Stephen Weber: And then when I came to the intersection
where I was to make a right hand turn,
someone had opened up a space for someone coming
in the opposite direction to make a left hand turn,
and so just as I was going into the intersection, the
truck made a left hand turn
and went smashing right into the side of me.
Rod Bland: My guest today is Steven Weber, who's one
of the global community of people who have had
a near death experience.
And Steven is here today to share his story.
Thanks for joining on the show, Steven.
Stephen Weber: It's my honor.
I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.
Rod Bland: Yeah, no worries.
So it's my honor as well.
We were just speaking about your accent.
It's the Long Island accent.
And now I'm familiar with people that come
from Long Island.
I know what to, my ear is tuned to it now.
Stephen Weber: Well, Water, quarter, what
is and should is.
No ERs.
That's the way we talk.
Rod Bland: All right.
Why don't we just drop into a little bit of your life
prior to your experience.
I'm interested in hearing a little bit about how, perhaps
how you grew up and then let's talk about your NDE.
Okay.
Stephen Weber: Sure.
I grew up on a small blue collar town on Long Island.
It's about 50 miles or so east of New York City.
And it was a rural community that was becoming suburban.
And there was lots of open trails.
And so when I was a young kid, I had a paper route.
I bought a mini bike when I was about 10 years old.
And ever since then, I've been riding motorcycles,
mostly a Harley Davidson's once I was old enough to
get a street bike and, and I just loved it.
It was such a big part of my life.
I love riding motorcycles.
I also am a computer person.
I'm an engineer.
And so I'm into technology.
And that was like my life is that I work very hard with
my computers, but In a lot of ways, I was an outlaw biker.
I I can't show you, but I have tattoos all up and down
my arms, Harley Davidson's, and and that was pretty much
my life for the longest time.
I was never a spiritual person.
I grew up in a Catholic Christian community.
The church was the center of town and but I was more
or less a Christmas and Easter Catholic, I would say.
And that was pretty much it is that I focused
on having a good time.
I considered myself a pleasure maximizing unit.
I had loved the rock and roll and cold beer and pretty girls
and, all those terrible things that you're not supposed to
be interested in these days.
That's what I was interested in.
Until my life changed.
And when I take a look at so many things that have
happened, like at one times I thought once I had this
near death experience, this spiritually transformative,
just wow experience.
I thought that was really the focus of my life and so many
things that had gone on, but I really began to learn is that
there's only a small part, I believe, in a much, much
longer experience that really taught me about forgiveness.
And about not only forgiveness of other people, but of
yourself and about learning and the very meaning of life.
And in the end of everything, I would say that if there's
one lesson that I learned from this experience and everything
associated is life is good.
And people are good, even when very sad things happen.
And that's really what I've walked away from
this experience with.
Rod Bland: I know there's a couple of events that
occurred and I'm not going to give anything away.
So tell us about the events that led up to your NDE and
then what happened after that.
Stephen Weber: Sure, I'll be glad to.
It's really important for me to share this experience
because it's very clear in a lot of ways can
bring peace to people.
Not only people who fear or cons don't know what's
gonna happen next and and have a fear of death
or even a fear of life.
Is that is that truly, It's an inspirational experience.
So I would say that it all started I guess back in 2005.
I live on Long Island and Fire Island and the
Hamptons and all that.
It's all a beach community and I would love to ride
my Harley Davidson all up and down Ocean Parkway.
It's a really, it's a hopping place.
I loved it.
And so it was 4th of July weekend back in 2005.
And I was driving my Harley Davidson down the parkway.
And I noticed that there was someone driving right
next to me and it seemed odd, I wasn't sure it was.
Out of place, but there was a pickup truck not more than
about five yards away from me.
And and after a while, me looking at it a few seconds,
it's just like forever.
I realized this truck was going the wrong
way on the parkway.
I was going.
Northbound on the parkway and he was going northbound, but
in the southbound lane and and at first I wasn't sure what
was going on because there was construction around and it's
just not something you expect.
It was very late at night and I just didn't
know what was going on.
And just then, when I finally realized that this
fella is going the wrong way, The divider line
disappeared between us, and he was right next to me.
And I realized I had to get out of his way.
I just, if he realized that he was going the wrong way,
he was going to cut right, right into me, and I need
to get my thoughts together.
And so I pulled over two lanes on the highway to get
as further away as I could.
And just right then, he went underneath the
bridge and went headlong.
Head on collision right
into a limousine,
killed a little girl, a little seven year old girl,
and killed a limo driver,
and it was a family coming back from a wedding, and
they had done all the right things they did, they hired
a limousine to bring them back and forth so they could
have some drinks with their families and not get in
this crazy situation, and the allegation was that the
fellow who who caused the accident and although it was
late at night, people were immediately on scnene, because
it was a holiday weekend.
And once I saw that, I went home, I went when you're on a
motorcycle, you want to stay away from traffic accidents.
There's a lot of debris on the road and people are
looking at the accident.
They aren't looking at anything else.
You just don't want to get run over.
It's a very serious situation.
I've been.
Riding for decades, hundreds of thousands of miles
on my motorcycles, on my Arleys, I've been around.
And so I know that was a dangerous situation.
So I so I drove home and that was the end of it.
I just went on with my life.
I often thought about it.
But but those types of things, as tragic as it was,
it they happen all the time.
And it was in the newspaper the next day,
and they were asking for witnesses to come forward.
But I didn't come forward because that, I felt that
there wasn't a lot to the imagination of the allegations
where the gentleman was drinking, he was driving
the wrong way, he hit the limousine, he killed these
beautiful people and can't undo it, but it seemed
very straightforward to me.
And that was the end of it for about a year.
And then a year later, some friends of mine called me
up and said, Steve, you got to look at the paper.
And and so I, I'm a computer person.
I, I didn't pay attention to local news.
I was more like big news, like world news.
Are we going to blow ourselves up today?
Like that kind of news.
I really wasn't that knowledgeable about
local happenings.
So I went out and got the paper, and on the front
page, there was a trial going on for this fellow.
And he was being charged with second degree
murder, not manslaughter.
He was being charged with second degree murder,
and it was like the first time in the United States
that was going to happen.
And and after hemming and hawing it for a while as I
came forward, I really did.
And it was a very difficult thing for me to do.
I was a business person.
I owned my own business with my brother.
And it was just a difficult thing.
I really didn't want to do it, but I knew
I had to come forward.
I came forward and I testified at that trial.
I was on the stand for two
days.
The defense attorney was a very, I don't know.
I don't want to mischaracterize him
he, in my opinion, he wasn't professional.
And he was just trying to throw things up against
the wall and seeing if things would stick
and I thought that it was very apparent the fellow
was driving the wrong way.
The allegations he was drinking it seemed
very straightforward.
And and they convicted that fellow and they sentenced
him to 16 years in prison.
And and I had very mixed feelings about that because
I understood the pain and suffering of the family,
losing a little seven year old daughter and they
were injured themselves, profoundly injured.
But I saw the kid, and he was a kid.
He was just a kid who made a stupid mistake.
And for the grace of God, it wasn't me, because
I wasn't any angel.
And I felt I had very mixed feelings about it.
And the family was very angry.
They thought the judge should have been harsher
with the defendant.
And they were very bitter about it.
And I understood that, but it stuck with me for quite some
time, just their reaction.
And I felt for them, I really did.
But I also felt for the defendant, in the sense
like, just a stupid kid doing a stupid mistake
that he can't take back.
And that was it.
And it changed my life.
I couldn't go back to work with my brother anymore
after having that experience.
And so I sold out, I sold my interest in my computer
company to my brother.
And I became a full time dad.
I had two children at the time and I did not, I
didn't want to miss out.
I saw what that family had gone through and I wasn't
going to miss out a moment.
And so I did some small consulting on the side from
my home computer consulting.
And I took care of my kids.
I was Mr.
Dad.
I even ran for the school board and I was elected
to a school board.
And that was a challenge.
I was just so wrapped up in just being the
best parent I could.
It was my life and it was something I thought
I was really good at.
I really did.
I was definitely an alt personality.
I was a biker.
I liked having fun.
Work hard, play hard, but I was committed father.
I really was.
And that's the way it went for a while until one afternoon.
It was Sunday afternoon.
I decided to take my Harley Davidson out to the Hamptons.
The Hamptons here on Long Island is like the
hot spot where all the rich and famous go, but
I wasn't going for that.
There's this little hole in the wall barbecue shop
that I would go to and I'd get some ribs there.
You could drive past this place a million times
and not even notice it.
But I just happened to notice it because I, I know certain
things, being a biker and driving all over the place you
know, the good spots to eat.
So I had driven out there and had some ribs.
It was a Sunday afternoon.
Then on my way back.
The road was backed up for miles.
I mean for miles and miles, the cars were not moving.
You expect beach traffic, but it was really the spring time.
It wasn't that warm out.
There must have been some road construction or
emergency road repair or something which caused it.
But I saw people were driving on the shoulder of
the road to get up to the next turn to make a right
hand turn to get out of the mess and find another way.
And after sitting there for a while,
I decided to do that, just that, is I drove on the
shoulder, and then when I came to the intersection
where I was to make a right hand turn, someone had opened
up a space for someone coming in the opposite direction
to make a left hand turn, and so just as I was going
into the intersection, the truck, it was a truck,
made a left hand turn and went smashing right
into the side of me.
Yeah, it crushed my whole left hand side,
everything I'll go into that a little bit, but
the lights went out.
I had no idea what had happened.
Rod Bland: So you saw the truck and that was, it was
like just a split second and that was truck boom gone.
Stephen Weber: I didn't even see the truck.
They did, these are all things that from reading
the police report and stuff, I didn't see anything.
I didn't know anything had happened.
And the next things I realized is that I was laying
on the ground, and I was looking straight up, and
there was all these flashing lights all over the place.
And it was actually starting to get dark out.
And I realized some time must have passed because
everything was changed.
And I remember looking around and thinking to myself.
This is going to be like no other day.
There was no getting up from this because that's
one of the first things I tried to do is get up
because as a biker, right?
Or wrong.
There's a saying, if you go down, get up because if you
don't get up, you stay down, you will stay down, you'll
get up right away and I tried.
And I felt my leg was disconnected.
It was, the skin was still there, but my leg was
just flopping all around and ah, such intense
pain that I blacked out.
And then and then the next thing I knew is I was.
Sailing through the air.
I was going higher and I was going through the clouds and
I was thinking, what someone would think in that situation.
Rod Bland: What's happening here.
Stephen Weber: Yeah, because it was everything
was so surreal and I didn't realize it.
Until I started to go down out of the clouds,
and then I saw a big circle with an H in the middle
of it, and I realized I was in a helicopter
and I was being airlifted to Stony Brook Hospital, and I
knew that hospital because I'm a graduate of the university
there at Stony Brook.
My daughter's a graduate of this university.
My mom's a graduate of the university.
It's a cornerstone of our community.
And it's one of the most premier trauma
centers in the world.
They just do incredible work there.
I think they invented the sonogram or they did so
many of the tests and micro grafting surgery to reattach
limbs and such that it's just a tremendous trauma center
outside of about 50 miles outside of New York city.
And I was outside of the helicopter.
It was if you remember from MASH.
The way the helicopter was really small and it
can't fit you inside.
So they have these pontoons.
And so I was outside and all these things, it
just took me a while to realize what was going on.
And then when they rolled me off the helicopter, I realized
that was the last time I was on this earth in my mind.
In my hospital bed.
I was in a coma for a month.
But in my soul, where I was, I spent a lifetime,
lifetimes there.
And it's a place I call between here and there.
And it was surreal.
It was the most intense, most beautiful experience
someone could have.
I didn't expect it.
I didn't expect any of this.
And I was profoundly ill.
I was bleeding internally.
They had to do several surgeries to stabilize,
stop the bleeding.
My whole body was crushed.
They had to do all this surgery to put all these
metal implants in me.
And then my back, my vertebrae were crushed.
They had to put these two steel rods in it.
And then I was in a coma and at first I didn't
know I was anywhere else.
I thought I was at work.
Really, it was...
It was no different than anything else I was
experiencing and when I say I was in another place, a
place between here and there, it's like purgatory that I
learned as a Catholic, except for Catholics learn purgatory
as a place of punishment.
You're not good enough to go to heaven, but you're not
bad enough to go to hell.
Go to this middle place where you do penance and you...
Absolve yourself of sins and then you could be in heaven.
But it wasn't like that for me.
It was a place of learning and understanding.
And it was what I felt, what I feel now is that in
the same way, your body.
transitions to come from spirit into a physical
form, your body also transitions to go from a
physical form into spirit.
It's not like a switch.
I don't believe that all of a sudden you're alive
and now you're past and now you're in forever.
It's a process.
It has to take place.
At least that's what I've come to learn.
And then one of the first things is I
learned in that place.
It seemed like I shared all of my experiences.
I shared everything that I had with the All
That Is, and I received certain wisdom, certain
knowledge that I needed
in order to make this transformation into spirit,
to make sense of my life that had passed so far, to
be able to grow my awareness through my experiences, and
so, um, I was, Sat down at a table and someone said, okay,
Steve, this is spirituality 101, start chapter one.
It was nothing like that.
It was the very first things I learned is how to see
spirit, how to sense spirit in everybody and everything.
And the way I was taught and I have to stress, I
never felt like there was a spirit's hand on this.
It felt like things just happened.
It really, it wasn't like, like I, I saw Jesus or
I saw this white light.
I didn't see any of that.
What I had was this experience and what the experience was
is I saw a friend of mine, a gentleman who I worked
with 20 years ago and I hadn't seen him for 20 years.
And I saw him and I was talking to him.
I recognized him right away and we said
hello to each other.
But what was odd about it is that he hadn't
aged a bit in 20 years.
Nothing, not a bit.
He was still the same guy.
He was like from Haiti and he spoke this French, Creole,
English kind of language.
And it was very expressive because he really didn't
know all the words.
And so we pantomime him out as he talked.
And he was really a jolly fellow.
I really enjoyed his company.
But I only worked with him for a year.
So I really didn't know his, and in retrospect, I would
think, why was he there?
Why was he the one showing me this?
But but then he appeared to me again, but he was an old man.
He was like 80 years old and I didn't recognize him at first.
And but then he did his mannerisms.
He acted out things the way that he does.
And I said, aren't you so and so?
and he said, yeah, how'd you guess?
And that was the starting of this game, is this
guy appeared to me in every shape and form.
Sometimes he appeared to me as a lady, other time he appeared
to me as an Asian person or from South America or he would
change all these ethnicities and ages and everything.
And over a period of time, and I keep on guessing
him, sometimes it took me a while, but over a period
of time is that I didn't really have to concentrate
on like a mannerism to tip me off to who he was.
As I start to feel like an energy like there was
something no matter what his form on the outside
changed, there was still part of it that I could
sense that didn't change.
And as time went on as I didn't even have to see
him, I didn't even have to look at him, I could just
sense and feel his energy.
And that was when I realized what I was seeing was his
true spirit, his satnam his soul, that part of you that
perhaps was born with the universe or created with
the universe, or always was, but perhaps, It grows and
develops over time and so by me seeing him and seeing
him in all these shapes and sizes is that I realized that
I could see and sense spirit and once I could do that is
I start to look around me.
And all of a sudden I saw everything in a different
light now because that I could sense spirit
and I started to realize everything has a spirit,
everything, the plants, the trees, the
animals, the universe.
And I started to understand that all these
spirits are unique, but they're also connected.
That together, perhaps, I'm just saying perhaps, I call
it the universe according to Steve very laughingly, is
that I'm just saying perhaps we are all connected and
that all of us and all of our experiences make up the
consciousness and I believe Now that I believe that's the
consciousness of the Creator.
I believe that the creation and the Creator are one.
Whether you believe in the Big Bang or let there be light,
it explains the same thing.
All of creation coming from a singularity and an infinite
expansion and this whole scenario plays out where, Many
planets and many individuals and many species evolve and
grow and develop spirit and eventually come to realize
that they are the creator.
If we think about now, if we think about where we are with
technology, CRISPR technology and gene editing, and we've
just come that this way in a short period of time, imagine
us a thousand years from now, if we don't blow ourselves up.
First, about the technology and what
we'll be able to create.
And what I really think is that perhaps, just perhaps
I'll get off my thing in just a second, but perhaps the
very purpose of life is to learn and grow and to really
add to the consciousness of the creation and the creator
through our experiences.
And that was one of the first things I believe I
learned there is really that everything has a spirit.
We're all connected and perhaps we make up the
consciousness of the creation that the creator and creation
are one and that was my very first experience, but that
was the first experience of many to come because that
when I was there this kept on happening with this fellow
and me recognizing who he is, and it kept on going on
until I stopped learning.
And each time I stopped learning, I was presented
with another scenario.
that brought my learning to the next level.
And so the very next scenario was I had a life
review and my life review went over and over again.
I reviewed all the aspects of my life, but now I
could see spirit and I could sense spirit in
everybody and everything.
So as I start to replay my life, Each scenario took on
a different meaning because that I could see what
everyone else was feeling.
And so to me, my reality was my reality, but every other
person in that situation had their own reality as well.
And so as I start to go through all these scenarios
in life is I learned more and more things.
And then when I got to the end of my life review,
my awareness was raised and I would go through
my life review again,
because I was able to get more and more out of my life review
each time I went through it, because at the end of my life
review, My understanding, my awareness was raised
and I was ready to learn more from my experiences.
And one of the things I learned that was so valuable
is some of the most terrible experiences in my life.
One of the most heartbreaking things that I've had the
jealousy and the hatred towards myself and other
people that, that once I lived through those, And I had my
life review over and over, I began to understand those
things in a different light.
And once I began to understand it, is I would feel like
a weight was lifted off me, is that I didn't have
any of those hatreds or animosities ashamed anymore.
Because once I understood it, and I learned what
I had to learn from it, I, it was liberating.
It was blissful.
It truly was.
is I knew every day that I went through my life review
is that I knew it was going to be a really bad time.
I really, because you had to face some really tough things.
And but at the end that I would feel blissful.
I really would.
And I like bliss.
I really do.
And I just, it drove me, it almost drove an urgency.
It drove an urgency for me to learn more and more.
And grow.
And that went over time and time again, a lot closer
to infinity than one.
And it kept on happening until I stopped learning.
And then when I stopped, nothing.
Rod Bland: Steve, it almost sounds like you're on a
therapist couch where you're talking about your experiences
and then you integrate and process that and then you
move on to the next one.
Stephen Weber: No, and it's so true because I
apply that in my life now.
That's one of those changes that really made such a
positive difference in my life in the here and now is that
I constantly do life reviews.
In fact, if I can't look back six months ago and say
what a jerk I was, I'm really not learning and growing,
nobody, if not learning and growing, why are you here?
And so that's why that life review was so important to
me because not only did it enable me to grow there,
but enabled me to grow here.
Once I learned the value of it, like anytime, some
people, when they find out their faults, they feel
shame or they uncomfortable, or they deny it.
Me, I get excited.
I get excited because it's okay, I'm going to learn it.
I'm going to grow from this.
I am, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it, and I
don't even have that.
Sometimes it, you know, can upset people close to me.
Like when I make mistakes, it really doesn't
bother me that much.
I have empathy and remorse in those things, but I don't beat
myself over the head for it as long as I learned from it.
And I'm not a person of malice.
I really not concerned about that.
It's just, you learn and grow, and that's and
that's really the mission.
That's what I learned, at least, from those
life experiences.
Rod Bland: I know time is a relative thing and
time doesn't really exist when you're outside of
this physical reality, but how many of those life
experience reviews do you, oh
you did actually say closer to infinity than one, yeah.
Stephen Weber: But I want to say something about the time,
because that's a really important
point that you raised.
Is that time didn't exist there like it exists here.
For instance, here you have appointments in the future.
You can see the calendar.
You can cook.
The grass grows.
The weather changes.
There, it isn't like that.
Everything's about the experiences.
Nothing, none of this happens unless it's
part of an experience.
And so really the way that you sense time, and time
moving on, is that you sense your personal growth.
All the understandings, how you learned along the way,
and that when I was going through my life review is
that what gave my sense of time is that I remember when
I started my life review, where I was mentally and how
I had to work through all of this stuff to get where I, my
understanding is now, and that gave you the sense of time.
That's why I believe so much, everything about life
is getting experiences.
If you went om on a mountain all day, and I, and that
may be important for some people, I don't know.
But you're not getting life experiences.
You have to be out there.
You have to laugh.
You have to cry.
You have to make mistakes.
You have to love.
You have to do all these things and still be able
to dust yourself off at the end of the day and put one
foot in front of the other.
So you get so many more of these life experiences.
If I didn't have these life experiences, I
would have nothing.
I would be bored but really.
Time wouldn't move at all because I'd have
nothing to reflect upon.
At least that's what I believe.
Rod Bland: So the life reviews came to an end at some point.
Was there always someone there with you or did you
just have this general sense of spirit or the creator
that was there with you as you were going through that?
Stephen Weber: I know this is very much unlike
many other people's life, NDEs, but I didn't
sense like an individual, like a Jesus or a God.
It was, everything was all around.
It was like, it was everything.
Like I remember when I was a kid, they would
say, God is everywhere.
And I'd be like little eyes.
You can see me going to the bathroom, it was like,
you would have those kinds of thoughts as a child,
but it wasn't until I was in that other place where.
It's everything.
And that's what gave me the understanding.
At least what I felt was that the creator and the
creation of one is that it wasn't like one set of eyes.
It was like complete understanding that
surrounded everything.
And I hope that answers your question.
I could babble on for a while.
Rod Bland: It's a paradigm, isn't it?
Because we see with our eyes, we individualize
things and to try to explain something that's outside
of that paradigm it's not an easy thing to either
explain or grasp, I think.
Stephen Weber: It's very true, but but I
do think it's important to for me to do my best
because having that life review is one of those lessons
that you could really learn in the here and now that would
change your life, is to have a very critical but honest
and kind eye towards yourself.
But truly to identify those faults in yourself, which
you can learn and grow, a lot of the things, a lot of
the issues that we have in life, we've ingrained them
when they happened like if the dog bites you when you're
seven years old, you can go through your whole life and
just be afraid of dogs and react all of a sudden towards
dogs, as opposed to if you were to review that situation
with the understanding the life experience of a 40
or 50 year old, you may now understand is that you
could tell the difference between an aggressive
dog and a friendly dog.
So you don't have to be afraid of all dogs.
You have to use your sense to figure it out.
And those, that's what a life review does.
It releases those blockages.
You can have that blockage for all your life and never
be around dogs and, be very afraid of them, or you can
revisit it with the wisdom of your life experience.
And that's really the true beauty of the life review
and how it's manifested in our lives here and now
it's one of those things.
Do it.
You'll be a happier person, in my humble opinion.
Rod Bland: While you're there having your life
reviews, what else did you see and did you have were
your senses like sight?
Could you hear things?
Could you smell things?
Could you touch things?
Was that there or was it something different to that?
Stephen Weber: It was different.
And what I mean by that is, when I say I talked,
I really didn't talk.
Nobody talked.
It was just an awareness.
Even when I was playing that game with my friend.
It wasn't like we really talked.
It was like,
it's tough to say how the communication was, but I knew.
What he was, wanted to know and wanted to share.
And I could tell he knew what I wanted to know or
what I wanted to share.
And that's the way it went.
It wasn't like, like Star Trek when the head moves
and they see pumping and you hear someone talking,
but they're not talking like you read the back.
No, it's not.
That is that you can feel certain things and it has
nothing to do with speech.
You can feel and sense intent and knowledge and
that's how I interacted.
It wasn't that like I can walk to the store or something.
It was that these scenes played over and over again.
I couldn't choose where I was going or what I was doing.
I didn't try, I didn't try, I just, everything
just happened.
But once I was in that situation, it appeared to me
that I had a lot of free will.
on what I can choose to do or what I can choose
to understand is that it was almost like a play.
Is that is that you had the scene, all your focus was
what was going on there.
There could be all stuff around me or there could
be nothing around me.
I wouldn't know because It just didn't occur to you
to focus on that because everything was about this
interaction that was going on.
So it wasn't that I ate or slept unless that was
part of the experience.
And for me, I didn't have those kinds of experiences
but later on, there was one point where I saw sunsets and
rises and falls every day, but that wasn't marking time.
That was part of that experience that
was very important.
And and so it's.
It was just just a surreal experience.
I after I was experiencing my life review, when I learned
all I was going to learn from that, everything stopped
and everything changed.
And the next thing is I was put in charge
of some young adults.
And I had to teach them a task.
And no matter what they wouldn't listen to me,
no matter what I did,
they wouldn't they would act, no really, they
would act like they got everything like okay yep.
And then when it was time to do it, they would scatter.
And then I would see them later and they would act
like nothing's wrong.
It was like something wasn't clicking.
It's I, and I was failing miserable.
I w I was failing.
And then I I went to who I thought was like
in charge of things.
And I want to express how I felt and try to figure
out what was going on.
And as I stood before, I don't know the owner
who was in charge.
I realized something is that I realized that I was
standing before myself, not myself, Stevie Weber, but
my higher self like it was then it became apparent to me
that perhaps part of you is always in spirit and part of
you has a human incarnation or a physical incarnation
to learn and to grow and to make the mistakes that your
higher self couldn't make to enable you to have those
experiences that enable you to learn and grow, which
is perhaps the very meaning of life is that to continue
the spiritual evolution, this awareness revolution,
evolution, how the more you Raise your consciousness.
You raise the consciousness of everything around you.
And so once I started to stand before my higher self is
that I couldn't read my mind.
I couldn't tell why I felt the way I felt or
the knowledge that I had.
But by standing in that grace, just that understanding, it
wasn't like I was answering or asking questions,
but just by being in.
That aura, that energy, things just appeared
to me to be more clear.
It's not like someone put a thought in my head.
It was just by being there, like all of a sudden I looked
around at the kids and I realized I had it all wrong.
Is that I wasn't there to teach them a task.
What I was there to do is that these children were spirits
who had yet to experience their first human incarnation.
And I was here, I was being tested to see if I could
shepherd those young children, those young adults, those
young spirits into their first human incarnation.
And what I was doing is I was failing miserably because
that I spent all this time.
To learn about spirit, be able to sense spirit and life
reviews and everything else.
And finally, when I was put in the situation to
mentor these spirit, I didn't see them as spirit.
I saw them as dumb kids who wouldn't listen.
Like I was taught all these things and I
didn't apply any of it.
There was this lady there who didn't do anything,
and it seems strange, but everyone had a role there,
but there was this lady there who just prayed.
And I couldn't hear her words that she was praying,
but I felt like this energy coming from her that was
just so beautiful and so intense and so love, but love
with wisdom, it's not just love, it's love with wisdom
and it was almost like The words was a was a road in
which this intent traveled.
It really wasn't like the words matter.
It was just like the highway for this
beautiful loving energy.
And when I was in this place, that loving energy
really gave me strength at some of the most difficult
points when I was dealing with the situation, it was
like, I couldn't hear the prayer, but I felt that
loving energy and that was.
If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have made it.
I really wouldn't have.
I don't think so.
And then once I understood that...
Everything came into line.
It was then I began to realize that perhaps your spirit was
created with the universe but it learns and grows over
periods of time through many incarnations that it's not so
much I believe that's not so much your reincarnated, as a
new person or a new body or just yourself and you just
forgot your other lives.
It's really what I began to understand is that
your spirit grows through many incarnations, many as
animals, as plants, as all different types of things.
And at each stage, you learn how to have
love and compassion.
Does an alligator have love and compassion?
I don't think so.
But once preachers start taking care of their Children,
then they start to understand love and compassion.
And I truly believe that the spirit learns and
grows through many of these experiences once again
to elevate the awareness and the consciousness.
And once I was able to shepherd those kids off to
their experience, to their physical experience is that
I had my very next and final experience in that place.
I come from a small town on Long Island called
Kings Park, and that's in New York, in the USA,
and there's a big bluff, it's like a cliff that overlooks
the Long Island Sound,
and everybody from town, at the end of every day, we
all go down to the shore, it's a small redneck town,
and we go down to the bluffs and we have red solo cups.
Some people drink coffee and other people drink other
stuff from the red solo cup.
And we talk about what's going on in town, who's
doing who and all those small Town Gossip, which
makes small towns fun.
And I would sit there with my two friends when I was in
this place, Joey and John.
I knew them from town, and they were
good friends of mine.
They were much older than me, but they were talkers.
They were raconteurs.
They were these two Irish guys who still
spoke with the brogue and they could tell a tale.
I just really, they did a lot of fun.
And and Joey, he had broken his back when he
was a kid, right at the bluff where we were.
He was diving in the water, it was shallow, and they actually
had to put metal implants in his back and stabilize him.
And that was years ago when that was really new.
And then Johnny, he like did the readings in church.
And he was like the voice of God when he was like,
he had this voice that was like, and Jesus said, and
like the ground would shake, he was really a good guy.
I really liked them a lot.
And and I would sit there and I'd watch Sunset
with them every day.
But the Sunset wasn't marking time.
It was the reason why we were there.
Because each time I saw the Sunset go, eventually
I came to the realization that both Joey and John
had died earlier that year.
And I thought to myself, how could this be happening?
Really.
How could this be happening?
Is that up until this point?
A lot of crazy stuff was going on, but for some
reason, I don't know, it didn't register with me.
It was like, I was just going with it.
I was having, up until this point, I was having a
wonderful experience and I just didn't question anything.
I don't know why it sounds so odd that these strange
things were happening, but I was just dealing with it.
And it was okay.
I was fine.
I certainly didn't remember any accident I was in.
And when I came to this realization, I started
to think to myself, I wanted to ask them
like, how are they here?
Why are they here?
I know your past, like, how could you be here?
And I kept on thinking about asking them, and I say that,
like I was saying before, it's not like we really talk.
It's if I wanted this to be known, I would
have made it known.
And each time this happened is that for some reason I
didn't want to ask them.
I'm not exactly sure why.
I probably didn't want to know the answer.
It's I just didn't want to ask them.
And then finally, each time we went through this experience,
Because I started to get the feeling that if I didn't ask
them now, I would never get a chance to ask them again.
And this started building up and then finally one time
as I had made it known that I wanted to know why they
were here, and they said, is that they wanted to make
sure that I was alright.
And I didn't know what they meant by this because there
was nothing wrong with me.
I was fine.
And it was like echoing in my mind, I'm all right.
I'm fine.
I'm all right.
It was like it was just so surreal to me and then as the
sun started to set it just got brighter and brighter
and then I shielded my eyes and then eventually I took
my hands off my eyes and I was in my hospital room and
my mother was holding my hand and she was telling me that
I had been in this terrible accident, but and I was
very injured, but everything was going to be all right.
I'm going to be fine.
And and that was my return back.
But in so many ways, that's just the start of
the experience because I thought it was the drugs,
like I thought of this experience afterwards.
And a lot of times I joked about it with friends, I
would, I really did is that I really made fun of it.
It was like, Hey, I got a six pack to go, it was,
wow, that was a trip, man.
It was like.
I didn't believe it.
And but I was just so gravely ill.
I couldn't walk for a year and and it was just so tough but I
remembered a couple of things is first off as I remember
that lady who was praying and I could see spirit now
and I knew who that lady was.
That lady was a dear friend of mine, Kathy.
She was I was on the school board.
And so she was like one of the school moms.
Our kids went to class together.
We did field trips.
We ran an organization called the Kings Park Network to
have positive change in our community and everything.
And we were good friends.
We walk our dogs together and she was a little kooky,
she was into saints and things like that, things that kind
of made fun of her over it.
But she was good humored about it.
And and so I called her right away.
As soon as I.
I was tied down, which was very strange.
It's the first time I was tied down with
my clothes on before.
So it was very strange.
It took me a little time to get used to that.
But as soon as I was able to get, I was intubated.
I couldn't move.
I had this tube down my throat and that's
set like a long time.
I was like that.
But as soon as I got all that stuff out of me, I texted my
friend and I told her that I heard her prayers and she
said, you heard my prayers?
How did you know?
And I told her that that I was in a place.
That not here, not there, where you can hear prayers,
and I heard your prayers, and it gave me strength
at the most difficult time I was there, and
I thank you for that.
And she told me how she prayed every day at the exact same
time, and she made sure, to send me that, that love and
light, and and really, so if I have any advice to anybody
is that, prayers work, but it's almost like the words
don't matter, it's the intent.
It's the love and the caring and the intelligence.
That you put behind those prayers, that it's really
just a highway, a vehicle for sending that into spirit.
I really believe that.
And it wasn't for Kathy.
I wouldn't have made it.
And also Kathy was an athlete.
And so she helped me recover.
And she was like halfway between Sergeant Slaughter
and Mother Teresa, you know, you know, like, at times she
was so tough and so mean,
but other times she was just so kind and supportive.
And, but there was something else there.
is that I felt like a surety of outcome.
Almost like I've been down this road
before, but I hadn't.
Like I knew that if I did these things and I tried real
hard and I didn't give up, I didn't get discouraged,
I would get better.
I would be able to walk and these things would happen.
And I was so sure of this.
I drove the poor people crazy in rehab because I
would sneak out of my room.
I'd be in my walker and I'd be shuffling down
the hall and stuff.
And they'd tell me I'd have to get back in my room.
And it was then I realized.
What Joey and Johnny meant about what Joey and Johnny
meant about making sure I was going to be okay.
They didn't mean there.
They meant here.
Because I believe that they were my spirit guides.
And like John's leg, he died of diabetes.
His leg was all infected.
My leg was all crushed.
My back was all busted up.
I had all these metal implants.
Just like my friend Joey.
How does this happen?
Like, how do they, how do I feel that energy?
How does that happen?
No, I'm certain they were my spirit guides
and I was benefiting from their knowledge.
Not like they were telling me one more push up, but
it was that understanding that if I did these
things I would get better.
And it was really true.
I felt like I did, I made tremendous recovery.
In fact, I meet some of my friends from high school
now, I'm in better shape than they are, nothing happened
to them, it's just, it's all about motivation and
and getting that energy, really feeling that.
from my spirit guides and Kathy, you know, get going,
Steve, but it really was.
And things were going pretty good.
Then I was starting to get my sea legs back.
I had returned to work and
then my son died of a drug overdose.
And um,
Rod Bland: Yep.
Yep.
Stephen Weber: you.
And uh, you know, it happened so quickly, a
lot of families have, long histories but he was,
He's a tremendous musician.
He could play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix.
He could play the saxophone like Dizzy
Gillespie played the horn.
He played the guitar
and the piano.
He played the piano like Mozart.
He just, he would, I remember the piano teacher used to
yell and scream at my son because he was playing all
these very complicated pieces.
My son would say, what am I playing it wrong?
He would say, no idea what you're playing.
It was like.
It was such a blast and he was gone, he was a
championship wrestler.
He was on a scholarship to a engineering, top engineering
school in the United States.
And it was just, Oh, it just happened all of a sudden.
And, and I had to do a lot of soul searching because, being
an alt personality wasn't so funny now, like the Harley
Davidsons and the pretty girls and the beer and stuff,
it wasn't that funny now.
I was a committed father, 100%, but I often thought
did I make the best example?
These are things you just run over your mind
over and over again, you just try to figure out.
And this is when I started to become pretty close to
my friend, Kathy, is that we were spending a lot of time
together and sometimes I would share stuff about the
place between here and there with her and then one day as
I was sharing it and I like made a joke and Kathy said,
Steve, are you looking at me?
I'm not laughing.
She said, okay.
That, That was real.
And the things you learn there is preparing you for
what you're experiencing now.
And I think she was right, because that it
was such a difficult thing and I had to begin
to come to terms with it.
And Kathy, she was very kind about it.
She was a little, she was a little kooky about things,
about spirit, at least I thought at the time, but I
later learned that perhaps she, one of us was kooky and
perhaps it wasn't her but.
Who knows?
And and so my cousin had gone to a medium, mediums, channel
spirit and went to a medium and to get in contact, I
think, with her grandmother.
And instead of her grandmother coming through, my son came
through And there were a few validations about my
son playing football with her son and the medium
read off the numbers on the jerseys and also said that
he had a synchronization.
Synchronicity with Saint Teresa, and that's like a
Catholic Saint, the little flower and roses, and the
psychic had asked if we had seen flowers like roses,
and it was so weird because Kathy and I, we were hiking
as part of my rehabilitation, and we'd be seeing roses
all over on the trails, like in the middle of winter,
and Kathy would say, Oh, someone's trying to send us
a message, And I would say, yeah, they dropped the rose.
That's what the message is sending.
And she'd say no, this is so odd.
And so when my cousin came back with this information
about Nick and St.
Teresa and roses, I just thought it was a
whole load of poppycock.
I just, I thought she looked on Facebook, what,
I just didn't buy it.
And that really upset Kathy because she felt
like this was the, the missing link that Steve
would really buy into this.
And that went on for a while.
And then, one day it was about a year after my son's passing,
is that a friend gave us a St.
Teresa card, like a mass card.
And so what we had done is that we had found like a
brook, a babbling brook, and we had put a statue of St.
Teresa there, and we had a big magic marker, and we wrote a
prayer on it, And we put the rock down and then we came
back like a month later and there's a hundred rocks there.
It was with all prayers on it for lost children or even
I need a job or I like this girl, even something as simple
as those things, but everybody started writing prayers down
and it was then I started to really begin to heal because
I began to, it reminded me of that Sting song, Message in a
Bottle where he was miserable, he put a message in a bottle,
he expected an answer, but he got 10, 000 bottles back
instead, asking for help.
And and that's the way I felt, but it reminds
me of that place.
It wasn't that nobody wanted to listen.
It was like we were all in this together.
Really, that we all have these problems.
We all have these things.
I'm not the first person to have lost a child
or lost a loved one.
And we're all in this together and we really have
to rely on each other and be there for each other.
It really helped me to understand that.
But it was then I looked down on the mass card
and it said Saint Teresa was born on January 2nd.
That was my son's birthday.
And then I, I'm not done, and then I read the day
she was canonized, that was the day my son died.
Rod Bland: Golly.
Stephen Weber: Like, Like, how does that happen?
It was like, really I could understand one
thing, but both things?
Statistically speaking, that's crazy.
And then with the flowers and everything, like I
had to sleep on this.
I really, it was very like, and then that
night I had this dream.
It was a dream that so many times people have when
they've lost a loved one.
Is that the loved one comes back to them and
it's everything's okay.
It's like nothing of this it's well, it's
it felt like nothing of this really happened.
And then when I woke up as I realized it was just a
dream, but it was okay now, it really was okay because
that I began to understand that place was real and that
my son was in that place now and he was transitioning
and he was experiencing all of those beautiful things
that I experienced and just as spirits grow and we have
our a higher selves that I'm certain I will see him
again, not as father and son, but truly as part of our
whole spiritual existence.
And it will be beautiful.
But until that time comes, I was going to
make the best out of life.
I was going to be happy again.
I was going to be sad again.
I was going to enjoy and make the most out of it.
My, my daughter, such a beautiful girl.
She was struggling with losing her.
Her brother.
And so I had to focus on those types of
things, not on myself.
And and it was beautiful.
It really was so liberating for me because I began to
understand everything, but that's not where it ends.
Is that they caught the fellow who sold my son the drugs.
Because, I'm a computer guy.
I had cameras all over the house when cameras
weren't cool, I was into it, not that I lived in a
dangerous neighborhood just because you could do it,
and my son didn't have any other drugs in his system.
He really didn't have his history of drug abuse besides
beer, the things that the kids can do and and they put him
on trial and they charged him with second degree murder.
The very same charge that they charged that
fellow in the beginning.
Very same charge.
And I thought, wow, how ironic that was.
And it was, they were charging him federally.
And in the United States, that's a big deal.
If you get charged federally, you get 16 years, you're
going to do 16 years, there's no, it's different.
And and so I went to go to the trial and and I was
really, I wanted to be angry.
I really did.
I wanted to pound the flesh.
I knew how those parents felt in the beginning.
After losing their child and when I got there and I saw
the defendant, I don't know.
I just couldn't hate.
I just, I couldn't do it.
Like all I saw was a kid, a stupid drug addicted
kid who made a terrible mistake, a mistake that
he couldn't take back.
What would it serve for me?
I don't know, it might sound so sappy so, well, whatever,
but I felt love for the kid, I really did, is that I
wanted things to be different.
I wanted him to be able to put his life back together.
He had to be held responsible, because my son wasn't the only
person who he'd hurt, the only person who died, but other
people got very sick and...
Forensics have changed their lives, and granted,
buying drugs is your own choice, but when a drug is
so addictive, and you're so young, and you really don't
know about these things, it's just, and I felt for the
kid, and, you know, I think.
And I don't know for sure, but I think that those
parents experienced from the beginning, with that
wrong way drunk driver is that I think that was
part of my life review.
And I came to terms with that.
By living through their example and feeling what they
felt and going through that over and over again in my
life review, when I was put in that same situation, it's like
I had the benefits of that.
And I was able to relieve myself of all of that
negativity, all those negative feelings.
And truly really what I wanted for that kid is I
wanted him to have a child someday, to get out of jail,
and have a child, and to love that child, maybe a son,
and nurture him, and bring him to wrestling practice,
go to his wedding, and see grandchildren, and maybe
someday when your day comes, you'll be surrounded by your
great grandchildren in bed.
That would be payback for me.
For that truly would to have a life well lived.
And so I understand Stevie Webb is not making
criminal justice law.
And I am a full believer in law and order in this world.
So I'm not saying anything about anything except for
my personal experience.
Is that I found a way to love after all of that,
after all this experiences.
And so when I tell you, and when I share with you and your
audience about the near death experience was just part, it
was just part of a longer, A more intense story that,
that, how did this happen?
I had this crazy experience with this wrong way
drunk driver and the death of this young lady.
Then I had my near death experience.
A crazy, crazy, and I survived to tell about it.
I often say like I took a spiritual shortcut because
all I did was survive.
But it's really true.
I had this crazy near death experience and
then I lost my son.
And then we had a trial that so paralleled everything,
and I thought, like, how did all this happen?
Is there a master design to things, or is the stage set?
Sometimes I hear people say, oh, that's your
life plan, you plan this.
I never got that feeling.
I never, you know, that like, like you have the
wisdom to plan your life plan to, I don't know.
I don't have all the answers.
All I have is my experience, but it seems so odd how
these things fit together and truly since, since
having these experiences and coming to terms, like
my life has changed so much.
There's certain gifts that I take with me now.
And one of those things is.
is signs and synchronicities is to really understand those
messages that we receive from spirit and that and then you
have to get rid of the oh wow factor a lot of times
when people receive a sign they're like oh wow grandma's
you know blah blah blah once you start to examine why
you're seeing this message or why you're feeling this
message all of a sudden it opens up this gateway of
communication because spirit knows That could communicate
with you and understand, you could understand those.
And sometimes the message in and of itself is
just one message and it tells the whole story.
But other times, messages from Spirit is a sequence
of messages to educate you and bring you a
level of understanding.
And it's really true, at least for me, is that once I
started opening up my eyes, I started to see these messages.
In my book, The Place Between Here and There, is that
I write about about this one experience that really
changed the way I felt about mediums and psychics
and spirit communication.
Because I remember the first time that my friend Kathy,
Kooky Kathy, said to me one afternoon, she said, has my
son ever tried to contact me?
I thought she was batshit crazy, because I, I'm
dealing with this grief and she's talking about
my son contacting me.
Oh, what am I supposed to go to a medium?
And they got to tell me stuff about my son.
Like I want to know part of this.
I didn't understand any of this and I
didn't buy a lot of it.
And um, day, Kathy and I, during the health crisis that
we've all had to go through, the whole world has suffered
through I had decided to write this book about my experience
and Kathy was helping me with it, we were doing it together.
And we were just taking a break from it and we
were walking along the beach on Long Island.
And one of Kathy's favorite pastimes is
collecting beach glass and it would roll up on the beach
and she had jars and jars of it all over the house.
We were going to have to get another extension on
the house just to take care of all of our beach glass.
And she's a big saint person and she always prays to
this saint called Saint Germaine, the violet flame.
So when we're walking on the beach, she's praying to Saint
Germaine to heal the world.
And first off, it wasn't for Kathy, things would
have been a lot worse.
She's, doing all those prayers for us, and I do believe.
But she wanted a sign from Saint Germain that
he had heard her prayers, and that he was going to
help her heal the world.
And so she asked for to find violet beach glass, like St.
Germain, the violet, she wants to find violet beach
glass on Long Island.
You will find hen's teeth before you will
find violet beach glass.
It doesn't exist.
Just no way.
And I knew she was going to be disappointed
because she can really get wrapped up in this stuff.
And and so we're on our way back and I thought
she was almost crying and that she was really upset.
She didn't find the violet beach glass.
And then just right then out of, just out of nowhere, this
Dalmatian puppy, Dalmatian, like 101 Dalmatian, like a
white puppy with black spots all over it, comes running out
from behind a sand dune and starts jumping all over us.
I was thrilled.
I love doggies.
I have no problem with a dog jumping on me.
And we were just, I was patting its head and
like pushing it around.
The owner comes running from behind the sand dune
saying, Oh, I'm sorry.
It's a puppy, got away.
And we're like, no problem.
And we chatted with the lady for a little bit.
And so I asked her, what's the dog's name?
Rod Bland: You're not going to say Violet.
Wow.
Hmm.
Stephen Weber: And I think to myself, like,
how could this Dalmatian,
how does a Dalmatian puppy, how does that be Violet?
It's nothing could be further from the truth.
And so I'm like, in shock, and Kathy doesn't get it at all.
And so the lady runs off with the dog, and so we're walking
away, and I'm like, Kathy, the dog's name is Violet.
And she finally got it.
And I was like, that's a sign, that has to be a message.
What does that mean?
Really?
We have to find this lady again.
And so what had happened a few weeks later, people walk in
the same beaches all the time.
And we see her again and she's running with the dog,
of course, is off leash again, jumping all over us.
And we're like, Hey, how you doing?
And stuff.
And so we told her the story about the violet beach
glass and the violet dog.
And she was so thrilled about it.
And she started to tell me how her son and her.
They used to watch Gone with the Wind.
It was their favorite show.
They like had one of these big screen TVs and they
just, they loved it and they loved Scarlett O'Hara and her
sassiness and and Brett Butler gave her this big violet dress
at one point that she wears and it's beautiful and she
decided to name the dog Violet but instead of spelling it
like Violet, she spelt it the way Scarlet spells her name.
She lost her son just a few months before
that.
And we became very good friends, and we're
both struggling with so many of the same issues
and like, how does that happen?
Like, how does it happen?
Violet Beach Glass, Violet Dog, Mom Loses Baby.
Young son like my son, and we're brought together at
such a critical time in the world is that a coincidence?
Really?
Is that a coincidence?
And that's really what's, what sold me is that I started
to believe that, no, really?
There is spirit.
We are spirit.
We're all connected.
This is all real.
My experience was real.
Life is real, and we have to go out and enjoy it and make
the very best of everything.
Laugh, cry, and just as we opened up our discussion,
if I could leave people with just this one thought,
it's that Life is good, and people are good, even when
very sad things happen.
And in so many ways, these are just silly
words that Stevie says.
But, if you could find out why, for your own self,
in your own way, why this is true, I'm certain you
will find peace in this world, and any other world
that comes afterwards.
I've found a way to be happy again.
I've found a way to share my experience, not only with
people who are interested in near death experiences, and
that this perhaps isn't a one and done thing, and that
we have so much to learn and grow, but also those people
who are suffering from loss, who understands that when
you say there's something else, there really is.
And it's beautiful and there's a meaning towards
everything is that I didn't see Jesus and I didn't see
pretty clouds or flowers and all those wonderful things
that many other peoples did.
But the beauty I felt was the bliss.
The bliss of understanding is that a lot of times people
believe there's perhaps two paths to enlightenment.
One is one of devotion and the other one is one of
understanding and I'm more of the understanding type.
And and it just so happens, I think I had that
experience at the right time and I'm very grateful.
And without the, with the exception of losing my son is
that I wouldn't have changed a bit about anything of my life.
And I'm so happy now.
And I feel very blessed.
Rod Bland: Thanks for sharing your story, Steve.
If anyone's got any questions are you open
to answering those?
And what's the best way for people to get in touch
with you and find out what else you've got going on?
Stephen Weber: Yeah one of the best things.
First off, my book is the place between here and there.
It's available on Amazon.
It's in Spanish.
It's an audio book in Kindle, and it's really
a beautiful story.
It's about love and life and there's some tough spots in
the book, but you'll leave feeling happy and refreshed.
You really will.
It's a beautiful story and I recommend it highly.
Of course I do, but but also is that we have a Facebook
page and my email address is steve, S T E V E at S Between
here and there.org, Steve, at between here and there.org.
And I'm sure you'll put our social media
in the description of the of the video and
please reach out to us.
We talk to a lot of people and we share, really it's a
. That means I honor the honor inner teacher and student
inside each of us, and we all have something to share.
It's just like, The lady with the violet dog is that
we're brought together.
And in that situation, we were both teachers and
students of each other.
And that's really the path.
The story, it's a beautiful story and and then since
then is that right now as I'm living in Florida,
we had mentioned this, I live in paradise.
This is paradise here.
Every day is a beautiful day.
There's palm trees all over the place.
And um, yeah.
You know, It's so odd.
I came here for the weather, but I realized
it's the people.
It really is.
People are just so kind here and just being
part of a community.
And it's just, life is good.
I can't ride motorcycles anymore.
I put my family through enough trauma, although I would love.
to ride motorcycles and maybe someday, but I have
these electric e bikes and I just love them because
I go off roading all the time and I have all these
scooters and unit cycles and so I have all my toys
that I do and I still work.
I work remotely.
I'm an engineer.
So I love that.
But but my real passion in life right now is
I teach a yoga class, a meditation class.
I called it Mantras, Meditations, and Good
Vibrations, and I teach another class
called Kundalini Kriya.
It's a type of yoga, it's like a celebration where we
just really enjoy a lot of different music, different
asanas and exercises.
I have this huge gong that's It's this immense gong.
I have it on wheels and I live about 50 yards from the venue.
So I just roll it out my front door.
I bring it to the venue and I play the gong and
it's just so much fun.
And I just I'm really enjoying it.
I truly am.
Rod Bland: I bet that makes you well known in the
neighbourhood, the gong.
Stephen Weber: No it's the best advertisement
because I walk, I push it down the block.
Everyone says, Oh, Steve, where are you going?
Like, come on, Come on down.
And I get like 50 to a hundred people each time.
Each time 50 to 100 people show up and either for the
yoga and the meditation or just the meditation class, and
it really makes a difference because we truly are all
connected and everyone has the same desires and wants
and need to just get a break from this crazy world.
Rod Bland: Uh, it's funny you should mention Kriya Yoga
because one of my previous guests, who was also a near
death experience with Peter Panengor, is into Kriya Yoga.
Is he someone that you know, Steve?
Stephen Weber: Yes, as, you know, I was really
struggling when I had first wrote the book,
The Place Between Here and There, because
people would come to me as I was knowledgeable
about spiritual matters.
And really...
I took a shortcut, you know, because that it wasn't all I
did was survive, people study all these years and have all
these letters after their name and all I did was survive and
I felt so awkward at times when people would come and
tell me, you know, share their stories with me and it was
really weighing heavy on me.
And I was really depressed about it because I felt
like I was an imposter.
And so I reached out to this one guy.
I think it was on HBO or I saw him on like a, uh, you know,
some sort of major outlet.
I found him on Facebook and I sent him an email message
and I just asked him, you know, I told him what I was
going through and I, Tom, I felt very uncomfortable and
he seemed like he was a guy who had his stuff together
and he was counseling people and so I began this pen pal
relationship and his name was Peter, Peter Paragon
Rod Bland: Yeah.
Because he used to have a mainstream television show
on a TV network for like 15 years or something.
I think it was, yeah.
Stephen Weber: and And he responded right back.
And I had this pen pal relationship with him
for several months.
He was walking me through spending a lot of time.
And it was walking me through and helping me
come to terms with things because he felt the same way.
Because I think that's the way it connected was
the whole idea of taking the spiritual shortcut.
And he really he got me into a good place and so
when I told him goodbye and I said, Peter, I said, if
someday a guy comes up to a stranger and gives you a big
hug, you'll know it's me.
And he laughed and that was that.
And so roll it forward to this year there's this group called
the International Association of Near Death Studies.
They had invited me to speak at their conference.
And this was a surreal experience for me because
other than seeing a small clip by Peters, I never even
talked to anyone who's had a near death experience.
I never listened to anyone's stories.
Part of it was that.
I had my own experience and I, it's complicated, but I
just, wasn't a part of anyone else's stories and, but
that conference was great.
All of a sudden, I met all these people
and it really changed.
Help me come to terms to things.
But I look at the very first day before everyone
gets there, Peter Paragon is speaking and he's
speaking about Kriya Yoga.
I was like, I'm going to his thing.
And and so I go to him.
I never saw him in person before.
And he's sitting there, he's talking in front of the group.
And at the end, he asked for questions.
And then everyone asks questions and I wait
until it's the very sticklers about time there.
So I knew they were going to, you know,
when the time was up.
So I wait.
I was the last question.
I raised my hand.
He called on me.
And I told him, I said, and he mentioned shortcuts again
in his speech that day.
And I said, Peter, I said, you mentioned shortcuts,
spiritual shortcuts, and you're not feeling worthy
to explain these things.
And that kind of brought you to Kriya
Yoga and other things.
I said, I share a very same experience is that
I, I felt like I took a spiritual shortcut.
In fact, it was causing me a lot of trauma.
And I explained to him the story, how I reached
out to this fella online and and they counseled me.
They really gave me some really good advice and made me
through a really tough time.
And I said, you know who that person was?
And he said, no.
And I asked him, can I, could I approach you?
He said, yeah.
And I walked up to him.
I gave him a big hug and then he reached out with
both hands and yelled at this top of his lung.
He said, Steve.
Rod Bland: Ha.
Ha Ha.
Stephen Weber: So that's, that's a great guy.
And I really learned the lesson not only about
Peter being a great guy.
Absolutely.
And someone gives to the community and a wider
community, not only yoga, I'm a yoga person but
also just being there talking to other people.
It was just a great experience.
I'll never forget it.
Rod Bland: Yeah, that's a great story.
Yeah.
He's a good guy, Peter.
My last guest said, had this saying, life is to be lived.
And I think that you're a great example of that,
Steve, despite what happens, life is to be lived.
And it's the joy that you have for living
really stands out to me.
So let's wrap it up.
Do you have one final message for people before we finish
off our conversation today?
Stephen Weber: Yeah, I would just say,
I just have to reiterate is that so as long as you
have breath in your body, you can make a difference.
You could find happiness and sometimes is some of the worst
things that have happened to you really can be the
greatest gift they really are.
And you could really agonize over.
terrible decisions you've made or other people have
made against you, but really there's a there's a
mantra which I love a lot.
It's called the Mool Mantra, and it says uh, uh, Ekankar
Sathan, Kata purak nirvo nirver, and that means
life is about awareness.
And raising your awareness, and you raise your awareness
through your experiences.
So never have hate or animosity towards those people
who bring you bad experiences.
Don't allow them to do it, because you have to learn.
No, don't allow people, be smart.
When those things come, take them in stride
and learn from them.
And don't hate or have jealousy towards others
or yourself, and you'll really, you'll find
bliss in this world.
No matter what, how crazy the world is, so many times,
one's prison bars are but their own construction.
Break free, and you do that from right here.
Rod Bland: That's a great message.
Steve, it's been my great pleasure to have
you on the show today.
I really appreciate you being my guest.
Stephen Weber: Thank you so much.
Best of success to you.
I'm inspired by your journey and your message,
and you bringing this this information to your audience,
and just best of success.
Sat Nam.