BS: Thoughts About Suicide

Subject: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Azizi
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 05:48 AM

For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about the subject of suicide-not my own suicide I hasten to say.

In this Mudcat thread on Depression & Anxiety I shared a personal experience that I had with a close friend of mine who was acting as a support person for a friend of hers, and was devastated when that friend took his life.

On another current thread that I won't identify, a Mudcatter shared the news about the suicide of her close friend. Another Mudcatter posted on that thread his hope that the person who committed suicide finds the peace that he could not find in this life. That thread may also have contained the abbreviation RIP {rest in peace}. It's that comment about finding peace in death, as well as that commonly used "Rest in Peace" abbreviation that surfaced to the front of my mind this morning when I woke up out of a dream.

I wonder, is it part of folks' religious beliefs or philosophy that anyone {including or especially people who commit suicide} really rests in peace after his or her death? Or-put another way-do people believe that all a person does after death is to rest in peace?

I believe in reincarnation. My personal belief [and I don't share it in any effort to win converts]is that people rest in between returning to earth {as a human being}, but after an interval of therapeutic rest-which may be short or long in earth time-the individual studies what went right & what went wrong in his or her immediate past life. In doing so, the individual becomes aware of what he or she has to work on in their next life.

I believe that people are not born as blank slates. While few people have any conscious remembrance of their [many] past lives, I believe that most people retain talents and skills and interest we have worked on and earned in our other lives. I also believe that we retain unconscious memory of our close relationships with others. This accounts for me why we are led to certain people and have intense feelings {positive or negative} towards those individuals.

A core part of my belief in reincarnation is that not only were we connected to other people in past lives, but we repeat those connections over and over and over again. We plan {or it is planned for us} to reincarnate at certain times and in certain circumstances so that we can continue working on our relationships with those people. So-for instance-a former male lover in a past life takes on the role of your boyfriend or your husband in this life-or -since people switch genders according to my belief system, in this life that person could be one's wife or one's brother or sister, or one's son or daughter. Or that person could be one's enemy or a boss you simply can not stand.

In my belief system, suicide is tragic because of the loss of a person's life and potential. Suicide is also tragic because it throws a monkey wrench in plans that have been made to work on or work through issues arising from past encounters or emotional and spiritual debts owed to others. Those issues and debts don't go away, but have to be worked through in whole 'nother life.
That's my belief anyway.

Does anyone here care to share his or her opinions on the subject of suicide and-most particularly-what their religion or belief system says about it, particularly with regards to the "rest in peace" saying?

Thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 06:19 AM

Knowing my luck I'd come back as myself

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: open mike
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 06:35 AM

we had a scary indicent in an on-line music room i was in last night.
Someone who few of us knew, burst in the room, made several mentions about ending it all, jumping off a bridge, etc, then disappeared. We
were at a loss to know what to do. Most thought it was just a ploy to get attention, but then that often is what an ATTEMPTED suicide is all
about....we were powerless to find out what the actual situation was,
and not able to do anything about it either way. The anonymity and
distance involved in internet transactions often has complications.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Paul Burke
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 07:10 AM

I try not to have beliefs- they get in the way of thinking- but my provisional speculation at the moment is that we only think we are conscious. Don't get me wrong, we are feeling, thinking, interacting etc.- but its the "we" bit that is a mistake.

In other words, there is only one consciousness- that of the sum total of the universe (or multiverse if you're a Pratchett fan)- of which what we think of as our consciousness is a minute subset.

So in this light, suicide is no problem for the protagonist- getting there is the problem. Their consciousness merely ceases to be the small hot bubble of fast activity that thinks it is autonomous.

On the other hand, the results for other people can be devastating. I know one woman who has been unable to hold on to a long term relationship all her life, probably as a result of her father's suicide when she was an adolescent. It's this consideration that has buoyed me up on the (mercifully) few occasions when I've been tempted to solve no more problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 07:55 AM

THe religion I was born into teaches that suicide is a "mortal sin", but that forgiveness is always possible with God, of course. IN some cultures, suicide was considered a highly honourable means of checking out under certain circumstances (ie in Japan, the soldiers on the losing side would commit suicide en masse rather than be captured). And it was customary for the aged among the Inuit of the far north to wander off to die alone during periods of famine, for example, thus freeing up food/supplies for the younger people.

As for me, I agree with what you said about reincarnation, Azizi, with one addendum --- there is no judgment, really. People are free to do whatever they like, and they are responsible for any effects their actions have on others. So, suicide may create more karma than it resolves, as the person's family and friends deal with the aftermath. Also, when a person dies in an extremely negative emotional state (which is often the case when a Westerner commits suicide), they carry on in that same emotional state, with or without a physical body, until it is resolved/healed. In that case, suicide resolves nothing - it just prolongs the agony.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 08:45 AM

Steven Levine, a Budhist clinician and close associate of Ram Dass has written extensively from his experience with terminally ill patients. He thinks that the first thought a person has after they have suicided is "Oops."

I have been fortunate in my career so far to have not had a client successfully suicide, but have a number of clients who have made a serious attempt, or who I have petitioned for commitment to prevent an attempt. In every single case, once the individual was thinking more rationally,(ie the psychosis or severely distorted thinking that can occur with depression were remitted) they were dismayed at themselves and extremely relieved that they were not successful.

I have also worked with a number of people who were struggling with the emotional effects of the suicide of a loved one.

I don't know if people who suicide rest in peace. I don't know what any of us do, if anything, after death. But the people they leave behind suffer tremendously. If the person who suicided is aware of this, I doubt seriously that they can rest in peace to have seen what pain their choice brought to those who loved them.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 08:47 AM

I would add that the problem of suicide is that one finds the issues one was fleeing come right along with you and await your inspection, like so many tin cans on a puppy's tail.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 08:53 AM

My thoughts on suicide is that it should be punishable with LIFE with no chance of parole.

My thoughts on reincarnation are: to each their own, but I wouldn't want my airline pilot to believe in reincarnation.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 08:57 AM

Sometimes people with psychotic disorders will have command hallucinations. They will hear persecutory voices berating them without respite. Those voices may command the person to suicide. When suicide is attempted or occurs under these circumstances, I think it fair to say that the individual is not acting under their own volition.

Some (but certainly not all) of my clients who have attempted suicide, or who have been at serious risk to attempt, were as angry as they were depressed and dispairing. In these instances, suicide can be seen as extremely passive-aggressive.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: the one
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 08:59 AM

ask leonard cohen; no it leaves you who are left behind so hurt i would not wish anyone the pain of losing somebody.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: mack/misophist
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 09:51 AM

I think (not believe, there's a slight difference there) that when you die, you cease to exist. So for a few, suicide may be the best solution for overwhelming problems.

Once I knew a man who betterly resented the intervention of the mental health services after his first and second suicide attempts. The third was successful.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 09:52 AM

My beliefs are very similar to your own, Azizi.

On the subject of suicide, though, I tend to believe that at least once in our many lifetimes, we choose suicide because we reincarnate in order to experience all of life, and we can learn from that experience as well. But I believe that for the most part, committing suicide creates a lot of work for us in subsequent lifetimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Jeri
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:00 AM

Another person's suicide doesn't cause people who are left behind as much pain as the left behind person's own feelings that if only they had done something differently...

I wouldn't feel bad if a person with a terminal illness made a conscious decision to end their lives.

On the other hand, those suffering with the pain of healable illness or injury should be helped. If they still commit suicide, they did so as a result their reactions to their illness or injury, and if there is an afterlife, the wrongnesses of a soul hosted by a physical brain and body aren't going to follow them. And a compassionate God would not punish them further. I think that those here who like to think of suicides burning in Hell are those who may believe they're going to get a consolation prize for just putting up with life. They've missed the point too.

Reincarnation? Speculation is interesting, but I don't know. If life is a road, the future is hidden in mist that only parts when you take another step. Neither you nor I have ever been all the way to the end. You may be sure of what's up there, but I'll wait to see.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:04 AM

I've worked with a few Native medicine people over the years; shamen who facilitate traditional funeral ceremonies and do spiritual/psychological healing work with the bereaved. The events I've witnessed / experienced after a suicide convinced me that life after death is much more than a "belief", and that people "do" just as much after they die as before; characteristic emotions/behaviours just carry on as usual.

A few years ago, a very depressed friend committed suicide. Very difficult to deal with, as everyone who'd been close to him worked through their guilt and sorrow, their personal versions of "IF only I'd done XXXX, maybe he'd still be around ..."   

This person was a womanizer, the "needy" type always looking for a new "Mommy" to look after all his affairs for him. He'd been through one woman after another over the years, tried to hook me in at one point. No go.

Well, after he died a few local "wanna-be Indians" did their version of a traditional Medicine Wheel ceremony for him. Laid a circle of stones around a big ole tree, did a pipe ceremony offering prayers and tobacco and inviting -- or perhaps I should say coercing - him to take up residence there, so he could be accessed at that place by the living for "spiritual guidance".

When I heard THAT part of the ceremony, BIG warning bells started going off. WHy would anyone want "spiritaul guidance" from someone who was so messed up he'd taken his own life?!? And why try to "trap" a soul here, on the physical plane, when they so obviously wanted out at all cost?

I didn't like it at all --- felt so uncomfortable I left, without a word.

Over the next few months, my life became, quite literally, a version of hell. I couldn't seem to get rid of the obsessive greiving thoughts about him during the day, and he was constantly in my dreams. He'd disguise himself and chase me, try to trap me. At one point I saw him, in my dream, performing weird incantations over my sleeping bod. I'd wake up from these dreams in a cold sweat, feeling like something was tied around my neck choking me. Well geez, and here he'd died by hanging himself too ...

At one point, I was so angry and so sick of the mental/emotional torment that I went back out to that Medicine Wheel and demolished it. Threw all the stones away with the intention of releasing his spirit and thereby breaking that strange and most unhealthy connection with me. ANd geez, y'know, after that I had no more trouble!   No more nightmares. No more fear, anger, or grief. No more "invisible ropes" choking me all day long. No more obsessive thoughts or constant urges to perform his original songs in public. (Haven't sang one of those in YEARS now, as a matter of fact).

And no one was more surprised - or relieved - than I! Mind you, the people who'd set up that circle were none too impressed when they heard I'd broken it without consulting them. BUt at that point, I couldn't have cared less.

Especially when a few weeks later, I bumped into the young woman he'd been "in relationship" (of sorts) with when he died. Apparently she'd been having the same experiences I was, plus a few others (ie after seeing him in a dream she'd wake up to find her apt just reeking with a most familiar and foul odour, stuff unexplainably flying off the walls, knocks on the door/walls and no-one there etc). It was getting harder and harder to explain these things to her young son, to feel safe and secure in her own home she said.

She mentioned that a couple other women he'd been close to had also been "beset" with this type of upsetting phenomena -- and then she told me that everything had quieted down over the last month or so.   Said she hadn't "heard" from him over the last few weeks at all - as a matter of fact, not since I'd torn down that Medicine Wheel, even though she still knew nothing about that!   :-D

Anyway, thanks for listening to all this. I have absolutely no "proof" of anything I've said here, and I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. Believe it or not, whatever you like --- those are simply my own experiences and interpretations thereof. Nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:06 AM

;-)   Suicide is the sincerest form of self criticism. ;-)

;-)Art ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:27 AM

Sometimes people with psychotic disorders will have command hallucinations. They will hear persecutory voices berating them without respite ..

Janie, I'm wondering -- as a psychiatrist, do you think that what I experienced could have been a "psychotic episode" of sorts, triggered by the trauma of my friend's suicide?

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:36 AM

What a load of bollocks this thread is. Azizi you are a fruit

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:41 AM

GUEST, I'd call you a vegetable, but vegetables do have some virtue.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:47 AM

I was not aware you'd broken up that medicine circle, Daylia. You really tune in strongly to spirit stuff, I must say. I was there for some of that gathering, but just to give him a send-off, not to build a medicine wheel or anything like that. Seems to me that I left about half way through.

Azizi, I see it pretty much the way you do. Nothing much to add. I suspect that suicide causes further difficult karma to deal with farther on, rather than allowing one to "rest in peace", but there may be specific situations where it would be somewhat appropriate. I'm not sure one way or the other about that. The Japanese certainly thought that way, and so did the Romans.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:53 AM

m/m,

I know that is sometimes the case. I also believe that if some one truly wants to die, they will eventually find a way to do so. And I think people have the right to commit suicide. However,in the majority of situations, suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems.

They do not, however, have the right to include me in their plans. When a person shares with me their intent, or I discover their action before they are dead, I have a legal, moral and ethical responsibilty to intervene. I think this is true of me as an individual, and not just as a clinician with legally and societally defined responsibilites. To tell another person of your intent to suicide, and then demand that person to do nothing, is the ultimate "double bind" and there is nothing more passive-aggressive. The person may successfully suicide. I have to keep living, and live with myself.

I will intervene for my own well-being, if for no other reason. The clients I work with are savy about the mental health system. They know that if they tell me about their intent that I will take every possible action to intervene. I therefore operate on the assumption that 1. They still have some ambivalence about suicide somewhere in their psyche, or 2. They are mad and vengeful enough to kill themselves in order to "punish" some one else (sometimes, me, the therapist.)and want to be sure the other knows they are being punished, or 3. both of the above.

Jeri, I agree with what you say. But those feelings of responsibility and guilt are normal and expectable, and a person who is thinking cogently knows the effects their suicide might have on others.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:56 AM

The above refers to suicidality associated with psychiatric and psychdynamic issues. Suicide in the face of a terrible, suffering illness, or to escape torture or to protect some one else (throwing yourself on a grenade) may well be different propositions all together.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 12:19 PM

daylia--(I'm a licensed clinical social worker, not a psychiatrist, but since I work in the public system my practice consists of people who tend to be much more severe in their illness than a private practice therapist commonly sees.)

Regarding your question--who knows? And I'm not sure it matters. What matters is you took action that was meaningful to you and it helped.

When my sister died from breast cancer I was with her. Immediately after she died I had the experience of "feeling" her consciousness move through my brain--like butterfly wings--and the thought was inserted "Janie, it's beautiful, I don't know why I was so afraid."

Did that really happen as I experienced it, or did I have a brief psychotic reaction to the overwhelming stress and loss of her immediate passing? I had never had a psychotic experience before, but I also had never sat with a sister as she died either. I'll never really know, and it really doesn't matter. I was comforted and helped through the moment by the experience, what ever that experience was.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Peace
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 12:32 PM

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 01:01 PM

And that, my friend, is probably the single most astounding piece of songwriting ever. In my opinion. Young Bob was sure tuned in.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Deda
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 02:12 PM

I pretty much agree with Azizi, to the extent that I have any firm ideas. I used to be convinced, have convictions -- "ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

The only thing I would add is that people who have children, of any age, and who go on to commit suicide, have a uniquely terrible impact on their offspring. The scar of having had a parent commit suicide seems deeper, darker, harsher, less forgiveable to me than having had a friend, lover, sibling, even a child do so. Suicide casts a great long shadow over following generations that never really goes away. Even if someone says, "My grandfather committed suicide -- of course that was before I was born", the statement itself is somehw ghastly, it speaks of enormous and somehow contagious, incurable, inheritable pain.

I didn't fully realize when my own children were small that I had a duty to shield them from my own pain, folly and vulnerability. They seem to have come out amazingly well, all things considered.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 02:16 PM

Daylia:

Good work; and a terrific tale.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 03:00 PM

Azizi...early in your post was this-

"I wonder, is it part of folks' religious beliefs or philosophy that anyone {including or especially people who commit suicide} really rests in peace after his or her death? Or-put another way-do people believe that all a person does after death is to rest in peace?"

Reflections about reincarnation took up most of your post, yet you ask about suicide and its ramifications as if reincarnation were a given.

As you might expect, I do not subscribe to past-lives theory, so my ideas about the relevance of suicide are partly shaped by my attitude. Still, I agree that suicide is 'usually' sad, regretable and unnecessary.

I do wonder how those who DO believe in reincarnation think it happens....and more importantly, when did it start? No one seems to 'remember' being a cave dweller 27,000 years ago. Did our very, very remote ancestors get reincarnated...and did THEY commit suicide? With what result? The metaphysics of such belief systems are staggering....How many 'souls' are there...and if everyone now living has one to be reincarnated, whose are they using, since the population used to be MUCH smaller? It seems like you must postulate infinite souls, yet an infinite number would never all get a turn, much less dozens of turns, 'resting' or not 'resting' in between turns.

No, it isn't necessary that you reply or debate me...it's just Bill D the sceptic again, wanting to be sure that various aspects of the issue are 'out here' to be chewed on by those who are not sure...

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 03:27 PM

To answer your question "when", Bill...

The problem is that bodies, or body-minds, think in terms of time because they exist in time. The Spirit does not. It exists outside of time, outside of form, beyond numbering things, and outside of any measurable distance or separation of any kind whatsoever. A body-mind can talk about that, but cannot grasp it...or see it...or do anything with it. How do you grasp the formless, dimensionless, and timeless?

Contrary to what you said, there have indeed been cases when people remembered 'past' lives under very primitive circustances.

You think in terms of "now" and "then". To the Spirit it is only Now. You think in terms of "here" and "there". To the Spirit, existence is everywhere simultaneously. You think in terms of "you" and "me". To the spirit, we are inseparable aspects of One Being.

You think that this planet is the ONLY place we can incarnate. It's one of an ifinite number of places (and times, and dimensions) in which we can incarnate. You could kill everyone on this planet, destroy the whole globe, and life would take form elsewhere. You could destroy our galaxy. It wouldn't matter. Spirit cannot die. It takes form where and when it will.

And, no, I do not require or expect you to believe any of that, and if doesn't even matter whether or not you do. ;-)

But it is an answer to your questions.

I have had any number of times when I sort of wished I wasn't here...but that's not exactly the same thing as contemplating suicide. I could never think of a method that I was willing to use. I just sort of wanted to check out, but wasn't willing to throw the switch, as it were. Just sort of vaguely wished the switch would throw itself somehow. I think it's a death wish that motivates people to do many risky things, such as, driving very recklessly, taking drugs, smoking, anorexia, and so on. It's not NECESSARILY a death wish, mind you, but in some cases it is. I've seen any number of people commit slow suicide by means of their self-destructive habits. Our society encourages them to, as a matter of fact, because it's often quite profitable for certain sectors.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: bobad
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 03:36 PM

".........the formless, dimensionless, and timeless"

That sounds like the definition of "nothing".

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 03:39 PM

Many people, by the way, feel suicidal around Christmas...or have thoughts about it. It's partly the short daylight hours, and partly the sense of failed expectations, compared to the excitement of childhood Christmases past.

Not exactly "the season to be jolly" for everyone, is it? I wonder how many people are truly happy around Christmas? My guess would be: a small minority.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 04:14 PM

well, LH, like bobad, I don't relate to definitions which seem to fuzzily end up referring to 'nothing'.

If 'spirit' is to be meaningful, it can't be 'nothing', and yet you grant the concept an overarching presupposition of existance using words which dodge all attempts at being pinned down to anything specific. *smile*...You speak of all this "universality of spirit" as if it were a **given**, an unassailable, obvious, non-debatable Platonic Form. In previous discussions, you saw my opinions that words can fool us into supposing that we are saying something, and then acting like poetic cotton-candy when we try to examine them. *shrug*...no law agin' it, and it's a pretty picture, but I gotta have more substance to MY ∞ and spirit...

stay well and have a happy holiday season!

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 05:13 PM

You're just not reading the right stuff, Bill. ;-) I take this sort of thing as a given at this point.

Want an intro? Read Eckhard Tolle, "The Power of Now". It's a brilliant book that will either interest you or totally not interest you, depending how you relate to it. You will either find it fascinating or meaningless.

Here's an example, Bill: What gives the night sky meaning? Is it the stars? Perhaps. Or is it the empty space, the nothingness, which permits the stars to show themselves? Without that field of "nothing" you would not be able to perceive all the individual "somethings" that show themselves on it. That is what Spirit is like. It's like space. It's a featureless context that contains everything, an apparent nothingness, out of which all individual things arise and are seen.

It's like the white space that I type these letters on. You relate to the letters and find meaning. Without the empty space they appear upon, you could not see them. The empty space provides context. Spirit is that which provides context for everything. Without context, you HAVE no meaning. Without some empty space between your eyeballs and what you are looking at, and some space AROUND what you are looking at...you CAN'T see it!

A mind cannot be seen. But...out of that mind arise all sorts of observable phenomena. You can't see my thinking mind. It appears in no way. But...my thoughts show themselves in phenomena (these typed words), in actions, in emotions, etc.

Spirit is the formless thought, the measureless potential, out of which all manifestation arises. It is "nothing" in your terms, but EVERYTHING you see comes from it.

You can't see or measure my thoughts. But...they are real. They will still be real when I have no body, and am said to be 'dead'. They will presently form another body. Then you'll say, "Ah! There he is. He's real." Your seeing me is not a requirement for my existence in Spirit. But...my existence in Spirit is the same as everyone else's. It is here in form that I appear separate. The space around my form and yours is what makes that perceivable.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 06:26 PM

I'd offer that it depends on how you define something and nothing. If you are defining these terms as parts of the usual matter-space-time continuum, they aren't there.

That doesn't make them nothing; it just makes them outside the usual framework of thing-ness in material terms.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 06:29 PM

He was an artist and a pretty good one. One hot July day his wife couldn't find him -- she walked into a shed and found him. Hanging from a beam. Eventually, her two sons were taken away and she was committed to a mental facility. No one, as far as I know, has ever figured out why he did what he did. And as far as I know, she's spent the last 30+ years in the care of the State of Ohio.

Two years later, Mom came home from shopping and the garage door opened upon the body of her son. He'd killed himself by firing a 12 gauge shotgun into his head. Why? as far as anyone could tell, because he'd dropped from an "A" to an "A-" average. Not that his parents cared -- they had been a close family and apparently a happy one that put no special emphasis on good grades. Dad took to drinking heavily and Mom eventually divorced him and took the two other kids.

Suicide is not a victimless crime.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST,First Responder
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 06:48 PM

Years ago I was part of an ambulance team that responded to a 911 call from a very distraught father. His daughter was sitting in his chair but she wasn't moving. He couldn't wake her up by calling her. He seemed very 'distant' to the 911 operator who in turned passed that info on to us in the ambulance.

We entered the house and one of the team went to the father. The other two of us went to the daughter. She was a beautiful young girl with long straight hair and soft facial features. The .22 was leaning across her body and she was sitting up fairly straight in the cushioned leather chair. I looked at the ceiling and saw a small hole about two feet behind where she was sitting. And time stopped--because I knew. There was so little blood on the skin just behind her lower jaw. I couldn't see the tiny hole through the top of her head without moving some of her hair aside. The police got there within two minutes of our arrival. We took the father to a hospital. The ride back to our base was very subdued, very quiet. Not at all usual for us. To this day I don't understand. She wasn't even sixteen.

There is an old saying I learned that was attributed to the Apache (Native North American people): I have no pockets to put that in. I think I will never have pockets to put that in.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 09:26 PM

I won't mess up this important thread any more, Little Hawk....maybe another one, about 'nothing' would be interesting...(I studied *nothing* formally at one time...so I do see where you're heading...but....)

anyway, it's too far afield for now. We've strayed even from reincarnation.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: kendall
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:00 PM

I see it as a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:04 PM

Regarding your question--who knows? And I'm not sure it matters. What matters is you took action that was meaningful to you and it helped.

Janie, thanks for the reminder about what's really important, and especially for sharing your beautiful experience with your sister here.

ANd thank you too, Amos.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 10:56 PM

I see it as a temporary (and poor) solution to a problem that is likely to have further repercussions for a very long time...on one's own spirit, and the lives of others.

I say it's temporary, because the soul of the suicide lives on. Therefore it promises escape, but doesn't deliver it. There may be specific circumstances, though, where it makes sense, such as giving your own life to save others.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 11:29 PM

Between the thought and the action - falls the shadow (TS Elliot)

http://www.seppo.net/nike.html

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 11:37 PM

Lots of music:

Theme from MASH

We Had Joy We Had Sun

cute little poem about how messy it is.

Sincerely, find a mental health clinic -

THIS WEEKEND!!!

Begin a dialogue - even two minutes - and call back later.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Dec 05 - 11:53 PM

I've been doing a lot of thinking about life after death and about reincarnation lately. I tell you- I have found no answers.

Some of the things that are incomprehensible to me:

1) The concept of seeing someone again. What does that mean? That the mother who died when she was 30 and the babe was born and the son who is now 90 years old will meet up yonder and take up their family relationship again? That's absurd. So it must be that we mean that 'spirit' continues. And then it occurs to me that if it is significant that two spirits meet again, then it seems to imply that the current family relationship was short lived and cursory. Reincarnation may well fit into that scenario and the next connection may well be of next door neighbors.

2) If one accepts that people/spirits do 'wait' for their significant others to rejoin them on the other side, might it be that the baby that died when it was three days old and the child who died at 4 years and the dead 7-year-old second grader are all the same 'person'? Think about it- say a young man died at 29. Let's say that his best friend who was also 29 at the time of the young man's death wil live to be 80. She wants him to 'wait' for her on the other side. That means that he has time for a number of very young lives (let's postulate that they were born for the sake of other persons) and still be waiting for her.

Bill D, I would love to see your mind take on this kind of exercise! (For the record, I think Little Hawk's take on this subject is profound.)

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Amos
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 12:09 AM

Connections are infinitely flexible if they aren't constrained by location and time. So what it means to "see someone again" is a dynamic and instantaneous exchange of attention; if this exchange is used to create a familiar picture of a person in material form, that's more a function of one's own habit than a function of what another being looks like, I would expect. It isn't a matter of getting stuck in some form ort other because of anothers' expectations or desires.

We are very habituated to being located by meat tokens, since that's how we pretend to present ourselves to each other. But the connections between live beings are much more than that. How much more depends on how socked in the individual is into the mechanics and electronics of meatspace, which varied wildly from person to person.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 12:44 AM

Ebbie - you are concerned ofver trival matters.

The Bible clearly states, "You will be known, as you have been known."

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: GUEST,*daylia*
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 08:07 AM

The ride back to our base was very subdued, very quiet. Not at all usual for us. To this day I don't understand. She wasn't even sixteen.

First Responder, your awful story brought back an awful memory, of a 21 year old neighbour who made good on his threat and shot himself in the head with his father's rifle, right in front of his ex-girlfriend and her grandmother. To punish the girl, I suppose, for breaking up with him. His father, the local fire chief, responded first to that 911 call. :-(

Could blame it on the fact that the young man just lost his job, that his girlfriend had kicked him out because he was drinking heavily, or that it was February (the most depressing time of the year for a lot of people).

Or maybe we could keep it real simple and say that if he hadn't had access to a gun, that young man would still be alive today. His family would have spared years of anguish and his girlfriend 6 months in the psych ward.

I believe that's true. And it's probably the same for that teenage girl you found. Guns just make killing too easy - if people had to stab or hang themselves etc, they'd be less likely to bring about their deaths as a means of revenge or attracting attention.

I know what it is to be depressed, to feel that everything's been lost, that no one cares or ever did care, that there's nothing more to live for. I know what it is to be in such physical pain and mental/emotional turmoil that every day is a dreaded test of endurance. I know what it's like to obsess about killing oneself - going over possible ways and means and methods and repercussions and finding none of them satisfactory.

And I also know this - if I'd had access to a gun during that thankfully brief period of my life, you probably wouldn't be reading this today.

WHen I was younger, the fact that my children were very small always brought me to my senses when I 'sink' that low. I could NEVER have inflicted my own suicide on them ... but once they were grown, believe me it was alot harder to find a good reason to keep on keepin on. So, praise be, I'm GLAD I never liked guns, and always refused to allow one in my home.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 08:35 AM

I don't believe in reincarnation.

I didn't believe in it last time either.


DC

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 09:50 AM

Daylia, there are too many ways to kill oneself to blame one method. Suppose that young man decided to throw himself from a height in front of those people. Or to cut his throat, spraying them with blood. No, it doesn't do to blame the method.

He should have had help. I don't know -- perhaps those who succeed with suicide have something in their makeup, some defect. You came through, others did not. It sounds harsh and it is, but perhaps "the weak died on the way."

Perhaps the people at Jonestown and the Heaven's Gate bunch were too easily led and were chosen BECAUSE they could be easily led. The same would be true of Martin's suicide bombers, too.

I'm not an expert in this area and I'm glad I'm not. And these are just musings, nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: *Laura*
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 10:12 AM

Have you read '4:48 Psychosis' by Sarah Kane? It was her last play and she committed suicide shortly after finishing it.
It's fascinating and beautifully poetic as well.

xLx

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 11:03 AM

Ebbie...I could, as you might imagine..*wry grin*, write several pages of the ways my 'mind' might go in taking on these thoughts....but today & tomorrow are gonna be quite busy...so...briefly....(well, MY idea of 'briefly')

It seems to me that the idea of living forever is totally fascinating to we humans who, alone among species, are aware of mortality and can comtemplate other possibilities. Therefore, reincarnation and 'souls' or 'spirit' which provide a theoretical means for accomplishing reincarnation are obvious and natural creations of those who wish to believe.(read Eric Hoffer) If it can be imagined, it will be....it is too simple an idea NOT to be thought of and believed, over & over....and it has been in every culture we have records of. Only the details of 'how' the soul/body/spirit might continue differ, depending on the society, culture and religion which gave rise to them.

It is SUCH a tempting idea that it is WORK to NOT believe in it. It is SO easy to write fascinating, poetic and ummmmm..'profound' thoughts and stories about souls, heaven, 'meeting on the other side', returning in a 'different' body...etc...etc...etc....that the opposite view.."I think death is simply the end" sounds boring, sad, and unfair!! "How DARE he suggest that the 'pretty' stories are false and that I won't meet my Mother again!"

To put it a bit differently...it is easy to have a belief....it takes a lot of thought and resistance to peer pressure to sort through beliefs and decide whether the evidence presented is compelling.

27 paragraphs of examples, logic, counter-examples and socio-psychological ruminations follow.

Subject: RE: BS: Thoughts About Suicide
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Dec 05 - 11:17 AM

Good one, Doug! ;-)

Ebbie - I have heard that spirits, being basically pure thought itself, can "appear" any way they want to...and that when one spirit wishes to "see" another specific spirit whom they have known, then they see them pretty much the way they would most want to see them...something like that. And it is not governned by timel. It's timeless. Time is something that has a function in the physical dimension(s), where things are separate and have distances between them. Time is the measure of distance. There is no distance in pure thought. Thought is instantaneous. (the firing of neurons in a physical brain is not instantaneous, but thought is) Most spirits would prefer, I imagine, to appear in the prime of life...but maybe they would prefer to be as a child or an old person for some reason...who knows.

In any case when one spirit recognizes another it is recognizing not outer form, but familiar patterns of consciousness. Being pure thought, we each are quite unique and recognizable to one another. In Spirit, to think of someone IS to be with them...immediately...whether they are "alive" (in a body) or "dead" (not in a body).

That's what I've heard. Can't say if it's true or not...

Gargoyle - I figure that most of us could benefit from some good therapy now and then...if we could find the right therapist. Therapists are fallible too, and sometimes they do more harm than good. They can also be quite expensive. I've known people who got totally screwed up by therapists. I've known others who were greatly helped by them.