I am lucky enough to live in the tropics and have a
palm tree in my front yard.

About once a month one of the lower, browner fronds
drops to the ground -- and, at about the same time I
see a new, green shoot growing out of the palm top.

The cycle goes on and on. If I do not clear them away,
the fallen branches eventually deteriorate, become part
of the soil, and give nourishment to the tree.

None of the old fronds seem to cling to the tree past
their time to fall away. They fall gracefully and die
forever. They only have a continuation in the tree's
living DNA, of which they were once a part.

Is there a lesson here to be learned?

Uncle Dale

Sounds like biology 101.

I love palm trees. None where I live. You are lucky to have one to enjoy.

also notice the seasons that repeat and repeat.

As far as living forever? I already do. Death is a mere transition.

ST

after reading every book i want to read a hundred times, and learning to play the piano a thousand times and perfecting all the recipes i want to perfect, a billion times, etc, etc and forever is still ahead of me, I think i'd say okay, i've been around long enough.

what's astounding to me is how many people are working all their lives to get to heaven but haven't given more than a few minutes' thought about what heaven is actually going to be like or what they'll do forever when they get there.

i wouldn't mind being able to stay around a few hundred years to see what kind of interesting advances are made in science and medicine. and i'd love to be able to jump ahead and see what humans are up to a thousand, or ten-thousand years from now. but the living forever thing would definitely get old.

>no, i think it would become torture...

I have similar feelings. We human beings have a normal
life-span -- we live, grow, die, and make room for others,
Perhaps in some of our actions, or progeny, or what is
written upon our tombstones, we have a certain kind of
immortality. I is enough for my tastes.

Rather than thinking about my own continuation, I wonder
what future faces the human race -- in 100 years, or 1000 years.
To that extent I wonder about our DNA being continued.

But -- to live the life of one of the wandering Three Nephites;
or to spend an eternity in the LDS Celestial Kingdom, seems
like a living hell to me.

I would rather that my being return to the cosmos, from
which it came -- to be dust among the stars. Now there
is an immortality that sounds a bit more interesting.

Dale

...is if my memory could be erased periodically.

Forever is a long long long time. Imagine living long enough to learn and do not only everything you ever wanted, but also everything there is to know and do (with "everything" being unlimited) -- and then keep doing it all an infinite number of times. Try to imagine infinity times infinity. With no f-ing end to it. I don't know about you folks, but I would reach a point where I just wanted to cease to exist. Thank you, I've been on this ride long enough. I've been in a constant orgasmic state of total enlightenment for, well, forever, and I'm done now. Goodbye. Don't bother locking up.

Maybe it's a personality defect, but I'm completely comfortable with the idea of not getting everything I want, of there being limits to everything, including my existence. And since I don't think there's anything after death, I won't be around to be upset my life wasn't 110% fabulous and that I don't get another chance.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 09:54AM by Stray Mutt.

I agree...torture.

The only way to be eternal would be to exist out of "time". To be able to see all things, past and future.

Humans are time-based creatures though...so it's impossible for our feeble minds to comprehend a being like this. Which means anything that I might become that could comprehend it, is nothing like what I am now...so I may as well cease to exist.

There's a great line from Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead": Rosencrantz is talking about what it would be like to be dead. He says finally "Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?"

reminds me of a intellectual debate I had with a missionary in my house. I theroized that. Some members of the Q Continium were tired of living with omnipotence, and one such Q who tried to terminate his existance and was punished for it, tried to describe it as tired old men sitting in a desert gas station, borred, living a mindless existance.

As well, with Zardoz, a movie about a caste of humans who were lucky to escape the destruction of the planet, lives out in Heaven like Vortexes, living an existance of artistic bordom. Their society is begining to deterioate as some Eternals become catatonic, or rebellous, some even conspire with experiments designed to help them find a way to die.

I think a life worth remembering, or at least one where even a tiny effort is given to make the world a better place, a funner place. Or when death does come. Be remembered as that weird SOB (in a positive way), that you mattered. Since we generally do this on a regular basis throughout out lives.... just being "normal", is eternal.

I love your post. I have lots of palms in my backyard and boy can I relate. I do not know why 80 yrs. seems to be max for people. I think it is the body withering away-ever so slightly after 40. Many of my relatives live to be mid 80's to even 99 so I will be here past 80 I think. Well, barring a devistating illness or accident that is.

I think by the time I am 90 I will have a ton of wrinkles and not be too energetic so I think leaving this world then is just fine. Hopefully I will have left a mark on this earth that my relatives and friends may speak of from time to time and that is all that would be important to me. It would be interesting to return every 50 yrs. or so as some sort of spirit and no one would see me but I could see my family line.

I just want to liver forever for a while.

>The only way to be eternal would be to exist
>out of "time". To be able to see all things,
>past and future.

Probably that would entail Reality beyond existence
itself. Once we get into such talk, rational reflection
becomes impossible.

It may indeed be the Ultimate Reality, but, separated from
worldly existence, we really cannot discuss such stuff.

If we could somehow view living things (like human beings)
from the perspective of a "higher dimension," I suppose
that their lives would appear as tangled threads, moving
all about the map, intersecting, dying out, splitting
into mother and children threads, etc. etc.

Interesting stuff -- for a pipe dream.
Not of much use here in common consensus world.

Uncle Dale

"I don't ...live today...

Maybe tomorrow baby, I just can't say,

but uhh...I don't...live today

It's such a shame to spend your time away like this...

existing...

Jimi

I wish to graduate from mortal lives, and to be the cosmos.

pretty much! ;)

I do want to live forever, but only if the next life is safer than this one. The idea of reincarnation really scares. I would prefer to cease existing over taking the chance of being born into this world again.

We in the western industrialized world are so lucky. But the majority of babies born in this world were born into horrible circumstances in modern times and throughout history: hunger, unsheltered, disease, war, natural disasters, neglect, abuse, violence.

I just think that if I were in a "pre-existence" and was told "tomorrow you will be born on planet earth" it would be more terrifying than if someone tells me "tomorrow you will die."

I would like to live forever provided its an existence where happiness is possible.

...or the Earth from which the tree springs.

I do believe that we are eternal beings. I think that we incarnate on the physical plane (repeatedly) as a way of passing the time, so to speak. We get to forget for a while that we are eternal beings, to see things with "new eyes," to learn and grow.

I believe that eternity does not not mean endless time, it means a dimension where time has no meaning whatsoever. Time is a physical concept. I believe that when we die, we move into nonphysical realms where the concept of time is irrelevant.

>I believe that eternity does not not mean
>endless time, it means a dimension where time has
>no meaning whatsoever.

Perhaps so. But, again, there seems to be no rational
way in which to discuss such stuff.

I could easily profess some afterlife, in which I ceased
to exist as an individual, but in which everything was/is
interconnected.

Possibly time IS an illusion. But, talking about these
sorts of things doesn't seem to get us very far.

A "spirituality" without any "spirits?" --- A Buddhist
atheist might smile in a agreement.

Uncle Dale

and the continuum, so bored they had to play with the enterprise like kids playing with an ant colony.

Is this repetitious, habit-bound struggle against others/conditions/bodily processes...really "living"? Is this puny self which will eventually go through the sieve really who we ARE?

On this point I think science (which by the way seems to answer "yes") is truly ignorant. It is useful in figuring out processes within "the Matrix," so to speak, but is itself part of the same framework. (For example it "reasonably" concludes that the body is real...but does so from the body's own perspective--hardly an unbiased source!) Likewise, it has no meaning of "forever," since it deals with conditions and these are always...hmm, conditional. ("Forever" isn't unending time, because time itself had a Big Bang beginning; if it didn't always exist backwards from now, how could it always exist forwards?)

"Forever" would be outside of time and temporal conditions. Other states of consciousness might intuit or even participate in that, but not our body-bound one.

>Other states of consciousness might intuit
>or even participate in that...

I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems that various
"states of consciousness" remain existence-bound, if
not exactly body-bound.

Years ago I had an out-of-body experience. It was a bit
thrilling at the time. Now it seems like just another
set of perceptions -- an interesting set, but not unique.

I wonder how the "highest" state of consciousness
might be described? And whether the "self" is even
present at that stage of realization?

My atheist friends tell me that there is "nothing"
beyond what we experience in common consensus existence.
Perhaps that is so. But, then again, "no-thingness"
also interests me.

Uncle Dale

...sound like the flat-earth naysayers in Columbus's time. How do they "Know"--any more than a testifying Mormon? (Of course even if they're relying on science, that tells them we 'experience' just a tiny sliver of the electro-magnetic spectrum through our sensory apparatus.)

From my own glimpses in meditation, there is a fully conscious state beyond registering any objects, including any thoughts. It's unqualified "brightness," and there was only a sense of joy...and the sense that this was more 'familiar' than anything in the relative world--the feeling of being Home. At least this is what my mind tried to construe of it when I came down again. I couldn't even call it an "experience" because there WAS no separate self-sense over and against it; it was Subject without an object. But the recollection of it was sort of like holding on to a tiny 2D postcard and saying that this was the Grand Canyon that I'd visited.

Yes I want to live forever and know I'm alive. I don't want to become one with the land like palm tree branches to grow up more from my DNA. I don't want to be recycled to become another thing either. I want to be me forever! The thought of being made of just organic matter like a plant does not appeal to me and I hope that never happens that we stop here.

I also think if a person believes in God, watching nature is a good way to learn about him. But somehow I hope we live on.

Kind of hard to answer because it requires making assumptions that are kind of magical.

For example, do we get some kind of work around for that little problem with the universe turning into a cold, dark, still, nothing-happening-nowhere kind of place ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe ). From what I can tell, unlike what the wiki page says, the newest news is that we're all going to freeze.

Do I get a fantastically good memeory?

Do I get to move around to anywhere I want more-or-less instantaneously?

Super upgraded memory might suck because then you'd actually remember all the stuff you've done and that might be bad.

For example, I can't remember quite a lot of stuff I've experienced in the past. So unless my memory becomes insanely better, I'm not going to remember that cute little planet that I visited a couple of million years. So the next time I go there, maybe I'll still think it's pretty cool.

Or maybe it will just be fun to go back and see it again because I haven't seen it for a while and I'm wondering what kind of cool stuff has evolved since the last time I visited.

FWIW, the reality of my not existing in the future isn't going to be a big problem for me (once I'm gone) seeing as how I'm not there to experience it :-)

Cylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


We've all read this before, and it is always worth reading again. Oh, I love life!

I would like to, yes, but I am almost certain that I will not, due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the eventual heat death of the universe. Long before the time that the universe becomes a vast field of black holes, devoid of all starlight, I would probably lose interest in existing further.

... and the old cosmic travel trailer's a runnin', I'll give it a whirl!

That dang ol' universe is purdy darn big. Give me a good view and some brew and I could hang at, say, the Crab Nebula for a while:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_a1n-_cIpzLE/S8JzY8tywrI/AAAAAAAAAT4/ZimPYg_4esw/s1600/crab-nebula.jpg

Lots of cool stuff out there I'd like to see. If the universe is, in fact, infinite, then it might take an eternity to see it all.

That would be cool.

Timothy

We may have souls and our bodies may just be shells to harbor them. There is no scientific proof for that but science hasn't proven everything yet. That isn't necessarily magical at all.

Scripture says,... but just as it is written, "THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND {which} HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM."

We think of heaven providing a finite list of things to do and know, so after a while everyone sits around thinking been there, done that. Our view is earthbound and small.

What if the list of things to do and think never ends? Imagine perfect minds always coming up with creative material. Places to discover. Colors far beyond this spectrum here. Art mediums and musical People to talk to, like Elijah or Ezekiel, with their stories to tell. Angels of all shapes and sizes. Wisdom to learn far beyond any that we have here.

What if heaven is like opening a door to a beautiful, fascinating room, and that room opens a door to 1000 other beautiful and fascinating rooms, etc?

And what if the food never ends, and it never makes us feel uncomfortable after we eat it, and the meal is attended by 100 million fascinating dinner guests, each with a conversation to offer that makes you want to stay and talk for years?

If God is infinite, and not the clumsy limited grandpa god of Mormonism, then should we not expect His house to be infinite as well?

If that is eternal life, I'm for it.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Yes, actually, I would want to live forever. Not that I think it'll happen, but what a great chance to keep on learning new things!

I don't think I want to live past age 50. It's like I've seen it all and the things I want to see and do I don't have the money to do and plus I'm tied down to a job.

Life after retirement seems nothing more than a hoax. You get a few good years and then you spend most of your days in a doctors office trying to fight off pain and death.

I think the best days are between 18 and 35. After that life seems to be nothing more than tricking yourself into believing you are still young.

I could not imagine an eternity of tricking yourself like that. Perhaps if eternity was one long orgasm like Christianity teaches.

The Mormon eternity sounds like pure hell. The Mormon god is always mad and pissed off. I don't think I'd enjoy being like that forever.