Andrea Silver was in seventh grade when she died. After being revived, she retained the memories of the experience she now refers to as "initiation."
On the surface, Silver is a person like everyone else. The thirty-six year old mother of five cares for her children and works as a title and escrow manager for Kaiser Abstract Company. Beneath the surface, she is a being who has traveled across the veil of life and death twice in thirty-six years.
Twice in a Lifetime
At age two, Silver fell down a flight of stairs and died instantly. She was revived, but suffered brain trauma which caused her to experience seizures until age five. She wore a helmet and tongue depressors for protection.
As a child, Silver used to look up at the stars and feel like she was looking up at a former home. She says a second death experience deepened her feelings that consciousness experiences life in many forms, over many lifetimes, and on many planets.
At age thirteen, Silver died while cheering at a little league game.
Silver said, "The profound experience of realizing our consciousness is greater than just our individuality was when I was in 7th grade ... I knew I had experienced something that would always be with me. This is still a very vivid experience to this day and I am forever grateful."
While spotting in a cheerleading stunt, a cheerleader fell on Silver, resulting in neck and back injuries. The pain became so great that young Silver went to her mother's car to lie down and rest.
Silver said, "I walked slowly to the car, I felt myself slipping out of consciousness. Luckily, it had started to rain so my mom was going to the car to get her umbrella. She was fifty yards behind me and saw me go down. My mom was my hero. She ran to help me."
"Little did she know that I wouldn’t be breathing. When she noticed my face turning blue, she begged anyone that was around to help. Meanwhile, I could hear everything that was happening. My senses were not that of which we know while here on earth."
Silver did not see a light at the end of a tunnel. Instead, she described a feeling of floating above her body. Her viewing perspective was slightly blurry, as if she was viewing from within a fishbowl. While her human body did not have a pulse, Silver remembers everything that was occurring at the time.
"It was the most profound feeling, knowing that everything around you was chaotic but you don’t feel that at all. Although I could hear my mom freaking out and saying I was dead, I felt no fear. It was all peace, all love. An amount of love that is indescribable. I was perfectly content and had no worries about the reality I was entering," Silver said.
She recalls psychically knowing what her friend was thinking at the time.
Without a human heartbeat, Silver felt herself buzzing as a body of energy with the awareness that she had been the girl she saw lying on the ground, and the woman next to her had been her mom.
Silver vividly recalls the following events:
Mr. Goodreau, a man who had just become an EMT, gave her breaths of air as a nurse tried to find her pulse.
As Goodreau gave Silver CPR, he repeated, "Fight Andrea, fight!"
Meanwhile Silver's mother said, "Please help her, she's turning blue."
After some moments, the nurse said, "There’s a slight pulse coming back."
Andrea recalls, "I felt my consciousness drifting back to my body. It was almost like being born, but fully aware. After about 8 breaths of air, my life was saved."
Silver felt the sensation of her energy being "sucked up" as if through a vacuum, and then pulled back into the denser experience of inhabiting a human body.
She said, "The thought was, 'no, I don’t want to go.' It was sucking me back and I could feel all that peace and beauty and love dissipate. It was almost saddening when I opened my eyes because I longed to be back in that space.”
“I don’t fear death anymore. There was no sense of fear there. It was never a thought. I know that going back to the Source is what we’re all meant to do.”
The experience took years for Silver to comprehend. She questioned whether she had only been dreaming. The paramedics verified that it was not possible for her to be dreaming as a function of human biology and chemistry.
She explained, "The paramedics said, 'no honey, you were dead. You had no pulse.'"
Beyond Human Perception
Silver will never forget the feeling of going home. Now, when she becomes overwhelmed in life she often states, "I just want to go home," in remembrance of the feeling of serenity and peace she experienced while dead.
“I would call it the greatest wisdom ever. I call it Initiation. Being put into another realm and finding your way back," she said.
Over the years, Silver tried to make human sense of her experience. In high school, she studied psychology. However, she struggled to find scientific information to explain the experience she had. Eventually, she accepted that the unique experience was something science cannot yet explain, and that the experience happened for a purpose.
For those who are willing to listen, Silver shares her story as a reminder that nothing in life is as definitive or serious as humans commonly perceive.
She explains, "The Source, we are here experiencing things for Source. That’s why we are here. I don’t think that Source would portray it as being good or bad. It’s just an experience. Life is just one big experience, and we are all connected."
In death, Silver experienced her true self as an all-knowing body of energy that was connected to everything. There was no concept of a separate, individual self. She feels that the idea of separateness is a temporary mental construct which allows us to participate in the drama we call human life, and once our hearts stop beating, we return to the Source from whence we came, where all fear, confusion, and lack of love dissipates.
She said, "No matter how bad it gets there is always better. It will get better. Even if it doesn’t happen this go round (lifetime). ”
"I don’t believe in hell. I believe that we as human beings make our own hell."
As a mother, Silver shares the wisdom gained from the death experience to guide her children through confusing aspects of the human psyche. She reminds them that judgement and human emotions such as fear, guilt, shame, and confusion are temporary experiences which become irrelevant when we connect with the energy of the heart, our direct link to the Source.
“I like to tell my kids to trust that everything will be okay. You don’t even have to trust in yourself. Just trust in that energy and your higher self. I always let my kids know no matter who sees something as being bad, there’s never a bad or good. That’s all interpretation. I tell them to follow their hearts.” Silver said.
Her kids range in age from three to sixteen. Silver reported that her sixteen-year-old has a relationship with the "higher self," and now understands this concept from her own experiences.
While Silver is still a human who is subject to the spectrum of human emotions, she remembers what home feels like and refers to that remembrance frequently to keep life in perspective. Perhaps part of her purpose is to share this experience so others may broaden their understandings about life, death, and love.
Silver says:
"I don’t take any day for granted, but I don’t fear death and no one should. It’s beautiful, peaceful and filled with the most knowing you will ever have. I am grateful for the initiation into what it is like after death, and grateful to the people who saved my life so that I could experience some more in this lifetime."
"I want to tell EVERYONE, I love you all very much, even if we have different opinions."
"All of us are ONE consciousness which is LOVE. So the next time you feel the urge to tell someone (even if you don’t know them) you love them, you are following your true nature! So follow it!"
"Spread the love dear friends because that is the best thing for all humans, to feel loved!"