I can't post about this in the thread about suicide prevention without risking that the thread would be removed, so I have made a separate one to protect that.

In my view, the soul is eternal. STIPULATED

So that, no matter what happens, your soul is still in existence. It survives the death of the body.
STUDY THAT: YOU are still the same soul - it doesn't go away

In my view also -the life experience on earth that we see and feel everyday is a learning experience created for us to experience as a learning path...

So our bodies are a vehicle (doomed to one day be no longer useful) much like a taxicab that we are taking a ride in to go to class...

What happens if we blow it UP?

Kill it, ruin it, tear it apart...

Your spirit is still alive, all you have done is to divest yourself of the substance you were granted to experience life in as a vehicle - so what does that necessarily mean?

I expect it means you have to do it all over again in a new one.

Sorry, good-by, see you again if I myself fail this stage of my spiritual classes and have to go to school with you in the next one.

You can BAIL on your body - but not on the school GOD sent you to. You have to repeat classes that you fail to complete regardless

So then, it seems to me that you might as well stick around even if you think everything sucks.


Why have it all suck twice?

From my perspective therefore - suicide is a waste of time


It pays to take a longer view of things


* I believe in reincarnation

 

Suicide itself is defined as "self killing". I'm not sure on the theological side, and there are far too many options on that path for me to argue one over the other.

On the other hand, I am a fixer. I cannot fix something if I am dead. I cannot help others fix problems if they are dead. Suicide to me is a final solution that cannot be considered until ALL other options have been tested and failed. In no way do I condone the action, but I can understand the choice. If someone is considering suicide, then they are looking at solutions for there problem. A lot of the current generation have come to expect life to be easy and require little work, so they see suicide as an easy solution. The older generations view it quite differently.

I will use Robin Williams as my example case. He suicided (yes, that is correct usage). Everyone wants to blame the depression. It was not just depression. He also had the onset of Parkinson's disease, which leads to Alzheimer's and dimentia. For a man like him to slowly lose himself was something he could not bear, and the diseases would ultimately take his life anyway. So he checked out early.

The complete depth of the problems behind thoughts of suicide must be explored and addressed before an intervention is successful. And when you help someone, try not to preach to them. Their ideology may be very different from yours.

I've rambled on enough, so I'll stop there.

 

When I was at Fort Irwin we only had 1 tiny movie theater on the post. Nearest town was 50 miles away. We had that 1 screen with 1 movie showing at a time. It was usually something family friendly in the afternoon, and then something more action oriented at night. But which ever showing you went to, you sat in the same auditorium, and faced the same screen, and if you didn't like the movie, there was no other auditorium you could walk into like you can at a big multiplex theater. You got the 1 movie you showed up for, and sometimes the movie wasn't a great one. I was sitting in that tiny theater one time with a friend of mine, and we were watching a really bad movie. Neither one of us liked it. He asked me "Do you want to just go watch something else?" and I reminded him "There's nothing else playing right now." So we sat and finished the movie, and the ending turned out better than we were expecting. It wasn't the greatest movie ever made, but it got better as it went along.

When any of my friends ever mention the idea of suicide, I tell them this story and then remind them that, much like at that little theater on an Army post, this life is the only show in town right now. It might suck, maybe sucks really bad, and might even suck right to the end, but since there is nothing else playing right now, might as well just hang around and see if it gets any better; and even if it doesn't, it's not like there was anything else playing, so we're not missing anything by sticking around to see how this adventure pans out.


EDIT: I just read through this and realized that some people may think I am totally ignoring the points brought up by RL250 above. But to avoid any misunderstandings, I think RL250 is 100% correct when he said :

"The complete depth of the problems behind thoughts of suicide must be explored and addressed before an intervention is successful. And when you help someone, try not to preach to them. Their ideology may be very different from yours."

I was not meaning to skip over this very important point; I was just offering my "different ideology" on the subject and how I explain it to other people. It doesn't mean I am right, and it doesn't mean my little story about Ft. Irwin is going to help even in the slightest for some people. But this true story is something I remind myself of when my life goes downhill (like when I lost my business and my house, and had to start all over again, twice). If this gives somebody else an alternative or additional way to look at the topic, then maybe it can be helpful for them as well.