An Afterlife Was?
Hi friends. I’ve been trying to write this post for some time now, but I just can’t seem to write what I want. It all seems to come out crap. So, after much trial and tribulation, I decided, maybe you folks could write it for me. If you are willing, or even merely motivated to add your own thoughts.
What I would like to know is, if you could choose your own afterlife, would you? Or would you choose immortal death (a death you could never come back from, unlike gods or superheroes)? You have full reign to design any afterlife you would like to go to, or live in. One life to live, possibly forever, or reincarnation if you so desire, a ready-made afterlife such as any world religion might offer, or something that no one but you could ever imagine. Explanations are totally up to you. In fact, anything you want to write is okay with me, as long as it is relatively inoffensive in word if not in deed. So, in other words, if you could be your own god, what would you design for yourself?
For myself, I would go along with my own philosophy, and incorporate a form of reincarnation. Why, because I do not believe it is possible to learn all about life in one lifetime. Nor do I think one could learn everything one might need to know by living in only one state of reality. I would create for myself a series of incarnations that would build upon each other spiritually, and do it on different levels of life in order to cover all possibilities that could eventuate. It would not be my ego-being that reincarnated, but rather a spirit-being that retains life-learning, and continually adds to it. Being “human” would only be one level of reality, preceded by living as other species of life, and being followed by changing into other forms of life. And even though I am the one creating my own afterlife, I would never write a scenario for a next incarnation until the last incarnation was complete.
This would give me an eternity of living and learning, always filled with new experiences and life-lessons. This is the kind of afterlife I could easily die for. What about you?
A New Spirituality 
An interesting exercise, suitable for some Sunday pondering, so I’ll tackle it tomorrow, see where it leads.
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Truth be told, I’m not so sure your right. The only reason it takes so long to learn this-life gig, is sifting through all the bullshit to find a kernel of reality.
There seems to be no getting around it here, raised in deception and lied to, conditioned to herd pressures to “believe”—there’s that word again, what others think, (which is guesses) my instinct would be to hang on, like all the elements do, to find a way to continue on. Eternity is where things get tricky. After 8 octillion years of experiencing being every grain of sand and pine needle, what then? I would have to live in a world where I could create increasing joy and contentment for the next 100 octillion years until the universes were filled with my creations. Endless creating to have joy sounds too much like capitalism, the way of economy. I think I’ll pass for now. Good luck on reincarnation. And all this infinite growth makes a pretty crowded universe when billions are pissing you off with their intrusive versions of heaven. 100s of billions of Christian choir songs being piped through the heavens while Johnny’s heaven is full of 2stroke dirt bikes making noise in every fuckin galaxy he controls. Maybe going through it as a sea sponge in the Marianas trench, deaf and blind would be a highlight.
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8 octillion years is quite a choice for eternity, but still a nice round number. Why would you want christians in an afterlife you design for yourself? Or are they so persistent that you can’t get rid of them. From my perspective christians would only last in the human phase, and then only until they advanced themselves beyond the traps of religion. By the time they passed humanity into whatever came next, there would be no religions left.
Meanwhile, Jim, I was asking about if you would choose an afterlife, and if so, what would it look like, or feel like. I could assume from your words you would choose permanent death, but that is me reading between your lines.
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In my late night diatribe I did mention that I would like to create new things in the afterlife. But remember, your not going to be the only one out there. 100s of billions (and growing like parasites) of others get their heavens. I don’t have the spirit To kill everything else. After a time rawgod, you will know everything there is to know. You will be a god of ultimate knowledge and power and turn into a dick. And after 100billion of the 8 octiliion years we mention…oh, that’s just the beginning of eternal boredom. You will have experienced life as every atom in the universe in all its forms. Maybe I’m not creative enough, but even napping gets old after a while. At that point, who knows.
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A lot of people already think I’m a dick, so that won’t be anything new. But 100 billion years from now I don’t plan on being rawgod anymore. In fact, rawgod dies in the next ten years, based on family history. I still have not come up with a satisfactory explanation of the mechanics of reincarnation that fits my experience, but that does not stop me from “believing” that some form of reincarnation does happen. My experience tells me it does. I can wait to see what my death brings, or
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Hi there. As a Buddhist I believe we do create our own afterlife based on the way we live our lives today. You see, Buddhists don’t believe in God but we do believe in personal responsibility and building karma. There are several different perceptions of afterlife as you know, from heaven & hell to becoming a spirit in the mountains and most are dependent upon whether we’ve led a ‘positive or negative’ existence in this life. So I would say we do choose our own afterlife. Just a thought best wishes Julie
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Hi Julie. I am aware of Buddhist philosophy, having passed through a period of Tibetan Buddhism in my life after I left monotheism behind. A lot of my present philosophy comes from that phase of my life. But even that didn’t concur sufficiently with my life experiences, though it came much closer than anything else I could find did. But I did use it as a base to build my philosophy on.
But this is why I had so much trouble trying to write this post in the first place. There are so many preconceived ideas of what an afterlife is, I was trying to reach beyond them. I wanted this to be an exercise in “controlled” imagination to a point, then “uncontrolled” imagination after that. What is it you would like to experience in “your” idea of an afterlife? As a Buddhist, do you accept the idea of Nirvana, and what does Nirvana look like to you? To say we create our own after lives is good, but what is it we are each creating? There lies the crux of my matter…
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That’s a very interesting question. My answer is yes I accept the idea of Nirvana and that it’s possible to achieve it in this lifetime if we follow the Dharma. Personally I’m not sure I want to achieve this state but more a state of the Boddhisattva continuing the journey of benefitting others. I’m working on it ☺️🙏 For me personally an afterlife is ‘A physical body into which my consciousness will be thrown into on leaving this body’ depending on how I’ve lived, that body could take many forms from animal, human, hungry ghost etc
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Thanks, Julie.
I understand the desire to be a Bodisattva. (I apologize if desire is not the right term, I don’t mean anything by it, just the decision you are making. But the way you worded your statement it almost sounds like you are avoiding nirvana, or at least that was how you made me feel, right or wrong.)
Anyway, Bodisattvas actually seem to be the choice of most Buddhists I have had similar conversations with. Is it a sign of the times? There is so much suffering on this plane right now, we need more healers. However, is that reality, or just a perception of reality? The world is always filled with suffering.
I wish you luck in your choice, no matter what.
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I like many, do fear death, as it is the unknown… What will it be like to die? Does it feel like you’re floating in darkness? Is it like that time I was anesthetized and literally perceive nothing when not even the darkness registered? However, I’m willing to accept saying “I don’t know” over believing in Heaven with no evidence it actually exists to soothe my feelings…
https://aladyofreason.wordpress.com/
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Hi ALoR.
I guess this is something I do not understand–why fear death when it is inevitable? No matter what it is, you are going to find out (if there is something after death) or you will never find out (if death is the ultimate end). You cannot choose not to die.
And that is what religions thrive on, they will gladly take your money while you are alive (when you could be using it) in exchange for telling you all will be teacups and roses once you do die. And in order to convince you to willingly give them your money now, they threaten you with an eternity in hell. And the suckers fall for it. The greatest con job in history, and the longest running con job. Look at televangelists, they live lives of utter luxury by selling a completely unbelievable bill of goods never to be delivered. The true money for nothing scheme.
Meanwhile, what death will not be is an extension of life as we know it here on Earth, or what would be the point of dying?
But, ALoR, do you want there to be a life after death? That is the real question behind my post, I guess.
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Depends… I’d like to live similarly to how I do now on Earth….
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Probing question(s) you ask …
I tend to go along with the “reasonable lady” when she mentions the anesthesia darkness. Sometime back I had gall bladder surgery and when they woke me up, that was my first thought. The “unknowing” that occurs under sedation must be what death is.
As for consciousness after death? Nope. I think this is it. In fact, IMO, the tales we weave about what might/could/will happen after death are directly related to our seemingly inbred fear of non-existence. We seem to need to believe there is some sort of extension of “being.” In any form. Which is why the many religious/spiritual tales have been spun over the centuries.
Needless to say, it’s all speculation since no one has been able to “report back.” ;-) But that’s my take on the topic — for whatever it’s worth.
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Thank you very much for your take, Nan. Seeing as a lot of my correspondence on WP is of an atheistic bent, I am surprised I did not get this kind of answer earlier.
However, with all the surgeries I have had, more than most but nowhere close to as many of some, I have never equated anaesthetic darkness to death. I always went “under” expecting to wake up, and so far I have woken up each time. Dying may be like going under, but death will not have the waking expectation. Rather, I think for me, there will be a great big question mark that may never be answered. Thinking back to my LSD experiences I never really lost consciousness at the start, but I did undergo a change of some kind, because I shrunk from a body-sized awareness to a cellular-sized awareness that was able to look inside my own brain. When I returned to my body was when I temporarily lost consciousness, and woke up body-sized again.
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It begins with the question: Death is not optional – but what if an afterlife was? Then the next questions are: if you could choose your own afterlife, would you? Or would you choose immortal death (a death you could never come back from, unlike gods or superheroes)?
I will respond with the strictly personal evidence I have at my disposal, without entering into anyone else’s reasoning for or against.
Evidence: I am in possession of remembrances of past lives, future lives and also lives or partial lives lived in alternate dimensions or if you will, realities or universes – doesn’t matter what you call them. Reincarnation is how we move, either forward or backward, our choice once we break free of our programming.
Evidence: Whatever I can conjure, or believe for myself; whatever I can think, imagine, express in some way, is de facto real. “Nothing” is impossible, i.e., I cannot “create” nothing.
Evidence: Life is infinite, hence eternal, since it exists beyond time and space. Yes, there is a “13th Floor” where I have been and must return to; that place where I draw up my own plans of what comes next, then put that in motion.
Evidence: As below (here) so above. To understand the worlds I came from and I am returning to I have but to understand this one little world constraining my thoughts and my temp body. I can use this life as a day on a pleasant beach, forgetting what came before and ignoring what must follow when the sun sets, or I can use it to learn some tricks of survival in the real and infinite world I call the cosmos.
Evidence: If I do not create my own afterlife, someone else will do it for me (as below, so above) and I will remain a mind slave of controlling forces I can see working their evil and horror upon this world. Since that is unacceptable, I have no choice but to create my own afterlife in the here and now.
Evidence: Obviously I won’t be alone “out there” any more than I am here, therefore my creation will have to blend, match, challenge, strengthen or force change upon whatever existing structures I encounter.
Evidence: Earth is the microcosm of the macrocosm. Everything I need to know I can learn right here.
Evidence: I am a mind being. My “soul” (no longer operational) is nothing more than a controlling implant designed to ever prevent me from becoming a full-fledged human(e) being.
Evidence: there are no gods as perceived. There are powerful unseen entities that seek to control and guide life to their own ends. Many of those ends are inimical to Life hence the need to develop both will and power to challenge and dis-empower such forces.
That is all the evidence I should need to present in answer to the main question.
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I agree, that is your evidence. But are you now going to give a summation (by presenting the creation), or are you going to leave me to build a creation based on your evidence? I would hate to have you leave it to me, there is always a chance I might misunderstand you on something. Of course we could just leave it as it is, a mystery. Or, you could design your reincarnation process based on the evidence. What are your thoughts, if any?
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Obviously (well, to me) my creation is/will be based on compassion. That is the foundation I stand on and work from, a “locked in” choice that is no longer a choice. What I actually create from this base, or basis, however, cannot be so easily defined. It will depend on the conditions I encounter, how far into the “hell” of worlds I plunge to attempt to effect change, or whether I have the luxury of being in places that have remained untouched by evil, or have worked their way out of it, for example my temp home world I call Altaria. It will be a matter of where I go or where I am sent. Since I am no longer bound by space or time, such could be anywhere, in any time, past, present or future. Currently the best example I can give of one such avatar work is presented in the novel I’m currently posting on my blog: The Antierra Manifesto. This is a part of my life I have dedicated to resolving earth’s greatest problem, misogyny, a problem that poisons the entire universe, not just a small forgotten prison planet. Until we recognize and by whatever “legitimate” means destroy the source of such horrors, racism being another, killing another, we can but tackle them and overcome them one world at a time. To do that requires great wisdom and an understanding of realities beyond this world, realities I call “astral” that impinge heavily on non-astral worlds such as this. As an avatar I can reach such worlds by dis-incarnating on one world and reincarnating on the chosen one. There is much room for error in such movements, as anyone who reads the “Manifesto” will learn. No magic and no super powers, just commitment and total dedication. Once there, you work as a catalyst or change agent using whatever means at your disposal. That is my kind of creation, and I expect it to continue thus forever since after all there is no longer any time to contend with, except of course the temporary encounter with time on time-constrained worlds. There will be others, yourself perhaps, whose purpose will be very different than mine. Those others will be the first creators or the “expanders” of existing reality. They will make and fill new worlds and rejoice in their creations. Only when/where something goes terribly wrong will they remember us and call us in to do the fixing. We will be known as the healers; that being our nature, role and purpose. That’s my creation.
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Did you read easternhealingroom’s comment above? She has chosen to come back as Boddisattva after her next death. She too is a healer. Again, as do you and I, you two have different backgrounds, yet you come to similar places. I wonder if you feel any kinship (spiritual connection) with her, or her with you, if she reads this. The ultimate goal of all of us, I think, is the healing of the cosmos however each of us can come to that.
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Kinship with other “workers” is not sought and never encouraged among us. As an avatar of compassion I would normally find myself working alone, thus all the risks of any enterprise fall upon myself, not having to worry about another I may be teamed with or be responsible for. Working alone in places where I know no one and know little about is one of the harshest lessons to come from detachment. The avatar of compassion belongs to her purpose and when that purpose takes her to her life’s engagement, her work, then she belongs entirely to that work. There is no room for family, lovers, friendships or even personal possessions: if such happen they must arise from the work itself, flow through and pass on like clouds in the sky.
There are many kinds of healers, everyone having a different approach based on experience, teaching and purpose. It is possible our paths may have crossed, or could cross (and they have certainly crossed here!) but we each must follow our own path. If we are indeed healers, our lives will not be at cross-purposes and that is what matters (to me, anyway!)
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‘Nuff said.
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Interesting question especially since I believe you die and that’s it forever, but……
I think after about ten years of seeing my past loved ones in some other worldly place and enjoying that and maybe taking care of some unfinished business, I’d be ready to move on.
I’d definitely want to reincarnate back as some bird to be able to fly and see the earth from a birds eye view and live among wildness. I’d try a few more animals and places as well, like Africa and some of the islands.
After about a thousand or so years of this, I’d be ready to somehow move on and see some other parts of the universe and see what life and other types of worlds were out there. I’d have to reincarnate as those entities to be able to experience this. This would take many thousands or hundreds of thousand years IF there is abundance of life out there.
But after all this time, there wouldn’t be much left to do or see. Perhaps a return again to see loved ones one last time and maybe a peek at the earth, if it was still there or not completely barren by then.
But in the finality, I’d be ready to finally die in totality, feeling grateful for all I’d seen and experienced. It would lose all of its meaning and joy, if it went on forever and I wouldn’t want to lose that.
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Thank you, Mary.
For myself I would find it amazing to be bored, even after high zillions of years. But then again, I don’t see an end to all the possibilities in life. Worlds, universes, planes of existence, to me they are as endless as the number of years in eternity, always (n+1)! Add to that the places where time might not even exist, where forms might not exist, where all places are instantly reachable from every other place…
But since I did ask for your ideal afterlife, I am grateful to have seen yours. I would wish for you to find that life, but since wishes are fishes, I’ll just throw in a line without a hook on it. Enjoy.
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Eternity would be a long long time and I still think you’d (yes even you😊) would eventually get to where you’d seen and done it all even if you repeated some. But I agree it might take zillions and zillions of years.
I guess my view is that if it went on forever, it would lose meaning and joy. It would actually become mundane. Just thoughts….
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I will not deny that if life were to only be constrained to what we here and now know as life, that would happen to even me. But I see life being different all the time, forever changing, forever evolving. This is the one unexpected thing I am seeing in almost everyone’s pictures of an afterlife–no dreaming, no imagination, no hope!
I really thought, given the idea that an afterlife could be designed especially for the individual, that imaginative people would come up with some very imaginative ideas.
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I think the keywords in your response, rawgod, are “if life were to only be constrained to what we here and now know as life.”
Because this “life” is all we know (unless one has an experience similar to yours), it’s difficult for our minds to go “beyond.” Those that can, often have what many (more practically-minded) people would call really “bizarre” visions of existence beyond the grave.
I guess I’m simply too practical-minded to allow my mind to travel into eternities with unknown dimensions. Perhaps to my detriment.
One thing is for certain … we’ll all find out the “real” story someday. :-)
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We will–or we won’t, eh, Nan.
I was not directing my words to you, you are happy where you are, I have to believe, or you wouldn’t be there, and I do not want to change that for you.
Nor do I want to change anyone else, and possibly your reasoning is correct. I have experiences “out of the normal” that drive my life. But I really hoped I was giving people a chance to imagine a perfect life, or something like that. “Is there something you could enjoy doing for eternity?” I would enjoy learning about life, and how other beings have to live it. I don’t mean physical knowledge, but wisdom of life and living. What is it like to be a butterfly? A cockroach? A being of pure energy who can live inside a star? Or in the deepest darkness of inter-universal space? Or some type of being I cannot even imagine from here in what we call the third dimension?
Maybe I was just hoping someone could imagine something that the rest of us could use as a target to work towards…
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Curious … how would you know what it’s like to be a butterfly? Or a cockroach? Or a being of pure energy? Wouldn’t you have to have some sort of consciousness similar to what you have now in order to judge these experiences? Or is that what you believe … that your human consciousness will continue on?
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Good question, Nan. No, human-type consciousness would not necessarily apply, but butterfly-consciousness would, or energy-being consciousness would. We can look from our lofty consciousness position, and declare no others beings in the universe can think like we do, but that is homo-centrism. I cannot think like that. If our species is conscious, all species should be conscious in their own way, because they are ancestors of ours. Science shows us how to trace ourselves back to the primordial soup, and though we do not have the fossil records, it only makes sense that multi-billion-celled beings were based on multi-million-celled beings, and continually lesser-celled beings until we reach that soup. I know we think any form of life would need to have a certain number of brain-cells in order to share a consciousness with us, but that is illogical. I think it makes more sense that all living beings are conscious in some way or other, and it is us who cannot recognize consciousness in them.
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I can truly not think of a thing I’d like to do forever. Not even eating delicious food, which is vice.😊
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Why is eating delicious food a vice? I cannot answer that, I wrecked my taste buds by being a chain smoker years ago, so I eat for sustenance, seldom for taste. But my girlfriend eats for taste, and she coes not consider that a vice. Each to themselves, of course, but as I said, I do not understand that one.
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I was kidding. I’m a big foodie and I love food..all kinds of food and that would come closest to what I could do forever. It was a joke.
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I kinda thought, but I am just never sure. I have this bad habit of trusting everyone to mean what they say, and then I think about it, and even if I change my mind it’s too late, I’ve already sent my comment back.
You’d think at 69 I would have lost my naivete, but without visible body language to counteract the words, I fall everytime.
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No biggy….honest😊😊
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I believe you, lol.
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If I had such power I would choose to be revived immediately after death. This revived body would be temporal but would only deteriorate at a time of my choosing. I would then explore the world, learn more and more and better the world until I felt satisfied. Then I would experience a painless and instant immortal death.
Sorry if this is too weird. I have a wild imagination.
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Not wild at all, but it leaves a question or three behind you. Why be satisfied with bettering the world if you won’t be there to enjoy it? This is just curiosity, no ulterior motives.
I am presuming that by dying and being instantly revived you are hoping to have your body repaired from whatever caused your death, but what approximate age are you planning to be while you go on your learning spree? You want to be healthy until such time as you decide you’ve done enough, and learned enough, so I am thinking you want to be fairly active as you seek your point of satisfaction. So why bother to let your body deteriorate at the end? Would just dying while healthy feel too much like committing suicide? Or do you want to suffer through another dying cycle?
And finally, what would be your idea of bettering the world?
I actually find this afterlife quite intriguing, and probably you have not fleshed your imagination out, just kind of winged it. But if you have fleshed it out, or care to do that now, I would very much like to hear more.
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Yeah. I did kind of wing it. But you’ve made me think about it a little more. Let me try to answer your questions.
“Why be satisfied with bettering the world if you won’t be there to enjoy it?” That’s just the kind of person I am. That kind of thing makes me happy.
“What approximate age are you planning to be while you go on your learning spree?” That’s a good question. I guess mature enough that I’m able to carry out my plan, but young enough to be able to function without too many physical hinderances (i.e. illnesses). You know what, I might just not get sick at all. I could be semi-immortal. In that case, my bodily age wouldn’t even matter.
“Would just dying while healthy feel too much like committing suicide?” I guess it would technically be suicide. Just without the pain. Maybe I’d just think a thought and then it would all end. But it would be a happy ending.
“Do you want to suffer through another dying cycle?” No. I would want a swift and painless “suicidal” end to my existence.
“What would be your idea of bettering the world?” That’s a tricky one. I don’t think I’m wise enough to answer it with the depth that it deserves. That’s one of the reasons that such a revival would be great – so that I could learn more with unlimited time. But generally, I think bettering the world would be to ensure that everyone gets to enjoy their lives. That might entail things like finding cures for certain diseases, ensuring everyone had food to eat, dealing with global warming, ceasing war etc. Whether or not just one person could do all that, is a problem of its own.
Did I answer your questions satisfactorily? Any more questions?
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Not at this moment, but I may think of some as the hours go by. Thank you for answering them, it gives me hope for the future, if there is one. I used to take a future for granted. I no longer can.
But I kind of like your afterlife. It isn’t that different from my own when you get right down to it. I never mentioned bettering the world, I don’t think, but to me evolving to higher states means helping create a better life experience for all. I purposely avoided saying that outright to hide my god complex, lol, a strange thing for an atheist to have…
Thank you again for taking part in my thought experiment.
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No problem. I enjoyed it. I think having a “god complex” is actually pretty common. I don’t know how common for atheists though. It only becomes a problem when you wish to be a wrathful “god”.
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Actually I “had” a god complex many years ago, but I gave up on it. It took up too much time trying to count the number of time even just one bee wing flapped. Besides, my eyesight was never that good.
However, I thought in sounded good in context, so I dredged it back up just for you.
I’m glad you enjoyed my little brain exercise, I am too. I’m hoping a few more people will try it so I can get enough information to summarize it in another post.
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I’ll be looking out for that post.
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Hi. :)
It requires some suspended imagination for me to put myself into the position of designing the most favorite turn of events after physical death, because I already have so many perceptions and convictions about it. I think that what I perceive to be the case is quite close to what I would prefer, realizing that this territory is designed and architected by beings of a greater morality and insight than my own, by necessity.
I have found that the way to achieve certainty about immortality is to look backwards, not forwards, at first. I look at my own sould in earliest childhood, and recognize the spirit there dwelling within me, in this particular place, family and circumstances. And then I see and intimately know (since I am on the ‘inside’), that this spirit already had qualities and individuality of it’s own — characteristics which only could have come from prior experiences. This, as I say, is the beginning only… but it leads to powerful insights and convictions when worked with for years.
I would also point to moral perceptions, or moral intuitions, inside ourselves prior to ‘education’ as evidence of higher truth and the spark of divine nature within us.
What I think happens is the same as what I would prefer to happen:
We, upon physically dying, lose our physical senses but unveil various non-physical capabilities and ways of perceiving. We then go through a series of ‘divestitures’, shedding onion skin layers of our former earthly being, first the obvious ones and then the hidden subconscious ones. This occurs in the context of reviewing our immediately preceding earthly life. Especially moral and social aspects of our autobiography are deeply experienced and digested during this initial period. The period, or onion skin layers, or regions of the higher worlds, are all the same thing, or closely related. It is only by purifying our being of urges from a lower level that our ‘eyes’ can open to the next higher level, which is the same as saying we then inhabit that new level.
This process continues, ever refining, for some centuries under normal circumstances. (Violent deaths and especially suicide are factors which steer this into an entirely different direction.) Also, during this process, we are constantly operating under the law of karma — which is very poorly understood at present, regardless of continent or religious stream — such that the ‘trespasses’ we come to feel morally culpable about are used as important ingredients in fashioning new bodies and a new destiny in a subsequent lifetime. This includes the people we will meet and interact with. There is always also an element of freedom. Meaning, encounters are arranged and we can deal with them or not as we wish within future circumstances. Also, time and energy suffice to initiate new encounters (new karma) based upon inclinations and new capacities we are endeavoring to cultivate in any physical lifetime.
This is a thumbnail sketch of how I see the world, in line with your questions.
But you said that you had thoughts of your own, difficult to articulate. One wonders now, what they are.
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To put it bluntly, those thoughts are not for anyone who believes in such things as morality, karma, gods, etc.
But thank you for your vision. I have to admit I have trouble understanding some of it. You seem to have given it a lot of thought, but yet it makes leaps that I don’t yet see as connected, am I am used to seeing connections in places others don’t. How many physical lives are you allowing yourself here? And why does it take hundreds of years to peel off the layers of onion skins? Please understand, I am not saying you cannot have these things, it is your vision. What I am saying is I cannot see a complete vision, and I would like to be able to.
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Hey, stolzy, I hope I was not insulting or demeaning in my reply to you. I asked what you thought, or imagined, and you gave that to me, so thank you. I admit to having a bias when I hear words like morality and karma and suchlike, they are not part of my nature anymore, so I do find it hard to understand. But that is my problem, not yours.Thanks again for your input, and if you have anything to add I would like to hear it. Just because I cannot understand it does not mean I reject you as a person, or a living being. We are each entitled to our own beliefs…
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Hi rawgod,
I really like this question, but not because I have a great answer, but because the question itself assumes we will be somehow in another time and place.
For me, one of the greatest mind blowing experiences that I ever had was so surreal you would have thought I was high on something. I had been to a meditation and healing ceremony (in Canada as it happens). I was driving home from Cambridge to Kitchener, fairly late at night and feeling pretty Mellow when I suddenly realised that I could feel the grass and trees on the sides of the road. I could feel the coolness of sap rising and suddenly, I was inside everything. I do not remember much of the time passing until I was driving through city streets again and I lost the connection. It was a pivitol point in my perception of life.
My feeling for an afterlife would be to recapture that awareness and beauty of all that manifests physically. I have been trying to do it in my limited physical form and it is difficult and evasive.
I have read some of the other answers here, but unlike most people here, or anywhere for that matter, I don’t believe that time exists. At least I don’t think it exists in the form we think it does, anymore than light having a constant speed (it doesn’t, it actually fluctuates).
There is much speculation about Artificial Intelligence these days, and whether we are all manifestations in a virtual reality that live in a matrix. Believe me, these questions are being taken very seriously, with millions of dollars going into AI development, and looking for the secret math (a Binary code) for the answer to ‘what is conciousness?’
I can partially answer that in my vision of an afterlife. Conciousness is the founding base for all that exists. When I die, what is left of my energy goes into conciousness and remanifests in a material manner according to experiences gained in previous material existences. The new manifestation does not know what it was before, but is a direct result of it (sort of like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly). This transformation of data from our previous physical manifestation is akin to individual cells amalgamating into larger, symbiotic forms.
We are the result of collaboration. What I want to feel in the afterlife, if at all possible, is the beautiful loving energy that I think creates it and holds it together.
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However you want to describe it to yourself, I sincerely hope you find it. I call that energy life, and I do not think it can be destroyed, only changed.
As for the feeling you had in Ontario, I am happy you found it, and connected to it even for awhile. Most people have not had that feeling yet, or this world would be a very different place.
Thank you for adding your vision. I didn’t really know what expect when I decided to hand the question to my readers. And, as always, I am quite surprised.
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Do you have spirit guides rawgod?
Mine come ang go, usually when I need them, but not when I want them. My latest one appeared just a couple of weeks ago. I was aware of a really strong energy around me, and I saw a picture of a sort of ethereal gold coloured air-born, seed like apparition. I didn’t know what to call this entity, but ‘Goat Beard’ sort of ran through my head. I had to go and look up ‘Goat Beard seeds’ on Google, and ta da! There was a seed for Goat’s Beard that looked like my apparition.
Goat Beard has stuck around and calls me ‘child,’ despite my aged status. Goat Beard is from that conciousness field that we all add to and he has been showing me some really cool stuff and clarifying some of my own thoughts. His real name is not ‘Goat Beard,’ but Methuselah . And yes, perhaps even the Methuselah of the Christian story of creation, and Grandfather to Noah. But he is an entity, not the story figure. His energy is not of this world, and he, is not even male or female. The reason that I say all this, is because I don’t actually believe in death either. There is just an end to the physical body, but we continue… Not a soul, not a mind, but an all encompassing knowledge. Methuselah showed me that as we reach out to find ourselves, we become more in tune with our non physical life force and how it connects to all other life force.
I think death is really just transition. We leave a bodily form and go into a state where we know all that has manifest.
Are we reborn? Not in a literal sense. We become a component in an intricate Web that brings into existence a physical sentient form of knowledge. Heaven is our beautiful earth full of life forms, Hell is the same Earth devoid of life. Our presence here in our bodies is as those who would help or destroy the earth. We pick our part to play and we reap the consequences of all interactions.
If I were to have my perfect Heaven on Earth, it would take the form of me being all knowing, all seeing and all controlling everything to remain loving and in equilibrium. That would tie in with your own feelings of having a God complex. I think it is a normal response to want all things to be perfect. The problem with that is that our vision is always different from that of another person’s vision. Our biggest challenge is to accept all that comes to us as just experience. And experience changes constantly. The ephemeral after life is without any form, expectation or construct. It is just an experience that changes, IMHO.
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Thank you Collette. I am going to need some time to respond fully to your vision, but for starters I have never experienced a spirit guide. The closest I can come to a guide of any kind is a strange encounter I had when I was 18 or so years old. I was in an all-night restaurant in Vancouver with a bunch of hippie friends, just hanging out avoiding the freezing rain. Suddenly in walked a very tall man, close to seven feet. He was bald, and dressed in a skirt-like robe and bare feet. A vest covered his back but hung open on his chest. His clothes did not seem to be wet.
He did not stop at the buffet-like counter, but came straight up to the booth I was sitting in. His eyes locked onto mine, and he looked inside me as no one had done before or since. I have no idea how long he looked into me but it seemed like hours. Friends later could not agree to between 2 to 5 minutes. When he broke our eye-lock he sadly said, “No, you are not ready yet.” Then he turned and walked out the door. No one moved for a moment, then someone got up and looked out the door. They could not see him anywhere, and he would not have been easy to miss.
That encounter changed my life. We sat and talked about what happened, and no one had quite the same story, except we all agreed he had to be a buddhist or a hindu monk. And that it was me he was focused on. But what he said some people said one thing, others said other things. A few heard what I heard.
I know my mind plays tricks on me, when I think back to that night over 50 years ago. Sometimes the memories are foggy, sometimes the memories are quite clear, like this time. But his words never change, and they set me off on a search to discover what he meant. I never did find out, and no one ever came back to check on me again, at least that I know of.
Sitting here, writing to you, I wish I had mentioned this tale to the Tibetan Buddhist rinpoche I studied with for awhile in the 80s, but I don’t think I ever thought of it then. Maybe he could have suggested something, I don’t know. But it was weird, and life-changing. And very mysterious!
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That was an amazing experience. Occasionally we do encounter such people. They look solid, seem to be like us, but say the weirdest things that leave us dumbfounded. I was once approached by a tall Norwegian fellow passanger on a Turkish fishing gullet. He asked what form I took in ancient Atlantis. He said his name was Stephen, and he was studying ancient Celtic language. He was fascinating, but like your large man, he just disappeared without a goodbye after our encounter. But he did convince me that I had been in Atlantis, and that I was of Norwegian stock (have no idea if I am) because he recognised me.
I think encounters like this enrichen our lives and open us up to all possibilities. Most humans would have dismissed your fellow and mine as ‘strange’ and probably needed some mental institution. But I see such people as having access to information beyond that which physical laws allow. These people can be good or bad in intention, but they have access to knowledge and perceptions that we can only dream about.
My guides have been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember. One clamped his hands over mine (I saw them) when my car skidded off the road and descended into a steep ravine. Somehow, the hands made sure that I could not turn the wheel which would have made the car roll. Instead I plummeted head forward ploughing down to the bottom. One car tyre went down and the whole vehicle was coated in mud, grass and leaves, but no other damage. I was 200 ft down and so many cars stopped and people came to the crest of the summit, that it looked like they thought I’d be dead. One man scrambled down as I opened my car door and got out. He was incredulous. He told me that my car became airborne as it left the road (hitting a foot high curb that I didn’t feel). He couldn’t believe that I was unhurt.
So guides are there, whether you see them or not. Our lives have purpose and our guides try very hard to help us find it.
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Weird. As I say, I have never experienced a “spirit” guide as such, but I have lots of stories where I could easily have died, and even one where radio stations in Winnipeg reported me dead in BC. It turned out to be someone who had my stolen ID in his possession when he died. This was before photo ID was mandatory.
But, dare I say it, spirits or guides do not play any part in my view of cosmology. Is that why I don’t see any? Who knows, who cares. We make it through life, or not, however we do, or don’t.
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rawgod … reading colette’s comment reminded me of something that I hadn’t thought about for a long time.
Energy is said to never die, right? Well, what if, after death, “our” energy became the “life-giving force” that “jump-started” a new human life? In other words, it became the impetus that triggered the zygote to begin its process of development. Of course there would be no carry-over of ideas/thoughts/philosophies or any of that. It would simply be the stimulant that begins the life process. (Note: it would not necessarily be limited just to our lineage, but I suppose it could be.)
Thoughts?
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Hi Nan, It is a simplified look at how I expect reincarnation to happen. I know what I experienced on my acid travels, but I have never been able to adequately describe it in English. I will say there is, in my opinion of my understanding (which hopefully shows part of my difficulties), nothing of ego or mind gets transferred, but there is a spiritual connection that allows for the transference of life-wisdom, if such a thing can be said to exist.
Definitely in my mind the energy of life does not die, but it does change. You explain it as going right into a zygote (not a criticism, just a note), so let us suppose that this is what happens, but not quite so quickly. Imagine the life-energy from a dead body separating, and then being absorbed into something like a swimming pool of other dead-energies. The wisdom or life-learning from the energy is then shared with all the energy in the pool, in a way that all the energy in the pools achieves a equal amount. Then a bit of that newly-changed energy breaks off and that is what enters the zygote, so like instead of a straight line it goes away from the straight around a bulge of some kind like a horseshoe shape, and then returns to the straight line after a short gap. The line then leads to the zygote.
Are you able to picture what I am trying to say. There is a continuity of learning, but it is not a continuity of anything earthly, such as ego. Depending on the energy from the dead being, the wisdom-bank can change for the better, stay more or less the same, or take a step backwards–as in the case of a Hitler or Trump.
But this is all experience-based speculation for me, yet a suggestion for you if you are willing to entertain it. I do not expect anyone to believe me, especially when I cannot even explain what it is I am trying to say. Every time I try I see problems, and the harder I try to correct the problems the more new problems I create. If I was making this up it would be easy to correct problems, but because I am trying to explain what I felt to be happening, without letting my imagination get involved, it seems like an impossibility.
Any comments are appreciated.
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I would concede that the “energy” may not be passed on immediately. In fact, I wasn’t really offering any specific timeline. It was just a general musing that came to me some years back.
This “after-death” stuff is fascinating. There are soooo many paths one can take … especially since no one has sent back any messages to confirm or deny. :-D
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Sweet stuff, Nan. The “no messages” really seems to support the idea that the end is the end, but yet so many people have past-life visions, including me–though they were not convincing, more like watching strange historical movies from a first-person perspective, and easily creditable to the power of suggestion.
I agree there are many possibilities, but yet all possibilities are on the side of a yes-afterlife side. Obviously, the no-afterlife side has no possibilities at all.
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This is certainly a possibility. There are many stories from people who receive organ transplants, that they feel somehow different and are attracted to things that they previously had no interest in or vise versa. The human body has a cellular structure and each water filled cell holds energy (mitochondria) and memory (a charged state). When another person’s charged cells interact with our own, the resulting combination will act with the wisdom of both. This too would be true for a Zygote.
For me, I feel much of the family traits are in me and they combine to form my physical appearance. Some of my basic physical emotional reactions can be attributed to direct genetic inheritance too. But there is an ephemeral component to my thoughts and interactions with the world that are totally different to those of my family. That is the energy component of conciousness. This can be seen in twins and siamese twins who have grown up conjoined. Their thoughts have some continuity, but they believe different things.
It is as though we have two forms, one physical and dependent of physical laws, and one that is just pure conciousness that explores the possibilities of everything.
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Keep it up, Colette, you may convince me yet, lol.
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You mention earlier in your response to Nan, if I am correct in my interpretation, that our life energy does not die upon physical death. The energy loses all physical ego, travels the collective pool of combined energy and conciousness to emerge with new insights, learning, experiences as it enters into a new zygote. If I am wrong here, please point it out.
For me, the ego, the personality, the thing that makes us who we think we are, is just an experience. How we think, feel, touch, see, taste and smell, are all just experiences and the knowing part is just our conciousness. Our physical body is just a constructed carrier. If we were a honey bee, our experiences would be different as dictated by the physical senses of a honey bee.
Every living thing will have a conciousness about its own form. It will see other forms as they manifest in physical casings (bodies) but it may not be able to appreciate all the experiences that form may have. When our physical body dies, it’s limited bandwidth of experiences changes.
If time were compressed, so that a lifetime became a day, we could perhaps appreciate that we as experiential conciousness, pop in and out of physical existence rather like small interstellar particles. We are a manifestation of conciousness. Time really does not exist, except in our own mind. If I were to clone me, and then stand next to myself, the me I created would be in a different time to myself, yet I can see myself, so time does not exist as a physical construct. It is a mental one.
You mention losing all ego, yet ego is our experience. To let ego go, will only create another because we are a result of our experience.
Death is not death of conciousness, but it is a change of experience. All we have, from the time we are conceived to the time our physical casing ages and dies is our experience. To accept that life experience, to love it and remember it is to take it with us into the mass conscious state (or collective pool) and it is that which forms our whole universe. As we add to conciousness, the physical realities grow too. Death for me means nothing more than taking my experiences back into the conscious creation of everything. Does that make sense?
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It makes a lot of sense, Colette, though I am not sure I am completely understanding some of the things you say, but that is very much the problem with the English language–there are concepts which just cannot be totally communicated because of a lack of preciseness in our vocabulary. Maybe, if we could use Sanskrit, which can be a very spiritual language, we might be a bit more precise. I would rather not speculate, but I hope that if I return to life on this earth I want to be born in an area where Sanskrit is being revived, just to find out…
Meanwhile it is hard to respond to individual items of what you wrote because each individual item leads of necessity to the next individual item and the next, making it a larger whole, where individual items disappear into that whole. Yes that is what I am talking about.
I love how you describe the life of the bee, because there is no way we can know what the bees consciousness is, or what any living being’s consciousness is, but yes I believe every living being has that consciousness, from the largest whale right down to the smallest virus. And viruses demonstrate your idea of compressed time, they live extremely short lives, and are continually dying almost as soon as they become alive. If you, Colette, can allow for viruses and bacteria to being the building blocks of life, then their consciousnesses, while extremely tiny and short-lived, still start the upward chain. If nothing else they are learning how to be alive, and yearning to stay alive. Obviously we cannot put ourselves into the consciousness of a being so small it takes a microscope to see it, yet through the connections I call spiritual I can at least conceive that they do have consciousness, because all living things have it.
Or is this just anthrpomorphizing at it’s most basic level? I don’t think so, but that doesn’t make me right. Maybe christians are right that humans have dominion over all other living plants and creatures, but I sure as hell hope not! I prefer to share my world, not own it.
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IMO, this — Or is this just anthrpomorphizing at it’s most basic level? — is the most fundamental and probing question you could ask.
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Hi, Nan, somehow this comment of yours got out of the timeline on my post, being listed before a comment I had made earlier, but I only noticed that because I was reviewing all the answers I had received to the original “what if” question, and its placement jarred my brain.
But that aside, the question you highlight is a very important question, not just in this discussion, but in all of biological science. Thank you for pointing that out. I thought it was a throw-away question, something to inspire a further bit of discussion, but you gave it more importance, and I thank you.
I have always insisted that we cannot judge any form or being of life by our human ideas of life.To understand a bee, we must be the bee. To understand a virus, we must be the virus. And, since we cannot be anything other than human, it leads us in two directions: 1) we can only really understand what it means to be human, which can be expanded to say we can only really understand what it means to be ourselves, as opposed to being someone else; and 2) it is impossible to understand what it is to be a non-human, no matter what science can tell us about the physical properties of being a bee.
Humans love to think they are the only beings who can mentate, or think. Whales and some other primates have already proved us wrong on that thought. Now even the lowly octopus is proving it can think, as of the last video I saw on beings capable of amazing feats of sentience. Living with cats I can see how they think on what appear to be higher levels of thought. I see them almost everyday thinking their way out of their problems without tial and error learning. A situation presents itself, they look at it–maybe from a few different physical angles–and then they solve the problem on their first try, or maybe the second. This is a sign of sentience if ever I saw one.
Yet, the person down the street who hates cats, doesn’t even believe cats have individual personalities. If only they would take the time to look…
Thanks, again, Nan. You are a genius!
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GENIUS???!?! Hardly. But thanks. 😍
Enjoyed your response. Most definitely agree that other beings abiding on this planet show signs of sentience. And it’s fascinating! I often wish I had looked at life a bit differently in my younger days and had walked some of the more complex paths of learning. It’s not that it’s impossible now, but the brain’s learning pathways tend to get a bit stubborn as we age. (I speak from experience. 😊)
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I know how you feel. I was 54 when I went back to university to get my Social Work bachelor. By the time I finished 3 years later I could not remember anything I learned. If I had had to take a final exam I would never have passed it. From then to retirement I was supposed to update yearly, and it wasn’t easy to come up with good reasons not to do my updating, but I could not remember anything I learned when I left the classroom the same day. Old age has hit me hard, and I’m really not that old. But learning, and retaining, seems almost impossible.
But though you feel the way you do, I see you as a very smart woman who can think her way out of a brown paper bag, and that is genius to me.
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Crows are also excellent at problem solving. I remember seeing a video of a crow using a a piece of wire to get a piece of food out of a long neck bottle by skewering it – after bending the wire so it would grab the food. Possible it was faked but I had a pet crow long ago and they are very intelligent creatures.
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They are, I just did not have time and memory for everyone. The more we study “animals,” the more we learn how intelligent they can be. Except the poor monkey, who will starve to death holding a piece of food that he cannot extract from a hiding place. But then, I blame that more on the unintelligent designer of the experiment, who could watch the monkey hold on to the food until it died…
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There are animals that are “programmed” to not let go. I figure the monkey, because of its nature to jump from branch to branch, much like squirrels, would have a “lock” on its grasp. The squirrel of course uses its teeth to hang on to a nut. If memory serves from my days as a field naturalist, the osprey must know not to grasp too big a fish when it dives below the water after prey because it cannot disengage so the fish would drag it under and drown it. Once in the air however, it can let go of the fish which it often does, to relocate it head first and properly balanced so it can rise and fly with the least wind resistance. It also has to be able to let go when a “robber baron” bald eagle arrives on the scene.
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Gotta love nature!
Gotta hate humans! (Or at least certain kinds…)
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I was “trolling” through your comments, Nan’s and Collette’s and thinking about how great the gap is between what I was reading here and the particular way I read “Life.” Experiences, ego, thoughts on omnipotence, thoughts on how to engage life outside the body. It’s been interesting reading.
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I think so too.
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As the old saying goes — to each his own … whatever works. 😍
We’re all different and that’s what help make “life” interesting. N’est pas?
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Mais, oui. And “may we” all celebrate les differences.
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Now, the problem I have (my problem, not yours) with what you say is with the word experience, especially when you add the senses. The senses are physical, and to me are not really a part of spiritual–energy–life. So I am not sure I understand what you are saying when you send experience with the life-energy. (I am sorry if I am confusing what you are saying, or confusing what I am trying to say. And I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, because it is not a big deal, but I do want to let you try to see what is going on in my mind.)
And that, basically, is what does life-learning mean? What are the important things we learn in life that we can take with us to the energy pool? What is it we can learn that is ultimately positive and will help us improve the state of life on earth?
How big are the memory pools? Do they comprise a billion life-energies? Or just 20? Or is there only 1 life-pool for all living beings. In a way these are ridiculous questions, probably only meaningful to a being still living on earth, and meaningless in the extended cosmos. Whatever is, or isn’t, is, or isn’t. Our thinking or questioning isn’t going to change anything. But yet it is being human, for whatever that is worth.
Probably all I am doing is making you think I am insane, but since I probably am insane, that’s okay too.
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I get what you are saying. These are difficult questions you are posing, rawgod. I think actually, that our senses can be spiritual or at least help to experience the feelings of spirituality. Perhaps that is a meaningless statement but I’ll try to explain.
I was born to strict Catholic parents and so they indoctrinated in the dogma of that faith. It was something that I never adopted even at an early age but I went through the motions, repeating the Latin, kneeling when required, and so on. But that didn’t have the same effect on me as hearing the common hum of people energy in the church. I was fascinated watching the human dynamics of people. I used to watch candles flicker, played with the light of sunbeams through stained glass windows and allowed myself to bounce the after images of lights around the church. I loved the smell of frankincense combined with stacte, and onycha, and galbanum. The cleansing of the space was more real than the symbology of the priest swinging the censer.
These sensory experiences were mine, and they meant far more to me than any dogma. Even as a child, I quickly formed the opinion that at best, the Bible was a written metaphor for people to follow the experiences of someone else.
Later my senses questioned everything. When I was 10 years old, I knew that caterpillars metamorphosed into butterflies or moths, but books never fully described what happened inside the chrysalis. I had fed a furry caterpillar until it pupated, and I knew (from my books) that it would turn into a Tiger Moth. But that was not good enough for me. Knowing that it would likely kill my ‘pet,’ I took a sharp pair of nail scissors and cut a slit in the Chrysalis casing about two months into the pupation cycle. I expected to see a sort of part Caterpillar, part Moth hybrid. But what I found was a soup of yellow liquid with no form whatsoever.
That stuck with me as being a building block of life. I believed from that point onwards, that life is representational in its forms, but that the life itself has no form.
From all of this long winded diatribe, what I am trying to say is that the senses are different in different species and all life forms experience the energy of life in different ways. Why? because it gives solid manifestation to an energy that is not but that holds the knowledge of everything.
That could mean that we are the playthings of an omnipotence or it could mean that we are the growth and development of an omnipotence. Either way, our own learning inside the human manifestation is only one aspect of the animalia component of omnipotent energy. That we can even comprehend the possibility of all life has intelligence or at least sentience, is a huge step in that learning.
I became Vegan four years ago, primarily because I became acutely aware of animal suffering, but also as a cleansing for my own body and awareness. It has changed my perceptions and indeed my attitudes to other life forms. I might still have the reaction of slapping away the biting mosquito, but I also know that there is payback for taking that life, no matter how small, because it is part of the whole and just because I cannot sense that loss to the energetic pool in a physical sense, I can on a psychic level.
I am learning to communicate non verbally with other animals using images and patterns. I am still very new at this and I pick up only broadbrush emotions but I believe that it gets better with practice.
I suppose that all of my learning in human form will take me to another level of understanding of the omnipotent energy. I think it is important to cherish every tiny bit of progress and not be too hard on myself when I do not succeed sometimes.
Your questions are not ridiculous, but actually really important. Many of us think that our life must be one of good deeds and service to others, using selfless principles. We bash our ego as being the antithesis of that goal, but really our ego is also how we measure our success. If an ego were not part of the equation of life, we would not have one. Our mission is to use it wisely… That is the lesson and we can only know if we have done well by assessing our own individual experiences. We are all our own judge and jury. We answer to our own conciousness.
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Thank you. I fear, but do not know, we are using ego differently, but I want to make some other comments first and ego might have to wait for another time.
I need to start by saying how wonderfully surprised I am by the depth of your thoughts (and a few other people as well). I have not read all that much of your blog, but I have read many of your comments and replies and I did not see the depths you are showing me now. Was I blind? I normally pick up on things like this fairly quickly, yet I somehow missed you completely My apologies, my friend.
The playthings of omnipotence: I remember having such discussions in high school in the early 60s, and a group of us rejected the idea completely. First the being(s) would have to be highly advanced compared to us, yet they would have to have a sense of humour somewhat equivalent to some nine year-old boys, and a few six year-old girls. That kind of sick humour did not seem consistent with advanced beings. Of course, there are bad actors in every group, but I don’t think that point was argued at that time.
As for a growth of omnipotence, we didn’t see that as a requirement. It turned into a religious debate from there, OT god versus NT god and so on, believer vs. non-believer, etc. None of us were “atheists” yet, I don’t think, but some of us were agnostics. Still, the majority voted against being ruled by a superbeing (my word).
But what the results would have been for us if we even thought about all living beings having consciousness at that point in our growth, I think we would have rejected that idea then–but now it is a central belief in my philosophy, and has been for many years.
I was never Vegan, but I did go vegetarian for a year or so in my 30s, but it didn’t stick. Not because I needed meat (though what broke me was the smell of frying bacon), but because I realized that as long as I was eating natural foods, I was causing death. Fruits and nuts were not directly causing death, but just about everything else was and does. We living beings live mostly off of other living beings, especially animals. I try not to eat anything wild, and I am well aware of the number of things that were killed to help keep me sustained, but I do not judge anyone for eating things that are grown as food if that is their choice.
But, as for killing for irritation, of revenge, I choose not to do so. If a mosquito does bite me, and I am aware of it, I strike with one finger about 1/2 an inch behind the poor little girl. The ripple of the skin pulls the proboscis out of my skin, and scares the insect into flying away as fast as possible. That is my conscious choice. I have even taught my partner that if she sees a bug in the house, we capture it and remove it outside where it can continue to live.
Non-verbal communication is good if you can do it. I often succeed by opening my mind to whatever life is around me, though I am losing that talent as I grow older. I’m not sure what the cause is, calcification of certain areas of the brain I suppose, but I do not feel as much as I used to. I miss those feelings.
Again you talk about omnipotent energy, my mind does not go in that direction–cannot go in that direction. Omnipotence robs us of any meaning or purpose to our lives. If someone already knows everything, there is no reason for us to exist. I choose to believe that we are working our way there, bit by bit. I have no idea what our ultimate meaning or purpose might be, what the ultimate meaning or purpose of life might be, but I think one of our purposes is to discover that ultimate. I used to think, in my god-complex days, I knew what that ultimate was. Now for myself I realize it still has to be discovered. We are too far away from it to be able to even imagine what it might be, or why. The journey has only just begun, about 4.5 billion years ago. If life survives, with or without humans (We seem to be hell-bent on killing ourselves and our whole planet too!), I think it will be billions upon billions of years before life gets figured out.
But that is my own opinion…
Ego, yeah, another day, perhaps.
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Thank you. I fear, but do not know, we are using ego differently, but I want to make some other comments first and ego might have to wait for another time.
I need to start by saying how wonderfully surprised I am by the depth of your thoughts (and a few other people as well). I have not read all that much of your blog, but I have read many of your comments and replies and I did not see the depths you are showing me now. Was I blind? I normally pick up on things like this fairly quickly, yet I somehow missed you completely My apologies, my friend.
The playthings of omnipotence: I remember having such discussions in high school in the early 60s, and a group of us rejected the idea completely. First the being(s) would have to be highly advanced compared to us, yet they would have to have a sense of humour somewhat equivalent to some nine year-old boys, and a few six year-old girls. That kind of sick humour did not seem consistent with advanced beings. Of course, there are bad actors in every group, but I don’t think that point was argued at that time.
As for a growth of omnipotence, we didn’t see that as a requirement. It turned into a religious debate from there, OT god versus NT god and so on, believer vs. non-believer, etc. None of us were “atheists” yet, I don’t think, but some of us were agnostics. Still, the majority voted against being ruled by a superbeing (my word).
But what the results would have been for us if we even thought about all living beings having consciousness at that point in our growth, I think we would have rejected that idea then–but now it is a central belief in my philosophy, and has been for many years.
I was never Vegan, but I did go vegetarian for a year or so in my 30s, but it didn’t stick. Not because I needed meat (though what broke me was the smell of frying bacon), but because I realized that as long as I was eating natural foods, I was causing death. Fruits and nuts were not directly causing death, but just about everything else was and does. We living beings live mostly off of other living beings, especially animals. I try not to eat anything wild, and I am well aware of the number of things that were killed to help keep me sustained, but I do not judge anyone for eating things that are grown as food if that is their choice.
But, as for killing for irritation, of revenge, I choose not to do so. If a mosquito does bite me, and I am aware of it, I strike with one finger about 1/2 an inch behind the poor little girl. The ripple of the skin pulls the proboscis out of my skin, and scares the insect into flying away as fast as possible. That is my conscious choice. I have even taught my partner that if she sees a bug in the house, we capture it and remove it outside where it can continue to live.
Non-verbal communication is good if you can do it. I often succeed by opening my mind to whatever life is around me, though I am losing that talent as I grow older. I’m not sure what the cause is, calcification of certain areas of the brain I suppose, but I do not feel as much as I used to. I miss those feelings.
Again you talk about omnipotent energy, my mind does not go in that direction–cannot go in that direction. Omnipotence robs us of any meaning or purpose to our lives. If someone already knows everything, there is no reason for us to exist. I choose to believe that we are working our way there, bit by bit. I have no idea what our ultimate meaning or purpose might be, what the ultimate meaning or purpose of life might be, but I think one of our purposes is to discover that ultimate. I used to think, in my god-complex days, I knew what that ultimate was. Now for myself I realize it still has to be discovered. We are too far away from it to be able to even imagine what it might be, or why. The journey has only just begun, about 4.5 billion years ago. If life survives, with or without humans (We seem to be hell-bent on killing ourselves and our whole planet too!), I think it will be billions upon billions of years before life gets figured out.
But that is my own opinion…
Ego, yeah, another day, perhaps.
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Maybe we will never know the exact answer to life’s biggest questions. As for my blog, (sad little thing that it is), it began as a project to show some of the things that I had learned and I was trying to stay scientifically sound. But as soon as one starts contemplating those bigger questions of finding our own resonance or vibration of being, one finds that woo, woo land doesn’t provide adequate answers and the search becomes much deeper. I find my ego getting in the way. Yes, my ego is important in some way to me, but it has no place in imparting information to others. If I cannot find peer reviewed research (in at least a few people agree on the information offered), then I feel inadequate for writing on a subject. Maybe that is why you have missed my deeper thoughts. I don’t normally share them in such detail. It indicates that your question is of such relevance, that it is impossible for anyone to give a polished answer.
And you are right, Vegan ism is not without pain to plants. I do not think that we can live on air and water alone, so for now it is my way to avoid the factory farmed animal cruelty. By the way, I love your approach to mosquitos, I shall try it.
I have a propensity for saving bees from Drowning, scooping them up in my hands. They almost never sting, but a few weeks ago, a tiny wild bee got trapped inbetween my fingers as the water ran away, and it sunk its stinger into my finger. I carried it, still stinging to the side of the pool where I gently pulled the stinger out of me, keeping the bee in tact. The bee huffily flew off seconds later. But this tiny 5mm bee had discharged its whole venom sack into me. My finger swelled up like a balloon and I had to take several antihistamines to stop it getting worse. The swelling coursed into my hand which took three weeks to go back to normal. These bees are not aggressive, in fact they will often sit on my hand for ages drying their wings after being rescued. Will I scoop another out to save it? Absolutely.
I must read more of your posts. Most interesting. ☺️
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Bee stings can be fatal, though the bee may not mean it to be, but a sting is a sting. Where I live way up in northern Canada we do not even see bees anymore, though many farmers used to keep them to service their crops and make honey. Most of those bees died en masse from the bee disease that covered a lot of North America, and it was too costly to replace them. I guess we probably have some wild bees around, but I personally do not see them anymore. I am sorry that the wild bee caused you such pain and suffering, but he was obviously scared. Why is it that you find so many drowning? I cannot think of ever seeing one in water.
Mosquitoes we have in droves, but they only attack me as a last resort. They pick mostly on my white-skinned girlfriend. Her blood they find very tasty. Still, I try not to kill them, they are people too. Being Metis, my skin is a soft reddish-white. Some people see me as white, others see me as red. Mostly, though, they see me as me, which is the way I like it.
When you talk of the energy you see as omnipotence, do you mean god-like? That is how I hear it. And I also hear your thoughts on ego and peer-review as very curious. While I am not the exact opposite, I allow my mind to go wherever it wants. Things I think are often considered as me-against-the-world. I see that situation as journeying in new directions, and I go with it as far as it will take me. For me it is all about imagination, except for my dirty little not-so-secret travels in my brain under LSD as a young person that took me into a dimension or reality few people get to go to. I know or know of many people who took the new-life option I was given, but I was too dumb to do that. I had to bring my experiences back to this world, and fight to understand them for years and even decades. If you were to start my blog from the start, and work your way towards the present, you might get a better picture than starting elsewhere or randomizing. Eventually the sequence does break down, but if you can follow it you might have the background to some of the things I try to say. A few times I got away from the spiritual, or the life-defining, but now I try to avoid physical life for the esoteric. I have no idea if I am succeeding…
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The bees I refer to, reside in Thailand, just one of many species that range from the mosquito sized sweat bees up to the humongous black bees almost 1-1/2 inches long. The bees are always searching for water and will hover near swimming pools and ponds. Because they are so small, a sudden gust of wind will easily blow them into the pools. They are usually grateful for being lifted out and will sit happily on my finger drying themselves until ready to fly away. I have rescued hornets too, but tend to use a branch as hornets tend to be a bit more sting happy.
I think a lot of bees have disappeared. Pesticide and herbicide use has weakened them so that their immune defences cannot cope with viruses. They also lose navigation skills due to the toxins. I revived hundreds of honey bees in Spain one winter. They lost their way and ended up on the cold side of a mountain. Bees die at below a temperature of 13.5°C so I picked up the comatose bodies, put them into boxes and warmed them with an electric hairdryer. It only too a few minutes. Believe it or not, the one’s that revived first, went and fed collected Pollen from sacs by mouth to the bees that were struggling. I have never seen such behaviour before.
I released them all in sunshine in line of sight of the hives they came from. All but about 10 survived.
I, like your girlfriend, seem to be prone to mosquito bites. I use a combination of coconut oil, tea tree oil and a bit of tiger balm as an effective repellent. I do rather smell strong though… very medicine like. As a Metis Indian, do you have any local Metis remedies? I find in most areas of the world, the traditional remedies are often more effective than the commercial ones.
Omnipotence might have been the wrong word to describe a ‘sentience’ created by the collective intelligence and learning of life forms. I was not referring to a ‘God’ but rather combined consciousness.
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My apologies. Omnipotence is not a word I like very much. Too much baggage attached to it.
I have to start by by thanking you on behalf of the bees (and hornets, etc.) for having such compassion for them. You obviously have a connection to them that they can feel, and trust.
Is 13.5 C a temperature common to all bees? Our average temperature during our at least 4 or 5 months of winter would be far under that, probably close to 0, or minus temperatures, with usually at least one week per year reaching an average minus 40. This cannot be good for any kind of insects, yet we have them every summer.
Unfortunately, though I am Metis, I was brought up white, as my Metis father hated his own people, so I don’t have much of a background in natural medicines, but I can ask around. Gail is very interested in your formula for your mosquito repellent. She asks what %s you use, if you have a set amount?
The only two things I know about mosquitoes is they are attracted to perfume, and the colour yellow. i happen to think, though, indigenous people have something in their blood as a natural repellent. Probably some herb or food item that they eat, though that is just a guess. If Gail attracts 10 mosquitoes, I might attract one, while someone with more native blood than I will only occasionally attract one.Maybe it is in the skin…
Cosmic consciouness is an idea I sttuggle with. While it is inherently a part of life, being the consciousness of the pools of the spirits of dead beings from which new lives are drawn, it wasn’t my experience that it could affect the “zeitgeist” of the world, if I may call it that. Yet something does seem to create a zeitgeist, as in right now the populist movements around the world seem to be transcendent right now, to my great dismay. I is like, if there is a cosmic consciouness, how did it get going in the wrong direction? That should not be possible!
Enough for now. More later, I hope. I am apprecoating this conversation very much.
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Yes, all bees will die quickly below 13.5°C. In the wild, the Queens will go underground and hibernate, producing a new brood in the spring that gives her lots of workers to create new hives. Vegans tend to avoid honey as a product because commercial hives Rob the bees of most of the honey (replacing it with low grade ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup) thus weakening the bees. Queens in commercial hives have their wings clipped or torn off by the bee keeper. This stops her leaving the hive with half the bees to create new hives. Worker bees will feed different substance (including Royal Jelly) to developing grubs to turn them into new queen’s or into drones. Two Queens cannot be in place so the weaker one will be killed by the workers. It is probably the system that inspired communism as the Queen’s only importance is to lay eggs, but she is pampered and consoled by an entourage of handmaiden bees.
Commercial hives replace the Queens with new stock every year, killing the old. They also try to destroy any grubs being tended for Royal status, to stop the bees swarming. I put a few videos about bees on my post ‘Bee All, End All.’ They are fascinating creatures.
It is such a shame that you never got any education in Metis traditions. I have been to a few shamanic sessions in the past. I even smoked a shared peace pipe (as a non smoker, that made me cough a bit). The Native ways and traditions have been squashed out of many tribes with Christian dogma and beatings. Sadly, I see many tribes now operating cigarette and booze running, or gambling casinos. They are a far cry from once proud nations of people. When I was a youngster, I used to read romantic novels about the old Indian native ways… It was what made me emigrate to Canada. I have citizenship there in Canada, but currently live back in the UK with my husband of 14 years.
As far as my formula for insect repellent. I just take ordinary coconut oil (used for cooking, nothing purified or expensive). I run a thin layer onto my skin rubbing it in. Then I take just a two or three drops of tea tree oil and rub it in all over the top of the area I have just done with coconut oil. If the mosquitos are particularly voracious, I will follow that with a dab of tiger balm or some other menthol type of rub. Be careful to cover everybit of bare skin… Mosquitos will find the uncovered bit. As far as clothing goes I usually just add a few drops of water to a drop of Tea tree oil in my palm and rub it into the palms then quickly wipe it over my clothing where mosquitoes can bite through.
Out here in Thailand, I use a really old remedy that is almost impossible to buy now, and quite expensive because as far as I know it is hand made. It is made from menthol and a variety of herbs and spices. It has the heat of tiger balm, but stronger. It is used both as a repellant and a cure for bites (very soothing and reduces swelling). Also good as muscle rub and smelling salts type of thing. It is called ‘Tai Meng’. I think it is available on the Internet, but at a much inflated price.
When I was in Canada, I used to buy Avon ‘Skin So Soft’ because it smelled nice and was pretty effective as a mosquito repellent too.
Unfortunately DEET, the commercial repellent is disgusting and harmful. Personally, I have never found it to be very effective on its own.
By the way, pure Tea Tree Oil applied directly to toe nails once per day, will cure nail fungus (the stuff that makes nails thick and yellow) and keep it away.
As far as the cosmic conciousness and why it isn’t all good? That is a question that puzzles me too. I am struggling right now, even in my own relationship, because I see a great polarity occurring. This is perhaps most noticeable in governmental institutions across the globe. The Trump administration is indicative of the negative forces of what I see as destruction of life.
I cannot answer why this is happening. I have mentioned it to people to ask if they see this polarisation in their family groups? Unfortunately, most people do not see it at all. One person suggested that I had issues and should go for counselling. I think part of the polarisation is due to this sort of social blindness to what is happening. I feel things so strongly, but I usually bite my tongue and keep it to myself.
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I will not condemn you for biting your tongue, but it is not healthy. I ended up with ulcerative colitis of the whole large bowel, and now live without a colon. I never noticed it coming, and the doctors were not able to diagnose it due to irregular symptoms.
How long have you been in Thailand? You do get around. Except for one short trip to Poland in 1986 to visit the town my mother was born in, and a vacation I won to Cuba, I have not really travelled. And now with no colon it is not advised.
Besides Canada, Spain, the UK, and now Thailand, where else have you been?
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It sounds as though you live quite far North in Canada. Airports are not on your doorstep so that makes travel very expensive for you. But I would expect that your natural surroundings beyond the town are at least still supportive of wildlife like bear, moose, beaver, wolves, etc. That is a place of energy and life.
I spend 3 months in Thailand. It is a trip that will end on Sunday. I have also seen large parts of the world from travelling with my husband on cruise ships. That makes me sound grandiose and I am anything but. I am as simple as it gets, mend my clothes and eat without wasting food (food waste is a crime). I don’t wear jewelry but do have a few costume pieces for the odd appropriate situation. Unlike most women, I do not wear fashion shoes. I say all that because cruise boats are not really my style. To be fair to my husband, he picks older, small vessels at cut rate prices. I have visited most continents including the high Arctic (Nyalesund in Svalbard) and got as far South as Ushuaia in Patagonia. I have not been to Cuba or Poland, so you have seen places that I haven’t. Basically, I have been everywhere nearly that has an oceanic coastline. I don’t want to list them because it sounds like bragging. It gives me great awareness of the world and the people therein. But what it does more than that, is make the case for all people who are not the power mongers, being connected with similar needs and values. People in other continents are not evil, their politics are not war like… Only their leaders are. I really do not see the need for war on any level. The people who instigate it are not fully human in the way I would expect. I love the fact that I have had the opportunity to see (first hand) so many things. Just yesterday, I spotted my first Hornbill (bird). These prehistoric looking birds are disappearing, most now endangered to the point of extinction. It is sad that I also learned that protections are not put in place. The island where I currently am, is getting a lot of new hotels and resorts (I am in a very simple and more traditional concrete hut with a fan to cool, not air conditioning). Apparently the construction workers have been shooting the Hornbill’s (about the size of a large Turkey). They don’t earn much, so will hunt anything as a meal. Bat’s have disappeared for the same reason. Thais hunt them and small lizards with sling shots. The once numerous Tokay (a giant Gecko) has all but disappeared. But I digress…
No, biting my tongue is sometimes very frustrating.
I am sorry to hear of your colitis and removal of your colon. A difficult situation for you. Colitis is not good. I used to suffer a lot of digestive problems but I am now gluten free and vegan and have no problems as long as I stay away from highly processed stuff.
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Can you do that, on cruise ships? I guess you can or you wouldn’t be there. Gail’s parents do a lot of cruising, but I think they take the big floating city ships. I saw some in Saint John harbour back in 2000 or so. As I stood on the dock and looked up, they pretty much blocked 1/2 the sky. Her parents aren’t fashionable, but they are lorders, lording it over everyone they see in their natural states, if you know what I mean. They aren’t at all religious, but they are certainly godly.
I am glad to hear being Vegan helped calm your bowels. I was vegetarian without a colon, and that did not work at all for me. But I at least was able to cut all beef out of my life. My body will not digest it properly, and I don’t miss it at all. Neither does Gail.
The hornbill is almost extinct, I never heard that. Are they native to southeast Asia? I’m not up on listed birds and such, we don’t have many up in northern Canada that I know of. Everything seems so hardy up here, though I know wolves and grizzlies are not as plentiful as they once were. l’m about 100 kms away from a herd of wild bison, and they are making a slow comeback. They and a small herd of wild horses live on a reservation where they are protected. We will never see a million at a time like used to roam the plains, but at least they are not extinct, like we were taught in school. Given a chance, they will at least survive a while longer. We will have to talk more, I am really enjoying learning about you. I think we could be great friends.
Just by the bye, do you happen to wear make-up? Just curious…
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Yes, it is possible to order special meals on cruise ships. I do my best trying to order healthy stuff and stay away from the cakes and rubbish as much as I can.
Hornbill’s are native to South East Asia and tend to be in India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, but they are disappearing fast mainly from habitat loss.
It’s great that Bison herds are making a small recovery and I am pleased to hear about the wild horses too.
In Britain, there is a Rewilding project underway. Beaver have been reintroduced fairly successfully in one area. Wild boar, Lynx and Wildcat and wolves are on the cards too, but meeting a lot of resistance from farmers for obvious reasons. Our silly government is culling all the badgers to control Bovine TB, which is a criminal thing to do… So far 70,000 have been killed with little to no evidence that it has changed much for the dairy farms.
I am against that Cull and cruel activities like fox hunting.
No, I don’t wear makeup. I would probably look better with it, but I actually don’t really see the point of it… I just don’t know who I am trying to fool with it. Besides, I wear glasses and pretty out of focus without them. I would have to put makeup on by feel rather than by sight. Might be a disaterous effect, LOL. I don’t dye my hair either. I am lucky that my long hair looks more blond than grey, but that can depend on the light. I usually wear it in a long braid.
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Tell your husband he is a lucky man, if he doesn’t already know that, which he should. Most guys don’t hide behind make-up, and I hate that they expect women to do so for them. No make-up, long hair, my idea of a real woman. I probably get that taste from my mother, though I did not get to know her well, she died odf cancer when I was eight. But she never wore make-up, and her hair hung to her bum. I remember her bawling her eyes out for hours the morning she got out of bed, and her hair did not get out with her. I think that caused her death, she did not last long after. I guess I’ve been trying to replace her ever since in some way, long hair and a clean face just look so good to me.
I have to say I am aghast at the badger situation. When is humankind going to learn Nature takes care of its own. But cows no longer belong to nature, they belong to man, and men have to protect their property, no matter the cost. I am too sick to even write on this subject!
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My husband does not like makeup either (fortunately for me) LOL. My hair doesn’t go longer than my waist, probably because I keep trimming it, but it is very fine, so easily breaks on the ends if I don’t. If you look at my icon, that is the back view of me.
I am so sorry that you lost your Mom so young. That must have been hard.
If you like long hair on women, do you also like it on men? I think long hair looks good on some men. My husband has lost most of his hair, and the bit that he has left, he tends to want to cut very short as it is wavy (and he feels it is unruly).
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Thanks for ghe kind thoughts, however they are unnecessary. It wasn’t easy, for sure, but it wasn’t hard either. It was what it was, even though I hate that phrase. It was life, and one has to live with the hand one is given. It was all I knew.
My hair hangs down my back, and has since 1965. It used to get cut about every 10 years, but I cannot remember my last trim even. It no longer grows as long as it used to, but it keeps me happy. It is a mite thinner than it used to be, and I have some gray hairs esp. at the temples, but this is where my aboriginal blood really comes in: My head hair is still a healthy colour, though my facial hair is extremely gray. If I use Just for Men, which Gail prefers because she is 17 years my junior and likes me to look younger, I can pass for in my 40s. Sometimes I oblige her, esp when I am feeling healthy and energetic, but lately I prefer to look my age, because I do not have the energy of a young man anymore. There is a small picture of me at rawgod.tripod.com, if you can get there. Pay no attention to the website, it does not work well anymore. But it was taken in my 40s, and I pretty much look the same now, except the facial hair colour.
I still do not understand computers. My picture shows up on a few Word Press blogs, but not many. Why not on all? I’ll never know…
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You look kind. Some websites pick up a gravatar image… I think I have two different ones and it depends on how I register for a website, as to which one is picked up.
I did a little video for a girl working for a wildlife Trust three years ago. I take a terrible photo, and seem to have myopia on this video as I am squinting in the light. I took my glasses off so that the light wouldn’t glare off them. Anyway, it gives you an idea of me. The website that I was promoting no longer exists, but I absolutely love that elephant sanctuary.
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Again, thank you for the kind words. I will have to wait till I get to my desktop computer later, that link does not work on my tablet. For now, it is 7:34 in the morning, and I need some sleep. I will try to shut up for now, but I love talking to you. I have no idea what time it is in Thailand, so I’ll just say, “Till later, Colette. Good morning.”
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Good night rawgod. It is 21:38 pm here. Sleep well. I am off to bed soon too. ☺️
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10.28. Three hours of pretty good sleep. Happy Friday to you.
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And to you… I always have to get my 8 hrs worth of kip. Have a great day!
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Dick laid in bed struggling to breathe. He had been laying in bed for the last month as he struggled with liver cancer, which had spread through out most of his body. The doctors said he would die at any moment. He spent this last month pondering the question of life and death. What was the meaning of his 80 years on earth? Where would he go from here? Is there a life after? Heaven/hell? Reincarnation? He thought he wouldn’t mind being reborn as a dog to wealthy people. He wouldn’t have to speak and just understand the basic commands. Food, water, shelter, companionship would be given freely and all he needed to do was ‘be a dog’ and maybe sniff out other dogs pee and have humans bag his shit. How cool would that be?
But then he thought that would be boring as hell. He’s seen dogs just laying around the house waiting for their owner to finally come home. Nope. No dog existence for Dick.
Maybe there’s a Heaven or Hell? A place to go to spend an eternity being joyfully blissful or eternally suffering in fire. Dick couldn’t even wrap his head around such a place. He had seen no evidence that such places existed, only written about in books by people with vivid imaginations. Dick decided to let that theory go.
What if, as the sages and yogis say, we return to Source. To the one. A place where we can choose another life here on earth to experience. Dick thought he might like to try being a mosquito. He would fly around, suck peoples blood, maybe give them malaria and then fly off laughing like crazy looking for the next target. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Dick got serious and sad. What if this life is all there is? While he was alive and happy and working hard and engaged with others, that was his Heaven. When he sat and moped and became depressed and stagnant living too much in his own head, that was his hell. Maybe this life contains everything he needed. The ups, the downs, the struggles, sickness, love, hate, emotions, blue skies and wind swept freezing snow was all he would ever experience. The eternity he sought was contained in each moment. Each moment, breath, heart beat is an eternity to be experienced and let go.
Dick smiled, took a deep inhale, then exhaled completely and let go of the eternal moment he called Dicks Life.
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Thanks, Eric. In a way that is a good way yo look at life, living each moment to its fullest. But how many people take the time to do that? When we are young we are too busy living to even realize we are alive. Ask a young person what life is, and you will get all kinds of answers–not one will actually be on what life is, only on what they can do.
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I’m guessing that at the end, when the body is nearing death and the mind scans it’s memory or what’s left of memory, for the answer to “What the hell was that about?” is when you really can really get still and sit with your life. When you’re running through the maze you’re too busy trying to figure out how to best manage and worry and fret to stop and ponder.
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That is how our society teaches us to be. If you don’t take time to think about things, keeping faith is the easy solution. Then once you reach near the end, you are too worried about what might be about to happen that you don’t want to think about it. But you will, if you get enough time. Surprise!
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Ha! Surprise indeed. Yes, there’s truth in what you say. It’s a rare man who will walk alone into the desert when his time is nearly up. Reminds of a scene from the movie Little Big Man. I’ll see if I can find it. https://youtu.be/93PBNHXXWWs
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Yes, I remember that scene, Chief George played it up beautifully. Something no white man could ever have done. He had Dustin Hoffman believing he was really dead.
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One theory amongst the new ager community, is that in the soup of mass conciousness, we have knowing, but have no feelings or emotions. We take a physical form in life to perceive a dynamic, interactive, but independent form. As some artificial intelligence researchers currently contend, our physical existence is actually a virtual experience built on a mathematical matrix.
We really don’t know ourselves very well yet. I would say that human knowledge of existence or why we exist, is limited by our own intelligence which is still very much in its infancy.
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I think we know ourselves too well, as we are, and therefore find it hard to imagine being anything else. Imagination has always been one of my strengths. I am much more a thinker than a doer. And being a spiritual thinker is not a profitable situation, which is okay for me, for I hate the idea of money. I am happiest when I am broke.
As for new age thought, that does not attract me much, though I have seen believers work some mighty weird msgic. The very short time I spent in the soup I did not know anything except life, and I could use the word feel in the sense of spiritual feelings, but senses and emotions were not as on earth. Except awe. Whether you call awe a feeling or an emotion, I have never encountered anything as beautiful as what I experienced those journeys to the soup. So far beyond human sensing, I have tried in many places to describe it, but have never succeeded. Neither have I failed, words are inadequate. Animal communication, also called telepathy in my mind, might be the only way to share the vision. Maybe!
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I agree with that. Animal telepathy is key to our development, because until we understand intelligences beyong our own, we understand nothing.
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You could say that again, but it wouldn’t help, people don’t want to understand. They like being lorders. There’s that word again. Never used it in my life before, now twice in 20 minutes. The stupidest thing the bible ever did was give humans dominion over every other species of liife. We took to that like a swan takes to water. Now some of us are fighting that, but it will be a never-ending battle, and like you I cannot appreciate war. I am a dyed-in-the-hemp pacifist, and I sing Give Peace A Chance daily, sort of.
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I’ve read versions of what you write here. I’ve also read some Zen stuff that says as soon as you ask “Why” you’re lost. Lost in your own mind, lost in confusion, lost in uncertainty. Just keep breathing until you can’t. LOL…haha. and laugh
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Laughing is better than worrying.
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Right..anything is better than worrying.
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Gosh … I feel like I’m eavesdropping reading the conversation between you and colette! But it’s been most interesting to learn about the two of you.
Took a gander at your picture on your other site. You appear a bit hippy-ish … but only slightly, you understand. 😊 Loved the saying under it!
As for your avatar … I can’t swear to it but I think you have to “sign up” for “Gravatar” (which is no big deal). Once you do, you can upload your image and it will show up on blogs. If you’ve already done that, then I have no clue. 🙄
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I signed up for Gravatar the day I joined Word Press, and for awile all my comments showed my picture (that same picture, because I like it and it is how I feel). Then one day the picture just stopped appearing. A few months ago it started showing up again, but only certain blogs. I don’t understand.
That saying is a short poem I wrote in my younger days, sometimes called “Playing with Time” but that usually goes unnamed nowadays.
Thanks for liking it. Too bad the guest book doesn’t work anymore.
BTW, you aren’t eavesdropping, as you know. If it was a private conversation, it would be done on email… But it is an interesting one, I think. Colette is an amazing woman.
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Hello Nan,
Don’t feel like you are eavesdropping, it is nice to see you join the conversation. It is often the spontaneous reaction and discussion that is most rewarding. I live in the UK on a canal barge called a Narrow boat, but I am just winding up a three month visit to Thailand. It is more like living than holidaying. My hubby does the cooking while I do the cleaning and laundry in whatever space we rent. We find the cheapest places that we can, tend to befriend stray animals and feed them occasionally (not wanting them to become in any way dependent on us as that is to their disadvantage).
There… now you have entered the conversation. 😉🙏
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What she said, lol, except the canal barge or the Thailand parts, lol.
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You asked — “if you could choose your own afterlife, would you?”
My response — Sure. I like options. I would choose a universe like this one with more time to spend in it exploring. More worlds to visit with more food to try.
Also free Wine and Pizza
I like to keep it simple because being happy isn’t really that complicated.
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Thank you for your honesty. Someone might ask you what happens after you had every possible flavour of puzza many times over, and every brand and style of wine (or beer, yech!), but I personally do not see boredom setting in if you like what you are doing. I mean, do you give up on sex because you’ve done it all before? No offense to those who do find repeated actions boring, that is their privilege. After all, I am always looking for ways to improve what we already have. I am in love with change. “Chaqu’un a son gout.” Each to their own taste.As long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s well being!
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You stated — “Someone might ask you what happens after you had every possible flavour of puzza many times over, and every brand and style of wine (or beer, yech!),”
My response — I accept the challenge. I am open to the universe offering me every possible taste and experience.
The better question is: Why would trying everything there is to try be the worst option simply because you might get bored?
I would rather get bored after a trillion years of good sex, pizza and wine than ever opting out of in fear of one day being bored.
If they want to opt out after just 80 years on Earth then more pizza for me.
Just a thought
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That was just me being snarky, but I like your thought processes. I myself am bored with pizza at this point in my life, and I do not indulge in alcohol, but that could change. Change is one of life’s spices, also optional.
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Change is a universal constant. I like to look at this radio shack AD have you seen it?
https://realitydecoded.blog/2018/04/10/change-is-a-universal-constant-if-you-dont-keep-up-with-change-you-will-be-left-behind/
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As a Buddhist who was raised Christian, I would want to come back as a Boddisattva, but have my own version of heaven filled with puppies and the people I love where I could rest and recharge when being of service was just too overwhelming.
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Would a Bodhisattva ever feel that way? Still being human, one might think so, but would one still be human?
Since this is your vision of an afterlife, you get to make it however you want, but if I may I would like some clarification? Would the Bodhisattva part be an afterlife, or a reincarnation? Next, would your heaven with puppies and people you love be part of the reincarnation scene, or an afterlife where the bodhisattva would leave samsara to rest up between reincarnations? Just wondering, since you chose both parts as part of your desired afterlife.
Meanwhile, thank you for that vision.
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Those are excellent questions, rawgod! From a Buddhist perspective, my afterlife vision is probably way off, which is why I mentioned that it was heavily influenced by my Christian upbringing, in which there would be some sort of Heaven. My concept of Heaven would include puppies and loved ones, but, to your point, as a Bodhisattva, I probably wouldn’t feel the need for “Heaven.” Moreover, I would be so busy helping sentient beings that I would never get to “rest” there.
This is a really interesting thought exercise. :)
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That was one of my purposes in posing the question, not only to find out what people might want to find, but to make people think. There is so much debate about what an afterlife might have to offer, and even if there is an afterlife, but yet no one seems to know what an afterlife might entail. There are these glorious words, heaven, paradise, nirvana, and such, but they really have no substance behind them. Even my own idea, continuous reincarnations over unending levels or states of consciousness, I cannot explain to people who haven’t imagined such things. But really, it is not a look at an afterlife, but just a continuation of life. I describe my understanding of the inbetween-life in a few posts, but I am still not satisfied with my desctiptions. Words cannot do it justice.
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I like the idea of reincarnation but I don’t think we just reincarnate on Earth alone. I think it is quite possible that we have lifetimes in other dimensions, parallel universes and other worlds in our galaxy.
This is a great topic for discussion and I see many others have joined in with their own ideas.
I saw a strange story online the other day that written by a doctor in an American hospital. He said that he and other staff members could tell when a person was getting ready to die because they would dream of deceased family members and feel they had visited them. Apparently the dreams seemed more real than most dreams.
My dad was ill and in advanced stages of dementia when he died. In the days before he kept talking about his mother like she was in the room with him.
In the hospital study some people said they met up with family members that they are unresolved issues with and talked it through with them. I like this idea – get all that stuff sorted out before you die so that you are free to experience the afterlife in whatever way your soul takes you. I rather fancy visiting Sirius myself – at least for a bit – :)
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Thank you for your thoughts, Suzanne. Reincarnation is possible anywhere there is life, I gave my vision based on my experience. If you read elsewhere in my blog you will understand that statement. And anything I do say in that vein is meant to describe my experience. What I have come to believe over the past 5 decades comes to me directly or indirectly from that time, although a lot of it I did not understand then, and some not yet.
You could say I am a relativist, in that I do not necessarily believe truth is the same for all people. Especially what we believe to be true here in this physical realm is generally based on our own experiences, and biases. This is why, after 4 plus billion years of life on this planet we still cannot agree on much. And this is just our species we can discuss belief with. Do other species have their own beliefs? If we ever learn to communicate openly with other species I think we will find they have their own beliefs too.
Other worlds, other planes, other levels, they are all good possibilities. Someday we will find out. For now, speculation is mostly all we can have.
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I have just re-read all the comments so far generated by my above post, and would love to thank everyone who took part. I can say I was both amazed yet disappointed, encouraged yet frustrated. But all those feelings were brought on by my expectations, the hopes I had going into this thought experiment. Someday, given the time and attention span, I hope to see if I can make a summary of what all who responded to it. If and when that day comes, I hope I can do justice to your ideas. I am certainly encouraged by the thought that went into some of the answers, and the depth of those thoughts. I know not everyone wants to entertain certain thoughts, but I am still thankful for every attempt.
Thank you, all.
rawgod
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Hi there, I really enjoyed reading your post. You asked if I could choose my afterlife would I? Well for me the answer is that we already do choose our afterlife by the way we live in this life. As a Buddhist, karma is very strongly featured in our philosophy and so the way we live our life now and the way we conduct ourselves with others, determines how we will be reborn in the afterlife.
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Yes, that is with reincarnation as a basic principle (which I happen to agree with, though we see the process differently). But a large part of the world does not see reincarnation as a given, and to many of them there is only one life followed by one afterlife, for eternity. In a relative world they can choose that. But is the cosmos relative? I have to hope not.
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Once asked a teacher,what’s it like,do you think,to be dead?
Was answered with,remember what it was like before you were born?
Added was,if there is any knowing after dead,the job wasn’t completed.
Yuk yuk.
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What if what you are “knowing” has nothing to do with life on earth?
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What if what you are knowing has everything to do with life on earth?
What if what you are knowing is not the point and only knowing is?
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Oh…why the emphasis on the word,knowing?
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Now we come to wisdom, for that is knowing is.
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Are you saying wisdom is knowing knowing is?Assuming you are,I’ll ask,how wise does one need to be to know they know?
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I am saying wisdom is the outcome of knowing what is inside of you. Study yourself. Do you know who you really are, or are you just a conglomeration of things you have been told, or taught?
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Person one to person two: Who am I?
Person two to person one: Who’s asking?
Person one: I am
Person two: That you are.
I think wisdom can be helped along by knowing what’s outside you,too.I gather from the outside,bring it inside and toss it back out if it doesn’t seem to fit.
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I relate that more to knowledge than wisdom. I could be wrong.
Sorry for the delay (Is 3.5 years stll considered a delay?) in getting back to you. I’m looking over old posts and do not remember getting this comment. It was worthy of a reply.
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I抦 not that much of a internet reader to be honest but your sites really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and bookmark your site to come back later on. Cheers
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Just curious if you were able to look at any more of my posts, and what you thought of them?
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I’ve long imagined having an afterlife as an eternal astronaut. I’d love to explore the countless galaxies, stars, and planets.
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Have you been reading the book I have been trying to self-publish? Man, you are so close to my “reality”!
(The book is presently in limbo, as it was sent without my knowledge to a page designer who does not speak English.) This happened last year. I got so depressed I shelved the project. Then my partner got really sick, and I have no time to work on it. She is supposed to have surgery sometime this summer or early fall. I hope to pick it up again when she is better.)
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Best wishes to your partner, I hope she has a successful recovery.
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That is all we can do right now. Time willtell.
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