Seraphin Murmur wrote:
This is like putting myself in my filthy shirt's shoes, so to speak. If I were to be taken off and thrown into boiling hot water and flung around for half an hour, I might start to feel that the person who owns me doesn't really like me. However, the fact is that it's only after going through a wash cycle that I as a shirt can be used again.
We don't put our dirty clothes in the washing machine to punish them. We put them through what seems like a rough and painful procedure only to make them clean and usable again. The water loosens the dirt, and the force of being swirled around shakes any stain or grease off completely. Far from hurting our clothes, I'm actually doing them a favor by putting them through this process.
I like the analogy but dislike the context and implication. It still implies that someone or something is judging my actions and keeping a tally of things that were deemed wrong or bad.
Who gets to do that? When did I sign up for that?
I do believe there is an overall design to the universe, and there is a goal. I also feel confidently that the river of time was just about the only Sumerian concept that didn't get utterly corrupted by the Ruling Theocracy toward the end of their reign.
The Sumerian
The river of time is both deep and wide, and our spirits come about from the energies present in the river. This is how a new soul comes about. We choose to exist. From the elements and energies that existed from the big bang, we can form ourselves in the rivers energies. If we choose that we should want to experience the different flavors of reality we can move into a body and be born.
When we died that energy is returned to the river. We can move along with the river and choose another point to leave the water, or we can reenter life through another body. Time has continued to push on with the flow of the river, so the process of being born again takes away from us some of the energy we built up, we have to fit a whole life into a new brain, which could be problematic so for the most part, we leave it behind, but we can sometimes remember, and from time to time individuals are reborn still connected to the energies they left behind.
My concept isn't much different. All things happen inside the scope of the river. So even the other dimensions that exist are all fed by the same river and they flow from the force of the river the same as the world we sit in now.
The questions that beg to me are about the veil.
The physical barriers between the dimensions. Most witches, and a large portion of Wiccans in general agree with the veil. Though I haven't seen many express an opinion about multiple veils. Just one encompassing barrier between us and everything else.
I understand the general concepts of shamanism and the spirit worlds, and even those seem extraordinarily limited in scope considering what we know as a species about energy.
With the endless universe postulation the river model is just as consistent as the root star model and collapsing dimension engine model so I look at all of them as one concept.
In that case, I'll explain how I understand it. All we know is constantly moving. Instead of the cyclic model of a big bang, then a big collapse which results in another big bang, to intifnity, (or until the return function reaches inverse square) or the infinite string concept that because of overlapping resonance infinite universes are constantly being generated in both directions, the Endless universe pushes both of those models together.
There was a big bang. All things flowed out from it, the overlap in vibration resonance (literally where realities collide) did create an infinite string of new universes. BUT...the density and gravity of the ROOT universe and the ROOT star are so massive and dense that new universes created from weak interactions of vibration resonance aren't strong enough to escape the root so they get collapsed, which causes new pushes inside the universes that did escape the gravity of the root. In turn, those interactions create more vibrations which create more realities, some of which are caused by strong enough events to escape and become a new thing, and some are weak and get collapsed and used as fuel to keep moving the universes that already exist.
It makes an engine. For all intents and purposes, an endless reality engine.
So in this model, once our unique energy/aura/field resonance/ soul is created we can go back in to the river, and go from the river into one of the other realities that exists. Or loop back into this world to try it out again. Or we can stay behind and stay linked as just energy.
The scary concept is what could happen if I get back to the river, and I choose to jump into a newly created reality, and that reality isn't strong enough to survive the root.
That is one of the instances where I imagine souls are really lost. They are collapsed with the weaker reality, and torn into parts and they make up a wave in the river that keeps pushing everything along.
The other thing the constantly speaks to me about this model, is that it has "roots"...and the roots support the branching and continuous growth and the branching supplies the energy and materials that the roots need to keep growing, and that is so close to the tree of life in concept that it feels like puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.
So to sum up. That which makes us..."us"..has been and will continue to be a unique form of energy. Self generated from the root of existence.
The majority of things that I feel people ascribe to our spirit and potentials for the afterlife are constructs based on our living principles of "culture", "civilization" , and the "social contract" alive humans work inside of while our meat machines are bumping into each other on this plane.
That isn't to say we don't take some of those concepts with us back to the river and then carry them in to other realities. Probability indicates if we can, we would. So that allows for further constructs outside our reality and the reality of the soul...but at the end of the day, I see it as improbable that my soul has to be "cleaned" for any reason.
Who is to say that my perceived cruelty wasn't required so that someone else could have a learning and personal growth experience that they needed to understand a larger concept of self. So how does my instance of cruelty get judged? And by whom if it in fact led to an advance for another individuals soul?
At least in my opinion.
now here