What do you think happens when we die?
I think we simply get recycled. Physically and also spiritually speaking. To think that there is something beyond this seems kinda silly to me. I can believe in the aspect of ghosts existing but I dont think theres some spiritual world where we all go to reside.
The idea that we as humans think were all special and above being like other animals as we presumably say to ourselves that pets and other supposed lifeforms particularly mammals have no souls and we do seems to imprint a superiority complex among us. As much as we can do things that other animals can’t we can’t deny that we are animals ourselves. The fact that synthetic pheromones work and that we are able to alter social behavior during interaction only further shows that we aren’t completely above being instinctual and animalistic. All I’m trying to get at here is if regular animals don’t get a spirit world and we are related to animals for the most part I don’t really see why would get one either.
My mothers family is Buddhist and my fathers family is Catholic. I’ve seen so many fallacies with religion and so much hate and animosity and intolerance of non believers and people of other faiths that the whole prospect of being religious disgusts me. Whether or not theres a God up there or not “hope” is the closest thing to being tangible and the rest of the nonsense rituals, rules, commandments, coming of age ceremonies I can do without.
Just my opinion.
So, Hope is the only thing you’ll buy?
Alright well lets see. I may not be very superstitious or spiritual but I can honestly say from my own perception that I believe my Grandfather from my mothers side watches over me. In a very limited fashion but no matter what and no matter how many close calls where I should’ve been hit by another car or me hit them or me badly timing lights or turns its just never happened. I know I can probably be jinxing myself by saying that but whatever 
Can I explain why he watches over me whenever I drive? Not really I just know that I’ve done a butt load of things that should have gotten me really injured or killed before. Im a pretty safe driver given the time and the day but I do reckless things at inopportune times all the time. And trust me when I say I’m not that lucky.
My fathers been dead for many years and I’ve never seen the likes of him in any form so I don’t know why my grandfathers so special (purely from a spiritual vs scientific standpoint) that he somehow acts like my angel. Theres probably a limit to all this avoiding car crash calamity and one day I will meet my maker “happening wise” in one form or another.
My beliefs…
Your body decays and becomes part of the earth again unless you get cremated then you skip the decay part but you still return to the earth.
Your spirit, soul or energy force whatever you want to call it returns to the main energy force that every organism comes from. There is no heaven and there is no hell these are just illusions religious leaders created to control the masses. If you look back in history it was “church” or other religious figures who controlled the people not just the “government”. In many cases they acted as one unit. If the king, Pharaoh, sultan etc etc wanted control over his domain he spoke to his religious advisory who then in turn made up some rule usually a fear based one to control the people. Its a form of social control that still exists on all different levels today in many countries including the US.
I do believe there is a higher energy form but we all derive from that same higher energy. Perhaps “god” is that combined energy and we are just all small pieces of it. While I dont believe the traditional “heaven hell God and religion” theory I do respect others rights to practice, worship or connect with that energy in any way they see fit as long as it doesn’t harm another.
So I dont see going to church or other rituals as silly. If this is the way a person connects to the higher energy force then these practices have a purpose for that person and are important. They just have to be aware of how certain aspects of all these practices can be forms of control and not fall into the illusion.
My fathers body returned to the earth about a year ago but I still feel his energy and I do believe those energies we are closest to never truly leave us totally. Remnants remain. They just take on a different form. Everyone has different labels for that form but its all the same. Ghost angel guide deity whatever we are all from one energy so we are all basically one.
Its not hope really, its a knowing. To hope is to not know. To believe is to create so if you believe there is a hell and your going there you will create that hell and that is where your energy will spend time until it returns to its source.
Tisha
I’m in the middle on this between Olfact and Tisha. Being Catholic and learning about the stages of eternal paradise or damnation are just archaic in my thoughts. I do believe that there is a being that is “up there”. I believe that once we pass here on earth our “souls” transcend somewhere else. I don’t think any of us could fully comprehend what happens but I feel that the finality of what happens here on earth isn’t “it” that there is something more to it.
Take comfort in the eternal truth that EVERY age of humanity has assumed that it was pretty near to a complete understanding of the universe, and every age of man has gone through mind-bending reevaluations of what reality is… we may still be in for such incomprehensible surprises… consider the most educated, most realistic, most farsighted 18th century man could not conceive of a cheap radio, a lightbulb, a flush toilet, an air conditioner, x-rays, bacteria, battery powered marital aids, movies, antibiotics, vulcanized rubber, the internal combustion engine, the disposable razor, structural steel, the metal we know of as aluminum, the bicycle, the idea that outer space was a vacuum, the idea that morphine could be isolated from opium, a field of study known as psychology and a field of study known as economics, department stores, cheetos… none of that was accepted “reality” yet…
Well Tacitus does have a intriguing point there. I really see it as the perception that we do learn until we die cause when we die we finally learn what happens at least to some degree whether its just us fading away from our body or if there is a whole process to it.