posted July 12, 2016 05:21 PM            

I believe I am IN a body, it is a vehicle which I require to navigate the material world.
What happens to "me" when my body dies?

What of the energy of "I" and "you"?
Can this perception of "I" exist without a body to create separateness from "you"?
Can it survive or function without hardware (brain)?

I want to know what YOU believe, and why, and how?
If you ascribe to a religion or belief system regarding "death", what concrete factors convinced you of this?

posted July 14, 2016 06:28 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by DopGang:
It's inexplicable. It varies and it's not often but I'm very aware that I am much more than my physical self.

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Yes.
So you too feel you are IN a body?

See this makes me wonder about philosophies and practises whose purpose is to merge mind, body and soul.
I'm not convinced this is a good thing, nor appropriate.

If the mind or consciousness is attached to the body, how then can it survive the death of the body?
Perhaps this leads to returning again and again to earth...

posted July 14, 2016 03:14 PM            

Some think of souls as nonlocal, completely outside the material realm (that is, not within or part of the body), and that even astral projection is just a mental construct based on expectations and belief rather than genuine self-awareness. I favor this idea for multiple reasons that I don't feel like going into right now. It's something I've explained in the past, and there are many factors that went into what happened. It would be a large essay (MUCH longer than this post) for me to go into all of it and I'd want to spend a couple of days neatening up and adding in what I'm sure I'd initially forget.

Long story made very brief and short, I once entered a higher reality. As I apparently lay weeping in the arms and lap of a guy who prevented my suicide (of which I was no longer aware of at the time, I didn't even remember my name or anything of my life in this world), I was in a realm of pure music, a realm in which English is not equipped to accurately describe, and my feeble attempt to do so is hindered by lacking the actual words for things we have no name for (or if we do then they're the "mysteries" set up in some spiritual or religious framework,the kind that you must experience to understand, because reading and hearing about it can't convey it and will do little to prepare you for it, and as I had no firm religious or spiritual path, it's even harder for me). I vaguely understood that the songs I heard were manifesting on Earth...and that one song in particular was me, I was a Song of a goddess. And being "reminded who I really was" changed my life.

Please don't assume anything. It really is a complicated story, and in retrospect I'm not sure what to think about it. And never in my life did I have any messianic complex or anything of the sort. I'm not certain how "real" it was (though at the time I was absolutely convinced), but I am certain that whatever the case, it was exactly what I needed to not only survive, but to become whole.

My instinctive reaction to thinking of what an existence after my death would be like is to think of being in that realm of music, a place that is nonlocal, outside our reality, and that I'm already there even now, and this body is a (not THE) manifestation of that Song, and my soul is that Song.

x

However, a guy I trust shared of a NDE he had as a toddler. This means he had NO expectations to shape his experience, and for years he hadn't even realized he was outside his body, though he knew something was weird...and the adults he described it to when he was a little boy didn't know what to make of it. Basically, he was sticking things into an electrical socket and then (after his heart stopped, but he screamed which he doesn't remember) found himself out in the hallway to see his mother run up and through him, which seems to imply that he may have well gone through some silver cord or other astral tunnel from his body when his heart stopped (which means tied to the body). Interesting enough, his mother came back out upset and turned all the power off, so he turned to look at a glowing clock that scared him back then (in retrospect he thinks it was an instinctive fear of animal eyes in the dark) but the fear didn't come. This confused him, and that's all he remembers (his mother was doing CPR on his body).

x

How to explain that from my POV? Perhaps my assumption is just wrong.

But the idea I have is that there are many bodies, one being physical. The "link" between a spiritual body on another plane (such as the Song I am) fills the body with vitality, and it's the vitality that leaves, remembers, and senses as a standard human. (Interesting thing, most people out of body, such as during cardiac arrest, typically hear and see as a human when they don't have such physical senses, and this includes the blind and deaf who can see and hear as a human once outside the body, even if they were born without the ability. What organ is doing the perceiving? And why can't it perceive so much more?) That is to say, it's an "echo" of the body, a byproduct of the link between bodies and planes of existence...and that this, too, shall fade/die, or perhaps is the saved data that is then transferred to the higher realms (perhaps the reason for the "life review" which is actually the up/download) or other spiritual bodies that we typically don't know about, or maybe it's more accurate to think of it as the dew that evaporates to form again (all part of a bigger cycle).

Though many mystical traditions have attempted to define these other realms in which the metaphorical and metaphysical combine and become literal (in those planes) that can affect this one (just as I perceived music on some unknown plane of existence creating my life here and the entire world from other Singers). Here's a summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(esotericism)

And btw, the goddess I saw could just be another layer on the mystical onion (perhaps better to see it metaphorically as a Russian doll ) so that there's something above Her (and something that Sings Her into existence that in turn Sings me into existence, and so on). Maybe we're creating realities and don't even know it, and I have some speculation here (everything from astrology to virtual realities created by us having more life than we know) but I think I'm already too esoteric as it is.

The ouroboros also resonates with me...in this case it's not a top-down layer of onions or Russian dolls (but then snakes do have skins they shed over and over...), but rather it's all linked together in a circle (or actually more of a spiral that's also a circle) and that we create the higher realities as much as they create us.

posted July 14, 2016 04:51 PM            

I really love your story of realising you are a song, that's one of the most beautiful things I have heard in a while.

posted July 22, 2016 04:36 AM            

But the rational part of me understands that maybe this is because I'm driven by feelings and emotions in my disposition, Cancer Ascendant (Moon in 8th), Pisces Sun, Venus, Jupiter. Maybe my emotions are what seek spirituality, but not in a religious sense by any means, but through compassion in people. As I've gotten older, I think we go back to the earth we come from and the simplicity of this process can be natural, even reassuring. But for some reason, it's scary.

posted July 24, 2016 09:08 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Brendan34:
Part of me wants to think this way...I know how I feel, I've always felt I am "in a body" too. Always, since I was young. I still feel this way on a daily basis.

But the rational part of me understands that maybe this is because I'm driven by feelings and emotions in my disposition, Cancer Ascendant (Moon in 8th), Pisces Sun, Venus, Jupiter. Maybe my emotions are what seek spirituality, but not in a religious sense by any means, but through compassion in people. As I've gotten older, I think we go back to the earth we come from and the simplicity of this process can be natural, even reassuring. But for some reason, it's scary.

I too agree music taps into our feeling nature, our empathy, more than almost anything else. It reaches the intangible.

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Hello Brendan, thank you for sharing your experience.

I actually find it comforting in a way to consider that I may journey on once free of the body.