Bringing it All to a Close

I have an appointment with my doctor next month and one of the items on the questionnaire I filled out was about death.  

How much am I afraid of dying?

I imagine death is an uncomfortable experience, especially if I have to experience all of it while I am awake.   Maybe if I were asleep at the time, I wouldn't notice anything strange?

For most people I think, questions about death are dismal.  

After all, we imagine so many things about death, and we really don't know what we're talking about.

Unless we've been there, or at least gone for a visit. 

I've been to Death's door, and looked in, but I never got beyond the foyer.  No matter who I accompanied on that journey, I was never allowed to go any further than the meeting that so many had with someone who was going to explain some things to them.

In the near death experience that I thought I had over a decade ago, I took a route I was unfamiliar with because I never experienced it with anybody else.   I simply arced off the planet, as a sky blue blob and looked back at the clouds below me, as though over my shoulder, and said to myself: "that life is over."

I had no idea that I would think so little about my life just past, about which I had thought so much while I was alive.

So I guess a truism would be that after life, the life just lived is not the highest order of business.  

Earlier this last summer, perhaps mid or late summer, I dreamed about a discussion I was having with my supervisor.  He was dressed as a "Father Confessor" and we were in the bowels of some Byzantine cathedral, in his office.

I was dressed in a business suit which is something I never wear, and have not worn in years.

It reminded me of discussions I've had with a number of supervisors in my professional life. 

The part of the talk I remember was me reporting that I would work for another year and then die.

How could the me sitting in that chair be so glib about my death?

Maybe my higher self, the one doing the talking, isn't that concerned about my life after all?

 

Is there an End to Life?

 We speak about lives, living one life, living another life, as though all of our lives were like beads on a string and placed in sequence in time along the string.   So I've experienced some lives, and not others.

Since some mystics know that there is no time, in the grand sense, that perspective is not real, but a construct of our human view that yesterday came before today, and tomorrow has not yet come. 

I will experience that tomorrow.

Whether we know it or not we live in the spacious now.  According some Seth writings, time is a side effect of having the kind of nervous system we have.  Axon and dendrites, and gaps between neurons that must be surmounted.

Time is an illusion of living, and gives us a sense of moment to moment experience.  For the body there was a first moment, when we became conscious enough to know we were here.  There will be a last moment before we fall apart when we will stop sensing this life.

I had a vision once, of being in a box, I was an electrical field in the box, and it was possible for me to look at what seemed to be a concrete enclosure with utter calm.  I think that's what we really are, electrical creatures who have a capacity to imagine with nothing to interfere with our concentration.

I don't know if there are more boxes, but I would assume that there are, since, from the shape of the box, it looked as though these could be stacked, and side by side.   I can't say where, and the idea that we would be captured clouds of electrical fluff begs the question:  how did we get here?

I've come across references to "the cave" in writings about mystical experiences.  Sigrid who was deep into mystical things talked about it, and I would think the box fits the description.  

Maybe it is considered a mystical milestone. 

And a milestone implies that we are back to sequenced time.  

There was a moment before the milestone, and a moment after. 

I think the box has been there since forever. 

I am in the box, and I have no corporeal body to worry about, so I will live forever, and dream forever.

To Thine Own Self Be True

What does it mean to be true to your self?

Since I recall not being terribly honest with myself, I think I know what it means; but I do wonder if it really means something else?

Does it mean to regard your strategic interests above other people's strategic interests, as you understand them?   Something ultimately selfish.

I thought it was a quote from an ancient Greek, but it turns out it was Shakespeare.  This implies that the translation was probably less garbled than it would have been, had it been Greek.  Not that I'd understand the subtleties of Elizabethan English any better than a translated Greek.    

Does it mean what it used to?

The trouble with this kind of quote is I don't know what it means.

But I understand now how, when I was a good deal younger, I wouldn't let myself know certain things because I wanted to believe in them.  I was so foolish.

Usually this had something to do with an attractive woman, or her attentions.  I had such a poor opinion of my attractiveness.  Or I wanted something else to be true, so I wouldn't pay attention to facts.

It's not that I dislike myself, but rather I see my flaws; my deep flaws. 

If I had a cat who always did the same stupid thing, I wouldn't hate the cat, or think less of it.  I'd think that it was cute. 

And so I look at myself and smile wryly and maybe even laugh a little bit, as I once again, blithely continue in my delusion.

I'll figure it out later.

 

 

 

Long Term Plans

Now that I'm old, and getting to the point where long term plans would seem Pollyanna like, I'm asking myself what comes after this life.

Not to seem overly dramatic, but after cancer when I was 60, and open heart surgery at 68, I think I see a trend.   

When I had dreams about other people's deaths, I would be them, so I guess I know what it feels like to die, and having one experience that looked like a near death, I can say that mine is different from any I've been experiencing.  

So I know I survive death.  The people who think we all just go dark after death are simply speculating. 

After life, is another life. I've been through the early stages of the transition with a number of people, but I never saw where they went after.

Michael Newton, PhD, wrote a number of books that talk about the destinations and it seems that each one of us knows where to go when we leave this life.  When I died, I simply took off and forgot all about this life, I had a destination and wanted to get there, until I was very rudely put back in my body. 

Probably surprised my keeper. 

It's been a long life, and a pretty good one.  I made a number of mistakes, I think at least one bad one, but nobody gets a manual when you get here, we all kind of learn by doing. 

Finally, I think when we know enough, we die.  I just don't know if I've been scheduled yet or not.

Yours. P.