Remember to speak with either your general medical physician or with a qualified psychiatrist if you are experiencing severe depression, anxiety or inability to cope with the realities of growing old and dying. This fear has its place in humankind, but only for a very short period of time. Your doctor will be able to help you with this and this blog article will help you between doctor visits.
The Problem:
You already know what death is and you already know why you're afraid of it. You're afraid because we don't really know what it's like when it happens to us or if there is an afterlife or not. Death is a universal concern for humanity, but honestly it's kind of a twisted dynamic and our whole lives are dictated by its presence in the life cycle and our fear of it - as well as fears of certain afterlife scenarios that we've thought up.But how much of that is really true? There's a saying that goes around for the folks that believe there is no afterlife that is some variation of "Well, I was dead before I was born, and it didn't bother me much." I've always found this line interesting and very true - are we just dead if we're not alive? Does that count for not being born yet? It seems so and that's something that I'm surprised more people don't take into account on their attitudes about death. I don't agree with atheists and people who don't believe in an afterlife, but I do agree with them that pre-birth and post-death is the same "state", as it were. And we should treat it as such.
So we can conclude, if not by full-on proof than at least by having no reason to disagree with it, that we've already been dead before. That should eliminate some fear of it already, but interestingly enough, that quote does not seem to clue people in that also means being dead does not prevent you from coming to life.
The Truth:
You are going to reincarnate. Get rid of your fears of cessation of existence, being in a fiery hell or a golden heaven without end because no matter what happens to you or all of us after death, it will only be temporary. As temporary as life was.How can you rest your fears that you'll be back somehow to live again? There's really quite a lot of clues around us in nature. Matter is energy. Energy is not destroyed. Matter breaks down and fertilizes new life. That energy becomes part of new life. We have a life "cycle", and why else would it be called a "cycle" if it didn't repeat? Think how many cycles we see in nature - day and night, seasons, planetary rotation, galactic rotation - it's all cycles. Cycles upon cycles upon cycles. The only catch is that we generally don't have any memory of our past lives when we come back (though some exceptions can be possible), but so what? We already lose memories of the lives we're living now before we die. There's a lot more I could write about it here, but the main purpose of this is to get you to relax about life and death.
I really am amazed the religious and non-religious alike don't take upon reincarnation as their base system for death belief because it is a brilliant system that can be spiritual or simply mechanical. Gods are not required for it, but there could still be a chance they would be. Reincarnation works in Christianity as well, but I'm not sure the Christians even know it. They base all their plans on getting to Heaven, but then what? No omnipotent or even intelligent God would bring people in without sending them back out. Same for infinite punishment for finite sins. All afterlives have to be temporal as well because change is required for them to exist in the first place.
If there is a system of divine justice there, it will likely be like some Eastern religious have it - you get punished for your sins to be cleansed, you get rewarded for your good deeds, then eventually you are sent back out to occupy new forms in new times. As far as systems that we can conceive go, that is probably the best one. Any of us who would be God and need to come up with something brilliant and fair would do the same.
The Relief:
1. Nothing lasts forever. Life doesn't last forever, but death doesn't either.2. Yes, you are, one way or another, going to reunite with your past loved ones again. You may or may not know it at that time, but it will happen.
3. Although controversial in nature, for good reason, there are studies that have been done on children who remember past lives and it's probably better evidence we have than for any other afterlife scenario.
4. This would apply to universe lifespans and alternate universes as well. Eternal recurrence or eternal recurrence with slight mathematical, and therefore historical, variations.
5. Some people even suggest that our pets know they will die and reincarnate as well. They will reincarnate, though I'm not totally sure they are aware of it as said. I do think they are closer to nature than we are, so there's no reason to think they aren't aware of it.
6. And on that note - there really is no reason to not believe in reincarnation. There is not one thing known to man that completely obstructs you from ever coming alive again. The very fact that you exist at all proves it is possible in this universe and something like that just doesn't happen only once in a universe lifespan. Your identity and incarnation as you are now will not come back to life in this universe lifespan, but YOU, the first person energy and awareness that occupies that body, will be born again one way or another.
Additionally:
"I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums. All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born." —Jack London"The theory of Reincarnation, which originated in India, has been welcomed in other countries. Without doubt, it is one of the most sensible and satisfying of all religions that mankind has conceived. This, like the others, comes from the best qualities of human nature, even if in this, as in the others, its adherents sometimes fail to carry out the principles in their lives."
"As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth." —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I believe ... that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting its conduct in this." - Benjamin Franklin
"I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning." - Benjamin Franklin
"I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time." —Walt Whitman
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting. And cometh from afar." —William Wordsworth
"I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence." —Socrates
“As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new.” ― Epictetus
"If we’ve been born once already (which we know we have) why then is it so hard for some to believe that we’ve been born before? The answer to that is nothing other than the information about life one has previously received.” ― Renee Chae
“You think God created us to be born only to grow and then die? Not even the tiniest perennial grows only to die. It comes back again and again when the season and the time is right. Even annual flowers grow seeds as they grow so that they can drop the seeds of themselves and live again year after year, life after life.” ― Kate McGahan
“We are all one. Everything is meaningless, and yet at the same time meaningful. Everything matters and doesn’t matter just as much," Wisdom said and looked beyond time.(Nakoma, by Gala.J)”
― Gala.J
“No one, good or evil, ceases to exist; life is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed; it is recycled.” ― Patricia Cornwell Blow Fly
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