What Do You Think Happens....

[Johnny]

I want to believe that humans can go on after their bodies die but, then its possible that once you die, you're gone.


Human Life is but a passing minute .

[.:x:Marissa:x:.]

both sides of the argument definitely make sense, they are both possibilities in my eyes. i guess im leaning to the afterlife part, because its more comforting.

[sandsleeper]

nikki, i definitely don't think that sounds crazy at all. i don't know if i could bring myself to actually say i believe in ghosts but i do believe that people who have passed on can still maintain a very strong presence in people's lives.

i mean, take for example what happened with my grandma:

a few months before she died i was at her house playing checkers with her and when the game ended she told me to stay right where i was, she had something to give me. she came back with her favorite necklace, a black hills charm on a gold chain, something she'd had for years and years, and she told me that she wanted me to take it in case anything should happen to her because she didn't want my bratty cousins to get it. ( she seriously said that too) she wasn't sick or anything so i thought it was kind of weird but i still felt pretty honored and put it away for safe keeping.

a few months later while i was up at the camp in maine (my mom had just returned home to LI for work) we got the call that my grandma had died. the first thing i did was go to my jewlery box to get the necklace. it wasn't there. i tore apart my entire room and moved all the furniture looking for it but i couldn't find it. so i just assumed i'd been irresponsible and ungracious and lost it, and i hated myself for that.

but then, a year to the day after my grandma's death, my mom was cleaning out her car and found a cruddy chunk of something under a cup holder. she was about to throw it away but then she picked at it a bit and realized it was my grandma's charm. it was chilling. neither of us remembered having ever put it on the dashboard. and we couldn't find the chain, we never did. just the charm.

so i'm not saying that my grandma actually took the charm and put it there or anything, but it just seems extremely uncanny that exactly a year later my mom should find it in such a manner. why would she think to scrub under the cup-holders on the dashboard? my mom is definitely not a clean freak by nature. it's like it was meant to happen, or like my grandma's spirit somehow directed her...

another thought i have:

whether or not our consciousness is something seperate from the mortality of our bodies, it's fairly safe to say that it's a result of some form of energy. they say energy never ceases to exist, it simply changes forms and exists in different ways with different functions; so in a way, your consciousness, or at least what makes up your consciousness, will never cease to exist either, it will just pass into another phase of existence. all of us here are in an expiriencing form of energy, but someday we will all become the experienced, for those who follow us to perceive and use while they're in their experiencing phase. that's the beautiful thing about this earth, it seems that no matter what we do we are always a part of life.


both of my statements may seem contradictory. but i'm sure there's some sort of resolution in there somewhere, amongst the shades of grey. but i don't consider figuring any of this out my business. in fact, it's very much a waste of time. the best thing that i can do is make myself comfortable with whichever reality it may be and be ready. cause either way, what am i going to do about it?

[Henrietta]

AHHH ... where raine hits the wall is my favorite part of that video!!!!

sorry, spam i know but i just noticed your new pic! I love it

Thanks

Nikki, my mom has a very similar story from her mom. I used to live in this pre civil war house in Mornroe, Michigan, where my great grandma lived all of her adult life. When my great grandpa died, my grandma was in her teens or twenties. He was a really good craftsman and was always building things. He kept his tools down in the basement or cellar or whatever it was. They were just sitting there after his funeral and they heard sounds like someone was just working with tools down there. They checked and nothing. I think it's just the dead's way of reassuring their loved ones that they aren't gone forever. I definitely think a few people may hang around earth cause they can't move on, but I don't think you just continue on living on earth as a ghost forever.

[nikki4982]

Oh yeah, I forgot one!

When me and my mom went into my dad's work for the second time after his death, we wanted to try to remember to look for an envelope moistener (hard to describe... makes it so you don't have to lick the envelopes or stamps) that had belonged to his dad, and was missing from the house. We just assumed he brought it into work with him, but when my mom had asked on the phone if anyone had seen it (before we went), my dad's secretary said no. We figured she just maybe didn't know what it looked like, so we'd look for it when we got there. My mom completely forgot about it when we got there (we were there for insurance papers or something), but I just snooped around the entire building looking for it. I looked above the sink in their little kitchen, then kept looking cos it wasn't there. When I walked back and was standing next to the kitchen, I looked over, and there it was. Just sitting there, above the sink, with the dishes. Very strange place for it. I couldn't believe it. I'm pretty sure my dad moved it there so I'd find it. The weirdest part about that was I hadn't mentioned what I was looking for, or even that I was looking for anything outloud. So, well, he not only moved it for me, but he read my mind. It was also pretty weird that my mom, my dad's secretary, and another man who work at the warehouse were all standing right next to the kitchen talking (no door or anything, just a little nook) and they hadn't seen anything move or anything.

[Axtech]

"They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't they say the same thing about life?" - Waking Life

[thirdhour]

I'm pretty certain that whatever happens after death is fairly simular to what happens before birth.

That being said, death scares me shitless.

[Sufjan Stevens]

Sex happens after death?

Anyways, I am finding it hard to believe that we all here think that there's some great land that we all go to after death. I thought there would be some realistic people here that would at least share the common idea of there being no heaven. As shitty as it may seem, there can't be a place.

Our bodies do not have some sort of intangible source of energy that drives us to do what we do. We live because of all the intircate networking of muscles and whatnot in our bodies, not because we have souls. If we had souls, everything would have a soul, and it's just not feasible. I know I sound pessimistic, but it's just reality. After all the things in our bodies stop working, we do not continue to live, we just go away. That's just how it is...

[thirdhour]

That's pretty much how I feel too.

[nelison]

I don't know what to think really. It seems really weird that everything just shuts off. I think we would all like to know that something greater awaits us, but really no one knows until you actually die.

I think I've come to grips with both sides. Realistically it doesn't make sense that a heaven exists, and I'm okay with that. And of course if it does exist then that would be great too. I guess its just a matter of time.

I try not to worry about death and just live life as good as I possibly can. I'm a strong believer that if you spend your life worrying about things you're not going to live life to the fullest.

[happening fish]

I suppose the closest alliance i have to any religion would be to the wiccans, who believe in the summerland where souls wait between reincarnations. They don't believe in any sort of hell or the devil or anything like that. I suppose this coincides pretty well with my opinions since i DO believe that your soul or life force or whatever you want to call it returns to the earth and as such is born of it again. wow, deep.

[Joey]

I studied wicca for about a year .. I loved it

There is no god, there is no heaven, there is no hell ... that pretty much sums up my beliefs .. the only reason I believe there is something is because it's what I have to tell myself since otherwise where the hell is my dad? I'd rather not think of him just simply gone .. so yeah, I don't believe in any of that afterlife stuff .. but I tell myself there's something simply to keep me somewhat sane when it comes to my dad.

[emily]

I don't believe in heaven or the afterlife or whatnot. I think it would be nice if it really was like a rebirth as a different object, like Shinto. I think you just die.