What Happens When You Return? Integrating a Near-Death Experience - Jonah Van Valin

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A near-death experience can completely change your understanding of who you are, but then you have to return to ordinary life. For Jonah Van Valin, a powerful near-death experience at age 29 became a profound signpost on a much longer spiritual journey. During an intensely painful recovery from surgery, Jonah experienced his body beginning to shut down and his life force steadily leaving him. Yet something within him remained completely clear, aware, and untouched. That experience completely changed him.

In this episode of Soul Elevation, Jonah shares his near-death experience and spiritual awakening, along with the years-long process of integrating extraordinary states of consciousness into everyday human life.

We explore the difference between pain and suffering, the nature of consciousness beyond the physical body, an unexpected out-of-body experience, and a powerful message Jonah received during a silent meditation retreat relating to judgment.

A Near-Death Experience at 29

Jonah’s NDE happened following surgery to address severe sleep apnea. He had to have tissue removed from the back of his throat, which was followed by an extraordinarily painful recovery. Several days after leaving the hospital, Jonah experienced what he describes as an unmistakable inner “click.” He suddenly knew that his body was beginning to die.

But rather being afraid, Jonah became aware of something extraordinary: the part of him that recognized the body was dying was not itself dying.

His body and his awareness of his body were clearly not the same thing. For Jonah, this was not an intellectual realization or spiritual philosophy. It was a direct experience. And with it came an unexpected freedom.

Jonah had been experiencing almost unbearable physical pain following his surgery. Yet during his NDE, he realized that while the pain continued to exist within his body, he did not have to identify with it. The pain was there, but the suffering changed. He recognized that the awareness observing the body was not itself in pain. This opened him to a profound peace that existed beyond what was happening physically.

This distinction between pain and suffering would become an important theme throughout Jonah’s spiritual awakening. We often assume that pain and suffering are inseparable. Jonah’s direct experiences show us how untrue that really is.

If awareness is larger than the sensations, emotions, and experiences moving through us, what happens when we stop completely identifying with them? Hear more in the clip below:

Experiencing Oneness Beyond the Individual Self

As Jonah felt the life force leaving his body, he also experienced an increasing sense of merging into something infinitely larger. Words such as oneness, wholeness, and allness can point toward this experience, although Jonah says that language ultimately falls short.

Jonah emphasizes that this merging did not feel like loss at all. He explains that if individual identity is dissolving into something that contains everythin nothing is actually missing. This experience gave Jonah a dramatically different perspective on consciousness and the nature of the self. But having such an experience and knowing how to live with it are two very different things.

Because ultimately, of course, the extraordinary experience was eventually over, and he returned to life as normal. There were jobs, traffic, meals, responsibilities, and all the ordinary details of being human.

How do you reconcile those things with a direct experience that seemed to show you that you are not your body, and something much more extraordinary with life is happening than we are led to believe?

Jonah struggled with this question for years. He could talk about nearly dying, but he found it much more difficult to explain what the experience had revealed about identity, consciousness, and reality.

Something that can be overlooked when discussing mystical experiences and NDEs. Integration can become its own spiritual journey. Expanded consciousness may happen instantly and unexpectedly, but learning how to embody what it revealed can take years.

An Unexpected Out-of-Body Experience

Jonah later experienced another striking shift in consciousness, this time in a completely ordinary setting. He was at the gym during a lunch break, running on a treadmill while reading something spiritual.

Suddenly, his awareness seemed to move several feet above and behind his physical body. For a brief moment, he found himself looking down at the top of his own head as his body continued running on the treadmill. He could also see the other people around him.

His first thought was completely human: Could anyone else see him up there? The experience was surprising, but by then Jonah had already encountered enough unusual states of consciousness that it didn't completely shock him. It became another piece of a much larger exploration of awareness and identity.

As Jonah continued integrating his experiences, he felt naturally drawn toward stillness. He began sitting quietly without necessarily thinking of what he was doing as a formal meditation practice. He was not following a particular teacher, technique, or spiritual tradition. He simply felt called to sit and be.

Looking back, Jonah recognizes that this practice began teaching him something important about non-judgment. He was not trying to force his mind into silence or push thoughts away. Whatever arose could simply arise.

Eventually, he attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat involving around a dozen hours of seated meditation each day. The physical pain that emerged from sitting for such long periods was extreme.

At first, Jonah tried to endure it through sheer willpower. But after several days, something broke open. He experienced what he describes as a kind of life review, but rather than simply witnessing events from his past, he seemed to encounter the accumulated physical and emotional pain of his entire life at once.

Then the experience expanded even further. Jonah felt as though his individual consciousness merged into a collective consciousness, bringing him into contact with an almost incomprehensible experience of human suffering.

It was overwhelming. But the following day brought another revelation.

As physical pain arose again during meditation, Jonah returned to the recognition he had experienced during his NDE. His awareness was not confined to the body. The pain could exist without completely disturbing the deeper awareness observing it.

Then three words arose within his consciousness: “Give up judgment.”

Jonah would spend years contemplating what those words really meant. He came to understand judgment, particularly the constant division of experience into good and bad, right and wrong, as something that reinforces separation. If mystical experience reveals an underlying wholeness or oneness, judgment continually divides that wholeness into opposing parts.

This became intimately connected with understanding suffering. It wasn't to deny pain or pretend difficult human experiences don't matter. Rather, his experiences invited him to investigate how our interpretations, resistance, identification, and judgments interact with the pain we experience.

Is Consciousness Is Bigger Than We Think?

What are we beneath our thoughts, identities, bodies, histories, and judgments? Jonah's near-death experience showed him one answer experientially. His later spiritual experiences repeatedly brought him back to the same understanding. Over time, what had once appeared only in extraordinary glimpses began to become a more stable recognition.

Jonah describes reaching a point when his awareness of the individual self as something less solid than it appears finally settled into him. His life took a completely different direction, followed by another long period of learning how to live from that understanding. Today, he works with individuals and groups to help people reconnect with deeper awareness, release long-held patterns, and experience greater peace and authenticity.

The Spiritual Journey Is Also an Integration Journey

Extraordinary spiritual experiences can necessitate a long process of integration and deepening our understanding of what we've been through.

A near-death experience can happen in a moment. An out-of-body experience may last only seconds. A profound mystical state can suddenly reveal an entirely different understanding of reality.

But then we return to our bodies, relationships, work, responsibilities, and ordinary lives. The question becomes: How do we live what we have experienced? How is it relevant to the every day mundane life?

Perhaps awakening is not only about reaching extraordinary states of consciousness. Perhaps it is also about allowing what we glimpse in those moments to gradually transform the way we meet everyday life.

Jonah’s journey is a beautiful exploration of that process and an invitation to question where our deepest sense of identity truly resides.

Listen to the full Soul Elevation conversation with Jonah Van Valin to hear his remarkable near-death experience, his unexpected out-of-body experience, his encounters with expanded consciousness, and the insights that emerged from years of spiritual integration.