Heaven and hell is in your mind

[J. Stew]

Yeah there's suffering everywhere, hurricanes happen, terrorists blown up buildings, there's S.I.D.S. . . but really that is just what happens. If someone calls you an a**hole and you take it personally, YOU are the one that holds onto it and YOU are the one that is angry because of it. Maybe the person that called you an a**hole is just an angry person because of whatever reason and they are just kind of a jerk for passing on that anger to you, but really you have the choice of whether to hold on to that anger and pawn it off on someone else or to transcend the anger and basically change it into a higher energy level . . . sounds fruity but whatever. If you're fake about changing anger into some higher/cleaner energy by telling yourself you are not angry when you really are, you hide anger away and it inevitably comes out in some unhealthy way, either a way you act towards yourself or to someone else.

So really you can be at the mercy of all the suffering that is around, and either ignore it by living on an island or harbor it without knowing how to properly deal with it thus perpetuating the wheel of suffering, or you can figure out how to deal with suffering in a healthy way.

One side heaven, one side hell. Some stuck in suffering, some transcending suffering.

Angry people are exactly that, they're angry, they don't know how to deal with their issues. Everybody has issues. Some people hide their problems away, some people blame their problems on other people, some people use religion as a way to not truthfully deal with their problems, and some people use the collective truth that religion seeks to point to, to help themselves see Truth.

It's not like religion is good or bad, that's looking at it the wrong way. Religion is a tool that points to something You already know. The tool is not You. You are already You, and You already know if you're being honest with Yourself or not.

So I see heaven vs. hell as basically the ability to deal with the suffering you harbor in your mind in a healthy way. What is a healthy way? Maybe some psychotherapy, maybe read the Bible and see what Jesus had to say, maybe talk to a homeless guy and see how much you can be thankful for. Everything has something to offer if you are open enough to listen to it. Suffering closes your mind, while the relinquishing of suffering opens your mind. So there's two broad directions you can go. Either down the path of perpetuating suffering because you either don't realize you are suffering or you don't know how to transcend suffering, or realize all the ways you are suffering and get dirty with your issues thereby transcending them when you get spit out on the 'enlightened' side. -Stew

[brandofo]

What are your thoughts on life after death? Specifically, heaven and hell.

[MidGe]

Hiya J Stew,

It is a bit of a novel approach on this forum but not in any fundamental way. This is a bit like a new age religion.

It will be so as long as you posit an ultimate truth to be somehow discovered, whether it is god or Yourself (I noted the capitalisation). To me this approach still lacks compassion. You may be able to deal with suffering in a healthy way but that doesn't mean suffering is desirable or should be neccessary.

[cambraceres]

You have alot of Stoic properties in your brief discourse, I humbly suggest you read 'The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius'. It has the deepest exploration of the powers of the mind to ignore and transcend suffering that I have ever read.

[J. Stew]

Yo G -

Intersting, I would argue that transcending suffering necessitates the natural compassion inherent in Spirit. I don't mean to say that suffering is necessary or desirable, just that 'suffering' is life itself. If one is able to see that, the negative connotations that are normally tied with suffering disapeer because that person isn't thinking in dualistic terms anymore. A non-dualistic approach, if it needs to be called that, has the vantage point of seeing suffering as neither good nor bad, just what is. Doesn't mean suffering isn't painful and heart-achey tho.

[J. Stew]

Hey Brando -

Does one's 'mental state' have anything to do with life after death, does one simply shed body and mind and rejoin with the nature of the Universe, does the light just go out and only emptyness remains and if so can that emptyness be experienced in some sense? . . . In some ways I don't know and in some way I think I already know.

[MidGe]

Yo /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Intersting, I would argue that transcending suffering necessitates the natural compassion inherent in Spirit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I undertsand that, but my viewpoint is that relying on spirit for its natural inherent compassion (I may need to know more about spirit, I guess), prevents compassion manifestation in a truly entirely human way.

[J. Stew]

Cool I will check it out, thanks for the recommendation. A small but important point is that ignore and transcend don't go hand in hand. Transcend is include and go beyond. God I'm such a nit.

[cambraceres]

No you're no nit, it's an important distinction, this is treated in Aurelius' famous text as well.

[J. Stew]

Ahh yeah I see what you're saying, and that's a sticky point. Are you referring to using religion as a crutch for compassion as in people reading the Bible, seeing that Jesus was compassionate thereby having a conceptual understanding that compassion is 'good' and consequently trying to act compassionately? I would say that 'relying' can be taken in different ways. In one way there is displacement of ownership, like when some religious people rely on something that they call not themselves, like they are not already divine. In another way though, 'relying' on Spirit could be taken as relying on traits already inherent in you, maybe undiscovered though. In this way, relying is really more about realizing what is already there. Like if someone were to really try to become a better listener, they would try to become more aware, attentive, quiet their own minds so they could take in the other's words in the clearest way. While doing this, they would come across as compassionate towards the talker. The compassion was already there, the listener just became more 'awake' to it. So it would be relying in a roundabout way. I talk too much /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[J. Stew]

My parent's used to say 'nothing good ever happens after midnight' when they tried to justify my 12:00am curfew in highschool and here we are talking about Marcus Aurelius at 4am. HAH!

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

"I sent my soul through the invisible
some letter of the afterlife to spell
and by and by my soul returned to me
saying 'I myself am heaven and hell' "

- The Rubiyyat of Omar Khayyam