June 3, 2023 by Brian Weiner No CommentsChanging The World One Thought At A Time., Lessons From The Mountain

There is no such thing as death, only a change of address.

There is no such thing as death, only a change of address.

DOUG IVANOVICH

Do we have any awareness of anything after we die?

Since the dawn of humanity, there have been countless suppositions about what happens to us after we pass away. Almost every religion or belief system has posited various explanations for their followers to hold deep within themselves as comfort and consolation towards the inevitable end of our life on planet Earth.

In my musing here, I very much wish to not offend any belief system, so if you have a defined thought process about this, please do not take exception to my supposition.

I have spoken with more than 10 people now, who have died on the operating table and returned back into their bodies. Almost all of them share a similar explanation of feeling detached from their body and rising up into a tunnel of light. As I have listened to these stories, I have often wondered, whether or not prior explanations of this experience had influenced what they thought they were feeling. The truth is, how does anybody ever really know?

Having some sort of a believe in an afterlife, whether that involves a place like heaven, or whether that involves some form of reincarnation or other explanation, helps people cope with the fact that, at some point in time, this journey of our physical body will come to a conclusion.

When my dear friend Doug, shared this aphorism with me, it really resonated, because at the end of the day, we are all working to process these fears and compartmentalize them.

Whether we are thinking about ourselves, or whether we are missing a loved one, it is unquestionably, one of the most unsettling topics of all.

By framing the thought process as transitional, as opposed to final, it alleviates a large volume of the fear.

I distinctly remember as a child, trying to comprehend that after I died, I would have no concept of anything that would continue past that date.

I found that incredibly unsettling, and it took a long time for me to find answers that would give me comfort and diminish this fear.

In the end, no one truly knows. But allowing ourselves to reduce the anxiety that stems from feeling apprehensive about our own mortality, enables us to more readily savor the tremendous opportunity we have to make every single day count. And in the end, that is what we would all have wished for ourselves at the point of transition.

Happy Saturday!

Image created by AI interpreting this aphorism.

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Written by Brian Weiner

When I was 5 years old, I discovered that the lemon tree in the backyard + dixie cups + water and sugar and I was in business. I have been hooked on that ever since. In 1979, I borrowed $14,000 to create a brand new product... photographic greeting cards with no text on the inside, called Paradise Photography. That was the start of The Illusion Factory. Since then, The Illusion Factory has been entrusted by all of the major studios and broadcasters with the advertising and marketing of over $7 billion in filmed, live, broadcast, gaming, AR, VR and regulated gaming forms of entertainment, generating more than $100 Billion in revenue and 265 awards for creativity and technology for our clients. When I took a break from film school at UCLA to move to Hawaii, my mother did not lecture me. Instead, she took 150 of her favorite aphorisms and in her beautiful calligraphy, wrote them artistically throughout a blank journal. That is the origin of the Lessons from the Mountain series. Since then, on my journeys to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise, I have spent countless hours contemplating words of wisdom from the sages of all races, genders and political persuasions, constantly accumulating the thoughts to guide me on my life path. I hope you enjoy my books. Please let me know your thoughts, as I highly value your feedback!