Death comes to all!

Death is an inevitable part of life. It is the one thing rich, poor, races, sexualities and all living beings share with each other. It will happen to all of us. We will die.

What is the meaning of life then? Is there a meaning even?

I personally think one of two things will happen when we die. The things that make the most sense at least. I cannot believe in heaven and hell although I wish I was naive enough to believe it.

Anyway, one of two things. Either we will be reborn as someone else i.e incarnation, or we will just be gone i.e nirvana. Both equally frighten me, but they are the ones that make the most sense. If you take when you die, then you are just dead. No thoughts, no feelings, no conciousness… nothing. You exist no more. Then there is reincarnation, but then, to what end are you born and reborn and reborn?

Different religions have different opinions on the above of course. How does reincarnation work you might wonder – and the question I get asked the most is how can reincarnation be true if there are more people on earth now than anywhere in the past?

Time is a man-made phenomena. There is no such thing as time. In the broad scope of the universe everything is happening in the exact moment. Time was invented by looking at how much you age in the moments a piece of dust takes to swing around a spark in the universe. That is time. Knowing that you can now start to understand that when you are reincarnated you may be reborn as a Chinese girl in 1820. Interesting right?

Moving on we start to realize that how can I be Ching’ Yau in 1820 but David next to me was Ching ‘Yau in his previous life… Read this quickly:

I take no credit for the above, it was written by one of the best writers of our time, Andy Weir.

That is deep spiritual thought, and you may say a bit far fetched. I agree, but something inside me moved when I read that. Why does the same rule resound in each and every religion you hear and know about: “Treat others like you want to be treated” and “Love thy neighbour…” etc. Could it be because they are you an a different time and space?

 

Michael

The Praying Spider

If there is one thing I love, it is religion.

What people deem to be holy and evil. How people pray, what they believe and most of all, I love the debates about religion. I may write more about religion, since I am aiming towards a masters degree in world religions next year.

I was standing in the bathroom a few moments earlier and I saw the fattest, blackest, creepiest spider I have ever seen. I nearly shat my pants. (At least I would have been in the bathroom!). I am extremely afraid of spiders, as you could have guessed. Anyway, I was looking at the spider and I thought about some meme I’d seen and killing spiders with fire and giggled a bit. At that point I planned on killing the spider- when something else I read or heard came to mind.

What does a spider know, and what does it not know? Does it know it’s about to die? What does a spider see when they see a human? A huge foot baring down on it… is it’s last thought, “Shit, a foot!” or something? Obviously we are taught that spiders and insects and animals mostly can’t think. Not the way humans do in anyway.

But what if they could think?

What if that spider sees this huge being in front of it and assumes it must be a god…

Will that spider be praying to me and asking me to bless him, and or not kill him, to spare him one more day to raise his children? Surely if it could think and become self aware it would notice that humans for the most part are powerful, omnipotent and everywhere. Would they think of us as gods? Good ones and bad ones?

If that is the case, what god am I? What kind of god am I? Honestly that thought shook me. What if my life right now is me being a god, what would the spiders pray to me for?

I might be the god of insight, or the god of cruelty. The god of alcohol or the god of love, maybe even the god of purple. There are different ways to think about this. You have good attributes and you have bad attributes, you even have useless attributes… but so did the ancient gods in the religions of old. We need to look deeper into ourselves to answer this question.

Personally I think I would be the god of self enlightenment, or at the very least some sort of knowledge god. My strong points are teaching and researching. My weak characteristic would be cruelty.  I can be cruel sometimes, even unfairly so, whether intended or not so. My spiders might pray to me for some enlightenment, but enlightenment always comes with a price- a dash of cruelty. As the sayings go, “Cruel to be kind” and “Ignorance is bliss…”

Think of yourself as a god. What would the spiders… or others pray to you for?

What if the spiders are praying to you right now.

Michael

Dear god…