What happens when we die

[Cheshire Cat]

(...)

 

Does that mean that if you're a Christian-hating Taoist you'll go to hell? The short answer, at least MY short answer, is yes...

 

What about a muslim-hating Christian?

[Marblehead]

.

 

I do believe that a person can be both a Taoist and a Christian, which is why I am here.

 

I accept that as a valid understanding.

[Marblehead]

What about a muslim-hating Christian?

 

We shouldn't hate.

[Karl]

We shouldn't hate.

I think it's valid to hate. It's only degrees of a fear of something that is potentially harmful given an emotional spin. I hate people pointing loaded guns at me, or sneezing into their hands then offering the shake hands. I hate people that decide they are deputised road police and then use their vehicle as a weapon in an attempt to stop me doing what they have concluded is contravening their authoritarian mentality. I hate squirty cream on my scones. after having it in mind I will be getting fresh clotted Cornish cream. I hate so many things it would be impossible to list them all.

[Cheshire Cat]

We shouldn't hate.

 

Why not?

 

Is there something wrong in being human?

[9th]

[Jim D.]

You can't be both a Taoist and a Christian if they know about it, and you ask them. If you try to rise up the ranks, forget about it. I was told because I hadn't been annuled from my previous marriage I could not be a Eucharistic Minister. I was told that my current was not seen as a Sacramental Marriage unless it was annuled and I remarried in the Church.

 

Now Protestant Christians believe you have to be born again to reach everlasting life. Practicing Taoism...I mean even if you're practicing Philosophical Taoism does not compliment the Bible. So, don't tell them. Do your own thinking. No man can tell you how to live your life.

[Marblehead]

Why not?

 

Is there something wrong in being human?

 

Nothing wrong with being human.  However,

 

Hate will not allow us to have true inner peace.  And hate will eat away at any spirituality we have in our belief system.

[9th]

Nothing wrong with being human.  However,

 

Hate will not allow us to have true inner peace.  And hate will eat away at any spirituality we have in our belief system.

 

Yes this is true.  Most cannot handle hatred.  The key to using hate is taking it all the way - but this is a dangerous path.  You have to hate all the little babies, the birds in the trees, the air you breath, your own stupid face, etc.  You have to hate every single thing that exists, you have to hate yourself and everyone else, you have to hate hard and hate long, then you have to keep on hating.  You have to hate so thoroughly that you eventually become hatred.  You have to hate all and everything until there is nothing left to hate except hate itself.  Then you will achieve transcendental hatred.

 

[Marblehead]

Nice 9th.

 

Thinking on it, I can't recall even hating my (country's) enemies when I was in the Army.  I was just doing my thing and they were doing their thing.

 

But yes, some people (not here) have really pissed me off.  And even that isn't a good feeling.

[Jim D.]

During Boot Camp I hated Jody, you know the one that's gonna get your girl while you are away. I hated the guys that were not in the Service. But that is what they wanted you to feel. They wanted you to be a killing machine. I was 20 and had no idea what the Viet Cong looked like. I had no feeling against them. It was the civilian young dudes that I did not care for.

[thelerner]

Best to fight against hate.  It tends to turn you into the thing you despise.  Avoid what you hate or change it, change your attitude- or destroy it, cut clean with as little emotion or attachment as possible. 

 

Words have power.  Avoid the word hate, especially for petty things.  Lest you cover yourself with little buttons of aversion, there for any situation or person to press. 

Edited July 4, 2016 by thelerner

[Spotless]

The concept of hell is engaged whether we are dead or alive.

 

When we die we are engage in the frequency of our entrancement that we were engaged in here - this is what karma is - it is our frequency of entrancement and as it plays out we move around in our entrancement.

 

When we die we do eventually move out of this entrancement but it can take quite a bit of "time" depending on the rigidity of our entrancement.

 

Some religious beliefs can glue spirit in a fear and occlusion that is as we can see here in bodies a powerful and unfortunate tornado of isolation and grief - only able to appear to flourish when highly isolated from a mixed society.

 

Upon death none of our fears and beliefs are quelled or dissipated - unfortunately they are vivified somewhat.

 

Both hell and heaven are myth in the most complete sense - at the same time hell is the illusion - it is the entrancement we tornado around with. Drop the tornado and you become heaven.

[silent thunder]

I experienced a profound gift at the age of 4 and it rendered me incapable of fearing body death before I had a concept of death.  For a while, I feared the death of my parents, once I discovered it, but my own body dying has never been a concern.

 

Direct experience of awareness free of form was my gift.  This body is a collection of patterns and systems that work (or not) for a time in conjunction.  It's not me and its eventual dissolution has never caused fear. 

 

The body, in my experience, is an elaborate and intense experiential interface, an organic suit, and when I consider it, it's like a well worn and adored coat, but just a coat in the end... it's not who I am.  It's not very important.  Its cells and systems arranged as they are, still flow in constant flux for a short time and then the components break down and become other patterns.  The skin I'm scratching now that two days ago was a salad, will soon fall off and be gone.  I don't have any sense of loss when I shave my head, I don't collect the hairs, nor do I save my nail trimmings.  The body that types these symbols is not the one that I had when I started this journey.  It has been replaced piece by piece, in its entirety, several times, like Theseus' Ship. 

 

My Stepmother however... her death was 11 days long, filled with pain and the end was a crescendo of panic and fear.  Her death was utter hell and then, mercifully, it was over.  Her experience was not wrong, though I had so wanted to have better words to convey somehow my experience so that it could aid her, but we each walk our Path and her Catholic paradigm was full of fear.  Yet I cannot find it wrong, even though I wished to lessen her fear and pain if I could. 

 

Then there was a friend who passed literally in my arms, in complete peace and contentment, no fear, no pain, just a profound release.  Breath out, don't breath in, done.

 

We all walk our paths and none of them are wasted, wrong, or useless.

 

As to what actually happens after we die, I'm pretty much in resonance with Spotless' perspective.  His words come closest to my experience of what may proceed afterwards.  I'm deeply curious.

[C T]

Best to fight against hate.  It tends to turn you into the thing you despise.  Avoid what you hate or change it, change your attitude- or destroy it, cut clean with as little emotion or attachment as possible. 

 

Words have power.  Avoid the word hate, especially for petty things.  Lest you cover yourself with little buttons of aversion, there for any situation or person to press. 

Although it is their sticks that hurt me,

I am angry at the ones who wield them, striking me.

But they in turn are driven by their hatred;

Therefore with their hatred I should take offence. . . .

SHANTIDEVA (685-763)

[Marblehead]

Although it is their sticks that hurt me,

I am angry at the ones who wield them, striking me.

But they in turn are driven by their hatred;

Therefore with their hatred I should take offence. . . .

SHANTIDEVA (685-763)

Yeah, but that's pretty darned altruistic.

 

Sticks don't cause pain (on their own), people cause pain.

[rex]

Yeah, but that's pretty darned altruistic.

 

Sticks don't cause pain (on their own), people cause pain.

Still it doesn't preclude snatching the stick off them and giving them a good whack - all with the best intentions of stopping them incurring the negative karma of being a danger to others and themselves!

[Marblehead]

You did good with that one.

[forestofclarity]

I think the Tibetan perspective is interesting, although I think some of the language used in this video is disempowering--- there is definitely a "commoner vs. yogi/lama" dynamic going on there. 

 

Some one asked a lama why Westerners who have near death experiences don't experience the same experiences Tibetans report. The lama said the experiences only arise for practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. Looking at NDEs through different cultures, they do happen differently to different people. Some might take this to mean that they are subjective experiences, but this need not be the only explanation. From a Buddhist POV, worlds arise according to our karmic habits. 

 

Which makes me wonder--- are people experiencing/creating the world that they expect? I mean, if you spend the day watching zombie movies, you are more likely to have a dream about zombies. Perhaps it is the same thing with death--- if we conditions ourselves throughout life to expect one thing or another, perhaps that is what manifests at the moment of death. 

 

 

this video clearly details the dying process from the Tibetan pov. 

 

[Trash Filter]

I think after death is likened to OB experience.You'll get a mix of ob world and dreamed things depending how clean come out.You get pulled towards your personal patterns of life there including hellish heavenly intermediate phase.Some chi schools build up energy body to the point they don't need return to physical body to download memory.So they can exist after death.This still doesn't guarantee freedom, as the ego must be changed also.And I don't believe this is guaranteed with only energy meditation hence evil ancestor spirits and the like.

[Jim D.]

These theories of after life make life worth living doesn't  it?

Edited July 7, 2016 by Jim D.

[Karl]

Not for me :-) to find myself in some new place without my, wife, iPad, motorcycle and guitar would be purgatory. I'm happy here and when I'm not happy here I don't want to be anywhere else.

[Marblehead]

Not for me :-) to find myself in some new place without my, wife, iPad, motorcycle and guitar would be purgatory. I'm happy here and when I'm not happy here I don't want to be anywhere else.

 

Don't worry about it Karl.  You ain't goin' nowhere when you die.  There won't even be a you.

 

So while you can:

 

 

 

[Jim D.]

Out of all the guys that have tried to interact or not interact with me on my posts or theirs, you two guys are the ones I relate to the most.

 

My guitar, an Alvarex, is not that important to me anymore. My rocking years are over. My composing years are over. I  lost  interest in it. Playing he Bluse kinda gets me going, but it fades like anything else if you don't stay with it. My relationship with my wife is the most important to me. She is a fine, honest, and dependable person.

 

You know how I know that she loves and likes me for me. I am all fucked up down there. Doesn't work for shit. She is 22 years younger than me and as hot as a toaster in McDonalds on a buy one and get one free Egg McMufin day. I make enough to live on, and she is part time employed. Nobody is going to rob the bank for our account because there's hardly enough in there to speak of. She'd live on the street with me if she got us there. :-)  She just loves and likes me. And I know it from her behaviors towards me.

[Marblehead]

Out of all the guys that have tried to interact or not interact with me on my posts or theirs, you two guys are the ones I relate to the most.

 

 

 

Yeah, well, at least we old guys have our old age in common.  Our younger days were different than the days of youth today.