born_yet_again andru235 here i am again, blathing about your endlessness! oh, how angry this makes you! don't worry, dearie, that's merely a side effect of this civilizational mechanism. when you were a kiddo you wouldn't have objected to the reality of your infiniteness at all. in fact, one of the most notorious questions asked by children is "where was i before i was born?" they ain't referin' to hootch! and when you are near death your body will protest greatly, for that is what biology will force it to do. if you have focused on spirituality, this will concern you minimally, whereas if you have dismissed spirituality as nonsense, you will probably be more alarmed. either way, next you will die, and as the dimethyltryptamine courses through your brain, your life will flash before your eyes and perhaps you'll approach the infamous tunnel of light. or, perhaps you'll approach the secret 'grove of rainbows', or the 'giggling fairies of thultruria'. at any rate, there you will find yourself, whereever you were before you entered the previous life, and as to what you will do next, how should i know? and furthermore, what do i care? i have my own matters to attend to. "but no one can be sure of what comes after this life," you protest. "oh, you!" i chuckle, observing that "no one can be sure that they *don't* know what comes after this life, either. so the likelyhood that an individual knows what is coming next for them is no less than the possibility that they do not know. it's 50/50." the social programming has been strong, and you are still irritated by the thought of reaching your personal heaven, or whatever it is you are seeking (reunion with goddess, or was it the magnesium charmer you were praying to find?), so you argue, "well, if we don't know if we know or don't know, then it is certain that we don't know." to which i counter, "if that were so, you are suggesting that based on mere wordplay we know that we don't know if we know or not, to which i might note that we *could* know that we know and yet simply haven't realized it yet, and thus currently don't know what we do know. that is the absurdity of wordplay. and it is wordplay that has scared you into a fearful rejection of something you were certain of as you entered this world from your previous zone of occupancy." "...*hmph*..." you pout, simply distraught at the possibility that whatever you have secretly hoped for your entire socialized life might be, in fact, an eventual reality. "that dastardly andru235," scathes your tongue, "i'll show him. either i'll be silent, and illustrate death, or i'll throw my finest arguments about christianity/nihilism/buddhism/zoroastrianism/islam/agnosticism/paganism/judaism/hinduism/sikhism/universalism/scientology/science/astrology/etc. at him, then he will see how wrong he is!" and as you throw these conflicting and conflicted concepts at me, i will chortle merrily, for you are showing me yet again that it_all_exists. and then, i will cry wearily, because i am having no success at showing you the very things you have shown me. and then, i will concede lunacy and retreat into my isolated rooms and await deliverance from this absurd planet of large brained creatures who have lost the spiritual knowledge of their smaller-brained cousins and now refuse to admit there even was any knowledge in their smaller-brained cousins despite the obvious evolutionary anomaly this would create. and when i depart, i will at last arrive at my home, wherever that is, somewhere beyond, in the endless infinities. 050713 ... andru235 yesterday at the food shelf, i asked a mom how old her little boy was. "can you tell the man how old you are?" she asked him. "fifty," the boy stated flatly, looking me directly in the eyes. "he's really only three," giggled the kind mother, as though it wasn't totally obvious the boy had recently died at 47 years of age and chosen to return to earth once again. 051019 what's it to you? who go blather from