One night on the way to L.A. from Vegas, Lion Goodman had a brush with death when he heard an explosion and realized he was bleeding.
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It was the summer of 1978. I was traveling through the Southwest as a jewelry and giftware salesman, selling a wide range of items from Austrian crystals to feather earrings. On the way to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, I stopped to help a motorist whose car had broken down in the Mojave Desert. He was down on his luck, had no plans and nowhere to go, so I let him travel with me.
His name was Ray, and he looked to be in his early twenties. He was small, muscular, wiry, and slightly gaunt, as if underfed. I felt sorry for him, and in the three days we were together, I grew to trust him. I even started sending him on errands while I visited stores to sell my wares. At one point, I gave him some of my clothes, and it pleased him to have something new to wear. He seemed calm and mostly satisfied.
The third night, we were camped out near Puddingstone Reservoir east of Claremont. I was sitting on the floor in the back of the large van, moving things around in the cupboards to make more room for the clothes, books, food, sample boxes, and my passenger’s duffel bag and travel gear.
There was a loud explosion, and I felt a sharp, searing blow to the top of my head. Had the gas stove exploded? I looked up, but it was intact. Then I looked at Ray, sitting in the driver’s seat, and I saw the black gun in his hand. His arm was resting on the back of the seat, aiming the pistol at my face. A bullet had hit me! At first, I thought he was warning me—that he was going to rob me. That suddenly seemed fine. Take it all, I thought. Take it all. Just leave me outside and drive away.
Another explosion shook me, and my ears rang with a terrible, high-pitched whine. I felt blood dripping down my face and the top of my head throbbed. He’s not warning me, I realized. He’s going to kill me. I am going to die.
There was no place to hide. I was stuck in an uncomfortable position surrounded by cabinets. There was nothing I could do. I heard myself whisper “Relax. It’s out of your control. Breathe. Stay awake.” My thoughts turned to death, and to God. “Thy will, not my will, be done.” I let my body go, and I started to relax, to slump back. I watched my breath, in and out, in and out, in and out….
I began preparing for my death. I asked to be forgiven by anyone I had hurt and offered my forgiveness to everyone who had hurt me throughout my life. It was a full-color fast-reverse movie reel of my entire twenty-six years. I thought about my parents, my brothers and sisters, my lovers, my friends. I said goodbye. I said, “I love you.”
Another explosion shook the van, and my body pulsed. I was not hit. The bullet missed me by a fraction of an inch, penetrating the cupboard I was leaning against. I relaxed back into my reverie. My luck could not hold out. Three bullets to go, if it was a revolver. I could only hope that the gun wasn’t a semi-automatic.
Nothing mattered anymore but to be at peace. My van, my money, my business, my knowledge, my personal history, my freedom—all became worthless, meaningless, so much dust in the wind.
All I had of value was my body and my life, and that was soon to be gone. My attention was focused on the spark of light I called my Self, and my consciousness began to expand outward, extending my awareness in space and time. I heard my instructions clearly: STAY AWAKE AND KEEP BREATHING.
I prayed to my God, to the Great Spirit, to receive me with open arms. Love and light flowed through me, spreading out like a lighthouse beam, illuminating everything around me. The light grew inside me, and I expanded like a huge balloon until the van and its contents seemed small. A sense of peace and acceptance filled me. I knew I was close to leaving my body. I could sense the timeline of my life, both backward and forward. I saw the next bullet, a short distance into the future, leave the gun, jet toward my left temple, and exit with brains and blood on the right side of my head. I was filled with awe. To see life from this expanded perspective was like looking down into a dollhouse, seeing all the rooms at once, all the detail, so real and so unreal at the same time. I looked into the warm and welcoming golden light with calm and acceptance.
The fourth explosion shattered the silence, and my head was pushed violently to the side. The ringing in my ears was deafening. Warm blood rushed down my head and onto my arms and thighs, dripping onto the floor. But strangely, I found myself back in my body, not out of it. Still surrounded by light, love, and peace, I began looking inside my skull, trying to find the holes. Perhaps I could see light through them? I did a quick check of my feelings, abilities, thoughts, and sensations, looking for what might be missing. Surely the bullet had affected me. My head was throbbing, but I felt strangely normal.
I decided to look at my assassin, to look death in the face. I picked up my head and turned my eyes toward him. He was shocked. Jumping up from his seat, he shouted, “Why aren’t you dead, man? You’re supposed to be dead!”
“Here I am.” I said quietly.
“That’s too weird! It’s just like my dream this morning! I kept shooting at him, but he wouldn’t die! But it wasn’t you in the dream, it was somebody else!”
This was very strange. Who was writing this script? I wondered. I began to speak slowly and calmly, trying to settle him down. If I could get him talking, I thought, maybe he wouldn’t shoot again. He kept yelling, “Shut up! Just shut up!” as he peered out the windows into the darkness. He nervously walked closer to me, gun in hand, examining my bloody head, trying to understand why the four bullets he had pumped into me hadn’t finished me off.
I could still feel blood oozing down my face and could hear it dripping onto my shoulder. Ray said, “I don’t know why you aren’t dead, man. I shot you four times!”
“Maybe I’m not supposed to die,” I said calmly.
“Yeah, but I shot you!” he said, with disappointment and confusion in his voice. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“I wanted to kill you, man, to take this van and drive away. Now I don’t know.” He seemed worried, uncertain. He was beginning to slow down, becoming less jumpy.
“Why did you want to kill me?”
“Because you had everything, and I had nothing. And I was tired of having nothing. This was my chance to have it all.” He was still pacing back and forth in the van, looking out the windows at the black night outside.
”What do you want to do now?” I asked.
“I don’t know, man,” he complained. “Maybe I should take you to the hospital.”
My heart leapt at this chance, this opportunity—a way out. “Okay,” I said, not wanting to make him feel out of control. I wanted it to be his idea, not mine. I knew that his anger sprang from feeling out of control, and I didn’t want to make him feel angry.
“Why were you so nice to me, man?”
“Because you’re a person, Ray.”
“But I wanted to kill you! I kept taking out my gun and pointing it at you, when you were asleep or not looking. But you were being so nice to me, I couldn’t do it.”
My time sense was altered. I realized that I had no idea how long it had been since the first bullet. After what felt like many minutes, Ray came up to me, still in my crouched, locked-in position, and said, “Okay, man, I’m going to take you to a hospital. But I don’t want you to move, so I’m going to put some stuff on you so you can’t move, okay?”
Now he was asking my permission. “Okay,” I said softly. He began taking various boxes filled with samples and stacked them around me. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay. A little uncomfortable, but it’s all right.”
“All right, man. I’m going to take you to a hospital I know of. Now don’t move. And don’t die on me, okay?”
“Okay,” I promised. I knew I wouldn’t die. This light, this power inside me was so strong, so certain. Each breath felt like my first, not my last. I was going to survive. I knew it. Ray lowered the pop-top of the van, secured the straps, and started up the engine. I could feel the van backing up on the dirt road, finding the pavement and moving forward to my freedom.
He drove on and on—to where, I had no idea. Were we bound for a hospital, as he said, or toward some horrible fate? If he was capable of killing me with a gun, he was capable of lying, or worse. How did he know where to go? We were in Claremont. Los Angeles was over an hour away. I used that hour to re-play the scenes and analyze the past three days, trying to understand what had happened, and why.
Eventually, I felt the van slow, pull over and stop. The engine was turned off. Silence filled the space. I waited. It was still dark outside. We had not pulled into a driveway. There were no lights. This was not a hospital.
Ray walked back toward me with his gun in his hand. He pulled away one of the boxes and sat down on the foam bed, facing me. He looked distraught, head hanging down. His words cut deep through my cloud of hope. “I have to kill you, man,” he said calmly.
“Why?” I asked quietly.
You can watch the award-winning short film, “The Kindness of Strangers,” which was based on my story. The narrator’s point of view is switched to Ray, and many facts were changed to make it more film-worthy, but most of the dialogue in the film is close to what actually happened. (20 minutes long)
http://www.EverydayAwakening.com/video.html
Visit my website to learn about my teachings about beliefs: http://www.TransformYourBeliefs.com.
What a miraculous story of love, faith, forgiveness and letting go. That is truly inspirationial Lion!
Loved this story 10 years ago and it has legs…