Dear Mary,
Sorry for this belated reply. I’ve been totally swamped. Thank you so much for
sharing your profound thought on universe, the hidden dimensions, the beyond and
the enigmatic idea of various phrases and the meaning of life. The continuous rotation of expansion and compression of the universe sounds familiar, I must have read about this somewhere some years ago. It must bring great comfort to people who believe that the inevitable end of life, death, does not mean the end of our feelings, emotion and consciousness, and that we can still continue to feel,
learn and seek truth and knowledge, without being bound by our physical body and
time and space. I can imagine how freely and exhilarated I’d feel, with an unshackled soul that is still capable of feeling and thinking. It must be commonplace for older people who have traveled through great length and come to a point very close to the final destination, to think and anticipate what lies beyond that boundary. I’ve been told of an interesting analogy that our life here on earth is a lengthy process of learning, experiencing and exploring. We’re here to learn about and experience various human emotions, we’re also here to learn new
knowledge and explore all the intricacy of this material world. We’re only given limited time and not eternity to do these things because at some point in the
future we all have to return to where we came from. Since we’re here to learn and explore, we’re given free will to do whatever we see fit, but hopefully we will follow some sort of moral guidelines to steer straight our own path and help
maintain a well harmonized macro environment for our peers to learn and explore
. The reality in this world is merely a reflection of another reality, which is
our real home. And that reality is a spiritual world that exists beyond the three dimensions we’re in. So the meaning of life is to learn knowledge and develop
emotions that are conducive to further development and advancement of the masses. Upon departing our physical body, we’ll bring along a behavioral report card
when returning to our real home, and that’s when we’ll be judged based on what we’ve done in our earthly life. The feeling of pain and suffering is part and
parcel of the whole human experience. And so the passing of our loved one(s) and the accompanied anguish and grief are the integral part of the entire learning
process that cannot be avoided.
One of my friends has said that since death is our common destination, and
we’re destined to be there to face whatever comes at that stage, it would
be wise not to waste futile efforts in finding out more about it, because
all our speculations in this area are empirically unverifiable, at least not with any scientific measure in this three dimensional, material world. We should just focus on savoring the human experiences and leave all the
unknown to the final moment. This must be a typical Confucius style
approach to life. But I think he’s got a point when he said why worry about anything after this life because we’ll have the entire eternity to deal
with it, what we ought to concentrate on and attend to is the nitty grittyof this mundane life.
I’ve been skimming through books like “Don’t sweat the small stuff” by Richard Carlson, “Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson” by Mitch Albom and “Life’s greatest lessons: 20 things that matter”
by Hal Urban, and the theme is, it all boils down to what really counts at the
end of our life. And it’s love, family and friendship that matter the most. So
all the wise sayings all point to the fact that the most precious things in life
are actually not physical things at all, they are all non-material in nature. And it’s the non-material emotions, love, good deeds and of sorts that makes up
the ‘life report card’ that we’ll be judged upon when we depart from this material world and enter the invisible world beyond.
Mary, the fact that I’m thinking about this sort of things is indicative of another cruel fact that I’m drawing further and further away from my youthful and
glorious years. Hopefully this also means that I’m slowly wading through the reign of wisdom.
Thanks for the recommendation on two good books. I think I saw “The Elegant Universe” in the books and magazines aisle in Superstore some months ago, but it may not be there anymore. I can’t even find “The Family Mark Twain” in all the
public libraries in my city. I may have to resort to the Amazon website to find
either one to read, on top of “Calculating God” you mentioned before. I read
the Chinese translated version of “Life After Life” in early 2003 shortly after my dad passed away. I think the book was given to me by one of my dad’s friends. I was deeply touched by the notion of 'survival of the soul' in the beyond.
I recently bought “The Pagan Christ: Recovering the lost light” by Tom Harpur,
“Art of Happiness at Work” by Howard Cutler, “The Jesus I never knew” by Philip Yancey, “Death and the After Life” by Billy Graham, and “A Passionate Life” by Mike Breen, so I have no shortage of brain food for the next little while.
So the election is over and the Tories got what they deserved. Are you happy with the outcome?
Neil