Choice, Individuality and Death

“I am not afraid of death; I have come to accept it. I am just not ready for it”
No sooner than I read that statement in today’s newspaper- the Scottish mirror, that I began to think, how true does the statement relate to me?
Is it with advancing age, or is it purely an elevated state of mind, that one begins to accept life/death and come to terms with it?
As a child, I was so very afraid of death and the concept of dying. What happens next, what goes on once you are locked up in a box, covered with dirt, dead to the world as we know it, dead to reality, to existence?
Each religion deals with death and the concept of it differently. I remember my malims (religious teachers), telling me of the awful things that will happen to the unbelievers in the grave. That definitely terrified me senseless and still does till today. I still think at any moment in my sleep I could just drift off into another dimension, another world, what have you!
I then feverently begin to pray forgiveness for all of my sins and recite my one and special surah that I believe clears my mind. Half way in between a state of fear and calmness, I drift off into sleep.
Now at age almost the age of **, I now regard death as a bit of a mystery, not with abject fear as I did in my youth but with a sense of bewilderment.
If I died now, what do I leave behind? I have no real achievements in the real sense of the word, family is weird, friends- almost erratically non existent, relationships at standstill, possessions-shoes, music and clothes.
Religious sacrifices none.
All and above what would like to think I leave behind for others to carry on is my love for God and devotion that I am still in the process of acquiring, and also ultimate love through understanding and belief that yes! There is a force that governs the universe, someone who holds the key to my destiny.

As with the question of death, comes the question of heaven and hell.
I will assume that no one wants to go to hell. At least I am safe in the assumption that I don’t. That is my greatest fear- Hell. The notion of being outcast of being rejected left to rot in a burning furnace of mega super hot oven temperature.
What is heaven, what is hell, does it exist??
For me based on what I have been doctrined into believing from youth - It does, so much so that I try to avoid going to hell by doing things that I know are good.

This raises a question for me here …., Can true goodness be measured by the good you do just purely based on religious belief that it will land you in heaven ? or is it based on that you doing it for the sake of doing it. Not for any beneficial gain.

I remember an argument my mum has with some Muslim doctrine in that we were told that for every act there is a reward for everything, every good deed there is a reward, in that people are now motivated by the reward as opposed to the concept of being naturally good.
I find myself falling into this category sometimes.
I might not want to be good, but then I remember hell and I am forced into being good. My proposal on this then shifts as I feel the good will not count because it’s not intentional. It is motivated by reward, kind of like bribery; I will do this so I can get …that… in return.
We have all been told as children at some point, do good and you will end up in heaven, do bad and u will be in hell.

But what is good and what is bad??

In as much as I firmly respect each person’s individuality and each person’s sense of reality, I am quite aware that it is never uniform. I cannot think exactly the same as another person. I can share some processes of thought but in some cases the result might not be the same or in a twisty reasoning our conclusion might be the same but the process of thought might be completely different.

So what defines good and what defines bad??

Because with individuality, I respect the fact that what is good to me might not necessarily be good to the other person.
The same reasoning is to be applied to threesomes. Some people like it some people don’t.
So what is the standard of measuring good and evil??
I guess one such standard of the 10 commandments are pretty reasonable but what of the grey areas that fall btw them. What happens then??

How is it possible for one person to tell me what is good and evil ??

We are all shaped by events that happen in and around us, and in more ways than one, our thought processes are based on past events and happenings that we as humans have been forced into accepting and coming to sense with.
So how in any way is maybe for instance a mad psychopath who unknown to everyone else is posing as a doctor, to tell me that I too am mad??
Or in a realistic sense, how is one malim, or priest to tell me what is good, acceptable or bad, when in their own lives they are flaunting the bad sides of the very things they ask us to do.
Why do I have to believe what their good is? or what their bad is?

Emotion is a very strong thing, and it is very hard for someone to seclude emotion from day to day life and reasoning.
We are all human beings. Granted.
And we fall prey to suspicious minds day after day.
But one damned person leading a flock of maybe for argument sake righteous people??? How does that figure. If one is the obedient type who just obeys w/o questioning, how then and why then should that person’s life be damned just because the leader is dammed.
These are the mysteries of life that elude me.

Fear is a great weapon. Fear of rejection, fear and force.

All my life I have been told to do, don’t question just do. What if what I am being told to do is not right/? What then. Am I to be bold and stand upright and stand for my cause or am I to fold due to undue pressure??
Self worth is also important.
For if I stand, I attain the right to call myself an individual I attain the right to be independent. I show integrity and display self worth.
But then again on the flip side of things, how I appraise myself will always be based on the circumstances and events unfolding round me/?
So if my appraisal is severely flawed in society’s eyes, then how do I justify my self worth?
If I have been doctrined into believing that my worth and my cause is just, where as in the true sense of things it is not, how do I make that leap of faith to either stick with what I know or to jump and be dammed/saved.

That is the problem with people and religion.
A devout catholic, Christian and Muslim will all argue theirs the true one.
But in all totality, we don’t really know do we??
We only know what we have been told and the little we have found out ourselves, but that in itself is still never truly enough. History is severely flawed, because events can never be captured accurately, without it being modified in the process of reported speech.
People first try to make sense of things themselves, they assimilate the information, and as it relates to them and makes sense for them, then they try to pass on the message. But the message in itself is flawed because they are offering their own interpretation of the events. Not as it actually occurred but as they see it. So confusion arises by the time the event is told about 20 or more so times, the true essence of the message is lost.
Different words mean different things to people, and like I said before the interpretation of things depends on circumstances that have shaped ones life from childhood to adulthood.
So why should I take ones persons interpretation of events when I know now that that event is flawed. Due to no fault of the mine or the event teller/??

An adage comes to mind, seek knowledge be it in china.
Never accept ones word for anything. Always come to A DECISION by ur self, from ur own reasoning factor, never take someone else’s decision.

Every man is equal. That part I agree with. We are all the same, same build up, same diseases, same genes, same everything. Every man is the same and every woman is the same as well.
The only thing that makes each and everyone of us individual is the different proportions in our building blocks, the things that make us human.
So still in that frame of mind, how can we then take each other person as our equal when in our mind we have been conditioned to mistrust, to be suspicious of the other person’s intentions towards us??
We are all equal.
We are all equal in that we, each and every one of us are all in the same boat. Our ability to be generous, to be kind to be mean malicious creatures, to be religious, all depends on the condition we receive as we are growing up. To God belongs all authority and all command in this life and the hereafter.
Each person has in them the ability to be kings, to be murderers to be psychopaths etc, but it is each person’s proportional inclination towards each act that differs i.e the proportionality is the advancement of the soul of the person.
Suffice to say that a plant grown in yellow water will have leaves that are pigmented yellow, one grown in blue water will have blue pigments and one grown in red water will have red pigments. We can also argue that if new pigments are introduced to a growing plant IF the greater proportion of the plants stock pigments are more than the introduced agent pigments than the plant will still have the same color.

It is very hard to say that you can treat two set of people equal. It is an almost impossible thing to do. How can you?
In many ways more that one you will always find yourself gravitating to one more than the other and in your quest to try to be equal, you then try to compensate for your actions by over trying with the other person, but then in trying to do that you make the situation imbalanced again.

I guess that is like, in as much as you want equality you cannot attain it except for with the grace of God. The key then if one cannot be equal is to be fair regardless of the consequence.
For in fairness you treat via circumstance and emotional factor so then, reasoning becomes a gravitating factor: this all depends on your interpretation of events.

I find life weird and complicated but I guess that’s the way it meant to be.