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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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In the Afterlife
    #7454423 -

Most people exert effort to ensure that their life is a living hell totally devoid of happiness or choice, so why do people try to comfort themselves with the idea of an afterlife? What makes them think that they will be any more skillful in this assumed afterlife than in the life they currently have?


--------------------
"A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." ― Carlos Castaneda

Edited by Huehuecoyotl (09/26/07 06:52 AM)

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #7454623 -

They would rather just wait and hope that the afterlife is more fulfilling rather than use some of their energy to make the life they have a little better. I guess some people are just lazy.


--------------------
"The only unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain and everything is changeable."

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #7454822 -

Huehuecoyotl said:
Most people exert effort to ensure that their life is a living hell totally devoid of happiness or choice, so why do people try to comfort themselves with the idea of an afterlife? What makes them think that they will be any more skillful in this assumed afterlife than in the life they currently have?

The first sentence in the post is really a loaded gun and I have no idea how to address it. I agree that one can choose how to interact with reality, but at the same time I wonder how little capability some people have of recognizing the conditioning which makes them feel powerless.

I think the promise of the afterlife is largely about formlessness, or the end of pain and the ability to soar. The promise of not being confined by the laws of physics or the laws of nature which say you are slowly decaying, and which guarantee that every form you love (are attached to) will eventually vanish.

It's easy to talk about skillfulness and choice when you've been conditioned as you have to believe in (or realize) these things. If you've been conditioned to believe in servitude, waiting for salvation, self-loathing and self-denial, etc., then these things are as real and powerful as the freedom to choose happiness which your post suggests you take for granted.


--------------------
“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: Lion]
    #7456535 -

I am aware of much of my conditioning, and it is no exaggeration to say that I have reconditioned myself to many of my own preferences at this point. The fact that people tend to be unaware of their conditioning was my point.


--------------------
"A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." ― Carlos Castaneda

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #7456751 -

Most afterlife scenarios are a composite of wish-fulfillment and infantile regression to a state wherein all of one's individual needs are met. This regression can even assume the form of Freud's "Oceanic Experience" which harkens back to the tensionless existence of pre-contraction intrauterine life. It is the biological matrix.

Personal immortality, the abode of the gods, the Elysian fields, the Happy Hunting Grounds, the scenarios of the movie "What Dreams May Come,' are all states of continued egoic, individualized existence of endless duration. Shortsighted people hold to these notions never realizing that limited existence, that is to say, an existence in form extending indefinitely would prove to be Hell. Even if every imagination could be manifested, the limitations of the average mind would result in stark raving madness after even a few hundred years of self-indulgence.

Eternal Life, Nirvana, Fana all refer to Formlessness, about which nothing can be posited, for anything named is made into an object, a thing, and Formlessness in no-thing. So long as we are 'things' to ourselves - body-minds - any taste of our transcendental nature will elude us. We are:

"Like a sword that cuts but cannot cut itself;
Like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself."

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #7457719 -

Huehuecoyotl said:
Most people exert effort to ensure that their life is a living hell totally devoid of happiness or choice, so why do people try to comfort themselves with the idea of an afterlife? What makes them think that they will be any more skillful in this assumed afterlife than in the life they currently have?


Damn good question.

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7457879 -

It's just a way for people to alleviate any responsibility for their actions here on earth in the now. Besides, I heard in the bible that Satan is gonna come back and destroy it anyhow, so why should we care what goes on here?

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7457943 -

Quote:
Damn good question.


In think this mostly comes from education.
We as humans are vulnerable beings and it all depends how we use it. Because from what I observed, it can be our greatest friend and we can use it as a tool and turn it into strength or it can be an enemy when we turn it into fear.
Sadly, the education we receive is in such a manner that it makes us fear life (and death) and religion and the after life idea comes as a comfort to our vitiated minds.


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs
:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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Re: In the Afterlife [Re: Huehuecoyotl]
    #7458811 -

Huehuecoyotl said:
Most people exert effort to ensure that their life is a living hell totally devoid of happiness or choice, so why do people try to comfort themselves with the idea of an afterlife? What makes them think that they will be any more skillful in this assumed afterlife than in the life they currently have?


This is the attitude most seem to have about the afterlife, seeing it as something applied to them rather than an extension of their own being. But at least in the Christian faith, the scriptures do not support such a view. Heaven and hell are what you make of things. We either make heaven or hell for ourselves by our attitude and the way we do things.

I've talked with people who believe that we cannot be perfect this side of death. But for some reason they believe that we can be made magically perfect after death in heaven. When I ask how they propose such a thing can be done, there is no answer. Apparently some have not even begun to question how to make perfection a working reality and assume that one day it will just be laid upon them.

Which leads to a quote I love:

"She sometimes wished she were good; but there are thousands of wandering ghosts who would be good if they might without taking trouble; the kind of goodness they desire would not be worth a life to hold it."
-George MacDonald


--------------------
"I threw a small stone down at the reflection of my image in the water, and it altogether disappeared. I burst as it shattered through me, like a bullet through a bottle... and I'm expected to believe that any of this is real!" -mewithoutYou

"To believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream: to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for godless repose: these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love." -George MacDonald

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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