Feeling anxious about afterlife

@4ngelicleena

May I ask you what makes you so concerned about the afterlife?

Actually, nobody knows what happens after we end our earthly journey, but we can look through some various scenarios:

1) When you die it's like falling off the stairs. The light is off. There is no further story. Nothing more happens. You cannot feel bad about it while your entire existence is no longer. That's a very materialistic explanation.

2) Depending on your doings during your earthly life, you can go to heaven, or to a pitch black place underground, or go to heaven after some time in purgatory. That is, for instance, a Christian explanation.

3) When your body dies, after some earthly days your soul is given a new body and a new life, depending on your soul's choices or assigned as a result of your actions in your life. That is a Buddhist one.

4) If you are a good person who passed away, one day the aliens come to retrieve your DNA and resurrect you on another planet where—in abundance, good health and joy—you could live forever. That is some kind of spiritual Sci-Fi.

5) If your life was really good, you just melt in the universe. You become wings of a butterfly, a gust of the wind or silent mountain creek. Or you come back to the source of all sources. That is also Buddhist, but when your path on earth is finished.

For me, personally, anything except no. 1 and 2 are very convincing.

But isn't the most important question what we should do here and now?

And maybe some other people could bring even a broader perspective here?

@4ngelicleena I hear you the uncertainty is what can be unsettling.

I use this analogy to help me. Think back when you were a child or as far back as you can remember. Are you the same person you were then or are you different? You are different in one way but there is a continuous stream that leads from that point to the present you. This shows me that there is a continuation in this life even though the outer appearances change. So why would there not be a continuation after this life?

Another analogy. Do you fear what will happen when you go to sleep that there might not be anything after that? No we can go to sleep and wake up the next day and if we look carefully we have changed so in some ways we are different but in other ways we are the same. 

Scientifically speaking "matter can be neither created or destroyed, only changed from one form into another. "  The form may change but the stream goes on.

Hope this is food for thought. 

@4ngelicleena

It sounds really heavy to carry that fear all the time. I think a lot of people feel that way, wondering what comes next. Some find comfort in thinking of the afterlife as a peaceful continuation of who we are, maybe in memories, energy, or a different form of existence. Others focus on the legacy we leave behind, how we touch people’s lives and the world around us.

It’s okay to not have all the answers and to sit with the uncertainty. You don’t have to face that fear alone, and talking about it, like you’re doing now, can help ease the weight a little.