Is there life after life?

I was watching some you tube videos about spooky goings on yesterday, ghosts, alleged angel activity, people talking about near-death experiences - I'm fascinated by it all!

When I was a mere boy, just before I fell asleep, I could hear about half a dozen conversations going on in my head.  I can only describe it like being on a railway station or in an airport near a bank of telephones - I could hear one half of all the people speaking - but if I tried to focus on one particular conversation, it would stop, only to start up again when I stopped paying it any attention.

Someone once told me it was the voices of the dead trying to channel through me.  I didn't like that very much so I blocked the voices out after that.

I have seen a ghost.  Well, I'm certain I have - and when I told my landlady she confirmed my sighting and told me it was real. 

Now the way I see it, we have an amazing amount of energy while we're alive - not just the bio mechanics and the chemistry in our bodies and brains - but also our thoughts and feelings - chemical reactions and electrical impulses.  What happens to all that energy when we die?  It must go somewhere?

I've always believed what we consider the afterlife is a continuation of that energy.  I think that depending on whether your energy is good in this life or bad will depend on how it continues afterwards, and I like to think that angels are after lives that have volunteered to help others both in this life and afterwards. 

I know this is a very simplistic view - but I'm a very simplistic person, and I'm just trying to make sense of my limited experiences.

I'm also a strong believer in reincarnation.  I have read many articles about people that are able to accurately recount past life in great detail - often verified by the families of those they claim to be.  I see this as even more evidence of an afterlife.  I think the older we get, the more we forget (the connections with the other side) what we might have seen before we were born.

I sometimes wonder whether the butterfly remembers it's existence as a caterpillar? 

It could be that I'm clutching straws - that I'm so desperate to believe that there's more to this life than just this life that I look for anything that might indicate that there is something - but I know I'm not the only one.  Most religions have some believe in the afterlife, Buddhism believes in reincarnation, people pray.  I think the majority of people on Earth believe in some form of spirituality.

I'll end on a quote from Marcus Aurelius - made famous in the film Gladiator. 
"What we do now echoes in eternity." 

Are We Lost?

I asked myself this question during the drive to work today.
No, I didn’t mean lost as in geographically, I mean spiritually and mentally.

I was thinking about how our ancestors lived.  Their lives seemed more structured than ours.  They rose at a certain time, ate breakfast – probably the same thing every day, and left for their work – a factory maybe, or clerking in a bank or solicitors, or on a ship, or in a warehouse, or a shop.

They would work their long day with only a little break for something to eat, and take they pay home in a small brown envelope at the end of the week.  The money would be divided up into tins – rent, food, whatever.  Once home, they would prepare a meal, discuss something – local politics, the church, school, work.  They would read a book, or sew.  They would go to bed early.

Their lives had a structure to them, and were not complicated.  It seems they knew their purpose in life.  They knew the career they were going to follow because their fathers and mothers followed that path.  They would apprentice and learn a skill, and they would employ that skill. 

If they needed to know something outside of their close circle of experience they would go to a library to research it, and questions would be asked – “why are you interested in that?  To what purpose?”  To seek more knowledge than was necessary in your day-to-day was considered a waste of time, because your time was so structured.  Your life had a clearly defined purpose.  It was what your parents did, and their parents, and those before.

Today I see us as being disparate, scattered and lost.  We no longer seem to have structure or purpose.  I get up at different times of the day, depending on what hours I’m working, or where I will be working from today.  I can eat a different breakfast every day for a week or a month, and never repeat the same meal twice.

I travel to work (or work from home), but can take time off if I feel like it.  I can stay home sick without fear of losing my job.  I can watch TV – hundreds of different channels.  I do not have tins to keep my money in.  My money is invisible – digital.  Bills paid electronically.  I no longer need to save for something – I can just buy whatever I want because my invisible money is no longer constrained by what I earn.

I no longer need a reason to find out something new.  I don’t need to go to the library.  I have a small device in my pocket that can tell me anything I want to know.  I can book a flight to almost anywhere in the world, travel there, find my way to a location via GPS or SatNav and communicate with people that do not speak my language using my smartphone.

I no longer need my mother or grandmother to teach me to cook or sew or iron – because YouTube can show me.  I no longer need to apprentice to learn a skill.  Higher education – which was once the domain of the wealthy or titled, is now open to all – and a degree, once the epitome of excellence, is now the norm.

We have expanded out of that tiny close-knit world of our ancestors so far, we no longer bear any resemblance to it.  Their values, ethics and morals have been stretched thin in our rapid expansion.  We do not respect our elders because they have nothing to teach us or give us – we no longer need their advice when Google has all the answers. 

I think we have lost our way, and I am greatly saddened by it.  I have taught my daughter to cook and sew (as my mother taught me), and I talk to her of the old ways, of the values we shun in favour of mass-produced homogeny. The ethics we’ve lost in an age of do-what-you-will, and the friendship-bonds stretched thin by Facebook and Instagram, because it takes no effort to poke or click like or share.

We are too thin – we lack any real depth.  We have become selfish in our desire for everything now!
Our pursuit of bigger, better, faster and newer now crowds out our desire for sympathy, empathy and understanding of others.  I pass people in the street and say hello and I smile.  I hold the door open for strangers.  I pick up fallen toys for children.  I talk to people’s dogs.  I clean up litter from my neighbour’s front lawn.  I offer to help complete strangers with their heavy bags.

I am trying to pull myself back in – I am trying to remember where I was before I became lost – and my smartphone can’t help me with that one!

Thank you for reading my thought on an ever-changing World!

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