#163 My lovely guest this week is Natalie Sudman. Natalie is an artist and an author who worked as an archaeologist for 16 years. In 2006, she went to Iraq, serving as a project manager for the U.S Army Corp of engineers. When in Iraq, her vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb which left her in a critical situation and caused her to have a Near-Death Experience.

During our conversation today, in addition to discussing Natalie’s NDE, we talk about going within and answering questions about who we are in regard to ourselves and not to the outside world. If you are looking for ways to re-define yourself and grow into your true self, then this episode is for you.

If you enjoyed this podcast, you may also like: Knowing: A Journey Beyond The Veil | Jeffery Olsen

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About Natalie:  Natalie Sudman earned an MFA from the University of Oregon in 1989. To support her art habit, she worked as an archaeologist for sixteen years, and as a project manager in Iraq for a year and a half.

An Enthusiastic traveller, Natalie has lived and worked in Iraq, Florida, Antarctica, Wyoming, Spain, etc. Her Travels include New Zealand, Europe, Mexico, the Middle East, and very briefly, China. She currently resides in southern Arizona.

Natalie’s poetry and essays have been published in various literary journals. Her non-fiction book, “Application of impossible things: My Near-Death Experience in Iraq,” is available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

►Audio Version:

 

Key points with time stamp:

• Application of Impossible Things (00:00)
• Natalie’s work in her own words (00:12)
• Natalie’s art (01:03)
• Natalie’s life as an archaeologist (01:33)
• Moving to Iraq (02:51)
• Natalie’s experience in Iraq (04:19)
• The Near-Death Experience (08:56)
• Did Natalie feel time passing during her experience? (17:48)
• On the hardships we experience in life (21:35)
• How did Natalie overcome her injuries after the accident? (26:50)
• Did the Near-Death Experience feel more real than reality? (30:13)
• Sharing her experiences with the other colleagues in the accident (32:32)
• “Why me?” (33:11)
• Writing Application of Impossible Things (36:42) 
• Sharing a traumatic experience with the world (39:21)
• More spiritual experiences since the accident (41:55)
• Natalie’s daily practices (45:36)
• Natalie’s choice of a dinner guest, from any timeframe (47:02)
• What Natalie leaves us with (49:37)

Mentioned in this episode:

• Paul Selig
• National Historic Register
• Hurricane Katrina
• Kundalini
• Wayne Dyer
• Application of impossible things, 2012. Natalie’s book.
• Anita Moorjani
• Jesus
• Buddha
• Muhammad
• Crazy Horse, a Lakota war leader

Natalie’s Website:
www.nsudman.com

Natalie’s Facebook Page:
www.facebook.com/Natalie-Sudman-319158271437378

Natalie’s Book:
www.amazon.com/Application-Impossible-Things-Death-Experience/dp/188694024X

 

About me:

My Instagram:
www.instagram.com/guyhlawrence/?hl=en

My website:
www.guylawrence.com.au
www.liveinflow.co

 

TRANSCRIPT

Guy 00:00
Natalie, welcome to the podcast.

Natalie 00:09
Hi, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Guy 00:12
I always thought the show and with if you were at an intimate dinner party, like at the dinner table right now, when you sat next to a complete stranger, and they asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Natalie 00:27
Oh, that’s a good question. I would probably just say that I am retired. And an artist, I would probably I do readings, I do psychic readings for people in consultations. But I generally don’t tell people that unless I know that they’re kind of in the field, you know, because I don’t know how that is going to go over. And I’m not here to convert anyone, or to get in an argument or anything. So it’s easier just not to say anything, unless I know that they’re interested in that kind of thing.

Guy 01:03
Yeah. But if it really depends on who’s sitting opposite you, isn’t it and, and where they’re at, I can still relate to what you’re saying, Well, why what kind of art you do, by the way?

Natalie 01:13
Well, I do collage and an unusual form of oil painting. And I do things like so quilt, and I’ll, I’ll try anything. I’ve done a lot of ceramics in the past. And

Guy 01:33
yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Well, I’m, like I said, I came across your work via Paul Selig of all people you mentioned your name and and it sparked my interest. And Paul is a beautiful human being. And he’s been on the show twice. And, and I’m always blown away by this work and what why things come forward. And then when I checked you out the new the book you had written and, and your personal journey, I was like, Oh my god, I really hope Natalie will come on the show and share a little bit about her experiences, because they’re not, they’re not everyday experiences that you hear. And I think a great place to take us back because I believe you were an archaeologist for 16 years. Is that correct?

Natalie 02:14
Yeah, I was I just did surface survey archaeology and some testing. I didn’t do digs full blown digs. So basically, I was walking and looking for sights on the surface of the land. And then when I’d find those, I would record them, and then evaluate them for the historic for the sort of National Historic Register. And then if somebody else wanted to dig them, they would know where they were, they wouldn’t know what was showing up on the surface and that kind of thing. So

Guy 02:51
bright got, yeah. And was it archaeology that led you to Iraq?

Natalie 02:56
Well, I was working as an archaeologist, when the the Corps of Engineers, US Army Corps of Engineers put a call out to all federal agencies, asking for people to come down and help with Hurricane Katrina cleanup. And that was back in What 2005 2006? I forget those end of 2005, I guess, and I volunteered for that. So I went down there and worked to one month, one and a half month, stints down there and met some other people from other agencies. And and a few months later, one of them called me up and said, Hey, do you want to work in Iraq? We could work in Iraq if we want to? I said, Sure. And hung up the phone and went,

Guy 03:46
sure. So like a true free spirit. No, no hesitation and just

Natalie 03:51
yeah, I kind of get myself into things once in a while. That way, I had been looking for overseas work. I had said to myself, I’ll go I think I’ll go anywhere but a rack. I don’t really want to go there. It looks like a mess. I don’t know what’s going on over there. I don’t understand what we’re doing over there. So, of course, that’s why I ended up you ended

Guy 04:12
up going yeah. What, what what was going on in Iraq at the time when you arrived?

Natalie 04:19
Yeah, that was supposedly at that point. The war was over ha and rebuilding efforts were going on. So I was in charge of some of those reconstruction efforts. I was managing some of those contracts the contracts were all a rocky contractors. And I had some Iraqi engineers working for me that really did the vast majority of the work. But yeah, we were doing things like building roads and health care centers and sewage systems and you know, clean water to villages and things like

Guy 05:00
Yeah, well, I did. And before the accident, I’m sure we’ll get into that in a moment. But did you feel safe at the time? Or were you always on Red Alert? or How was the general consensus of where you were out there?

Natalie 05:12
Well, the first half of my time there, I was in an area that was pretty safe the first couple of months. And then the surge happened up north, which kind of shoved all the action down to our area. And then we were getting rockets and mortars into camp, probably, I don’t know, between three and 10 times a day, maybe. So we were getting a lot of a lot of incoming. Yeah, and I was going out in the field a lot because of the particular project that I had. And a lot of times people didn’t like to go outside the wire, because there was danger of IEDs improvised explosive devices on the roads. But at that time, we were hitting so many rockets, that it was kind of a relief sometimes to just get out of camp. And then the second, the second half of my tour there, there was I was in a different area, and there was hardly any hardly any incoming at all, I think maybe two or three times in the next. I don’t know why that must have been about seven or eight months. So in that area, the IEDs probably were more of a more of a threat.

Guy 06:37
Yeah. Wow, incredible. And what’s going on? Did you at any point that you know, I need to just go home or pull out this is getting a bit hairy, or was that not in your nature of just?

Natalie 06:51
No. You know, I said at one point, that even when I hated it, there was nowhere else that I wanted to be and that was kind of always true. I knew before I went over there, I figured if if I’m going into a war zone, even though they weren’t calling it that in the US News, then I I should be willing to get injured or killed. I don’t have kids, that probably helps. I wasn’t, you know, I just thought well, I followed it through and and if I don’t, if I’m not comfortable with getting killed or injured, then I’ll go home. But I I don’t know. I, I think that I’ve never been afraid of dying. I think it’s a pretty good option. I think I remember that. It’s really nice. And that’s okay with me. I think now having been injured, I would be more a lot more wary about being injured. Because I know how long that can feel.

Guy 08:07
Right. recovering the pain and yeah, in

Natalie 08:11
the long term effects, I think. But at the time, no, I was fine. I didn’t. I figured too, that if something was gonna happen. That was really bad. I would probably know about it. I would I think I thought that I would, I’d be given a chance to avoid it. And I think I probably was I wasn’t, I was tired. And I wasn’t really paying attention. But there were a few. There were a few things that happened that in retrospect, I think Oh, yeah. Well, if I had been paying attention, I would have I would have recognized those things as a signal, I think, right. Something was gonna happen. And I don’t know if I would have done anything anyway. Yeah. You know, you don’t know hindsight.

Guy 08:56
It’s a beautiful thing, right? Yeah, absolutely. So how long have you been there when the accident happened? And how long have you been there? What were you doing at the time? Where were you going to from?

Natalie 09:08
I had been there about a year and a half, a little less than a year and a half. And I was out outside the wire with three colleagues. And when we traveled outside the wire, we traveled with a security team normally wouldn’t go, there wouldn’t be more than two of us. But in this case, there were four of us. And so our team consisted of four trucks, a lead truck, us a second truck with two of us in it, another truck with two of us in it. And each of those had two guards also their driver and a guard. And then the gun truck which went behind us and had I think it had three guys in it. So it was an armed convoy, right and we had been out visiting construction sites, we went to three of our water projects. And then we visited road construction project. And we were on our way home at the end of the day, when the vehicle that I was traveling in was hit with the, with an ID with a roadside bomb.

Guy 10:18
So the bomb had been planted in the trucker district over, essentially, is that right?

Natalie 10:23
Yeah, I didn’t, I never actually found out if it was triggered by us driving over it, or some of those ideas were triggered by cell phone. Someone would be watching from a distance, and then they would dial in a number and it would set off the bomb. And I never did find out I guess which way that one was set off.

Guy 10:44
That’s incredible. You in the lead truck bend over there?

Natalie 10:46
No, I was in the I think I was I must have been in the third truck. Yeah,

Guy 10:56
yeah. And it was it was only your truck that I got hit by that bomb.

Natalie 11:01
We were traveling this team. Teams traveled with different distances between the trucks, whatever that team like to do. And we had, we had quite a distance, I don’t know, maybe a quarter kilometer or a half kilometer between trucks. So I do have one photograph that the guys in the truck ahead of us took looking back at our truck. We can’t really see the truck all you can see is this column of black smoke. So they were they’re pretty far away from us.

Guy 11:33
Well, and how many of you were in the truck? At that point?

Natalie 11:36
There were four of us. Yeah, the driver and a guard in front of me, the driver and a guard and colleague of mine and me.

Guy 11:49
Amazing. And then when when? How do you recall it did once the bomb went off? Do you actually remember the bomb going off in the blast? Or?

Natalie 11:59
I don’t know. I think I was kind of leaning on my hand like this kind of half asleep. It was, you know, the long end of a long day and very hot. And so I was tired. And all I all I remember was that. That I was not in the truck anymore. There was no there was no I didn’t notice the bomb. I didn’t notice any explosion.

Guy 12:32
I was there’s no segue. It was just like,

Natalie 12:35
like, I was in the truck. And then I was not in the truck.

Guy 12:38
Holy shit. Amazing. So I’m gonna have to ask what happened then? So you weren’t in the truck? Where were you?

Natalie 12:46
Yeah, so I was standing on kind of a little stage. And all around me or like 1000s of beings, it was kind of like being in a stadium. And that these beings looked like they were made out of they had form but they looked like they were kind of made out of light. And I knew that I was wearing my fatigues, the same fatigues that I had been wearing in the truck. And I was just standing there and I was I was downloading information to these beings. And then I’ll just shorten it. I I let them know that I didn’t want to go back that I was tired of being in a body. I didn’t want to go back in the body. And they’re like, Okay, good, fine. But if you did want to go back in the body, maybe you’d like to try this. And I was like, Oh yeah, that sounds like fun. So see, I did it again. I called me up and said, Hey, you want to go to Iraq? And I said, sure. But anyway, then I I call this

Guy 13:57
Were you scared at this point or nervous? Or like,

Natalie 14:00
No, No, I wasn’t. I seem to know. I knew exactly where I was. I knew exactly what was going on. I think there was no sense of disorientation. There was no wondering, what is this? or How did I get here? It was all very familiar to me and I knew exactly what I was doing.

Guy 14:24
Wow. Sure, so what happened next Sorry, I cut you off.

Natalie 14:30
Yeah, that’s okay. I was just gonna nutshell the whole thing and you want to come back to but um, yeah, then I then I, what I just call moving from one kind of environment to another blinking because that’s his, that’s how easy it was. So, when I was done kind of doing whatever I was doing with this group I I blinked to another environment that I call the D brassed environment because it was, that’s what I was doing, like I was going into this really deep, quiet. And it was kind of this velvety darkness, it was like a rest and rejuvenation area. And at first there was a couple other beings there and they were kind of tinkering with the organization of my energy or something, I didn’t really interact with them. But that’s my sense of what they were doing. It was kind of like mechanics tuning up a car. And I kind of, well, then I blinked to another area that I called the healing environment, I could see the scene on the desert down below the blown up truck, and us in the truck. And, but it was, it was kind of, I could see all that also as energy as energy structures. And I was with another being or two beings. In this environment, one was a good friend. And we were kind of goofing around, we were doing kind of the equivalent of waving a hand and giving me different injuries. And then we would see this kind of holographic picture of what the rest of my life would look like. And we would just fall down laughing, we thought the whole thing was just hilarious, you know, eventually, I chose the injuries that I wanted, waved my hand proof, give me give myself those injuries. And then then I blinked again. And I was down kind of standing next to the truck with some other beings like seven or eight other beings eight or nine, actually, I think. And we were discussing what I was going to do on kind of a more nuts and bolts kind of level, I had, actually after the depressed environment, I kind of went back to that big gathering that big stadium of beings. And we had, we talked more about what I was going to do. But talking at that level is, is kind of like talking to the architect. And then you know, standing next to the truck, I’m talking to these beings. Like I’m the one that kind of be hammering the nails into the boards, you know, it’s a very, very different perspective, from laughing at injuries, to getting ready to hop back into the body that’s severely injured. So yeah, that’s kind of a overview of what I experienced. Yeah,

Guy 17:48
that’s, that’s incredible. Because there’s so many different directions I could spark off into, when you when you had that that entire experience, how long did it feel? Like? Was it to feel like a blink of an eye? Or the eternity? Or could you not know? Or was it just

Natalie 18:10
I don’t I mean, I think when I was within it, I wasn’t really, I’m not sure how to describe that it doesn’t feel like any time passes, really, it just feels like you are wherever you are. I could say that the deep rest environment, it felt like forever. And, and yet the blink of an eye it just. And I can still sometimes go there, I can go back into that and thinking very deeply and feel like oh, I’ve been here forever, and then come back out. And it’s been five minutes or something. And this whole experience couldn’t have been more than a second or two. Because when I popped back into my body, the truck was still rolling down the road. So it hadn’t even come to a stop yet.

Guy 19:07
Wow, amazing. I think I hear the term I was listening. I’m sure it was you when I was listening to an interview about, like, we’re photons of light compressed into this human being and if we hold our fist like this and continually squeeze it. If we were to then open it up and release, that’s what it kind of feels like when you’re outside of your body. It’s very,

Natalie 19:31
I didn’t say that, but it’s the good example. Yeah. Cuz it really does. I mean, now we’re kind of I think it takes a certain amount of awareness, to hold ourselves in a body. That’s what it feels like to me to sort of balance ourselves in a body and focus in that particular way. But when you, when you step out of the body, it’s just, it’s so easy. Everything’s so easy. Thinking is easy and creating something as easy and moving around as easy. It’s easy to understand things on a on a very, in a very fundamental way to recognize truth, sort of with a capital T, it just, everything just becomes a lot easier.

Guy 20:32
Yeah. Amazing. I know. We were talking off air I mentioned about the Kundalini awakening, I had experienced an amplitude of energy that went through me. When I was in a meditative state, I had this expansive experience where I was beyond the body. And, and all of a sudden, I could go, Ah, that’s what you mean. That’s what all the books mean, that’s what you’ve all been leading to. Until I until I then when I come out, like, so. so obvious car? No, but But until that happened, it was just just, I couldn’t compute it.

Natalie 21:10
Yeah, it’s just an idea until it happens. Right? And, and maybe you think you can imagine it, and maybe you can imagine it, but when you have the actual experience, it’s, it’s complete, right? It’s you, then you really understand something when you have an experience of it, not just an idea.

Guy 21:35
I’m fascinated as well, about the, what you mentioned about when you’re standing on the side with the beings and they go, Oh, should I have this injury? Or should I have that injury? And the rest of my life is gonna could look like this, it could go in that direction? I mean, what are your beliefs now on the hardships that we have in life? Do you think we pre select our journeys to learn from them like in that we are in the school of life? What are your thoughts on that?

Natalie 22:05
Well, the way I describe that a school sounds to me too much like lessons and tests. And there’s goals that, you know, specific goals that if you don’t fail, yeah, oh, yeah. So I talk about this as life as an exploration. And I think we come here to explore different things. And to master them, we just talked about how, if you have an experience, you understand it in a different way you understand it on another level, you really own that that’s your information, right? And I think that we come here to have those kinds of experiences. And so, you know, there’s a part of us that thinks, how come? How come life has to be hard? How come it can’t just be fun, it can’t just be easy. But I think that if we didn’t have challenges, I think that number one, if we would be bored, on some level, we would be very bored. But the difficulty, the difficulty of what we’re doing comes from our own way of thinking about things. I, I was in the hospital for about a month after I got blown up. And and there was one, one evening when I was when I was really worried about my I don’t really see out of this eye anymore. And I was really kind of starting to feel sorry for myself, and, and, you know, I’m an artist, I really want to be able to see out of both eyes. And all of a sudden, I just had this this moment of perfect clarity. And when I said it doesn’t matter, it’s only for 40 more years. And to a human mind, you go 40 more years, or you’re out of your mind. And yet, if we if we would cultivate a different context for ourselves, if we would stop. Stop limiting our, our context to birth, this life death if we would open that up to beyond this life, however long you want to make it, you know, is that a cluster of lives does it does it include this sort of feeling of infinity between lives? Or maybe we don’t have maybe some of us don’t do multiple lives. But if we begin to imagine a different context for what we’re doing, then maybe 40 years is just 40 years, and it’s okay. It’s gonna be alright.

Guy 24:57
Yeah. Wow. And then And I think of what Wayne Dyer might have quoted this, but to fully live, you must accept death. And then from that we can begin to fully live, the pain, the greatest fear. And I often think about that in the choices I make on a daily basis, I’m I just getting caught up in my, my programs my conditioning, or am I actually appreciate in the moments that I have here to experience because there’s such a rich tapestry of experiences that we could have you as a human, you know? And,

Natalie 25:35
yeah, definitely, I mean, infinity is infinite, right, we have a great playground here. But fear, really, it doesn’t necessarily have to be fear of death, you know, it could be fear of injury or fear of making a fool out of yourself. You know, there’s lots of ways that we curtail ourselves and, and limit our own choices. And, you know, maybe some of that we came to explore, to, to meet and kind of begin to understand how to stand out a step above it. But I do think that it, it will always be to our advantage to step up to step out of our own fear, to rise above our own fear. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t feel fear, but to not let that be in the driver’s seat. And, you know, sometimes say I’m, I’m scared to death of this. But I think it’s what I really want to do. And I’m going to just carry my fear along with me try it.

Guy 26:50
Yeah. What? Yeah, no 100% after the accident, and what injuries had you sustained? Or had you chosen? And did it then help you overcome them over? You’re laying in the hospital bed thinking, geez, I wish I hadn’t chose that. This is this is how right now? kind of thing.

Natalie 27:14
Yeah, so I had my right heel was broken by shrapnel. Both the, the bones in my right forearm were shattered, and some of the wrist bones were broken. All the bones on the right side of my face were broken. And I had a skull fracture, I had a hole in my skull here, a couple holes, and blunt force trauma injuries to this eye that retina was was really tattered, and eventually came detached. It was reattach. So I have a little bit of vision in that eye, but the eyes don’t line up now. And so that the lasting effects are the the sigh, I kind of see double because it doesn’t line up. They don’t, it sees less light. And there’s no lens in that. So it’s fuzzy, but it’s still distracting. And I don’t really have full range of motion in this arm, although it’s, it’s, it’s pretty close. It’s pretty good. So it’s really the eye. And, you know, I think that I, I didn’t remember this whole thing. Until a few months after I got out of the hospital. I was I had this I kept having those moments of clarity, like I just told you about when I was worried about my eye and oh, it’s only 40 more years, I kept having those moments of clarity. When I was in the hospital, and after I got out but at some point after I got out, I was still all drugged up. But I thought something happened. I went somewhere. I knew I went somewhere when that explosion happened, and I kind of close my eyes and took myself back in to the truck and boom, the whole thing just as a whole. Just crystal clear memory returned to for that whole thing. And I think that I know that remembering that I chose my injuries changed the way that I understood my injuries. But but that was true even before I remembered the whole thing. Right? You know it? I think that on some level I remembered it and that mattered it it. It made sense to me or or I understood that these injuries made sense for a reason. They’re not. They weren’t just random that For whatever reason, even if I couldn’t see that reason as a, as a conscious personality self, that on some level, they were valuable to me. Yeah.

Guy 30:13
Yeah, fair enough. And the experience you had, did it feel when you’re there? This is just for people trying to wrap their heads around it that would be listening to this today? Did it feel as real as this reality? Did it feel more? less like a dream? Like, how would you describe it?

Natalie 30:29
No, I feel more real than here. It’s more real than this reality. I’ve heard other people say the same thing. I don’t know how to describe it if you haven’t had that experience, because you think well, this is, isn’t this as real as it gets, you know, this is what we’re here for. We’re in, in these bodies in these minds. And this is real, you know, knock on this. It’s real. And yet, if you have that experience, you really, I think probably you had this, you must have had the same feeling when you have that Kundalini, you are you become? Yeah, when you’re free like that, you know, when you’re like this in the body, and then you’re like this, you can perceive so much more when you’re relaxed. You can perceive so much more when you’re aware as a whole being instead of just aware as a personality, self through this body.

Guy 31:33
Yeah, absolutely. How were the other colleagues in the track to

Natalie 31:40
colleague next to me, he had, he had more severe injuries, he had a part of his femoral artery artery was blown out. He did keep his leg and but he has some nerve pain that has never gone away. And the driver, he also is blind in one eye a piece of shrapnel with into his head and cut his optic nerve. So he’s blind in one eye, and he had a lot of injuries to his forearms because he was driving like this. So I think he has some nerve pain from the shrapnel in his head, too. I haven’t spoken to him for a little while. And then the man the guards sitting in front of me was killed.

Guy 32:32
Yeah. Did you ever share your experiences with the other two people in?

Natalie 32:39
In the I did? Actually I sent them copies of my book. Okay. And yeah, well, yeah, I don’t really talk about them. Because we all had our own experiences. Yeah, we all have our own perceptions. And they’re, they were very gracious. And they were very open. I think. I know that one of them passed on the book to somebody else. So yeah. That’s nice.

Guy 33:11
Yeah, no, fair enough. And do it. Do you ever wonder why that experience happened to you like? Oh, you don’t question it? You know?

Natalie 33:21
Well, I don’t know. I don’t really I’ve had that question a lot. I know, it’s just I don’t I don’t know. I don’t ask, why a lot. Maybe in that way. I think that asking why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me is often not a very productive question, to ask ourselves, that a more useful thing to ask ourselves is often How do I best handle this? Because I think the why of things is not always going to be purse. It’s not always going to make sense to the human mind. It’s not always going to make sense to the personality mind to the small self. Having an experience through this body. I saw some of the reason why I chose that, to have that happened to me. When I was when I was remembering this. I could remember seeing, you know, when I chose my injuries, I could remember seeing a whole kind of instance of the whole rest of my life and understanding on a really broad level. why I chose this particular action, why do it this way? And it made sense, but it’s it wouldn’t make sense if I talked about it. It would be like she must be kind of crazy. I honestly just think it wouldn’t kind of make sense. And. And I also think that we are our culture’s, like to prioritize things and, and put things in hierarchical order. So if I, if I described some of what I understand about why I chose this action, I think that people would, people would they be saying, I wonder what I did with that action, then, you know, or is, that seems like grandiose? Who does she think she is? Or, or what I’m doing is more important than that. I think that we go there without even really realizing it sometimes. And I just want people to know that there was reason behind it. Because I’m not unique in that way. I don’t think I’m unique. I think there’s a reason there’s purpose, there’s value in whatever we experience. Everybody, no matter what your experience, I think there’s value in that. I don’t think that we can always understand that from our, our human point of view, but if we can begin to make a little space for for faith, maybe in in just a allowing that that may be true that it may be is really important. And this is uncomfortable, but maybe it’s worth it on some level.

Guy 36:42
Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. You your book application of impossible things, why did you decide to write it? And why the title?

Natalie 36:56
Well, the title just came. As soon as I started writing it, I just, that was just in my head, and it wouldn’t go out of my head. So that’s really why once I started thinking about what might be meant by that it made sense to because I think that everything that I experienced, has, has value to, and some kind of application in our lives, as they are through through these personalities, and through these bodies. And through these emotions. I think that in my understanding this world is within the infinite world. So we’re not separate from it. We’re within it, we’re part of it. We’re in, you know, an intrinsic cell within or whatever. So what is Apple applicable on the non physical, has some kind of echo here in the physical world? When I wrote the book, because first I started writing it just so that I would have a record, an honest record of what I remembered. And I had read some near death experiences years before just a couple and thought these are, these don’t even interest me, because what they tended to do was, they wrote a lot about how they got to the near death experience. And then and then what happened to them after the near death experience. But the experience itself was like, this much of the story. And I’m like, No, that’s the part I want to know about. That’s the part people want to know about. Not, we don’t want to hear about your whole flight to Timbuktu and your whole flight home. We want to hear about Timbuktu. So I thought, well, here’s my chance. I can write about Timbuktu, I can write about what I remember and how I understand that. And what I think can be brought back into this life from that. And so that’s what I I tried to do once I once I got about halfway through I thought well, this is better than I thought so maybe, maybe somebody I want.

Guy 39:21
Good on. Yeah, yeah. And I did for you because I remember, I had Anita moorjani on the show. Last year or a year before now go get in 2021 2020 was a blink. Yeah. And she started the same way because she had her experiences whilst in hospital with a cancer and then she wrote about it, but she was terrified to put it out there. Yeah, I was too. You were Yeah,

Natalie 39:47
okay. Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t want to do it. I was like, Oh, well. Maybe I’ll send it to a couple publishers and a couple agents and if they don’t answer then they don’t answer. And then I was just terrified. I thought, Oh, if this goes out people, I don’t know, I thought I would lose friends. I thought people would kind of confront me and say, You’re crazy. I didn’t know what would happen. I don’t know. It felt like, it felt big, you know, it felt really scary. But then once it was out there, it was like, Well, nothing happened. And I thought,

Guy 40:28
Oh, that’s gold. That’s gold. Because it is it. It’s, I mean, I have these conversations on a regular basis. Now, because of what I do the point I just have this curious, open mind. And I’m like, Well, I certainly don’t know anything. So I need to did there’s so much more to this. So having an open, open, curious mind has been absolutely the greatest gift for me, where before I was so closed off, you know, and being able to explore these ideas, but outside of that context, you know, I can’t imagine, I don’t know what the general responses with people, if we saw kind of caught up in the human experience, constantly, we stressed to the eyeballs, and we’re, you know, and our experience is very physical, then it can feel like such a stretch to even consider it in the first place. You know,

Natalie 41:21
yeah, and we’ve been taught out of these things to, you know, to a certain extent, right. That’s not real. That’s all hoax or that’s crazy, you know, so some of these things can feel like you’re really opening yourself up to ridicule or? Yeah, I don’t know. It can feel like a real leap into the unknown, to sort of expose yourself that way.

Guy 41:55
Yeah, absolutely. Once um, once you got the book out now, and you would do it, you you you have these experiences you do that do you have you have you had more experiences since so you’re not you’re not attached to any of that you just go about your daily life now.

Natalie 42:16
Oh, I’ve had some experiences. I don’t really talk about them as individual experiences, I think that I think that what is most important is not the, the the drama of some of these experiences, I think that what’s important is knowing that we are more than our physical bodies, and more than our emotions, you know, we are an infinite being having experience through this body and through these emotions, and through this mind. And, and the more we know that more, we open up to the actual experience of that, I think then we’re all whoever can do that, or whoever is, is willing to do that, to know themselves as we really are. I think that some of these transformative experiences just begin to happen to you or you begin to get more intuitive or psychic or, you know, you you have these kinds of things happen to you. But I think that sometimes I think of those things as the tricks like you can, you can set out to learn the tricks you can set out to you know, learn how to do a psychic reading or learn how to do Reiki or something. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think it’s easy to feel like well, now I know how to do that. So now and I’m enlightened or now I’m, you know, closer to enlightenment or, but I think of those things as as they can be misleading. I think that the real point of knowing those things is to remind yourself, every time you have that experience, that there’s more to this reality than we are admitting publicly right now. You know, that’s the point of it. Do you want to do you want to learn to use your psychic abilities or do you want to know yourself from the inside out as a whole being? That seems to me to be the real important thing. And what everyone is what people really want, you know, that’s, that’s what they think they’ll get through learning a psychic to be psychic. or something? When really if you pause and say, What, wait, what do I really want here and aim yourself there, you’ll probably get those side effects and that’s fine. But you’ll have them in a in a context that makes sense on a, on a broader texture and and will allow you to carry those tricks to with a certain kind of confident humility. I think you will need to have it on your resume. You’ll just be who you are. I think that’s the valuable place to be.

Guy 45:36
So well put. Thank you. Yeah, that makes so much sense, doesn’t it quite often we can go chasing experiences to try and fulfill a part of ourselves that’s missing and hoping that’s going to be the answer where it’s then redirecting ourselves away from ourselves when like you say, if we actually just learn to be and turn the journey inward a little bit and be with ourselves and get to know thyself, then those experiences will come organically from it. And there’s less attachment to it. We’re not always chasing it, and wanting more, you know, bringing ourselves back. couple of questions to before I wrap up the show, do you have to everything that you’ve gone through? No. Do you have any daily practices at all? Or do you just find yourself the way you live your life is the way of you bringing presents to yourself through art and, and through different things.

Natalie 46:31
I try to meditate every day. And I wish I were better at that. Because I think it’s a really, really powerful tool. I think it’s probably the best tool. But I can I’m not especially disciplined person. So a lot of times that kind of gets away from me. But that’s, that is the one thing that I aim for. As a daily practice.

Guy 47:02
Yeah. Beautiful. And a couple of other questions just to get to know is, um, if you could have dinner with anyone from any timeframe anywhere in the world, even if a couple of people you could sit down one night and have a good meal in a conversation. Who do you think it would be? Why?

Natalie 47:21
Well, that’s so big. Oh, boy. Maybe maybe it’d be fun to sit down with Jesus, Buddha Muhammad and and like, oh, Crazy Horse or somebody.

Guy 47:55
Wow. All the big guns for sure. Yeah, exactly. Why not go big? See what they have to say about it all, you know, right? Yeah. It always reminded takes me back to us. I’ll never forget going to a just going off a tangent. Some friends invited me to go to this this weekend, there was this Kundalini guru, Yogi guy coming in. And I’ll never forget, I turned up in my CrossFit singlet. I didn’t know what I was getting into. And I remember sitting I can’t even sit Lotus or anything and, and there but this guy, and I’m like guru like, but he was just so full of joy. And he always, he always teased himself. And he never took anything seriously. The whole time. He was there. He was just an amazing human being to be around. I came away after that weekend, just thinking you’re the best. I’d love to hang out with you more like you’re, you know, we’re all the students and I’d like so serious. Yeah. And, and he was just the complete opposite. Yeah, it was it was it was wonderful, really refreshing.

Natalie 49:02
Yeah, we have such a preconceived notion that divine divine things are holy things to be serious and quiet. And, and really, in my experience, it is that just sort of overwhelming joy and that willingness to laugh. That is so big. It’s so big, and it’s so healing. It’s so light. We don’t need to. We don’t need to quiet it all down. It can be kind of fun to

Guy 49:37
exactly know the point be in the dinner table you’ve picked I recommend a lot of fun. I recommend the Lord. You know, for sure. Um, last question for you, Natalie. And that is with everything we’ve covered today. Is there anything you’d like to leave the listeners to ponder on

Natalie 50:00
Well, I think kind of what I said a few minutes ago, about going within, I think that we’re kind of taught to define ourselves from the outside in we, we throw out this question Who am I to, to the world all the time. And, and watch what comes back. And we kind of build this identity with those things. You know, I’m lazy, I’m good with people, I’m kind of a con I’m whatever you know, are we listen to what our parents who our parents tell us, we are our peers, our friends, our teachers, and, and when you go within, and ask yourself, who am I and be an open up to having an experience of who you are not just an idea or not just a list, but an actual experience like that Kundalini experience, this is who you are, you’re going to begin to interact with the world differently, you will feel like the world is imposing upon you or that you are not the one choosing your experience or, or you won’t always assume that that things outside of yourself are responsible for your emotions or your state of mind, you’ll begin to understand that we are the creators, and that even in the midst of something difficult, you can choose joy, and I don’t know your whole, the whole experience of life becomes something different. When you can love yourself. When you can come into that affinity with yourself and know yourself, then it’s possible to love everything. You don’t have to try to love everything. You just will recognize that same spark and everything else.

Guy 51:55
Amazing. What a way to end the show. Thank you so much. I am if people want to buy your book, I’m assuming it’s available. pretty much everywhere. From what I can see Amazon. Yeah, I

Natalie 52:06
think so. Yeah. Amazon and local. Some local booksellers have it? I think Barnes and Noble used to have it and they probably still carry

Guy 52:14
it. Incredible. I’ll make sure I have links in the show notes. Do you have any online presence role? Or do you keep yourself away from all of that kind of thing.

Natalie 52:22
I have a Facebook author page. So that’s just under my name, Natalie Sudman. And I do have a blog that I really don’t blog on anymore. But I do post interviews like this links to interviews. And there’s all the information about psychic readings. So that’s of elements calm.

Guy 52:45
Brilliant. I’ll make sure everyone listening to this. They can pause, scroll down, click the links, and be sure to keep up to date with you, Natalie, Natalie, just thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing so openly and beautifully. I was absolutely incredible. And I just want to acknowledge you and thank you because I feel privileged to have had this conversation with you today.

Natalie 53:08
Thank you very kind of you. Thank you guys. It was fun talking with you.

Guy 53:12
Thank you