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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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Jan 29, 2009 - 11:49pm PT
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wow, what del cross said has got to be the definition of agnosticism.
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Jan 29, 2009 - 11:50pm PT
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jBar - I hear you good sir. And please understand that I wanted there to be something. I believed that there would be.
For all my bellyaching about having to get dressed up and go to church - I actually did believe what was said.
That's why I hurt so much when I found nothing on the other side.
I blamed myself.
I don't anymore.
Maybe it was a test of faith and I failed. Maybe it is the truth and I can't handle that. Maybe I was blind in some sense of awareness.
"Ignorance is bliss" goes the saying.
So what is the opposite?
Awareness and hell?
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Jan 29, 2009 - 11:58pm PT
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Hey Ricky D,
First please say hi! to beautiful Dawn....who's beautiful on the inside as well as the out. Hope to see yo both this next Facelift.
About Death, I know it well. I slept with it 24/7 for a month in the ICU unit while Dan was dying. They don't want people staying overnight there. I got special dispensation from a Doctor Friend.
No one else got to stay overnight with the ones they loved so I refused the cot the Dr. said he would bring in and slept every night in two chairs with a trash can turned upside down, in between, to fill the gap. I brought sheets and covers from home. Every early morining at 3am the xray people came. When I was to tired to get out of the room, the kind Dude covered me with a xray proof cape so I wouldn't get zapped.
Dan at this point was on a ventilator and not conscious. Dan was trached and put on a ventilator suddenly during an unexpected crisis. We/I never got to say goodbye. Tough stuff. Yet, God has sustained me, even more, blessed me and given me peace and joy. I have met all you Great people on the Taco. What a gigantic blessing that has been.
I have had doubts, fear, anxiety many times in life, and I have wavered....But God always comes and rescues me. Fears have been a huge problem my whole life. Dan was my fear guy, he not only rescued me he schooled me on fear relief. And he "guy like" let me know that God could be trusted.
I finally had to make a decision to turn off the venilator...or not. God, my family and physician friends helped me make a decision I knew in my heart Dan would want.
Yeah, others have had tougher lives mayhap than me. But this is Lynnies reality and Lynne is ..... not that strong or perfect...so it has been a challenge. I cannot deny God because He is so very real to me and I love Him and He loves Lynnie.
Just this gals life and opinion. Love yo all. No arguments, jess sharin'. : )))
Ricky D...thinkin you had to much religion put on yo in your
life. Having a friendship with Jesus is no church, no rules, no peeps telling yo what to do and how to. Jess Jesus and you, Sweet! Love ya Dawn and Ricky.
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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:01am PT
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Ricky, like I said I think it is a personal experience. I know how you must have felt. I have often wished I could feel the hand of GOD as I see so many others but I don't. I'm just a sinner with my bad thoughts and bad deeds. Yet I keep my faith. Don't give up bro. I didn't see a blinding light or anything like that either but then again, I wasn't dead. Maybe it was a test, maybe you just weren't that far yet? I don't believe the "near death" stories. People seeing themselves laying on a table, seeing a bright light. The mind is a powerful and barely understood organ. Heck, I've had some pretty incredible visions and not all were drug induced. lol People heal themselves all the time and attribute it to crystals or whatever. "If you believe you shall receive what you ask for in prayer." You only have to truly believe. Maybe you doubted. If it was a test of faith I don't think you failed. You just challenged yourself. Ignorance is not bliss it's ignorant. Bliss is true belief. Doesn't have to be mine.
Edit: Lynne don't think others have had it tougher than you. What you endured was more than most. I never read a post about it without being sorry for your loss. So many people feel like they never got to say goodbye but I think you're love was evident enough. What you said to rick about church seems accurate to me. I always refused to go to church because I hated people pestering me. It wasn't until I lived with my grandparents who always asked me if I would like to join them and never pushed when I refused that I came to learn that it has to be your own choice and time.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:06am PT
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Opps, jbar I would love to read the book.
Ricky D, didn't address the fear issue much. Will try tomorrow. Have lots to say but time is fleeting. But just to say, when all is great we depend on ourselves. Perhaps God who loves us, in an attempt to connect with us, lets fearful things happen so we will look for and to him and connect with the one who made us. Jess sayin' : DD
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:07am PT
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Heya Lynne my Facelift friend - good tidings to you as well.
I hope that I've not come across as bitter - though I know that I can be in this regard.
Since I was very young - think 4 or 5 years old - I have known with a forged iron certainty that I had been "here" before.
So why the rerun?
Why was I sent back?
What am I supposed to learn or do?
Why when I twice died was nothing there to greet me?
What must I learn or do to get to the happy place?
I envy people who no longer question but accept and rejoice.
In the meantime - I live.
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:11am PT
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Thanks for that, Lynne, I can't begin to imagine....
Ricky D, thanks as well, any time you feel like expounding on any details of those two experiences, there are those around ready to listen.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:12am PT
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Gezzz, RickyD, with a smile like yours that lights up your face I would never associate yo with the word bitter. AND you are the best ever guide back to the camp from the dance Ever !!! hehehe.
I'll just talk to the Father about what you are experiencing....it won't hurt yo and it mayhap be good. Peace from a Friend. : DD
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luggi
Trad climber
atwater california
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:13am PT
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Hey Rick..that is great to hear about your life dealings. All I can say is keep your eyes and mind open. There is a reason you a standing and writing on this forum. We might never know in this life what or who or anything we have done that made a difference. That is why, as you could guess, I believe all will be revealed and then you and I would say...oh that is why........
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MisterE
Trad climber
One Place or Another
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:45am PT
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Just finished an interesting book "God's Problem." The book asks the question: If God is all powerful, and God is all loving, why is there suffering in the world?
I have not heard a good explanation for that question.
Makes one at least question the existences of a God?
Because the important lessons are always the hard ones.
Just sayin'
:^]
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Scared Silly
Trad climber
UT
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:46am PT
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I'm born once agnostic heathen who hopes to be hell for 20 minutes before ole Peter knows I am dead.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 30, 2009 - 12:57am PT
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"I always turn to the question: "Where were you or your soul before you were born?" We have no recollection of that, so why would our death be any different? "
You have always been your soul, now, before life and after death. It is a pure awareness that gives you the source "I" feeling upon which you construct a mental identity that quickly obscures the illuminating source of it's existence.
Why don't you remember your Being before birth? Because we associate ourselves with the made up model of personalities in our minds, rather than the source awareness that can forget all else and become a baby again.
Here's the test. When you go to sleep, you seem to forget yourself completely in deep sleep, later, you wake up as if from oblivion. Can you remember what it feels like to be in the deep sleep state?
Most can't.
I can
I learned to do so via years of meditation. It has been scientifically documented by sleep researchers that some people, with 20-30 years of meditation experience can remain aware during deep sleep continuously.
It's super sweet because of its utter peace. I love not simply passing out and waking up suddenly, having to go after another day. I enjoy the peaceful calm undivided repose of deep sleep.
What does that have to do with this thread? First, to say that it is possible to remember yourself before birth once you are aware "who you are"
Second, from the examples of near death experience. A calm with no lights or fanfare is not necessarily equivalent to no existence. It's what we wake up after each night.
Peace
Karl
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MisterE
Trad climber
One Place or Another
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Jan 30, 2009 - 01:01am PT
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From a more practical standpoint:
energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
Your spirit, energy, whatever.
transitions.
Just sayin', again.
Cue entropy supporters
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 30, 2009 - 01:03am PT
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Transmigrates ,,,,,
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MisterE
Trad climber
One Place or Another
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Jan 30, 2009 - 01:05am PT
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trans·mi·grate
Function:
verb
Etymology:
Latin transmigratus, past participle of transmigrare to migrate to another place, from trans- + migrare to migrate
Date:
circa 1559
transitive verb: to cause to go from one state of existence or place to another
intransitive verb1of the soul : to pass at death from one body or being to another
yeah - that.
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Rudder
Trad climber
Santa Rosa, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 30, 2009 - 01:44am PT
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del cross wrote: """" Yes, absolutely. I do not know.""""
Albert Einstein wrote: """"We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.""""
Why is it the smart people are always willing to say they don't know? But, the others... oh, those others. lol
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Rudder
Trad climber
Santa Rosa, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 30, 2009 - 01:45am PT
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I like this one, too:
Albert Einstein
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 30, 2009 - 01:57am PT
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I have much respect for agnostics in the sense it is honest to say "I don't know" rather the arrogance of an atheist who claims that "I've proved the negative"
I don't like to see "agnostic" substitute for "can't be bothered to think about the fundamental questions of existence.
For all of us, God or no God, the fundamental question exists. What are you? How do you know? From where in you does it springs?
Are you your thoughts?
We live in this mental cloud of our own insecure thinkings about ourselves and call it "Me"
Take an intelligent look at yourself and the facade will crumble if you apply half the wit that you allot to other musings.
Peace
Karl
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jbar
Ice climber
Russia with love.
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Jan 30, 2009 - 02:05am PT
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"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan]way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.]It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist"
From Benjamin Franklin who obviously wasn't very smart.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 30, 2009 - 01:11pm PT
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Many of the founding fathers were deists, but that's an ambiguous term at best. In fact, Orthodox Christians, those believing in the infallibility of the canon, like Catholics and most Protestant sects, could not participate in a revolutionary war because that kind of thing is prohibited in Romans chapter thirteen which says, essentially, obey the government and shut up and pay your taxes.
Deism is Christianity or belief significantly mediated by secular reason. "God is energy" is considerably different than "God is a personal deity born of a virgin."
How anybody can believe a starving child in the Sudan is somehow a victim of its own karma is beyond reason.
Karma and the transmigration of souls has been used for centuries as an excuse for the worst kind of despotism. The caste system in India is a blatant example of social slavery based precisely on this idea.
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