What do you want to happen when you die? Really, deep down, what?
Because, until you know what you want, you can't know how to lead this mortal life.
Do you want to become extinct at death - for consciousness to cease, and there be nothing left of your mind.
Do you want, above all, an end to suffering of all kinds - do you want to be around when that happens?
Do you want to live in the constant present moment of bliss? If so, then do you want to be a part of deity, alone, or in a communal bliss?
Do you want to come back and incarnate as another person, or some other entity?
Do you want to experience your fantasies? Live in a sensuous paradise? Do you want all your wishes to come true - with other people willing and obedient to them? Do you want to be so powerful that everything shall be arranged to your personal satisfaction?
Do you want to be resurrected to eternal life, and go to the Heaven of loving persons and dwell with God the creator, and with the Christ? If so, what will you actually do in Heaven? (Because that may make a difference to how you lead this mortal life.)
First, you need to know what you most want; then whether you can actually have it (i.e. what kind of reality this is); then (if it is possible) what to do in order to get it.
But first you need to know what You want; because not everybody will necessarily have exactly the same destination after death: there may well be some choice in these matters...
3 comments:
Decisions, decisions!
"Do you want to become extinct at death - for consciousness to cease, and there be nothing left of your mind?"
That would be the choice of damned souls, notwithstanding Samuel Johnson's saying that it would be better to be in Hell than not to be. But it might not do much good. Ceasing immediately to exist would not be like drowsily passing into sleep but more like the 'instant out' one gets from general anesthesia. And if Hell is as horrible for a nanosecond as it is for an aeon, there would be not the slightest awareness of the end of suffering. At best it would mean that the denizens of Heaven need not pity the damned for long.
"Do you want to come back and incarnate as another person, or some other entity?"
Borrring. Only if forced to.
"Do you want to experience your fantasies? Live in a sensuous paradise? Do you want all your wishes to come true - with other people willing and obedient to them? Do you want to be so powerful that everything shall be arranged to your personal satisfaction?"
Sounds like the bargain a traitorous character made in the move The Matrix. It was also the plot of an old Twilight Zone episode in which a murdering gangster receives everything he wants in the afterlife. After rounds of carousing, drinking, and gambling he tells his handler he is bored with Heaven and wants to go to "the other place." The handler informs him that that's where he is.
My own insight and imagination fail me. I'll take whatever is best, to be determined by Him.
Even the impossible things I would like to do--time travel into the past and future, say, or going back to some 'restore point' in my life and taking different actions--hold no interest for me beyond this life.
@ap - Well, I did ask...
" I'll take whatever is best, to be determined by Him."
But, you have already decided that He is real. I was thinking of the question for someone who really hadn't considered the matter seriously. It might be a way in, the beginning of something.
Right! I keep forgetting. My frame of reference when I read these is summed up by another Samuel Johnson quote, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
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