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.

one thing I know

As you may have guessed I'm fairly uncertain about what life is all about, whether it has meaning, if there's a god and does it matter. But if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that we are supposed to evolve. What that means is that hopefully, by the time it's over, each of us will have changed into a better person than we were. And I think it's clear what I mean by 'better.' More giving, tolerant, loving, patient, kind, and grateful. The trouble I have is that while some of us are making an effort, there are a surprising number of well-educated people who think it's all about the acquisition of more, regardless of the cost. I say surprising because it always amazes me that anyone would want to stay the same. I mean, why would you choose to stagnate? It's disappointing. Because I believe we could create paradise IF we could all learn to be better, better sisters, mothers, workers, bosses, writers, teachers, and especially leaders.

The trouble is getting everyone else on board.

envy

I'll admit to being envious of a great many things but at the top of my list would be my envy of those with complete and utter faith. Because I do want to believe in God...or something. Anything really, rather than the nothingness I'm afraid of. But how do you get there? How do you believe in something when you can't see any evidence of its existence? How can I believe in God and all that he entails when every single day I read/hear about the selfishness and greed and cruelty of so many people. If God is here why doesn't he do something? I know, you'll say those people will be punished in the after life. They will go to hell or wherever, or have to pay in their next life if you believe in karma and reincarnation. Or maybe at some point in their lives here and now payback will come in one form or another. Except I don't see it. I see people getting away with murder and stealing vast amounts and just being generally awful to one another and nothing happens. I see people who claim to be 'men of God' doing things, saying things I KNOW God would be horrified by. Maybe you'll tell me that God is hoping we will do something and he's just waiting. Except we don't. And life goes on and whatever faith I may have once had as a child is slowly eroded until now, it is just a tiny little mustard seed of hope.

So tell me. How do you have faith? Where do you find hope? What makes you believe in whatever it is that you believe in or have you given up and subscribed to a belief in Nature and Science?

I guess I'm still hoping that one of these days I'll find that wardrobe without the back and step into...somewhere else.

And who knows, maybe I will.

I just can't make up my mind

ok, so let's just say for the sake of argument that there is a god. I'm not saying there is or isn't because I honestly don't know. Which means that sometimes I talk to someone I'm not sure exists. Like an imaginary friend.

Anyway. So if god does exist what sort of being is he? Or is it she? How does god operate? Is he/she/it a harsh and vengeful god like in the Bible? Or does god resemble some other version like in The Koran or the Divrei Torah or Buddhist Texts or the Bhagavad Gita. What will god become in a hundred years? And what might god evolve into a thousand years from now? Will there still be churches and synagogues and mosques? Will we still be separated by words we think mean different things, when in fact they all mean the same and if there is a god maybe that's the lesson he's trying to teach us.



I don't know. What do you think? How do you imagine god?

here's the main problem I have

life is too short and we aren't young enough long enough to enjoy it to its full extent. There are so many things I'd like to do in addition to what I'm currently doing. I can think of at least two, no three other professions I would've like to have explored and hundreds of places I'd like see but there just isn't enough time. I want to say it isn't fair except in the immortal words of Sylvia M. "fair is a weather term."

Which is why I think death is a ripoff.

Which is also why I hold onto this small hope that maybe it isn't. Maybe death isn't the end, maybe it's just a way station we come back to, like the bardu in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which wonders "how might human history be different if 14th-century Europe was utterly wiped out by plague, and Islamic and Buddhist societies emerged as the world's dominant religious and political forces? The Years of Rice and Salt considers this question through the stories of individuals who experience and influence various crucial periods in the seven centuries that follow. The credible alternate history that Robinson constructs becomes the framework for a tapestry of ideas about philosophy, science, theology, and politics."

But the really interesting part in my mind was  the  "small cast of recurring characters who live through each episode of the book as soldiers, slaves, philosophers and kings. Dying, they spend time in the afterlife [the bardu], only to be reborn into the next era, generally with no knowledge of their past lives." Or their knowledge of one another within the bardu.

I wonder if that isn't true. That we are all connected somehow only don't know it except in death.

And yeah. This is the crazy shit I think about, can't sleep because of, drive myself crazy with.