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Miki Brittenham is a medium, animal communicator and crystal healer, who works with crystal energy to speak to the body as well as other lifeforms.
She offers readings and energetic crystal healing for people and pets, intuitive coaching, handmade jewelry, crystals and other metaphysical awesomeness, like her psychic haikus better known as psykus.
She shares her near death experience.
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Near Death Experience with Miki Brittenham
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TRANSCRIPT
Miki:
I was really sick. I was pregnant with my first child and I got something called HELLP syndrome, which is hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelet count. It's like the most rarest form of preeclampsia I guess. Something like that.
Back then, it's a death sentence. So you basically die. But nowadays, majority of people, they don't die now because of medical advances. But back then, I don't know, I guess you just died from it. I'm not really sure. That's what they told me anyway.
I was in the hospital, in and out of the hospital, and the total amount was probably about a good four to five months, because I kept going in and out and in and out and they just kept me in. And they said I needed to at least make the 32-week mark.
So on the day that I made the 33-week, they induced me. That was the first mistake because my health had just started going down rapidly, but my body was failing at that point. My blood pressure was really high and my platelets were super low. Which is why they didn't really want to do a cesarean because of the clotting factor, right?
So they induced me and at that point, they had said, I guess I was in labour for about 12 hours and they said that my platelets had dropped to 80,000. Normal is about 150 - 450,000. So they told me that my blood pressure was so high that I was going to have a heart attack or stroke. And they came in and I remember this. They brought me some papers and they basically said, "Here, sign these papers because we need to keep the baby alive but you're going to die."
Slade:
Ohmygod...
Miki:
That was pretty much what they had said. Yeah. It was so weird. They're like, "Alright. Well you're dying. We need to get this baby out."
My liver shut down. The whole birth took four minutes. My liver shut down and my heart stopped. It was 9:00 when they wheeled me in there and her birth certificate says 9:04. I don't even understand, but it was so fast, and as soon as they started to put me under, I left my body and I was watching from above, but I didn't really care about ME.
I mean, they were saying, I could hear them, they were saying, "Her heart stopped. Her heart stopped. Get the baby out." All I cared about was just making sure that baby was okay.
I had no... I mean, it was weird because it wasn't like an emotional attachment to the baby. I just wanted to make sure the baby was going to be alright. It was like, is this baby going to be fine? But I didn't care anything about my body at all. I was watching it and I had zero emotion to it at all.
As soon as I saw the baby was coming out and that she was fine, I just floated up out of the ceiling. My mom was super stressed out and she was on the roof. You know they have those patio, I don't know if it's really the roof, but those outdoor patio smoking areas, right, they used to do in hospitals? She was out there smoking and I could see her and I felt the same about her.
I was like, Oh, there's my mom. But there was zero emotion involved. And then I just kind of floated up, and I did not see a tunnel or anything. It was like I had seen my mom, and I started to float up, and then all of a sudden I was there... wherever, you know, whatever the 'there' is.
There were three people there. I don't, I mean, they weren't really people but that's the best way for me to describe them. Beings of light.
The first thing that I noticed when I was there was like, everything was so much brighter. And it was almost like when you're looking at the sun, how bright that is, but it didn't affect your eyes in any way. Like it was so soft and calm and just everything was bright. You know when the sun is starting to set, and the sky sort of looks like a Maxfield Parrish painting?
Slade:
Yes!
Miki:
Okay. That's how it looked. That's the closest way that I can describe it. And it just, it was so beautiful. And these beings were there and there's this feeling when you are, like you've been gone a long time and you're getting off of a plane and you see people you love. And it's just so... you just want to run to them, right? It's like that. This most intense love of everyone you love: your family, your lover, your kids, your parents, your animals. All combined.
If you could combine all of that love into one feeling, that's how it feels. And I felt that about these beings.
They had, I mean I'll describe them. They had features but they didn't have any features. And I know that's like a contradiction and it doesn't make any sense, but I don't know if I perceived them as having this or if that's what they really had. Because it's almost like they're just a light but within the light, I could pick out these features, almost.
So there was an older man who had long hair that was very pale and really blue, blue eyes. He was wearing some kind of robe or cloak, maybe a cloak but there was some kind of sleeves because I remember cuffs. They were, all three of these beings were wearing the same kind of cloaks. It was sort of like they were almost white or very pale and kind of shimmery, almost like there were jewels but there weren't jewels.
I want to say it's like there was gold thread through this white but there was no gold thread. It was just very shimmery. All of it was shimmery, like their hair and their eyes.
Then there was a younger man who had lighter, not really brown hair but kind of like a dirty blonde, darker, not so pale as the first man, and he was a lot younger and he had like a purplish blue eyes and then there was a woman who had really long, like, super long pale hair. Very, very pale, maybe pale blonde, and she had those purply eyes too. That is the one with the bluish skin. Her skin kind of had this blue tint. I don't really recall if the other ones had a blue tint. They might have.
But there was just so much emotion involved in seeing these people, like we were hugging without hugging, like a virtual hug or something, I don't know.
There was a river. I could see out in the distance, like with that pretty Maxfield Parrish sky, there was a river and the water was so crystal blue. Have you ever been to Zion National Park?
Slade:
No.
Miki:
We went a couple of years ago and I've never seen water that colour except for at Zion National Park. It was almost like this teal colour, maybe green. Almost like this bright, bright turquoise. The water in Hawaii has that in some areas, but it almost is like there's too much pigment in the water in Hawaii. Whereas in Zion it seemed more like very sheer waters. When I saw that water, I was like, that's the kind of water that that river was!
So strange but there was some kind of field but I don't recall there being a colour to the field. It was just a landscape kind of all blended in to that sky but it was a field and then there was a river. I was over here in one spot and the river was over there and I could see it but there was almost like this invisible barrier or this secret fence that I couldn't see.
Like, No, you do not pass.
I'm on this side with these people and there's all that beautiful stuff over there and I'm like, I just want to go over there! But that wasn't what was going on. I joke and say I wasn't allowed in heaven because it's that barrier. But it wasn't like I wasn't allowed there. We were just doing something over here.
There was some kind of weird building that we were by. I keep remembering a building but it wasn't a building. It has really strange angles and it had that iridescence. Like their robes. So it could have been something I perceived there, you know what I mean? They were just beings of light. I don't know if that building was a perception. I'm perceiving there's a building here or there really was a building there.
Looking down on myself, I have no body. Like if you're looking at yourself now and you look down, you would have a body but I had nothing. So there were no parts of me that I could see. I'm just seeing everything from my eyes. Nothing was spoken between us. It was all telepathy.
So I knew everything that they were saying. I knew everything that they were thinking and it was just this deep connection.
And then I went into the life review.
The best way that I can describe it was like, you know when you see those maybe in TV or movies, they have these huge monitors that have a whole bunch of different little squares and everything is moving. Like these TV monitors with people on it or something from all across the world and they're showing each one has different stuff in the little cubes.
It was sort of like that. So it was like there was lots of different visions going on of my life and it felt like it almost kind of wrapped around my head, but I don't think I had a head. So it just sort of, I want to say it was like a 360 degree vision almost. And every block had a moment of my life that I was able to look at and feel and understand everything that was going on in all of these different moments of my life all at the same time.
But it's not just feeling it from your perception. Whatever interaction that you have with every person, you feel it from their point of view and your point of view at the same time. So every single interaction that you ever have, you experience how the other person perceived you, what they picked up from you. And sometimes it was really painful.
I mean, if sometimes you're an asshole, you know what I mean, and you say things that aren't nice, then you kind of really see how you impacted this other person. You really explore every area of your life and it's almost like it's instantaneous and you're just learning and learning and you kind of see how you behaved and where you went wrong maybe and where you went right. Or where other people damaged you in certain moments and how you perceived what they were trying to say versus what they were really trying to say.
It was pretty intense.
After that, the thing about the life review is there's no judgement. Those beings, they didn't judge me at all. All they had for me was pure love. I was the only one who was judging me. So there is no judgement. There is no being that's gonna come and, no god is going to judge you for your wrongs and things that you did wrong to other people.
The only person that's gonna judge you is yourself. You are your judge and sometimes that's, you know, I think that's even more painful. To see your own shortcomings, you know what I mean, so vividly and understand them. In seeing where I went wrong, it was almost like, not wrong, but where I could've been better, or done things different, it was almost like some moments were a sad revelation where it's just so impactful.
Then, after that, the beings showed me this. It's a domed chest. I don't know. It's really strange. It kind of has a dome top and there were straps across it and it was really iridescent, kind of goldish colour. And they lifted up the chest and when I looked inside the chest, that was the moment that I had complete clarity of every question I've ever asked.
I knew all my answers to everything, and I was like, Oh yes, I know this stuff! I know all of this stuff. That's right. Like it was almost like I remembered that I'd always known this stuff.
I think I watched my future. Looking in the chest is where I really have thought about a lot of it over the years, trying to figure out what exactly was in that chest because, you know it's like I remember what was in the chest but I don't have a clear vision of it and I can't really put it into any words.
The only thing that I remember when I looked in that is going, "Oh!"
But whatever they showed me in that chest, was the reason I chose to come back. So it must've been a future like, this is behind the box if you choose curtain #2!
It was at that point that they asked me, "Are you staying or are you going?"
So it was like, I mean, they didn't ask me. It was this mind-to-mind connection. I knew they were giving me a choice and at that point, it was my turn to do something about my situation. It was at that point where I was like, "Okay. I'm going back."
And then my uncle was there, which was really strange. My uncle had a, he died of a congestive heart failure from a drug overdose when he was 33 and I'm named after him. He died when I was 19 but I'm still named after him.
The only word that I recall being spoken like a spoken word through this whole thing was what my uncle said. He was a big wave surfer and the word that he used to use to describe the perfect wave was 'perps', and when I said "Okay, I'm coming back", he threw the shaka and said "perps".
What was really interesting is that he was perfectly clear. I mean, he was like these other people but he, like I really remember his features so well. Maybe because I know him. I mean, I knew them too but I'm very familiar with him. But he only had an upper body. He didn't have any legs. I've always pondered that. I don't know. It's kind of strange. I mean, I didn't have legs either so I guess it would make sense that he didn't.
It was at that moment that I decided to come back and I woke up in the ICU. The first thing I did was I stuck out my finger like E.T. and said, "How big?" because I wanted to know how big the baby was. Because they had said that she wasn't growing, she was about 2 pounds. She was 3 pounds. So she was perfectly fine. She was doing great.
I stayed in the ICU for about two weeks and I had a 24-hour nurse in there that didn't work at the hospital, that no one else saw, so he was like a stranger angel, right? He was in there. He was wearing scrubs and he would sit by my bed.
His name was Scott and he would sit by my bed every day and any time I would wake up, I kept waking up and I would have these nightmares of this death scenes and I would panic and I would wake up and I'd be like, "Where am I?? What's going on??"
And he would hold my hand and he'd say, "It's okay. You had a baby. The baby is fine. You're gonna be fine."
And I'd be like, "Okay." And then I'd kind of fall asleep but I remember asking the nurse, when the nurses would come in, "Where's Scott?"
And they're like, "What are you talking about? There's no one here named Scott."
I'm like, "Yes! He's been sitting with me every single day. He's wearing blue scrubs." And they all wear maroon scrubs and no one's in blue scrubs. But he was in blue scrubs. So that was kind of interesting.
Slade:
Ohmygosh. Okay so I've written down some questions while you were talking. Just a couple of things that, it's like a lightning round of details.
Before you had this experience, had you ever had an out of body experience or ever done any kind of astral projection or tried to do anything like that before?
Miki:
Um, yeah. When I was about 13, 14, I went through this extreme astral projection phase where I went to bed at like, 7:00 every night. Shut my door because I was just going in there to meditate because I'm going to leave my body, you know? It was like this determination and so... I rearranged my room so my bed was in the direction it needed to be in, everything was perfect.
Most of the time I think I fell asleep but there was one time where I did leave my body and I remember seeing my body laying there and just that, seeing that, was so... I don't know. It freaked me out that I just..
Slade:
Popped back in?
Miki:
Yeah. Just popped back in. There was this weird instance. That was the only time before this, but now it seems like, I mean, I can't do that spontaneously at all. But whenever I have some kind of anesthesia, I always, I see the situation from above, so I'm hovering above but it's in a different, very different than that experience.
That experience I had zero attachment to my body. When that happens to me now, I do have feelings and an attachment to my person, you know, my body.
Slade:
So when you were in that place, which, I love the Maxfield Parrish reference because I love golden hour, that time of day, that time of light. I love the late 19th century painters who were really into capturing that. And I think that being the age that we are, there was a period in the 80s and 90s where that artwork was very popular on posters and stuff.
Miki:
Yeah. Every room in the house.
Slade:
Yeah so I totally know what you're talking about. So when you describe this kind of wall of love, of sort of these entities clustered together, you do talk about your uncle manifesting as a unique individual being. But other than the three entities who were guardian spirits or whatever, were there other... Like, was there a crowd of people and you sort of could pass your eyes over it and see like, Oh there's this person and this person, or was it just more of a feeling?
Miki:
Um...
Slade:
You know, were your grandparents there?
Miki:
Nope.
Slade:
Your ancestors or anything particular like that?
Miki:
Nope.
The only people that I recall being there at all were these three beings and then my uncle randomly showed up when I, like, "Woohoo! You're going to live!" Kind of a, I don't know, like my cheering section or something because of the choice I made almost.
Slade:
Who do you think the entities, the blue-skin lady and the sort of Merlinesque character? He shows up in a lot of guided meditations, you and I know, from intuitives who do these kind of Akashic Records travelling and all this kind of stuff. That is a type of entity that we do often see, those three that you describe.
Who do you think they are now? Did you come out of this experience thinking, who the heck were they? Like, I want to know who they are. Or did you have a sense of who they were that stayed with you?
Miki:
Um... I think that I've contemplated this experience for 25 years now.
At first I didn't really know who they were. You know, I was like, I don't know who they are. But I knew that they were someone that was super close to me and that they love me and they were there. So I just regarded them as people I knew. I don't know if they were people, but that's the best that I can... Beings that I knew, maybe, you know?
I belong with them. That's where I belong. I mean, I'm here. But when I'm not here, I will be with them because I belong with them.
I do have moments in time where the female comes and goes like she's almost like maybe one of my guides that sort of steps in every once in awhile. So maybe they step in, the other two step in every once in awhile. I'm just not really aware of it because I have such a strong connection to my main guide, who I've always had a super strong connection to him. He looks very similar actually to the younger man but I don't think they're the same person. I don't feel like they are.
Slade:
Do you ever try to communicate with these people now? These entities, these beings?
Miki:
With the woman.
Slade:
Okay.
Miki:
Her name is Wistera. But I have not... Only because I've encountered her more times than the other two that I've started kind of exploring that. But I don't feel like... I think if I were going to communicate with them at this point, that I would have. You know? That maybe they would've shown up in some form or fashion somewhere.
Slade:
So during the life review part that you talked about, and you talked about how you got to experience it from the perspective of the other people involved, but also that you were judging the moments of your life and interactions and stuff.
Do you have a conscious recollection of how your understanding was different during this experience than it would have been during the moment that some of those events happened? Like for instance, you're recalling some memory or you're seeing some event from the past that you had, let's say, some kind of anger or resentment about, and then now you have this different perspective of it.
Did you come away feeling changed about your own real life experiences? Like, I've got to rethink everything?
Miki:
Umm... sort of. It wasn't the other people or how I perceived things that happened. It was more how I reacted to the things that happened and why was I reacting in this way.
When I was a kid, I used to have this weird thing that would happen to me. I would be hanging out with friends or family or whatever the situation was and then I was almost like I was watching it from above the situation at the same time and having a different consciousness about it, going, "This is a very odd interaction. Why are humans behaving this way?"
And then in my own mind, I'd be like, "What is that?"
It was sort of like that kind of separate... like, here's the human doing this and here's my consciousness going, "Why are humans behaving this way? What is making them react this way?"
It was a similar experience where I'm experiencing my human thing but it wasn't like a memory. It was like I was re-living every single thing, like I'm having this conversation is real right now in this moment. Every memory at that life review was going on at that moment. There was no distinction of time. It was really happening and I was seeing how this interaction impacted my life and how I reacted to it. And how my reaction to it impacted what came next. And how I could have reacted differently and how that would've made a different thing happen next.
It was like this broad view of my action.
Slade:
Were you able to retain any of that sort of perspective? I was thinking as you were talking about it, it's like you had full awareness of your Higher Self as maybe separate from your sort of animal self or something.
Did you retain any of that perspective that you feel like you use now in some way?
Miki:
Yes. Definitely I think that I do. I think that comes into my, I'm an overthinker, you know? I am really very concerned about, okay, if I behave this way, how is that going to impact this situation? Like, what can I do to make it the best situation? Or what would be the best way for me to behave in this situation, kind of overanalyzing.
I definitely think that watching that has really changed my behaviour, because I used to, I had a kind of not the greatest upbringing, parts of it were really good, some were really great. I had a lot of anger when I was younger and sometimes I could be a little volatile, you know? It was almost like when I came back, I was a completely different person.
I mean, not completely. I still am the same person but in a much softer sense, maybe? Much more caring, not so self-centred. Much more concerned about how other people feel or, let's try and figure out what the best thing for everyone involved is going to be. So it's not just about me anymore. Ever since then, I don't feel that it's all about me or this one situation is me.
Because it's not always, it's never just about me. It's always about everyone involved.
Slade:
Did you believe in the afterlife before this experience happened to you?
Miki:
I didn't NOT believe in the afterlife. I don't know if I had any real belief. I had hippie parents. I wasn't baptized. They were like, "No, she should choose her own way in life." My parents were Catholic. I grew up Catholic. That wasn't really their thing, although my mom kind of went back to the church for awhile. But I'd gone to many different types of churches trying to, you know, teen groups with friends or whatever, trying to figure out what it is that I thought.
I knew there was something. I don't think I ever thought there wasn't something, but I didn't really know what it was.
Slade:
So what is your perspective on the afterlife now?
Miki:
I definitely think that we live. I have zero fear of death. The only fear I have about death is that I feel like, if I were to die today, I would be perfectly okay with dying. The only part of it that would be upsetting to me is, there are certain things I'm trying to achieve. I have these things laid out that I'm trying to do or to achieve, but I'm not concerned about, like I'll catch up with all these other peeps later. My family or whatever. I'm not concerned about them.
It's only about what it is that I'm like, "Wait, wait, I wasn't done doing what I was trying to do." You know what I mean? That kind of...
Slade:
Yeah... So you do feel a sense of peace about your consciousness continuing after this lifetime?
Miki:
Oh definitely, yeah. I definitely feel that this is just a moment. This is just something that I'm experimenting with right now, being a human. I'm trying it out. Seeing what's going on. I am certainly not this body at all. I'm something much more grand than this body. This body, with this body, there's limits. It comes with limitations and so within this body and this form, I'm learning to work with those limitations, you know?
Slade:
Okay. So let's talk about the chest a little bit.
You talked about, there was just so much information there and a sense of oh yeah, remembering all this stuff. And then as I imagine when you came back, you don't really necessarily remember individual truths from that viewing of the chest or do you?
Are there sort of philosophical maybe insights that you retained from that glimpse into that chest that you can now have conversations with people, you know what I mean?
Miki:
Yeah, um, definitely I couldn't sit down and be like, "This is what I remember from the chest. There was this, this, this..." You know what I mean? It doesn't come to my memory in that kind of a way. There are definitely things that I know, and it's just like, I didn't know these things before.
And that's where I can make that distinction of, this is things that I knew that the chest showed me because I didn't have those thoughts, I didn't know any of this beforehand. I just was sort of, oh, whatever, "Here I am" kind of thing, right? I didn't really think about, I mean, I thought deeply about things but when I thought deeply about things I didn't have the same... You know, it's like I'm thinking less about it now because I know the answer, almost.
Slade:
So let me ask you this way then. Like when you hear someone talking about something like god or spirits or mediumship or, you know, just any kind of spiritual or philosophical concept. As you're sort of observing those things or hearing questions presented about them, do you sort of have a part of yourself that's like, "Nah, that's bullshit." Or like, "Yeah, actually what he's saying reminds me of something that's a truth from that chest."
Are you able to evaluate thoughts now in reference to that?
Miki:
Yeah. I think that I am. I definitely do look at a lot of things and go, "Psh, okay that's bullshit."
One of the biggest things that I can say is bullshit is, and which is very big in the spiritual community is, "We're here. This is an earth school." You know what? That's bullshit.
Slade:
Oh, thank you! I'm so glad.
Miki:
This is not an earth school. What kind of asshole would be like, "Oh, let's send all these people here and let them learn something with no curriculum! Hahaha."
Come on. That's ridiculous. That's not... not at all the case. It is not a school. We aren't trying to learn. The only thing we are trying to do is experience. Like I said, you're this huge, huge consciousness. I guess I'll call it consciousness because I don't really have anything else to call it. If I call it that, then kind of we all know what I'm talking about. Because if I say 'thing', that's just like, "You know, you're this huge thing right?"
Slade:
Right.
Miki:
You're bigger than life. You are so big you're everything. You have such limits in this body that you're in. The only thing that you're learning is, if you're going to learn something, you're learning how to work through these limits of this physical body because it's an experience that you want to have. That's it. You're experiencing what it's like to be in this body.
Slade:
Like in the way that somebody might choose to do ayahuasca or trip on mushrooms or go underwater with scuba gear.
Miki:
Exactly. Yeah.
Slade:
Interesting.
Miki:
So that's what it is. It's not a school. You aren't, I mean, you learn things along the way. Don't get me wrong. You do learn things along the way. But it's not like you're here to learn. You're here to experience and through your experience, you're going to learn because you learn through every experience.
Slade:
Right. And there's not like this predestination, like, I'm going to go have this sort of earthly experience so that I can learn what it's like to blahblahblah. Like there's not that much planning.
Miki:
Well I think there are themes.
Slade:
Okay.
Miki:
So it's not really like... You know, it's like if you were planning to, I don't know, make a convention, okay? There's a lot of planning that you have to put in it. Everyone's talking about, "Oh, this is how we want it to come out." There's this and this and this.
It doesn't need to be... I mean, it's detailed and you do have a planning committee, but you're more discussing themes.
Slade:
Like the vibe that you want it to have for the attendees, or...
Miki:
Yes.
Slade:
What you kind of want the takeaway to be, but the nitty gritty, like how you get there is more randomized than that.
Miki:
Yeah. That's a lot more organic and because you choose one thing or you don't choose something. And some people, I mean, probably like you and me, we're "i'm going to make this choice," and something in your head is like, "No, don't do that." Right?
Slade:
Right.
Miki:
Stay away from that person. Don't go there.
And you either adjust to pay attention to it or you don't, right? I mean, of course if you don't pay attention to it, then everything goes to shit. You're like, "Goddamn, I should've listened to that."
Slade:
I had this experience yesterday actually when I was pulling into the parking space down at the tea shop or something like that. And I looked around and just in a flash, I saw all these instances of kind of miserable shit. I mean, there's really no other way to put it.
Someone who was really struggling to get across the crosswalk in a wheelchair in the rain and then there was an animal that was missing a leg and I mean, I just sort of like turned off the keys and looked around. It was just, bam bam bam bam bam. All this awful stuff, just all this hardship and difficulty in a slice of a moment.
And my thought, Miki, in that moment, was, "Who in the hell would make this up on purpose?" That's kind of like this weird question I had for the Universe.
So when you said that about this isn't an earth school, we're here to experience versus here to learn, that really spoke to me. Because I felt such an overwhelming sense of how cruel the world was. And not that there aren't always things to be grateful for and all these other things that we can think are wonderful and make it worth it.
But I'm just saying, the idea that anyone would mastermind that kind of stuff... Like I'm okay with the fact if it's kind of like, random and organic, if it's nature, but the idea that it would all be pre-scripted, like a video game, feels kind of evil to me. You know what I'm saying?
Miki:
Yeah, but in choosing the themes, like you said someone in a wheelchair who can't walk and they're struggling through whatever until they come to terms with using the limitations that their body has. You do choose those things but they're themes. It's almost like... It's not as random as, "Woohoo, I'm going to be a human. I'm gonna dig through this bag and randomly pick out 5 themes and those are going to be somehow manifested into my human life."
It wouldn't be as random as that because you... I mean this now is going into past lives, which I don't think are past lives, but anyway, we'll just call it a past life right now. Say if you randomly chose these 5 themes out of this magic trunk or whatever, right? The chest. And then what if you'd already, in a past life, you'd already had that theme or... You would go, "Okay..."
And you're looking at your human life differently when you're here than when you're looking at it from there. It's like a completely different perspective. So you looking at whatever limitations have been put on your human existence in your human body, you don't feel the same way about those limitations when you are choosing those themes.
Slade:
What were you going to say about the past lives? We'll call it a past life but you actually don't perceive it that way. I have an idea what you're going to say, but I want you to explain that really quick.
Miki:
They aren't in the past. They're all right now. They're all going on in the same time but I mean there's no concept of time, really. Time is just a space in consciousness where you can experience something. That's time. That's the best definition really of time.
Slade:
So we're living all kinds of experiences of other places.
Miki:
All kinds. And the themes are the same.
Slade:
Oh really!
Miki:
Yeah. We kind of talked about this like, what is god, right?
Slade:
Yeah.
Miki:
If there is a god, so in order to explain this, we'll have to talk about that for a second. So...
Slade:
That was gonna be my next question anyway.
Miki:
The best way that I can put "god" and just saying god, because everyone knows the concept that we're talking about, the best way to describe it would be like an octopus where 'here' is the head, is this main energy, or consciousness, the main theme, all of the arms are all of the other, like the webs almost, it's the same theme. The arms are the same thing as the head of the octopus. So god is the head of the octopus and we're all the arms.
We're all experiencing the same thing or, we're the same thing, but we're all experiencing it in different ways.
So if you took all of the pieces, like let's just say, for the sake of this conversation and understanding this concept, if you were god, right? I mean, you are. We're all one. So you're god. But there's a bunch of different facets to your personality. And each one of them likes different things, does different things, but altogether that makes Slade.
If you broke up every single thing about you and about your personality, fantasy writer, teacher, podcaster, tea lover, animal lover, all of these different aspects of you, right? You have so many. Each one of these, if you could make them into a completely different person and send them out into the world as that personality and just imagine how much faster you would experience everything there is to experience. Because you were spread out instead of just one.
Slade:
We're the way by which the Universe is aware of itself.
Miki:
Yes.
Slade:
Yeah. And when you and I had this conversation about the octopus thing, I said well that's really cool because I'd always perceived it as kind of a fractal image, like a computer screen saver that's like a fractal. And there is something octopus-like about those tendrils, or whatever and the facets and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I actually really get that really easily.
Do you feel like that was something that was in the chest?
Miki:
I do. Yeah. For sure. Definitely.
Slade:
So switching gears just a little bit. What was it do you think that motivated you most to go back?
Miki:
Probably my kids.
Slade:
Right.
Miki:
Because four years after I had my daughter and died, I decided to do it again, but I knew I was like, everyone's like, gasp, "You're gonna have another kid." The doctors and everybody kind of freaked out. I said, "Nope it's gonna be perfectly fine. Everything will be fine."
And everything was perfectly fine.
There've been so many things in my life from that moment where I go, "Nope, this is the way it's going to be. Don't worry about anything because it's gonna be perfectly fine," or "This is the person, without a doubt, I know for sure." Almost like, just these deep knowings about my life which, I can't sit here and recall them but when they present themselves, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know that."
Slade:
So you're really moving through trusting your gut and feeling like everything always turns out okay.
Miki:
Oh yeah, definitely.
Slade:
What a great way to live.
Do you experience anxiety? Do you worry about things? Because I'm a big worrier.
Miki:
Yeah. I mean, I do worry about things and I think we talked about this too. I worry about things in both directions. I can take one idea and take it to the depths of hell and I can take the same idea and go to the highest point of ever anything and become the most famous person in the world. You know what I mean?
I can go in all directions and I can see almost like how the idea could potentially play out in whatever direction I went with, you know?
I don't really know if it's worrying so much as just deep thinking.
Slade:
Yeah, like contemplation.
Miki:
Extreme contemplation.
Slade:
Does it happen kind of instantaneously or is it something you really mull over and analyze a lot?
Miki:
Sometimes both. It depends on how much time I have to think about the particular thing. Sometimes I can daydream about something and just enjoy looking at how something's going to play out, I guess.
Slade:
Thought experiments.
Miki:
Yeah. Uh huh.
Slade:
What do you hope, like when you tell people this story or when you put this out there, what do you kind of hope people take away from it?
Miki:
Just to know that we are all one and that we all are love. That's, you know, and I think maybe I hope that they feel a sense of ease about being a human because everything is, Oh you're born and you die. You're born to die. That death is the end. It's almost like I feel like the human culture doesn't put enough importance, they put a lot of importance on a birth but the importance they put on a death is much more tragic than celebratory, which is what it should be.
So that's what I think that I hope everyone gets from this. Just a sense of calm warm fuzzies about... because I wish, it's a transition, that's all it is. You're just, it's like you're done with this book. That was a great book and you close it. What happens to you when you're done with the book? You're enriched. Your soul grew in some way. You feel, Oh, that was such great book. I really connected with these characters. It's the same. It's just like closing a book. You're just done with this book. You're still perfect and whole.
Slade:
Hmm... I have so many thoughts about what that means for storytelling in general and what it is that we seek and living all these different lives through story. I'm like radiating out in layers of thought right now.
So tell us a little bit about the work that you do now. What do you do with all of this in the world?
Miki:
I don't really know what I do but I like to help people. I like to help people in whatever way that they feel they need to be helped. If that's doing a reading, if that's having a friend, if that's having a healing.
Animals. I read for animals.
I don't know. Yeah. I guess, make people laugh? Bring happiness in some way. And if that's through a reading, then that's what I need to do for them.
Slade:
I like that you don't really separate what you do as work from what you do as just sort of being human in the world.
Miki, thank you so much for coming and just laying this whole story out for everyone. Tell everyone where they can go find you online if they want to connect with you.
Miki:
You can find me at MikiBrittenham.com
Slade:
Miki, we love you and your stories and your great perspective. I learned a lot listening to you today. I'm sure a lot of people are gonna have cool questions for you when this episode comes out.
Thank you so much for doing this.
Miki:
Thank you, Slade, for having me.
…there’s an Oracle message at the end of the audio episode…