Very short diary but, perhaps, something to think about and share your thoughts:
What would have to be in an afterlife for it to matter?
Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
For an afterlife to matter, you'd have to have consciousness of yourself. If you, whatever you are, is completely obliterated or absorbed into something greater than yourself, how would you know and what would it matter?
For an afterlife to matter, you'd have to have memory. If you weren't aware of before a moment, or the next moment, if everything was just right now, what would it matter?
For an afterlife to matter, you'd have to be able to think and learn. There would have to be a sense of growth from what you just were to what you are now, and you'd have to be aware that you aren't yet what you're going to be. What happens to you in the afterlife would have to matter.
For an afterlife to matter, you'd have to have perception. Visual images? Sound? Taste, touch, smell? Something else, or something more? For an afterlife to matter, you'd have to know you were there!
For me, it sounds so much like my dreams.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come."
-Hamlet, William Shakespeare