To want to believe in life after death

[Jezebell]

Part of me really wants to believe in this. Part of me is cynical. I’m still grieving but comforted a little by hearing anecdotes where people’s lost loved ones visit somehow, in any form… Can anyone give any personal stories where they feel this might have happened?

I thought the idea was that you're not 'you' and they're not 'them' - more that you're all part of a universal consciousness.

I was very sick last year. At one point I was very unwell, I felt peaceful and there was a "next room" waiting for me.

I've obvious recovered, but that feeling I had at the time has given me comfort.

@FatherJacksBrick What amazing dreams those must be , whatever they are …

We live on in the memories of the people who knew us, cared about us, laughed with us and loved us.

Apart from that, humans are no different from the last fly you swatted or chicken you cooked. Death is the end, ‘the afterlife’ is a fairytale and we are either piles of ashes or worm food.

Western civilisation is hardly unique in destroying itself through vanity or misadventure. History is littered with civilisations and empires that engineered their own downfall.

This time though I think we're talking about our whole planet's ability to support life, not just a specific civilisation. So I'd argue that we are not so intelligent after all!
I agree that the church has far too much say... but that just shows how here we are still governed by religious dogma, which in my opinion has little to do with a spiritual belief in the continuation of some form of consciousness.

Before my gran was about to die, she said is your dad still there? Dad had died a couple of years ago. She said he was in the room and had come for her. Then a few hours later she died.

My cousins dad died. She claims he came to her and told her that she and her sister needed to go to India and get married. She was very shaken by this for some time so not likely made up. Shortly after, they both did find suitable matches out there and did marry (traditional arranged marriages). Both are happily settled now but it seems their father even after death, wanted to make sure they did that as with him gone, there was no one else to look after them.

I remember when I was grieving (and I still am to be honest) I was so jealous of people who believed in life after death or believed in when they visited the grave the person could hear them or was looking over them, so jealous

But as time has gone on, when I visit the grave I do talk to my mum and it's more therapeutic I think, but I do talk to her and I feel better for it.
I also laugh and feel a little bit of joy when I see a white feather, as they have actually appeared mostly at key times in my DS life that my amazing mum would have loved. So the sensible side of me knows it's a birds feather, but I also don't mind taking a little bit of joy from them, even if it's silly. It gets me through so it works for me on some level.

These are my only experiences. Sorry I can't be of more help

We don't let ourselves believe because we can't comprehend that maybe there is some meaning, maybe there can be joy and all this isn't for nothing. That's too much to hope for. But it doesn't mean it's not true. What's the saying....there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. It's also a bit mad to think we're sitting on a spinning ball in the middle of an infinite universe, so...

My point is, don't dismiss your hope and the signs that you connect to your loss. Why should you? What if they are indeed a sign? Why shouldn't they be? Take comfort in them, give thanks for them and the memory they symbolise. Even if that's all they are, that's not nothing. And I don't think that's all they are

I don't know OP.

I talk to my DM inside my head all the time. I feel comforted thinking about her, I do feel her around me at times of need.

Might be a bit crazy to others.

I'm a Christian so my hope is in Christ's promise of eternal life for those who believe. Don't think it'll be anything like this life thankfully!

Some of you might find this podcast interesting: it's just a few episodes, all about consciousness/our mind: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/where-is-my-mind/id1470129415

@PinkTyger why is the only other option it "all being for nothing" though?
I personally don't believe in an afterlife and that actually gives me great comfort when thinking of my deceased loved ones. Their life was important, it mattered and it was beautiful, all the more so for the fact that it wasn't just a stepping stone to a next step... it was what it was and they were what they were. And their having existed still continues to enrich my life and I hope my life will continue to enrich others both during and after I am gone.
But that's just me.

I support whatever gives the grieving person comfort, as ultimately that's who these beliefs, or lack of, are ultimately for- comfort to the living. If belief gives people comfort (and it doesn't hurt others), I'm for it

We've lost all the older members of our family in the past few years. None of our family are religious, but all have agreed that we can feel my FIL here with us (he lived next door), not in a spooky way, but as a comforting presence. None of us have ever felt that my mum, who died in March is here, or indeed in the house she died in. We felt she went when she died and didn't come back.

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. 

Amen.”

― Aaron Freeman

Read Anthony Peake books. Very comforting and interesting.

That's lovely @MrsTerryPratchett

Yes, completely agree with that too @Sandinmyknickers

I had a ‘dream’ a few years ago a short while after I my aunt.

it was a visiting dream, I remember it so vividly and I’m certain it was real.

I was in a house which was white, airy and incredibly peaceful with light coming in. I was upstairs alone, I don’t remember seeing any furniture but I knew it was a house with lots of space.

I heard a voice saying my name and that Aunty Sally (name change) was downstairs and wanted to see me. I remember feeling nervous because in this dream I knew she’d died.

this voice said it was okay and I slowly walked down the stairs. As I got to the bottom of the stairs my aunt sally was stood there and opened her arms to me. I remember hugging her and I said to her ‘you look really healthy aunt sally’ we both smiled and I woke up.

she never spoke a word to me but she looked happy and healthy (when she was dying she looked really sick for the last few months of her life)

this was about 6 years ago now. And still till this day I often think about that dream and how real it felt, I really do feel like it was real and it was her visiting to show me she was ok and she was still here..

I hate the idea of nothing but also can you imagine being alive for eternity ? That’s also pretty awful. I also am not comforted by ghosts . I mean imagine the thought of your loved ones floating around in limbo ? Actually tbh there’s no great option.

Thank you for this recommendation. Just found a couple of his books and have ordered them. I love reading about life after death but had never heard of the author or his books. It looks very interesting. Thank you.

I'm a cowardly but hopeful agnostic. But deathbed visions are intriguing.

When my mum was dying she told my brother her best friend had died. He tried to reassure her that her friend was alright - as one does. She made no reply as she was drifting in an out of consciousness.

Upon her death it fell to my uncle to break the sad news to her friend. The friend's son answered the phone saying his mother had died a few days previously. Given that my mother died in Essex and her friend in Galway I've no idea how she could have known.

I find that really really profound.

The night my father died I had a dream that someone close to me had died unexpectedly and I hadn’t found out until a long time after. In the dream, there was a voice referring to my estranged wider family with a reference to “them being my family now”. When I woke up I told my husband. I was on holiday thousands of miles away in the Indian Ocean at the time.

12 hours later I received a phone call to say that my father had died in his sleep. It was unexpected - he wasn’t in the hospital or anything.

I remain convinced he had come to visit me in some form on his way out. Maybe that’s crazy but I have not had such A dream before or since. If not it’s an amazing coincidence.

There is a place our spirits go to after our bodies die. In it we feel no pain or sadness & the soul is quite literally cleansed of all earthly struggles & negativity. Our spirits will be happy & free; take heart because there absolutely is a joyous place waiting for each of us after this.

I have come close to it and I know it is there. I saw it, I felt utterly at peace. I was not afraid at all. I was actually so so happy!!

This physical experience is not the only experience we have. I also strongly believe that this is the harder of the two experiences- the physical confines of our body, the physical world our bodies are in. Spirits want to be free, & the death of the body is a relief to them as they enter that peaceful realm where they can be totally devoid of the trappings that have held them back for so long.

This is the hard bit. There is a happier spirit place to come.

My brother passed away very suddenly and traumatically last year. I haven't seen his ghost but I had a dream about 4 months ago and as I woke up I heard myself saying over and over 'it's ok I'm at peace, it's ok I'm at peace'

It was strange but it made me less upset.