Against Eternity
A conclusion I’ve been sitting with recently is the very real idea of possibility that there is no eternal Heaven. I’ve known this rationally, but it’s always come with a, “yeah but there’s a DMT-adjacent afterlife as part of dying, where the 3 minutes pre-death feels like 300 years. That may be true, conditional, or false, but in the end we all end in blackness, back to dust. Yet, I’ve also now reconciled this with Christian theology; “The Orthodox Way” has gotten me to believe that this eternity thing is a massive unchecked axiom, and almost obviously a pacifier. ie: The existence of an eternal soul is something you have to build into your foundation, because without that comfort there would be an unbearable existential anxiety. But recently I've found comfort in the idea of dying, specifically, because if you can really accept the permanent end of everything, it brings a presence to the life you have. Maybe this is heaven. In any case, the point of a theology/cosmology is to properly attune yourself to your situation, and so if the lack of eternity brings you peace, doesn't that sort of accomplish the mission?
The value in a theology should be the direct effect it has on your character and being. The idea of a heavenly body prevents a boyish, primal, universal anxiety of our annihilation, but what good does it bring? ie: Is heaven a catalyst or xanax? What I mean is, if you accept Nothing, and really try to hold nothing in every frame of your being, and to realize the sadness of it all, but to not see it as sadness, but as a reminder, a shock for life and vitality and spirit and spontaneity, then doesn’t Nothing bring out a fuller you? One that will not wait to say what has to be said? And the whole DMT thing, does that not also demand courage and virtue of you? For if every frame of that Odyssey (and Odyssey really is the perfect word for it) is determined by the seeds sowed of your lived moments, then every moment is consequential. If the afterlife is not an eternal heaven, but a DMT Odyssey that mirrors your soul, then sin is consequential! It's hard threshold to cross, and requires a lot of work. The Christian eternity, alternatively, has a bunch of easy thresholds. Are you baptized? Are you generally a good person? (ie: have you not stolen or murdered?) Good, you’re set for eternity. These are weak standards! Think of Montaigne’s scrutiny. We are all wicked beasts, self-deceiving, and we flounder daily, multiple times, and we scrounge our potential, and we shy away from glory and courage and such, and are those all not damnations? Should we not see them as damnations? Should we not expect greatness within ourself, and see that not as shame, but as a call to personal glory? I suppose the greatest call to adventure is to be a hero, to “save” the Other, whether it is your family, or community, or however large a concentric ring you aspire to help, and is to be a saviour not the Hellenistic pre-Judeau name, “Christ?” Should we not aim to be a Christ to the extent that we can? I find the more I withdrawn from Christianity, the more I am drawn to Christ.
I think I’m close to making a breakthrough here, but to follow through would be something like a rupture in my charisma and actions. And through writing, I can do it. I think years 1-17 were a phase of coddling. puberty and ego. From 18-35, I went through my initial Maslovian initiation (lol sry, refers to "Abraham Maslow," a psychologist). But from 36 on, this could be another era, one where I strive to be radically aware and honest and beholden of the true nature of reality, that this all really is a fleeting dream, that death brings Nothing, a true annihilation of Ego, but I am not I, as in, the true I is not the self contained within small Michael, but a parcel of the greatest It, the universe, and I welt melt into a dust that is eternally churning, recycled into food for worm swarms for millions of years until I aid in the ascension from the Earth into some other marvelous species. The fact that I am a human, now, in this very moment, IS, heaven. This is the pinnacle, the is the realization to carry from room to room.
(Edit: To synthesize all this, I find comfort not in the eternal Ego, but in the eternal Engine, as in, some force outside our universe that continuously generates new space-time fabrics and all life within it. To realize that you are not separate from the Engine, but are one with it, and even on the its cutting edge of its biological complexity, is to appreciate and identify with the whole enterprise of Life. Knowing that life will continue, despite the extermination of species and the heat death of this particular universe, is a better kind of immortality.)