Written with love + care by Drew Henry
When we die, I think we realize we were already dead…
For instance, when we go to sleep, we only ever remember waking up again. We have no recollection of the time in a perpetual blacked out dream state — a state we all but skip in the process from going to bed to waking up…
Therefore, if we ever pass away, the only thing we will ever have consciousness of is waking up again.
We won’t remember the time our body is asleep, or rather dead… we will only realize when we wake up in the next lifetime.
Personally, I believe in a spiritual place (or a spirit world) known as the Afterlife, as well as in the reincarnation of all plants, animals & beings back into the universe, to evolve & transfuse into new beings.
Although I believe in reincarnation, I think that applies to the future of creation, not to what happens to us when we die. I think we roam a unique realm in pure freedom from usual earthly ties, suffering & attachment.
Not to say I don’t believe in God & The Lord Jesus Christ.
Without God, this whole thing wouldn’t even be remotely fathomable.
Some may say it’s the Big Bang.
Something may have started from nothing, or the crashing of two sources of life harnessing energy.
Matter is neither created nor destroyed… but somehow & someway this whole universe was created.
Unless in some way, the universe & God & the entire solar system & elements were just here in some shape or form since the beginning of time.
And for all it’s worth, it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that there was no beginning: of time & the universe. That time & the universe— like God — has simply always been in continuous residual existence.
God could be anything to each kind of individual asked. You ask a little girl & she may say God is her parents who’ve always been there when she had nightmares or wanted to jump in their lap to give them a hug.
You ask an astrophysicist & he may say the universal planetary energy is God itself, causing & shaping everything in our periphery (I honestly just made that up… I have no idea what an astrophysicist does, but you get the point… we all conjure up our own idea of who & what God is).
This isn’t really a scientific read, or anything…
I studied psychology in college, not philosophy or science.
In actual reality, I know nothing more than that guy you always see on your morning commute. I know just as much about anything in relation to what happens to us when we die & religion & spirituality as anyone who has ever walked this earth & knows even the slightest thing about Tarot readings & astrology & all of that.
But for the longest time, I wanted to dive deeper into this subject.
I am slightly attuned to the more imaginative & non-morbid ideas of death… just an inkling I’ve had ever since smoking my first cigarette, experimenting with DMT trips, acid tabs & mushrooms & all of that.
I’ve thought about our place as little specks in the overarching grand scheme of this whole thing.
Back to my very first sentence used to start the whole article off, something I’ve always come back to — an idea:
When we die, I think we realize we were already dead…
It’s highly likely we wake up from the dream — the simulation — we are in to reality as it actually is…
So here goes my take on what happens the moment we die:
I believe, first & foremost, there is a Heaven & there is no Hell… for everyone. At least, it closer resembles Heaven than Hell: simply a soul’s place in which to exist in some outer realm & blissful ideal universal state of being known as the Afterlife… a place to grasp Nirvana.
Maybe… just maybe
We all go to whatever our version of the Afterlife is. No matter who we are & whatever we did… we will all experience a state of the Afterlife.
If we like to read & write, we’ll be surrounded by books & the ability to write. If we like to listen to music, we’ll have all of the music we need to listen to for all of eternity. If we like to draw, we’ll have new ink pens & sketchpads & colored pencils. If we like to drive cars, we’ll have a full garage with cars somewhere…
But that’s only because when we wake up from life’s dream, we’re now alive in a realization we’ve been dead the whole time & can still escape in ghostly form to places similar to the ones we enjoyed in our lifetime, from art shops to record stores & cafés.
I think we all end up waking up in a ghostly spiritual realm nearly equivalent to Heaven. But what we do on Earth now seeps into what we will ably do in the Afterlife. The Ghost & Soul carry on long after we die & we continue doing what we love, in this lifetime to the next after death. Death just really awakening us…
The way I look at it, from a philosophical standpoint… back to the religious aspect, the reasoning many follow in the lead of Jesus Christ lay in the fact He symbolizes most of what could ever be found to be Holy in mankind… not that he is or isn’t God himself… God made in man’s image… I still, to this day, debate whether He & God are two separate distinct beings or one in the Same Trinity so that when He was praying to God in the garden or whatever & was tempted by Satan, He was actually just praying to Himself… maybe God & Jesus Christ & The Holy Spirit & the Devil & all of the demons & angels within the galaxy all play a balancing act.
…who is Satan anyways? Just the devil pimping out evil. But angels & demons involve themselves with all things — not necessarily in as such extremes as God & Satan — but on a smaller level… like some optimistic angelic girl in one ear & a bad bitch up to no good in the other… there’s angels & demons to all of this.
Maybe… this is all speculation.
But maybe… when we die, we become an angel or demon for those still living on Earth. We whisper in their ear or cause the onset of certain outcomes.
Or maybe, when we die, the soul has a way of haunting or blessing other individuals in close bond to that individual on Earth during a transformation in which the soul escapes from its bodily cage.
I believe the main reason, in the life we live out currently, to follow in the lead of Jesus Christ & the main point for why we should all emulate Jesus Christ, was because he not only showed us how to truly love & heal others via words & actions & how to handle all levels of suffering with the upmost grace & dignity… but also never ever gave up on a better, kinder, brighter & lighter world…
By living in the footsteps of Jesus Christ (speaking from studies in Psychology at UC Davis & my own fascination with the idea of the human psyche), we essentially give ourselves a means of vulnerable transference of our pain into the arms of another being, blessing us with a perspective that, no matter what we go through on Earth, there’s someone out there — in this case Jesus Christ, as well as every one of the ancestors who’ve gone before us — who has surely been through a similar, if not somewhat greater pain than the one we may face today. This transference of our pain to Christ makes our pain easier to deal with.
We need only to compare the first world problems we currently face (such as stress of raising a family or bitter resentment & jealousy of a girl who’s with a boy you like or a lingering substance abuse problem) to what Jesus went through in his 3 days on the Hill of Calvary — being brutally crucified & made an absolute mockery of & pretty much completely beaten & tortured in front of his Mother, the Virgin Mary & his closest friends — the Disciples & Apostles.
When we compare the problems we go through with the crucifixion itself, we gain a whole new perspective on the severity of our issues & realize our lives are not falling apart & there’s still a lot more to live for.
By achieving the smallest little things today, we unlock a way of blessing the many generations to come after us — with the works we do in our lifetime.
Who knows, maybe in the year 3030, my great-great-great nephew will be on his holographic watch, or whatever new technology they have then & will pull up my Substack or website.
You never know, the Apps we use today could simply just be viewed on more futuristic technology in the days to come. Essentially, people may still interact with older sites of the .com era: apps like WordPress or Substack shared from one person to another.
In his life, Mahatma Gandhi wrote something along the lines of, ‘whatever we do in life is insignificant, but it’s very important that we do it.’
I wholeheartedly & sincerely agree with this. On a further note, I think we are all artists.
Whatever our art form is — whether that be music or sports or business or whatever (it’s all an artistic form of pursuit & expression… yea, even in business & law, the way they handle changes on the stock market & analytically defend a case… so too an actor or writer or someone who likes to draw or a chef) — we all usually seek to potentially leave a legacy that will impact generations down the line, hoping to exchange some more light, insight & wisdom about this universe, leading always to a better day tomorrow than it was yesterday.
So, in the Afterlife as well, we look back on all we did in this lifetime. So the way I think about it, in my mind, when we die & enter into the Afterlife, the legacy & things we did for others & the things we created are all important… as one day, we will look back on our lives, either in a Hellish state of regret & shame (most likely not the case) or a type of ever so graceful & Heavenly acceptance & sincere warmth & awe. Similar to the way Max always wanted to die as light as a feather in Marcus Zusak’s novel The Book Thief narrated from death’s point of view.
I like to think there is a Heaven — or in this case The Afterlife — simply because — for instance — if Jesus had said his final words, ‘they know not what they do’ in his last most agonizing ab crushing breaths for nothing & really had never resurrected or ascended into Heaven… then maybe this was all for nothing.
Maybe the impossibility of a world without any logical reasoning to existence is why people cling onto old fashioned traditional religious ideals within the Holy Bible & the idea of Jesus dying for our sins… almost as a way of writing off our lives… that whatever we do, Jesus has already saved us & will soon enact a promise to deliver us into Heaven.
It’s easier to believe in salvation than it is to ignore it altogether, let alone contemplate going to Hell.
A little bit ago… someone asked me if I knew I was saved. I was stunned & puzzled at this question & didn’t know how to answer them. I wanted to rebuttal it quickly: ‘how would you ever know until your time is up…’
For the longest time, I’ve considered myself a Zen Taoist Catholic… I was confirmed Catholic on a religious level, but on a spiritual level — my cozy little niche, where I spent most of my time residing in (the spiritual realm) & contemplating — I believed, not necessarily in any sort of Buddhist ideology, but in the Zen offshoots of it, most especially the teachings of Lao Tzu in his 2 part book: the Tao te Ching… which had as heavy an impact on my Spiritual beliefs as the Bible would reasonably hold to any old die hard Christians.
To a Taoist, Tao is essentially the Way, or the fundamental life essence in Everything: the Godly element in life. The Tao is the source & ideal of all existence — ultimately the same as saying God, but instead of referring to a being, the Tao refers to an almost atmospheric element.
When we act unnaturally, we upset the natural balance of the Tao, which is always aiming at perfect equilibrium within the universe, the balancing of opposites. Wu-Wei, or ‘the ebb & flow of non-action, responding with as minimal action as possible’, is one of the core concepts in Taoism, to not fight against — for example — the tides of the river, but to move in alignment with the changing tide & flow of the river’s current.
The minute we start opposing the Natural Way (the Tao) of the world, we are working against some greater universal energy & these actions could end up squelched & disrupted. We must flow with the universe. The Tao realigns all things to their true destiny, inspiring & initiating only what was meant to come to fruition.
In Taoism, what is meant to be will always be, as what is meant to be is also aligned with some greater universal nature. The Tao conspires in our favor so long as we accept & embrace whatever comes our way & go with the ebbs & flows of this life.
Anyways, to keep the story moving forward, I’d been messing around with some substances — the substances I always preferred to mess with were stimulants, whether coffee or black tea or nicotine & all of the others that follow suit & my pharmaceuticals prescribed to me were always pretty much sedatives.
Finding a chemical balance in the Bipolar ADHD of it all was always the trickiest thing. Had to figure it out. One of these days, all of it wouldn’t feel so awfully tiresome…
I wound up at a Christian Rehab Facility. One of those places that bleeds hard the whole mission statement, ‘Jesus Saves’.
They had made me hold up this sign one of my first days there as cars drove past. I was working at one of their job sites trying to get clean. The sign said ‘Honk for Jesus’. I was semi enthused & laughing my way through holding the sign when two pretty attractive girls drove by & flipped me off, giggling & laughing as they drove by, a little bit laughing both at & with me… I guess in this new day & age, it pays more to invest in a pack of Tarot Cards than to invest in a Holy Bible.
At the Christian Rehab Spot, we had designated smoke times, bible study in the morning & we had to work some time at one of the job sites — auto repair, auto detail, construction, kitchen, landscaping, etc. (after a few days, I helped with Auto Detail).
But every Sunday, without fail, we would be required to attend two Church services. One of the churches had an almost cult-like audience (but also some of the cutest girls too so I didn’t mind getting dressed up to honor God every Sunday… but was still far away from being there for the right reasons, still in it to kick the temptations of drugs momentarily & pretty girls never hurt). After all, it was an all-male Rehab so I took what I could get as far as the girls went, even if it was only a glance in passing on Sunday. A few of the leading members of the church liked to visit us Rehab Boys over at the Mission.
Well, this guy sits down & wants to know my life story. Does he really care or does he just want to make sure I’m not another delinquent attending his church? Should I give him the TL;DR or my whole life story? I decide to spill off somewhere in between.
Yeah… I guess I’ll tell you the gist of how I got here, brotha…
Had a couple loving girlfriends in the past… in one of my more intense semi-recent relationships with my cute & thoughtful college ex, I joined a ski or snowboard club in college where I started to party lots more & partake in extracurriculars. I tried this & that for the first time in the winter of 2015-2016 after a summer spent at music festivals. I had picked up a little cigarette habit too, in late Spring of 2015.
In a few years, my ex & I broke up, after an unsuccessful stint with her in New York trying to land a job at SoundCloud & things of that nature, while she was going to school at Columbia for her masters. She was applying for a PhD program at Harvard a little later. I was dragging her down from her true potential & she only clung onto me so tightly because I was something safe & comfortable.
It was time for both of us to break away amicably, spread our wings & live independently of one another for the first time in three & a half years. The break up was about a year in the making & was an absolutely necessary move.
We smoked a cigarette in the park on the Upper Westside, even though she had given up smoking. I told her, just this last time, to smoke a cigarette with me again, to share one final smoke, almost more symbolic than anything, before I grabbed my already packed bags & took the first plane headed back home to California.
She called me crying nearly everyday for about a month to two months after, but soon fell into the arms of her soon-to-be-husband & all was alright in both of our worlds again.
I moved to the town we’d always have our Ski or Snowboard Club cabin trips at. I worked a small little local job as a barista & sandwich artist & flatbread cook. All was pretty good, but I started to fall into little drug tendencies & temptations again.
The drugs & alcohol were always around most weekends. The girls came & went, like cigarettes. I had a few crushes & a few fell through that I hoped would lead to more. My heart felt broken, not because of a girl or anything like that… just this utterly numb & overwhelmingly barren void I felt — some inexplicable void — I had no cure for. Like there was just a gaping hole in my heart no girls could heal me of… the only thing that did the trick for a brief instant was a drag off the cig & some drug habit.
Soon enough, it caught up to me & I was about to get into some trouble if I didn’t check into some mental hospital soon. Plus, I really hadn’t been feeling the way I typically do mentally, which — as an impulsive Aries with Bipolar 1 & an undeveloped frontal lobe — did lead to more susceptibility to risky decisions. Usually, in life — when offered — I could never refuse substances. I never had the little voice in my head telling me no, just a strong urge in the other direction, saying ‘fuck it, why not…’ & I’d use.
3 mental hospitals later & they ended up transferring me from the ski town to a college town about three hours away… away from the degeneracy of the old town & I was back to square one & ground zero. I knew nobody & was broke & homeless. But there was a cute little low barrier homeless shelter. I stayed there for several months while I got back on my feet.
I didn’t know what ‘low barrier’ meant until I had been there for a minute. I guess it pretty much means, so long as you get high off the property & weren’t found with any sort of substance on you, you could get away with getting high everyday & staying at the shelter. The staff was pretty nonchalant & carefree about the whole drug policy & hardly ever enforced it. But when I first got there, I had tried to evade any type of drug scene like the one back home.
I kept just smoking cigarettes — 2 packs of Montego Blue 100s — everyday, continuously sipping on Taster’s Choice Instant Coffee for the first few months with money from my dad & EBT Food Stamp Money.
I’d fuck around from time to time, but wanted to get away from any lingering kinds of drug tendencies. So I went to rehab after checking into a hospital & crisis center a few times in a row… off to the land where you read a Bible regularly & are not permitted access to phones. I’d be writing my family handwritten cards & playing guitar from time to time & listening to music off an old radio.
And here I am, talking to this guy who currently asks if I know I’m saved. To answer the question… yes in some ways, as someone previously baptized, I like believing I’m saved.
But there’s so much more that this man asking me this question didn’t see in relation to the whole picture of existence. Essentially, we must save ourselves by our actions, words & responses to the things we feel. Heaven isn’t a destination after we die, in the same way the Afterlife is. Heaven is a state of utter fulfillment relative to our sweetly impermanent lives on Earth. Heaven is a desired state of blissful peaceful coexistence in life as a human being. We create & manifest life as a blissful & Heavenly experience when we act, speak & feel in a way that invigorates & revitalize us, going towards positive high vibrational energy & staying away from the lower forms of energy seeking to drain us.
Life is suffering. We know that, as showcased by all we could put pen to paper on about all of the things we’ve been forced to or happened to endure over the span of our lifetime.
Jesus Christ (the Heavenly Father) showed us the true meaning of sacrifice, suffering for the good of humanity & those around Him. But there’s many cases of suffering that go even beyond the utmost pain suffered by Lord Christ on the Cross. Maybe they don’t go beyond that fateful day on the cross, but nonetheless there are many cases of extreme levels of suffering in this world, in our lives & others’.
Think about Jewish people forced to endure starvation & being gassed in gas chambers — months on end in concentration camps with hardly any water or food, or any small amounts of human dignity afforded to them.
Or the mere existence of slavery back in the day & the hate given black people for years & years & years… without even a hint of any remorse by those seeking to subordinate them…
Jesus suffered 3 of the most grueling days. Jewish people suffered months on end of inhumane agonizing torture & black people years (nearly a few centuries) of cruelty towards them.
Same with Tibetan monks, who in protest to some war — I’ve seen this somewhere on the internet… I can’t place it, but I’ve seen somewhere that as a way of protesting some government regime or war going on (Tibetan monks, as I was saying) — actually walk into a gas lit flared fire with just the shawl or whatever they got covering them — the little robe that monks always wear — and in some kind of way, set themselves on fire & stay perfectly calm in spite of being burned to death as a result of their complete meditative ability to abandon & dispel any feelings of suffering & pain.
So many of us go on hurting ourselves & others, yet so few of us master the artful gift of overcoming & releasing the traumatic constraints of lifelong suffering.
In Buddhism, as detailed in Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha about a bodhisattva — who’d one day go on to become the Buddha — Siddhartha goes through every walk of life, from a life of wealth & excess to a life of lust to a life rejecting all wealth & material possessions. He realized, no matter what, in every walk of life, there are four noble truths.
Here are the Four Noble Truths in detail:
The Truth of Suffering (Dukkha):
Life is characterized by suffering, dissatisfaction, or a fundamental unease.
— This encompasses physical pain, emotional distress, the impermanence of pleasant experiences & the anxiety that comes with the transient nature of all things.
That is why, I say, the Afterlife will be the release of all of the chains & sufferings of this life.
The Truth of the Cause of Suffering (Samudaya):
The root cause of suffering is craving, thirst, or attachment to worldly desires and experiences.
— This attachment stems from ignorance about the true nature of reality… inability to grasp an innate interconnectedness of oneself in relation to everything in existence.
The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering (Nirodha):
There is an end to suffering.
— Suffering can cease when the craving & attachment that cause it are extinguished.
…this state of liberation is known as Nirvana.
The Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering (Magga):
The way to end suffering is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path. This is a path of spiritual practice, living ethically, and cultivating wisdom to free the mind from ignorance & suffering.
The Eightfold Path is a set of eight practices — 3 core points, 8 in total
Wisdom:
- Right View — Having a clear understanding of the Four Noble Truths and the nature of reality, including karma and impermanence
- Right Intention — The resolve to be free of ill will, harm, and cruelty, and to instead cultivate compassion & non-violence.
Ethical Conduct:
- Right Speech — Abstaining from lying, slander, harsh words & idle gossip. Speaking truthfully, kindly & constructively
- Right Action — Behaving peacefully & harmoniously by not killing, stealing, or engaging in sexual misconduct
- Right Livelihood — Earning a living in an ethical way that does not harm others (trading in forms of goods & the arts, etc., not trading in sorts of intoxicants, etc.)
Mental Discipline:
- Right Effort — The intentional effort to prevent unwholesome states of mind from arising and to cultivate wholesome states
- Right Mindfulness — Maintaining a clear and non-judgmental awareness of the body, feelings, mind, & thoughts in the present moment
- Right Concentration — Developing a focused & universally aligned mind through meditation & other sorts of ways to clear the head to ultimately achieve a state of inner peace & perfect tranquility
The eightfold path cultivates wisdom, ethics & mental discipline to achieve liberation from suffering & so too enhancement of current consciousness & a blissful state of universally awakened enlightenment.
So, in a sense, the eightfold path is all about what we feel & think, respectively & respectably making moves based on what we feel & think to cultivate a higher meditative state fundamentally beyond capacities of usual suffering.
By always residing a little above it all, we can ignore all lower level energy forces eagerly awaiting to drag us down & we can escape all subsiding drudgeries, monotonies & ways of suffering through brand new focused mentalities, total wisdom on karma & impermanence & ethical ways to act from this life to the next lifetime.
Most vitally, in both the life we currently lead & in the Afterlife that follows, we naturally will end up gravitating to a Spiritual state of being, such as the ones found within Taoist & Zen Philosophies: existing according to the ideals of the Yin-yang, balancing counterparts, establishing a sense of collective consciousness & finding a rhythmic wave & flow to life in the hopes of achieving the ideology of the elusive & rarely grasped state of Nirvana.
The only difference from this life to the Afterlife is that the Soul Being experiences a constant never ending state of Nirvana, which is defined — in Buddhism, as well as in Zen & Taoist doctrines — as a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the being is released from the effects of karma & the cycle of death & rebirth… the final goal in the Afterlife is to be aligned with the Tao & its universal energy & live on a moment-to-moment zen level basis & live in ever bliss states of Nirvana.
˚☽˚.⋆ 
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