You're welcome Boris.


Chumley:

Everybody wants to live according to love and humility. Everybody wants to live according to the divine plan. Nobody wants to have eternal enemies. Each person can find that what I say is true inwardly. Something has taken place in your life that has caused you to become unaware of this inner knowing. This is why you feel angry about things. We become angry when we lose track of the love, peace and happiness that we inwardly yearn for. We yearn for it because on some level we know about it. YOU'RE NOT AN EXCEPTION DESPITE WHAT YOU BELIEVE!

B-man,

Consider the consensus of astral explorers and NDEs about one of the "nearest" astral layers to the earth variously known as Sheol, Focus 24, etc.   This layer is inhabited not only by earthbound spirits and lost balls in the tall weeds, but also by spirits who, frankly, seem insane.   Now consider all those defiant elderly souls who have no interest in God, Jesus, or progress towards PUL.  A good percentage of these die in pathetic senility.   Their major pleasure is a good bowel movement and their greatly eroded memory is clearest about their youth.   B-man, there is a good chance that this will eventually be your fate.    And since you were so "spiritual" and goodie-two-shoes in your younger years, that is the phase that your memory will preserve.    

Now, B-man, ask yourself why the afterlife "system" leaves these pathetic souls to their insane ravings and lost confusion.   Perhaps, they lacked the noble core desires that might allow them to be retrieved and made sane to pursue their intense and loving goals.  Think about it, B-man.   These guys wanted and expected extinction like you, but instead they get stuck in drooling insanity--like our most incoherent dreams that make no sense.  These insane souls, too, congregate on the basis of like attracts like, B-man.  If I were you, I'd actually read a book on the afterlife--any book--and get yourself some core desires that might  get you out of this mess.

Don

The way i see it, any pain/suffering only lasts until i die.

Until that point, i live as comfortably as i can. I try to find the ins and outs of this game we call life.

When you 'know' that all pain/suffering is for a limited time only, it becomes far more bearable.

Just think when you die, you wont be human anymore, you will be something else, you will never feel tired/bored/alone/pain...

Death is the prize for completing life, so stick it out chum.

Augoeideian wrote:

"It is beyond the senses, it is elusive and at the same time all encompassing, while we here it feels like the melody of a song you can't quite remember, it comes from within and overflows without.  It simply just is because it is."


I like that Augoeideian.

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

The way i see it, any pain/suffering only lasts until i die.

Until that point, i live as comfortably as i can. I try to find the ins and outs of this game we call life.

When you 'know' that all pain/suffering is for a limited time only, it becomes far more bearable.

Just think when you die, you wont be human anymore, you will be something else, you will never feel tired/bored/alone/pain...

Death is the prize for completing life, so stick it out chum.
*****************
Not to fear, Spit... I'm here for the duration (or at least until I
get some horribly painful terminal cancer or something, in which
case I'll push the "off" button methinks. (Suffering with no reward
ain't my thing.)
After all, I wouldn't have quit smoking (one month now and going
strong!) if I didn't plan on sticking it out as you say. (And who
knows, a cryogenic suspension maybe even...)

B-man

B-man:

You are guilty of the same bias as many Fundamentalists.   That is, you judge alt challenging perspectives in terms of their worst examplars and refuse to seek out spiritualities at their best with their accompanying awesome verifications.   So I challenge you once again to become an honest seeker.

[B-man:] "I'd rather stick my you-know-what into a meat grinder and
hit "puree" than become a churchy, preachy, suit-and-tie
get-a-life faithhead."
_________________

Many churches disdain all forms of stuffiness, and both the pastor and the people "dress down" to enhance the comfort of outsiders.

[B-man:] "I suppose you'd say it's a noble thing to pony up my hard-earned cash to waste on maintaining Mr. Pulpit Lizard's lifestyle when his collection
plate gets passes around? Parasitic bastard...)"
_________________________________________

No, I'd say just the opposite!   Find a small, intimate caring chiurch that pays its pastor a modest salary and raises funds primarily to meet the concrete needs of the poor and the oppressed.  True love requires a loving community to pool their resources and identify practical needs that social agencies overlook.  In many mega-churches, suffering members are often overlooked in the crowd and even die in oblivion.  In a loving small church, everyone is treated as family.   Hospitalized members are visited by the laity as well as by the pastor.   Corporate prayer time is an occasion in which troubled souls pour out their hearts and receive both passionate prayer and practical follow-up to meet their needs.   I know this by direct experience as a pastor.

What I chiefly lament is that mega-churches are growing at the expense of small, more initimate and deeply spiritual small churches.   True, big churches have more money and a larger talent pool.   But Christian spirituality flourishes only when each member has the chance to make a practical difference on a regular basis.  Small churches respect everyone's spiritual gifts and graces.

[B-man:] "Sorry, but I'm not sacrificing what I DO have -THIS life - in order to pursue rewards which have BLIND FAITH, as their only evidence."
_________________________________________________


You forget that the Gospels can be confidently connected with eyewitnes testimony.   More importantly, Gospel miracles find corrobration in modern miracles that change skeptical lives.  I have often both experienced such miracles and documented the miracles experienced by others on this site.   If you imagine that Christianity is based on BLIND FAITH, you just need to get out more and take new pictures.  But start by opening your mind to some sort of spiritual quest, even a non-Christian quest.   Why not begin by reading a book by a New Ager rather than a Christian?   In my view, the best example of this is David Fontana's "Is There an Afterlife?  A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence."   No role for Jesus there, but his book deeply inspired my faith.

Don