Life after death?

Well, I'm sure that can guess what my opinion on this topic is. But for fun's sake we could kick this around a bit if you're game. On what to you base your opinion that there isn't an afterlife?

 

Actually, I can't guess your opinion. Perhaps I'm just dense, but why should it be obvious?

And I'd rather not discuss it, actually. For a long time, I was very depressed about death and agnosticism. I sort of let myself obsess over it, and it really hurt my life. I never really conquered my fears, but I've learned how to avoid thinking about them, better.

 

Well, I think my last 30 posts or so in this forum have been on Christian issues, and I could have sworn you were in on some of those threads, but perhaps I'm wrong. Avoidance isn't the best way to deal with an issue, IMO, but this may not be the best way to address it if it's a difficult issue for you. I am a Christian, btw, and I do believe in life after death, but it's an almost impossible conclusion to come to logically, I think.

 

I understand. I have been there too. It's hard to conquer. I know I haven't yet. And I don't really expect to. I don't have a solution, but avoiding it won't help in the long run I think.

Sometimes I have to tell myself there's no use in worrying about it. You can't change the fact that you're going to die, so why worry about it. I think the best bet is to be a good person, not because it might mean your salvation, but because everyone should be a good person.

I don't know if that helps any, but it gets me through sometimes. It's not fun for me to think about now, but at least religion interests me a little instead of scaring me to death.

 

Ahh... I go to a Jesuit schools. And Jesuits pretty much run the gambit in their opinions about the after life. Let me just suffice it to say that not all of them believe in the more tradiitonal conception of it .

Let's just say that I don't categorize Christians when it comes to the after life. Some are pie-in-the-sky-when-you die types... and some aren't.

Incidentally, I tried to work out my mania on the issue for a long time, and it just spiralled out of control. My father, who's a psychiatrist, wanted to medicate me, but I have an aversion to this. I'd prefer to work it out philosophically, but have difficulty doing so.

I agree insofar as I believe that one's view of the afterlife should have nothing to do with how one lives. Seems sort of shallow just to do something to a get reward/avoid punishment. I hope humans are a little beyond Pavlov's Dog.

Princess... I think we're actually not all the differen.. We don't believe similar things at all. But our personalities seem somewhat alike. I can certianly sympathize with you on the hounding you're taking over your UH professors. I'm in college, too... and have gone through the same on this board, though on somewhat different grounds.

 

Forgive me for rehashing an old topic, but recent events bring this discussion to the forefront of my mind.

My grandmother passed away last night. It was not unexpected. My mother has actually been down in Texas for the past week or so, ever since she took a turn for the worse. It was genuinely odd, however. At about 3:55 a.m., my mother woke up out of a dead sleep, wondering how my grandmother was doing. She was staying with my aunt Janie, who as a matter of coincidence woke up about five minutes later, reportedly feeling an eery sense that something was wrong.....or perhaps it was a kind of melancholy that an innate sense of finality brings. At any rate, they managed to go back to sleep and called the hospital early that same morning after the Sun was up. According to the nurse, my grandmother passed away at around 4:00 a.m.

I was never very close to my grandmother, which was always the source of a faint guilt for me. Due to geography more than anything else, I was always closer to my father's parents, who lived in the same town as I did for seven years of my childhood. My grandmother on my father's side actually lives with my parents now, ever since my grandfather passed away several years ago. So I've always been closer to my father's parents than my mother's. I simply didn't see them more than once or twice a year. They seemed from a different world somehow. They were simple, plain-spoken, honest people who enjoyed a simple, pleasant way of life. They were avid golfers, and watched it all the time on television. After my grandfather on my mother's side passed, my grandmother never went golfing again to my knowledge. I think it was kind of "their thing" to do.

My grandmother knew what she liked and stuck to it. Unfortunately, one of the things she really enjoyed doing was smoking. She smoked for as long as I knew her, started probably well before I was born. The doctor's agree that the smoking is the primary reason her passing comes now, and is the primary reason her passing was as painful in her final hours as it was. Her lungs started filling with some sort of fluid.....I don't know what it was....but they kept having to drain the fluid out of her lungs by the quart. When the flow of fluid became too much for her lungs to handle, it would seep out onto the bedsheets and soak her bed. They would have to try other methods which I won't go into in order to stem the flow of this fluid, and it would get better for a little while. She lived the last few days of her life in that kind of confusion that comes to an elderly person when they're in pain and their faculties aren't quite what they used to be. She didn't know why she hurt so bad, and she couldn't understand why noone seemed to want to help. At about four this morning, she'd had enough.

My mother had to watch all of this during this last week, and I can't imagine what that must have been like. It was hard enough hearing about it through her own words, much less being there to witness. This is why I don't mind being that pretentious friend that harrasses my friends who stubbornly smoke on a regular basis, whether they be chain-smokers or only smoke at social functions. I don't ever want to see anyone that I love go through that. Ever.

My grandmother was a tough old bird. She baffled the doctors time and time again with her resiliency. My mother was the same way when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had both breasts removed and was out of the hospital before anyone thought she would be able to stand. The women are tough in my family. I say all of this with pride. I love my mother, and I loved my grandmother, even though I didn't get to see her with any kind of regularity. I don't remember ever telling her that, of course. I guess it seemed awkward. It gets me though, the number of times I answered the phone when she called asking for my mother, and I just passed the phone off to my mother without even saying hello and asking how she was doing, because it was awkward to speak to someone who I didn't know that well as if I did. I always recognized her voice. I could have. I should have. I should have talked to her more. I should have called more, and not just when I was calling to thank her for a Christmas present, no matter how awkward it would have been, because it would have meant so much to her....and to me ultimately. But I didn't. No, I much preferred to stay in my comfortable little world, assuming there would always be time for that kind of thing later. And when she got sick, I felt like such a hippocrite if I called to talk to her then. No, God forbid I do that....that would be far too uncomfortable.

I guess I'm writing all of this because I want any of you who have similar relationships with relatives to know how I'm feeling right now. Don't ever take anything for granted. Stop caring how awkward you might feel if you tell them you love them. It's not going to be as bad as you think, and it will mean so much in the long run. Just do it. Don't think about it. You don't ever want to feel like I feel right now. It's not worth feeling comfortable today so you can hate yourself tommorrow.

I think the other reason I'm writing this has to do with this topic. I believe my grandmother can see me right now. She's watching me sit here, typing a message in an anonymous forum, wiping the tears out of my eyes so I can see what I've typed and look for misspellings, and I think she knows I'm really writing to her. You guys may not believe it, but I know she's reading this right now, and I know she feels much better now, whereever she is.


I love you, Mammaw. I miss you. And I'm sorry.

 

Sorry for your loss...I've got tears in my eyes.

 

Gascon, I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. My grandmother died two months ago, so I think I know what you're going through. Feel free to send me an email if you need to talk.

 

What if every living thing is "reincarnated" as a non-living thing (such as a telephone or a chair). That'd be weird. Maybe the "better" people are reincarnated as cooler things, like the sun or something. Weird man....weird!

 

Gascon -- I'm sorry for your loss. Losing a loved one is bad enough, but feeling a sense of guilt along with it can be nearly unbearable. I firmly believe your grandmother understands everything now and knows how much you care for her. There is nothing for you to feel bad about.

Oddly, my grandparents have shown up in my family's dreams after they've died. My sister has had several vivid dreams involving our grandmother (my dad's mother)that she was very close to. They sit on a park bench and talk about things that are troubling my sister, and my grandmother comforts her. My sister always wakes up feeling as if she's really spoken to my grandmother.

The night my mother's father died he came to her in a dream and apologized for being a bad father. He told her that he was alright where he was and that now he could take care of his wife (my mom's mother who had already been dead for 3 years) the way he hadn't been able to when he was alive. When my mom woke up her arms we outstretched as if she was hugging someone, which, in fact, she had been doing in her dream. After that she felt completely at peace with his death.

And I had a dream involving my mom's mother right after she died after a long battle with Alzheimer's. I was like you, Gascon. I grew up far from my grandparents and didn't communicate with them as often as I wished I would have. After she died, I felt intense guilt over not telling her how I felt when I had the chance. But one night I dreamt that I went back to their home for a visit. The house was falling down and decayed -- not at all the way I remembered it. I looked in the front door and saw my grandmother lying on the couch. She looked so small and frail that I wanted to cry. But then her body seemed to disappear and this beautiful, glowing white being took its place. She smiled at me and I knew instantly that it was my grandmother. She simply said, "I'm okay," and then she was gone. When I woke up, I felt as if a weight had been lifted off of me -- I no longer felt guilt or sadness, just love for my grandmother and the time we had together.

Many people think that those who have passed on use our dreams to contact us and offer reassurance and guidance. I can't offer you any concrete proof that your grandmother is still with you, but I can say that based on everything I've experienced I believe she is with all my heart. My thoughts go out to you and your family.

 

I never really knew either of my dad's parents. My grandfather made really good Italian food, and had a gorgeous old world accent. My grandmother smoked English cigarrettes and watched soap operas and ran a bed and breakfast.

I remember only superficial things about them. I know my mom's parents very intimately... but my memory of my dad's mainly come from a couple of holidays. So I know how you feel, I think. You feel loss... but not simply for the person, but also for what you don't feel.
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Sorry, Gascon.

 

I'm wondering if anyone can help me with this. Last semester, I had several dreams in which my mother died. I don't know what was going on between us at the time, but my mom and I are very close. I had to call her after the dreams to make sure she was okay because they were so real. Does that mean anything or do I want to know?

 

If I die I've got some investigating to do. I'd like to know who's on the left hand side of God. He or she get's no respect.

I don't know what you do in heaven, but I'd like to be the guy that makes those billowing clouds. They just look fun. And you get to make stuff that all the people on earth get to look at. I'd make a rockets logo over Los Angeles. Just to screw with them ya know.

 

Bold mine... and I bet some of you will recognize the quote.

I like the use of the word "faith" there-- makes a good point. The idea that religion is faith, but atheism is thought, is absurd. They're both forms of faith.

Anyway: the belief that there must be more to this than meets the eye is not ego. It is the admission of the fallability of our consciousness. You can assign a name and a set of beliefs to that frailty-- Christianity, for example, or Buddhism, or anything else. But it remains at its root an admission on mankind's part that there's more to this equation than we are able to figure.

Frankly, the belief otherwise-- that since all of our reckoning doesn't prove a God or an afterlife, those things cannot be (or are unlikely to exist)-- is human ego at its most overblown. It's an exercise in mental masturbation: namely that if we humans, of our 75-100 year life spans and physical limits, just think long and hard enough, we can somehow make ourselves privy to the fundamental mysteries of existence.

 

Thank you, everyone, for your sentiments.

I'm doing better now than I was when I posted last, as I had just found out everything from my father. I'm generally a very private person, so I wasn't sure why I was posting all of that. I think that somehow it made it more real if I posted what I was feeling in public, rather than keep everything inside as would usually be my want. Keeping my thoughts private in this case felt like a cop-out. I felt like I had to atone. I think I was also reacting to a sense of impotence, as I won't be able to attend the funeral. My family simply can't afford to fly me there. Me or my father, for that matter. So that is adding to my frustration. I want to be there for my mother, mainly. But it wasn't meant to be, unfortunately. My grandmother would understand.

Thinking on it now, I think my grandmother understands everything about what I was saying before, and probably understood to a large extent before she passed. She really was a remarkable woman. It's comforting to know I have people like her waiting for me when I cross over myself someday.

 

Princess: One of my wierd little areas of expertise is dream interpretation. People always ask me to figure dreams out for them.

A lot of what dreams mean have to do with context. Dreams tend to fall into one of three categories:

1. The metaphorical dream - this is one that has lots of different variables and each variable has an equivalent in reality.

2. The linear dream - this is the one that relates very closely to your normal reality.

3. The hodge podge - these dreams usually happen right before you wake up or when you oversleep - they are filled with bits and pieces of everything that is going on in your life all thrown together - it's like your brain using the dream to get rid of a bunch of extra stuff in there.

How your mom died in your dream, the circumstances, what you did and felt...they all effect the meaning. If you want to go into detail, I'll try and help if you like.

 

Jeff:

Do you know what the dream of losing your teeth symbolizes or means? I know that dreaming one is nude or in the underwear is supposed to symbolize insecurity about something and being chased symbolizes guilt over something...but what about losing teeth? I thought that I had read somewhere that is another common type dream, but I never found what "it" was supposed to mean.