We just seem to keep ourselves so busy. We seldom take time to think about those things that matter most in our lives. When we are young, there is always another tomorrow. When we are raising our families, there is always the career and paying the bills. When we grow old, we begin to dread the increasingly frequent invitations to Memorials.
Why are we that way? Maybe we are just afraid of death? If we keep ourselves busy, if we pay attention to important matters, if we attend Memorials out of duty, maybe we are refusing to allow ourselves to think about the most important thing: eternal life.
Eternal life. Boy, that is a hard thing to get your hands around! It's right up there with trying to imagine a God without beginning and without end! We try to understand things we have never experienced by relating them to things we have experienced. And who of us has experienced living forever? Living forever is impossible to imagine on this earth and in this universe. Especially when our body becomes a constant source of annoyance as we approach 80, 90, and 100. As my Dad said as he reached into his mid 80s: "What use to be loose is now hard. And what used to be hard is now loose!"
When we do get the courage to think about our impending death, we often try to think of ways to defeat the Grim Reaper. Death Becomes Her is a story like that. Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep receive a concoction from Bruce Willis that gives them eternal life in the body. But like the Egyptian mummies, they learned that life in the body forever is less enjoyable then they had hoped.
It has been said that the contemplation of death is the beginning of philosophy. And that of all God's creations, only humans can contemplate their own death. We can, but we don't. Why? Because we can not image a life after death. We find it impossible to picture ourselves in an eternal spiritual world. What the heck would we do there forever, anyway!?
I studied with a famous Methodist theologian at Southern Methodist University, Shubert Ogden. I recall during one lecture on his renown series on Systematic Theology when he said: "Could you image living with the same woman for eternity! That would be incredibly boring!" A famous theologian? And he doesn't understand the first thing about life in the eternal, spiritual world after death?
The eternal spiritual world is the atmosphere of love, at least in the realm called heaven. There we breathe love like we breathe air here. How do we know? People are traveling often to the spiritual world and reporting about its nature. Shamans have voyaged into the spiritual world for many thousands of years, held only by a golden cord to their earthly body.
Emanuel Swedenborg wrote volumes on his experience in the spiritual world in the 17th and 18th centuries. He had established himself as a scientist before venturing into the spiritual world, seemingly spending more time there awake than awake on the earth. Of course, we can easily discount experiences like Emanuel Swedenborg. Yet his logic is strong. In Conjugal Love, he writes that the sexual union between husband and wife is the highest spiritual experience of love in heaven. Yet he testifies that that love is far, far more than a sexual experience. It is the complete merging of a man and woman in ecstatic love forever.
You see, that is where Shubert Ogden missed the boat. He spent so much time trying to understand things that he failed at the most important task: Experiencing the highest form of love with his wife.
So, what is the eternal spiritual world that awaits us all like? Why are we so afraid of it that we will do almost anything not to think about it?
Like life before death, the eternal spiritual world is about relationships. The most important relationships here are the most important relationships there. The relationship between husband and wife, between parents and children, between siblings, and between friends. The eternal heaven in the spiritual world is like life in a family, a great extended family that embraces all people who ever lived.
Will there be people who hold esteemed positions in heaven? Probably. They are the people who showed the way of love on this earth. They are the ones who taught us the way of love that jives with heavenly love. You see, if we live the way of heavenly love here, we are ready and able to live in the total freedom of love in the eternal spiritual world.
Just as nature is extremely important for living a life of love and peace here, nature in the spiritual world is extremely important for living a life of love and peace in the eternal spiritual world. From accounts of those who have been there and returned, the spiritual world has many realms. Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said that in his father's mansion has many rooms:
In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. New International Version
So why are we so afraid of death if what awaits is so glorious? Maybe because our spirit tells us that we have been so busy taking care of ourselves, our careers, our families, that we have forgotten to embrace and live the love of heaven? How could we neglect to do that? I doubt that any of us could say no one told us how to do it! Read the scriptures of Shamanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and in each and every one we are taught the way of heavenly love.If we do not know, it is because we choose not to know. We choose to keep ourselves busy enjoying our youth, building our careers, buying our toys, or hiding in our beliefs. Anything but living the way of heavenly love. Those who live the way of heavenly love now have nothing to fear from death.
