Believe in Life after Death?

[Fljotsdale]

Lady Avalon? I think you would really like my eldest daughter, judging from the posts of yours that I have read. She has a very spiritual personality and goes in for all sorts of stuff that baffle me! I have no idea where she gets it from!
My son and younger daughter don't have a spiritual bone in their body, and I don't either, now. If I ever genuinely did. I used to think I did, but looking back, there was always a small, central core of me that constantly pointed things out that I didn't want to know, and that was always laughing cynically at me...
I'm almost like two people in one: one part of me would really like to believe in an afterlife (wherever, however), and I yearn after vague, vast vistas of unexplored universe where I can drift and observe for eternity... But the other part always says, 'come off it! There is absolutely no sense or reason in the eternal life fiction. We invented it 'cos we can't stand the idea of actually dying'.
And as for the re-incarnation bit... well, if you really believed that, you could never eat again, could you? 'Cos you might be eating someone's grandmother... (ok, I know I'm pushing it here...! )

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Smile! Life is too short for bitching!

Fljotsdale

[Fljotsdale]

Originally posted by 250: just why should anyone care if there is no after life? all effort is futile because of the inevitable demise.

Futile? What are you on? Didn't you read what I said? ANIMALS have no expectation of eternal life for themselves. BUT THEIR LIVES ARE NOT FUTILE! They live for the offspring. Their GENES live in their offspring. Therefore they care for their offspring. The purpose of LIFE is LIVING!
Can you not enjoy a sunset if think you will be dead forever when you die? Can you not enjoy raising your children if you think you will be dead forever when you die? Can you not enjoy a cold beer on a hot day if you think you will be dead forever when you die? Think about this: if you die and go to heaven (or wherever) you will never enjoy a beer, your children, a sunset again, anyway. This world will be dead to you. Pointless. If you believe in reincarnation.. sheesh... a long string of futility! Futility forever! Futility rules!

However, if you believe that that when you die you are DEAD, then you just HAVE to make the best of this life that you can, for yourself and others.

Do you realise what belief in an afterlife DOES? It makes people accept rotten situations in their own lives and in the world that they would not TOLERATE if they knew THIS LIFE WAS IT!
Because they think it doesn't matter, because it will all be 'made right' for them in heaven. As a consequence... well, just look round the world. Look at newsreels. Look at what people are enduring. They endure, they put up with it and hope for better when they die.
WE SHOULD NOT PUT UP WITH IT! We should act in such a way as to get a good life NOW for EVERYONE! Saying that 'heaven will compensate' excuses all sorts of horrendous things from slavery to poverty to war to disease...
I think religion, with it's insistance in the 'hereafter' has a LOT of human suffering to answer for. I feel pretty passionate about it!
No apologies.

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Smile! Life is too short for bitching!

Fljotsdale

I believe in reincarnation but that's because I've done Hypnotic regression and seen three of my past lives. I have also has 2 NDEs (Near-Death Experience - specifically drowning) and 1 OBE (Out of Body Experience)

[Lady Avalon]

Fljotsdale, I respect your views, nothing wrong in believing what you do. I would really recommend that you read "Out on a Limb" by Shirley MacLaine or "The Other Side and Back" by Sylvia Browne. You don't have to believe it, just read it and see if it makes any kind of sense to you. I'll tell you a little story: Back when I was married, in the 80's, I thought my life was incomplete because I didn't have kids. I really wanted a child, couldn't get pregnant, blah, blah, blah. Signed up with several adoption agencies and was told the prospects were slim to none that we would ever get a newborn child. Finally signed up with the State of TN and we were asked if we would accept a "Special Needs" child. I thought about it really hard and to be honest, it wasn't what I wanted. But I thought this was the only way so my husband and I agreed. Got a phone call one day from the adoption agency saying they had a male child, not quite a year old, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (a very mild case I was told). They told us that we were being considered along with 5 other families. The child was going for physical therapy and I had to agree to continue the treatment and work with him at home. I said yes and a few days later, we got the phone call that we were selected. Was this fate? Who knows? They informed us that the child would have to have a full physical before we could pick him up. We picked him up and found out a week later that the physical was never done and we would have to take him to the doctor to have that done. Well, when the doctor examined him, they couldn't find any evidence of cerebral palsy and said it must have been a mis-diagnosis. OK, now for the part I was trying to get at, I guess. If my son, Matthew had that physical before we picked him up, he would have immediately been taken off the "Special Needs" care list and we would not have been able to be his parents. My son was left at the hospital by his birth mother and if she didn't do that, he wouldn't be with me today.

I know this is long, but I have to add something here and I will try and make it short. My son lives with me, but does have visitation with his father. My ex and I went through a horrible custody fight for my son and if once wasn't enough, my ex filed a second time three years after the first. My son and his father do not get along and he absolutely hates his visitation time.

One day, I spoke with a channeler, St. Germaine, and found out that in another life, my son did in fact know my ex. The roles were reversed however and my son was the father in one life and a priest in another life. Both times his father died under his care. That's why today him and his father keep having these run-ins.

Anyway, food for thought for today for whatever it's worth.

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Seeker of Truth

[Lady Avalon]

bump

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Seeker of Truth

[Memnoch]

Yes. I believe that there is. Do I have proof? Of course not. Do I believe because I think that life would not be worth living otherwise? No. I just believe. At the end of the day, that is what religion is to me - how I live my life. I believe that there are 2 commandments - love God and love your neighbour. I don't think it's that hard to follow both, so I have no problem doing so. And it's gotten me through my life so far. I can't rationalize this belief - faith is not based on reason, IMHO.

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Originally posted by Memnoch: Yes. I believe that there is. Do I have proof? Of course not. Do I believe because I think that life would not be worth living otherwise? No. I just believe. At the end of the day, that is what religion is to me - how I live my life. I believe that there are 2 commandments - love God and love your neighbour. I don't think it's that hard to follow both, so I have no problem doing so. And it's gotten me through my life so far. I can't rationalize this belief - faith is not based on reason, IMHO.

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I believe in God too (though as a composite of all that lives). I only have one commandment, though - do unto others as you would have them do unto you - wise words from my mother!

[Lady Avalon]

Thank you Memnoch. I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. You just believe a certain way and there is no reason behind it.

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Seeker of Truth

[bilqis]

Originally posted by Lady Avalon: How many of you believe that your soul passes on to the other side and you have the option of being reborn again (into a different body of course)? What do you believe happens after you die?

I do, most definitely.

Originally posted by Sazerac: Although I normally wouldn't proclaim my beliefs in a public forum, yes, I do believe in life after death. I also believe that there is no way we can possibly learn all we need to in one lifetime, so yes, that we come back in to learn more. After a time when we've mastered what we need to know, we move off to a higher level of existence. Granted, this is just my belief, and I may be wrong...but it rings a lot truer than a finite "heaven or hell" scenario that, to my mind, is all but too often arbitrarily applied.

And Sazerac expressed my views to the letter.. so why repeat? Thank you Sazerac.





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Sometimes I think I
understand everything,
then I regain consciousness.

Happy Member of Fast Fourward.

[This message has been edited by bilqis (edited 05-09-2001).]

[Fljotsdale]

Originally posted by Lady Avalon: One day, I spoke with a channeler, St. Germaine, and found out that in another life, my son did in fact know my ex. The roles were reversed however and my son was the father in one life and a priest in another life. Both times his father died under his care. That's why today him and his father keep having these run-ins. Anyway, food for thought for today for whatever it's worth.

Lady Avalon, I respect your views, too, even though they are not mine.
Regarding your son, the legal battles must have been horrible. Happily, my ex never contested my custody of our childrren, so I was spared that.

Regarding other lives, which some of the others on this thread have also mentioned. I've had similar experience myself, but it has not made me a believer. Let me tell you. My mom took to Dianetics and then Scientology in a big way - VERY BIG way. She became firmly convinced that that she had been a concubine of Rameses the 2nd, as well as living various other, less memorable, lives.
She regressed me several times, but I never got any earlier than birth - except for once (I was around 15-16yrs old and a great reader of science-fiction with a VERY vivid imagination. I have never met anyone else with such a powerful imagination as I had at the time, lol!).
In this regression, I went pre-birth, pre-conception, pre-everything. I was in space, near this planet of ours, floating adrift and helpless near a wrecked space vessel. I knew there was no intelligent life on the planet, just an abundance of 'lower' life forms. I seemed to be enclosed in something - space-suit, probably - but I could do nothing but drift; I had no power source. I knew I was going to die. I was just drifting, spinning, waiting to die. Fade out.
That's all. Mom was convinced I was experiencing a previous life as an advanced alien! So was I, for a while. Quite a long while! But now? No. I was a teenage girl, desperate to please my mother, with a vivid imagination.
I am not pouring scorn on what you believe, for I think that there are lots of things that happen that we don't understand, so we put labels on them to explain them as best we can, and everyone has their own interpretations of them. For instance, I once saw a man standing on steps in front of a hotel and it was like an electric shock went through me (nothing sexual!) and I stopped in my tracks. At the same moment, he stopped talking to his companion and looked right at me. I can still see his face vividly, and it must have been over 40yrs ago. I started walking again, he started talking again. You would probably say that we knew each other in a previous life. My opinion? Just deja-vu. Same experience, different explanations. BUT we don't KNOW, do we?

Also, (nothing to do with the above) I once saw a UFO. Dunno what it was. I was leaning out of my bedroom window, stargazing, when I saw this bright point of light that I thought was a very bright star. I was trying to figure out if it was in the right position to be Venus when it suddenly streaked to one side very fast (much too fast for an aircraft) and vanished behind the trees. But do I believe in aliens observing li'l old earth? No. I think.


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Smile! Life is too short for bitching!

Fljotsdale