Why Do I Not Care Anymore? Possibly a Rhetorical Question

by cantleave 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cantleave

  There was a time, not so very long ago, when a purpose in life was so important to me. It mattered to me what I believed as to how we came here. It mattered to me what happens after death. It seems now, I don't really care.

  There have been some great questions aimed at theists and atheists the last couple of days, but I haven't been engaged by them and haven't made any comments, and I don't have any opinion on them. I haven't even taken the time to think about them.

  I can't understand why I'm not interested in these topics. Anything with a scientific slant used to interest me immensely.

  It seems I'm alive, I want to live the rest of my life in an enjoyable and productive way, nothing else matters. I don't care if there is an after-life, a god or a purpose.

  Is it because my belief system of over 40 years has disintegrated and left me with no desire to search and develop a new one? Is my sub-conscious protecting me? Has the trauma of the certainty that has now gone stopped me from holding any strong views? Will this lack of interest stay with me the rest of my life? Has anyone else felt this way? Am I turning into one of the empty shells that the WTS says all "wordly"people are?

  I don't feel depressed, confused or anxious, just disinterested in life big questions.

  This post may sound bizarre to you, but maybe someone understands where I am coming from and can help me make sense of where I am.
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  AllTimeJeff

  I understand. The best thing I can say is, you're right. Don't force it. Think of other things.
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  In

  Sounds like you're just tired of the racket.

  Enjoy some peace in life, and come back to the questions when you want to... or not.
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  Robdar

  It seems I'm alive, I want to live the rest of my life in an enjoyable and productive way, nothing else matters. I don't care if there is an after-life, a god or a purpose.

  Well, go do it! If you take care of this life, the one to come will take care of itself.
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  Sapphy

  I've gone from the burning, desperate "but there must be an answer" phase, to actually enjoying "not knowing".
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  Mad Sweeney

  I'm with you all. So's Phil Collins.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVFku0P7qTA
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  daniel-p

  I think I understand what you're saying, and I've felt the same things recently. I think that a lot of us are in a state of transition, and it's a glorious state when we shouldn't try so hard to figure the entire world out and the secret to life and happiness and everything else.

  In a way, it's a relief to just take it one day at a time, live in the moment, and leave the rest for later. Ironically, I think it just comes down to what Solomon said: beyond working, living day to day, spending time with family and eating good food, what the hell does anything matter? The entire universe is in a whirling state of shifting matter, and our atoms simply go back into everything else.
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  HappyGuy

  cantleave,

  I think I know why. I went through the same thing.

  I do not beleive that we can know the answer to the questions "why are we here?", "how did life start?", "where did the material unverse come from?", etc.

  Whatever caused the universe to come into being is outside our universe. Being inside the universe we cannot have a frame of reference to understand it. We possess neither the words, nor the symbols, nor the imagery to understand it.

  It is like showing a line a cube and asking the line to describe the cube. The line will only describe a line because it will not have a frame of reference to comprehend the cube.

  Mysticism comes as close to the answers as I have found. Most people won't like the answer. I will try to explain it, I don't fully understand it and will have to use words familiar to me becuse the ancient words cannot really be translated into modern language.

  I have posted this before in different forms so I will try to be brief.

  We know that the material universe came into being at a fixed point. I don't say fixed point in time because we don't know if time existed at that point. What existed before the material universe? Einstein can help us here. Relativity theory says E=MC2, what we want to know is how to create mass, before the material universe came into being there was no mass, so solving for M we get M=E/C2. So, prior to the material universe existing what existed was E, energy.

  Mysticism teaches that this Energy is love, that all of us come from this energy, all of us have this energy inside of us, and all of us can connect to the universal energy anytime we want. And when we die we will go back there, to this universal love. Mysticism teaches that the purpose of life in the material universe is so that we can perfect love because without strife there is no way to perfect love. How can I learn compassion if I am never in a position where I need to be compassionate?

  Now, what is the nature of the universal energy? No one knows. We have no way of knowing, we lack the words to describe it because it is outside our universe.

  So, while we can know that energy existed prior to the material universe and our life force comes from that universal energy, we cannot know what it is, other than to know that we are part of it, can connect to it, and will go back to it when we die.

  I am not describing "God" here or anything to do with the Bible.

  This knowledge is very old and was unversal until religionists tried to stamp it out.
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  nelly136

  It seems I'm alive, I want to live the rest of my life in an enjoyable and productive way, nothing else matters.

  reached the plateau of being content?
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  cantleave

  Thanks guys for your input so far.

  Happy Guy - I think I understand where you are coming from. I used to work with a druid. He used to talk to me about energy running through everthing and binding everything. He spoke about lay lines and the ability to channel energy (I thought he was Satans agent!!!). But on reflection what he said actually made sense.

  The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can not be created or destroyed but can be converted into different forms of energy (I do not recall love being being one of those energy forms). But to view love as a form of energy makes sense to me, but then everything results from energy. The thing is energy probably pre-dates time and space (even if by a nanosecond) and so therefore every thing we see is energy as Einstein's fabulous equation shows. Therefore energy must be god (isn't that stated in isaiah 40:26? ).

  I will say that some of the ancient ideas do appeal. In fact paganism appeals to me more than Christianity, I must sit naked on galstonbury tor and the let the energy from lay lines inspire me.