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So you think you want to go to "Heaven," and live in "eternal bliss?" I feel I must dissuade you, of this delusion.

The concept of "Eternal Heaven," is second only to the concept of "Eternal Hell," as the most horrifying idea ever conceived, and eventually the two would be virtually indistinguishable. Here's why:

After a trillion years, with an exponent of 9, followed by a trillion times a trillion zeros, you would still have lived only an infinitesimal speck of your never-ending lifetime. And there is an obvious problem with that: long before the unfathomable length of time, that I just described, had passed, you would have long since exhausted every significant variation, of any pleasant, or desirable experience for a living entity. Or to put it a little more simply: how many times can you hear the same joke, before it's no longer funny? Or to be a little more vulgar, but perhaps more accurate: how long can you fuck, before your dick gets sore?

Everything that was once pleasant would become painful, until you found yourself completely numb.

You would literally find yourself envying a rock, for being inanimate.

This is why most atheist's have the better long-term hope: zero.

Or as David Byrne put it, in what I consider to be the most comforting song in my music-library, "We're on a road to nowhere."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtCittJyr0



"And it's all right..."

You are on a road to nowhere ... because you have already arrived ;-)  Everyone has.  You have always been at the center egotistically and physically ... you never went anywhere.  Think of the surface of a sphere like the Earth ... everywhere you stand, you are surrounded, you are the center (but not the axis, that is only the N/S pole).

Regular (non-Buddhist) theistic views of an afterlife are as valid as ... Santa Claus.  In the original Torah Judaism, there is no afterlife, just Sheol aka The Grave.  Of course this isn't a stable position ... people want to keep their illusion of linear time, their illusion of personal identity (see Buddhism).  Circular time is equally inaccurate, as is reincarnation .. though it is helpful for breaking Western people out of their Matrix.  But jacking into the Eastern Matrix isn't any better in the long run.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 06:12:57 AM
before the unfathomable length of time, that I just described, had passed, you would have long since exhausted every significant variation, of any pleasant, or desirable experience for a living entity. Or to put it a little more simply: how many times can you hear the same joke, before it's no longer funny?

Yes, but you haven't factored in that one undeniable factor at the heart of most religions; Magic!  Each experience in eternity is freshened when the magician waves his hand and resets it all to zero and makes everything new.  Yes you still remember the old, because memory is a requirement for making sense out of things.  You remember a previous experience, but through magic, it becomes different somehow.  How exactly?  Well, we don't know, because it's magic.

This is the failure of Islam, the false religion.  It fails to recognize the component of magic.  Instead, it gives you 72 virgins.  OK, that's going to last for a little while.  For many, that's more than a lifetime of sex.  For those Muslims that do not comprehend magic, it's like, "Yahoo!  Seventy-two!  I'll blow myself up today because 72 is higher than I can count.  Seventy-two must be like 37 billion trillion, and I'd be lucky to get two anyway, so let me at it."

But 72 virgins require maintenance.  Some of them actually don't like to slapped around the way a good Muslim woman wants to be, and without the magic, they get headaches, and some of them actually expect you to provide them with inventive ways to satisfy them.  It gets to be a chore, and pretty soon, you will be wishing to get your old life back.

Eternal life... even when the number of eons you've "after-lived" surpasses Graham's Number or TREE(3), you're still not even an iota of the way to the end, because there is no end. Eternal life makes life meaningless, and it will get old fast.

Quote from: Baruch on July 05, 2017, 06:44:54 AM
You are on a road to nowhere ... because you have already arrived ;-)  Everyone has.  You have always been at the center egotistically and physically ... you never went anywhere.  Think of the surface of a sphere like the Earth ... everywhere you stand, you are surrounded, you are the center (but not the axis, that is only the N/S pole).

Regular (non-Buddhist) theistic views of an afterlife are as valid as ... Santa Claus.  In the original Torah Judaism, there is no afterlife, just Sheol aka The Grave.  Of course this isn't a stable position ... people want to keep their illusion of linear time, their illusion of personal identity (see Buddhism).  Circular time is equally inaccurate, as is reincarnation .. though it is helpful for breaking Western people out of their Matrix.  But jacking into the Eastern Matrix isn't any better in the long run.

I grok you, Brother. Really. In fact, I'll see your "center egotistically, and physically," and raise you a "center mathematically."

I know you are aware, that I am experiencing insomnia, that has lasted for months now. If I can take a second to digress, before I even begin, I have come to a point of enlightenment, on the very subject of "enlightenment."

Many "truth seekers" try to find enlightenment by deliberately trying to cause themselves to "suffer," in order to obtain a higher understanding. "Cross a threshold," as it were. I now realize, that it is, literally, impossible to find it that way. For what should seem like an obvious reason: if you deliberately seek something, then it is, by it's very definition, not suffering. Suffering isn't when you fast, or climb the seven thousand steps, or eat a knotted rope, or take a vow of poverty, or deny yourself the company of women, for the rest of your life. Suffering is the shit  that you wish to fucking God would stop, because it is so absolutely miserable, that it makes you, actually envy a rock, and you have no control over it, whatsoever. Suffering, in my opinion, can teach you a lot, but of what fucking possible value is the lesson? You can't teach it to anyone, and the price is way too fucking high.

now, to get back to the point. A week or two ago, my friend, and his wife, stopped over for a visit. I made the mistake of letting them smoke a joint with me(first time in quite a while). Now I have always become very thoughtful, and creative, and
talkative, when I smoke weed. But combining it with months of insomnia, took me to a level I had never been before(and don't ever want to go again). This will sound silly to almost everyone, but you, Baruch. But I'm pretty sure, that I came as close as anyone ever will, to articulating "The Unified Theory of Everything." Here's the door: dichotomy. Everything and it's dichotomy, are essentially, like two sides of a single coin flipping through space. That has to be the exact solution, simply because it can't be. Nothing and everything, are one and the same. Words are math, on a higher level than physics, and are an equation, like every other equation, continually solving itself, and contradicting itself, on a level that is so completely incomprehensible, that it is far, far beyond numbers, to the point that it resembles some kind of insane, supernatural, chaos. It reaches into dimensions, that the human mind can't even conceive.

After my friends left, I got trapped in this thought for so long, reciting dichotomies to the walls, that I found myself in the center of the universe: a null point, in between all of these contradictory ideas, and realized that I have been there all along, and never, ever, want to go back. When you sit there, for a while, it all make perfect sense, because it is both simple and completely incomprehensible. Nonsense, is exactly as mathematically perfect, as any other thing in space. I'm now convinced that all that exists comes from nothing, flipping on the other side of the coin from every-potential-possibility. Everything is math, and math alone. Substance is just one, of an incomprehensibly complex series of side-effects, of this fucking strange shit.

That's about as far as I want to go with the thought, for the moment, and if you want me to comment further on the subject, I will decline. It sounds like complete bullshit, until you see it for yourself. I know most people won't get it, but I think you will grok me, Baruch.

Quote from: Atheon on July 05, 2017, 11:39:47 AM
Eternal life... even when the number of eons you've "after-lived" surpasses Graham's Number or TREE(3), you're still not even an iota of the way to the end, because there is no end. Eternal life makes life meaningless, and it will get old fast.

Pretty much. We're transient creatures, both in our time and what we make of it. To not die means change can't occur, and change is just a fundamental aspect of the universe. As evolved animals, we require companionship, comforts, to be able to fit into the world around us and adapt and grow. None of that would occur if you live forever, everyone you know and love grows old and dies while you keep going, making just the idea of companionship meaningless, and there is only so much our species can do before we run out of steam.

Plus you wouldn't live forever, since the sun going supernova would see to that.

Yes, SZ ... I do grok you.  Many a Buddhist monk has been sleep deprived, meditating in the wee hours thanks to tea.  Even Muhammad said the best time to pray is after midnight.  When we enter an altered state of consciousness ... we suffer a breakdown of normality.  Normies of course fear this.  You are clearly Kekistani now ;-)  You have then .. maybe before then .. experienced "ocean of being".  A near death experience can induce this too.

The Zen masters report that spiritual development goes from normality, to abnormality, to un-normality.  The purpose of monk life and meditation and koans is to break down your normality.  Enlightenment isn't "it" aka abnormality ... post-Enlightenment is the goal.  People who have only gotten to Enlightenment ... are said to be ... "stinking of Zen".  If it happens again, I hope you have someone in normal mind, be there with you, to pull you back from the brink, if you get too close.

This spontaneously happened to me many years ago when in REM sleep, and I had the self consciousness to pull myself back, to wake up ... otherwise I wouldn't have ended up in un-normality, but stuck in abnormality.  My wife was in bed next to me, asleep, but I was unaware of her, she couldn't have helped me if I had called out for help.

Turns out we are all Kekistani, even our alternate selves, living on the far side of the galaxy...

Laughing Buddah says, "Beware of disrupting your sleep patterns, or you may find yourself understanding Baruch's obscure jokes, to the point that they may even seem profound."

I think you may not have groked what I said in this part though:

QuoteSuffering isn't when you fast, or climb the seven thousand steps, or eat a knotted rope, or take a vow of poverty, or deny yourself the company of women, for the rest of your life. Suffering is the shit  that you wish to fucking God would stop, because it is so absolutely miserable, that it makes you, actually envy a rock, and you have no control over it, whatsoever. Suffering, in my opinion, can teach you a lot, but of what fucking possible value is the lesson? You can't teach it to anyone, and the price is way too fucking high.

To make it a little more clear, I'm basically saying, "Fuck asceticism, or any of that kind of search for meaning, Buddhist, or otherwise. You can't find it: it has to find you. But if you see it coming, run away as fast as your little feet can carry you..."

One thing about Buddhism though: reincarnation...

I have this odd, very clear, but impossible memory, of being retarded. I lived in the same house(very close to a small market), and had the same parents. In this memory, the girl I first fell in love with(in this life), was a cashier at the store. She treated me with love,  and respect, every time I went in the store. So I asked her on a date. She agreed to go on the date with me, but before we could go out, someone convinced her that she couldn't date a retarded boy. I remember very clearly, feeling so devastated,  and cheated,  and angry,  and helpless.

Skip ahead to this life, in which I have a brain, that allowed me to articulate complete sentences, from the time I was about 16. Not 16 years...16 inches. As in before I could get out of my crib, and walk, or even eat solid food. My cousin told me the story of the first time she saw me. I was in my crib, and when she walked in my room, my bottle was on the floor. She picked it up, and put it in my crib. I responded by  saying, "I think it's probably sour." She screamed, and ran out of the room. At which point, my mom said, "Oh! I forgot to tell you: He talks."

On the other hand, the girl I was talking about, has been employed for decades now, as a caretaker for the mentally handicapped.

Karma?

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 02:01:41 PM
I think you may not have groked what I said in this part though:

To make it a little more clear, I'm basically saying, "Fuck asceticism, or any of that kind of search for meaning, Buddhist, or otherwise. You can't find it: it has to find you. But if you see it coming, run away as fast as your little feet can carry you..."

I do know the book of Job ... so yes, I do grok it.  I know the book of Job in my own life, not as literature.  I know Ecclesiastes in my own life, not as literature.  Us old guys get it.  Mortality can't be escaped, but it can be appreciated.

Do you remember the book of Jonah ... run away to Tarshish you will try, get there you won't.  To Nineveh you will go, preach to the Ninevites, what G-d tell you to preach you will.  Just don't get your panties in a wad, if they repent.  Ninevites represent the people you most want G-d to smite, not to show mercy to.  They lived where ISIS is now.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 02:21:36 PM
One thing about Buddhism though: reincarnation...

I have this odd, very clear, but impossible memory, of being retarded. I lived in the same house(very close to a small market), and had the same parents. In this memory, the girl I first fell in love with(in this life), was a cashier at the store. She treated me with love,  and respect, every time I went in the store. So I asked her on a date. She agreed to go on the date with me, but before we could go out, someone convinced her that she couldn't date a retarded boy. I remember very clearly, feeling so devastated,  and cheated,  and angry,  and helpless.

Skip ahead to this life, in which I have a brain, that allowed me to articulate complete sentences, from the time I was about 16. Not 16 years...16 inches. As in before I could get out of my crib, and walk, or even eat solid food. My cousin told me the story of the first time she saw me. I was in my crib, and when she walked in my room, my bottle was on the floor. She picked it up, and put it in my crib. I responded by  saying, "I think it's probably sour." She screamed, and ran out of the room. At which point, my mom said, "Oh! I forgot to tell you: He talks."

On the other hand, the girl I was talking about, has been employed for decades now, as a caretaker for the mentally handicapped.

Karma?

We play many roles in the Globe Theater of life ... do you remember/foresee when you were/will be Yorick's skull, and Hamlet picked/will pick you up?

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

It is our fate to become stage props in the stories of other people.  But some of us want to morbidly be the drapes that when drawn closed, close the play, not just the present scene.  But the play must go on ...

See addenda to post #6 above.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 06:12:57 AM
After a trillion years, with an exponent of 9, followed by a trillion times a trillion zeros, you would still have lived only an infinitesimal speck of your never-ending lifetime. And there is an obvious problem with that: long before the unfathomable length of time, that I just described, had passed, you would have long since exhausted every significant variation, of any pleasant, or desirable experience for a living entity. Or to put it a little more simply: how many times can you hear the same joke, before it's no longer funny? Or to be a little more vulgar, but perhaps more accurate: how long can you fuck, before your dick gets sore?

Everything that was once pleasant would become painful, until you found yourself completely numb.

They (the Christians) know that, it's even in their anthem, Amazing Grace:

QuoteWhen we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.

Of course, 10,000 years is a very long way shy of even the miniscule portion of "eternity" you mentioned. Not only would everything that could be done  actually be done by us, but everything would be done an infinite number of times.

Quote from: Baruch on July 05, 2017, 03:55:57 PM
I do know the book of Job ... so yes, I do grok it.  I know the book of Job in my own life, not as literature.  I know Ecclesiastes in my own life, not as literature.  Us old guys get it.  Mortality can't be escaped, but it can be appreciated.

Do you remember the book of Jonah ... run away to Tarshish you will try, get there you won't.  To Nineveh you will go, to preach to the Ninevites, what G-d tell you to preach.  Just don't get your panties in a wad, if they repent.  Ninevties represent the people you most want G-d to smite, not to show mercy to.

I think we all have our, "Book of Job,"(with the possible exception of our current president).

Ecclesiastes, by the way, is my second favorite portion of the Christian(Protestant) Bible. Right after the "Sermon On the Mount," and followed closely by Proverbs, and the Epistles of John.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 04:13:29 PM
I think we all have our, "Book of Job,"(with the possible exception of our current president).

Ecclesiastes, by the way, is my second favorite portion of the Christian(Protestant) Bible. Right after the "Sermon On the Mount," and followed closely by Proverbs, and the Epistles of John.

i have edited several posts in this string.  Enjoy.

I like Ecclesiastes the best, because it really tells it like it is. All the God stuff was added after the fact of it's writing, I think.

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 05, 2017, 04:20:19 PM
I like Ecclesiastes the best, because it really tells it like it is. All the God stuff was added after the fact of it's writing, I think.

So you admit to being yet another cynical old fart? ;-)

When has that ever been in doubt?

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 05, 2017, 04:29:07 PM
When has that ever been in doubt?

I don't need faith, if I can smell the fart.

I don't have faith in the Firth of Forth:





(https://www.castlegalleries.com/assets/castle/r/detail/large/c_g/assets/file/uploads/NDA_Firth_Forth.jpg)

Quote from: Baruch on July 05, 2017, 01:21:44 PM
This spontaneously happened to me many years ago when in REM sleep, and I had the self consciousness to pull myself back, to wake up ... otherwise I wouldn't have ended up in un-normality, but stuck in abnormality.  My wife was in bed next to me, asleep, but I was unaware of her, she couldn't have helped me if I had called out for help.

Not quite sure that I groked all of that, but it reminds me of my most personally horrifying experience, as a schizophrenic: to keep it brief, my only other experience with insomnia, was...fuck I don't even remember exactly how many years ago(and pretty much irrelevant anyway)...but it was(unlike this time,  when I usually get, at least, an hour or two a night of sleep) TOTAL INSOMNIA, for 15 days. At the time, I was still fascinated enough, with the voices, etc., that I cooperated with them in, what I perceived to be, their attempt to show me how to do what they were doing, and be in two places at once. More or less cross a threshold, allowing me to be in my physical body, and be able to walk around, as a "spirit," or whatever, and apparently fuck with the lives of people who can hear you, but not join you. So not only did they keep me awake that UNGODLY LONG time, but they also convinced me to FAST - as in STARVE MYSELF for 15 days, as well. I don't even recall, now, how I ended up in the hospital, but they poured bag, after bag, of saline into me, and I still pissed dark brown for hours(The upside is, that in those two weeks, I lost 27 pounds.)

Anyway, getting to the point, they put me on a high dose of Seroquil, a nightmare of a drug, that only made the experience about 5 times worse. Then they put me alone, in a room with two beds. To wrap it up, with something that relates, a little, to what you were saying...basically, one of the few memories of that day, that my brain hasn't either suppressed, or deleted, was that for quite some time, I WAS OCCUPYING BOTH OF THE BEDS.

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 05, 2017, 04:20:19 PM
I like Ecclesiastes the best, because it really tells it like it is. All the God stuff was added after the fact of it's writing, I think.

I know what you're saying, but I  tend to think, that King Solomon, like most geniuses, was still a product of the culture that he lived in. In this case, Jewish culture.

I seriously doubt that any King Solomon wrote  any part of the Bible, much less Ecclesiastes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Title.2C_date_and_author).

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 05, 2017, 04:52:13 PM
I seriously doubt that any King Solomon wrote  any part of the Bible, much less Ecclesiastes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Title.2C_date_and_author).

You may be right, at least in part, who knows? Does it invalidate anything in the book though?

I don't think so. After all, it isn't my favorite Bible book because of who wrote it, but because much of what it says sounds about right to me.

Quote
Deleted

PS - bi-location is a commonly defined siddhi (supernatural power) in Hindu stories.  The trick isn't that you perceive that you are in two places at once, but that someone other than you has evidence that you were in two places at once.  There are lots of non-scientific ways to explain this, but I won't bother here.

So was your spirit leader Sasquatch or Kujo? ;-)  Just as long as it wasn't Iron John or Lord of the Flies ;-(

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 05, 2017, 04:52:13 PM
I seriously doubt that any King Solomon wrote  any part of the Bible, much less Ecclesiastes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Title.2C_date_and_author).

MacBeth didn't write MacBeth either, it was a fake news story to please King James (who is descended from King Malcolm).  Shakespeare wrote a lot of truthiness ;-)

Actually, his name was Jedidiah, but who cares...

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 05, 2017, 06:27:52 PM
...but who cares...

I can almost grok you too, Brother...almost...just articulate slightly more, with your heart, and I'll be there... :agreenod:

I have figured out the solution, to every human problem that has ever plagued mankind, is currently fucking-up our lives, or ever will. It won't save your house from a fucking tornado...but yeah...I figured it out. The thing is, I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT IS, because this message is SO IMPORTANT, that I have to figure out a way to post it anonymously(with no chance of being identified as the author) or it will be nullified, by the fact that...I am an American, schizophrenic, atheist, high-school dropout, with an alcohol dependency, and...well...name your preconceived bias. Basically, I am too smart too make the "Jesus Mistake,"(that's right, you heard this phrase here, for the very first time). If what I have discovered...a thought that can be a genuine catalyst for change, that snowballs into something more meaningful, and effective, the wider it is spread(look up, "the fullness of time," and think, "internet,")...then I refuse to exploit it, for my own profit(what the fuck do I need money for? I need SLEEP...), or take ANY CREDIT FOR IT: THE JESUS MISTAKE. The message must be separate from the messenger, or it won't help the people who don't like you. It's that basic.

But, trust me, I WILL save the world. I HAVE TO, because, of three things: NO ONE ELSE BELIEVES THAT THEY CAN; THEREFORE NO ONE ELSE IS TRYING; AND MOST OF ALL, BECAUSE, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S ABOUT TIME. Just give me a little bit of time to figure out, how to avoid the "Jesus Mistake:" associating my identity with the message, and it will begin. I really shouldn't even post this, but I have tried as hard as possible, not to give any hint, as to what I intend to say. Still, it's about to begin...

All praise to...?

Almost time for bed...wish me luck.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 11:35:50 PM
I have figured out the solution, to every human problem that has ever plagued mankind, is currently fucking-up our lives, or ever will. It won't save your house from a fucking tornado...but yeah...I figured it out. The thing is, I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT IS, because this message is SO IMPORTANT, that I have to figure out a way to post it anonymously(with no chance of being identified as the author) or it will be nullified, by the fact that...I am an American, schizophrenic, atheist, high-school dropout, with an alcohol dependency, and...well...name your preconceived bias. Basically, I am too smart too make the "Jesus Mistake,"(that's right, you heard this phrase here, for the very first time). If what I have discovered...a thought that can be a genuine catalyst for change, that snowballs into something more meaningful, and effective, the wider it is spread(look up, "the fullness of time," and think, "internet,")...then I refuse to exploit it, for my own profit(what the fuck do I need money for? I need SLEEP...), or take ANY CREDIT FOR IT: THE JESUS MISTAKE. The message must be separate from the messenger, or it won't help the people who don't like you. It's that basic.

But, trust me, I WILL save the world. I HAVE TO, because, of three things: NO ONE ELSE BELIEVES THAT THEY CAN; THEREFORE NO ONE ELSE IS TRYING; AND MOST OF ALL, BECAUSE, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S ABOUT TIME. Just give me a little bit of time to figure out, how to avoid the "Jesus Mistake:" associating my identity with the message, and it will begin. I really shouldn't even post this, but I have tried as hard as possible, not to give any hint, as to what I intend to say. Still, it's about to begin...

All praise to...?

Zen is quite clear ... if you can think it, write it or say it ... then it is an impediment to real enlightenment.

BTW - every human is Jesus.

I don't know, I've been retired for 11 years and I'm not bored yet.  In fact, I don't feel the passage of time.  Maybe eternity would work that way.  Unending loss of time-sense, vague dementia, forever debating about a deity or lack of one.  Forever at the keyboard drinking a few glasses of wine...  Flying around playing frisbee with the halos...  Tricking a few friends in stepping on the thin spots of the clouds and watching them fall through.  Could be fun.

Quote from: Cavebear on July 06, 2017, 07:23:39 AM
I don't know, I've been retired for 11 years and I'm not bored yet.  In fact, I don't feel the passage of time.  Maybe eternity would work that way.  Unending loss of time-sense, vague dementia, forever debating about a deity or lack of one.  Forever at the keyboard drinking a few glasses of wine...  Flying around playing frisbee with the halos...  Tricking a few friends in stepping on the thin spots of the clouds and watching them fall through.  Could be fun.

Agreed ... lack of regular routine, or being bed ridden, leads to a kind of dissociation.  Maybe if your body isn't going to pieces, your mind is.

Quote from: Cavebear on July 06, 2017, 07:23:39 AM
I don't know, I've been retired for 11 years and I'm not bored yet.  In fact, I don't feel the passage of time.  Maybe eternity would work that way.  Unending loss of time-sense, vague dementia, forever debating about a deity or lack of one.  Forever at the keyboard drinking a few glasses of wine...  Flying around playing frisbee with the halos...  Tricking a few friends in stepping on the thin spots of the clouds and watching them fall through.  Could be fun.

Actually, I seem to be more acutely aware of the passage of time.  I think that's supposed to be typical of aging and have even read an explanation for the phenomenon, but if that continued on for eternity, it could be the blessing that gets you through it.  Eventually, the past and present could merge into a kind of moment of understanding everything at once.  It wouldn't answer the big question about where everything came from, because none of us could have experienced that, but it might make the question rather irrelevant.  I don't actually know that, of course.  I'm just speculating wildly.

Quote from: SGOS on July 06, 2017, 07:54:00 AM
Actually, I seem to be more acutely aware of the passage of time.  I think that's supposed to be typical of aging and have even read an explanation for the phenomenon, but if that continued on for eternity, it could be the blessing that gets you through it.  Eventually, the past and present could merge into a kind of moment of understanding everything at once.  It wouldn't answer the big question about where everything came from, because none of us could have experienced that, but it might make the question rather irrelevant.  I don't actually know that, of course.  I'm just speculating wildly.

Time does not pass for me.  I still feel 35 and it seems I retired "last year".  I think I could live forever (if in decent health) and not notice.  Just call me "Cavebear Lazarus Long Somelastname"... 

Quote from: Cavebear on July 06, 2017, 08:02:06 AM
Time does not pass for me. 

I'd like to know how you accomplish that.  I'm not trying to run out the clock.  I'd like to keep the game going for as long as possible.  Overtime, if I could make it happen.

Quote from: SGOS on July 06, 2017, 08:22:41 AM
I'd like to know how you accomplish that.  I'm not trying to run out the clock.  I'd like to keep the game going for as long as possible.  Overtime, if I could make it happen.

That's not an easy question.  It's mostly attitude.  But...

1.  I think more about the future than the past.
2.  As relatives die, I accept it as the normal course of their life.
3.  I have never attended a funeral.
4.  I live with cats.  When one goes (and I mourn them), it means room to accept another.
5.  I think of the lawn grass.  It gets mowed but endures. 
6.  Keep an unending "To Do" list. 
7.  Do something useful every day.
8.  Never repeat yourself.
8.  Never repeat yourself.
9.  Convince yourself the flowers and veggies NEED you.
10.  Be assured the cats do.
11.  Listen to different music every day.
12.  But listen to some favorites too.
13.  Always plan what you are going to make for dinner tomorrow.
14.  Plant a tree and expect to see it mature.
15.  Completely change your style of clothes every few years.  I'm really into desert camo now.  A few years ago, I was The Man In Black.
16.  Develop bad habits and then drop them.
17.  Live in the same place with the same furniture and change it so gradually you never quite notice the difference.
18.  Be an atheist, so there is no reason to look forward to dying.
19.  Plan stuff you will never do but "will someday".
20.  Tell the world your annoying opinions and change them sometimes.
21.  Make lists like this.

;)

Good advice to live by, and I follow similar rules myself, but time is still accelerating.  I know I could do better, and I think I'll make a hard copy of your list and put it on the refrigerator, but at best I would expect any changes in my perception of time to be more subtle and more closely related to attitude.  I promise I won't give you any advice on how to speed up time.  Neither of us could benefit from that at this juncture.

But you know, long after I retired I traded my house for a boat and sailed across the ocean twice and explored places I had never been and saw things that I could not have seen in any other way.  I did that for three years, and while some people lead that life for much longer, it was three years and not just your average vacation by any means, but something I'd had on my bucket list since I was a teenager.  But that went by all too quickly and then I had to get on to the next thing.  That three years seemed like one year, and in my memory it could be a month.  I even lost track of seasons for a while, and would have to stop and wonder if it was winter or summer, although that was during the year in Hawaii.  During the Alaska part of the adventure, I definitely knew when it was winter.  In the summer, I knew it wasn't winter, but I still puzzled about if it was still early spring or actually summer.  Then I worked my way down the coast, and by Fall I was in Southern Canada, but I thought it was summer.

Quote from: SGOS on July 06, 2017, 09:16:54 AM
Good advice to live by, and I follow similar rules myself, but time is still accelerating.  I know I could do better, and I think I'll make a hard copy of your list and put it on the refrigerator, but at best I would expect any changes in my perception of time to be more subtle and more closely related to attitude.  I promise I won't give you any advice on how to speed up time.  Neither of us could benefit from that at this juncture.

But you know, long after I retired I traded my house for a boat and sailed across the ocean twice and explored places I had never been and saw things that I could not have seen in any other way.  I did that for three years, and while some people lead that life for much longer, it was three years and not just your average vacation by any means, but something I'd had on my bucket list since I was a teenager.  But that went by all too quickly and then I had to get on to the next thing.  That three years seemed like one year, and in my memory it could be a month.  I even lost track of seasons for a while, and would have to stop and wonder if it was winter or summer, although that was during the year in Hawaii.  During the Alaska part of the adventure, I definitely knew when it was winter.  In the summer, I knew it wasn't winter, but I still puzzled about if it was still early spring or actually summer.  Then I worked my way down the coast, and by Fall I was in Southern Canada, but I thought it was summer.

That was an outstanding adventure.  Different things, but similar.  I once spent 6 weeks in a sleeping bag, but not quite the same for sure.  I live life at home now.  The hummers at the feeders, the butterflies at the flowers, the bees everywhere and the cats being cats outside but inside every night.  My house and yard are my sanctuary.

I paddled uplake in Canada with a friend once at Lake Opeango.  Spent a week with dried food heated with boiled lake water and fierce mosquitoes.  My friend was utterly inept, I was right at home.  We paddled back and were hit by a squall.  My friend was in the bow and just paddled, I quartered us into the waves and gained the leeward shore eventually.  I should mention he tipped the canoe over previously in 8" water and *I* had to do all the diving to recover our stuff.  I still have the leather cowboy hat (my handle back then was "Sheriff")  I wore then that was soaked in the Canadian waters of 1976.  My friend never understood how close we came to dying in the squall.

Some people do interesting things in their life.  Most don't.  They just go along with life as the tides take them.

YOU are an interesting person.

Quote from: Cavebear on July 06, 2017, 09:38:53 AM
I paddled uplake in Canada with a friend once at Lake Opeango.  Spent a week with dried food heated with boiled lake water and fierce mosquitoes.  My friend was utterly inept, I was right at home.  We paddled back and were hit by a squall.  My friend was in the bow and just paddled, I quartered us into the waves and gained the leeward shore eventually.  I should mention he tipped the canoe over previously in 8" water and *I* had to do all the diving to recover our stuff.  I still have the leather cowboy hat (my handle back then was "Sheriff")  I wore then that was soaked in the Canadian waters of 1976.  My friend never understood how close we came to dying in the squall.

In my early 20s, I had a similar experience with my dad.  We paddled his canoe into Ontario's Quetico Canoe Area starting from the northeast tip of Minnesota.  I drove back to Chicago from Montana to make the trip with him.  It was in early may a week after the ice left the lakes.  We paddled 100 miles and made 20 portages and had the place to ourselves.  Only saw a couple of other canoes at the very beginning and the very end.  We encountered similar blows.  On the first one, which wasn't as bad as the second, we got caught out on one of the bigger lakes of the journey and with the wind at our backs, we rigged a small sail out of a tarp and canoe paddles.  We made extraordinarily good time, but finally threw in the towel when we made it to a small peninsula early in the day and decided it was safer to make camp for the night.  I wouldn't say it wasn't dangerous.  I was pretty nervous during the ride.

The second blow was much worse.  Again we were caught out in the middle of the lake, and knew right away we were in a bad place.  We managed to make it to an island gravel bar still quite away from shore, and held up until the sun went down and the winds subsided.  My dad always wanted to try paddling at night.  He had read somewhere that the French Voyageurs often traveled that way guiding themselves by the north star.  So on a glassy calm, we started out in the dark.  I don't think the stars were necessary, but we kind of pretended that they were.  While we didn't have a time when we needed to get back to Chicago, it was nearing the end of our trip and we had made arrangements for a launch on the next day that was to save us an extra 20 miles of paddling across American waters and take us the final distance to our car.

We paddled until about 4:00 in the morning and found shelter at an unused cabin in a quiet bay.  My dad was in the bow, and told me he couldn't stay awake so he stopped paddling and fell asleep.  So much for the voyageurs fantasy.   I didn't mind.  I was having a good time and paddled us for the last 4 or 5 miles.

As it turned out the next day, the launch wasn't there at the appointed time when we arrived.  So we paddled the rest of the way, thinking we might meet the launch along our route.  I can't remember.  It might have been another 10 or 20 miles.  When we got to the takeout point, the outfitter that ran the thing told us he had simply forgot to get us.  I didn't care, nor did my dad.

On that trip we did the freeze dried food thing like you did.  We also supplemented it with some items from the grocery store that lent themselves to light weight.  One of them was powdered omelets, made by the Borden Dairy Company.  They were quite tasty and we ate a lot of those, but I don't think they make them anymore as most cooks at home just use regular eggs, but on the trip, they were delicious.  We also paid out for one special freeze dry meal; It was pork chops, peas, and some kind of potato serving a bit more glamorous than hash browns.  The meal was not the standard freeze dry goulash, but actual pork chops without the bone.  Out of the package, they were a good size but resembled something made out of cork.  They could be reconstituted with hot water and a small package of something labeled "pork enzyme."  Once that was done, they could be fried like a regular pork chop.  The meal also came with peas.  It was all delicious, but the potatoes were really something special.  I can't remember potatoes that good since.  The rest of the trip, we ate the usual freeze dry goulash like chicken and rice and beef stroganoff.

We also brought with us a reflector oven made out of aluminum, and it worked surprisingly well.  We baked corn bread, and biscuits, and I even made a coffee cake out of plain old Bisquick topped with a crusty brown sugar glaze.  We also had one of those plastic squeeze bottles of honey that my dad turned up his nose at when I bought it.  He thought it wasn't appropriate enough for light weight, but he admitted later that it was a welcomed luxury on the biscuits and cornbread.

That trip was one that stands out in memory, and it was the last such experience I shared with my father. 

Any eternal afterlife that doesn't involve cruising the multiverse unfettered by the laws of physics so I can see everything there is to see is not an afterlife I have any interest in.  There's no point in being a disembodied spirit if I can't poke my ghostly head inside an event horizon and see what's going on in there, and then move on to watching Betelgeuse or η Carinæ go supernova from one of their outer planets (if they have any) and then off to observe other sentient life forms elsewhere in the galaxy/universe.

If I can't do that, then I'll take oblivion, thanks.

Quote from: SGOS on July 06, 2017, 07:54:00 AM
Actually, I seem to be more acutely aware of the passage of time.  I think that's supposed to be typical of aging and have even read an explanation for the phenomenon, but if that continued on for eternity, it could be the blessing that gets you through it.  Eventually, the past and present could merge into a kind of moment of understanding everything at once.  It wouldn't answer the big question about where everything came from, because none of us could have experienced that, but it might make the question rather irrelevant.  I don't actually know that, of course.  I'm just speculating wildly.

Most people as they age, experience the sense of ... time passing more quickly.  Years are quicker, months are quicker, weeks are quicker and days are quicker.  If it keeps up, I expect the sense of last good day ... to attending my own funeral will be a snap of the fingers.

Quote from: SGOS on July 06, 2017, 09:16:54 AM
Good advice to live by, and I follow similar rules myself, but time is still accelerating.  I know I could do better, and I think I'll make a hard copy of your list and put it on the refrigerator, but at best I would expect any changes in my perception of time to be more subtle and more closely related to attitude.  I promise I won't give you any advice on how to speed up time.  Neither of us could benefit from that at this juncture.

But you know, long after I retired I traded my house for a boat and sailed across the ocean twice and explored places I had never been and saw things that I could not have seen in any other way.  I did that for three years, and while some people lead that life for much longer, it was three years and not just your average vacation by any means, but something I'd had on my bucket list since I was a teenager.  But that went by all too quickly and then I had to get on to the next thing.  That three years seemed like one year, and in my memory it could be a month.  I even lost track of seasons for a while, and would have to stop and wonder if it was winter or summer, although that was during the year in Hawaii.  During the Alaska part of the adventure, I definitely knew when it was winter.  In the summer, I knew it wasn't winter, but I still puzzled about if it was still early spring or actually summer.  Then I worked my way down the coast, and by Fall I was in Southern Canada, but I thought it was summer.

I see the key to what Cavebear is saying ... retire, and make every day like every other.

Quote from: trdsf on July 06, 2017, 12:49:14 PM
Any eternal afterlife that doesn't involve cruising the multiverse unfettered by the laws of physics so I can see everything there is to see is not an afterlife I have any interest in.  There's no point in being a disembodied spirit if I can't poke my ghostly head inside an event horizon and see what's going on in there, and then move on to watching Betelgeuse or η Carinæ go supernova from one of their outer planets (if they have any) and then off to observe other sentient life forms elsewhere in the galaxy/universe.

If I can't do that, then I'll take oblivion, thanks.

Clearly you are an astronomer ;-)  But I suspect, any life is like this one ... mostly stuff you get no choice in, some stuff you do, and confusion as to if you had any real free will or not!

Quote from: SGOS on July 06, 2017, 11:56:23 AM
In my early 20s, I had a similar experience with my dad.  We paddled his canoe into Ontario's Quetico Canoe Area starting from the northeast tip of Minnesota.  I drove back to Chicago from Montana to make the trip with him.  It was in early may a week after the ice left the lakes.  We paddled 100 miles and made 20 portages and had the place to ourselves.  Only saw a couple of other canoes at the very beginning and the very end.  We encountered similar blows.  On the first one, which wasn't as bad as the second, we got caught out on one of the bigger lakes of the journey and with the wind at our backs, we rigged a small sail out of a tarp and canoe paddles.  We made extraordinarily good time, but finally threw in the towel when we made it to a small peninsula early in the day and decided it was safer to make camp for the night.  I wouldn't say it wasn't dangerous.  I was pretty nervous during the ride.

The second blow was much worse.  Again we were caught out in the middle of the lake, and knew right away we were in a bad place.  We managed to make it to an island gravel bar still quite away from shore, and held up until the sun went down and the winds subsided.  My dad always wanted to try paddling at night.  He had read somewhere that the French Voyageurs often traveled that way guiding themselves by the north star.  So on a glassy calm, we started out in the dark.  I don't think the stars were necessary, but we kind of pretended that they were.  While we didn't have a time when we needed to get back to Chicago, it was nearing the end of our trip and we had made arrangements for a launch on the next day that was to save us an extra 20 miles of paddling across American waters and take us the final distance to our car.

We paddled until about 4:00 in the morning and found shelter at an unused cabin in a quiet bay.  My dad was in the bow, and told me he couldn't stay awake so he stopped paddling and fell asleep.  So much for the voyageurs fantasy.   I didn't mind.  I was having a good time and paddled us for the last 4 or 5 miles.

As it turned out the next day, the launch wasn't there at the appointed time when we arrived.  So we paddled the rest of the way, thinking we might meet the launch along our route.  I can't remember.  It might have been another 10 or 20 miles.  When we got to the takeout point, the outfitter that ran the thing told us he had simply forgot to get us.  I didn't care, nor did my dad.

On that trip we did the freeze dried food thing like you did.  We also supplemented it with some items from the grocery store that lent themselves to light weight.  One of them was powdered omelets, made by the Borden Dairy Company.  They were quite tasty and we ate a lot of those, but I don't think they make them anymore as most cooks at home just use regular eggs, but on the trip, they were delicious.  We also paid out for one special freeze dry meal; It was pork chops, peas, and some kind of potato serving a bit more glamorous than hash browns.  The meal was not the standard freeze dry goulash, but actual pork chops without the bone.  Out of the package, they were a good size but resembled something made out of cork.  They could be reconstituted with hot water and a small package of something labeled "pork enzyme."  Once that was done, they could be fried like a regular pork chop.  The meal also came with peas.  It was all delicious, but the potatoes were really something special.  I can't remember potatoes that good since.  The rest of the trip, we ate the usual freeze dry goulash like chicken and rice and beef stroganoff.

We also brought with us a reflector oven made out of aluminum, and it worked surprisingly well.  We baked corn bread, and biscuits, and I even made a coffee cake out of plain old Bisquick topped with a crusty brown sugar glaze.  We also had one of those plastic squeeze bottles of honey that my dad turned up his nose at when I bought it.  He thought it wasn't appropriate enough for light weight, but he admitted later that it was a welcomed luxury on the biscuits and cornbread.

That trip was one that stands out in memory, and it was the last such experience I shared with my father.

Outstanding!  You had better freeze-dried food than we did.  Chicken Tetrazinni was more like a smootie, the spaghetti and meatballs were mush, and there never was anything we could actually call meat.  In fact, if we had sampled the stuff before we went, we probably would have just brought 6 cases of beer and bags of pretzels?.

Astronauts wouldn't have made it to the moon on that stuff.  And we had these weak little "white gas" tubes that could heat water enough to melt the freeze-dry stuff in as little as 15 minutes! 

The most profound memory though, was the huge mosquitoes that blanketed the net front of the tent.  They looked like wasps.  We peed in a pot at night rather than leave the tent.   

Your canoe journey sounds more perilous than mine.  I was good at the stern and could control the canoe.  My friend might as well have been paddling with a flyswatter for all the good he was.  But at least he didn't tip us over again.  He didn't even have decent rain gear. 

A typical case of mismatched skills.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on July 05, 2017, 11:35:50 PM
I am an American, schizophrenic, atheist, high-school dropout, with an alcohol dependency, and...well...name your preconceived bias.

Jeez, where have you been all my life? You're the man of my dreams/nightmares!

QuoteAll praise to...?

The Glorious Quantum Foam!

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 06, 2017, 05:04:39 PM
Jeez, where have you been all my life? You're the man of my dreams/nightmares!
The Glorious Quantum Foam!

But does quantum foam clean the grout in your shower?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh0OdgjOdDk

Quote from: Baruch on July 06, 2017, 01:23:44 AM
Zen is quite clear ... if you can think it, write it or say it ... then it is an impediment to real enlightenment.

that leaves only eatin and poopin

Quote from: fencerider on July 07, 2017, 01:29:29 AM
that leaves only eatin and poopin

Said like a Zen master.  If you need to eat, eat ... and do it with complete self awareness and situational awareness.  Similarly with poopin.

Quote from: Cavebear on July 06, 2017, 08:02:06 AM
Time does not pass for me.  I still feel 35 and it seems I retired "last year".  I think I could live forever (if in decent health) and not notice.  Just call me "Cavebear Lazarus Long Somelastname"...

Lazarus Long--had not thought about him in awhile. Woodrow Wilson Smith did have an interesting life.  And he may still be alive--I don't remember reading of his death.

That stanza, to me, is pretty much "life in a nutshell." Possibly the most beautiful song of all time - sung by Cyndi Lauper.

Quote from: Mike Cl on July 07, 2017, 01:10:40 PM
Lazarus Long--had not thought about him in awhile. Woodrow Wilson Smith did have an interesting life.  And he may still be alive--I don't remember reading of his death.

Nathan Brazil out did him.

Oh man, would I love to see Lazarus Long and Nathan Brazil meet each other!  It would either be sad Bros or who shot first...

I don't often mix my sci-fi universes, but that would be SOMETHING!