Brief comments in your text... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
From: "Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" While I have no memories of past lives that I would consider valid, death does seem like it would be an interesting experience to face, experiencing what comes up as it approaches, if it does not come unexpectedly, in which case anticipation or curiosity would be rendered moot. I would suspect that even an unexpected bullet in the brain would leave time for a quick "WTF?" Whether anything follows that "WTF?" or not, I suspect it would still be a cool moment. :-) I am finding as time goes on, I do not look back much any more, and also I do not look forward much any more either, the sense of anticipation is extremely low at this point. Exactly. Thanks for getting it. That is precisely what I was hoping to convey with what I posted. The very *concept* of spending one's last few moments on Earth looking back at one's life is foreign to me. Looking back on one's life and feeling BAD about it is even more foreign. Like you, I tend to live primarily in Now, but without trying to. It really isn't a "having to try" kinda thing -- it's more like my mind (whatever that is) is more comfortable in the timeline we call Now than it is in the timeline we call either Past or Future. I do have to make make financial decisions, which requires I do think about such things, but I do not get excited about new stuff any more except rarely. If a new movie comes out, I don't care any more, and if I die before it comes out on DVD or Blu-ray, it is not going to be a loss. I wouldn't go that far. If I get a bullet in the brain before I get to see the end of this final season of "Justified" and find out what happens to Ava, I'm going to be a little pissed off. :-) I am plodding through Justified. I am only still in season 3, let alone 6. Season 1 of the Blacklist. Family time here in the evening requires certain compromises to tender (i.e., weak) nervous systems. So I have to watch these when I have time during the day, or when others are out in the evening. I enjoy watching older films too, from the 1930s and 1940s or even silent films on occasion. Also we have had more involved snowstorms here this year, and it's been colder so it's costing more to heat the home, even though oil prices went down a lot, I bought the year's worth to get a lower price, unfortunately before the prices declined so rapidly. There are more things to see than I would every be able to see. So except for logistical planning, life more and more centres on the current moment. And if the current moment involves death, well, no one really has much to say about that at that moment, do they? Not much. Except I can imagine that one has the same choice they have at *any* moment, which is to be IN the moment as opposed to being OUT of it. I honestly can't *imagine* greeting the moment of my death -- the moment in which the curtain concealing the greatest mystery there is is about to be pulled back -- by wanting to look away and look back into the Past and think about what I might have left unfinished or unresolved back then, back in the Not Now. That simply does not compute. The only thing that does is looking forward, with anticipation. Thanks, BTW, for upping the ante on conversation around here. It's appreciated... I simplified my FFL e-mail. Since I am also on the Peak which comes into the same address, I just split them into two folders, except for one particular heavy poster that goes directly into the trash. Buck is annoyed I am on the Peak, but Jim has not kicked me off. I am a bit more diplomatic than you. One interesting effect of the split off FFL is both groups are actually a bit less interesting because of the increased uniformity. The real split seems to me to be the difference between scepticism and belief. We have been watching the reboot of Sagan's Cosmos, which has beautiful graphics, and while the science is kind of high school level, it does not make concessions to religious belief. There are also some very interesting stories. The guy who worked out a method for determining the age of the Earth, also was the guy who got tetraethyl lead out of gasoline. To determine the age of the Earth, he discovered it was impossible to work out without creating a clean room environment to exclude lead contamination, and in discovering this he also discovered how much the lead industry was contaminating the environment with lead, which is a neurotoxin, and he managed to prove it was caused by human intervention by demonstrating the historical rise in lead contamination with samples from locations all over the Earth, including ice cores from Antartica. From: "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2015 6:29 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Last rites I feel the way I do about the notion of reincarnation because of personal experience 'remembering' previous lives and even 'remembering' the transit through the Bardo between death and rebirth. At the same time, I know that these 'memories' may be false, so I don't know fersure what will happen at the moment of death. I've said this many times -- if it turns out that death is like the switching off of a light switch and there is only blackness, then there will be no "me" to be disappointed, or to even register the disappointment. So for now I'm going to go with "looking forward" to what comes next, because that strikes me as the best way to live one's life at ANY moment, not just one's last. But as for trying to link the notion of God to reincarnation, that's your hangup, not mine. Millions of Buddhists believe in reincarnation without having to believe that there is a God. The two concepts are not related in any way. I would suspect that even an unexpected bullet in the brain would leave time for a quick "WTF?" Whether anything follows that "WTF?" or not, I suspect it would still be a cool moment. :-) I am finding as time goes on, I do not look back much any more, and also I do not look forward much any more either, the sense of anticipation is extremely low at this point. Exactly. Thanks for getting it. That is precisely what I was hoping to convey with what I posted. The very *concept* of spending one's last few moments on Earth looking back at one's life is foreign to me. Looking back on one's life and feeling BAD about it is even more foreign. Like you, I tend to live primarily in Now, but without trying to. It really isn't a "having to try" kinda thing -- it's more like my mind (whatever that is) is more comfortable in the timeline we call Now than it is in the timeline we call either Past or Future. I do have to make make financial decisions, which requires I do think about such things, but I do not get excited about new stuff any more except rarely. If a new movie comes out, I don't care any more, and if I die before it comes out on DVD or Blu-ray, it is not going to be a loss. I wouldn't go that far. If I get a bullet in the brain before I get to see the end of this final season of "Justified" and find out what happens to Ava, I'm going to be a little pissed off. :-) I am plodding through Justified. I am only still in season 3, let alone 6. Season 1 of the Blacklist. Family time here in the evening requires certain compromises to tender (i.e., weak) nervous systems. So I have to watch these when I have time during the day, or when others are out in the evening. I enjoy watching older films too, from the 1930s and 1940s or even silent films on occasion. Also we have had more involved snowstorms here this year, and it's been colder so it's costing more to heat the home, even though oil prices went down a lot, I bought the year's worth to get a lower price, unfortunately before the prices declined so rapidly. There are more things to see than I would every be able to see. So except for logistical planning, life more and more centres on the current moment. And if the current moment involves death, well, no one really has much to say about that at that moment, do they? Not much. Except I can imagine that one has the same choice they have at *any* moment, which is to be IN the moment as opposed to being OUT of it. I honestly can't *imagine* greeting the moment of my death -- the moment in which the curtain concealing the greatest mystery there is is about to be pulled back -- by wanting to look away and look back into the Past and think about what I might have left unfinished or unresolved back then, back in the Not Now. That simply does not compute. The only thing that does is looking forward, with anticipation. Thanks, BTW, for upping the ante on conversation around here. It's appreciated... I From: "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2015 6:29 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Last rites I feel the way I do about the notion of reincarnation because of personal experience 'remembering' previous lives and even 'remembering' the transit through the Bardo between death and rebirth. At the same time, I know that these 'memories' may be false, so I don't know fersure what will happen at the moment of death. I've said this many times -- if it turns out that death is like the switching off of a light switch and there is only blackness, then there will be no "me" to be disappointed, or to even register the disappointment. So for now I'm going to go with "looking forward" to what comes next, because that strikes me as the best way to live one's life at ANY moment, not just one's last. But as for trying to link the notion of God to reincarnation, that's your hangup, not mine. Millions of Buddhists believe in reincarnation without having to believe that there is a God. The two concepts are not related in any way.
