Excerpt from "Becoming the Light: Realize Your True Enlightened Nature"

The twenty-first century dawned with a massive and collective paradigm shift in consciousness. Nathaniel and I loved to globe trot. In January 2000, as in many years before, we flew to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a dose of vitamin D.

On our last few days there, Nathaniel asked me, “Baby, how would you like to stay longer on the beach on our last day?”

“Yes! Absolutely!” I replied. “I want to see the sunset! Can we change our tickets to a later flight?”

Our original tickets were on Alaska Airlines flight #261. Only Alaska Airlines flights #261 and #258 were scheduled to return to San Francisco that day, so Nathaniel switched our tickets to flight #258, which was scheduled to leave one and a half hours later.

That evening, as we rode in the taxi on the way to the airport, I began to feel an intense, unpleasant sensation in my solar plexus, as if something catastrophic was going to happen. I wondered why. As we took off on flight #258, I sat in silence, haunted by an eerie feeling. Apprehension lingered in my heart. For the following hour, I lost myself in the vastness of the pink sky, gazing out through the tiny window, falling deeper into a meditative state. I envisioned a blue light circling around our plane and invoked the Divine for protection.Was our plane about to fall into the Pacific Ocean? I knew something tragic was happening or about to happen, but I did not know what.

When we reached the San Francisco airport, our plane circled for over forty-five minutes before landing. I could not wait to touch the ground, kiss the earth. I held Nathaniel’s hand tightly. He appeared unaware of the strange energy in the air. As we landed, I was still wrapped in a contemplative silence.

“Passenger alert,” the captain announced somberly. “Dozens of journalists andTV reporters are waiting outside the gates.We lost flight #261.” Before deplaning, I walked into the cockpit and asked, “What do you mean the plane is lost, Captain?”

He looked at me with a sorrowful expression and repeated,“The plane

is lost.” He kept saying it, like a broken record. I thought perhaps he meant the plane was lost somewhere in the sky.

We walked to the customs area to pick up our bags.The entire room was silent. While we waited, a woman who had been whispering on a phone hung up and exclaimed loudly,“Everyone died! All eighty-eight of them.The plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean. It’s all over the news. My mother just told me.”

Her words penetrated every cell of my being. In that instant, I realized it was the victims’ energy, their cries, that I’d felt during our flight. My hands trembled, and my heart felt crushed.

One of the agents pointed to an exit door,“There is a private gateway if you wish to escape the crowd and the reporters.”

Nathaniel turned and whispered,“Hey baby, do you feel good enough to go through the regular gate?” I nodded my head yes, although I was shaking inside.

We passed through the gate. As soon as we emerged, some of our dear friends came running toward us and hugged us.They had heard about the tragedy and were not sure if we were still alive. Moments later a flock of microphones,TV cameras, and tape recorders swirled around us. One journalist asked me, “How does it feel to be alive, miss?”

“I feel so incredibly grateful and blessed,” I choked out. We were sup- posed to be on the flight that crashed. How did we escape death?

I felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience. In this altered state of consciousness, everything I saw, felt, touched, and heard was intensified. My usual way of perceiving the world had shattered, leaving my being in a lighter, expanded state. Something mystical had occurred. I didn’t fully understand. It was beyond logic.

I learned never to doubt my sixth sense.There is a huge, though subtle, difference between fear and intuition.That day, I learned to make the distinction. Intuition comes suddenly as an inner knowing and bypasses our five senses. Often fears are what keep the mind chattering.

When we arrived home, Nathaniel insisted on opening a special bottle of French champagne to celebrate our survival. He wanted to watch the news. We sat, like kids, on our bedroom floor, leaning against our bed.

“Here’s a toast to celebrate life, baby!” Nathaniel said.We clicked glasses.

“To all the people who perished and to their families,” I added, feeling overwhelmed with gratitude.“May they always be in peace.”

The next morning, we soaked in our outdoor hot tub and reflected. I felt frozen in an eternal moment: the trees were greener, the sky bluer, the air purer—even the birds sang sweeter. My sensations were still intensified and acute. Nathaniel did not seem affected. I couldn’t understand how he was seemingly so fine with how narrowly we’d escaped a plane crash. I didn’t judge Nathaniel for this; maybe he was touched in a subtle way. Everyone grows and evolves at different rhythms for reasons that may remain unknown.

Later that day I read the headlines. Alaska Airlines flight #261 was

considered a major aviation tragedy. The plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean about 2.7 miles north of Anacapa Island, California. Most of the passengers on board were Alaska Airlines’ employees and their family members who had been vacationing in PuertoVallarta.

How could I explain the mystery of tuning in to their energies in transit? Every day, I spent time on my knees in the tiny sanctum I had created in our living room. I could not understand how I could be grieving over this for so long, while at the same time I felt serene, grateful, and blessed to be alive. I uncontrollably vacillated from bliss to mourning. The experience had put me in a state of spiritual urgency, perhaps even emergency. Even though Nathaniel and I were not part of the tragedy, it had opened up a part of my being, creating an intense spiritual crisis.

This life-transforming experience became, in some ways, a spiritual process that propelled my being forward. Everything I did thereafter was in pursuit of truth, in a search for self-realization.

That year I started to realize, feel, and experience an expansion of consciousness that I call “the light of Oneness.” It taught me how we, all living beings, are interdependent, interrelated, and interconnected by the same thread of Divine love, intelligence, and truth. We come from and return to the same Source—something I already knew on an intellectual level but had never truly experienced before I connected with the energies of those lost at sea.

Most of us live in a protective bubble wrapped in the limited perceptions of our five senses and governed by the limitations we have set for our- selves. This apparent physical reality is often mistaken for reality. Too many of us are still enslaved by our fabricated belief systems, our limited minds and perceptions, and ignorance of our true, ultimate nature.....

All worldwide copyrights reserved by Vivianne Nantel, 2018 (“Devi”)

Vivianne Nantel (Devi) is a modern-day mystic and the author of Becoming the Light: Realize Your True Enlightened Nature (Greenleaf, 2018). A devotee or discipline under such renowned masters as the Dalai Lama, Sadhguru, H. H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and Thich Naht Hanh, she has overcome grave life trials — an abusive childhood, major depression, advanced breast cancer, and several near-death experiences — and, today, has gone on to be a celebrated yogini, spiritual guide, visionary and inspirational speaker. Learn more at viviannenantel.com.