I Will Remember Me

 

I sometimes, jokingly, say that I am old; and then it occurs to me that it is not a joke anymore. I am 60. That’s not the end of the line, but there are not as many stops left for me as there are for many others. The fact is: I am going to die. Naturally, this occurs to everyone at some point. But when you are 60, you begin to realize that the years behind you are positively greater in number than the ones left to live. But this fact bothers me less and less as I see the day approaching. Why is that? To me, death is a hiccup. There are millions of details that will all undergo instant change when I die, but the most fundamental detail won’t; Life will go on.

I suppose I must have awakened more fully when it occurred to me that my thoughts are like hairs. As a person grows older, one’s hair always changes or even falls out. New hairs often grow from where old hairs have fallen and sometimes, the color of the new one is slightly different than the last one. Over time, this makes one’s appearance change altogether. Similar activity is going on in the bodies of every animal. An index finger that was strong and flexible a few years ago, may be arthritic now. But the mind? Thoughts themselves?

I did not want to admit this at first. I thought that my thoughts were critical to the survival of a soul. Here is how I framed the question: “How can I go on living beyond my death if I don’t bring my thoughts along?”

This, I refer to as “The Hard Problem of the Afterlife”.

What version of my living personality would survive the death of my body? Would it be the person I was when I was a teenager? Would it be the person I was when I turned 30? Which memories would I pack for the trip to Heaven? Over time, it occurred to me that the thoughts I have worn on earth won’t be of any use to me without this body. I managed to arrive at this conclusion by forgetting the things which are behind me. In some cases, I did not purposefully forget specific memories; they simply flew away. Today, when I try to remember my experience as a young boy, I am afraid there are more gaps than there are bits and pieces. However, in spite of having forgot most of that experience, I still believe I Live.

An interesting experiment involves sitting here and allowing a minute to pass without changing anything about my experience. I find that I am still very much present, even though the present situation has just been born and the minute I just experienced is nowhere at all. Whoever I Am, is obviously remaining present, while who I was a minute ago disappears entirely. There is not one shred of evidence that the last minute of my experience even took place at all. It is impossible to bring physical tangibility from one minute to the next. And while doing this experiment, I find that I did not bring a complete memory of the last minute with me. Having remained as I was, I feel I could make excellent guesses about how everything was just then, but I am making those guesses based on how they are now and there is no way to prove I am correct.

And here is the strangest part of the experiment: I know, from the way distant memories fade, that a minute like the one I just had will too. It is possible that every memory of any particular moment could completely dissolve into oblivion. I may recall the minute I just experienced, but there was this specific minute I experienced just yesterday which I did not file; I cannot recover it now. I would tell you when it was if I could recall even that much about it. Did that minute occur? Yes, it was real. Was I involved in that minute? Yes, I was present then. If I cannot recall it now, has a part of me died? Of course. But that part is not I.

I am not a single thought and I am not all of my thoughts combined.

So what am I? Who am I? I am a bolt of lightning, coming from The Living Cloud, electrifying and animating a bundle of nerves and cells for a moment, and then I withdraw right back into the Cloud of Energy where I originated. That’s how I believe and that’s how I see it, but don’t stop there.

What about this self? What about this actor? What about me?

The Living Cloud knows about myself. That Energy breathed Life into me and became me through that bolt of lightning. Everything I felt, was felt in The Cloud. Everything I thought, was thought by The Cloud. My Life experience will be conserved in The Energy as it returns to The Cloud and my experience becomes a diluted part of every experience ever had by anyone or anything at any time. I won’t forget who I was, but I will add all memories of being everyone to my own memories of being me. The memories of me do not diminish, but spread throughout eternity, only Love manages to affect The Cloud in any significant way.

And this is where things get interesting. The Living Cloud is Heaven and you can lay up treasure there. You won’t take a single token back to Heaven whenever your energy retreats, but you can send tokens up while you are having the experience of being you. As you actively, lovingly participate with All, you will find yourself having an effect on The All. That effect is forever.

This is no longer a thought-experiment; I am giving you the truth. Everyone you encounter is a bolt of lightning from the Only Cloud. As much as you can accept this and love as many, and as much as you can, the more The Cloud preserves of your participation. If you become aware of our Living-Oneness, you’ll waste less time trying to fortify your bundle of nerves and cells, and more time trying to bring joy to the collective dance of lightning bolts. As those bolts retreat, they go back to The Cloud with your love for them as an eternal treasure. You have successfully laid that treasure up in Heaven.

If you can find a million people to love, you will die and awaken to a Cloud of witnesses who will all share that joy back with you forever.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” ~ Hebrews 12:1 KJV

What is weight? Pick up anything at all and you’ll see. Whenever you get a grip on anything, think of it as a weight you won’t be taking with you. And what is sin? The definition of sin is: The missed opportunity to Love. And what does it mean to beset something? It means that you’ll put it in a specific place.

So do I believe in the afterlife? Not really. Calling it the afterlife would suggest that it followed another, earlier life. I don’t think life is partitioned. Life is. So I believe in Life. From the perspective of the character I am playing on earth, Life was, Life is and Life will be, but from the perspective of Life, Life is and myself is but one of its countless portrayals.

Life is forever and only love matters.

The character I play has been cast to enlarge the landscape of Love between all of the characters I play. The divisions will come down and the charge of Love will enlarge the joy of The Whole. Nature’s entire plan is expansion. Having evolved from forever, Nature values Love over all else. Anything besides love is a sin; meaning, it is besetting. All I can ever hope to add to All is Love.

What really matters? The taste of chocolate? A million dollars? The third brick up from the bottom row of bricks on a nice ranch house? What you are going to wear? Or Love?

I want to live forever, so I will lay up treasures, by loving others and my experience will be remembered. I will remember me.