Posted on 05/05/2011 5:34:23 AM PDT by Daffynition
amazing stuff
I hope by now he knows he was wrong about no longer existing
God Bless Derek and his family
As long as you are unaware of Being, the reality of other humans will elude you, because you have not found your own. Your mind will like or dislike their form, which is not just their body but includes their mind as well. True relationship becomes possible only when there is an awareness of Being. Coming from Being, you will perceive another person’s body and mind as just a screen, as it were, behind which you can feel their true reality, as you feel yours. So, when confronted with someone else’s suffering or unconscious behavior, you stay present and in touch with Being, all suffering is recognized as an illusion. Suffering is due to identification with form. Miracles of healing sometimes occur through this realization, by awakening Being-consciousness in others — if they are ready. ~ Eckhart Tolle Compassion and Reality from The Power of Now
It would be a better thing for him if he did not know. Eternity is going to happen to us, whether we believe it or not.
As someone who endured chemo and lived, that was a tough read... RIP.
Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to this bond. On the one hand, since you are still here as a physical body, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form with every other human and with every living being. Next time you say "I have nothing in common with this person," remember that you have a great deal in common: A few years from now -- two years or seventy years, it doesn't make much difference-- both of you will have become rotting corpses, then piles of dust, then nothing at all. This is a sobering and humbling realization that leaves little room for pride. Is this a negative thought? No, it is a fact. Why close your eyes to it? In that sense, there is total equality between you and every other creature.
One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also dies. Yet you are still there-- the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.
The realizaton of this deathless dimension, your true nature, is the other side of compassion. On a deep feeling-level, you now recognize not only your own immortality but through your own that of every other creature as well. On the level of form, you share mortality and the precariousness of existence. On the level of Being, you share eternal, radiant life. These are the two aspects of compassion. In compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace. This is the peace of God. It is one of the most noble feelings that humans are capable of, and it has great healing and transformative power. But true compassion, as I have just described it, is as yet rare. To have deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond empathy or sympathy. It does not happen until sadness merges with joy, the joy of Being beyond form, the joy of eternal life.
Wow. One of the few people who can actually handle the reality that death is indeed the end, and not pin their hopes on some fantasy afterworld.
100 billion points of light
on a living breathing vibrating sphere
travelling through the vastness
learning lessons of love and life and death
recognizing the beauty of creation
feeling the spectrum of emotion
receiving the gift
with each breath
solstice prayers
dear friend
blessed be
"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
That is translated through you into action,
And because there is only one of you in all time,
This expression is unique.
If you block it,
It will never exist through any other medium
And be lost.
The world will never have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is,
Nor how valuable it is,
Nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
To keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware
Directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction,
A blessed unrest that keeps us marching
And makes us more alive than others."
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is is carried so high
I kiss the Sun's mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their cups of wine
And their wild song books all around.
And
For no reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I am.
“pin their hopes on some fantasy afterworld.”
I am one of those...fantasy after-worlders. I serve a risen Lord. I feel great sorrow for those who can not look forward to an everlasting life in his presence, and you can too.
Can you expand what you mean about a fantasy afterworld? Are you talking about 72virgins or something else? curious....
D’oh! “Leak” should be “Lead” for the title.
"I haven't gone to a better place, or a worse one. I haven't gone anyplace, because Derek doesn't exist anymore. As soon as my body stopped functioning, and the neurons in my brain ceased firing, I made a remarkable transformation: from a living organism to a corpse, like a flower or a mouse that didn't make it through a particularly frosty night. The evidence is clear that once I died, it was over."
Ignoring the fact that he uses the future tense as if it were the past tense, his atheism and naturalism are self-refuting. If his presuppositions were true it was impossible for him to know what he claimed know. He claimed that his knowledge that once he died it was over was based on "the evidence". Really? Did he look everywhere and examine everything in the entire universe? He would have to be omniscient to do that, making himself God. The internal contradictions are apparent in what he wrote. On one hand he says, "What to know, now that I'm dead", and on the other hand he says, "There can't be answers today."
If all he was was a concatenation of molecules and atoms banging around the very rationality he assumes, as well as the love, truth and beauty, good and bad he speaks of to his daughters are all meaningless nonsense. Matter in motion is not "good" or "bad". Love and hate would be nothing more than monistic, blind, electrochemical activity.
What is true is that I loved them. Lauren and Marina, as you mature and become yourselves over the years, know that I loved you and did my best to be a good father.Airdrie, you were my best friend and my closest connection. I don't know what we'd have been like without each other, but I think the world would be a poorer place. I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.
He wasn't a very consistent atheist. In spite of himself, his professions of love are eloquent testimony to his inner knowledge of God as Creator, as well as a damning indictment of the futility of his professed Naturalism.
Cordially,
I'm dying from a horrible illness (Pulmonary Fibrosis). I'm now afraid of death because I KNOW that when I pass from this body, I will be in the presence of God. Fantasy I think not.
I’m wondering if the author hasn’t put his toe into the waters of *Cartesian Solipsism.* ;)
Stand in any train station you choose and you’ll always see that some unannounced destinations are more popular than others.
NOT
I’m sorry to hear this and I did just pray for you and your family.
A huge hurdle, IMO, is to see and take things just as they are.
‘As men begin to arouse themselves from slumber, they start to see their own life as a metaphor;
for what, specifically, is unclear, but they feel most assured that their individual existence is
but a metaphor for something greater.
Then as they become able to actually arise from their bed of distraction and step out
of their darkened room into the natural light, metaphors and allegories disappear
in the splendor of everyday things just as they are.’
‘One man says that all of his metaphysical efforts and studies are finally beginning to pay off,
and with such intensity and with such magnitude that on some mornings he is able to stand free
in the middle of the room, holding on to nothing – and put on his socks without falling over and
hurting himself!’
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