His Face Was Destroyed In The Crash — But His Soul Went Somewhere Else (NDE)

And now, from beyond our dimension, this is the Jeff Morrowagas. Here's Jeff. My guest is Damian Horton, who had a near death experience due to a car accident. Damian, thanks for joining us today and welcome. Thank you, Jeff. Pleasure to be here. Damian, let's start on the day you had that car accident and go from there. Hi, Hans. A pretty rough childhood like many of us. I'd battled a lot of sort of abandonment issues and self-worth issues from my parents' divorce when I was a little kid. So I really, really struggled with my mindset. But all my teenage years, right up to that night, August 12, 2007. And I basically reached the bottom of the barrel, emotionally, psychologically, that night. I'd been, yeah, on the wrong side of the tracks, you could say. And that night I went out with some friends and ended up about 3. I think it was 3am in the morning. I was driving way too fast in my car and came around a corner and the car slid out from underneath me and smashed head on high speed straight into a rocking bank. So I smashed most of the bones in my face, had skull fractures on both sides. I had a lot of medical, critical head injuries and broke my back in 6 places. So it was extremely dire situation. And the emergency workers cut the roof off the car, saved my life. You know, the ambulance members and the firefighters to get me down to the Royal Adelaide Hospital in time because the hemorrhaging from my brain was pushing down on the brain stem, which is severely dangerous in that sort of situation. So I had what's called complex pan-facial fractures, which basically means my entire face was scattered to pieces. My plastic surgeon said it was like a bag of smashed eggshells. And they didn't know exactly how to put me back together initially. Some of the greatest reconstructive surgeons in the world are actually here in South Australia out of the cranial facial unit. So I believe there was a couple of days where I was just left in my coma while they tried to figure out how they were actually going to put my face back together. And they ended up doing what's called a Lefort reconstruction where they cut from behind the ear to remove the face. And they put 42 pieces of titanium into my face to rebuild it, cut out pieces of bone from my ribs and chest and a bit from the back of my skull as well to restock the face. And they basically put me all back together. So I had critical head injuries and also broke my back. My spine was broken in six places as well. And I was in that coma for eight days. And my only, my experience in those eight days was most profound experience I've ever had in my life. Well, before we go there, I want to say that the surgeons did an amazing job because you're a handsome man. Thank you, Jeff. It took four attempts. Took four surgeries. Yeah, I jokingly said I would like to Brad Pitt nose and the surgeon was like, there's nothing we can do, buddy. You're going to get what we can give you. So I ended up with this. But I look nothing like I used to. I've had four different faces. So I've looked in that mirror and had four completely different versions of Damien Orton. Did you consciously experience the accident or do you think you were already out of your body before it happened? I was already out of the body, definitely, because I don't remember the actual impact. It was at least a year, maybe longer before I had the memory come back of that night. And it was just a flash of coming around the corner, just that sense of the cast sliding out. And then, yeah, for me, it just went from that moment in time to my experience in the coma, which was, yeah, in truth, more real than for me, more real than the chap you're me having right now. I what happened. I woke up. I was in a place. I was in a room. And I was in a wheelchair. But there was no memory of the past. There was no identification with a personality. So the thoughts, the opinions, the story of the past, everything that makes up our personality self, they completely dissolved. So the way I try to explain it to people is underneath all the things that we add onto I am. I am this. I am Damien. I am an author. I am all the things that we add on top of that unconditioned state of consciousness. It all forms the identity, which forms the personality structure that we live by. So that instantly dissolved. And it was just pure consciousness, pure loving consciousness. And I had a choice. I had a choice to either return to the path I'd been walking down, which was a lot of suffering and mere survival. Just, yeah, making it through day by day. I had a drug habit. I was drinking. I was a pack of day smoker. And the choice was either to return to that space of suffering or love. And it was a emotion. It was like my actual heart opening. And as my heart opened and expanded and chose love, there was like a route for a tear that happened in this scene, in this room that I was in in a window. So I was part of this window in my wheelchair. And this tear just sort of opened up with light spilling through it. And I still didn't have any concept of self. So there was no day in the open, but I heard a voice. And it was my brother's voice. And the moment that I recognized my brother's voice, I identified as Damien as a someone again. And in that moment, I just remembered all of the contents of my previous life, if you will. And I just felt like bliss, like ecstatic bliss through my whole body. And then I was pulled into this light, into this tunnel of light. And the second I passed through that tunnel, I was lying in intensive care at the Royal Latte Lake Hospital. And my brother was right there beside me. And my mom was at my feet. My mom was at the foot of the bed. And they'd been waiting for me to wake up after the surgery. So before you came back and you were just pure consciousness, you had completely forgot about Damien, right? Everything like our personality structure, the opinions that we have and the viewpoints, the things we fight to protect and we're so sure that that is us, like the ego. of that instantly had to so solved, but the true essence of who we are, of who you are Jeff, of who I am, like that, whatever word you want to attach to that, I call it pure consciousness. That was very real and very alive, but it was just the I am. It wasn't connected to this whole identification, like the whole personality structure, that we believe is who we are, that we live by here in the physical world. Ultimately, it's a higher dimension of consciousness that we all come from and we all go back to every one of us returns there at the moment of physical death. So it's very hard to conceptualize and I normally say to people, you can't really look to your mind to try and understand it conceptually because that's not where it is. We all get glimpses of what I'm talking about in moments of shared compassion or shared joy and excitement, gratitude to be alive, gratitude for the gift of existence, maybe through meditation and breath work, yoga and different practices where we get the glimpses of that pure consciousness, that unconditional state and we come alive. People instantly feel that energy just moves through their body and it's a natural state then to just feel that gratitude for existence, appreciation for this gift, for this moment, we're experiencing right now. But yeah, because our everyday experiences were in this physical body, we're plugged into the five senses and the thoughts we think, the choices we make, the behaviours, our emotional reactions, they're all you know, neurologically wide into our brain, the record of the past, the record of past experiences, our family unit conditioning, education, etc. To try and conceptualize what pure consciousness is like is very, very hard because we always again, we just look to the mind, we look to this record of the past, but it's like before, you know, the 16 chapel was painted, it was like a potential waiting, you know, to be manifested, it was like a blank canvas that something could be impressed upon. Going back to source is like coming back to just that foundational layer of being of just I am without all the things that will talk. I know this may be hard for you to explain, but what were you doing while you were existing as pure consciousness? Were you just being? Were you thinking about anything? There's no linear time. That's the thing, it all happened, it could have been like I was in that space for a billion years or a billion for the second because the way we normally process time in this linear A goes to B, goes to C, you know, every day a human experience, that is not the way information is, yeah, or it's not the way we're experiencing this high dimension of consciousness, it's all happening now, it's just, it's just the present moment. So for me, because of my past and my battle, my struggles with drugs and myself worth, you know, problems, the choice I had in that space was I gonna choose love and the purpose of my human existence or was I going to choose the suffering and survival and it was extremely clear like I wasn't like I looked to my mind in the coma to think of anything. The closest I can say is just this expansion of love, you know, I say the heart but ultimately as pure consciousness, it was an expansion of love and nonverbal communication and as soon like the second there was truth in that love is when this opening appeared, it's when this tear, like a rip in the fabric of whatever that reality was, that's when it opened up and it was like a doorway back to this dimension of space and time. I didn't see everyone talks about, you know, going through the tunnel on the way in but for me, I woke up that source or whatever word you want to attach to it. For me, that's that source consciousness, that's that's home for every single one of us regardless of where you've come from or what you believe in or your political views, it doesn't matter, all expressions of life are ultimately returning to this unified state of consciousness and for me, it was the choice that I had and when I realized why we're here, when I got the download of why we're having this human experience and the purpose that is within it for every single one of us, that's when I came back. So I only experienced that portal, I guess, is what I would call it of light when I came back through this tear. It was a tear in the fabric of that place that I was. Once the tear happened, is that when the choice presented itself? No, the choice had been made before that. What I find interesting is that it was identification. It was when I said I am and what followed I am was conditioned it. I am daily important. The second I remembered the personality structure is when I experienced that coming back through and then I'm just in this intensive care unit with no memory that there had been this horrific car crash, no idea that eight days have passed. My brother, you know, it perhaps has saved me, you know, you've crushed your car. We've all been worried about you. Your face is now built out of metal. So he filled in all the gaps about what had been happening here in the physical world for me. So it was a rebirth, you know, it was like a set before. It was a blank canvas for me and because I'd experienced the true self, whatever you want to call it, because I'd experienced that unconditioned consciousness when I came back into my physical body, I realized that I could be anyone that I wanted to be. Like I'd broken that connection to the familiar personality because I realized that personality had caused all of my problems. You know, the story I've been telling myself, the thoughts, the choices, actions, beliefs that make up that personality structure. In an instant I realized if that was the truth, if that was helping me in any way, there's no way I could be lying here as a 24-year-old man with a face built out of 40 bits of metal, emaciated. My mom said like, my mom said, I look like a prisoner of war. She said, you look like a prisoner of Auschwitz because I was so thin and emaciated. So because I disconnected from the personality self or the ego, right, once I came back in a physical form as soon as the program, the usual predictable patterns of thinking started. You know, I call it the mental terrorist. It's that little voice in my head. As soon as it started, you know, saying, you know, you're capable of this and it's all the judgment and the opinions and everything, the content of our mind, I was able actually just to view it as pure consciousness. And in that moment, consciousness had separated from thought and then through neuroplasticity, I was able to remount my brain and reconstruct my entire personality to be, you know, the man I always wanted to be, which was someone that could teach and write books and follow my mind. music, you know, record my songs and just live in love and gratitude for this gift. Because I discovered that this is the greatest gift we've ever been given. Is the gift of life, this opportunity to experience physical form and the whole lather of human emotion that comes with it. But you know, the loss and the grief and the beauty and self-expression, the compassion and the friendship and the wonder, you know, for me it all came back like I was a little child again, like that wonder of what's around the next corner. And I just realized that it was like, again, there's two-zero adventure. Life is what we make it. If we say that it's bad, we say life's terrible, then it becomes terrible, you know, to see who says she can't and she won't. And to see or hear who says they can, then it's given. It's basically just a scale of consciousness that we exist on. And it's this mental dialogue in here that will either carry us up to the greatest expression of who we can be, you know, where all the dreams and the heart's desire that we've always wanted to bring into physical form and manifest where we get to give that gift, that self-expression and that gift to the world, or that mental dialogue can just drag us the whole way down to the lowest possible expression of who we are. And that's where, you know, the self-worth and the attack on ourselves where we just live out of the, you know, the judgment and the blame, the shame and guilt and all these limited emotions that we carry. So for me, it's just having my face cut off and going through years and years and years of pain and suffering has been the most incredible blessing I could ever ask for. Because I got to experience something that so many people were searching for and the choice I made was to live my purpose. It was to follow my heart's desire and do everything I can each day to be in alignment with that. And ultimately, it was a promise I made to my mum. I promised my mum that I would make her proud, basically, she's been to enough. And I realized that millions and millions of people aren't lucky enough or they're not fortunate enough, not luck, to have this second chance. And you've got to make the most of it, like you can't go extra易 that and then return to who I was being. That's, you know, it was mere survival. It wasn't life, that wasn't life. So it's reconnected with the love that I never known. It has never left me. This feeling has never gone away since I came out of that space. Why do we come here? And if you believe in reincarnation, why do we do it over and over again? We've come here to experience our physical form. We've come here to ultimately manifest our heart's desire. That's it. Desire gets a really bad rap. But I'm not talking about greed and lust and neediness or any of that. I'm talking about the most pure space in here. It's innate in us. Okay, it's there. We will fall on with it. Like when we go back to thinking about when we were a little child, we have those dreams who were lit up at this heart and that wonder, maybe I could, maybe I could be an actor, maybe I could be an astronaut, maybe I'm going to paint one day over to come and artist. And they're not even ours as in the personality ego itself. They're not even ours. They're given to us from that whatever word you want to put on that higher consciousness, that universal consciousness or God or whatever. So ultimately what I learned in my time is that we've come here to experience, we're experiencing separation and duality. And we can only have this experience here in flesh and blood where there's a me and there's a you, where there's up and down and you know there's linear time you know, whereas this unconditioned state is the seed of everything, all creation and all beauty and all wandered everything existing within an infant like within this infinite present moment. It is exactly like the unified field that they talk about in quantum physics and that from that consciousness all matter and all physicality is born. So I know that I remembered it was a remembering that I'd come here for a purpose and that purpose ultimately was to practice open and to let the heart and these dreams that I've been born with come into come into this world. You know it was it was so it was the deepest knowing of every experience and it was like getting back to that blank canvas again where it was something like I'm not bound by this fear of death. The fear of death even a lot of religious people yesterday I met up with someone who's highly religious and they said to me, "Daming, I'm just so scared of death, I'm so frightened." And I just thought it's such a shame, but it is such a shame because there's absolutely nothing for us to be frightened about when it comes to crossing over. No one that has ever been or ever will be has ever died that that essence that makes up each individual point of light is forever and where reunited with all that has ever been at that moment. And so yeah I just I feel that the more we are able just to get back to the purity of what we know in our heart and step outside of this this running commentary that goes around in our head that's judging and analyzing and thinking all these thoughts that were so short it's the truth. The second I had this near death experience I realized that all of it was just a story. It was a story I've repeated to myself so many times that I believed it to be true and then had limited my life. It had limited my connections, my friendships, my ability to express myself everything. So yeah for me there's absolutely no doubt that we've come here as a unique one-time only perfect expression of universal consciousness to have a physical linear experience that we call life and it's up to us it's our choice. What mark we want to leave in this world, how we want to be remembered, how we want to live and love and express and it's a gift. It's the greatest gift we can ever experience and we've given it to ourselves ultimately. If we decide what our purpose is going to be while we're here, how do we learn about that purpose once we are here? Well I think for some people like for me it was instant that I had to help the first thing I said to my mum was I need to be a service I need to teach when I came out of that coma. It was a night so I think for some people we know like there's this deep inner knowing and what gets in the way is our fear. It's the mental terrorist who comes back to this rare core player of the past, all these limiting beliefs, opinions, perceptions that we carry that they're not even arms. It might be a teacher from school or a family member that was giving some of their garbage to us. You're talking about their fear and they spoke it as if it was truth and we adopted and it became our mantra and then through repetition the brain hardwires these patterns, these neurological patterns in the brain and then the kind of mind that we produce the way we think originates from those patterns and then it limits us, it limits us so we go back to the dream and we go, "Oh, it's not possible. Oh, oh, oh, oh, only some people get lucky." You know, I'm not that talented. I could never stand on stage. I couldn't write that book. I couldn't, you know, start my own business, start a podcast like you've done, whatever it may be. And so that mental terrorist keeps blocking our ability to express the true self. So some of us we just know since we were little kids and it's just in there but it's covered up by the fears and not the lies that we tell ourselves. They are lies, absolute lies. It's not the truth. If I've been able to follow my dreams then anyone has the potential and we know this through neuro plasticity that the brain can change, adapt, rewire and make new connections at any point in life which has to change the way we relate to ourselves and the way we express ourselves in the world. But then for other people it's through trial and error. It's the path, it's the journey. It's the quest, like this is what makes life so incredible. And as we go we're gathering information, we're learning what works, what doesn't work, what resonates, what doesn't resonate, you know, and nothing's ever lost. Like this is a big part of my teaching, once you learn how to grab that gift, right, you shift for the gift in the hardship, you can grab that gold out of the toughest times you've been through and you grab that wisdom, you're completely free from that moment in time. But the emotional charge that's connected to that maybe childhood experience was someone that we've lost, you know, someone that's hurt us or a relationship breakdown, heartache, you know, once we see it from a higher point of consciousness and we can understand the lesson, it was in it, we continue to climb that scale of consciousness that I was talking about before, fire and fire and fire and our awareness just continues to expand and expand and expand and that is where we are connected to the most profound higher vibration or emotions of gratitude and joy and love and it becomes part of our natural state. It's just there within us and in that space we don't have to go out into the world and try and get it. When you cultivate that level of joy and abundance inside yourself, I do it every morning through my meditation and breath work before I go out into the world because I know I'm going to be hit with all like the constraints of physical life, you know, car cutting you off in traffic and the work issues or the bill coming in the mail or whatever it may be. So when we cultivate that joy we get into that space we express more of who we really are. This is what the world actually needs, right? You can't fight unconsciousness. We can't, and we would try this for how long and gone to war and it's this group, it's that group, it's the key coming back to this division, to the duality and the polarity and then we cause more exactly of the same unconsciousness in the world. What I know is that ultimately we're all responsible. Every one of us is responsible for the collected consciousness and so it's about us coming through these wounds that we carry and us learning how we actually rise above the terribus. Literally this maniac that everyone I've known has this voice, this negative voice that defeats us up is to actually transcend these limited states and turn the hardships that we go through into joy and you turn it into consciousness, you turn it into creativity because ultimately that's what we are here to do. We are creative beings. You know, we emulate that universal consciousness that's creating us. We emulate that when we step into our trip potential and let ourselves be seen when we go out into the world and we create something, when we share something or that vulnerability ultimately cracks open the personality track, the prison that we have with this ego, this ego itself. So I think every one of us has got so much potential to change, to transform, to express. And what I've learnt first hand is that if you have anything in here that says I can't or it wouldn't work out or I wouldn't know where to start or I think that only some people get lucky or my younger sister was more talented than I, this is the dream killer. The mental terrorist is the dream killer and I think it's at the core of why there's so much suffering and I'm conscious behavior in the world and while we keep looking to these leading experiences, you know, like materialism and the addictions, you know, that we have, we're trying to feel this space, this comfort that we have because we know that there's something greater within every single one of us. If we got really real in those quiet moments and you look into the mirror and you face yourself, which is what I had to do in my near death experience, you face yourself, you realize that there is this pure desire that burns in your heart. And it's not something that can cause harm to another, you know, that that's not it. If it's pure and it's innate in us, then it's not something that's going to control or harm or diminish any other, you know, it comes back to the golden rule. If it's in line with the golden rule and you're in your heart, then this is our opportunity to bring into physical form what we were given the moment we entered this physical world. So that's what I know to be true. I know I went, we're not from a bit of a tangent there, Jeff, but you asked very good questions. So after your NDE, did you notice that you had any new abilities that could be considered psychic? The biggest thing is this connection to my heart, like this energy that's been in me, it's just joy. It's just pure unfiltered joy that leads to just a deep sense of gratitude to be here, to have this breath, in this moment, to be on this interview with you. So the way I'm able to relate to myself and experience that joy and not get wrapped up in the little things. A lot of people I've spoken to that have been through near-death experiences. They say the same things. This new-found joy for existence. So that was been the biggest thing. But beyond that, it's been my ability to manifest, like, just to call in events and situations that are impossible if we look at the classical view, you know, the materialistic view of our place in this universe. So, you know, I've had people say to me, like, you're like a witch, they mean, you know, because I'll predict things that are going to happen and then they'll happen exactly as I've said it. So, ultimately, I believe that when our intention is for the greatest good and we're in this alignment or this achievement, the consciousness, we are in a co-creation with universal intelligence. I've found that reality just hearing this beautiful divine co-creation with this bio-consciousness. And it comes back to the wonder that I was talking about before. Once you realize you can plant a seed in intention and just quite, I've had the other big thing is I've learned you don't speak it. You just know within yourself this is what my heart desires. This is my goal. This is this future that I can see and you fall in love with it. And then you just move around your day in alignment. And it's not your business how it shows up. Because if we're analyzing and trying to control parameters, we're up here, you know, in the thinking brain again. And this voice is going to say, well, how could it happen? How could I bang instantly we go, duck, duck, duck, duck, it would never happen to me. Another dream, another dream just gets chopped. So it's this continual act of. Well, it's faith. It's faith. It's it's that. You've written a couple books. One of them is about your NDE. And then you have another one there behind you. What is it about? So my first book, limitless is just the journey. It's the whole path from my childhood. Hey, myself work issues being born going down that slippery slope into drug addiction and self hate to finally reach this, this point, you know, this. The dark night of the soul, where I crash my car and have this experience that reconnects me. And everything that I've always dreamed of. So it's the whole path. But these people teaching experience in the coma. And then how I created a brand new personality, a brand new life. So it's audit biographical. And it's something that I knew I needed to do as soon as I came out of the coma. And I was sort of my story. And so many people have said to me since day one. That's all well and good day, but how do I do what you've done? How can I create all this? Because it just seems like a fantasy. Can you write a book? And hundreds of people just kept saying, could you do a personal development book? And I had a few slots out of, to be honest with you, there was a couple of other half finished books that I've got, but they didn't quite get there. They didn't quite resonate. And then basically, I had a few months ago, a few months ago, I woke up at 4am. And I knew that I had to write a book. And that had to be the exact blueprint that I used. It had to be a model that anyone could apply. And then I had to do a book that I used to do, and I had to do a book that I used to do, and I had to do a book that I used to do. And I had to do a book that I used to do. And I just had to daiminghorton.com/books. And that would both be their limitless and the personality trap will be there. If they want to touch base with me, connect with me. I've got a YouTube channel that they can find easily. It's called limitless initiatives or social media. I don't, I'm not much on Facebook, but if you're if they're on Instagram is just daiminghorton official. Yeah, they can get in touch. Before we finish up, can you leave us with a last positive message? It's all within you. It's all within you beyond any sort of motivational height of love for anything like that. To understand that there is this potential that exists within every single one of us. Once we can move past that barrier of fear. The area of people are going to judge me. Or what if I make a mistake? What if I sing off key or my friends say, you know what? What's wrong with Jeff lately is acting different. That's a good thing. You want to hear that in your life because it means you're starting to truly change. You've just got to know what you truly want. You just got to get back to the heart of the matter. And to understand that ultimately this life is such a sacred gift. Damien, thank you for your message and thank you for being my guest. Thank you Jeff. Appreciate it.