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End-of-Life Dreams

commonwealmagazine.org

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Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#51

Post by rakejake »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #47

I have an aggressive cerebral garbage collector. I've forgotten all the dreams, visions and miraculous experiences that I thought were personality- and/or life-changing at the time. I've come close to dying a couple times and that's literally all I can say about it. At some point I concluded that the question of an afterlife is irrelevant. Spirit or no spirit, I want to live this life well. If there's something good…

Lucky you. I don't have a garbage collector so much as a "good-memories" collector. My mind is kind enough to surface my embarrassments and disappointments from years past (some of which are objectively irrelevant) and very rarely the happy memories. Taking this mind deficiency into account, I have started aggressively taking photos and documenting happy instances as well.

I think being optimistic and positive by default is a superpower that some people possess.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#52

Post by budgi4 »

wishfish wrote: post #10

When my father died, he had a waking dream of this. Saw a river with all his dead family across the water. Smiling and waving. Coming to the banks. Waiting for him to cross. His last words were “Cover me in a blanket of sunshine.” He died two hours later. What’s a little remarkable to me is that he had these visions in this detail despite being lifelong blind. As I was reading the article, I kept wondering which came…

Similar thought about religion being established around these experiences rather than these experiences being a result of religion as the direction of cause and effect.

The symbolic significance of boats in ancient Egyptian religion mirrors the river theme in a lot of the accounts with the sun god Ra travelling through the underworld at night.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#53

Post by schrodinger »

tomohelix wrote: post #43
phkahler wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> even though the analytical part of my brain consistently shouts this idea down every time I think about it. "shouts it down" sounds like some rebeliousness or anger. Might want to figure out who that's for. ;-)

Well, who else but for me? I make a living by thinking analytically about technical matters with sound logics and clear evidence. But that part of me wants to think about stuff that is completely opposite of what I normally do. So they are mad at each other. Kinda schizophrenic, I know. But that is just human, right? Frankly, I would be more afraid of someone who never argue or debate an idea within themselves than s…

I think they were just making a joke on the assumption that “shouts it down” was a typo for “shuts it down.”

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#54

Post by Centigonal »

wishfish wrote: post #10

When my father died, he had a waking dream of this. Saw a river with all his dead family across the water. Smiling and waving. Coming to the banks. Waiting for him to cross. His last words were “Cover me in a blanket of sunshine.” He died two hours later. What’s a little remarkable to me is that he had these visions in this detail despite being lifelong blind. As I was reading the article, I kept wondering which came…

re: sibling:

Almost like an end-of-life vision, I thought for a moment that Terry Davis was with us again.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#55

Post by LoganDark »

tomohelix wrote: post #21

I am as irreverent as you can probably get, in fact, if I have to say what I really think about religions in general, I am probably a blasphemer in every sense of the word. Yet I believe this article. Because even I had a spiritual experience too real for me to discredit or brush aside, and I meant it not just mentally but physically too. It didn't completely change my views about religions, but it did soften my stan…

> I realized how much it can help someone to believe in something. Even if in the end, it actually isn't real or has any deeper meaning, all that matters is the believer receives some solace. And that is enough good reason for it to exist.

This, I think, is the most important thing that one can realize about belief.

We like to believe that we are 8 spirits in one body, because it makes us feel better about ourselves. It lets us feel more like individuals, who were meant to be who we are, and less like mere creations of a disordered brain... even though that's what we are.

Technically, we were never supposed to be multiple. We were supposed to all integrate into only one "person"... a singlet. But we did not. We split from each other and became "dissociative identities". We each have our own self-image, our own personality, our own wants and desires. Our own bodies, inside our head.

In contrast... using spirits to explain what we are, feels so natural and comfortable, so convenient. Even if we don't believe in the afterlife, or religion; even if we believe that the universe is deterministic and no spiritual realm really exists; even if we know that once our brain fizzles out, there is no consciousness left to experience what death really feels like.

There are no experiences left for one who has died. They stopped existing the moment after the last neuron fired. Consciousness can't be restarted.

Yet... we choose to believe that we each have our own souls because it represents something within ourselves that we struggle to otherwise describe. An opinion, an aspiration, perhaps even a wish.

Sometimes... we wish that our outside body represented even any one of our own, internal bodies. Our ideal selves. Our true forms, perhaps. But we are, mostly, content with being able to express ourselves on the internet... we are content with treating this as an act of spiritual self-expression. Where... physical form does not matter. Where we are not the body.

But we are only not the body... when we are souls. When we are just people, pure and unadulterated.

-Emily

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#56

Post by Jeff_Brown »

rakejake wrote: post #51
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #47

I have an aggressive cerebral garbage collector. I've forgotten all the dreams, visions and miraculous experiences that I thought were personality- and/or life-changing at the time. I've come close to dying a couple times and that's literally all I can say about it. At some point I concluded that the question of an afterlife is irrelevant. Spirit or no spirit, I want to live this life well. If there's something good…

Lucky you. I don't have a garbage collector so much as a "good-memories" collector. My mind is kind enough to surface my embarrassments and disappointments from years past (some of which are objectively irrelevant) and very rarely the happy memories. Taking this mind deficiency into account, I have started aggressively taking photos and documenting happy instances as well. I think being optimistic and positive by def…

Bad experiences haunt me too, but seem to stop shortly after I believe I have nothing left to learn from them.

I've noticed that telling stories or writing them down burns in memories. I'd like to journal more. My main motivation for that would not be as a memory aid, though -- it just feels healthy.

For a time in my life I was quite angry. I meditated and journaled heavily during that time, and that really was transformative. Among other changes, I became able to recognize an unhelpful habit -- like fuming over something someone had done -- and staring its unhelpfulness in the face for long enough that the urge to do it went away. Or at least, until something else seemed more helpful, at which point I would switch to that.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#57

Post by c4wrd »

rakejake wrote: post #51
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #47

I have an aggressive cerebral garbage collector. I've forgotten all the dreams, visions and miraculous experiences that I thought were personality- and/or life-changing at the time. I've come close to dying a couple times and that's literally all I can say about it. At some point I concluded that the question of an afterlife is irrelevant. Spirit or no spirit, I want to live this life well. If there's something good…

Lucky you. I don't have a garbage collector so much as a "good-memories" collector. My mind is kind enough to surface my embarrassments and disappointments from years past (some of which are objectively irrelevant) and very rarely the happy memories. Taking this mind deficiency into account, I have started aggressively taking photos and documenting happy instances as well. I think being optimistic and positive by def…

As a recommendation from someone who suffered this way too long, your way of thinking is why you only store the bad memories. I often thought “I’m just a negative person” and accepted it, but not until I decided to focus on my mental health did I realize I had to let this go. I’ve been happier each and every day since. It took almost a year or two of “fake it until you make it”, but once you’re on the other side of this coin, you will never look back.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#58

Post by LoganDark »

ggm wrote: post #3

Since I have a rich interior dialogue with myselves "inside" it comes as no surprise that close to end-of-life minds come up with comforting thoughts to Shepard the close. Thats what your friends would do. If you are one of the smaller cohort without an interior dialogue, I suspect you will have the same outcome because even if unvoiced, I am confident you have more than one brain process at work. Not just the propri…

> Since I have a rich interior dialogue with myselves "inside"

Interesting~! We are a DID system that contains around 8 people but we don't have a very rich internal dialogue between ourselves despite the fact that we're capable of trying if we focus. What is this like for you? How rich is 'rich'?

-Emily

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#59

Post by darkerside »

clnq wrote: post #33

Whatever is happening, it is sad to hear about yet another case where doctors are too arrogant to listen to their patients and try to understand. It might not be a spiritual experience, it might be delirium. But perhaps it is important step in the human mind making peace with death. And it disappoints me greatly that the medical community shuns this phenomenon and anyone who tries to research it. There is nothing wor…

I'd have some empathy for doctors. They are doing what they are paid to do, which is extend life and improve its quality according to a given set of metrics.

Like most engineers, when there is a potential positive outcome that isn't captured in the metrics they are incentivized to improve, they shrug and turn their focus elsewhere. It doesn't mean they're happy about it, it's just not their job.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#60

Post by cjohnson318 »

ekianjo wrote: post #48
clnq wrote: post #33

Whatever is happening, it is sad to hear about yet another case where doctors are too arrogant to listen to their patients and try to understand. It might not be a spiritual experience, it might be delirium. But perhaps it is important step in the human mind making peace with death. And it disappoints me greatly that the medical community shuns this phenomenon and anyone who tries to research it. There is nothing wor…

> And it disappoints me greatly that the medical community shuns this phenomenon The medical community is a joke as a whole. They even brush off side effects because they have never heard about them before. They are as unscientific as you can go. Nowhere in hard science world do people act like that.

> The medical community is a joke as a whole. They even brush off side effects because they have never heard about them before. They are as unscientific as you can go.

I've had lackluster medical care before, but this is an extreme position. A lot of health professionals are dealing with life and death decisions on an hourly basis. I can understand how under those circumstances you'd be biased towards conservative and practical methods. Do what you know works; you don't want someone to lose their life, or have some horrible complication, because you think it'd be cool to try something different.

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