Personal Questions

[RCMerchant]

^Well, I don't! Now I'm going crazy!
(Well, not going- I kinda guess I been there for a while.)

[RCMerchant]

What do you think of the Disney corparation?

Myself- f**k them.  Scumbag Rudy Gullianni sold 42nd Street to f**king Disney, put all independent businesses out of work. All the old NYC grindhouses were bought up. He may have busted the Mafia, but he became the Mafia. He got a kickback from that. f**k him. Same reason he sided with Trump- he wanted a kickback. He was in cohoots with that poor excuse for a human being back in the 80's.

[ER]

^Well, I don't! Now I'm going crazy!
(Well, not going- I kinda guess I been there for a while.)

Oh, sorry. A long time ago, years back, something the Rev said was funny and I told him with his wit women in Ireland would appreciate him. (In so many words.) He said something witty and subtle in his question tonight and I made a little reference to telling him that years ago, thinking he'd probably remember that. Incidentally, after I said that to him years back he made me laugh again byreplying, "How much is a plane ticket to Ireland?" 

[indianasmith]

I believe in both free will and predestination.  Not sure how they both fit together, but I don't have to know in order to believe.

[ER]

To skip to the answer: free will.

For a longer reply, I find it hard to believe there is a plan to this chaotic life, and while we may not always understand that what seems like free will to us is us being motivated by what Joyce Carol Oates called the "Night-Side" of our natures, our sub consciousness for instance, but if I had to pick either/or I'd say free will. I can't see how predestination would work out on so vast a scale. It'd be like trying to herd cats to corral everyone toward one specific point in time. It'd surely be too much trouble for whatever or whoever would control that. Why not wind us up and let us go and sit back and see what we choose to do? If there's a God I think we exist to please and entertain that not always benevolent being, I truly do.

There are also considerations like people who commit violent spree or serial murders are often found to have had a recurring deformity in the pre-frontal lobes of the brain, so perhaps they truly do not choose to act as they do, maybe that behavior and so much else is determined all in or part by anatomy.

My friend Mitch, the supposed trance channel, tells me we enter each incarnation with a broad self-chosen life plan that has certain major goals but that mostly the life plan gets discarded and we're lucky if we get anything that we scripted accomplished. (For instance he told me I had "pre-birth agreements" to have two children, yet of course I have three.) I like Mitch but I think he has bought into himself for too long and truly believes he can do what he says he can do, which is channel astral and mid-Causal beings. In all the years I have known him I have not once had a moment where I thought, yeah, I see, you're truly doing this.

Ultimately we'll likely never know answers to any of the big questions, and accepting that is a major milestone, or was to me.

[RCMerchant]

Did you know anyone who committed suicide?
My cousin Ricky Merchant hung himself in juvie in 1979. My little brother Richie shot himself in the head.
My brother Glenn cut his throat ear to ear after he stabbed a guy in the face 13 times with a screwdriver in a drug store because he was f**king his girlfriend. He lived.  He was put in a nut house. He escaped to San Fran, where he is today.
I tried it once in 1989. I put a 12 gauge shotgun to my head on the floor and pulled the trigger with my toe. The gun jumped. I put a hole in the ceiling of my apartment. Good thing it was on the top floor. Neighbors called the cops. I told them I was cleaning it and it went off. They believed that bulls**t- I was cleaning a shotgun at 2 in the morning? And how does cleaning a gun make it fire? I never tried that again. Scared the fvck outta me. I tried to drink myself to death last year. That didn't work either. I'm never gonna die.  

[ER]

Odd you should ask since my terminally-ill father in law killed himself two weeks ago. I think that's one reason I've been emotionally off lately even if it wasn't the same as someone young and physically healthy acting out of less logical reasons. In his case no matter how it may have otherwise affected us all I think everyone basically understood the situation where an elderly man with a hopeless illness shot himself after two years of pain and however much suffering still ahead of him. Sad but somehow excusable?

[Alex]

I had just picked up two of Kristi's cousins from the airport and was driving home when I got a phonecall from my mum. Kristi answered it since I was driving and she blurted out to me that my uncle had killed himself. My aunt had been in hospital and they found his body when they got home. Most of the people I've came across who have said they were suicidal were more doing it for the attention rather than being serious. I'd spoken with my uncle just a few days before and he'd seemed fine then.

[indianasmith]

I've never had anyone close to me kill themselves - like a family member or close friend.
My neighbor two doors down shot himself in his driveway about four or five years ago.

[Newt]

I believe in both free will and predestination.  Not sure how they both fit together, but I don't have to know in order to believe.

This put it together for me:

“Life... is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.”

— Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time)

[Rev. Powell]

I've had two friends (probably) commit suicide. In neither case did they leave a note or anything, but in one case it was obvious, in the other it's very probable.

The self-euthanasia question is interesting. I think it's completely reasonable. But should they inform their close family before doing it, rather than surprising everyone? 

[ER]

The self-euthanasia question is interesting. I think it's completely reasonable. But should they inform their close family before doing it, rather than surprising everyone? 

That's been a question I've had on my mind and I have come to think my father in law probably told his wife he was going to end his life and they said their goodbyes I also think that's why he didn't leave a note, he'd said what he wanted to say. I don't know that but it's what I think happened. I was with him the day before and he didn't say anything to me about doing that or if he gave indications that particular day it was coming I didn't perceive them.  He had spoken a few months ago about wanting to end what he was going through but not lately.

It says something big about his state of mind that he did this in a laundry room where there's a drain in the floor, and ghastly as that detail is it showed consideration, if that's the right word.

[ER]

OK, you die and find yourself in an afterlife that is nothing like anything your own beliefs about death primed you to expect. How shocked would you be?

[Rev. Powell]

I'd be stunned if there is any afterlife.

[RCMerchant]

^ What he said.