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Kickle
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: deCypher]
#14429599 - 05/10/11 12:20 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I agree with the majority using a preconceived notion. I also think that the notion arises out of the psychological benefits provided. And the ability to cope with reality has so many shades of gray, I find it pretty wild. Children who grow up in abusive homes tend to have very few practical coping skills aside from simply tuning out the world. Not real effective in the long term and instead quite detrimental for dealing with the pressures of life. I mean, as a child who depends on their parents for survival purposes, there's a big conflict when those same parents bring high levels of stress. Options are extremely limited and trying to mentally escape the trauma is about as good as it gets. Even if options open up down the line, that default mode of dealing with stress/trauma is pretty ingrained as what "works". This is reflected neurologically and provides a huge barrier against change.
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evildee125
Here now



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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: Kickle]
#14429627 - 05/10/11 12:26 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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take everything on here with a grain of salt... its always a trend in one way or another... 
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c0sm0nautt

Registered: 05/19/08
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Loc: The Astral Realm
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: deCypher]
#14429718 - 05/10/11 12:52 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
deCypher said: If you believe in an afterlife, you most likely believe that what you do in this life will affect what sort of afterlife you go to. In the case of religions like Christianity, this instills a great amount of fear into the believer: if you sin by not following certain rules and precepts, then something greatly unpleasant will befall you after death, whether it be burning in a lake of fire for all of eternity or just being disconnected from the Source/God. As a result the believer tends to live their life in perpetual worry of doing the wrong thing and, in addition, is unable to potentially improve their happiness by disobeying certain rules and precepts (sex before marriage or abortion, for example). The same thing applies for believers in reincarnation: one lives in fear of being reincarnated into a lesser form of life based on one's actions in the here and now.
Yea, I definitely see what your saying here. Another example of a detrimental belief would be the suicide bomber who believes their worldly deed will land them in some sort of virgin-filled heaven.
However, I think it can go both ways. It really depends on what your idea of an afterlife is, and if you believe what you do in life will have any bearing on it. My idea of an afterlife doesn't have any fear in it. Well, I'm afraid of dying but that fear seems almost primal and doesn't correlate to what I expect post-Death. I suppose it's the fear of the unknown because no one who is alive can ever no for sure what is coming, if anything at all.
I think most people are going to be very confused when they die, and I believe practicing meditation and focus can assist one post-Death. Also, I believe that psychedelics, out-of-body experiences and dreams are all in a way preparations and practice for death - practice navigating thought-responsive realms.
I don't buy into the idea that our actions in life determine our reincarnation or afterlife in a judgmental or punishment type of way. I suppose I'm probably in the minority on this, so perhaps a belief in an afterlife is detrimental for most people. However, life is real hard for a lot of people and these types of beliefs can keep you going day to day, keep you happy and feeling good. What else can you really ask for?
Quote:
deCypher said: Not only this, but belief in an afterlife seems to take away the importance of this one: this life is seen only as a waiting room for all the really cool things that'll happen after you die, be it sex with seventy-two virgins or blissful life-everlasting spent singing with the angels. If it weren't for the fact that most religions forbid suicide, there would be no reason for the believer not to kill themselves right now in order to escape this suffering-filled world into something unimaginably better.
Finally, consider this: isn't it better to behave as if this is our only life? If we're wrong, then we get the chance to do it over again in the next. If we're right, then we made the best use of our time and didn't waste all the short years of our life molding our behavior for imaginary future rewards.
It's definitely best to live your life to the fullest. But if one is utterly convinced through experience that this is not the end, but nothing more than a dream, then couldn't that also open up some room to live life in a different, perhaps more fulfilling way?
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Vsnares.Zappa
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: Kickle] 1
#14429761 - 05/10/11 01:03 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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The fact that we are mortal and have a limited timespan on earth pushs us toward acomplishement(progress)IMHO.
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evildee125
Here now



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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: c0sm0nautt]
#14429792 - 05/10/11 01:09 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
c0sm0nautt said: But if one is utterly convinced through experience that this is not the end, but nothing more than a dream, then couldn't that also open up some room to live life in a different, perhaps more fulfilling way?
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microdotty
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: evildee125]
#14429897 - 05/10/11 01:37 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
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Vsnares.Zappa
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: microdotty]
#14429906 - 05/10/11 01:40 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
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Kickle
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: microdotty]
#14429960 - 05/10/11 01:54 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
do you feel driven to let others know?
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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infectedstyle
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: Kickle]
#14430041 - 05/10/11 02:19 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Woulden't u want to knowQuote:
Kickle said:
Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
do you feel driven to let others know?
Woulden't you want to know life goes on beyond death?
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microdotty
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: Vsnares.Zappa]
#14430275 - 05/10/11 03:12 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Vsnares.Zappa said:
Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!

You can mock me all you want... i know what i seen and it was witnessed by 5 other people all completely sober!
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c0sm0nautt

Registered: 05/19/08
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: microdotty]
#14430296 - 05/10/11 03:17 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Just woke up from a dream where I talked to my two dead grandparents. I rarely dream about them.
May 10, 2011 I’m in some sort of huge church. The place is filled with people. I am emotional about something. I walk over with my Mom to this water area on the wall and wash my face. My Mom washes her face as well. I find myself walking out of the church towards the back. I feel this is premature and the theme had to do with death. As I get to the back of the church I find my Dad sitting between Grandpa and Grandpa John. I give them each a kiss. When I get close to Grandpa I say, “This world is filled with love, you just need to find it within yourself.” He seems to know what I am talking about.
Edited by c0sm0nautt (05/10/11 03:24 PM)
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Sleepwalker
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: microdotty]
#14430642 - 05/10/11 04:21 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
Ok let's assume that you really did see a "poltergeist". What about that tells you that there is an afterlife? Couldn't there just be forces that we call "ghosts" that have nothing to do with and never were part of the living?
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microdotty
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: Sleepwalker]
#14430657 - 05/10/11 04:25 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Oweyervishice said:
Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
Ok let's assume that you really did see a "poltergeist". What about that tells you that there is an afterlife? Couldn't there just be forces that we call "ghosts" that have nothing to do with and never were part of the living?
Well thats a very good point, so im only going on what other people believe and what i myself have seen, it seems rational that it is spirts of dead people that cause these actions.. i have heard no other rational explination for what happened that night...
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Vsnares.Zappa
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: microdotty]
#14430970 - 05/10/11 05:42 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
microdotty said:
Quote:
Oweyervishice said:
Quote:
microdotty said: I know there's such thing as an afterlife FACT! I've witnessed poltergeist activity.. and i don't mean the movie!
it seems rational that it is spirts of dead people that cause these actions..
I'm not mocking you, i find it hard to believe it, thats all.
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auxiliary
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: microdotty]
#14431380 - 05/10/11 07:10 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
microdotty said: it seems rational that it is spirts of dead people that cause these actions.. i have heard no other rational explination for what happened that night...
I think it's more rational to assume it's invisible people fucking with you.
--------------------
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: g00ru]
#14431453 - 05/10/11 07:25 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I think what is detrimental, and the source for the Marxist notion that "religion is the opiate of the people," is the childishness of holding fantasies about the afterlife. I have heard a 20 something aged girl say something to he parents like, "When we get to heaven..." This girl seems to imagine a world of form wherein life goes on happily in some 'place' with her parents and loved ones, a mundane existence without aging, sickness or death, ad infinitum. The possibility of experiencing Eternal Life, is not the same as having immortality. Dissolving one's individuality in death or mystical death, to discover that there has always been only one Being. Our delusion of isolation dies with us, hopefully in ecstatic realization, and we see, face-to-face as the Bible puts it, that what I thought was 'me,' has always been 'He,' and that none of us has ever been alone, rather, we've always been 'All ONE.'
So, what disturbs me is that a mystical Truth is misunderstood by the sensate masses as being some Elysian Field, Happy Hunting Ground, 72 Celestial Virgins, or walking hand-in-hand with a long-haired, bearded Aramaic-speaking gentle Jesus. What disturbs me was best depicted in film in What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams. Mystical experience, glimpsed in this life, always transforms that life in a compassionate, life-enhancing, freedom-loving way. Visionary experiences might be misunderstood; they may be interpreted in a way that creates megalomania and false prophets, but real mysticism turns human beings into Christs or Buddhas, in jeans maybe, not robes of millennia past. Finally, the Light carried in one's Heart goes 'supernova,' engulfing the awareness of ourselves in an ecstasy of Infinite Radiance, even as the pain of our stalled heart fades away. This, is as comprehensibleas I can imagine, but of course I'm sure it will be incomprehensible by the mind that writes this. As the Good Book says: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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g00ru
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#14431714 - 05/10/11 08:21 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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wow, thought provoking post.
Very good point that fantasizing about the afterlife is childish. The fact is, fantasizing excessively in general is childish. I guess I'm just a big baby!!!  
Srsly though, i think there may be a world of form beyond death. But indeed, all i can know for sure is the holistic aspect of death, which will almost certainly result in complete destruction of the individual. In that way, this is our only life. It's the only time I get to be me. But there's more than the "me" and that's what I think experiences rebirth, in still something of an individuated fashion.
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
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Jeerix
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: g00ru]
#14432225 - 05/10/11 10:04 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I tend to think, as with most things, that finding some middle way is essential. Sure, excessive fantasizing may be childish, but what's at the other end of the spectrum? Certainly not supreme maturity.
In fact a complete lack of fantasy implies a certain lack of creativity as a whole- something essential to our very humanity. Sometimes I feel as if a society which discourages fantasy is really just a nursery for fallen humans: more beasts or machines than men.
Edited by Jeerix (05/10/11 10:05 PM)
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g00ru
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: Jeerix]
#14434164 - 05/11/11 10:07 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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yeah, of course imagination is essential to creativity...if everybody let their imaginations run wild, this would indeed be a much more beautiful world
-------------------- check out my music! drowse in prison and your waking will be but loss
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Sleepwalker
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Re: Belief in the Afterlife is detrimental...yay or neigh? [Re: g00ru]
#14434937 - 05/11/11 01:24 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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What about those creative people who fantasize about cutting their fellow man into teeny tiny pieces and flame-broiling them to perfection?
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