Is there an afterlife?
For some time I've envisioned death as a release from the confinements of your earthly existence, whene you return to the full awareness of your higher self, where you are no longer concerned about your life on earth because you understand what it was. I imagine that you are freed to connect with the others out there fully again, not so alone in the way that it is on earth. You return to the great symphony of voices of the heavens and join your song with the others. I imagine that you'd be free to choose to come back to earth again if you wanted - or perhaps to some other entirely different world or existence.
Or... death is simply the end of our organism's lifespan, and the end is The End. There is nothing after that. Just because this is hard to conceive in your head doesn't mean that it isn't the right answer.
I am more at peace with either one now than I was a few years ago, because my mortality has made itself known with age, though I still would like to avoid a lot of suffering when it's my time to go.
I do not subscribe to the rigid beliefs of most religions, which indeed sometimes do seem designed to pacify the people and turn them into sheep, as some have suggested. I do not believe there is an all powerful god and creator who controls the world. And while I have seen every attempt at any kind of magic fail, I have no evidence to believe it exists, nonetheless I see a kind of magic in the world, and I feel the symphony of the heavens singing in the high winds above, in a joining of the voices of those like myself.
