Death an Atheist View

     Recently I asked someone close to me who happens to be an atheist what he thinks happens to us when we die.  I tend to believe eastern views about reincarnation and so fourth, but I also am influenced by the Course in Miracles, that we all go to heaven, whether good or bad and that there are disembodied spirits, metaphysical stuff, etc., which do not pertain to the Course in Miracles.  (These days, I am listening to evangelists on talking books like Joyce Myers, because they comfort me.  I have been a little sad about some things, but coming out of it.*)

     My friend said, "all our brain and nerve synapses would be dead, so we would just be dead.  Our heart and brain would no longer be working, making us dead, just dead."  An acquaintance of mine had recently died and oddly my friend's father had died recently too.

     As we walked the beach that night.  I could not see but for the lights of the hotels and the crescent moon thank God.  He was holding onto me, warning me of the tide coming towards our shoes.  The night air touched our faces.  I wore his coat and I was warm, but a sadness stirred in me as I recounted his words, "we are just dead, plain dead.  That's all there is to it."

     That very same day we had watched a Woody Allen movie called "Midnight in Paris", which I loved about this guy who goes back to the twenties from 2010, because he is a writer and unhappy with his shallow girlfriend and her rich right wing parents.  He meets Gertrude Stein and Hemingway and Salvador Dali and Picasso's mistress, the bohemian scene, where Gertrude Stein uses the term 'petit bougeour'.  

      Hemingway is saying that only during sex do we forget about death.  Perhaps this is true.  Sex is a beautiful thing, good sex and it does momentarily make one forget the pain, the bad.  It alone could make you believe in God.

     But my friend perhaps 'religioned out' by his youth, said there is no such thing as magic and to believe in life after death would be to believe in magic.  I could go on about this, but I will not now.  I believe in magic.  I am a Reiki master, a yogi, into chakra meditation.  I have even done white wicca spells, real innocent believe me, black magic terrifies me.  But, I also believe in God and a life after and a lot of good things.  Although I will say I took my older son to an evangelical church, we walked, and the lovely woman minister said to me, because I am legally blind, which is why we walk, "the Lord heals".  I simply smiled and said "thank you".  Inwardly I know God is not going to do this, science has no answers.  Just like those people who do not really get up out of wheelchairs on tele-evangelical faith healing shows.  I know the Bible does say Jesus healed the blind and the lame.
     *I added this comment today, July 13, 2014, almost two years since Alan died.  Alan died in late summer of 2012.  When this incident happened, we did not know that Alan had stage four pancreatic cancer.  I miss him.  I was there for him to give him reiki for the pain and to listen when he felt sad about the fact that he was going to die, and he would spend the night when he did not want to be alone.  It was hard for him to be alone, going through this, but he worked two jobs almost to the very end.  I do not know how he did it.  When someone close to you dies, it is surprising that it is sometimes their flaws you miss as much as their strengths.  As far as death, I have no answers.  I think life is just about trying to be a good person, even if people do not understand you.