Michael Ellick

So I was sitting on my brother's bed because it was a room where I could shut the door from anyone else who would come into the apartment.

And I did this thing where you put these cushions underneath your butt to sit up a certain way straight.

And I was in practice.

And I don't know for how long I was practicing.

maybe five to ten minutes, when in the midst of that practice session, a memory popped into my head from long ago.

And that is not unusual for meditation.

All of these strange thoughts are going to come into your head, and you sift through them in different ways.

But this memory felt different.

When I was 15, I was in a really bad car accident.

I went through a windshield.

I was in the driver's seat, and it was pretty serious.

And at 15, back in 1990, no hiding how old I am, I...

You know, I was really close to death.

But I lived, miraculously.

Like an inch to the right or the left, they said, would have killed me.

But I was pretty beat up.

My face was torn up.

And the next day after the hospital, I was in my bedroom again, and I was sort of recouping back in my home, my parents' house in my 15-year-old bedroom.

Well, meditating in 2006, I had a memory of that morning, that morning after the accident.

where I was sitting in my bedroom, and it was just some random memory.