Vinney Todd: What I Learned About Love After I Died

When Vinney had an incredible near-death experience, he learned just how much God loves him, and how much he should love himself. Listen as he shares his incredible journey to heaven and back again.

Episode Discussion Points

How Vinney died and what he saw.
The miracle that saved him physically (even though he was dead)
The smothering fear he felt when he realized the body he was watching was his body and the immense feeling of love he felt that saved him from this darkness.
How God’s immense love in that moment was enough to save him from a lifetime of pain
The guide who came and took him on a journey
How Vinney’s guide asked him about/taught him some Important principles before they could progress
- Being authentic: which means being the same you no matter who you are with because, “until we can be authentic with ourselves we can’t grow.”
- Authentically love ourselves—“You can never truly love anyone outside you until you love inside you first.”
Time isn’t measured in heaven, and Vinney saw people of different cultures, faiths and time there in heaven.
Heaven looked like a ginormous star as he approached, but it was a planet a million times bigger than earth that shone.
The interesting “pearly gates” that surround heaven as a decompression spot to get rid of their negative energy so they then keep progressing
The concept that we each progress only as quickly as we allow ourselves to progress
How you don’t have to communicate verbally in heaven—you just think it and it is easier to understand.
Heaven is so bright and energetic that our normal human eye couldn’t abide it.
Vinney explains how there are a hundred million colors in heaven and mountains, rivers, flowers and trees.
When Vinney’s feet “touched down” in heaven he felt like he plugged into God’s love
The beautiful opalescent buildings in heaven were built out of “loving consciousness.” God asked the building to exist and it formed itself out of that love.
The place of learning Vinney visited where people learn pure knowledge.
Since he “came back” Vinney has become more aware of the light and patterns all around here on earth.
We have quite a bit of growing to do to return to live with God at His level in His dimension
Vinney explains what frequency is by using the story of Jacob’s ladder in the Bible. Every choice we make can move us up or down the scale.
“If you want to learn to raise your frequency, come from the perspective of love.”
If you lash out in anger at a fellow human being, you are only hurting yourself because “we’re all different fingers on one hand.”
Feeling anger and that you can’t forgive someone is “like drinking poison and hoping someone else gets sick.”
As Vinney coaches people with marital challenges, he finds a lot of people who say, “He doesn’t make me happy.” To which Vinney replies, “The only person who can make you happy is you.”
What coming back to his body was like and why he felt claustrophobic.
The humorous situation at the hospital with the staff after he came back.
How at first he didn’t remember his near death experience and how talking to his sister a day later brought it back to his mind.
Why he felt suicidal after he came back.
The changes he made once he came to terms with being back on earth
We all have spirit guides here on earth
There is no reason to fear death
If you are missing a loved one, remember that this life is the pit stop on the road of eternity—be patient, allow yourself time to heal, and remember you can be with them forever.
If you think positively and with love about loved ones who have passed on, you can get your own signs that they are okay.
How we can connect and tune into the divine and into our higher frequency.

Some of my Favorite Quotes from the Episode

”We are kings and queens of the most high God, and we don’t act like it.”
“You can never truly love anyone outside you until you love inside you first.”

“The whole reason we are here is to learn to make choices.”
“We all play our sacred, diving part—every single one of us—even if you feel you aren’t making a difference. If you are broadcasting that love frequency, you are changing the world.”

Favorite Bible Verses

Colossians 3:14 “Over all these virtues, put on love.”
1 John 4:16 “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

Connect with Vinney

Website: https://www.livinggodslight.com/
Vinney will be publishing a book about his experiences in the afterlife within the next 6 months. Check out his website for more information because we just barely scratched the surface of everything he experienced there.

#tamarakanderson #storiesofhopeinhardtimes #podcast #hope #God #hardtimes #neardeathexperience #godslove #angels #connection #faith #hope #love #death

Transcription

Vinney 0:03

I resisted with my left hand, and I looked down and I felt my arm come up and get free. I looked down and saw that the body had just ripped the strap. That's when it hit me, that what I was watching was me. Then when that happened, just like fear, negative thoughts came in. Like, “You idiot. You've been dead this whole time. You didn't even know.” It felt like all these dark forces actually started to come and smother me. As they're getting closer and closer, I felt like my light, who I was, was going to be put out. As it was happening, I felt this warmth all of a sudden start on my back.

Tamara Anderson 0:47

Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure, and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.

My guest today was born in Texas and raised in California and Utah. As an adult, he has lived in Asia and traveled the world. He has lived in 30 states of the United States, which is crazy. He used to work in TV, including on the staff of Touched by an Angel. He was also a production assistant to several A-name movies. He's happily married and has been for 18 years and has two crazy but amazing kids. I'm pleased to present Vinney Todd. Vinney, are you ready to share your story of hope?

Vinney 1:47

I guess so.

Tamara Anderson 1:50

Vinney and I are at an author's retreat together. I figured I’d just snag him while we were here and chat for a little bit, which is awesome. But I have to ask you a little bit about these 30 states that you've lived in. Oh, my word. Seriously. Tell me a little bit about that.

Vinney 2:08

I have some favorites amongst them.

Tamara Anderson 2:10

Please do tell me which are your favorites.

Vinney 2:12

Now I never got to work in Hawaii. But I got to go stay there for a couple of weeks when I was younger and I did love Hawaii.

Tamara Anderson 2:18

Did you?

Vinney 2:20

It's a special spot in my mind. Yeah. But I also did love Texas, couple places in Texas. And of course, I was born there. So I gotta love Texas. In Northern California, I worked in Ventura for quite a while. And if it wasn't for the traffic, I would love that so much.

Tamara Anderson 2:39

I lived in Ventura for a bit. Yeah, I have two kids born there. So hey, we have something else in common.

Vinney 2:47

I worked in Malibu and it was a short little jaunt, maybe eight miles, but it would take almost an hour.

Tamara Anderson 2:54

Depending on traffic, as they say in California, right.

Vinney 3:00

So yeah, I have a lot of favorite states. So amongst them, I have a lot of favorites.

Tamara Anderson 3:03

That is awesome. So today, I am so excited to interview Vinney. He's been on my list of people to interview since I started the podcast. Ironically, I'm finally getting around to it now. The reason is because Vinney had a near death experience. Well, you died. You've actually died, twice. So he's going to talk to us a little bit today about that experience and the things that he learned that I think would be very interesting to all of us, since we always wonder, “Well, what happens after that?” So why don't you take us to this second experience when you died. You were in your 20s, right?

Vinney 3:42

Yes, I was 25 on that day.

Tamara Anderson 3:44

Why don't you tell us a little bit about that story, and then the experience you had.

Vinney 3:50

So I was taking a really popular weightlifting supplement at the time. It was so popular, you couldn't get it any of the local stores anymore. So we went online to buy it. And one of the only places that had it in stock online was a place out of Thailand. What we didn't realize is that the supply that was being shipped overseas from them was 100% pure solution, whereas what we were buying in the States was a 5% watered down solution. So we got it, we got really excited, we want to go work out and took our normal little bottle cap full. Instantly, me and my buddy both felt really sick. We figured, “Well, let's go eat something and we'll probably feel better.” So yeah, we went a couple blocks down the road from where he lived and there was a fast food place. We went in and I went straight to the bathroom. It was one of those single use restrooms so I locked the door. The room started getting really dizzy and then I blacked out.

Meanwhile, my buddy went in the restaurant and collapsed on one of the booths and started to vomit all over the booth. So they called 911 and hauled him away. But nobody had seen that we had come in with each other, so they nobody knew that I was in the bathroom. So a couple hours later, hours later, my phone was ringing in the bathroom and one of the customers kept trying to get in the bathroom. So he finally went to the manager and said, “Hey, I think somebody may be in trouble in there. They've been in there a long time and the phone keeps ringing. Nobody's answering it.” So a manager went over there, unlocked the door. And there's a dead guy on the floor. No breathing, I was purple, like my neck was really swollen wide. It is just gross, really gross to behold. From my perspective, at that point, I was watching it, but I was watching it from outside myself. What it felt like to me was that I was sitting in like an auditorium, or a theater, sitting in like a comfortable seat, watching on the screen, this show of this dead guy on the floor, but from the view above. So even though I was watching it, you know, in a comfortable chair, kind of leaning back, what I was watching was from the point of view from above. I was seeing this dead body on the ground, seeing the manager freak out, he called 911, they get a medic, there are a team of medics. They do some, you know, some chest compressions for a few seconds. But they documented the body as 79 degrees at that point, so they knew I was dead. So they did pronounce me dead.

They call the police officer because they had to get some police officer verification, that kind of thing. They filled out all the paperwork, put me in a body bag, strapped me down, put me in the back of an ambulance and just left me there for about another 30 or so minutes until the police officer showed up. He just checked the boxes on what the guys already did. He gave him the green light to go ahead and turn the body into the medical examiner for an autopsy. So the medics, they pull away from this scene of this fast food restaurant. As they do so, there's a brand new medic who's sitting in the back. This is like his first week, being an EMT. He's sitting in the backseat, he's got two veterans in the front seat. I'm sitting here watching all this, and to me, it's not me. To me, it's a show. I'm watching some weird show. And I keep thinking like, “Why do they keep taking the camera angle from the top?” Like, that was like something for me. I'm like, “Why would they angle from the top? Doesn't make sense.” But I was like, “I’m still here. I'm gonna watch this.” As I'm watching, I see this light actually start to form around the heart area of this new medic. It was almost like it started to glow. All of a sudden, I heard really loud, a voice say, “This one's not dead.” I remember it was so loud that even where I was, I like went to look around. He did the same thing, the medic. So I knew that he heard what I heard. He was looking around to see if that was maybe a joke from his counterparts in the front of the ambulance. But it wasn't. He debated it as mine, whether he really heard that or not for a few seconds, and then the glow started to expand. It went from his heart up to the top. The glow was going around his mind as well as his heart, almost like from his waist up. He started to glow. It got even louder. And I heard, “This one's not dead.”

And that time, he began to take action. He didn't even hesitate for a second. He unzipped the body bag. He started feeling all over the neck area, under the arm. Then he went down to the groin area, like on the inner thigh. When he pushed down, he pushed it really hard. He, like, connected with the bone in the thigh, like the thigh bone. When he made contact with the bone itself, there was like a spark of electricity from me, where I was sitting up in the theater, to him down there. That was a little bit of an inkling that something odd was going on, this was not just a movie that I was watching. But that was enough for him to start taking action like to start trying to resuscitate the body. So first thing he did, is he did a little mini trach right here and fed a tube down that would start pumping oxygen into the lungs. He ripped open the body bag, number one, and start clipping off the shirt and putting these pads on the body so that he could shock the heart.

He shocked the first round, and that made an alarm bell go off when he did that. All of a sudden, the two veteran medics start noticing what he's doing. They're like, “You're gonna get fired. Don't do this. This guy's dead. You have to know when someone's gone.” That kind of stuff. It didn't even faze him. He wasn't fazed at all. So first round of shocks, nothing. Second round of shocks to the heart, there was a single beat, single heartbeat, and then flat lined. It was really faint, but it was definitely a beat. That gave him even more hope. So then he hurried and shocked a third time. The third time, it was a steady, faint beat. And with that steady, faint beat, the veteran medics in the front completely changed. They went into action mode themselves, right? The driver said something like, “There's a hospital a block and a half over here, call ahead.” So they call ahead and literally a block and a half from where my heart started there was an emergency trauma team ready to meet the body. So they met the body, they put the body on a hospital gurney and as they transferred it over, I felt moving. That was a little weird to me. But it still didn't dawn on me that what was going on was me, really, as me was up here watching. Not down there. So how could that be me? Right? That'd be kind of like watching someone out on this balcony. That's you. Yeah, that's not you. You're right here.

So I'm sitting there. Well, that was weird. Why did I feel that? And then they started to strap down the body, because the body was starting to go into convulsions. There was like foam and weird stuff coming out of the mouth. I was like going into these convulsions. They strapped down the body with these like leg straps first. Then they went and did the arm straps. Well, they got both arms strapped down. And I remember feeling like I couldn't move my arms where I was sitting. So I resisted, and I'm left handed. I resisted with my left hand, and I looked down and I felt my arm come up and get free. I looked down and saw that the body had just ripped the strap. That's when it hit me, that what I was watching was me. Then when that happened, just all this fear and kind of like, negative thoughts came in. Like, “You idiot, you've been dead this whole time, you didn't even know.” Like, just all these dark thoughts and feelings came in. It felt like in this theater where I was, it felt like all these dark forces actually started to come and smother me. As they're getting closer and closer, I felt like my light, who I was, was going to be put out

As it was happening, I felt this warmth all of a sudden start on my back. This is always hard for me to talk about. This warmth was this love that you can't describe. But two seconds of this love can immediately eradicate the worst harm that this entire life can give you. It's so beautiful. It's a love that we don't get to experience here. We don't. But it's a love that is the foundation of what is here. It's that love that the universe was built on. People call it God's love, or universe’s love, or source love, or creator's love, but it's the building blocks of what has created this life. And I felt that it was like a light, like started warming my back. It kind of flooded over me. As it did, I felt it was coming from behind me. So I turned away from this horrible scene in front of me, and I saw this man all dressed in white. He had a long white beard, very pink skin, very blue eyes. Blue Eyes felt like they could literally like stare through you. And like see who you were as a soul. And so obviously, this guy looks like the typical, must be God.

Tamara Anderson 14:14

Yeah.

Vinney 14:15

So I’m like, “Are you God?” He shook his head and laughs. He's like, “No, I'm not God.” And I'm like, “Well, then you must be Jesus then, right?” And he's like, “No, I'm not Jesus.” And I'm like, “Well, you know, who are you? What's going on?” He just explained that he was here to be a guide for me. He was a helper. He was going to help me go where I wanted to go. If I wanted to go back to where I’d just come, I could go back right then. Or I could go with him. There was no question. There's no possible way I would want to go towards that pain, and that ache, and that fear that I was feeling. I told him, I just said, “Wherever you're going, I'm going with you.” Yeah, none of that anymore. So, he said, “Ok, you're gonna have to come in and embrace my energy. You're gonna have to not just travel a distance, but you're gonna have to travel with three layers of yourself. You're gonna have to travel from point A to point B, which is a physical distance, right. But you're also going to have to travel with understanding.” And I have to embrace or just be willing to accept the possibility of certain principles to go with him.

And then in addition to that, I have to raise my frequency. I have to raise my energy, because where we're going is extremely high energy. For me to get there, I have to be matched, at least close to that energy to exist there or be there. So he explained those three parts to me, and me being raised, I was raised Christian, and I was like, “I got this.” He just kind of laughed, and he's like, “No, there's a lot more you're not allowed to know here.” That's what he explained. That's why he was there to help be my guide, he was going to help guide me along the way. So he asked me a few introductory principles. The first thing was being authentic, which I thought I had been. But he showed me myself, who I was, and showed me that there was a version of me, that would be with my family. There would be a version of me that would be with my friends, there would be a version of me that would be on movie sets, working movie sets, or TV sets. I used to build homes, there'd be a version of me on construction sites. But all these versions weren't the same person. He showed me that being authentic would be me being the same personality, language habits, the exact same no matter where I go. He explained that it's really important, because until we can be authentic with ourselves, we can't grow. We ourselves can't grow until we, authentically, are who we are, number one, and then secondly, authentically love ourselves.

Tamara Anderson 17:16

Wow, that is such a powerful concept. I've often wondered that, because I think that's something we really struggle with is humans, because I think the adversary attacks that. It's interesting, he taught you that is the first principle. I think the adversary attacks that, “Oh, you're not worth anything. How can you even be proud of yourself? You made so many mistakes.”

Vinney 17:38

If you think about it, too, one of the reasons why we put on kind of a different personality, for different groups, is that of protection. Because we figure, if we're our true self, why are we hiding our true self? Yeah, because somehow we thought our true self would be not accepted, or excluded, or made fun of, or something like that. Yeah. So we put on this different persona for certain groups. That's not the way we were built to be. We were built to be authentic, and to understand who we really are. That was, essentially, another part of one of the principles to understand that, that if you looked at all the different forms of life in the universe, and you took the very, very top, that would be the humanity that's on earth today. According to all the life forms that that source, or God, has created, we are the cream of the crop. We are, every one of us, kings and queens of the most high God. Right. And we don't act like it.

Tamara Anderson 18:38

No. It's because a lot of us, maybe we've heard that before, maybe we haven't, but we don't internalize it.

Vinney 18:46

That was one thing he helped me understand, too. He helped me see the vastness of the universe. Our human brain can't comprehend it. Can't comprehend it. It's just so vast. There's life everywhere in the universe, throughout it, permeating the entire universe life. And yet here we are. Kings and Queens, suffering, in our own dementia of sorts, that we're having a hard such and such. But we are all kings and queens in His kingdom.

Tamara Anderson 19:21

Wow. That is powerful. What has knowing just that first principle meant to you?

Vinney 19:26

Absolutely changed me. Absolutely changed me. After my experience, I'm definitely a different person. I used to be a bit hot headed, especially with driving, and politics, and a lot of different things. I'm still very passionate about freedom, because it is free agency that we are here to utilize. And it's our free agency that helps us work out our spiritual muscles. That's one of the biggest things that I did take away from my experience, is the whole reason we are here is to learn to make choices and to learn what we're going to be, what we are able to create with our choices. Because when you're right next to God and God's kingdom, anything you want is so permeated with that love of creator, that it just starts forming in front of you. It's kind of like taking a kid to Disneyland. After living in Disneyland for a year, it's not gonna be so special. So the only way to learn how special Disneyland is, is take the kid out of Disneyland into the real world, where you work, you get a job, you have a family, that kind of stuff.

You learn to make choices, so that when you get back, you can appreciate that. That's what it's all about. We're not able to use those choice muscles very good there. Because we can't think selfishly there. It's impossible, right? Because that all-encompassing love is so permeating everything there, it's literally impossible to have a negative thought, or almost an independent thought. You can still have an independent thought, but it's surrounded by that same love, that love permeates everything. So for us to learn how to make choices, we have to go far away from that love, if that makes sense. So we go to the third dimension, where we exist here. Some of us are able to experience fourth dimensional existence here, even fifth dimensional existence here, and still be here. But there's a lot higher than five dimensions.

Tamara Anderson 21:39

That is so fascinating. So he taught you this first principle. There's more to come, right? I know there were several. Maybe you can pick a few more handfuls and what you were experiencing as well.

Vinney 21:52

You know, those would be the kind of the foundational principles for me, the first few. But another thing that was kind of hard for my ego to accept is, when I got up there, when I actually got to heaven, I looked around. I'm like, “How come I don't see only people of my faith?” I was always believing that I was gonna pretty much feel like everybody in my church was going to be there, when I grew up and had passed away, it would be all of them. But it wasn't. There was all sorts of cultures, and eras, and times, and faiths. There was people there that were from our future, there was people there from our past. And that was another principle, that time is only the rules for the board game. But when you step away from the board game, those rules don't matter. Time is one of the rules for this board game. So when you step out of this dimension, this existence, you can choose where you want to jump back in.

Tamara Anderson 23:03

Really?

Vinney 23:05

But all of it’s happening now. So there, you realize that time is what they call “now,” “the moment of now,” or “the moment of one.” And that's all of us growing and developing in our own special way. And I'm getting a specific, catered life path that we get to choose.

Tamara Anderson 23:24

So you went to this, heaven?

Vinney 23:26

So we approached this place, that at first started looking like a star that was getting brighter, and brighter, and brighter. What's weird is it was almost a bluish white, the star itself. Then, as we got closer, and closer, and closer, I realized that it wasn't a star. It wasn't like a planet or a sun, you know, burning. It was actually a planet. But you could fit a million Earths inside this planet. It's huge. So huge, so much bigger than our Earth. As we're getting closer and closer, I realized the light is coming off of the planet, kind of the way that the moon looks to us, how it looks like it's glowing. But that place, it's not reflecting light. It's actually coming from inside, or coming from the actual planet. As we get closer and closer, I see all these like, pearls. They look kind of like opalescent, like creamy colored pearls, like all over the place, floating around this planet. It's funny because I've been talking about it for years, and I finally had somebody come up and say, “Maybe those pearls were like the pearly gates.” Oh, yeah. Never put two and two together until that person had said it. So maybe they were the pearly gates. I'm not sure.

But as we approached, I asked my guide his name. He had told me his name at that point. His name is Drake. I asked Drake, I said, “Drake, what are these?” It's so cool. He was able do this, the entire traveling, of us getting close to this place. He could take my consciousness and just put it places and then bring it right back, like instantaneous. Kind of like the internet, right? So at this point, I asked, you know, “What's going on in here?” He's like, “Well, I'll show you.” So he puts my consciousness inside one of these pearls. I see that there's like spirits all over in there, a lot of spirits. They're all angry, and yelling, and screaming, like profanities. They're all yelling at each other, but they don't see each other. So then I asked the second level, like, “Who are they yelling at?” I can tell they're not yelling at each other. Because they’re kind of yelling out into open space.

He helped me understand what this one gentlemen, he let me see what he was seeing. He showed me that this old man was yelling at his son, and was like, cussing him out for a betrayal. He felt betrayed, almost to death, like, of this portrayal of his son. And, and then across from this old gentleman, there was a lady. She, in turn, was yelling at her daughter, which is kind of odd. But both kind of the same energy, thought. It felt like betrayal energy, and I think that's what this pearl was, it was a pearl of betrayal energy. All these spirits were in there. Here's what it was, I was explained by Drake, that this was kind of like a decompression spa of sorts, for certain spirits to cleanse themselves of negative energy. Once they were able to do that, then they were in a place where they could get help to raise their frequency and go where we were going. As that was explained to me, the old man kind of like took a deep breath and stopped yelling. Then, out of nowhere, he kind of realized, “Whoa, where am I?” He started to look around, and within a millisecond, these angels came from outside the pearl into next to him. And then he was gone. So they took him on his journey, where he was going to go. These pearls, this pearly gate, is not necessarily a gate keeping people out. It's a gate getting you conditioned and ready for what's on the other side, which is heaven, which is this planet that’s huge.

Tamara Anderson 27:30

So I guess one of the lessons learned is you can only progress as fast as you're willing. Yeah.

Vinney 27:35

But the whole system, even those pearls themselves, are built out of that love. And it was really cool. Because the second that old man had realized that he was done cleansing himself, that energy, that love was right there. And they were able to take him. It was cool, because he was from probably, like, early 1900s, late 1800s. And, you know, me, being the guy who came from the third dimension, I'm thinking time linearly.

Tamara Anderson 28:02

Like you've been there for…

Vinney 28:04

A long time. At least, almost 100 years, maybe 150. Then Drakw would just smile at those thoughts, because he would understand even though you don't use words, because you don't have the low third dimensional body. You have a high dimensional body, which is your spirit body, which is actually a body. So you don't have to use your mouth to communicate. You just think. Just think it and they think it. You just understand stuff. It's kind of the way that computers assimilate or compute with each other, network here. It's that love. It's that same love that's running all of it. It's just instantaneous. The second you even think a question, the answer’s coming already.

Tamara Anderson 28:50

No miscommunication in the afterlife. Good to know.

Vinney 28:56

Unfortunately, we can't claim we didn't hear you.

Tamara Anderson 29:01

We're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back, we'll have Vinney tell us a little bit more about what heaven was like. Stay tuned.

Hi, this is Tamara K. Anderson and I want to share something special with you. When our son, Nathan, was diagnosed with autism, I felt like the life we had expected for him was ripped away, and with it, my own heart shattered as well. It's very common for families to feel anger, pain, confusion, and anxiety when a child is diagnosed. This is where my book, “Normal for Me,” comes into play. It shares my story of learning to replace my pain with acceptance, peace, joy, and hope. “Normal for Me” has helped change many lives and I'd like to give this book to as many families as possible. We put together something I think is really special. My friends and listeners can order copies of my book at a significantly discounted price. We will send them to families who have just had a child diagnosed with autism or another special needs diagnosis. We will put your name inside the cover so they will know someone out there loves them and wants to help. I will also sign each copy. You can order as little as one or as many as hundreds to be shared with others. So go to my website, tamarakanderson.com, and visit the store section for more information and to place your order. You can bless the lives of many families by sending them hope, love, and peace. Check it out today at tamarakanderson.com and help me spread hope to the world.

And we're back. I've been talking to Vinney Todd about his near death experience. And we've just gone through and learned how he died and what happened after that and how he's been journeying towards heaven. He just found out what the pearly gates are and now we’re going to pick up the story.

Vinney 30:59

It was really cool. So after my experience with the pearly gate, he pulls me back, and we're still on our trajectory towards this planet. And again, I'm in awe of just the light coming off of it. I can even sense that there's no way a physical, human eye could even be near this. It's too much energy. Too bright, too much energy. It's brighter than our sun, way brighter than our sun. But it's not a burning light. It's not fusion, it's not what we see on our Sun. So we come and we get closer, and closer, and closer. I start realizing that this bright blue is starting to green up as we get closer and closer, and blue up in like ocean areas, and river areas, and mountain areas. It's just absolutely gorgeous. And the colors there. I mean, you know, if you break down the actual color gamut of what we have in our real world, you can pixelize it to about a million pixels in actual color differential that you can find in the world, in the third dimension. I can easily guesstimate there's 100 million colors over there. There's just so much more.

Every color has 1000 different versions and the colors there actually have energy, they have voice, they have smell, they have taste, even touch. Down on the grass where we actually touched down, even touching the grass with my feet, I felt that love, I felt like plugged in to that love. If you could cry, there would be like crying. I just started to like liquefy, almost, like who I was. Because like that love was so strong. I didn't feel I deserved it. These silly blades of grass were so beautiful. Like to even describe in human words isn't impossible. But the best way I can describe it is this sweet, loving music. The smell, like the best smell I've ever smelled in my life. That was just the blades of grass. There's flowers, there's trees, there's a stream. I got to experience all of that.

I got to see this building, this huge building. It was built out of white marble, like white, opalescent marble. The entire building was one block of marble. The way it was built is out of loving consciousness. Our source, our Creator, asked this building to exist and the building formed itself out of that love. What was really neat is there is no doors in any of the rooms. Yet when people wanted to go from room to room, they would come and lovingly ask to go from one room to the other. An opening would just form, they’d go through, and then the opening would seal itself back up. This place was like a university of sorts, beyond time, because there's people from our future, from our present, from our past, from our ancient past, which oddly looks very much like our future. But all of these beings are there learning from each other. They're learning in a way that is not polluted with politics, or with money, or business corporations. This learning that they do there is completely unadulterated. It's true knowledge. So our yearning for learning gets to continue. So we get to learn more if we want to.

Tamara Anderson 34:51

I like that concept because I am a true learner. If I want to learn how to podcast, I learn how to podcast. I do, I have this thirst inside of me that doesn't seem to get satiated, like I always want to keep learning. And I think it drives my husband crazy that I take so many online classes or whatever. Like, I'm always curious, I want to learn more.

Vinney 35:16

Me too. And what’s funny is, I liked to learn before I died. But since I died, I have this weird knack for remembering things. The oddest, weird, most random things, I just remember them. Data, physics, math, like just numbers, sequences, patterns, just so many things that are so different now since I died. I pick up on patterns everywhere, everywhere. We have no idea that that loving force that runs that existence, or the whole universe, is very present here. But you almost have to be that like, super aware person to pick up on these patterns. These frequencies, these especially numerical patterns, it's a way that God really likes to send messages to us. Specifically, I really resonate with the number 1111. To me, that connects to me as my God number. Because it's all arrows pointing to him. Also, it's the first number. It's the beginning. The way my mind understands it, God exists at the 11th level of the 11th dimension. I got to touch down at the first level of the 11th dimension in heaven. That's what heaven is, is the 11th dimension. That also helps us understand where we are, with being in a third dimensional existence here. We have quite a bit of raising our own frequency to be able to get to where His loving frequencies.

Tamara Anderson 36:57

How are you talking about frequencies here? Is it like… See, one of the things I'm fascinated with is the concept of light. We see that battle in books and movies, and have a battle between light and darkness. Is His frequency like light? How would you describe…?

Vinney 37:15

So here's the best way I've been able to describe it. And again, this is trying to use words to explain things that there's no words to explain.

Tamara Anderson 37:23

Right? Sorry.

Vinney 37:26

You know, in my past, I was an avid study of the Bible and of scripture. When you study Jacob's Ladder, essentially, is the frequency scale. At the top of Jacob's Ladder is God, our Creator. At the bottom is the opposite of God, the anticipation of God. Some might call the opposite of God, Satan, right, or devil, or whatever. But here's the funny thing, if God created Jacob's Ladder, He created the bottom and the top. And so God knew that for us to grow, we had to get distance from Him. The same way that in this world, sometimes our kids can't grow up till they get a little distance from us, just a fact. Doesn't need to be that big that we get moved from God, no, but it's the same principle. And for us to grow, we have to get some distance, so we have to sink down Jacob's Ladder. But what's really neat, though, is our daily choices. .Every single choice we make, from the air we breathe, where we live, what we choose to eat or consume, whether it's with our mouth, our eyes, or ears, because we consume with all three.

Tamara Anderson 38:41

Yes.

Vinney 38:43

Those choices will either raise us up the scale, or push us down the scale. If we're not sure if it's raising us or lowering us, it's lowering us. There's no question. So if we're like, “No, this decision just has me treading water.” No, it's sinking you. Period. You're either raising your frequency or you're lowering your frequency. If you want to learn how to raise your frequency, come from the perspective of love, period. Love those around you. Love your enemies. Love those who cut you off and see it for what it is. When someone cut me off, before I died, I used to give them a special finger, wave it around to see if they'd pull over and I could cuss them out or whatever. Now, since I died, someone cuts me off, I literally am like, “Look at me there. That's me, right over there.” And it is. We're all different fingers on one hand. For one of us to hurt another, we're only hurting ourselves. We can't hurt someone else. And it's so funny in this life because everyone has this thing where, “I can't forgive this. I can't forgive that.” And somehow we think that gets to the other person. It's kind of like drinking poison and hoping someone else gets sick. When we hurt someone, when we do anything, when we don't forgive someone, we're only drinking poison. It only hurts us. Essentially, it's gonna hurt them too, because we're all one together, but it hurts us first, and more than anyone.

Tamara Anderson 40:20

That is a huge, huge takeaway. I love that, that you see this connection between all of us. We're all connected. Yes. So is that one of the things that you learned, is that we're connected as children of God?

Vinney 40:38

We’re a quilt work. A quilt of God. And for one thread to be angry at another is to still damage the quilt.

Tamara Anderson 40:49

I love that. Because we're all part of the same masterpiece.

Vinney 40:53

We are. We are. And to try to discredit one thread because it's in the middle, it's not seen, is to discredit the whole thing. We all play our sacred, divine part, every single one of us. Even the ones that think they're not making a difference in this world, going around and being a loving person, you are broadcasting that love frequency. You are changing the world, period. You don't have to go build towers and bridges, or be a politician. You don't have to go do these grandiose things to change the world. You can change it by just being a loving person, period.

Tamara Anderson 41:35

And that starts by changing yourself,

Vinney 41:37

Gotta love yourself before you can love anyone else. You can never truly love anyone outside you until you love what's inside first. Love is a mirror, here. So, I do, I help people that have kind of life obstacles and such. I run into a lot of people that are having marital problems. Now one thing I hear with people with marital problems is, “They just don't make me happy.” And, and I go, “You're unhappy, and you think somewhere you're gonna find someone else that's gonna make you happy. But here's the thing, the only answer to that unhappiness or hunger is you. You have to make you happy first, before you could ever feel someone else make you happy.” And it starts with love. You gotta love yourself. You gotta love yourself first.

Tamara Anderson 42:30

Wow. That is such a powerful concept. Now, um, why don't you bring us back around to when you came back?

Vinney 42:40

Right. As I was noticing the building, and I'd been through the experience of, like, all the grass, and trees, and flowers, and river, and water, my guide Drake came to me. Hee got really close to me, and he gave me this heart hug. That's kind of what we're emulating when we hug each other here. But what we do in that form is literally our cores, our centers, come together and become one for a few seconds. When we do that, we just get so full of this love of our Creator. And it's a beautiful thing. When he got done, he pulled away and said, “This is going to be really hard. I promise you it's going to be worth it though.” And as he said that, I instantly start hearing in my ear, a blessing being given to my body back on Earth. I was hearing it as loud as it was in my own ear. So I was hearing it through my own body. So I obviously was being brought back to my body. By the time I heard amen to this blessing that was being given to my body, a special prayer being given to my body, I felt like I was instantly back.

Now fast forward, I've been in the hospital now for a little over three days. I'd been brain dead for those three days. My brother had come in and given me this special prayer, blessing, over me that third night. As he said, “Amen,” he had said that about 10:15 PM. I woke up at 1 AM. To me, it was instantaneous, but it must have taken that time of him saying amen for me actually to travel that distance to get back. Yeah, I woke up. I was fine. completely fine. I pulled hoses off of me. I had hoses all over my mouth, and diodes, and then a cath, like all these things. I yanked them all off.

Tamara 44:47

I’m sure your doctors and nurses were like, “Ah!”

Vinney 44:49

So I yanked them all off and then I just stood there. I felt very, extremely claustrophobic because our spirit self, who we really are, is much larger than who we exist in this physical body. We're vastly larger. So coming back into that physical body was very constraining to me. It kind of felt like, you know, going to Disneyland and then then being put handcuffs on and squished into a little box and locked. That's what it felt like. So I instantly like woke up claustrophobic. I still struggle a little bit with that. Because I got to play outside the body. And there's another reason why, you know, we have to come into baby bodies, because if they could talk, right off the bat they’d be like, “What the hell are you doing, stuffing me into this little body?”

Tamara Anderson 45:43

I know, right?

Vinney 45:45

So yeah, it took it took us a few seconds. I just stood there. I stood there just taking in, just breathing, and realize that I was standing there naked. I better grab some clothes. I went rifling through the cupboards and found like a stack of these gowns. I wrapped like three of them around my middle section. And I bolted. I was leaving. This is, you know, again, it’s like one in the morning. I think there's two nurses on the entire floor that I'm on. There wasn't a lot of critical care in that hospital, in fact, there's a brand new hospital, I think there's maybe three or four rooms with patients in them. So I went running down towards where I could see there was an elevator. So I'm all bolting down there. I get to the elevator, I hit the down button, and I hear a scream, like a squeal so loud. I looked down and the nurse had run in my room and saw, like all my stuff was pulled off. Even my gown was on the ground. The gown had blood and stuff on it, and she just squealed like, screamed. Then she came out of the out of the room and the other nurse met her. And she was like, “He's gone.”

They both, this is so weird, they both somehow knew I was right there at the elevator because they both looked. They both saw me, and I'm sitting there holding these gown. They both scream. I'm like, “Man, I'm toast. I gotta go back.” They made me go back to my room and put on a gown and hook up some more diodes. But every time, as soon as they leave the room, I just pull. I couldn't have them touching me. It hurt to even have the gown touching me. It really did. It just felt so claustrophobic. But it was funny. They had called a security guard. He came and like stood by my room. I told him I wanted to go home. They're like, “You can't. You were dead. You were brain dead.” And I'm like, “Well, I'm fine now.” So they're like, “No, it's a fluke, you're gonna go back under.” They're trying to tell me that I was gonna go back unconscious again, that sometimes brain dead people come out for a few minutes, and then they go back and then they die. So that's what they thought was happening, that you're just gonna fall over dead and they were gonna be in trouble or something.

So I hung out and I said, “What paperwork do I sign? Give me whatever I need.” And they called in a neurologist, they called in a cardiologist, they called in about four or five specialties and I had to get waivers signed by the doctors and myself saying I won't sue anybody. I checked myself out but they wouldn't let me leave till about 6 AM. So by 6 AM, they finally gave me the green light. I had assigned like a phonebook full of paperwork. So I signed it all. And I called my dad and said, “Hey, Dad, I'm alive. Can you come pick me up?” This was his answer: “Okay.” So he came and picked me up and took me back home and I just went jogging. I felt like jogging was the only thing I could do to like, feed that desire to get out of my body. It felt so conflicting to even be back in a body.

But what was weird though, is when I first woke up, I actually didn't remember my whole experience yet. I just was like, picking back up where I left off. I didn't even remember dying. I didn't even remember really, I didn't even remember going to the restaurant or any of that. I kept asking, like, “What happened to me?” when I was signing the paperwork. And every medical person had a different story. I'm like, “I don't think any of these is right.” Luckily, the next day I went to work. Back then I was working construction. So I went back to building houses and I was just back to normal. I met up with my sister and her family a couple nights later. She was the one who brought it out of me. She came up to me and she's like, “You were dead. You know that, right?” I'm like, “Well, that's what they say.” She's like, “Did you have an experience? Did you see anything?” And I wanted to say no. But no didn't come out of my mouth. All of a sudden, my whole experience started coming out of my mouth. And it felt like someone like hijacked my body.

Tamara Anderson 50:17

Really?

Vinney 50:21

And then, as the sentences started to form, it like, downloaded into me. Or didn't download into me so much as like, the cover that was covering it up, came off. And all of a sudden, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. I did die. I saw my body.” So I kind of gave her the short version. But the hard part for me, at that point, is that love was still so real to me. To even think about it, I would just bawl. I'm not a public crying guy, ever. Right? Yeah, like even around people who are really close to me, never saw me cry, ever. But with this, even to think about it, I would just bawl like a little baby. So I wouldn't talk about it with people for quite a while.

I was extremely suicidal, extremely suicidal. Really, I wanted to go back. I kept hearing spirits tell me things. I thought I was crazy at the same time. So I was trying to figure all this out. This was a new version of me. It was very different than the version before. So I was trying to figure all this out. I had a run in with a cop, even, and he arrested me for a ticket that never got sent to me. All this is happening, but God kept sending me messages. In fact, the very money to bail me out for that stupid unpaid ticket was the exact amount my brother had on him at, like, midnight one night. So that added to my experience of, you know, God's still looking out. I need to be aware of that, and stop trying to want to go and just let it happen on its own time. Once I finally accepted that, I actually started to receive messages in spirit, that something really good was about to happen. But I needed to take immediate actions to start living a different life than I did before my experience. So I did. I went through my phone and deleted contacts of people or blocked contacts of my past that I didn't want to have contact with anymore. I only left in contacts where I felt like I could make a positive difference, or they can make a positive difference on me.

So I went forward with that. Literally, four days later, I met my wife. We knew instantly we were going to get married. Before we even went on a date. She knew, too. We both knew. We both knew and we hadn’t even been on a date yet. We're driving up Provo Canyon and going to my family's cabin up there. We go past what's called Bridal Veil Falls there. As we're going past, we're both silent. That wasn't like us, because when we would hang out, we were just chatting, talking, both of us. We love talking to each other. I asked her, or I didn't ask her, I asked my, I have spirit guides. So since I died, I have spirit guides. All of us do, but I talk to mine.

Tamara Anderson 53:26

Can you see them?

Vinney 53:27

Yeah.

Tamara Anderson 53:28

Really? More than one?

Vinney 53:30

Oh, yeah. All of us have more than one.

Tamara Anderson 53:32

Wow. That's cool.

Vinney 53:34

So I have spirit guides, and as we were driving past Bridal Veil, one of them said, “Ask her what she prayed about last night.” I'm all silent. I kind of look out of the side of my eyeball. “So, did you pray about anything interesting lately? She goes, “Why?” She gets really defensive. Like, “Why, did you?” I'm like, “Yeah.” This is gonna sound crazy. But my guides were saying it was okay to say this. They said, “Go and tell her.” Because I had prayed. I'd asked, “Why do I feel this connection with her?” And they wouldn't give me any answers. So I asked, “Is it because we're supposed to get married?” It was like instantly, yes. I don't even know her. I just barely met her and we had been on one date. So as we're driving off I go, I think I said, “I prayed about something really special or important. And I got an answer.” And I go, “What about you?” She's like, “Yeah.” “What was your answer?” She's like, “Yeah, me too.”

Then she asked me, she's like, “What was it you were praying about?” She wanted to hear it. I’m like, “That we're supposed to get married.” She's like, “Oh, me too. Okay.” And kind of had to just get that out from the beginning. Then it was really neat, though, a few months later, in August, we ended up getting married. In that month of July, before we got married, we went up to Wyoming to a family reunion. That wasn't my thing. That wasn't my scene. But it was the scene she would go into. Plus, it was a new scene I was supposed to embrace. I’m supposed to embrace the family scene, and the family idea of reunions and stuff like that. Again, it wasn't my thing, though.

So we go to this reunion. Someone comes up to us and says, “Hey, come to the high school tonight. They're going to do like this play in this presentation at the football field, showing the history of the town, of this little town in Wyoming called Afton.” She's like, “That'd be really neat.” I'm like, “Nah, that's gonna be dumb.” Like, okay, so we go. We're sitting there watching this play, they're doing dances, they're showing the history of the town, who the founders were and such, and then they have this big movie screen that's out in the middle of the field. They're showing like slides, and pictures of pioneers, and different people that helped found the town up there. Up comes this picture of this old man with a long white beard. Even though it's like a black and white picture, you can see his eyes were blue. They were like, piercing you. And I froze. I froze. My energy completely changed so much. Andrea, my fiancé at the time, looked at me and said, “That's the guy. That's your guide.” It was cool.

The picture had said, Charles D Kazer, on the picture. Come to find out, the D meant for Drake. And Drake was my guide. So I was just flabbergasted. I knew that my grandmother was a Kazer. So I'm like, “I wonder if there's a connection.” She grew up in Wyoming. He was one of the first clergy of the town. So we went asked my grandmother. It a few days later, I think, when we were asking her. She said, “Oh, yeah, Grandpa Drake.” Great grandpa Drake is what she called him. It turns out, it was her great grandfather, which was my great great grandfather, or triple great, great, great, great grandfather. The way she described him, was he had these blue eyes that could look through your soul. And you're like,

Tamara Anderson 57:43

And you’re like, “I know!”

Vinney 57:46

Yeah, personally. I’m like, “And he’s standing right here.” It was just really cool. Because he's kind of showing me, like, “See? There's this love all around you.” Like, because even at that point, all these good things are happening to me, I still am thinking, “You're crazy.” I tell people my story, and they're like, “You're crazy.” And I'm like, “Yeah, you're right.” And then I hear and speak to spirits. And I think, “You're crazy. That's not something people do.”

Tamara Anderson 58:22

But it's about being authentic.

Vinney 58:24

Exactly! So God sent me this little, like, nugget, to find out that my guide was a real person, here on earth. Fast forward, I get married. I'm still a builder at this time. I end up going up to Alaska for a couple big, custom homes I had to build up there. As soon as we get done, all my projects are finished, I have no more projects for like a month. Family comes to me and says, “Hey, your grandmother,” who I just talked to, you know, a few months earlier, “her health is failing, and she needs somebody to come take care of her.” So without even skipping a beat, we volunteered. We moved to Wyoming to go take care of her. While we were there, my wife was able to go through a lot of the documents and stuff for my grandma. One of those documents was a prayer, a special prayer given in in my faith. People call it a blessing, a patriarchal blessing. It was the one that was given to him, to Drake.

It was really neat. It might not have been the official patriarchal blessing, but it was like that. It was a long, three page blessing, a two and a half page blessing. It was all written down. When you read the first two paragraphs, they talked about his life in the physical realm. Then, almost an entire two pages was all about his work on the other side, as a guide, a transport, someone who assists in helping those transfer from the physical realm to the others. So, really, so there was like a third nugget to that gift of understanding that I couldn't have made that up. There's no possible way. Because my ego was still saying, “You're crazy.” I'm very scientifically minded. So my brain kept trying to say, “No, this is just your mind trying to fill in the blank spaces.” But here's the thing. After so many signs, of things being dead on, 100% true, you realize you have to give up on that whole ego of, “This is your brain making up things.” This is real. Right? So you have to go with that. Some people still, to this day, are like, “No, Vinney, he's crazy. Stay away from him. He'll tell you things he's not supposed to know.”

Tamara Anderson 1:00:49

There are people out there who are probably super curious. I know, first of all, you've written a book and it'll be coming out sometime in the next…

Vinney 1:01:01

We hope in the next six months. We hope.

Tamara Anderson 1:01:03

But why don't you tell us a little bit about where people can find you and find out more about you?

Vinney 1:01:17

Best place is, I'm doing a website called Living God's Light. Eventually, I'll be branching off and doing a Facebook page out of it, Instagram out of it, that kind of thing. I really am going to take it on as kind of a campaign of light. I want to be that light for who those who need it. It's not for everybody. Definitely not digestible for everybody. And I understand that. I, of all people, understand that. Even though my message is not for everybody, it is for a lot of us. If I wasn't someone who went through this, like when I go back to who I was, before my experience, I needed this. I needed this understanding. I'm so grateful that I was able to receive it and come back. At the same time, I really look forward to one day when I get to go back there. It's not something at all that I fear. I embrace it. I'm not trying to bring it on me in any way. But I really am excited for one day when I get to go back.

Tamara Anderson 1:02:21

That's cool. So I love that. That's a good takeaway, too, is that we shouldn't fear death

Vinney 1:02:26

Not at all. Oh my gosh, it's like, if you're in Disney World, or Disneyland.

Tamara Anderson 1:02:31

Well, there are some people, like my husband, who does not like Disneyland or Disney World. I like Disneyland and Disney World. But yeah, it's not something to be feared. And what would you say to people who are perhaps grieving the loss of a loved one?

Vinney 1:02:48

So the number one thing I like to tell people is, number one, that they're totally fine. Number one. And number two, is that this life continues. In fact, this is the pit stop. Life went long before this and life continues long after this. This is the pit stop. This is the going and getting gas. That's what we're doing here. This is just a short pit stop for our eternal existence. Before you know it, the time will come where you can be back with that loved one. You don't want to rush things. You don't want to go in the wrong way. You want to go the way that God plans for you. But you need to embrace the love, and the energy of who your loved one is. If you really embrace them, and think of them a lot in a good way. Not a hurting, sorrowful, “I'm lonely,” way. But in a good, “I love you, I miss you, and I remember these amazing things about our existence together,” that way we can actually bring forth a strong connection with them so that we can get our own signs and our own omens from the spirit side.

Sometimes in numbers. Sometimes in the 333. Sometimes in the 1111. Sometimes we can be specific. If our loved one loved birds, we can say, “I want to see a cardinal feather,” or, “I want to see a blue jay feather,” you know, something like that, or a turkey feather. You have all three out here. But you can ask for specific signs. When you find them and see them, snap a picture of it and really feel gratitude, and love in your heart for God's universe to compile enough love to make that sign come forward. Those signs do come. Once you get through the healing, because it does take some time, with some time your heart will start to heal. As it does start to heal, it'll never be the same, but you'll still be able to heal. As you start to heal, you'll be able to connect with that loved one through their voice in your mind. And you even get to a point where some people can actually hear their loved one talking to them as they're doing stuff.

Tamara Anderson 1:05:10

I've noticed some people have that gift.

Vinney 1:05:12

They do. All of us do. We're all radios, just some of us turn on. Some of us tune in. Some of us turn on and just randomly get stuff here and there. Some of us learn how to tune in, turn on and in tune. But all of us, our antenna, we’re radios. All of us, we can send and receive.

Tamara Anderson 1:05:31

Wow. What have you found that helps you tune in better to hear, I guess, I want to say God speaking to you? Because I've had another podcast guest call it the God voice in her. I really liked that phrase. What do you do to help you tune in? Because maybe it's something we can…

Vinney 1:05:51

So, if I did everything I knew, my spirit voice or God voice would be much stronger. I call it my guides, my guides would be much stronger than they are. But going to sacred places helps a lot. Like we were talking this morning, the most sacred place that any of us can go is in our temple, and in between our two temples. We need to go there regularly and meditate. We need to start building that relationship with the divine. If that relationship starts with just setting up a regular time where you're just going to sit quietly, eventually, the energy will start to flow and it will start to come. It's really important for us to seek higher frequency. Because we can always ask lower frequency, the same questions as we ask higher frequency. A lot of times we get the same answers, but the version of answer we get from lower frequency will lead us on the wrong path, always.

So it's really important that we do seek higher frequency, because it's kind of like, you know, guideposts, where people can be up on a guidepost. The higher you can get, the better you can see. So the higher the frequency, the better the answer. When an answer comes to me, like from my side direction, energetically, I don't trust it fully. I'll listen, but I don't trust it. I wait till it comes from above, or higher frequency. One of the things that helps me the most is to, number one, stay really hydrated. I drink a lot of water. I drink a lot of sodas too, but I shouldn't drink sodas. Soda turns off the spirit, water turns it on. For every soda I drink, I gotta drink two or three waters to counteract it.

Tamara Anderson 1:07:39

So it does matter what you put into your physical body? That is so cool. Before we close, have there been any Bible verses that have become meaningful to you, since your near death experience?

Vinney 1:07:48

I have two favorite scriptures. One of them I had before my experience. The other, I've picked up since. Let's see here. So this is the one that I picked up since. This is Colossians 3:14. “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” That's one that, when you go to the Hebrew version, essentially, could be translated as, “Love is the most important thing to put first, on top of everything. And it is the force or the power of unity between all life.” That was essentially what I learned through my experience. Then, of course, John 4:16. “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” It's kind of essentially the same principle that, like, the universe is love. The universe is God. It's all permeated with that loving force that was created for us to guide us, and create us, and shape us, but in a way that we choose that shaping, we choose that growth. And if we choose not to grow, we don't have to grow.

Tamara Anderson 1:09:19

Right? It’s all up to us. And God takes us where we are.

Vinney 1:09:25

We're driving our own ship.

Tamara Anderson 1:09:28

That is awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing this. I'll be sure to link Vinney’s website, livinggodslight.com in the show notes if you want to check that out. It'll keep you apprised of his book that's coming out. There's a whole lot more in there that we didn't even get to cover. So we're just doing a little scratch here and I'm just thankful that he was willing to share his story with us. If anything, take from this that you are loved, that God loves you, and choose to love yourself because that's really, really important.

Vinney 1:10:04

Truly, if you love God, you're gonna love you because you are a creation of God.

Tamara Anderson 1:10:12

Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you heard, subscribe so you can get your weekly dose of powerful stories of hope. I know there are many of you out there who are going through a hard time, and I hope you found useful things that you can apply to your own life in today's podcast. If you'd like to access the show notes of today's show, please visit my website, storiesofhopepodcast.com. There, you will find a summary of today's show, the transcript, and one of my favorite takeaways. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this episode with them. Maybe there was a story shared, or quote, or a scripture verse that they really, really need to hear. So go ahead and share this podcast. May God bless you, especially if you are struggling, with hope to carry on, and with the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help you bear the burden. And above all else, remember God loves you.

You can find the transcription of today's episode here: https://www.tamarakanderson.com/podcasts/vinney-todd-what-i-learned-about-love-after-i-died

Tamara AndersonSeptember 1, 2021Death, faith, Love, NDE