I visited many graves this past weekend including my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and my ex husband.

I thought about all the coffins buried in the various cemeteries I visited, and how the decomposition happens. I found out it takes up to 50 years for an embalmed corpse to get decomposed down to bones.

Then,as I thought about their lives and their deaths, I got to wondering something about religious thinking concerning a person's spirit.

My TBM relatives like to talk about the reunion of those who have just passed away with others who died earlier and what a glorious thing it must be.

What is the supposed mechanism for this happening? I remember years ago about the "twinkling of an eye", "being translated" and dead relatives "coming for a person" at death. But, I do not recall ever really understanding in a practical way how it could possibly take place.

I know this might sound "out there" and I have spent the last few days wondering if it is too upsetting a topic to post here. It is not my intent to be morbid, but as I ponder the human condition, I find myself really amazed that I just accepted this concept and never questioned the "how" of it all.

As someone once suggested here, perhaps our time after death is the same as our time before birth.....we are completely unaware and non-existent?

That's my current, working theory. So seize the day and enjoy...make the most of each and every moment.

The topic is one that hit home with me. I've wondered, have no idea how it works,but I am convinced that there is something in the realm of energy that survives the earthly, physical body. I'm also convinced that energy is the essence of the person and they can and do leave us messages. I've taken photos. I've had a lot of them since my husband and brother died in 2013 and 2014, in particular. Big and clear. Can't miss it. It's one of those things that I just accept on faith (hehe) that everything is energy and is not destroyed. I find it very comforting. Sometimes funny! I don't care what the mechanism is, I'm just happy that it works! I'm not the only one in the family that have received these messages either.

I know that only my husband's decaying body is in the coffin in the local cemetery. I go there and visit from time to time. It's a kind of meeting point. I'm intrigued by all of the decorated graves. Some are very elaborate and do not stick to the rules but the cemetery owner doesn't seem to mind.

I don't know where my mother and her parents are buried other than it's in a cemetery in the Portland, OR area. I don't know if they have markers or not. But none of that matters to me.

What I find interesting is that my husband was a TBM through and through. I'd sure love to have a conversation with him now! :-) My brother (actually half brother, same mother different father) was not religious at all. I spent very little time with him in the last 40 years, but our connection was never broken.

At my age, I think about how many years I will live on this earth and how they will pan out. I've concluded that some of our body parts had expiration dates and I was not notified ! So life for me has changed a lot concerning what I can do and not do. Because of my experiences, I have no fear of leaving this earth. I have my trust and will all documented and set up. I've put in a request to live to 94! So we'll see if I make it!

My husband used to say he'd be killed walking across the street on Sunday on his way home from church by a Budweiser Beer truck!
I don't say: keep the faith anymore. I say: Keep your sense of humor, you're going to need it!

Gemini, since you researched this, how long for an UN-embalmed corpse to decompose? My dad was not embalmed and died 26 years ago. I don't mean to be morbid either but I'd rather think of him turned to dust by now.

In Mormon theology, I believe I was told I'd be twinkled to heaven along with all my family buried next to me. If you are cremated, which Mormons don't advise but don't forbid, you get put back together and then twinkled.

As an apostate, I guess I'll be floated out to outer darkness.

The best answer I could find is about 8-10 years for an unembalmed body to decompose.There are a lot of factors that come into play and climate is one of the big ones.

Thanks. I don't know why exactly but it is kind of nice to know that all my deceased relatives are back to dust and no longer decomposing.

For something really squeamish, but I find fascinating is "The Body Farms". These are farms where bodies are left in different environments to see how they decompose. This helps forensic police detectives to estimate how long a body has been out or buried or covered, etc...
https://youtu.be/FDU0X9VVQn4

First off, your spirit body...

We 'learned' in seminary that the spirit body is made of matter, but a matter "so fine" that men of science could not detect it. Which was okay over 50 years ago but not so easily swallowed today.

Next, I was taught that there is a veil here on earth that hides the spirit world from our gaze,because otherwise we'd see all the spirits around us.

At death the spirit leaves the tabernacle of flesh... Naked!

I think its like a dust devil but with spirit instead of dust.

Or maybe like the transporter on the original Star Trek?

Maybe using the telephone booth method that Bill and Ted used on their excellent adventure?

How about the pods in "The Fly"?

And are we sure it "up"? Is there an up in space? Because god lives in space, near the star Kolob as we all know. So which way is up relative to the earth and heaven? Depends on which part of the planet you die on I suppose.

Heavenly Father doesn't want you to ask that question.

All you need to know is that Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways. I would drop this, because you really don't want to make him mad--see Old Testament.

Actually my best guess would be the one clue from the Bible: "On chariots of fire."

Through the stargate.

Heartless Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Through the stargate.

Darn, you beat me to it!

My ex could see dead people and worked hospice for a while. The normal procedure is for two relatives to come for you. When a patient sees this, their time is near.

As for LDS doctrine, based on TSCC's track record with the facts I wouldn't believe a thing they say.

Stairway To Heaven....sorry my bad....

RB

Actually makes sense since you can actually buy them . . .

Because we all know, words have two meanings?!?!

A long time ago I was a paramedic in Los Angeles and saw people die in front of me, primarily when in the E.R. and CPR was being performed and the the doctor would call it. I never, nor do I remember anyone, nurses, doctors, paramedics, or even the janitor having seen or had any kind of spiritual experience knowing a soul had left a body. It looks very much like lights out, period end of story.
Also I have always wondered if there is a soul how strong it must be. Imagine the poor people that were standing under the atomic bomb blast of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They where vaporized, atoms scattered everywhere. So is the soul capable of surviving a close encounter of a atomic blast? If that's true then maybe B.Y. was right and people do live on the sun.

All the stuff you can see, whether you're just looking up at the night sky or through any telescope, is just 5% of the Universe, according to boffins who know stuff.

95% of what is contained in the Universe canNOT be seen. The science boffins call it Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Dark Radiation. I call it Dark Doings.

It's obvious to me that spirits, all 100 million who have lived, and the homes and building they live in, the offices and fields where they work and the movie houses and libraries where they divert and learn, are Dark Matter. And their homes, their buildings, and all their infrastructure and appliances are running on Dark Energy. And their internet uses Dark Radiation.

...and I pray that the prophet, yea, even Thomas S. Monson, may be inspired to tell all the eager to know science boffins what they want to know. In the name of all that is holy, ah man!

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All the stuff you can see, whether you're just
> looking up at the night sky or through any
> telescope, is just 5% of the Universe, according
> to boffins who know stuff.
>

How do you get to be a boffin who knows stuff?

I guess if you're up for it, I could boff you??


Hey, isn't your birthday coming up!!!!!!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 08:58PM by elderolddog.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I guess if you're up for it, I could boff you??
>
>
> Hey, isn't your birthday coming up!!!!!!!!


Yes and Yes.

Ay! Que sucia!

Okay, here is a sample of my personal beliefs. Lots of woo ahead, so proceed with caution! :o)

In my belief, our spirts are attached to our bodies by the chakras. These are points where the spirit is screwed down to your body, and which lay along your spinal column, neck, and at the base of your skull.

Your spirit is quite used to exiting from your body. It does so frequently, if not nightly. As you fall asleep, your spirit starts detaching at the base of your spine and works upward. The noise as it is detaching has been described as being like "a freight train," and in my experience this is a good description. It is LOUD (if you have enough residual awareness to perceive it.) Spirits have different preferred ways of detaching. In my case, it is quite rapid. My feet point toward the ceiling and shoot up straight toward the sky with the rest of my body following. Some people prefer to roll out sideways. Some wait for the spirit to fully detach and either rise straight up or go out head first. Your spirit retains an attachment to your body through what has been termed a "silver cord." At death, the cord snaps for good. Pets have spirits, too, and detach and travel just like we do!

At death, your spirit will detach as it normally does. In all likelihood there will be a loved one or two waiting in the same room for you (as Bradley stated.) They will accompany you through the tunnel. You move toward the light. I've seen the light and it's incredible -- pure, unbelievably clear, unearthly, and loving. Other loved ones will meet you in the tunnel. You lose your physical age as you proceed. At a certain point you will start running, no matter how old or infirm you are when you passed.

Just before my mom died, she told me that she saw a longtime friend of my dad's beside a small plane (My dad, who had passed long before, was a private pilot during his lifetime.) I heard her holding a conversation with this friend. I like to think that my dad was waiting inside the plane, and that he flew her over to the other side.

1. Mormon spirits don't go to heaven. They go to a spirit prison until their time for punishment is up. Then they go not to heaven but to one of three kingdoms.
2. Some of us apostates will be condemned to "outer darkness".
3. At my love counsel I opined that I "wasn't sure if Mormons would get to heaven".
4. I have been told on good authority that there are no Presbyterians in Hell.
5. I reject the idea of different kingdoms or getting planets to mess up. I personally think we get out results immediately. But I really hope that Heaven is very colorful and with lots of interesting people. I do not want the Mormon equivalent, I do not want separation from my family and friends, and I surely don't want to be dressed in white eternally.

My sincere hope is that, soon after my death, my (unembalmed) carcass will be tossed in the back of a pickup and taken out into the jungle (I live a few hours from the Amazon) and dumped.

Shortly thereafter the stench will reach the nostrils of a mama jaguar. An adult mama jaguar should have no problem sinking her teeth into my corpse and even pulling me up into the fork of a tree, whereupon she and her cubs will chow down.

I expect them to start with the soft parts first--my genitals, stomach, neck, buttocks, thighs--then start ripping the meat away from my face, shins, back etc. I can see her kids pulling my intestines from my belly, my liver and kidneys from their inner perches.

Eventually mama will nudge my ruined corpse out of the tree and allow it to fall to the jingle floor where smaller animals and thousands of bugs will continue the task of picking my bones clean.

This feat will be hard to pull off. But folks around here are poor. I might have to front somebody a couple twenties, an old blanket and a six-pack or two to get it done.

My soul? Not important. I don't have one, as far as I can tell.

You don't go up to heaven when you die; it's right here on earth.

I just realized that "up" is "everywhere" in this physical universe. [Caveat: factoring in "dimensions" is beyond me. ;) ]

Think of "us"..."here" on Earth...which is, of course, a kind of big "ball" shape in our solar system (bigger than some shapes...not so big as others).

The point is: theoretically, a person could die at ANY point on the surface of this planet, so "going up" for any of us would mean that ALL directions are "up."

Trace those billions of invisible "up" lines (think of each one of those "up lines" as a laser beam) as they shoot through the cosmos towards "heaven"...

...and that would mean that the "up"/in the "sky" heaven for human beings would be cosmologically-wide...and billions and billions of light years "across."

Even if it folded into itself, perhaps like a Mobius strip or in some other way, it would still be beyond-human-brain-capacity gigantic.

And therefore, I think, an "up" heaven would be the most unimaginably loneliest place that any of us could ever possibly experience.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 08:50PM by Tevai.

When your spirits (moods, enthusiasm) rise or fall, in what space does this take place? When you wake "up," how were you "down" before? (don't say the body was lying down and now it's sitting up--people use this expression regardless of body position) When people get "high," on anything, are they "lifted" out of "deep" depression? When people meditate or dream, in what space does this take place?

The "up" of Heaven shouldn't be confused with "the heavens," the sky or outer space. It is figurative in our 3-dimensional terms. Some say it refers to a 4th dimension, one of 'throughness' ranging from grosser to subtler vibrations, some of which fall within our sensory range but most of which do not. The same goes for the terms "inner" and "outer." These are focuses of awareness, sometimes construed as being in reference to the body, but again this doesn't begin to explain them. (For example, the whole "outside" world is a pictorial formulation and projection 'within' the mind.)

I remember reading about, and seeing a pictoral representation where reality was similar to the layers of an onion with the highest reality ("God") being at the center and the densest realm, the physical world, as the outside layer. So going toward God would be going toward the center, or inward.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2016 09:33PM by summer.

I'm not exactly sure, but SpaceX is going to submit a bid now that the Falcon 9 is working flawlessly.

If you really want to know a little about this I will provide the following.

I have experienced a number of things and 'believe' how I interpreted those things and others related to this.

Your spirit/energy just floats out of the body. Yes it can float out often without you (mentally) ever realizing it. Also, the spirit doesn't necessarily wait for the moment of death to be 'suffering' in the body ----- it can leave for good, come and go, as it wishes that's why I get concerned with people saying God allows 'a lot of suffering'. I don't know who is feeling that suffering always as the body can suffer quite well without you in it.

It is true some of your past 'relatives' normally are there to comfort and help you near death with others that will greet you once you return. They will encourage you to return to the 'light/tunnel' which you will float into unless you chose to stay. It appears some will want to stay because they don't have their 'knowledge' and some don't believe they are dead or want to stay for other reasons but they certainly can return after 'going to the light' and be aware of significantly more powers.

It appears you do not remember 'who you are' and what powers you really have, etc. until you pass back to the light ----- which is actually in another dimension which can definitely put you close to/on this earth.

Maybe....

1. Catch a ride on a rainbow.

2. Catch a falling star and turn it upward.

3. One stair at a time.

4. Blast of in an invisible rocket with a 'spirit' seat.

5. Hitch a ride on a comfortable puffy cloud heaven bound.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2016 01:48AM by presleynfactsrock.

on a white horse ?

SL Cabbie takes them.... Ha Ha