Not knowing the meaning of life or having the hope of a heavenly reward, has left me with my philosophical idea of what is the true test of a person:

"Following all the rules of being a good person is one thing, but the true test of a person is if when there are no rules, what will you be, who you be; with no promised reward, will you still do the right thing?"

Which begs the question, why do so many who believe in the heavenly reward and as part of that, believe in the eternal punishment, and still do the wrong thing? The hurtful thing?


I think all religion has focused humans on a substandard version of what might be. Wandering around for eternity playing harps, having seventy virgins, or dining at Chez Joseph in the CK and then returning to thousands of spirit children in your mansion for Family Home Evening. Blech.

As one of those Mormons, I liked the concept of eternal progression because the idea of endless learning and perpetual accomplishment pressed creative buttons in my mind of all I would want to do, to know, to be. I figured that having a planet and ruling that sphere would be a billion years of learning away anyway. I wanted to start with making new flowers and plants. At the same time, other Mormons were just seeing it all as a magic reward. Like God would wave a magic "rod" and you would know EVERYTHING as your reward for never drinking coffee. But then our planets were yanked out of our arrogant little hands and we had to settle for some unspecified eternal bliss. WTFF? (Two effs because that was teh biggest rip-off of all time.)

I guess a bit of that has stuck with me. Even yesterday, I was thinking that I hate the idea that this is all for naught. I feel like no matter how I started, I really got somewhere in life and I hate the idea that, Poof!---it's gone. The possiblity that whatever I am goes into some collective consciousness does not do it for me. I am sure we have receptors to pick out what we need from the ether. Does that live on? That sensor that connects with "what is." And live on as what? I read Deepak Chopra's book on all that and found it spookier than Mormon Heaven which is spookier than Mormon Hell for me.

And in a collective consciousness the conglomeration has to include the murderers and rapists and the selfish along with the Jane Goodall's and the others with big hearts and hands dirtied by good works.

I think about this all the time when someone really accomplished dies. They leave a body of admirable work behind for others but what do they get out of it? You are the one missing from your own funeral, ya know?

So. A benevolent presence. Would be nice. Even though we don't mind doing our share, we all wish that there was someone fixing that which we have no control over. We say we are human. Which, means we are organized matter. No? Matter that can be repurposed as is the way of the Universe. But apparently the oft discussed purpose of life is, to, "not know." Who will you be when there are no rules?

I would say the only hope is that mankind finally, as a whole, becomes decent. At that point then, the collective consciousness will be made up of only good. The benevolence finally coming from the whole being a whole lot greater than the sum of its parts.

108 billion people and counting so far have lived on the planet. I don't see one mindset of goodness happening ever. The opposite of benevolence isn't evil, but selfishness. Very adaptable selfishness. Doesn't take much of a big dose to ruin things.

Perhaps one day man/womankind will get "the art of being" right and Benevolence will be as popular as football and baseball and the The Real Housewives shows and the Kardashians all combined, and we will have to read old novels to remember what evil used to be. But I'm not holding my breath.

Not knowing. Ignorance is not bliss but is a necessity?

With you, I could sit on a deck overlooking the ocean and discuss this all day. Your thought, even when I disagree with it, maybe mostly when I disagree with it, leaves me more mentally pregnant than before reading you.

In lieu of the deck, I’ll feel through the thoughts as I make my way along the aisles at Costco.

Cheers to you, D&D!

Aw thank you Human. There is no one I'd rather disagree with more than you because the reverse of what you just said is true. You always make me look at something from another side.

Kind of boils down to what is meant by "knowing."

We see only a very thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum.

"Depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is?"

HAHA. It is kinda long, isn't it!

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Depends on what the meaning of the word "is"
> is?"
===================
:-D
That made me chuckle!


> It is kinda long, isn't it!
===================
Well, it's deep. Has to be that long.

Gets very cold in the depths and at altitude.
Most folks don't like to go there.

I'm following the 'Wait and see" program. I refuse to have any expectations, other than to hope I won't be asked to pay for my sins. I'm of the Bill Burr divinity school: if ghawd made me, he knew what I going to do with what he gave me. The notion that I was supposed to 'withstand' temptation is bullcrap!

And then they told us we were being tested? That isn't fair if he already knows.

I think about this a lot, too. Myself, I'm ready to die and have been for a long time. I hang around as I brought kids into this world and I owe it to them to stick around as long as I can. I tend to wonder what it is I would want and then I also think, "But I didn't have a choice in coming here, no matter what THEY say, and so I don't have a choice in what is coming." If there is something coming, it better damn well have my dogs in it. I'll be really pissed if they don't come running to me when I die.

I tend to "believe" that my parents are there. I don't KNOW that they are. I want them to be. They weren't perfect, but I sure love them and miss them. BUT then do we go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever?

I don't want reincarnation or something like that. Someone here said something about being reincarnated and starting where we left off. Oh, thanks a lot. So people born in third world countries, get to stay where they had progressed to? Makes no sense to me.

Nothing makes sense to me--because if we were born, where did we come from? So I haven't a clue what comes next, if anything does. Who made this all up?

Any possibilities have drawbacks in my mind.

cl2, You really touch me when you say, "Ready to die." Life is tiring sometimes. I could say me too so easily some days. I hope you find something today really special, besides all the massive support and care that you give to others, that makes you happy to be here. I'm happy you are here. Pretty sure a lot of people treasure you.

My dogs. You and me. I get it. Nothing after this would be worth it without them.

My sister is coming today who could easily be a neighbor of yours up there in that valley. I'm so excited for that. She's the one, though TBM, who is live-and-let -live and we have a blast. It can happen, haha.

I relate too.

I think that getting old and experiencing increasing deterioration of our bodies in a way helps us come to realize death might be a relief. We can't keep our bodies young forever.

We tire of fighting windmills hoping humans will somehow change.

The inevitable comes. Will I go gentle into that good night or will I fight to the end? I suppose I will fight to live, no matter how much pain and frustration, but part of me will be relived to get out of the rat race that never ends.

And this is what we share with the Mormons. They cling to life like the rest of us even though they will tell you death is only a passage to the glorious CK and true happiness. Why aren't they embracing the transition? Why do they go on life supports and suffer and cling? After all, they don't have to wonder "what's next?" like the rest of us, haha.

I guess "KNOWING" isn't everything.

died close to the same time. My uncle was a stake president. His daughter told me he was horrified about dying. He stayed in a nursing home just hanging on for a year or 2. My dad's only concern was he wanted to know how it happened. He was ready. He told me not to be sad when he died as he had had a good life and he was ready (and he was). My parents both died different than anyone I had known as they both died still lucid, had still been able to drive, etc. I talked to them within hours of their deaths. No bedside vigils. When they decided to go--and I believe they decided to--they left.

Almost every other aunt and uncle has died after spending a few years in a nursing home. Not my parents. I didn't realize you could actually die so simply. They were both sick with many illnesses, but they just kept going and going. That is how I want to go.

I am always surprised by how the GAs cling to life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2019 11:01PM by cl2.

I've had many in the last 36 years since I found out he is gay. My life is good right now, but I'm not afraid to die except to leave my son. I have to live as long as I can for him. My daughter is now okay even if she is TBM. She is married into a family who is down to earth and I LOVE THEM. Her husband is great and thinks I'm great just like I am. I taught him in primary, but didn't get to know him until he dated my daughter 6 years ago and she dumped him before she left for Alaska for a summer. He came to talk to me to try to understand what had happened and we became good friends. He has such patience to wait around for her to figure it out and she is SO HAPPY. No adjustment to marriage and they WORK TOGETHER, too. They spend 24/7 together.

I want to believe there is an afterlife and that my parents are there waiting for me and my dogs. As I told my sister when my last dog died, I feel my dogs will come for me someday. If there is an afterlife, I believe they are with my father, who also loved dogs like I do. I told him before he died that I needed him to be there when the dog I had at the time died.

I kept living in the darkest days of my life only for my children. I was trying to figure out how I could die and take them with me. I obviously never did. But since the day he told me he is gay, I've lived with a death wish as I lost hope during that time. THEY stole hope from me.

The last 9 months or so since I lost my job have been tough, but when I got my first SS check last Wednesday, life became much more tolerable again. I'm doing well, but I'm not afraid to die. I have 2 dogs to live for now and I need to also stay for them.

I owe it to my son to stick around as long as possible so I've even been working on my health as my parents both died at 76 and I'm 62. I need to live longer than that.

THANK YOU for what you said. I so appreciate that more than you can ever know.

I loved your post, D&D!

I often wonder, like you do, and it annoys my family, so I keep my ideas to myself, and my ideas change with the seasons. I prefer to hang onto the positive thoughts that make me happy. As for the rest, I have learned to deal with ambiguity. There is a tiny bit of satisfaction in NOT knowing!

NOT knowing leaves us free to imagine. We each have a right to invent our own version of Heaven, just like Joseph Smith did. JS turned it into a major scam, and tried to sell it for money, but if we keep it to ourselves, what's the harm?

We could structure our heaven, with our SELF being on the right-hand of Christ, yea, we could even be "the greatest person who ever lived, except for Christ." Maybe instead of 70 virgins, we could have 70 pet dogs--CL2 would like that--I would like children and cats, also. I would like to spend eternity with the people I have loved--but only the good people. I would like to go back and re-live only the happy moments of my life, and explore the better choices I could have made.

No one wants to be an amorphous, vaporized part of a collective consciousness. No one wants to be wandering around from meeting to meeting in that blank, bright-white Mormon CK--especially being perpetually pregnant and giving birth and giving up your soul-children to other worlds. Ya think the Mormon Heaven is scarier than the Mormon Hell--right!

If all that scary stuff might be true, then the happy stuff would be just as likely to be true, IMO.

Write your own Afterlife! (Just don't try to sell it.)

As for me, I'm practicing "mindfulness", which is living in the moment. The present moment is the only reality. It is the only moment we can control, too.

After all, it is in this moment we are contemplating eternity.

That might be the only valuable lesson I learned from Mormonism and recovery: Focus on life, and not death.

You put a big smile on my face with that, Mother Who Knows. Your expansion of the subject tickled me. So glad to start my day with your thoughts.

I once heard someone say, and have thought this many times myself, that everyone would get the heaven they had believed in. Mormons would be very disappointed I would say.

So I love your idea of building our own fantasy heavens in our minds right now and maybe we will get them. Perhaps they will show on our faces now. Envision what you want and it will come? Could be, who knows.

I need my dogs and my flowers and to once again hold all the friends I lost in the nineties, and the few dear people I have loved and finally, "my own people"---all the ones I would love if I finally found them;sifted them out of the billions, which would be a good eternity.

Oh, I want my horses too. Am I getting greedy?

We are born over and over.

Science is learning this (finally) thanks to Ian Stephenson and his followers at the center named in his honor.

All it took was the courage to look at it, the evidence has always been there.

Ian is the man who caused Sagan to write in “Demon haunted world.” That science should be studying reincarnation. He said he wasn’t a believer, he couldn’t be, and that because reincarnation hadn’t been properly studied.

When we incarnate (Latin for turn into meat) we learn by experience, not theoretically but factually.

I don’t like the thought. I’d really rather just disappear!

Wonderful post, D&D--and responses. Loved Human's comment, "Gets very cold in the depths and at altitude. Most people don't like to go there."

With many posts, you're like the big brother who lifts the little kids up so they can see. This is another one.