Between Worlds: Insights from a Death Doula with Helen Gretchen Jones

In this episode of Closer to Venus, host Johnny Burke interviews Helen Gretchen Jones, a death doula, intuitive channeler, and author. Helen discusses her work involving reiki, hypnosis, past life regression, and delivering messages from spirit. The conversation explores bedside visions of dying patients, shared death experiences, and Helen's own spiritual journey that started in her childhood. The episode takes a deep dive into transformative experiences with spirit, Helen's interactions with her spirit team, and notable experiences during her hospice work, including experiencing multiple dimensions simultaneously. Helen also shares insights on the non-linear nature of time and how she was guided to write her book, Healing Whispers From Spirit Guides.

00:00 Introduction to Helen Gretchen Jones

00:31 Understanding Bedside Visions and Shared Death Experiences

02:31 Childhood Spiritual Experiences

07:27 Seeing Light Beings and Spirit Guides

12:50 Messages from the Deceased

17:49 Writing a Book Guided by Spirit

20:38 Past Life Regression and Life Between Lives

24:31 The Concept of Timelines and Reincarnation

27:29 Understanding Time and the Council

29:10 Meeting Paul Dirac: A Nobel Laureate in the Closet

30:59 The Science Club: Messages from Deceased Scientists

32:52 Hospice Experiences: Near-Death and In-Between Worlds

34:08 The In-Between World: A Journey with Mr. Virgil

45:40 The Final Transition: Comfort in the Afterlife

46:48 Conclusion and Contact Information

https://www.helengretchenjones.com/

@helengretchenjones

Transcript

Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I'm Johnny Burke, and today's guest is Helen Gretchen Jones. She is a death doula, intuitive channeler, and author of Healing Whispers From Spirit Guides. Her work involves reiki, hypnosis, past life regression, and delivering messages from spirit. In this episode, we will discuss bedside visions of dying patients, and shared death experiences. Gretchen, welcome to the show.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Hi. I am glad to be here. Thank you.

Johnny Burke: So, bedside visions of dying patients and shared death experiences. So they're not the same thing, are they?

Helen Gretchen Jones: They are not, no. So bedside visions are the visions that patients have, before they die, usually within the week before they transition. And those visions include angels, beings of light, loved ones that have already passed before them and shared death experiences are the experiences that I have, or anyone can have with their loved one when you walk or experience the afterlife with them for a short time. So you go with them as they transition, so you're experiencing what their immediate experiences are as they're transitioning alongside them. You don't get to go all the way. It's not like a near death experience where you actually die, but you do get to experience some very similar aspects to a near death experience.

Johnny Burke: I was going to say, it actually sounds like it's maybe an adjacent to a near death experience. So what you're talking about is when you see and they see their relatives who have passed on, those relatives and friends are like a welcoming committee, right?

Helen Gretchen Jones: They are absolutely, and everyone always has a welcoming committee of sorts. And some people ask me, well, what if I don't like any of my family or my friends? Or, who am I going to see? I actually get that question. 

Johnny Burke: I bet you do. 

Helen Gretchen Jones: I do. But you know, you're met with other beings of light, guides, angels, people that you knew from  other experiences. And so you're never alone and you're always met by loved ones.

Johnny Burke: . All right. So let’s rewind just a bit now. In your childhood, you did have experience with Spirit. how did those experience influence the spiritual journey you're on now and your work is a death doula?

Helen Gretchen Jones: So I have always had experiences with Spirit. I just didn't know when I was really young that this was something that was not normal. I don't know. I feel like it still is normal for everyone, but I feel like in our society it's so easily dismissed. I would retreat to a bathtub, an empty bathtub, and I would be four or five years old, and I would sit in an empty bathtub where I could just focus on the silence if life got a little overwhelming for me, and oftentimes in those moments of silence, that's where I would have a spiritual experience.

And when I would talk to my family or friends about- mostly family when you're four or five about these experiences they would say, I believe you believe that's what you saw.  So it was sort of, it was dismissed and these experiences were so transformative that it didn't make me question my experience. It did make me, however, question the wisdom of my parents. So moving forward, I always moved with a little bit of when they would say something I would inside question it a little bit because if they couldn't understand or know or believe these really amazing, beautiful experiences, then how could I trust all of what they were saying moving forward? So that's how it shaped me in my childhood.

Johnny Burke: I'm kind of surprised that type of response doesn't come up more because you had a knowing, very early on. What were some of those transformative experiences when you were little four or five years old?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Sure. So at the time in my childhood, my mom was, still finding herself. She would get married and divorced, many times, or we would move a lot. And oftentimes we were living with my grandmother, me and my sister. So about half our life we were with our grandparents, and so it wasn't necessarily a very, very stable childhood, but she was doing the best she could. But during those moments, I think that I was the oldest child and I'm sure a psychiatrist would have something to say about that, but I did feel the need to have some kind of control. I wanted my room to be a certain way, or I felt the need to take care of my little sister in many ways. So I was looking for control. 

So when things were a little chaotic, I really needed to find peace. And so when I needed that moment of peace, I was so grateful that a being of light would come and when they would show up, they would always make me feel like everything was going to be okay, always. And I would have this knowing that no matter what I could control or what I couldn't control, no matter how much I wanted it, it was all going to be okay. I also had this, sort of, if my parents were saying something or someone was telling me something, I would hear a voice say, well, it's not quite like that. so would be looking at, 

Johnny Burke: In those words, or in the meaning?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah, not quite like that. So when someone was trying to explain, and I was a child, so of course they're trying to protect me, and not make things complicated. But then my voice or my team in spirit would come in and say, well, it's not quite like that. And try to give me a greater understanding of what was really happening. And so that was really valuable. And one more thing that still happens to this day is when someone is talking with their hands and they're using their hands in front of their chest area, if they're saying something that is really exciting and from the heart and they're really really honest and, and genuine about what they're talking about. I'll see like these little shimmers of light, I'll see like some light come from the palms of their hands, but only if it comes across their chest area, their heart chakra area. And if they're not being fully honest, it would be like a little shadow.

So even as a little kid, when people were talking with their hands to me, I would have an idea of how honest they were being based on  what was coming out of their hands if it went in front of their chest.

Johnny Burke: Oh, that's so cool. And I can't help but think of a certain political candidate who does talk a lot with his hands, which we're not going to go into now. But once the tape stops. we're going to go through that 'cause I'm just dying to know. Okay. So you had some experiences with Spirit, right? You mentioned light beings and then a spirit team. Let's talk about the light beings first. What are they like and how are they different from your spirit team? Or are they part of your spirit team?

Helen Gretchen Jones: So the light beings that I would see, I believe are part of my spirit team. My Spirit team is a collective, and I think that personalities show up in the collective based on what I need and where I am with the challenges that I'm experiencing in life. One might show itself or show themselves and I may never see them again. Or I have some that are reoccurring all the time. So I like to call them a collective that come and go as I need them and as they need me. So it really is a  team in that way. I would say all of them, actually, I was about to say almost all of them, but all of them so far present as beings of light. They're always light and sometimes they're like orbs of light or balls of light. And then if I really focus on them, a being, an image will appear. So I think it depends on what I'm needing in order to connect more strongly to them from my human perspective. Um, we're all light. You're light too.

Yeah.

Johnny Burke: Yeah, I hope so, because right now I can't speak for everyone, but I would think, I'm pretty dense, like in every aspect of the word. I don't think I am anything like a light being, but we do hear the expression light beings quite a bit. So the visuals, if you concentrate, give you a visual. Do they look human or what do they look like?

Helen Gretchen Jones: So a lot of them look human, some of them do not. And that is something that is relatively new to me. I will be honest, I never had an interest in aliens, ever. Because it never mattered to me. 'cause to me, I'm like, well, we're also aliens. Like, what's the big deal? it just depends on who you're asking. 

Johnny Burke: it definitely does because if you talk to intuitives like yourselves, they'll usually say that while you're talking about star beings or aliens, I think they prefer to be called, Star beings or star people; ' And I got this from a medium, , they don't like the word alien because alien means apart and they don't feel apart from us, which, supports what you just said. And we've been told, I don't know how many times that we came from the star nations or the star beings. So we’re all kind of like that anyway Right?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Right. Yeah. And so it never like resonated really strongly with me, but fairly recently, in the last couple of years, some of my guides have presented, in alienesque bodies or in light being form, different color skin, different shaped head, different shaped eyes, you know, something different than being human. And at first it was distracting to me, and they would say, stop looking at what we look like and focus on the message that we are trying to, you know, but it was.

Johnny Burke: Sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but I can definitely imagine someone listening to this imagining an alien looking, being saying,” stop focusing on what we look like.” Do they have a sense of humor?

Helen Gretchen Jones: They do. My team does. They're really, really funny. They never say anything hurtful or harmful or judgmental, and they never, not that I need it, but they never praise me for things that I'm doing if I take their advice on something or their suggestion. It isn't about that it, for them. It really is about, meeting me where I'm at and helping me to serve in the way that my soul wants to serve at this time. So they're guiding me through that process. 

 For example, one of my newer, I call her newer because I hadn't seen her before, but she's been around the last, couple of years now. She comes in, she's blue, like her skin is blue and she is, I think she's beautiful.  She's got really big dark eyes though. She has like, I don't know what they are, colored lights or colored jewels, or maybe it's a combination of both that kind of run down the front of her body, and I can't tell if she's wearing a dress that looks like skin or if these are just on her skin somehow, or if it's some kind of ornament that she's wearing, but that is a part of her and it's very distracting when she shows up. But she told me that she's here to guide me through the process of connection and communication. So we'll see how that unfolds. That hasn't really unveiled itself quite yet. but I feel her presence on a regular basis.

Johnny Burke: I'm sure you're on that path, whatever that is, because there's already lots of things that you've seen beyond the veil, as it were. So speaking of communication, messages from the deceased, did that start early on when you were a kid?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes, yes it did. I stopped telling people when those messages would come through. Specifically, my grandmother. My grandmother was a non-practicing Seventh Day Adventist. But she had the fear in her, you know that religious fear. So when she felt it was maybe like evil or the devil's work. She knew that I wasn't, but maybe I was being tricked in some way, or even if the messages were beautiful, it was just such a, a hard hurdle for her to overcome. And so I knew early on to not share messages from spirit, to my loved ones, which is exactly who those people in spirit wanted me to connect to.

So it was sort of like shutting it out because it made her so uncomfortable. She didn't know what to do with it. And I recognized in that moment that it gave her more stress than joy. At the time at least, she had more fear around it than the need to hear a loving message. So that was just one example.

Johnny Burke: And it's a good one. I can imagine as a child, you getting these messages that had to be scary.

Helen Gretchen Jones: It wasn't scary. 

Johnny Burke: It wasn't? 

Helen Gretchen Jones: It wasn't scary. The information would just kind of like, woo drop in and I would just, if we're, like with my grandmother, we'd be making biscuits or something and you know, she's helped letting us put our hands in the dough. I would just repeat what I heard, and it would be, something, to me it wasn't like, poof! They're showing up in front of your face and it's a really startling event that would be probably startling and I wouldn't like that. But it was just the information coming through and it came through so matter of fact and easy and loving, and it seemed harmless actually, but her response to it was not as welcomed as one would like.

Johnny Burke: Okay, so when you get these messages, I imagine, they still come to you from time to time?

Helen Gretchen Jones: They do. They don't do just drop-ins very often. Like some people ask me, can you be in the grocery store and suddenly you're getting all this information? No, that's not how it works for me. And here's how it works for me, and here's why I think it works this way: I am putting off a certain frequency all the time. And my thoughts, 'cause I'm human, are, did I unload the dishwasher? Oh, , that's a really short skirt. Oh, that was really nice. That person just gave a flower. 

So I'm running, I'm, I'm running the gamut on what level of frequency I'm putting out there. My thoughts could be a short skirt, which would be really judgmental, which I would never repeat out loud, like to a person. But I thought it in my head. Or I'd say, oh look, the little boy's giving her a flower. And that would be a higher vibration. So, my thoughts are always fluctuating 'cause I'm human. whatever it is I need to do, but throughout the day, 

Johnny Burke: They're kind of doing this type of thing. They're like jumping up and down.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. So how can they tune into me if they don't know what dial to, to, to tune into? So when I sit quietly, yeah. What station? I'm all over the map. 

Johnny Burke: Where's the Gretchen station? Well, it's kind of coming in and out, so we'll wait until the signal's a little better. 

Helen Gretchen Jones: Sitting quietly helps me to\ connect. 

Johnny Burke: Frequency, wavelength. Vibration the word has kind of like a negative connotation because it sounds new age-y.

Helen Gretchen Jones: I know. 

Johnny Burke: Right, but frequency sounds a little bit more exact because you have to be at a certain frequency and when we talk about cats and dogs can see and hear things that we can't. Because of the frequency spectrum, theirs is bigger, is wider. Right? And a lot of the things that we talk about on the podcast are in that hidden bandwidth. The kind of things that you experience, not everybody gets to experience that even though almost every single intuitive I talk to says, anybody can do this, but you have to work at it.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Correct. It's practice, like playing an instrument. 

Johnny Burke: So you still get those messages now, and the voice that you mentioned before, apparently at one point this voice told you to write a book.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Three years ago in June, the voice told me to write a book. Didn't actually tell me to write a book. And, and that's one thing I'd like to say. My team in spirit has never told me I can or can't do anything. They make suggestions and that's very clear with their language, but this time it was a little bit different.

 I usually hear their words in my head. This time it felt like one of my guides, a male guide, was right in front of my face. So it came from outside my head, which was different than what I normally experience. And he just said, you're going to write a book. And I'm like, write a book? Yes, you're going to write a book and it's going to cover a lot of information and it will take you just two years to complete.

It actually took me two and a half years, so they do do ballparks for me. So it was close enough I was just like, what would I even write about? ' I'm not an expert in anything. and also I'm a mom , a stay at home mom for a long time and I dabble in a little bit of this and a little bit of that, like, what do I really have to share is kind of how I felt about it.

And they just said, write what you know. And I had already had all of these journals 'cause I was working as a death doula and volunteering also in the community with the dying community. And so I had all these amazing stories that I had just journaled for myself, just trying to find answers, trying to understand what's happening at time of death. So it was all my own little stuff. And so it was kind of already written for me. I just had to kind of pick my favorite stories and the lessons I've learned from working with as an intuitive and working, with the dying community and kind of compile it all into this one big sort of book. So that's how it came about.

Johnny Burke: So was the book channeled or not necessarily?

Helen Gretchen Jones: So parts of it are, so I took patient stories that I'd already written about on my journal, but I end every single chapter with a channeled message from my team in spirit. It has channelings, it has, exercises in which, you know, you can practice trying to get in touch with your team in spirit. It has all these amazing lessons and how to ask for signs and different things in the book.

It's a lot of beautiful messages. I have a whole section in the back about common questions and the answers that my team suggest and how I answer them. and it has patient stories. It's got a lot going on.

Johnny Burke: And we're definitely going to get to the patient stories 'cause I think that's one of the more, really interesting parts of your work. I wanted to talk about your past life regression, a session that I think you had one yourself and now you do them for your clients and on one occasion. I think you did experience life between lives, 

Helen Gretchen Jones: On many occasions. Yes. 

Johnny Burke: Many occasions. What was that like?

Helen Gretchen Jones: I would like to clarify just a couple of things before I go into that, if you don't mind. Whenever I decided to get my certification in hypnosis and past life regressions, I was going through a teacher, he was great, but you know, you, to get a certification, you have to hit all of their milestones. So it was just like, okay, let me get through this to get the certification, because some things weren't ringing true for me anyway, it didn't resonate fully with me. So at the end of each day that we had a class, I would sit with my team in spirit and they would correct my understanding of what the teacher was teaching.

An example would be, I would say, oh, okay, we have all these past lives and now we're going to regress and go and re-experience these past lives. And my team in spirit would say, no, you are one life having many experiences because your past and your future is absolutely fluid to your experiences in the present moment.

So it isn't like we're going back to a past life when we are regressing through- at least this is my understanding with, from my team and spirit, the interpretation, that I understood. When we are having a past life experience, we are tuning into or tapping into that part of ourselves that is currently happening on the timeline that resonates with our present moment.

Johnny Burke: Okay and I've heard this definitely more than once, and I did ask this question very recently where I said, okay, great. So if you go back to 1812 and you see yourself as whatever character you were, it's like being a character in a play almost. Is your experience that particular moment, that day in let's say 1812, that's actually happening right now? It's not gone in the past. It actually does exist?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Correct. And if you, on a higher soul level, a higher self or higher soul level, like let's say, Johnny, that you die tomorrow. Okay, and you're not done having experiences. You're bored. You're bored on the other side because everything is so fantastic, and you want to have more experiences. You can choose to experience life in 1812, even if you die tomorrow.

Johnny Burke: Oh really?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes, you can choose a moment in time and space in which to experience.

Johnny Burke: and you were told this by your spirit team?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Correct. But they were correcting the class as we went along because this was all news to me too. I had no idea.

Johnny Burke: That's amazing. I've heard this once before. I interviewed a hypnotherapist, Dr. Bruce Kaloski, in Newport, Beach, California. Very cool guy. We talked about the possibility of being reincarnated into the past, and you're saying that's possible?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes, because you get to choose the time and space that's best going to give you 'cause you know, time's linear for us here, but it's not linear. It’s not linear at all. But it's not also a complete illusion. We use it as a tool. I mean, how awesome is time? Because otherwise, you know, we want a beginning and an end to our experience in these bodies, you know, thank goodness we have time. So, it's a fantastic tool. So, we want to experience life in 1812. Well, there is a timeline in which 1812. Earth, there are several timelines for 1812 Earth and which ones are going to provide you with the greatest experience. So let's say that you're born to someone named Kathy in 1812. Well, Kathy could be Kathy, or Kathy could also be someone who's coming back to experience life as, who would've been Kathy. They're just vehicles. Bodies are just vehicles that souls can pop into and utilize for certain experiences.

Johnny Burke: That's what John Lennon said. He said, I don't believe in death. It's really just like getting out of one car and getting into another. So if I go back to a certain time in the past and I change something, isn't that going to affect where we live now? Or is that a separate universe or just an offshoot or how does that work? 

Helen Gretchen Jones: I don't know, physics. yeah, so I don't even know that if someone were to explain it to me, that I think it would go right over my head. From my understanding is based on our thoughts and our ideas and how we feel about where we are in our  present moment all the time. We are always choosing new timelines. I don't know how many timelines there are. And some may not be as relevant, you know, like if the entire collective completely forgets about a specific timeline or no longer resonates with it, then it's probably an irrelevant timeline. And really you are where you focus.

So, you know. I wonder, I'm just thinking about it right now. You know how sometimes a particle could be a particle or a light wave, but it goes through a slit, double slit experiment. What if everything is always that? You know what, if nothing is static, So if you want to change your timeline, or we as a human collective want to move into a different direction with Earth, and maybe those other ones are just sort of molecules, just kind of particles over here that haven't chosen to become, matter or light or whatever that is on the physics level.

Johnny Burke: As humans, I think if we really knew how it worked, it would probably make our minds explode. It probably makes more sense when you're in a different space, beyond the veil as it were. Speaking of the book, you mentioned something about the science club. How does that relate to the afterlife and spirituality in general?

Helen Gretchen Jones: This is actually a good time to bring them up because I had done a past life regression, and my team was teaching me about time not being linear. And I'll go back to your question with the in between lives. So I went into a world of an in-between area, which is where I met with a group of people who were called the council. But I had a feeling that there were many councils in spirit, like a lot of them and this is just one. And I asked the question. Tell me about time. Help me understand time, and this council made me feel like, I mean, it was, it was humorous, but they made me feel like I had gathered the top minds the top brilliant, most amazing people. And then I asked them, how does Santa Claus deliver all the presents in one night? 

Johnny Burke: That's what it felt like ?

Helen Gretchen Jones: They made me feel like so I had my opportunity to ask one question and I asked them a really valid question if time were real. So it's like asking about Santa, yeah. How does he deliver presents all in one night if he were real. So it was like I completely missed the mark, but what they said was essentially that time was not linear. And that's when I started really pondering all of this. After my team then I got to meet the council in a past life, regression and that, which was really an in-between lives. And then, that's when I went in. I was like, all right, I'm going to get the answers from a team. That's who my team in spirit.

And all of a sudden, a man appears in my closet. I'm doing these meditations in my closet because it's the quietest place in the house. Sound is completely deadened by all the clothes, you know. So I'm in my closet and a man appears in my closet. He's in black and white. When I see a spirit in black and white that typically is someone who lives between the 1920s and 1970s, I think that's black and white photography in my mind. So I think that's why he came across in black and white. He was very slender. He had a mustache. He came across kind of weak, like a weakling. He had a British accent. So I knew all these things about him. He gave me some information about himself, but I couldn't ever get his name. And I decided, well, I'm just going to go look for his image.

 So I typed in British physicist and I typed in that year, and there he was. He came right up I couldn't believe it. His name was Paul Dirak and I had never heard of him, and my husband had never heard of him, and he's much, you know, smarter into physics and science than I am. But turns out he's kind of a big deal. He'd like won a Nobel. Prize in physics. And he came up with all these theories. He was a colleague of Einstein. He was a big deal. And so that's who appeared in my closet. He showed -

Johnny Burke: up in your closet. Okay, well that's pretty, outstanding, 

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. And he won a dual Nobel Prize with Schrodinger. In the 1920s we made such huge advancements in our ability to understand science and physics. And so that was a really big deal. I. And he was definitely a big contributor.

Since then a collective of deceased scientists and Einstein has come through twice, but not directly to speak to me, just as part of the collective, with Dirac and several other deceased physicists and one biologist, Kurt Hofer, who I found recently, just transitioned like in the last five years or so. And he was a guy in Florida, so I mean, I mean, I have no idea who he was. But anyway, they're coming in, and I just group them all together and call them the science club, but they're giving me information that they want me to look up and research like waves, understanding waves and things like that.

 They give me some stuff that hasn't quite happened yet. Like, they talked about, you know how there's like platonic solids? I think that they were saying platonic waves, and I looked everywhere for that, and it doesn't exist. If I remember, that's what I have in my book. So it's platonic waves. They're not real. They don't exist. It's not a thing. But I did include it in the book just because I wanted to keep everything as authentic and genuine as it came through. I don't want to leave anything out just 'cause it doesn't exist. So maybe one day something. 

Johnny Burke: Maybe they don't exist yet.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Right. they're in there. I don't know. So they give me information to consider.

Johnny Burke: That's very cool. And I had a recent interview with a woman who apparently channeled Einstein and there's other, luminaries that were part of a club. I can't remember what they were called, so I thought, okay, this has probably happened more than a couple times. So, not completely out of the realm of possibility. 

. So now what we've been waiting for, tell us about some of the experiences in hospice with the patients where you didn't get all the way to beyond the veil, but you got pretty close in some cases.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes. So someone once, hearing my stories told me that they believe I was in a place called Summerland or something like that. And I keep meaning to look it up and I haven't yet, but apparently, it's like a place between the worlds. 

Johnny Burke: Right below Santa Barbara. I was in Carpinteria, for a wedding, a few weeks ago. And Summerland, I believe is right after Carpentaria and then you get into Montecito and Santa Barbara. So that's the only Summerland I know of.

Helen Gretchen Jones: Well, I think that this Summerland is, I guess a place in between worlds, in between experiences. So I don't know. I haven't looked it up yet. 

Johnny Burke: That sounds great. What is the in-between world, the in-between space? 'cause I know it's been called a lot of different things. What really stood out about that for you?

Helen Gretchen Jones: I can start with, an experience I had with one of my patients and where I kind of go to this in-between space of, if you wouldn't mind, I can share the story and it will incorporate, what it was like. 

Johnny Burke: Perfect. 

Helen Gretchen Jones: Wonderful. So, I volunteer with an organization, it's called NODa, which stands for No One Dies Alone. It's a hospital-based program throughout our country. , What they do is they'll send out an email blast to all of their volunteers and have them sign up for three hour shifts. One day I saw that there was an activation for a NODA patient, and I was after midnight, which by the way is long past my bedtime, so, it was already late for me, and I'm just like, ugh. I'm so tired, but if the person makes it through the night and just knew I had to be there, but I'm like, I'm not setting an alarm. I looked at when all the available time slots were, and all the good ones were taken. Nobody wants the midnight to 3:00 AM shift, but there was a 6:00 AM shift and I just told my team in spirit, if I'm really supposed to be there, you guys are going to have to wake me up and wake me up before 4:30 so I can get down there in time.

4 :28, I wake up. And I had the song Colors by the Black Pumas playing in my head, and I knew that that would be significant in some way. So I get dressed, I hop in the car, I turn on the radio as I'm driving to the hospital and Colors by the Black Pumas is on the radio. And in that moment, I'm given a download of information. I knew that my patient would be male, he would be black, and he would have anxiety and panic issues. And the reason that was relevant is 'cause at the time I was having panic issues, which came out of nowhere for me. And so I was struggling even watching someone go through one. I, was fearful it could trigger one in me.

 So here I was now being called to go sit with someone who was struggling with that. So that was important. So I knew when I turned on the song that, the song that, that I heard that song, it was gone be relevant. So I'm going to the hospital, I walk in and sure enough, male black man, having severe panic attacks every 90 seconds.

With NODA they're usually in their last 72 hours of life, so they're already in an unconscious phase. They were giving him anti-anxiety meds, but they weren't helping. So I put my hands on him trying to bring him peace, some connection of some sort, and when it wasn't working, I decided I would go ahead and try to connect on a soul level with him.

As I did the entire hospital room that we were in transformed into this gorgeous meadow, like blue skies. There were bright yellow flowers there was a forest straight ahead and off to the right a little bit. And this is the in-between world. This is an in-between space and when you're there. I can tell you how it is when I'm there. When I'm there, I feel expansive. I feel huge, bigger than my body. I am free. I feel like I can do anything. I feel love. I feel true unconditional love. 

I say that because I have children and I love my children, and I love them more than anything that my human self can ever love them, but I still put conditions on them. I want you to eat your broccoli. I want you to sit up straight. I want you to go to college. I want you to be happy. All of these things I want, and I have expectations for them. So there are conditions. I'm always telling them; this is what I want you to do. But when I'm there, there are no conditions. I just love with all that I am

 So here I am standing in this field, and next to me is Mr. Virgil my patient. I am now in two worlds at once. I am aware of my physical self sitting in the hospital room holding Mr. Virgil's hand. I'm also aware of my soul self with Mr. Virgil, soul self-standing in this field of flowers about to approach this forest, every blade of grass is emanating light. Every leaf, every single thing is emanating light from the inside out. It's like there was a source of lighting, but it wasn't like the sun, how it shines on us here. It's like everything was light and everything made a sound, a tone, or a humming sound that was really beautiful and melodic and soft. It didn't have a beat. There weren't like drums, but everything had a musical note or quality to it somehow, and yet it all just kind of made sense and flowed somehow. Even with the light, it was just. Beautiful. I knew his time was close when I could hear his welcome party. All of my patients have a welcome home party waiting for them, and they can vary from big, extravagant, to-dos all the way down to small family reunion picnic style stuff.

Johnny Burke: Really, So they have picnics?

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Like out in the grass people are out on blankets. I don't know if I've ever seen food actually, now that you say that, but it's like picnic style. People are sitting out on blankets in the grass. It's very, very casual. There's always music. Then there's also these big gatherings that could be in a ballroom. I think it depends on the person and what they would like, 'cause they're always the life of the party, the guest of honor. 

So I knew that on the other side of this forest was Mr. Virgil's welcome party. And I could also see his mother, and I could see she was holding a red balloon and some flowers. I could see that she was ready to greet him. As we started to approach the forest, he panicked again. He got scared and this being of light comes out of the forest and she's big and she's blue. And she's glowing this bright blue and white light and she is so beautiful, and I loved her right away. But the really crazy thing I know is that she was me.

I am now in three places at once. I have never experienced this before. I am looking and talking to my team all the time to have this multidimensional experience again. So I have a perspective of being in the hospital room, physically human, Gretchen, sitting over there with Mr. Virgil. This other point of view where I'm in this field of flowers, approaching the forest and then coming out of the forest is me again, and I can see all perspectives at once and it was not confusing. It all made sense. I don't know how.

Johnny Burke: When you started talking about the sensations and the humming and everything is musical, and light is emanating from even the blades of grass. Sounds a lot like a near death experience. So is there possibly an overlap or do the near death experiencers actually get a chance to go into that space, albeit temporarily?

Helen Gretchen Jones: I think they go beyond that, because, if they're experiencing that, I think they usually talk to God or they talk to, , their loved ones and their loved ones tell them, you have to go back. I don't ever talk to anybody outside of my patients,

Johnny Burke: But you saw them, 

Helen Gretchen Jones: I see them. Yes, 

Johnny Burke: So you stopped short of that. That's incredible. . 

Helen Gretchen Jones: All right. Well, so I'm in three places at once now, and I pull out this present for Mr. Virgil and it's a small golden box with a purple ribbon- the me of light does. I tell him that this is his life as Mr. Virgil, this gift of life, and it's right here in this box. And anytime he wants, he can open it and relive anything he wants from his life as Mr. Virgil and how beautiful it was and what a gift it was, not just to him, but to all of us. And as I am handing him the gift, he was kind of worried because he'd been sinful, and he was talking about his sins and everything. And in that moment, the me of light, it didn't matter what he did or what he didn't do, or how heinous his acts could have been. It didn't matter. It mattered 0%. I loved him with every fiber of my being. I loved him more than anything, and it didn’t matter any of his actions ever. I just loved him so much and I, just tried the best I could as this being of light to send him all this love and to show him how much he was cared for and that he was perfect, just the way he is. Absolutely perfect. 

And he did feel safe enough to continue into the woods with me for a little while. And then he had another panic attack. And when that happened, he got really scared and the forest fell away, and it was replaced with a backdrop of stars and I got even bigger than I was. This me of light. I picked him up like he was a child, and I rocked him and I held him and I kissed the top of his head. And I knew in that moment that my only reason for being there was to make him feel safe and loved. And eventually he calmed down. He did feel safe and loved, and he wanted to continue on his journey. As we got to the edge of the forest, he could hear the welcome home party, coming up closer. And he turned and he asked me, what about my uncle and my nephew and are they going to be okay? And I showed him the me of light, showed him a projection of potential possibilities for each one of them. 

And when that happened, I lost perspective of the me of light and it shot back to the only two perspectives, the one in the field and the one in the hospital room. It was like I was not allowed to know the potential outcomes of these two people who were still alive. So the me of light temporarily, lost connection to the me of light and was not allowed to see that. And then as soon as that was over and he felt that they were going to be okay, my awareness of the being of light came back into, where I was in the body of the me of light again while in the body of the other two. When that happened, I was observing the me of light. I wasn't actually in her body. So, he did eventually go into the welcome home party, but being in three different worlds at once, that's really what it felt like. Three perspectives at once in three different forms at the same time and having it all make sense. And in this world where everything was so beautiful and welcoming and perfect and warm. That's what the in between world is like. So that's my story about Mr. Virgil.

Johnny Burke: That's pretty extraordinary to say the very least. And I'm sure you've got more stories like that as well.

Helen Gretchen Jones: That's the only one where I'm in three places at once, but I am very often in two, two places at once is very common. 

Johnny Burke: Well, I think it gives a lot of us comfort that there is a welcoming committee for everyone, which means, again, life goes on, it just doesn't end there. in a hospital bed, right?

Helen Gretchen Jones: That's right. And in fact, most patients are outside of their bodies before that final breath. And so for people who are fearful of that final breath, which is common in the weeks before, they actually transition in my experience, they step out. They step out, and they watch the body do its natural process of shutting down. They don't need to be present for it. And you know, that can be validated by an NDE when people say, they died, and people are giving them CPR and that's very traumatic. You can break ribs and it's, they're at the hospital ceiling ,observing. And so it's been my experience that oftentimes these patients are standing outside of their bodies observing.

Johnny Burke: Also good to know. So it's not as painful as they might think,

Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. The human body is shutting down, going through its natural processes, returning to the earth, but the soul doesn't belong with the earth. It just kind of hopped in and visited for a while.

Johnny Burke: Like John Lennon says, getting out of one car, getting into another. Awesome, awesome stuff. Gretchen, thanks for joining us tonight. amazing, amazing stories. In the meantime, how can our listeners find you online?

Helen Gretchen Jones: It's at helengretchenjones.com. And then I also have an Instagram and Facebook for helengretchenjones.com. My book is available on Amazon and barnes nobles.com, and it's available in paperback, Kindle, and in audible.

Johnny Burke: You've been listening to Closer to Venus. I'm Johnny Burke. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing. You can find more info on. Closertovenus.com as well as MINDBODYSpirit. fm. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.