What do you think heaven looks like?

David Vaughn75 said:So maybe the whole point of heaven is that it’s totally tailored to you—you finally get exactly what you want. 🤷

The real kicker is, once you get bored of it—kind of like how a kid loses interest in a brand-new toy after a week—what happens then?

Then you reincarnate, and by the time you're struggling through life on earth, you certainly won't be bored anymore. 😁

I think we've finally cracked the code of the universe and existence itself! 🙂

To God, it's simply a matter of boredom...

mistybison said:Then you reincarnate, and by the time you're struggling through life on earth, you certainly won't be bored anymore. 😁

I think we've finally cracked the code of the universe and existence itself! 🙂

To God, it's simply a matter of boredom...

🤣

The mystery, the meaning, and the whole damn purpose.

Morgan Peterson6 said:I remember reading this story ages ago about a guy who actually died and was clinically dead for three days. Apparently, there’s even medical records to back it up—he was dealing with cancer and made this one final request to his caregiver: don't bury him or report him dead for three whole days. I can't recall his name, but he was a staunch atheist while he was alive.
Once he passed, he merged into this massive cosmic consciousness. He described it as a state of pure, unconditional love—honestly, it sounds like it would be deeper and more intense than anything we could ever dream up. He saw this incredible mandala formed by human souls, and he saw souls passing through, guided by figures like Buddha or Jesus... basically, whatever you believed in during your life is what meets you on the other side. Since he was an atheist, he just merged into that mandala without any specific figure waiting for him. He wrote so much about it—just beautiful descriptions of this "heaven." Mostly it was about love, oneness, and the realization that we're all just one single soul...
I've also read Anita Moorjani, and she writes about that exact same thing—that feeling of merging with unconditional love.

But then there's this other stuff... honestly, it's the scariest thing I've ever read.
It makes your blood run cold.
And seriously, if you're someone who's easily influenced, reading this might leave you living in fear for the rest of your life.
Because once you mess up here, the devils come dragging you down.

Isn't it true that be Gloria is the only one who experienced paradise and visions of hell? Or does one need to have a brainwashed mind for that to happen?

You either lie, lose your mind, or end up with a brainwashed perspective that treats hallucinations like they're some profound truth.

Pure light. Just blinding white light.
It felt like looking through a window straight into paradise, while everything else was just the pitch-black void of hell on either side.
This hit me right when I thought my life was over—and honestly, part of me probably did die then, because a piece of who I was vanished in that moment. It’s funny how people call these experiences "hallucinations," as if they’re just glitches in the brain, yet everyone seems to encounter them precisely when they're facing death. If they're just hallucinations, why does the timing always sync up so perfectly with mortality? It’s a strange coincidence, though not a new one for me; I found myself staring at that same light again during another near-death experience.

THEY AREN'T HALLUCINATIONS!

I've gone through Glorjin's little booklet a few times now. It really just reinforces everything our faith teaches us, doesn't it?

bluemason3 said:You either lie, lose your mind, or end up with a brainwashed perspective that treats hallucinations like they're some profound truth.

It’s always so incredibly easy to slap a "crazy" label on someone else, isn't it? Honestly, if there were a machine out there capable of scanning a brain to detect hallucinations, I’d gladly volunteer to be hooked up to it just to prove I'm seeing things clearly.
Simply dismissing something as a hallucination doesn't really hold much water as actual evidence.

The whole point of a hallucination is how convincing it feels; you can't tell it apart from reality. So, just because someone subjectively feels like something is real, it doesn't actually mean anything.

On the flip side, every religion comes loaded with these claims about mystical insights or what happens after death. But funny enough, those specific religious concepts always seem to perfectly align with that particular cultural and religious background.

It’s the same deal with spiritual experiences. In my own experimentation with different faiths, I noticed those experiences just adapted to whatever "movie" was playing at the time.

Objective reality, however, doesn't shift just because your worldview changes.

We have zero evidence for these religious narratives outside of someone's subjective experience—or a lie. On the other hand, we do have evidence for hallucinations: how they are shaped by an individual's mental framework, their susceptibility to suggestion, how they can be triggered by the exact same methods used by religious contemplatives, and the fact that people experiencing them (or perhaps delusions) simply cannot distinguish them from reality.

I'm not saying this implies madness; that isn't a medical term anyway. Anyone can experience hallucinations in certain situations, though some mental health conditions might make them much more frequent.

All things considered, based on what we know right now, a hallucination or a lie is a far more probable explanation and a more logical conclusion than religious faith in their reality.

David Vaughn75 said:I’m throwing this out there for anyone who actually believes in an afterlife—but hey, if you’re a skeptic, feel free to jump in and tell me why you think it’s all nonsense too.

So, here's what's rattling around in my brain: do we actually get a physical body in heaven, or are we just floating around in some vague, spiritual void? If we do get bodies back, who gets the final say on what we look like—is it God making the calls, or do we get some kind of cosmic autonomy?
And what’s the crowd situation like? Are we talking about a private VIP lounge where it's just us, or is the place packed with other people and... I don't know, other beings hanging out in the same space?
Is paradise basically just some pristine botanical garden like Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden, or is it more like a non-stop, eternal rave where we can indulge in whatever we want without any consequences?

Anyway, how do you guys picture it?

Personally, I'm picturing a world totally free from religion and all those hypocritical gods.

Karen Anderson35 said:I've gone through Glorjin's little booklet a few times now. It really just reinforces everything our faith teaches us, doesn't it?

That’s not "faith" teaching us anything—that’s just the Catholic Church, and those two things are definitely not the same thing.

Karen Anderson35 said:I've gone through Glorjin's little booklet a few times now. It really just reinforces everything our faith teaches us, doesn't it?

Lightning hit him from behind and fried his
insides, but he was totally fine on the outside. Even though he was
pretty young, he was a man completely devoted to God.
He had a special reverence for the Child-of-JESUS. He even wore
HIS medal inside a quartz crystal around his
neck. Forensic experts actually claimed that the
quartz is what attracted the lightning.

http://www.i-h-s.eu/www/gloria/htdoc...gnis_kroat.pdf

The Child-of-JESUS definitely has some strange ways of reaching people...

I spent some time scrolling through a couple of similar threads on two different forums, and it basically boils down to this:

Screw a paradise where my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother, my daughter, my son, my grandpa, my grandma, my best friend, my parrot, my lab, my favorite author, my favorite professor, and even the war buddy who saved my life... aren't there.

Given that—as we saw in that other thread about religion (THE PROBLEM OF EVIL)—the ratio of the saved to the damned is roughly 1 : 1,000,000 according to most Christian mystics and saints, it means it’s practically impossible for any family to enter paradise together in its full capacity (parents, kids, grandparents, grandkids), right?

When you bring that up, believers usually respond something like this:

"Hey, buddy, you've got it wrong. In paradise, we won't remember our earthly lives; we'll be something else entirely..."

My response:

If we're going to be something else entirely, then it won't even be us. In other words, it's a double screw-you to have a paradise where "we" don't even exist. Believers clearly don't realize what they're actually saying when they lean on that "argument" (the blessed forgetting)...

However, as Anthony Perez9 said (I haven't verified it myself, but I take his word for it), the Catholic Church teacher St. Thomas Aquinas goes way beyond just claiming that very few people will be saved; he actually suggests that the greatest joy of the saved in paradise will consist of finding satisfaction in the suffering of the damned...

Can anyone tell me that this kind of teaching isn't the most monstrous and immoral thing imaginable?

So, what happens if you’ve gone through three or four different wives in your lifetime—which one actually gets to go to paradise with you?

David Vaughn75 said:So, what happens if you’ve gone through three or four different wives in your lifetime—which one actually gets to go to paradise with you?

None of them. You go there with the sirens and the honey wine. 🧐

Unless you were a total jerk, though. 😁

Paradise is likely some kind of state of bliss and perfection that remains entirely subjective to the individual...
What one person considers paradise might actually be someone else's version of hell.

It follows, then, that within this "paradise," a person can only experience a holographic projection of their own specific bliss and perfection, because they simply cannot force another soul into their particular version of heaven against that person's will.

Movement is existence. It’s basically at the core of all... faith.

..in paradise ...amidst pure abundance, right next to that apple with "NO" written on it.

Paradise is like something out of a Laza Lazarevic story—a place where everyone is basically a superhero.

I’ve been thinking lately that maybe heaven and hell aren't some distant places we go to, but rather states of mind we carry right here on earth... and once the body finally gives out, you just end up experiencing whatever reality you've spent your life building inside your own head, which means to me, paradise isn't some far-off thing waiting on the other side... 😍

rustymaker5 said:I’ve been thinking lately that maybe heaven and hell aren't some distant places we go to, but rather states of mind we carry right here on earth... and once the body finally gives out, you just end up experiencing whatever reality you've spent your life building inside your own head, which means to me, paradise isn't some far-off thing waiting on the other side... 😍

🤣

That's one way to look at it, anyway.

The other possibility is that there's absolutely nothing after death.

rustymaker5 said:I’ve been thinking lately that maybe heaven and hell aren't some distant places we go to, but rather states of mind we carry right here on earth... and once the body finally gives out, you just end up experiencing whatever reality you've spent your life building inside your own head, which means to me, paradise isn't some far-off thing waiting on the other side... 😍

But what happens if dementia hits and you lose your grip on everything? Is there dementia in heaven, too?