If not Heaven and not Hell...

[sheshe2]

Where do we go?
Not that I am a true believer, I lost that years ago.

Middle ground is limbo.

Any ideas?




[url=http://postimage.org/][img][/img][/url]


[url=http://postimage.org/][img][/img][/url]

[femmocrat]

1. I think our "energy" floats around in the universe.

That is why we can sometimes feel the presence of those who have departed this life.

Works for me.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

3. Energy and matter are interchangeable and indestructible...

I absolutely agree with you!

[sheshe2]

4. You know what, femmocrat.

That works very well for me to!

Thanks!

[freshwest]

68. Works for me. too. Except I'm bit troubled by that at times.

What's the energy of one whose usual response is:



My last words may well be those three...

[sheshe2]

71. No, freshwest. I doubt those will be your last words.

I use this picture as an explanation, of our souls swirling together in this universe. See the colors.

[url=http://postimage.org/][img][/img][/url]

Green is the color of nature, fertility, life. Grass green is the most restful color. Green symbolizes self-respect and well being. Green is the color of balance. It also means learning, growth and harmony. Green is a safe color, if you don't know what color to use anywhere use green.

Blue is calming. It can be strong and steadfast or light and friendly.

White, an inherently positive color, is associated with purity, virginity, innocence, light, goodness, heaven, safety, brilliance, illumination, understanding, cleanliness, faith, beginnings, sterility, spirituality, possibility, humility, sincerity, protection, softness, and perfection.

Then there is this.

Is white the absence of color and black the combination of all colors?

I see the night sky and it's black. I take every crayon I have and I mark a paper with all of them in the same spot and it turns out black. Does that mean that black is all colors combined. Then why does space appear black? Because of the absence of light and things to reflect it?
http://askville.amazon.com/white-absence-color-black-combination-colors/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=3896130

There is no WTF, in my vision. We are a blend of all colors and we will meld. That's not to say I am right. Just my thoughts.

[snooper2]

39. It will be a couple billion years for that to happen...

It amazes me that the wonder that is the universe, stars, galaxies, supernovas, moons, atomic reactions, it isn't enough for people..

They have to come up with some mythical woo woo that sounds "cool/neat?"

[RebelOne]

60. I believe that also. Works for me too. n/t

[Sekhmets Daughter]

2. Neiman Marcus....

[sheshe2]

5. With a heavenly credit card no doubt!

[Sekhmets Daughter]

10. But of course!

[sheshe2]

13. Sekhmets Daughter

Discover Card.
Member Since: The Beginning of Time
Credit Limit: The Sky and Beyond.
Expires:[url=http://postimage.org/image/u4816wb59/][img][/img][/url]

[Sekhmets Daughter]

15. sheshe...I'm in love!

with the credit card! You and I_T_W are so clever with the the visuals.

[In_The_Wind]

18. about that credit card

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[Sekhmets Daughter]

20. Duplicates!

What's my limit?

[In_The_Wind]

21. however ... that bit of platinum will bite you in the ass

[img][/img]

[Sekhmets Daughter]

22. Nah...I better not say it...

but the naughty child in in full tilt tonight!

[In_The_Wind]

23. ok ... so

it'll just nibble on your ass

oh and, you'll love it

[Sekhmets Daughter]

25. OMG...

I'm sure I will!

[In_The_Wind]

26. a little

snaky tongue action

[Aristus]

36. It's fun when women get freaky with each other...

[In_The_Wind]

43. sometimes friends help without realizing it ... ... ...

kumquat or paraquat

macrame or a noose










I prefer eating kumquats while I'm making macrame [img][/img]


to the manufactures of paraquat . . . . . . . . .

[sheshe2]

38. So glad you qualified that statement SD!

[Sekhmets Daughter]

64. Don't want to confuse my friends!

[sheshe2]

66. LOL

Thanks SD...

[Moondog]

7. Very good! Heh.

[sheshe2]

9. Shop til you drop, Moondog! nt

[In_The_Wind]

6. into the recycling bin

[IMG][/IMG]

[Moondog]

8. Also a good option.

[In_The_Wind]

14. From my point of view : that is all that is...

We are here for a while. Most of us continue, through family ties, are bound to return.

Others, the ones who have no children, . . . those are the lucky ones.
For the choice is theirs.

[img][/img]

Live each day like it was the last.

[sheshe2]

11. Damn!

I like it. Into the wind. In_The_Wind!

Great pic BTW.

[In_The_Wind]

17. It is what I truly believe.

When I do no harm to others, I am also being kind to myself.

Thank you she.

[sheshe2]

24. ~~~

[url=http://postimage.org/][img][/img][/url]

[HERVEPA]

12. You go nowhere. You're dead. You don't exist.

Except in the memories of others of course.
Why is the thought that there is nothing after death so scary to people?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

31. damned if I know --

When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

[HERVEPA]

45. Very well said..

Is that your original writing? (Not meant as a criticism for no attribution if it isn't! Just curious.)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

47. credit goes to Tecumseh - of the Shawnee

[HERVEPA]

48. Thanks Ms. Afternoon

[Tuesday Afternoon]

50. yw - should have given him credit and thanks for asking so that I could rectify. peace.

[HERVEPA]

51. Well, he's no longer around to receive and you are. :-)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

52. the whole "poem"

"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

by Native American Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh (1768-1813)

[HERVEPA]

54. Wow. Thanks muchly to both of you on this Tuesday Afternoon.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

56. yw, my pleasure -

[HERVEPA]

58. Yo! Stop! Don't need more places to have to visit when I retire in a couple years. :-)

Beautiful!

[cliffordu]

72. Yes.

Exactly.

[zanana1]

44. Some people are afraid of going to hell.

Really.

[Duer 157099]

46. You sound awfully sure about this

It isn't that the thought is scary, it's that it doesn't make sense. From everything we know about the universe, things don't cease to exist, they just change form. Matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So thinking that we don't cease to exist is actually logical.

[HERVEPA]

49. OK. But thinking we exist in any form where we'd have any knowledge of a prior existence...

definitely seems illogical to me.

[Puzzledtraveller]

61. It's not scary

Never did you not exist and never will you cease to be.

The Bhagavad Gita, II verse 12

So I agree with you, nothing happens.

[HERVEPA]

62. Can I disageree with the statement that you agree with me? :-) (nt)

[Puzzledtraveller]

63. Absolutley!!!

[easttexaslefty]

78. It's scary to me because I long

to see my dead son again.
Pretty simple, really.

[HERVEPA]

79. I understand. I'm sorry. As a father, it's a hard thing for me to imagine happening.

[easttexaslefty]

81. Thank you. n/t

[Lady Freedom Returns]

19. You know those reports of monsters in closets?

Just throwing the idea out there!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

29. Ha!

BOO!

[Son of Gob]

33. .

[NightWatcher]

27. I hope it's like anesthesia

That's the one thing I love about surgery. You get the drug into the IV or take a drag of the oxygen and the next thing you know several hours have passed. No dreams. No awareness of time.

[sheshe2]

28. Floating Unaware. Sweet!

[url=http://postimage.org/image/i55pr2kbx/full/][img][/img][/url]

[NightWatcher]

30. Yep, just turned off

[Newest Reality]

32. Well, that's a good question.

What is non-dual? Though we don't remember where we "came from" it sounds like the place to return.

Of course, we use ideas and what we have been told to try to discern where we end-up. Did we start out with all of that obscure, second-hand knowledge?

Coming and going, as well as birth, death and time are all conceptual. Even ideas of nothing are conceptual. Some fear that death, (without an afterlife) is like some black box of nothing and that is conceptual, too. Even that is an idea based on dualistic thoughts.

So, to me, it is ineffable and non-conceptual and the only way you can be concerned, frightened, cajoled, manipulated or anticipatory about death is to not think it through carefully until you get the insight that death, at the least, is the other side of what we are calling life. Everything else is based on other people's ideas, fears and fixations about what is just as natural as "being born", (which we learn concepts about after the fact).

Right now in our current condition, death is a fantasy fraught with interpolations, repudiations and fabrications. From one perspective, it is quite natural for a living creature to have a reaction to its cessation. However, one of the spices of we conceive of as existence is the uncertainty about imaginary endings, extrapolated into the future.

Once you explore the abstractions of conceptualizing everything and actually living in that as real, you come to wonder just how much of life we are actually living in any direct way in the first place. Then, death becomes a issue secondary to actually living without obscuration and as an endless series of problems, frustrations and suffering.

If death can be experienced at all, (as opposed to the process of dying) it may be like any wave function. Living is the upside of the wave and death is the trough, meaning one goes with the other.

Even with the fear, one can go kicking and screaming or calm and open to it. Though exploring the idea of your own death is a useful contemplation that may reveal much, one can always leave the outcome as a mystery that remains to be solved, one way or another, when the time is ripe.

[sheshe2]

35. To be honest

I have no fear of death. That it would come swiftly, as in dying in your sleep, would be a blessing.

I was raised in the Episcopal church. I had a debate with my mom one night about limbo. I was 12 or 13 at the time. The church said if a baby died at childbirth and was not baptized before death, then the child went to limbo. An innocent child, without sin could not get to heaven? I was troubled by this. I drifted from the church a few years after that.

I believe in something, however not the rules of the church. I believe in the end that it is ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
"Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return" (Genesis 3:19), and "I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee" (Ezekiel 28:18).

[Newest Reality]

37. Ah!

Glad to see you have inquired into it and applied your own insights. Sounds very open and freeing from the way you express that. I do feel that examining death holds keys to life, particularly in a culture where the reality of it is denied and put aside. We are immersed in news and entertainment regarding deaths, but that is so far removed from being there, in the midst of it, or being about to experience it.

When someone we know dies and there is a funeral, we get to "view" someone who has their hair done, make-up and and looks dressed for a fun night out. Then the cover is shut and we deal again with concepts.

Ah, but the dust and ashes are what an immense Universe is made of, ey? Trillions and trillions of particles flowing dynamically in an unimaginably vast expanse of space and coalescing into everything and anything. Of course, other than the early atomic theory of Democritus, they had no words for atomic and sub-atomic particles in the old days and Quantum Mechanics was but a mote in God's eye.

Enjoy your freedom and may it lead to a really great liberation beyond words.

[Taverner]

34. You become unstuck in time. Like Billy Pilgrim.

You bounce around your old life over and over again.

[Rowdyboy]

40. Hopefully I'll spend eternity spooning my partner in a drowsy half-sleep...its my "heaven" now

so why would I want it to change?

[sheshe2]

41. What a beautiful eternity you describe,

I wouldn't change that for the world!

[Rowdyboy]

42. I've often thought that's when I'm happiest and most content.

What more could you ask?

[rrneck]

53. Into the thoughts of those we leave behind. nt

[sheshe2]

55. Sweet! nt

[valerief]

57. Same place before we were conceived. nt

[Puzzledtraveller]

59. Reincarnation

Until you get it right, which may be never but that's not the point. The point is to live good, without your eyes set on the fruits of your actions.

[struggle4progress]

65. I think I'll go out for dinner

[Major Nikon]

67. 6ft underground

More or less.

[sheshe2]

69. For me.....

[url=http://postimage.org/][img][/img][/url]

[Dash87]

70. If we could be free from our lives, and it were possible,

would we look back and find the fear of death not only spurious, but ignorant?

Humanity is too flawed to view death reasonably. I can't trust my own judgments about it.

[cliffordu]

73. K&R.

[Bake]

74. Just out there into the cosmos.

Maybe. Maybe not. Don't know. Hard to imagine that something as precious as LIFE just ... ends.

If you find out, come back and post it here!



Bake

[sheshe2]

77. Will do, Bake!

sheshe

[Xyzse]

75. I enjoyed this one.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4675953

Thing is, I don't think I want to know.

[sheshe2]

76. Wow!

That was a great article, Xyse.

Thanks for posting it!

[Xyzse]

82. I know...

Did you listen to the audio? It was great!

[sheshe2]

83. No only read the write up.

Will follow with the audio tomorrow! It was an awesome read!

Thanks, Xyzse.

[Xyzse]

84. My pleasure...

I like the guy's pacing and intonation.
I haven't heard from him in NPR lately, so I should check out how the guy is doing.

[olddots]

80. I thought about this alot a few months ago

really dwelled on it for a few days then I lived and forgot the thoughts .Maybe we go where we want to go for a change .

[name not needed]

85. Hell is real. The locals call it Paramus.