Is there an afterlife? Or rather, what is there after life? If there’s something coming next, what exactly does it look like?
If you agree that our souls are energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed (so promised my junior high school science teacher), then where do our souls go after our mortal bodies “die?”
This is something I’ve been wrestling for some time. I have trouble imagining a “heaven” as others have described it, where we get to see our loved ones again, as I get stuck trying to figure out what age we would all be in such a place.
Seriously. Will be remain the age we were when we died for all eternity (another concept I can’t quite wrap my mind around)? Or will we all be young and vibrant, which I’d certainly prefer over old and decrepit. Perhaps we hover there as ageless, faceless “spirits,” or souls, essentially without bodies. In which case, how will we recognize each other?
This is when I start thinking that reincarnation might be a viable “solution.” But then I wonder if the souls of humans and animals can exchange places. And if they can, and I’m a “bad” person, will I come back as something lower on the food chain? Or just as yet another human being muddling along, looking for answers?
If you’ve read some of my past blogs, you know I’ve been seeking and tweaking my concept of “God.” I find it hard to believe that Christianity is the only right way to believe, and that all those Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and Taoists and so forth are “wrong.” Is it possible there are separate “heavens” for each religion?
So I’ve been honing in on my “faith.” A lot of people claim to be spiritual without being religious, and if you carefully read the last paragraph, you already know I seem to fit there better than most other places.
Spiritual beings having a physical experience currently works best for me. Souls—energy—come here to further our “education.” As my friend Idaho Steve is fond of saying, “And what have we learned from this?”
And as for naming the western “God,” what about interchangeably using one of these terms: Divine Spirit, Universal Mind, Collective Consciousness, Great Spirit, Higher Power, or Energy Source? Following that line of thinking, then we are all one… All part of the cosmic “us.”
Robert Heinlein was on to something when he wrote “Strangers in a Strange Land” back in 1961. In the book, he attempted to explain the Martian concept of life in the translation “Thou art God.”
Are we all essential here? The saints and the sinners? The righteous and the unruly? The yin and yang? Yep. At least when I’m practicing tolerance and acceptance I think so. At other times, I’d like to send a few of these “flawed” humans packing. That thought, of course, makes me also among the flawed…
Existentialism dictates that the mean of life is to search for the meaning of life. So I guess today I’m an existentialist. Tomorrow, though, I might be a Buddhist. Or a walrus. You just never know.