Although I no longer believe in religion I remain a spiritual person always looking for evidence, for answers. I try to find these answers in multiple ways and have found one common thread throughout is meditation. Meditation at first blush seems like something esoteric from the orient. But what I’ve found is that it is similar to “prayer.” The biggest difference is that meditation is inward looking, simply trying to quiet the mind in order to understand that divine spark within. Prayer on the other hand recognizes the divine as something different, something outside such as in a separate entity such as God or Jesus. The prayers are always asking these other entities to grant a request, confer a blessing or something like that.
At this stage in my life I’ve come to realize that part of this divine is already within ourselves and we must connect to that first in order to have greater access to everything else that encompasses “the light” which is all beings both on the spiritual as well as on our physical plane. In the Roman Catholic Church – which is the religion I’m most familiar with – they are stuck telling stories meant for the illiterate whereas the greater mysticism is held behind a curtain or in high level theological courses. It seems the congregation isn’t ready for this enlightenment so simple stories and lessons are still used, just as they were 2,000 years ago.
The being, all seem to agree, does not direct the question to them to accuse or to threaten them, for they still feel the total love and acceptance coming from the light, no matter what their answer may be. Rather, the point of the question seems to be to make them think about their lives, to draw them out. It is, if you will, a Socratic question, one asked not to acquire information but to help the person who is being asked to proceed along the path to the truth by himself.
As they witness the display, the being seems to stress the importance of two things in life: Learning to love other people and acquiring knowledge.
If only religion and humanity could just focus on this one simple statement “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Unfortunately, as simple as it is, this seems to be impossible with most of humanity. Simply take a look at the Republican hate machine and how it has incorporated itself into the evangelical mainstream: preach love at church then go outside to “own the libs” and buy guns. Thinking about this I feel as though I’m in a simulation where the divines keep ratcheting up the absurdity of my world to see how I will do.
Almost everyone has stressed the importance in this life of trying to cultivate love for others, a love of a unique and profound kind.
This is it, the most important purpose of life.
In addition, many others have emphasized the importance of seeking knowledge. During their experiences, it was intimated to them that the acquisition of knowledge continues even in the after-life.
So, in most cases, the reward-punishment model of the afterlife is abandoned and disavowed, even by many who had been accustomed to thinking in those terms. They found, much to their amazement, that even when their most apparently awful and sinful deeds were made manifest before the being of light, the being responded not with anger and rage, but rather only with understanding, and even with humor.
So much for the teachings about hell and if one doesn’t follow the teachings of the church and get baptized you’ll get burned for eternity.
According to Plato, the soul comes into the physical body from a higher and more divine realm of being. For him it is birth which is the sleeping and the forgetting, since the soul, in being born into the body, goes from a state of great awareness to a much less conscious one and in the meantime forgets the truths it knew while in its previous out-of-body state. Death, by implication, is an awakening and remembering.
[While I was over there] I got the feeling that two things it was completely forbidden for me to do would be to kill myself or to kill another person. . . . If I were to commit suicide, I would be throwing God’s gift back in his face. . . . Killing somebody else would be interfering with God’s purpose for that individual.
Life can sometimes just be too much. I’ve always felt very sorry for suicides and seem to be one of the few who can understand. I have a strong sense of empathy and been in dark places myself. This passage is a very strong one as it does make sense. We were gifted life and although we sometimes feel very far from that light, or even punished by it suicide cannot be undone and only afterwards would we understand what a grave mistake it was. People who are stuck in depression and dark places should seek help although that is very hard to do when stuck in a very dark place. I could speak more to this but in order to do so would have to go to that dark place and would rather be happy today.
