So you’re probably thinking, “But what happens to me after I die? Like, come on, answer the question already, right?”
Hopefully, you’ve been going through this entire series and letting the ideas soften the belief systems we have about who we are and how life works. Hopefully this is opening up the reality of who we are, and what life is, into your awareness.
Let’s look closely at this question now, and we’ll be able to see it from a different perspective.
Sooooo…. what happens to me after I die?
Take a look at that idea, now, and see how selfish it is. It’s completely, “Me, me, me.” What happens to me? It assumes you are a separate little molecule floating free without relationships. We’ve been trained to this way of thinking since birth… to always think about me, me, me, right?
Stop for just one second and go, “Wait a minute, what about everybody else?”
That opens a whole new vision. What happens to everyone else when you die? What about your family? Are they going to be left in disarray? What about your community? Have you contributed as much to your community as you possibly can while you’re alive? And the environment? What have you taken care of? What have you created?”
What happens to everyone else?
Go even broader. What happens to your country? You may think, “Oh, they don’t care!” But is that true? You are a part of this greater thing and it has aways needed you. Hopefully, we’ve all contributed to our country as much as we possibly can.
What happens to the Earth? The Earth itself? You are part of the Earth. How do you blend back in? Now you can see yourself as a million connected molecules, not just a single one floating in space. Is there something that’s really lost for the Earth when you are gone? Is there something that stays there? Is there something that is the Earth itself?
What about the universe? How is the universe affected by you coming in and out of life?
I’m not giving an answer to it, I’m just saying, think broader and you’ll immediately see that the human being is an amazing blend of everything. You and me. We have minds designed to think in unselfish ways. We can extend ourselves way beyond the boundary of just “Me, me, me.” We are so much more than the tiny separate being we’ve been trained to be in our society.
We are way more vastly interconnected to all of existence than our little egos can see. There’s a part of our brain that sees this connection and knows it intimately. A part of our consciousness that is aware of this vastness.
What happens to that after you die? Kind of nothing, right? Also, kind of everything, right? Because you matter. Broaden your feelings and your ideas about it. It’s something that we can spend an entire lifetime contemplating: this vastness of everything.
The Bucket List
There’s an idea in our society about a bucket list, right? Think about that from this new perspective. Do you notice, now, how selfish that is? The bucket list is a list of all the experiences and things you want to consume before you die. It’s just about consuming, consuming, consuming. “I want to make sure I go here and do this and I want to do that.” It’s me, me, me, me, me.
What if our bucket list was a list of how much can I contribute to the overall whole of humanity while I’m alive? Like right this very moment, you’re reading this article, so I assume you’re alive, right? We’re back to our story of Shik Fared, who was asked, “What happens after I die?” And he says, “I only know about life. Ask me about life.”
You’re alive right now, so this bucket list doesn’t need to be this selfish thing. It can be all about our contribution to things.
Life of a Consumer
What about all your stuff? What happens to all your stuff when you die? Do we ever think about that? We are one of the first generations, in the history of forever, who have so much stuff that when people die, taking care of their stuff is a big, huge problem.
This is just fantasy, of course, but imagine if, when you die, all your stuff dies with you. Boom, all the metals go back into the mines, and all the plastic goes back into the dinosaurs. Imagine it’s this huge recycling of stuff? It creates an amazing vision of interconnectedness, yes?
Of course, that doesn’t happen, but what if we lived our lives in that way. What if we lived in a way so that all our stuff is a completed blending with the Earth? Go deeper into it and we see that is is actually the way it is. Plastic is on a much longer time scale than a flake of skin, but I am nothing more than this amazing blending with the Earth.
We can exercise our minds by stretching ourselves into these kinds of thought experiments. A simple exercise to look at who are we, why are we here, what we are doing.
Now we are drifting back into our video on Erachman, Erahim where we were talking about the total trust we can have in existence itself. As we drift in this sea of trust you’ll notice that the question, “What happens to me when I die?” comes from complete lack of trust. In reality the entire space of existence, creation itself is put together the way that it should be. If we understand Erachman, Erachim, we understand this vast container of life that we are all part of is full of benefit. We’re part of creation and we’re also part of taking care of creation. Erachman is the protector of the womb. Erachim is creation bursting forth.
This vast interconnectedness of everything is our consciousness itself. When you touch it, when you see it, then you have complete, complete trust in how everything works. From that level of trust, this question is literally moot, right?
What happens?
Answer: the thing that’s supposed to happen, happens.
Sigh you say, “You’re still avoiding the question.” Well, let’s get a little further into it then.
So now, think about it: you die, what died?
Obviously, your body did, right? But, you and I both know that this question is about is what is this “me”? What is this me that’s dying?
This me is your projection.
Think back to the video we did on projecting into the mirror. We’ve been trained since birth to constantly project ourselves onto things that are outside of us. This is the same with our ideas of what happens when you die.
A perfect example of projection is the idea of going to heaven. Picture that right now. Heaven is never just you floating by yourself in the universe. No. The idea is that you go to heaven and there’s clouds, and there’s people playing harps, and maybe St. Peter is meeting you at the gate. All your dogs come running. All the people you love give you a kiss.
Can you see, now, that this is a projected field of imagination? It’s all images of things outside of yourself. Just like you looking in a mirror. We get lost in the image and forget that it’s just a reflection, and we never notice who is looking.
So then? What is this ‘me‘ who’s sitting there surrounded by clouds, and harps and joyous dogs? That invisible you is the thing you are wanting to be alive after death. Yes?
What is that thing? Really, it’s all your memories. It’s your sense of aliveness that you want to stay there, right?
Let’s picture it again. You’re dead. You’re floating around in this cloud (0r however you want to picture it.) Notice that you’re still seeing a thing. You’re not experiencing the one that’s seeing it.
Now we’ve hit the secret. Becoming this experiencer is what we’re trying to bring ourselves to in, “Die before you die.” If you can bring yourself out of your projection, into who you are, then the question of death is moot because it’s totally obvious.
The Universe
Think about our projection onto the universe. These days we’ve turned God into the universe. Instead of praying to God, now we pray to the universe. We hope the universe is going to do things for us.
But think about it… more and more.
The universe. This vastness of space and time. A space so vast it contains all the stars and all the planets and all the galaxies. Gosh! We’re talking about this incredibly huge unknown thing. A million billion year old void with stars and planets floating and spinning through nothingness.
Do you really thing that this universe is floating around and worried about whether or not you get a new car? Is this universe really worried about your relationships? Is the universe really sitting there and wondering whether or not you’re learning your lesson? No, no, that’s a huge projection.
We’ve turned the universe of into a thing, right? Then we imagine that the whole focus of the universe is on me and whether or not I get the things I want. We’ve turned the universe itself into, “Me, me, me.” Selfish, selfish, selfish… because this is how we’ve been trained.
Each human being is capable of seeing more than that. Your very nature is to see beyond that projection.
As far as neuroscience is concerned, we use a very small part of our brain when we are self involved. The “Me, me, me” section of our brain is very small. It’s a tiny nodule. What is the whole rest of the thing for?
The whole rest of the brain is used to see the vastness of existence without any definitions needed. We are built to understand, in a wisdom sort of a way, the vastness of this experience of life.
Don’t Give Up!
It may seem that I’m going in circles, but I’m weaving our consciousness from a very small concept of me, me, me, me, me, me, me, to vastness itself.
Now we’re in this vastness. You can figure it out for yourself.
What happens to me after I die from this place of vastness?
Imagine yourself floating in a vast field of absolute nothing. It takes a bit of brain stretching to do this. If we put anything in our nothingness then we automatically project onto it. More than likely you have to come and go, back and forth, into this field of nothing.
If you notice things happening in this field, then remove them. You’re in the universe, you see stars? Okay, take them away. Maybe there’s a solar wind blowing, take it away. What about the spaceship you used to get there? Take it away. Just you floating in this vast absolute nothingness.
Nothing.
Now, at this point, all that’s left is you. The only thing you can notice is the thing that is noticing. Just you in this vastness. Now, who are you? Step into it.
You’re the one that’s alive. The second you touch yourself you have found the thing that can never die. This is die before you die. When you’ve touched this, when you’ve stepped into it ,and become it, you become fully alive.
What am I? You are a human being.
What, then, do I have to contribute? Like… nothing, right? There’s this vast nothingness. What am I going to give the universe? Well, I can’t give it a car, right? The universe doesn’t need a car. I can’t give it a rock. The universe doesn’t need a rock.
The only thing we have to give is what native societies tell us to do: ceremony and praise for creation. Ceremony and praise for creation is the job of human beings.
You can give appreciation. It’s best to do that with some sort of a ceremony. You might not have ancestor ceremonies of your own, so you can come up with your own. You see a rock and you just touch it, instead of picking up, and say, “Thank you.” See a tree, “Thank you.”
Get together with people and celebrate. Do everything that you can to bring people together because the more we come together, the more we want to celebrate. That’s literally what dancing and singing is created for, right? Dancing, singing, creation. It’s all for doing with people, not sitting in front of your computer watching a video. But celebrating with actual people. Giving back, giving back. Sit with other people and somehow pray together.
This is why I like the dances of universal peace because we get together, we get in a circle, and we simply pray, mostly singing songs that really don’t mean anything to us because we use a lot of mantras and non-English, non-language things.
In the end, we’re kind of back to Erachman, Erachim. We are the protector of the womb because all of us watching this video, reading this book, all of us are full-ass grown adults at this time. Our job is to be the protectors. To come together with as many people as possible.
Die Before You Die
So what happens when you die? Nothing.
You die, I die and not a whole lot is changed. Hopefully, you haven’t left a big, huge mess. Right? Because if that’s the case, then somebody has to clean it up. Hopefully, when you die, what matters is what’s left. What’s left is all the care that you have extended throughout your life.
So we’ve all got a really big job to do, don’t we? Because we are alive right this minute. What are you going to do the very next second when this video ends?