Right now Patrick Swayze is in the hospital, doing quite poorly due to his pancreatic cancer. It has been suggested that he has 6 months to live. It must be so difficult to know that you are terminally ill, and are likely to not be here at the end of the year.

I have found a lot of people, in the new age, often say the same thing... death is a part of life, we move on to somewhere better, we're just energy. Yes, this may be all well and true, but it doesn't release the fact that death to this lifetime as a whole as we know it is finite, and all the philosophies and beliefs in the world don't change this fact. Nor do any ideologies on the subject take away the mystery of death.

Personally, although I have my personal beliefs, it doesn't take the edge off when I really contemplate death. To know one has a time limit, must be amazingly difficult, it must be intensely conducive to panic attacks taking over from time to time.

We all know we are going to die, but knowing that it is sooner than later must be worrying. In the last stretch it must either feel like time is flying by so quickly, or going so slowly.

I feel like what we do here often on the forum is become knowledgeable in the worlds between life and death, the realms of consciousness that bridge our physical selves with the spiritual realms. I can imagine that long-term/short-term death sentences, must bring up so many of the concepts we discuss here, so quickly. Questions, ideas, ponderings on so many aspects of reality to confront.

Reminds me of a quote by Jim Morrison, "No one here gets out alive."