Nature of death and spirit

So hellos. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

The problem of the nature of death is something that's really been...I don't know what word to use. It's been on my mind for a while. Particularly, recently. I'm not entirely certain why it would have flared up now, except for being in Qigong class and...basically, thinking on the possibility (likelihood?) of immortality. Of course, I'm not thinking of physical immortality, because that would seem to be disadvantageous given the course of a natural life. (I mean, aging and such.) But spiritual immortality is a different thing.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this here before...the major question, stemming off of my personal mythology, is the nature of spirit and the question of why things are now, the way they are. So, for example, I don't seem to have any really strong recollection of past lives, though there is a specific "place" in my "memory" (more like a "familiar" feeling) that I find when I see or read something containing the appropriate key. In the past this has been material on Buddhism. Currently, I've branched out into Daoism (I'm shifting to the Pinyin spelling because it's grating on my nerves, I always want to read it "Taoism" when the correct pronunciation is "Daoism").

I have begun energetic practice prior to knowing precisely what it is that I'm doing, however, it seems that (as in Ki Aikido) the practice of Qigong is basically a physical reassertion of philosophical ideals. However, it doesn't seem to be as...regimented? as Aikido. Because you can't really hurt anybody with Qigong...at least, I can't, not yet; well, mostly (I was warned of two pressure points which could cause miscarriage); there isn't so much of a push to be extremely disciplined. The disciplinary angle probably comes more from Japanese culture writ large in Ki Aikido, though. Daoist ways seem to be a great deal more laid-back. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> Of course, though, in the native land you also mix that in with Confucianism and Buddhism and Legalism, and that is kind of not so great. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->

I have gained something from my experience in Aikido, though...particularly on the front of meditation. Recall before that I said I had practiced some form of zazen in Aikido. This is sitting meditation, focused on one's posture, breath, and surroundings without the aid of sight. This experience, done often enough, keeps one in the present moment. It can lead to a fairly profound change where one is aware of moments passing as they do, and one becomes able to keep up with the "now" without worrying about the future or past. This makes one much more able to defend oneself, as one can remain sharp even as blows are coming at one, or even as one's body is flying through the air with a large risk of severe injury, should one let one's guard down in the wrong moment.

It's this that has led to the question I have of the nature of time itself. It would seem that to a focused observer, time is illusory, and yet it is not or else how am I writing a train of thought to you now? I did just write the last three paragraphs, didn't I? There seems to be something to existing in a physical form which ties us to the realms of time and space.

I haven't had the Physics training I'd need to be able to tell if time and space can literally collapse and become ineffectual, but I wonder about it. And I wonder if this state is the state of Divinity, or oneness/Unity, given my own definition of the Divine as permeating all.

Because I don't have memories of past lives, only these feelings of familiarity; and because Bell has told me that memories of past lives do not continue on, only their effects do (though this may have just been me attempting to justify not having any memories); it seems there must be something about the nature of being disembodied which leaves one without the hardware to retain memories. If one cannot retain memories, the question is how one is able to have an identity, and the answer is that one simply *is*, and not that one knows why or how one is, just that one *is*.

It's partially this that has led me to leave such a prolific paper trail online and in my own files; there is the possibility, however remote, that the people who read what I've written -- or hear what I say -- will in some way carry on parts of my own thoughts so that they will be recoverable in future incarnations. At the very least, a paper trail will make the concepts accessible again, even if, in the future, I happen to fall into an incarnation which is less able to grasp my meaning, than now.

And then there is the question of what is sometimes called the "bardo," or the state between lives. I have no memories of this place. The most I can gather is that it is not a place to fear being, and that it is the place I came from, so not to worry going back to it. I'm not Christian, so I have no ideas really about any states in which I will exist in a form similar to now but up in clouds or something. The closest I can come to that is existing as a celestial in the darkness and beauty of space.

For those of you who have past-life memories...do they stop at the moment at which you died? Or do you remember anything of the time between death and new life?

I've got to go, for now...

All right,

I'm back. I had a couple of messages come to me earlier. One of them is the concept of dualism...I think I mentioned this before in a different thread. That essentially reality is not unitary but binary. That is, the Divine is not wholly encompassed by the experience of Oneness, because something lies outside of that oneness, and that is the realm of matter, a.k.a. space-time.

I've read something of this in texts on Hinduism/Sanatana Dharma. Basically, it is taken that the masculine Divine (deva) relates to Mind and the feminine Divine (devi) relates to Matter/Power. Though of course, there are a lot of different emulations of both Mind and of Matter/Power. The point to be taken here is that neither is really fully capable without the other. When the two are working together, we get life. I do not know that either could actually truly be separate from the other, as even in a dead universe we get Mind suffusing everything, just not able to affect the material through incarnation (though note that I am not talking about universal "heat death" in this scenario; black holes are interesting, but I don't fully understand their implications, yet). In Daoism, Yin and Yang are never separate, as they are each complementary to the other. Create one thing, and you get the absence-of-that-one-thing or complement-of-that-one-thing, in contrast.

What I was thinking of earlier is that at death, the here-to-fore conjoining of the masculine Divine and the feminine Divine separates, though neither fails to continue to exist. As matter recycles itself, I suspect something similar is true of spirit. Likely because I am a Westerner, I understand myself as a combination of the masculine and feminine, as versus only feminine (because of my physicality/body and supposed ability to bear children). It's like I understand myself as a combination of Yin and Yang, not only Yin (though I understand I'm talking about two different, geographically separate systems, here: Daojiao/Daoism [China] and Sanatana Dharma/Hinduism [India]).

So, basically, I'm thinking that what is happening with my visualizations is that I'm identifying more with Mind and less with Matter. I wonder if this is related at all to my gender issues...

I'll put the rest of what I have to say in a different post.

Chordal Wrote:For those of you who have past-life memories...do they stop at the moment at which you died? Or do you remember anything of the time between death and new life?

For the few experiences I have which I believe are past life memories, they're just brief flashes of images accompanied with feelings. And none of them have been past the point of death. I haven't remembered deaths, just specific memories from back then.