after after

So. I talk a lot about death and what I think it might be or what I'm afraid it might be and what I hope it might be. But I'll be very honest. As much as I hope I'm wrong. I think that when we die that's it. Game over. And believe me when I say I wish it weren't so but I have this awful suspicion that as much as I wish there was an afterlife there isn't.

So, if that's true (even if I hate the thought of it), it means that we've got just this one chance, one life, to make good. Do everything we can to be remembered well, have some fun, make friends we'll never forget and love someone other than ourselves more than anything.

And as much as I hope this isn't the only chance I get I can honestly say that I am trying to be remembered well (through my writing), doing my best to have some fun (thank you skyrim), and there are a few people in my life I love more than anything.

So. How about you?

I know now what ruined it for me

You know how when we're small we're blissfully ignorant of death, never guessing that there's end to this thing we know of as life. Even the death of our pets at a young age is often no more than a passing sadness - remember Poltergeist when the little girl's bird died and how as soon as it was buried her sadness was gone and she wanted a goldfish? It never occurs to us that one day it might be our body buried, our life ended abruptly and, perhaps, tragically. Most times we don't realize this until we're older, much older.

For me the realization came when I was around twelve or thirteen. I was standing at the end of my driveway, waiting for the bus, and I went to get the paper out of the mailbox like I always did, to read the headlines. And there on the front page was the most horrifying story I'd ever read. A young girl, 14, was found murdered, her head chopped away from her body and buried under a rock. It was at that moment I realized that death could come for me, too. And not when I was 90 and old and had lived a full life. It could come and snatch me - or anyone I loved - at any moment. Worse yet, it could be a horrifying death, not at all peaceful, not surrounded by those who loved you in life but possibly by someone who saw you only as a means to slake their own sick desires. It didn't matter how old you were, how cute you were, or even how good you were. There were no exemptions from death and no guarantee for the kind you hoped for. It was a crapshoot.


So, when did you find out the awful truth?

afterlife

so...

if you had to choose, what sort of afterlife would you like? Would it be the sort where you hung about in Heaven - and if so doing what? - or would you choose a more participatory afterlife in which you spoke with other ...people/souls/beings or would you prefer to move right on to your next life? What do you expect from death? Nothing? Something? Have absolutely no idea whatsoever?

Do tell.

an excerpt

According to the foreword, The Secret of the Golden Flower is a part of the Book of Consciousness and Life which was written by Liu Hua-Yang in 1794. He later became a monk in the monastery of the Double Lotus Flower (Shuang-lien-ssu).'The text combines Buddhist and Taoist directions for meditation. The basic view is that at birth the two spheres of the psyche, consciousness and the unconscious, become separated. Consciousness is the element marking what is separated off, individualized, in a person, and the unconscious is the element that unites him with the cosmos.'*

Would it then follow that death would be the re-unification of the consciousness and the unconscious?



  



*Wilheim, Richard, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, Harcout Brace Jovanovitch, Publishers, 1931, p. xvi.

Heaven

 Assuming it exists, I wonder what it's like.

Is it all angels and harps and singing and rapture?

Or is there something more going on?

I always hope Heaven is the way it's described in the book WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. I know they made a movie out of it but if you can get the book, it's well worth the read. Anyway, in that book, you can hang around and be a ghost after dying, but most people pass on and Heaven is exactly what you make it to be. So for those who thought it was going to be singing and angels and rapture, it is. But the coolest thing I remember about it was the libraries and museums in Heaven, where all the art on the walls was exactly as the artist had envisioned it as opposed to what was created on earth. All the history books had the true story of what happened. And every novel was written just the way the author intended it to be.

What would your Heaven look like?

Death

 Yeah, I have this sort of love/hate relationship with DEATH. Okay. Maybe there's not much love there. I mean, why would there be? After all, DEATH is going to come and at some point take me away from everything I love, make me stop what I'm doing, remove choice. What's to like about that? I suppose if I knew that there wasn't just zip waiting for me I might not mind so much but without knowing all I have is the fear that when it's over, it's over. No more hanging out with the people I love. No more writing, reading, walking with my dog, dreaming, evolving. Just nothing. And I have to tell you it scares the shite out of me. Puts me into a panic if I think too much about it, keeps me awake at night. Because I am no where near done.

Sometimes though, I imagine DEATH ala Terry Pratchett: "An obvious sort of fellow: tall, thin (skeletal, as a matter of fact), and ALWAYS SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Generally shows up when you're dead, or just when he thinks you ought to be. Not a bad chap when you get to know him (and sooner or later, everyone gets to know him)."* Because it feels like DEATH has always been with me, ever since I discovered his existence, just hanging around, always a few steps away, waiting. And I wonder, what might I say to convince him to leave me alone? And what might happen if he did?



* From Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.