Death

[mapuc]

I can't be the only one.

When I was young death was never on my mind, I can't remember having a thought of it.

When I had reached 40 and above, death was on my mind now and then but without fear.

Now that I'm a little bit over 50 thoughts about death have struck my mind, more than now and then.

And now fear also appear sometimes when I have these thoughts about death.
Keep on saying to myself I should stop having fear for what is
unavoidable and that my fear is based on old fairly tales.

Wonder if I'm the only one with these thoughts.

For your information, I do NOT have these thoughts everyday.

Markus

[Reece]

As a Christian I have no fear of dying at all. . . Only the process!!

[mapuc]

Death is, as I see it, a two part process
First process I call the bridge. Because here a person have to cross the life he or she have to something unknown, after they have died.(don't know how I should explain this)

The second part is unknown-what happens after one is dead ?

I know or I think I believe the brain continue to give a dead person dreams until there's no more oxygen.

Markus

[Mr Quatro]

At the moment of death that is who you are forever ...

Good, bad, indifferent, angry, moody, hungry, sensual, lusty etc.

forever is a long time ... I won't get into the religion thing, but it borders on the faith thing, either you have faith or you don't.

My ancestors celebrate death with Irish wakes, but I cried and cried when my mother died ... with faith I'll see her again someday

[Sailor Steve]

I'm sixty-eight right now. People younger than myself are dying of "natural causes". Of course we can die any time via an accident, but that's unexpected and hopefully pretty sudden.

With all that I find myself pretty well resigned to it. It's going to happen, no matter how much we might desire to avoid it.

I used to believe in an afterlife, and a pretty specific one. Then one day I went looking for evidence, and after a couple of decades I still haven't found any. That's why the call it "unknown". Nobody knows anything about it, though many claim they do. You can speculate, you can guess, you can wish, you can hope, but you can't know. Those who claim they do I consider to be deluded. I too wish there was something more, but the more I look for anything to indicate that it might be true, the less I find.

[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I'm sixty-eight right now. People younger than myself are dying of "natural causes". Of course we can die any time via an accident, but that's unexpected and hopefully pretty sudden.

With all that I find myself pretty well resigned to it. It's going to happen, no matter how much we might desire to avoid it.

I used to believe in an afterlife, and a pretty specific one. Then one day I went looking for evidence, and after a couple of decades I still haven't found any. That's why the call it "unknown". Nobody knows anything about it, though many claim they do. You can speculate, you can guess, you can wish, you can hope, but you can't know. Those who claim they do I consider to be deluded. I too wish there was something more, but the more I look for anything to indicate that it might be true, the less I find.

Well the way I look at it is if believers are wrong then they'll never know it and neither will the non believers ever know that they were right. On the other hand if the believers turn out to be right then both sides will know who was right and who wasn't.

[Mr Quatro]

If you die before we do Steve leave us sign like a strange message that was posted after you die. of course we will all think it's a hoax anyway

See you on the other side! Wasn't that a spaghetti western movie saying with Clint Eastwood?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Well the way I look at it is if believers are wrong then they'll never know it and neither will the non believers ever know that they were right. On the other hand if the believers turn out to be right then both sides will know who was right and who wasn't.

If you're talking strictly about an afterlife, the you're right. If you're talking about a specific afterlife, then a lot of believers of one sort or another are going to be severely disappointed to find out that while they were right about that one point they're still going to pay dearly.

Still, I don't deny the existence of said afterlife, or even the possibility. I just haven't seen any of what I call "evidence".

[Skybird]

Mapuc,


No mortal can avoid thoughts about death and dying forever. Sooner or late they find us. Sooner, I would say: already little children, at some age around 6, 7 years or so. Maybe some even earlier.

I say you only have one chance to get along with thoughts about it: You must make death your friend. Its the only certainty in your life. Nothing else is certain, not even your next breath. A more reliable companion you will never find. And in your last moments in this life, he will be there. You can count on him.

For what scares us, is not so much the non-existence (from which we emerged anyway), but the dying as a process or the death that takes others, loved ones, away from us, while we must survive - and feel the lack. And that hurts.

See it this way, maybe: all there is, is just an idea in our head. Even our understanding of what our head is, our brain, and how its processing creates the mind we think is ours, is just an idea. Its unreal a world we live in, that we perceive, that we experience. Its just the interpretation of incoming electric stimuli in our brains, input from our eyes and ears - but never has any living creatue ever touched the universe itself, directly: it had been electrons, photons hitting the retina, waves finding the ears, etc. Our whole conception of what we are, and what dies when we die, is just an idea - our idea. Its not the original. Not "reality". It even cannot ever be. "Brain" is just an idea - ours. So is "electric stimulus". "Eye". "Photon". "Nervous system". We cannot get into contact with the things directly. Neither them, nor our senses, are real, are not what they seem to be.

To me, so far it is just logical conclusion until here. The last conclusion from this all is: we are not the ones we use to think of ourselves as.

And that asks one question, the one question that all existence and all the univese is revolving around: Who am I? It may sound like a second question, but it isn't, it is the same one question just in another clothing: what is this idea this universe/life/myself is basing on, where does it come from, and why? I cannot touch the universe directly: only form my own idea about it - including my idea of myself.

If all this is just idea, and this idea is the origin of the ideas I form about myself and my life and the universe, then it all must be one and I cannot be any different, cannot be separated from it/anything/universe. Me and the universe is one and the same, I am the cause of myself and everything else, and everything and me are one and by this one-ness everything always was and always will be and cannot be any different than just this. Time is a dream passing by, but there is no real time passing. I am, and this expression means to embrace all existence and universe, and it cannot be any different. There is just one, and always was and always will be. Its all a dream, images come and images go, they all are just reflections of unreal things, but nothing really comes and nothing really goes, like the ocean does not come and go and does not win anything and does not lose anything due to the waves on its surface playing. There are no single, separate waves. There is just the ocean. There is no life and death. There is just the endless coming and going of ideas, images, scenes... And them all are us, for it is us who bring them up. And in the end, "us" must be thought not in plural, but singular.

Buddhists sometimes use the image - there you have it again! - of soap bubbles floating in empty space. Inside they only hold empty space, and outside them, surrounding them, is empty space. What changes when one bubble bursts, what is the loss? When a new bubble shows up, a birth of a living being somehwere - what gets added to it all? Nothing! Its all just empty space. One and the same empty space all the time. There are not many or infitnte kinds od empty spaces. "Me", "Life", "God", "Universe" - its all one and the same thing. Always has been so, always will be. Nothing can be gained, no enlightenment can be won, say Buddhists. Nothing can be added, for nothing ever was separated. We must no get everywhere - we always have been there.

You sound a bit scared, mapuc, worried, and probably most people know this feeling of terror and panic when they realise first time ever in their life that they must die one day, and that evertyhign they like or dislike, own or wish for, their loved ones and the enemies - that all and everythign will be lost, must let go. Nothing lasts forever. Life is like a lesson in just one thing: letting things go. And one day, even ourselves.

You sound as if this haunts you, really scares you. Death has set you on his mailing list. My advise is: do not try to adblock it, it is in vain. Turn towards it, do not invite it but also do not push it away. Look at it. Study it. Find all features and details in its face, note how your react to eveything new you find out, maybe you find that it is not as scaring as you initially thought it is. Spiritual crisis can have a very positive effect, since where there is no doubt there can never be any insight.

Since this is a personal voyage you must undertake, and revealed something of quite personal nature about yourself - your fear - I want to answer you with something personal as well.

25 and more years ago, I still engaged in writing, a couple of short stories, two novels, a collection of poems, a rework of the TaoTeKing, nothing really special or good enough to seriously consider to publish it. In the end, I stayed a layman in writing. One of the two or three better little things I produced, was a "Novelle", that means a story too short to call it a novel, but longer than the usual short story, title was "Picknick in Avalone", and for that I wrote a poem that was at its very beginning. I give you the exact English translation of my German original, so it has neither rhyme nor rythm nor prose, but hopefully you still get the idea behind it.

And a dream is all life,
And all world movement is just delusion.
It starts and it ends
In the right place, at the right time.

And a dream is this world,
Interwoven with invisible powers.
They separate, confuse,
And bring together,
Yet are both in one.

Between Now and Then,
Surrounded by Here and Nowhere,
I was looking for the Other Country
All life long,
And found

Avalone,
The fabled
The magical
When opening my door
And found I never was gone.

We all must transcend our existence, or death will press us down to the ground. How to live well if fearing death? How to die without fear if living in fear? Inm the end, the books of the dea,d like the Tibetan Bardo Thödol, not only tell you something about the process of dying and incarnating, but also about the art of living. Because it all is just one thing.

But we can only transcend our life by moving beyond ourselves, forgetting about ourselves (or should I say: our selves ?) Hearsay will not save us, just imagining something will lead us nowhere, false prophets offer us no real escape, just a way to worship and feed them. Everyone of us must awake from his own dream, and that can nobody do for him, everbody must do that himself. Of one thing however I am certain: there is nothing that is worth to be feared. Where we fear, we have not yet understood.

[Commander Wallace]

This all reminds me of a comedy routine by Jeff Dunham. One of his puppets or characters is " Achmed the dead terrorist. "


Achmed said in his religion that if he dies as a martyr for the cause, he will be rewarded in the afterlife with 72 virgins. Jeff asks Achmed if he is sure they will be women and not men ?


This isn't that clip but gives people the idea.

[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

If you're talking strictly about an afterlife, the you're right. If you're talking about a specific afterlife, then a lot of believers of one sort or another are going to be severely disappointed to find out that while they were right about that one point they're still going to pay dearly.

Still, I don't deny the existence of said afterlife, or even the possibility. I just haven't seen any of what I call "evidence".

Evidence aside, personally I find it highly arrogant for folks to say what the afterlife (or God for that matter) is like. Most of us can't even keep a checkbook balanced yet we opine in great detail about the attributes of a supernatural being that we have never seen in person.

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by August

Evidence aside, personally I find it highly arrogant for folks to say what the afterlife (or God for that matter) is like. Most of us can't even keep a checkbook balanced yet we opine in great detail about the attributes of a supernatural being that we have never seen in person.

My bottom line for the afterlife is, my dogs better be waiting for me. If there's no dogs (assuming there is some sort of afterlife), I'm in the wrong room.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

Evidence aside, personally I find it highly arrogant for folks to say what the afterlife (or God for that matter) is like. Most of us can't even keep a checkbook balanced yet we opine in great detail about the attributes of a supernatural being that we have never seen in person.

I guess that last sentence also applies to the so-called evangelists who expound so mightily (for a 'small' donation) on their 'knowledge' of the after life and why their way is the only way...

...and, given how so many of them seem to get caught with their hands in the till, their check book skills are also suspect...


...or as a wise man was explained:


“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

― Mahatma Gandhi




Just saying...








<O>

[Armistead]

Yes, in my early 50's, I think about it. Course at that age many of the adults in my life, parents, etc., have recently died, which makes you think about it. Course, like most, the concern is over health, disease, what could it be., more so when you see people you love die out slowly over a period of several months with severe suffering. But in the end, I know nothing I can do about it, so I try not to worry about it.

I also don't worry about the afterlife. While I'm open to the possibility there's something more, I see no evidence that any religion has it right. For most of them, salvation is based off fear, accept a certain belief or go to hell forever. If God exist, I don't believe him to be that petty. Imagine being a Christian and dying only to face Allah and Allah says to you...depart to hell to be tortured forever.... What you gonna say? Most people simply believe based off cultural or parental indoctrination.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Evidence aside, personally I find it highly arrogant for folks to say what the afterlife (or God for that matter) is like. Most of us can't even keep a checkbook balanced yet we opine in great detail about the attributes of a supernatural being that we have never seen in person.