is when I realized I have lost my way.
I am so separated from...
The truth that I am, and I fell into this
very deep depression.
I had become really busy.
I had become very distracted.
I had become also very angry and all the things
stress, all the things that we see in many people in
society, very divided and complaining and all the stuff.
And then, I fell into very deep depression, but at the
end that deep depression and what we call the dark night
of the soul brought me to the healing and brought me to the
deafness and brought me to what I call a big awakening.
And from that time on, depression ended and the book
started to happen and then I've been working in Service.
How can I serve?
That's my asking to God every day since that big awakening
that I had 12 years ago and it's just been amazing
and if you have a question there or you want me I could
just go on in like my 30
a couple.
So the first one is, so the beings of light, I'm
fascinated by your description of them as a child.
Are they sort of part of your everyday life
now like they were when you were much younger?
Yes, once I had my my awakening, what I call my
big awakening 12 years ago.
My connection with the beings of light came back in full
again and because I thought about committing suicide,
so I was very depressed and what happened that day is
beautiful because it was first, that realization of
give yourself one more day, give yourself one more day.
Yeah.
second, it was that knowing of if you kill yourself, nothing
is going to change in reality.
Yeah you leave this shell, but you're not resolved.
And you have to be little again and repeat a lot of
the little part of stuff.
And I'm like, Oh God, no, yeah.
Let's see if I can solve it.
So it was all that started to, clarity coming to my
head and I gave myself one more, one more day and then
next day when I woke up, I just received with clarity
the message, go look for help, go look for help.
And like I'm saying to you, I was a scientist.
I, at that point, I was very busy.
I have become very successful.
I just thought I don't need help.
But at this moment, I knew.
Yes, I do.
So this was the first time that I really
went to look for help.
And then I look, I went to, and I googled psychologists in
my area, and I wrote the name on a paper, and then I wrote
the name on a paper, and then that very day, I went to the
NASA cafeteria, met one of the colleagues, and she said
to me that her daughter had a very traumatic experience
and she was visiting this doctor that was an amazing
doctor, and that was the same doctor I had in my paper, in
Wow.
Rod Bland: my little paper.
And then that very day, another person from another
completely different place mentioned the same doctor.
I'm like, come on, this cannot be a coincidence.
It's clear I'm getting a message.
And then I went to meet that doctor.
And this doctor is the one that started to help me in
that process of reconnection.
And he told me to write all my sufferings as a
cathartic kind of practice.
After I was seeing him for a while, he happened to be the
right person, very spiritual.
And now we're seeing that more and more in the people
that practice psychology.
And then he was very open.
And then I could tell him anything and he wasn't
going to, Oh my God, this lady lost her mind.
No, little by little I realized he's good.
And then I can trust him and feel safe.
And then when I wrote this list of sufferings and he read
it, he's Whoa, he said, In my 30 something, 37 years of
practice, I have never seen anyone that has suffered this
much and is mentally stable.
He said, I'm impressed.
And I'm like, but I'm like, what?
I never thought I was the person that suffered the most.
So I was like, that was a big shock.
And I, it's when this question that I've been asking all
my life and that we humans, we all ask all the time is,
came and I said, why me?
Why me?
And I'm crying.
I'm like, why me?
And it's when he answered the most incredible thing.
He gave me the answer that turned the light on.
The light back on in the room and the answer
when I said why me?
He said why not?
Why not?
And then he started to say look thanks to this you have
done this and thanks to this you have done that and thanks
to this and that and I'm like whoa and I started to
type all the notes all the notes and I'm like wow and
I started to find purpose behind all my experiences
and I went from the state of feeling a victim to gratitude.
And I also realized that he had been listening
and the power of healing when people listen.
And I'm like, that was a miracle that day itself.
Everything that happened that day was this big miracle
because I would say a miracle if I change in perception.
My whole perception about my life and my life experience
changed and now I'm in the place of gratitude to the
point I'm like, I wouldn't change absolutely anything.
All my sufferings are my growth.
All my traumas are my growth.
Now I can use all these to even be more empathic,
more compassionate, more kind, more open, more
giving, more at service because I know how you feel.
She's like, Oh my gosh.
So this was amazing.
And then another miracle happened.
This was the moment when I'm sitting there and I'm
realizing the only thing that is truth, the only
truth is this moment, that I'm talking to this
doctor and nothing else.
Everything else is in my head and I can do
whatever I want with this.
Imagine the sense of empowerment.
I'm not a victim.
I'm not the puppet of my reality.
I'm not the puppet of my narrative.
I became present.
And then when you become present, you become the
creator of your reality.
And then the other thing that happened at that moment
is that I discovered the true meaning of forgiveness.
And it was realizing that, wow, in reality,
there's nothing to forgive.
Because I discovered something.
That nothing ever happened to me.
It happened for me.
So if absolutely everything happened for me, then
what is to forgive?
If everything is being...
the path in my path.
So at that moment, it was this place where I am like, I
could tell that nothing needs to be forgiven or absolutely
everything was forgiven.
And I am just in gratitude.
So imagine when I walk out of that office, right?
I was like walking in the clouds then I am sitting
in my car and I'm driving my car and that's when the
connection with the beings of light came back full
on and I'm driving my car.
And it's when I started to feel that.
And even beyond that, what we call beings of light
at that moment, it was God itself, the light itself,
I started to feel that absolutely everything.
Every part of my being, the windshield, the
wheel, the experience, the light, everything was the
light of consciousness.
Everything was God.
There was nothing that wasn't it.
And I even had to stop the car.
I'm like, whoa, and I'm like, oh, I'm just completely melted
in the presence of the divine.
And then at that moment, I knew that 20 years had passed.
Remember, they said in 20 years you will understand, but
of course I wasn't counting.
I forgot the 20 years.
Wow, come on.
And then I'm in the car and I know 20 years passed
because the two questions that I have asked 20 years
before were answered.
And the questions were how is it possible to
forget who we truly are?
And when did we disconnected from source?
How is it possible?
When all this happened?
And the answer was beautiful, the answer was
one never stopped being one.
One never left the source.
One just became distracted and seemingly forgot.
So that the answer came directly from the light
and the connection full on came back.
And then, yeah, from that moment on, I just started to
work again from the place of How can I fully reconnect?
But of course I had a lot of work to do, Rod, and I have
dedicated my life from then to using tools for healing.
I was diagnosed with post traumatic stress
disorder, which I now call post traumatic growth.
And I've been using all different tools and
ways to heal because of being so light set.
Your inner child work starts.
Now, and that was beautiful because I can use all these
tools to help other people.
So that's just been this incredible path
of just growing and growing and growing
evolving, peeling layers.
And from all these that have happened, I think one
of the greatest, I think, awareness and experiences
between all of these I have had was last year.
Which experience itself, of course is, I don't
wish anybody a near death experience, and I don't want
anyone to think that having a near death experience is
good, because it's very hard.
But last year I had my last near death experience, and
it happened during a surgery.
But this was finally what have opened the
door for me to truly...
Live life to the fullest.
And why?
Because for many years with my two first near
death experiences, I wanted to die because I
wanted to go back there.
You always was the sense of like when I am going
home in reality, when I'm going to go over there.
And in my last near death experience, one
thing that happened before the experience,
I was guided to the right doctors.
Doctors that were going to listen to me.
Because otherwise, I knew beforehand that I was
going to have problems with my blood pressure.
They listened to me.
They were monitoring my blood pressure
throughout the surgery.
My blood pressure dropped dramatically.
I went into hypothermia.
And when I'm in all this experience of the body,
for the first time, from the three experiences,
for the first time, I was asked if I wanted to leave
or I wanted to come back.
Oh, so things were getting a bit more
serious this time around.
Yeah.
Ingrid Honkala: Yes, and usually people are
asking, it's not your time, you have to come back.
In my case, it was amazing.
It was like, okay, you want to stay or you want to go back?
And the moment they asked me if I wanted to stay, it was
that sense of oh, home again.
Of course I want to stay.
This is like a, 10 million diamond resort.
I want to stay.
But when they ask when the light asked me, oh,
you want to go back?
I said, wait a minute, because I have been
practicing awareness for so long, being present, being
conscious at that moment, I said wait a minute.
Is this a test?
And.
Of course, is that also realization, no
one is testing me.
I'm testing myself.
Is this a test?
I said, because if God is everything, and if God is
everywhere, and absolutely everything is a manifestation
of God, so where is here and where is there?
I said no, there is not here.
And there is not there.
So it was the ultimate knowing is only presence, is only
consciousness, is only God.
Home, I'm at home already, no matter where I am.
And then the only thing I said in that moment,
look, I am in the state of absolute detachment.
There's no judgment.
So when you're in this place, it's that sense of
I'm not thinking my son, my husband, my family.
If I leave them nothing, remember I am home.
So it's the knowing that everything is all
right, whatever is to happen is all right.
And then my only answer at that moment was, keep me where
I can serve God the most.
And it's when the attachment, the thought about my husband,
my son, my family, my sisters, all the stuff that I needed
for anchoring came back.
And now I was pulled back on earth.
When now I have that absolute knowing I am home.
And then from that point on, I started to walk
my life of truly living.
And it's when I said it's not about a near death experience,
it's none of that, it's about a near life experience.
How can I use this human experience with all these
contrasts, all these challenges, all this
diversity, and all these things to wake up, to be
more aware, to be to be more human and divine.
It's let's use this as an opportunity to
remember who I am.
And that's where I am now, Rod, and it's just
been, been amazing.
Ingrid, this has been such a privilege for
me to hear your story.
You are such a great storyteller, and the
light just shines out of you like nothing
I've experienced before.
So let's finish up by if people wanna find more about
what you do and how you do it.
Where should they go?
They can go to my website.
I have a website, IngridHonkala.com.
And yeah, and in this moment, I do one on one
sessions with people.
I do talks, mentories, I try to do retreats
when it's possible.
All the possible ways I can communicate with people.
All these beautiful videos and podcasts and yes, and in
my website they can find all that information and also I
have the media pages and I have a beautiful newsletter
that I share every Monday.
Yeah, just go to my website.
Okay, great.
And have you got any final message that you'd like to
leave for people that might be watching this video?
Yes, I would love to share with people
that one of the ways,
because people ask me, How can I connect
with beings of light?
I wish I could just do what you do.
I said, the way is first, learn to calm the mind.
And second, learn to live in gratitude.
And people say, how can I live in gratitude?
Life is so hard and I, it's when the being of life said
to me, Ingrid, you don't imagine how gr, how grateful
people would be if they realize that for you to exist.
Trillions and trillions and trillions of
subatomic particles have to be in agreement.
They have to agree to be you.
You are a divine intention.
Remember that.
So now every time I see a person even I see this pen, I
see a glass of water, I drink this water with that sense of
wow, trillions and trillions of subatomic particles agree
to be this pen, agree to be this water for me to drink it.
And somebody that was connected with the
creative thinking of the universe thought about
this pen and these atoms are responding to that.
Oh my God, this is the way I live my life.
How can even the little, little things, the flower,
the birds singing, the smile in your child.
Learn to see God.
I said God is playing hide and seek with us and our
mission is to find him.
So learn to live in gratitude.
Gratitude is the highest vibrational
frequency there is.
So when you are in gratitude, you will Gratitude are the
things that make you feel great, the things you love.
So love is a synonym of gratitude.
Being in that place of love, gratitude, and you'll
find your joy, you'll find your calmness, you'll
find a way to talk to the universe, talk to God.
Gratitude.
I'll remember that.
That's a great message.
Ingrid, thanks so much for your time today and thank you
for being a guest on my show.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
I'm very grateful.
It's
Rod Bland: been my pleasure
you, Rod.