What’s an STE…. and is it catching?

I’ve always been interested in the nature of reality, so I gobbled up Dr. Raymond Moody’s groundbreaking book, Life After Life, at age 19 in 1975. However, when I had my most powerful mystical experience, in the 1990s, it was not an NDE or NDE-like experience, but something else entirely. It seemed to come out of the blue. I couldn’t find a book that addressed events like mine. Had other people had such an experience? Was there a name for it? I didn’t know.

The majority of people now know what an NDE, or near-death experience, is thanks to Dr. Moody, who coined the term in 1975. But how many know what an STE is? The term comes from Canadian doctor, author, and experiencer, Yvonne Kason. STE is short for, “spiritually transformative experience.” Kason has written about her extraordinary experiences in the 2019 book: Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences.  

The STE is a broad category encompassing every kind of spiritual experience that transforms a person. The NDE is one type of experience within the larger category of the STE. 

Some other experiences in the STE category are: 

• shared-death experience
• after-death communication
• experiences of guidance 
• experiences of God’s love and light 
• kundalini experiences 
• mystical visions 
• spontaneous past life recall 
• unity with God or the universe 

And more…

My STE was completely positive, and yet so powerful that for months afterward I felt disoriented. I walked with one foot in each world and I couldn’t be fully here or there. My reality had shifted. My peek behind the curtain had unmoored me. I was like Jupiter knocked out of its orbit and careening through space. The cognitive dissonance was uncomfortable as my brain argued with my experience, declaring it impossible. Because of this, I thought about suppressing it, tucking the experience away in a box on a shelf at the back of my mind, so I could pretend it never happened. 

But I wouldn’t deny something this important, something that had answered all my biggest questions and had divided my life into a Before and an After. I was struggling, but at the same time I didn’t want this glowing, transcendent feeling to end. Who would want to give up the empowering, creative energy flowing through the body, and the felt sense of God standing by? I made the choice to embrace this experience, but I needed information and help to process it. 

There are many books now and Amazon makes them easily accessible, but no one was talking about STEs then. The internet was just getting started, so it was harder to find information and support in the 1990s. My STEs continued. I needed to talk, but I learned pretty quickly to be discerning about who I shared my STEs with. Talking to the wrong person was worse than not talking at all. When I mentioned a lovely pre-death, spiritual experience I had with my scientist father-in-law’s dying mother, he got so red in the face I feared he’d have an aneurysm, and he yelled at me across the kitchen: “That’s nonsense! When you’re dead, you’re dead!”  So, I learned not to cast pearls before swine… or in-laws! After a few attempts at sharing, I kept it to myself.

 It would be seven years before I met a fellow experiencer who knew what I was talking about. Catherine was a therapist and energy healer I met at yoga class, and she helped me to further integrate my STEs into my life. 

Have you had an STE? I would love to hear about it! In future posts, I’ll share more detail about my experiences. 

Email me at: Cynnaseagrove@protonmail.com