An Excellent God

The other day I learned that a friend of mine is terminally ill with cancer. That is never a nice thing to hear about someone. I imagine it is even less pleasant to hear about yourself.

Whenever I hear this kind of news, my initial reaction is disbelief, followed by sadness, then I hope that it is either a misdiagnosis or that the end comes quickly and painlessly. Once I have run through the myriad feelings that I have for my friend and gone over all of the fun memories of him/her, I begin to think of myself.

What effect will this passing have on me?

Sure, I will have lost a friend, but every action has an impact on the world around it, and death is another of those things impacting us. I would like to think that I will reflect on my life and attempt to live every day as if it is a precious gift from heaven. I might, for a couple of weeks and then it will be back to my old ways of pissing my time away sleeping or watching TV.

Every now and then I wonder just what happens to the person once he or she passes on. I don’t believe in a heaven or hell, I can almost believe there is a great reward at the end of a successful life, but I don’t believe in eternal damnation for mistakes that I made in moments of weakness. There just doesn’t seem to be a point to life if that is all there is, and I’d like to think that even if I haven’t made a great success of this life, at least it has some meaning. It is nice to think that there will be a bright light at the end, and all of your loved ones will be there to greet you. I am quite fond of myself, but surely all of those loved ones must have something better to do than hang around waiting for me to pass on. If they aren’t busy, then what do they do all day? Play the harp? Some of them were hesitant about spending time with me when we were both alive, I can’t see them happy about meeting me in the afterlife.

I tend to lean towards the far eastern beliefs that view this life as a learning experience and we keep coming back in subsequent lives until we manage to get things right. There is a problem with that of course is who decides when you have finally gotten things right. What is right? If you do get it right, then what comes next? If there is a next, then what happens after you get the next right? Or the next after that? When does it end? What happens when it ends, or does it ever end? I hope that it isn’t an eternity of learning, because I spent some time in school and although I enjoyed the time I spent, I was happy to move on to a more productive application of what I had learned.

My personal thought is that once we have gone through all of these many lifetimes and yet more lifetimes in other dimensions, we become God. We don’t reunite with God, we become God. We have learned all that there is to know and since the universe is without end, there is room for everyone to set out their God shingle and run things. I imagine that there are good Gods and less good Gods, I would like to think that I will be one of the good ones and there will be a minimum of “smiting” and I would like to keep a little higher profile than the God we have on Earth. Every now and then I will appear to stop a war, feed the hungry and heal the sick. You just never know.

I hope my friend has a good passing and since he has been a good human, I would imagine he will be an excellent God eventually.