Life and the Afterlife
The Only Way to Know For Sure What Happens in the Afterlife
It involves being dead
Alive and Clueless
The afterlife is a topic that gets many people riled up, feeling uncomfortable, ready to debate, attack, and fight other people’s beliefs just to find some comfort in what they believe in. It’s a sensitive topic that tickles our fears when what someone believes is different and scarier than what we believe.
But here’s the thing: not a single person alive knows for sure what happens after death. Not one. Not me. Not the enlightened beings. Not your guru. Not your psychic. Not your medium. Not even those who claim to have special powers to communicate with entities in the spirit world.
I don’t know for sure what happens in the afterlife. I know nothing at all. I’m just a curious soul digging for truths and writing about my findings, but like everyone else, I have my own beliefs that I stand by.
I believe God created me, and he put his spirit into my nostrils and gave me life. I believe that if I keep my spirit pure, do the right things, and love my neighbor, I will die and my spirit will go back to where it came from and I will spend eternity in the most beautiful place beyond the stars. But if I conform to the patterns of this world and taint the spirit that was given to me; if I do sinful things, my soul wouldn’t go into the heavens because sin doesn’t align with the heavens. Sin aligns with hell. They go hand in hand.
Like the prison systems in this physical world serve the purpose of separating us from evil, I believe hell is a really intense correctional facility to course-correct certain souls and not a place to torture souls. But that’s just my belief.
Not a soul alive knows for sure the exact events of the afterlife.
All We Have Are Thoughts
All I have are thoughts, ideas, and scripture to help me wrap my mind around the afterlife, but I don’t and won’t know for sure. I’m entitled to my belief that heaven is the most beautiful place and that hell serves a purpose.
I can write about the afterlife in fiction or from the Bible’s perspective, but all of those are just thoughts and ideas.
My thoughts and ideas.
The atheist who believes they turn into atoms and molecules is entitled to his own belief. The person who can’t wrap their mind around hell is entitled to their belief. The one who thinks there’s no life at all after death is entitled to their belief. The person who thinks she becomes an immortal being and keeps on living after death is entitled to their belief. The one who believes heaven is real is entitled to their belief. Even the one who thinks there’s no punishment at all for evil doings is entitled to their belief.
Do for this life as if you live forever and do for the afterlife as if you die tomorrow — Ali Ibn.
The Only Way to Know The Truth
The only way you will truly know what happens in the afterlife is if you’re dead. And the only way I will know what happens in the afterlife is if you return from the dead to tell me. There’s no other way.
If we were supposed to know what happens after death, then we would know. But for many centuries, we don’t know because we’re not meant to know.
If you desperately want the truth about what happens after death, then you must die first. That’s the only way you’ll find the truth you seek and until you make peace with that thought, you will always be riled up about the afterlife, losing sleep over what another person believes to be true.
If you have breath in your nose; you are alive, and if you are alive, you know nothing about the afterlife.
Final Thoughts
I understand how uncomfortable and unsettling it is living, not knowing what comes next, but there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do. Your attempts to find the truth when you have breath in your lungs will leave you terrified, angry, and frustrated.
Until your breath leaves your body, no matter what you think you know and the evidence you think you have, you know nothing at all.
We’re alive and clueless, but death brings answers.
There’s nothing you can do, but the right thing to do is to respect other people and their opinions even if they're different from yours.
What we can do as we wait to find out what comes after death is to cultivate patience for ourselves as we navigate the unknown and with others, as we all try to make sense of what follows death.
