I have been giving some serious thought to the idea of the afterlife. Death, or more specifically, what comes after it, is probably the only fear that I have not come to terms with, and that is only because of the fear of the unknown...
I was raised Roman Catholic, but I'm not particularly sold on the idea of heaven and hell.
To think that there are billions, if not trillions of past lives, just continuing to live on in those worlds? Are they supposed to possess their likeness from their moment of passing? Say, a person who perished in a fire; are they just chilling in heaven with deforming third-degree burns all over their body? Do they appear as how we remembered them? how they want to be remembered? What about babies who did not get the chance to possess conscious thought? There are just too many inconsistencies...
Then for the longest time I believed that the afterlife is eternal darkness. Eternal slumber... The afterlife would be the same experience as being asleep -- unconscious darkness...
As I was falling asleep last night, I gave the afterlife some more thought... I've been exposing myself to more philosophic and spiritual material, reading more about how everything is energy, and the origin of energy is conscious thought, the act of willing something into existence...
My theory now, is that is what we become in the afterlife: the bare energy that we have manifested during our time here on earth.
This is what I believe -- I believe that there is truth to choosing to live an inherently good life. I believe there is wisdom in choosing to carry yourself with dignity. In the afterlife, I believe we will be balls of light, and this will represent the energy we manifested in this lifetime.
Energy only attracts like energy. The people who chose to live life positively will be met with the same in the afterlife; they will be surrounded by other balls of positivity. The people who chose to live life negatively will barely produce a flicker of light, and any balls of light they do manage to attract will immediately be repulsed and repelled. They will be forced to traverse the universe alone, for all eternity.
My husband took it a step forward: stars. Our energy makes its way into space, as stars. I told him I believe that we even get the chance to meet loved ones, past lives, etc. and once we find one another, we merge and fuse together to become one, even bigger ball of light. My husband said those are suns.
I told him it must be an incredibly ethereal experience. You will never know the names or the faces, but you will still know it is someone familiar because fusing together will just feel so right. To be engulfed amongst so much light and love and positivity and warmth...
And suddenly death did not seem so terrifying...
Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the spectrum: the damned souls. We thought about black holes, especially considering we don't rightly know what happens inside of black holes. Maybe there is the possibility of something beautiful being born from such horror...
The fear of the afterlife ultimately boils down to one thing: I do not know what awaits me there. And if I do not know, then rather than choose to live my life in fear of it, I choose to believe that something truly wonderful is waiting for me on the other side. I choose to be excited for what awaits me!
