What Will Judgement Day be Like?

These are my beliefs - I don't expect anyone to share them. I think that all religions have given us clues on what will happen when we die. Unfortunately the wording is often cryptic and not easily understood. Examples include: the veil will be lifted, The light of truth will shine, all will come to understand, all will become part of the one, the wheat will be separated from the chaff, etc. I believe these statements explain both heaven and hell in one fell swoop.

Imagine you have just died. Often times we hear that people see their lives pass before their eyes. Those that experience this and don't die, find that their world view is fundamentally changed. Why? Perhaps they have had a partial experience of what it is we will experience when we die. I believe that when we die, that indeed the veil will be lifted - for everyone. At that point we will no longer be burdened by our biases, fears, and other chaff. We will see our behaviours in light of the truth - it will become obvious whom we have hurt, how we have impeded the growth of others and chosen paths that were self destructive. I believe this will be an intense experience and we will all be overwhelmed by the depth of our own faults. I believe this is being held under the blinding light of the truth. I can't conceive of anything more hellish than being completely exposed and having all my false pretenses ripped from me.

But there is also good news here, the wheat is separated from the chaff - we lose those parts of our self that are false, and we become one with God. So while we regret and feel ashamed of our failures in the light of God - we find that we still exist and are brought into oneness with the source of love and truth. We neither lose what we are, because we have always been part of the one, but now we are a conscious part of the whole.

I believe that the core truths of religion are those that help us separate our wheat from our chaff, help us become more like God while we pass through the journey of life, and lessen the distance or separation between our embodied and spiritual state. I believe our separation from the whole is intended to be a learning experience for us all, and that we will understand that purpose when we are reunited. Our need for one another and fellowship is a natural result of a longing for the state from which we came, and our longing to create the same state while on earth.

I believe anything else, tenets, creeds, beyond these fundamentals are man made and result in more harm than good. Anything that causes us to focus on the path of others rather than our own has a very high potential to divert us from the truth.

Many of our most insightful prophets, bodhivisttas, and messiahs have warned us of the wolves in sheep clothing: those that have all the appearances of being righteous but are rotten to the core. These are the people that claim they have the exclusive rights to the truth, feel free in harming others in the name of the truth, and exploit the fears and doubts of others to gain power and self esteem. These are the people whose experience upon death will be the most disconcerting because they have built their houses upon foundations of sand. People who willing abdicate responsibility for their journey by allowing someone to do their thinking for them will also be surprised that they wasted the opportunity to learn something from the journey and will bring little to the table to enrich the whole. I believe there will be a lot of surprised people.

What will the heaven be? How about: all of our wounds being healed, heart felt reconciliation with others, and the giving and receiving of true forgiveness for what we did or failed to do while we were alive, the leaving behind of the imperfections and pains of our physical being. Sounds just absolutely wonderful to me.