Mourning and belief

December 13, 11:07 PMPhoenix Progressive ExaminerDebbie Jordan

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Today, I beg your indulgence while I temporarily stray from politics to talk about our beliefs about death and the afterlife.

My mother died on Friday, 12/12 at 11:11 a.m., in the little Rocky Mountain town of Fruita, CO. My youngest brother, John Taylor, believes her lifelong fascination with numerology makes this detail of our mother’s passing significant. He feels she might have consciously chosen that day and time, despite the fact that she had little connection to reality, or barely to self, for the last few years of her earthly existence.

If this concept gives my brother comfort, then I respect his right to believe it. I can neither accept nor deny it. It leaves me with questions, which makes it counterproductive to my purpose. My own beliefs help me, so I expect others to respect them as well.

It’s been years since I’ve accepted the traditional concepts of heaven as a place of eternal contentment, or hell as a burning place of eternal torment. A lifelong curiosity about all things religious finally helped me realize people applied details from ancient myths to dramatize the connection between our actions in this world and the afterlife. Those stories long ago lost their power to make people behave, and they’re now symbols of rebellion and counterculture. Instead, I settled on my own understanding of what happens when we die.

I considered the eastern belief in reincarnation and karma, the assumption that we experience many lives. We’re supposed to learn something during each journey and put the lessons together until we reach a state of enlightenment. I don’t dismiss the idea. I even have an opinion of what one of my previous lives might have been like and how it ended. But that’s only speculation I indulge in to help me deal with certain conflicts.

On the other hand, since we’re born into each incarnation with no memory of a previous existence and the lessons from them, it occurred to me that this would be an inefficient way to run a universe. So, I don’t really hang my hat on that belief.

I’ve gained comfort from the belief that when we leave this plane, the energy, spirit, and consciousness that we are enters another level of existence. There, we review the lessons of this experience, and more importantly, we take on new work at a completely new level. Perhaps there is a connection between that world and this. If so, then I believe part of that work must be to help those we leave behind to accomplish their goals.

Perhaps, whatever understanding we lacked in this life will be provided in the next plane, so when we’ve passed on, we’ll actually be able to make up for mistakes made back here. That belief gives me the greatest amount of comfort.