Face your fears-Death

Something I've done a lot of contemplating on lately.What I've found is that the deepest form of fear inevitably comes from one's unique uncomfortableness with death. I've suffered from this affliction, as I'm sure the vast majority of those reading have as well. If it's not death itself, it's what it will be preceded by - in other words, how it's going to happen. Beyond that, there's usually a question of uncertainty. What happens after? Harder question to answer than one might suspect, even for the most religious people. Once you dissect the form or brand of whatever particular version of religion you desire, you're left with little else but your own thoughts. You can picture the circumstances that will surround your death, but there's still a slight hint of unease. If you're not careful, this feeling can turn to dread, then fear, and then it can consume you. Very, very unhealthy - and not very productive either."When one dreams a dream, one does not know that it's not real until they wake. How, then, do we know that death is not the greatest pleasure?" - Kung Fu, TV SeriesWe, as religionists (not a priest anytime soon), attempt to diagram, study, explain, and delve deeper into the unknown - not for other people's sake, but for our own. Initially, the goal is completely selfish. There is a knowledge that exists that can help us determine exactly what happens to our consciouness at the moment of death - and we all yearn for this knowledge. It is the entire reason our species seeks out and explores the possibilities of the universe. This knowledge is like the Fountain of Youth, a never-ending specticle of immortality. Which is, after all, the goal. We seek answers about our mortality in the hopes that we can discover that we are actually immortal, and that we can cheat death. But it is not "death" that people fear, per se, but rather the end of their own existence. The knowledge that is yearned for is just a comfort blanket, if you will - sort of a reassurance that everything will work out in the end. Then we must gauge ourselves accordingly. Realize that "time" is merely static - invented by man in order to establish a way to gauge a sequence of events. "Time" is merely a means to an end, and we have focused our entire existence on surveying time. Clocks, watches, fast-food, instant coffee - all forms and brands designed specifically to feed off the idea that we are losing time. The fear technique is tapped in order to establish our own end - that our physical selves are running out of time, so make the most of it while you can.But this is rediculous. Since time is really static, and all we observe are sequences of events, then we have always and will always live in the present - never NOT existing. There is no past, there is no future - as you read this passage, you are merely keeping track of the seconds and the missing time of your life based on the starting point of this paragraph and the ending punctuation. When you finish, nothing has changed except for the balance of atoms in existence and their particular place in reality. "Time" has not moved.And so we must conclude, that at the moment of death, the physical life that we live is only changed, since the energy and mass of our selves are still extant. There is no life left in this shell, but according to physics, the energy can't just disappear. It has to exist somewhere.In what capacity? That's an entirely different topic. But there is a knowledge that can lead us to these answers. The knowledge is there, almost as if it was placed there intentionally. This knowledge, friends, is called gnosis.