when i die, i want to be cremated and spread amongst the earth.

that’s what i was thinking today (for the umpteenth time) while reading and riding the train. some might think this a rather morbid thought –especially as i have just celebrated a birthday and i am rejoicing in the lessons i am learning/remembering –but it’s not…i just continue to be frustrated by the “living” who place such high value on flesh — especially dead flesh. for those who believe in afterlife, incarnation, or astral existence (nearly all religions do, in some form), why is it so customary to hold onto that motionless body buried in a cemetery? it’s one thing to prepare a body for the afterlife, it’s another to make that dead body your life.

i don’t want to visit bodies buried “six feet deep” lined up as numbers, in rows, columns, with hundreds, maybe thousands of other…heck, we might just end up with more buried bodies, then living ones.

i feel we tether our deceased ancestors to these solemn plots of lands simply to pacify our grievances and inability to let go. when our hearts stop beating, i pray and hope, we do not stay close to those decomposing bodies … i’d rather honor, and rejoice in, their memories then go sit at their grave and cry. i’d like to know that we are free

when i pass over, if my body is so confined to a coffin underground, my spirit/astral/conscious energy will NOT be there. so don’t come looking for me. in fact, i think i might rather visit you in the comfort of your own space. or, come back in another.

i tend to think tangentially, connecting (not-so) random things. this time, i connected my want to be cremated to a chat i had on facebook yesterday…

i was talking about how we have the same composition as the earth – you know physical science/biology stuff. we’re something like 2/3 water, 1/3 minerals. my fellow FB friend challenged that.  i explained that either we are comprised of the earth, or the earth is comprised of us.  our composition is much too similar.

we are one in the same. there is much truth the common prayer, “from ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

then i had a personal “aha” moment.

if the majority of people born OF the earth (mineral composition) are dying and not REPLENISHING the earth are we DEPLETING the earth, robbing it of the very minerals it gave us – locking those minerals into expensive wooden and metal boxes?

i remember coming across some write ups a while back about how the soil today does not have the same nutrients it had centuries ago. that the earth’s fruits and vegetables provide us with less sustenance than 100 years ago. i know industrialization and technology (in the name of progress, of course) have contributed to the depletion of our soil. but, could not our collective lack of return (especially those who were not dis-eased at time of death) to the earth, to dust and ashes, to those minerals contribute to the difference in the composition of the earth’s soil?

i wonder.

being of such an inquisitive nature, i am adding this to my list of research projects…in the meanwhile, i just wanted to get these thoughts down. maybe have a dialogue or two in the process.

hmmph, my desire to be cremated and spread amongst the earth could now have two purposes! i can encourage those who know me to place less value on this physical existence and  more on the ethereal/spiritual one AND, in the process, i can give back a mineral or two.

talk about being green.