Reflecting on Death

It has been two months since my last post. Between my two kids finishing up with final school projects, my side business needing remodeling, my husband driving me insane from being home due to short term disability..... my head has been spinning. I've barely had time to breathe let alone write anything cogent here.

So the kids get done with school, we pack their bags so they can go up and spend the summer with the first wife, hubby is healing and on his way back to work.... and just as I'm getting settled in to get this house in order again I get one phone call after another giving me bad news after bad news. I'm wondering when it's going to stop. Deaths happen in threes, it seems.

Last week my grandfather died at the age of 82. I just went to his funeral today. Military honors and all. It was sweltering hot, everyone was sweating through their clothes and I have to say that we were (all 150 of us) holding up quite well until the Taps was played. Then we discovered there was a severe shortage of tissues. My twelve year old niece was sitting on my mother's lap and when the three shots were fired she screamed and had to be taken to the car. She and Grandpa were close and she was just plain devastated and traumatized by the whole thing.

My nephew(by marriage) was killed in a hit-and-run this past Saturday. That funeral will be this Friday. My poor brother-in-law drank himself silly the day after it happened. Mother and I took food over and sat with him and my sister. He started yammering on and on about killing the guy who killed his son and then sobbing about how wrong he was so say such things. All I can say at this point is that our whole family has gone slightly psycho this past week.

THEN tonight, only hours after getting home from my grandfather's funeral Mom calls me and tells me that a longtime friend of ours died on Monday. He was living with family in Joplin, Missouri when the tornadoes broke out. He had cirrhosis in his liver among other things. He'd been bed bound for a while. Well when the tornadoes hit, he jumped out of bed to try and get a bag together and get to a shelter. He never made it. He fell to the floor in his bedroom and went into multiple system failure, dying two days later in the hospital.

This past week has been filled with nothing but death. I hope these are the last funerals I have to attend for a while.

Any followers of this blog who've read my posts on grief know already that I believe that the 'grief' of a loved one's passing from this material world is ultimately a selfish expression. And a subconsciously jealous one. Sadness they're gone from us(if we allow it to) tends to spiral into a selfish circular logic which is all about what the survivor has 'lost' and not what the recently deceased has gained. An aunt of mine said it best today, "I'll see Daddy soon and I guess I'm just jealous, really." She gave a silly laugh and smile afterward and we shared a knowing look with one another. No one else at the table got it. They looked at her slightly horrified.

I had a wonderful experience just before Mom originally called me to tell me about Grandpa's death. She woke me up from a sound sleep with her call and only a short time earlier I remember dreaming that Grandpa and I were talking. It was almost like a phone conversation but ... closer. I can't tell who initiated the 'call' but he asked me some sensitive questions; things I don't think I could have had the nerve to explain in person. He hugged me and told me that he understood everything and why I made the decisions I did and that he loves me. And, "everything is ok." More questions were asked but- it was easier and more efficient that he just take the information he wanted and then he said good-bye. I felt like he pillaged parts of my soul with that last bit but it wasn't intrusive in a bad way. Just... efficient.

I told Mom about the dream and she said she was so thankful that grandpa and I got a chance to talk. I was so sick during Easter this year that I didn't get to see him during that last holiday get-together. We made our peace with one another. I was still pretty numb that day but you know what? I had my one cry-fest and then I was done with it. I remembered what grandpa said to me and just like that- my sadness was gone. It evaporated like morning dew on grass when the sun comes up hot and bright. I felt his presence for a day or so and then he was gone, at peace at last, lying beside his wife who he'd been missing for more than twenty-six years.

From the Nag Hammadi scrolls in the Manichaean literature section, I'd like to dedicate these verses to all our loved ones:

Come, spirit. Death has fallen, and sickness fled away.
Let there be no desire for the house of affliction,
which is wholly destruction and anguishing death.
You were cast out from your native abode. You suffered in hell.
Come nearer in gladness. Don't turn back
to regard the shape of the bodies. See, they return
through every rebirth, and through every agony
and every choking prison where they burn and sigh.
Come nearer. Don't be fond of perishing beauty
in any of its forms. It withers
and fades like a broken rose that dries in the sun,
its grace destroyed.
Princes and dead souls lie shackled in the tomb
where all is blackness.

My soul is saved.
I am dressed in light.

The Paradise of Monasteries

Manichaean Literature
The Gnostic Bible, pages 640-641


The Paradise of Monasteries

How good for us to have known your teaching!
Please have mercy on us, generous ruler.
The messenger of the father heals souls,
draws joy in all of us, and carries away sorrow.
Lofty and limitless, where darkness never comes,
all the monasteries and the dwelling places are great
in beauty, for they are happy in the light
and know no pain. Those who enter remain
forever. No blow or torture ever reaches them.
The clothing they wear no one made by hand.
They shine with light, and no ants crawl in them.
The green wreathes on their heads never lose color.
Their bodies are unfamiliar with dead weight
and don't droop. Their limbs are not paralyzed.
Heavy sleep never overtakes their souls,
and deceptive dreams and delusions are unknown
among them. In that land hunger and anguish
are not known. There is no thirst. The waters
of all its lakes give out a wondrous fragrance
everywhere. No one knows floods and drowning.
Their walk is quicker by far than lightning.

In their bodies there is no sickness. The actions
of all the dark powers leave them completely alone.
Fear and horror do not live in those lands,
nor does destruction. The trees don't shake down
their fruit. Decay is foreign to their fruit.

Within and outdoors it is replete with brilliance,
the gardens aromatic and no stray bricks
or thorns. Those who ascend to those precincts
and have knowledge will extol his manifestation.
No one suffers a dark shadow. Its earth and face
are radiant. Precious forms are free from hurt.
Their limbs don't become feeble with age.
They are happy. They speak well. They revere
the high generous one. There is glad sweet song
in splendid monasteries. No fear, no dogs howling,
no bird squawking, no confusing evil
and dreadful screeching. Nothing coarse in that land.
Darkness and fog have not marked pure paradise.
The self lives in light. The virtues of joy, love,
and beauty are shared. No living being dies.

Zammit & The Million Dollar Challenge

Victor Zammit is an interesting character I've discovered online through a fellow gnostic. I completely forgot about our conversation until I tripped across Zammit's website in a round-about way. *shrug* All's well that ends well. In gnosis you're bound to find what you need when you need it.

Here's his website. Zammit is a retired Australian lawyer with a zeal for exploration and truth. His specialty? The afterlife. More specifically: Near Death Experiences, also known as "NDE's"

Zammit offers a book he wrote called "A Lawyer Presents The Case For The Afterlife" for free if you download it in PDF form off his site OR you can click on links and read it chapter by chapter. The physical paper book is $10.

This guy is offering a ONE MILION DOLLAR reward for anyone who can offer a logical argument against any of his own which are presented in his book making the case for the afterlife. What I find so ... magical... about this is the fact that Houdini and other magicians have done the same concerning proof of psychic abilities and nobody ever won. Why? Because the magician always holds the cards and controls the experiment. So does Zammit hold all the cards here? Is he scheming or scamming anyone? He appears to be a very well learned gent and open to conversation.

Zammit made his case, printed it, and is giving it to the masses to refute. So far nobody has taken the bait. And yet Dawkins continues to sell books endorsing fundamentalist atheism. I suppose it's so much more productive to refute something in theory(in your head!) than show physical proof of your argument. Dawkins, nor any of his disciples, will ever win that million dollar prize.

Zammit's site is a treasure trove of reading material. He has dozens of links on articles talking about debunking magicians, skeptics of all kinds, and his talks with serious scientists who show proof of what happens to the body and brain during death. Amazing stuff. I plan to get lost in it for a few hours today.

The Literal Truth

I don't agree with the last 30 seconds but it's still funnier than heck from an open-minded gnostic perspective. The last round is especially funny because of the sheer number of ways the quotes contradict themselves.

On Death, Grief, and Selfishness

We had a death in the family last week. On the day I found out about it I cried. The next day my tears wouldn't come and I had no answer as to why this was.

I loved this person. I still do. I miss them and I always will. This is what the emotional part of my mind keeps chanting. But there is something else I've discovered that lies under that thick layer of grief: joy.

Why?
And what is this joy?
Why do I feel this joy?
Where did my tears wander off to on that second day? Are my tear ducts malfunctioning?
Why am I not sad anymore?

I have grieved over loss in my past. This entire experience doesn't feel like the 'grief' I have known in the past, however. This feels different and I only discovered why when I let the rational part of my soul surface and allow me to pick apart every aspect of what I was feeling in a non-judgmental way. This distinction is important if we are to make real progress in finding gnosis. NON-judgmental rational thought. It can be scarier than heck because we're socially conditioned to categorize everything into Good, Bad, and Leave-The-Gray-Area-Alone.

That gray area is where gnosis exists. We have to learn to think outside the box that is this material world.

What I have concluded in my search for answers on this topic is that psychologists' definition of grief is backward in relation to gnosis. They believe and teach others that grief happens in stages. This I cannot really argue with. Our emotions do evolve. But dissecting the fundamental judgment they make about the cause of sadness in grief is dependent on one concept only-- that the sadness is based on a feeling of losing a loved one. The survivors are left behind with too many questions and these will supposedly never be answered. Dig deeper and you'll find an atheist component to this psychological argument. If you believe in heaven are you really losing someone or only have a brief period of time before you do see them again? So who's losing what here?

Psychologists cling to this loss rationale and never dig deeper.

I dare. I'll do it now.

Grief is selfish. It serves no purpose. Why do I say this? Because when you examine the very nature of "losing someone to death" you find that it is wrapped up in the survivor's experience. Not the one who died. It's all about what the survivor supposedly lost.

"I miss him/her!"
"I'll never see them again."
"I feel so lost without them."
"What am I going to do without them?"

Do these thoughts sound familiar?

Let me put this in another light. Suicide. Psychologists(and curiously enough, most religous clergy) teach the world that to commit suicide is the epitome of selfishness. Why? Again, because the survivor would miss out on the loving company of the one who wants to kill him/herself.

What exactly is selfish about realizing how hard and unforgiving and hellish this world is? What sane person wouldn't want out?! The answer is the person who is hylic/somatic. Worldly. Materialistic. Unable to see the forest for the trees. Cannot see the eternal nature that is our soul and our divine parent, Pleroma.

Am I advocating suicide? No. But I am advocating truth and the concept of the Bodhisattva, that is an enlightened person staying to teach instead of going back to Pleroma as they crave.

A Bodhisattva has the choice to stay or go. A person who is hit by a car doesn't. But as survivors we have a choice in how we react to OUR loss. Our jealous loss. We have a choice of either accepting that we will not see that person in their worldly body again until WE die and then move on -- or we can wallow in selfish grief.

Yamantaka/gnosis?

I have a question for my readers: Does this description of 'the enlightening activity of wisdom' sound like gnosis to you?

How does Yamāntaka terminate death?

Directly from Wikipedia.org-- "This question depends upon the meaning ascribed to the term death – but one way in which this ability can be identified is through the enlightening activity of wisdom. The wisdom mind is able to perceive that death has no intrinsic, concrete existence: our understanding of death emerges solely from the conventions of the world. Also, when we achieve the same realisation of Yamantaka - who is a Buddha - then we have transcended death.

There are three types of death spoken of in the Yamāntaka Tantra : Outer death is the regular end of life, which is embodied by Yama, Lord of Death, who resides in the south, seven stories under the earth. The inner death is ignorance of the true nature of non-dual reality. Instinctive habitual grasping and aversion to objectively "real" objects and subjects arises from this ignorance. The secret death is dualistic appearance on the subtlest level of clear light mind and illusory body. With the practice of Yamāntaka one overcomes those types of death and gains immortality as a Buddha."

Obvious Paradoxes & Contradictions

The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio

In a discussion on the Atheist Camel's blog, an anonymous commenter made a few deductions which were so perfect I couldn't resist talking about it here.

The Atheist Camel's blog post was called Loving The One You Fear: The Peculiar Christian Dilemma. In it, Dromedary Hump points out the flawed and contradictory relationship literalist Christians have with their God. In essence, this is an abusive relationship.

Anonymous goes even deeper into the paradox saying,

"Do we love abusive parents too? I personally can't stand to read about a parent who abuses their own.

For example, would you build a playground for your kids, and than put a running chainsaw in the center?(garden of Eden).

Would you leave your toddler(s) alone in the neighborhood knowing that a drug pusher was going to try to convince your kids to do something forbidden?(Serpent in said garden).

Would you kill all your kids but one and his immediate family?(Noah).

Imagine two of your kids gave you a present. Would you tell one child how wonderful his present was, and tell the other what a piece of crap HIS present was?(Cain and Able)

How about this..... Your kids are having problems. So you instuct one child(Moses) to tell the other child (Pharaoh)to knock it off, or he will pay. In the mean time, you tell the other child NOT to listen to the first("and he harden the Pharaohs heart). Then, just for kicks you kill all the innocent first born in the second childs village to teach him a lesson!!! Man, that's one terrible dad!!

The last example(of many) is one of my all time favorites. You make a bet with your sworn enemy(Satan) that he can't shake the love of your best behaved child(Job). Your enemy tortures your kid to the point of death, destroys those he loves, and generally is a real terror to him. Well, your kid still loves you, and your enemy is proven wrong. But to what end? All that horror has made absolutly zero difference!! Your enemy is still your enemy, he hasn't changed, but your kid is scarred for life!! What a great parent!!!

Above all, don't forget the Xtian mantra "god gave us free will". Yeah, sure he did "love me or burn". That's not free will. Free will would be "believe in me and go to heaven", or "don't believe and go to heaven". They confuse freedom of choice with free will. Sorry, abusers don't give free will."

-- The Serpent Was Right

Celebrate 2012!

...because it's just another year.

Gospel of Thomas, 51 "When will the repose of the dead come about, and when will the new world come?"

He said to them,"What you look forward to has already come but you do not recognize it."

The scripture before this is even more insightful:

Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'

~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~

Living. Dead. It's all the same stuff to the good god. Energy isn't spent or destroyed. Merely moved. He loves you so much he wants to love you and squeeze you and call you George. Or Georgette. (blatant Loony Toons reference.) He doesn't want to let you go. You are a part of him. If he lost you then he would be losing a part of himself and any sentient, pleasure loving creature wouldn't want that. They'd do anything to stop losing a part of themselves.

Yes, I'm still planning on making my regular credit card payments in 2012. No, I'm not going to run naked through the streets like a crazed lunatic fearful of hellfire. If anything, I'll be celebrating it, if it is the end of all this madness!

Human beings have been preparing/going psycho on their fellow man for the apocalypse since 999AD. Nada gosh darn thing has happened.

According to tabloids the present day descendants of the Mayans who created the 2012 doomsday calendar are rolling their eyes at us. "White man so stupid," they're saying to themselves. Seriously. What exactly can we do to stop this supposed End of Days?

*crickets chirping*

Exactly.

So get off your arse and enjoy your life. Go grab a Smirnoff.Or a good book. Or both.