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.