Tried to figure out how to post this comment a couple times without it sounding like proselyting my own view point. Can’t manage it. So I’ll just add this here: that’s not what I’m doing! I’m not attempting to convince anyone of anything. Lol.
I’m a nondualist. Panentheism, to be more specific. I believe that existence is God’s way of experiencing. In other words, we are not just ourselves, and not just reincarnated as the next thing down the line, or spending eternity in heaven. But that every creature, every rock, every thing that has ever or will ever exist is you. You are Ghandi, and you’re also your own mother. You’re hitler, and you’re Stalin. You are God. And in between, after, and before, when you’re in that state of being without limitations, without boundaries and illusions of duality and separateness, you are fully aware of every thing you have been and will be. You understand all.
It brings me comfort. It has allowed me to come to peace with the fact that I will die some day. It hasn’t given me peace for the people I have lost, but I try to remember them as the forms of God I love best, and the forms of God that knew me best. One day I will be gone, and I will dissolve back into the divine, and I won’t be so sad about losing those forms and those people, because I will be with them, as them, and know them better than I could ever have in this form.
As a little aside, another way I like to look at this is through a Betty White quote. She once asked her mother what happens after we die, and her mother told her it was a secret. So whenever Betty lost someone she would say to herself “they learned the secret today”
The secret is that you get to learn everything, at least as far as I believe.
Tried to figure out how to post this comment a couple times without it sounding like proselyting my own view point. Can’t manage it. So I’ll just add this here: that’s not what I’m doing! I’m not attempting to convince anyone of anything. Lol.
I’m a nondualist. Panentheism, to be more specific. I believe that existence is God’s way of experiencing. In other words, we are not just ourselves, and not just reincarnated as the next thing down the line, or spending eternity in heaven. But that every creature, every rock, every thing that has ever or will ever exist is you. You are Ghandi, and you’re also your own mother. You’re hitler, and you’re Stalin. You are God. And in between, after, and before, when you’re in that state of being without limitations, without boundaries and illusions of duality and separateness, you are fully aware of every thing you have been and will be. You understand all.
It brings me comfort. It has allowed me to come to peace with the fact that I will die some day. It hasn’t given me peace for the people I have lost, but I try to remember them as the forms of God I love best, and the forms of God that knew me best. One day I will be gone, and I will dissolve back into the divine, and I won’t be so sad about losing those forms and those people, because I will be with them, as them, and know them better than I could ever have in this form.
As a little aside, another way I like to look at this is through a Betty White quote. She once asked her mother what happens after we die, and her mother told her it was a secret. So whenever Betty lost someone she would say to herself “they learned the secret today”
The secret is that you get to learn everything, at least as far as I believe.