Why do you believe, advocates/skeptics?

I suppose I should add a post which relates to the actual point of this thread. 

I was an airline pilot, kind of bored with my life, head down in the trough aged fifty. I’d think I’d had some warnings. My blood pressure had been a bit high for some years, but I wasn’t unduly worried by that, or by the thought of failing my annual medical. I went to the gym once a week and got some of my frustrations out by playing the bass guitar. I worked three out of four weeks in the simulator as an examiner, one in the aeroplane. 

I wasn’t looking forward to my five days of flying that I had starting the next day, it was one of the busiest I’d ever had. Long story short, I had a stroke. 

Even longer story short. My recovery led me to do around three or four years of intense investigation into the topics this forum is interested in. I am a proponent. I think I always believed in God, although I wasn’t brought up in a religious family. I feel closer than I ever have to God. I am not as popular here as I once was, but I’m feeling quite alright about that, I’m a stroppy Scot/South African/Earth Being. 

 I mentioned an interesting personal experience, I ought to maybe describe it. I’m not a person that had anything unusual happen while growing up or anything. A few months after the stroke I felt the need to start meditating every day, a practise I kept up during the ‘investigation’. 

Anyway, one day I was meditating while feeling deep sorrow for a friend of mine, who was deeply troubled by things that were occurring around him. After about an hour and a bit, I had the strangest thing happen. I describe it as being like a sausage machine in my head, suddenly spelling out the letters of a name, which was Helen Strickland. I never had such a thing before or since. 

I googled the name, and the first thing I saw was the name of a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist 
by that name. Unfortunately, she was in Bournemouth, while my friend was in Manchester. So it was a non-starter. Interesting, nevertheless. 

I now stick mainly to being a thorn in the moderators sides, by posting mainly in the hidden forums. 

One of the things that I am fascinated by, and I personally think points to ‘consciousness continuing’, are NDEs. So I cut Tim a load of slack for being a bit dim on other things! 

Only kidding. I consider many of this forums members my pals, in spite of our egos sometimes flexing their stuff!

You're very welcome to the forum, Smaw but I'm afraid you might be a little late to the party. We've been discussing these things now for many years and there isn't much that hasn't already been said. I personally don't want to go back over it again, some others might and that's fine.

Still, the forum is a good place to visit and say something about one of the subjects discussed here (or any subject, Stan ?), whatever it is you might want to say.

The problem is that my memory isn't too good so I forget that I have almost certainly posted identical comments previously. But never mind - maybe someone read the new version and missed the earlier post. 

Incidentally, that's an odd thing about memory: I can repeat a post almost verbatim after months (or years) but don't remember having written it the first time.