Life After Death - Topic and Questions

Recently I started researching the topic of life after death and found there are many convincing reports of kids who remember a past life. They are able to give specific details about a person of the past who they would have no way of knowing anything about. The cases have been researched and the details seem to check out.

There are also many reports of near death experiences where someone dies and their consciousness goes on, but then they are brought back and come back to life. They are then able to recall what they experienced when they died.

There have also been many reports of ghosts or unexplained occurrences especially in places that have a long history such as old homes and buildings where people used to live or work.

Cases like the ones above seem to infer that consciousness goes on after physical death. The idea of reincarnation may exist. When one dies, transition to another life may not happen instantly but can take weeks, months, or even years.

There is certainly a lot we still do not know about life and what happens after we die. Here are some questions that can be discussed in relation to life after death. Feel free to reply with any thoughts, ideas, or experiences.

What happens after we die?

Where does the consciousness go between physical lives?

Does one get to choose where they go next after death? If not, how is it decided?

Does one's actions in life have an affect on what happens after death such as in the idea of karma?

Does one's beliefs have any affect on what happens after death?

When does consciousness begin in a living thing? At conception? At birth?

Can one be reincarnated anywhere on Earth? What about other planets or places in the universe?

Can one be reincarnated into other living things such as animals?

Why does one's knowledge and memory not carry over in most cases of reincarnation? 

If you can remember your life after you die in a state of consciousness, how come we don't remember the consciousness state after reincarnation?

We have rules here on Earth that we live by, but what are the rules of the universe?

Does our consciousness have a name or identity since it would be different depending on which living thing it inhabits?

Does our mental status carry over after we die? What about people whose mental capacity declines later in life? Would that state of mind carry over, or would it be restored back to normal capacity?

Are dreams related in some way? Could dreams be more like our consciousness when it is between physical lives?

Could people with dissociative identity disorder or gender non-conforming people be remembering their past life which is making their current identity confusing?

Why is physical life so detailed with so many things that don't seem to make sense for them to exist at all?

Are there certain things a person must accomplish in their physical life to move on to another stage?

Does dying early or in an unexpected way have an affect on what happens next with the consciousness?

How does time play into it? Is time as consciousness the same as time in the physical world?

How significant is the act of having children since it is a way to create a new physical being that will have a consciousness? 

Can those who have died still see and observe the living world which they came from? If so, do they have the ability to affect the physical world?

Can different consciousness's interact with each other while they are in between physical lives?

What about the time before the Earth existed and eventually if life on Earth comes to an end, would consciousness's have to exist somewhere else or find another physical world to inhabit?

We tend to take death very seriously here on Earth, treating it as though when it happens everything is over, but if life goes on after death than it may not be such a big deal at all but instead simply a transition to the next life.

The use of the name Karen as a derogatory word needs to stop

I will start by saying, no my name is not Karen, but I believe the recent trend of calling people “Karen” as an insult is wrong and needs to stop. Calling someone a bad name based on an identity characteristic they have no control over is not ok.

Usually in situations like this, the person being described is not actually named Karen, but the person saying it is still using the name of other people as an insult.

There are a lot of people who have this name and unfortunately it happened to catch on as a way to describe a certain type of person. The people with this name should not be subjected to a negative association just because of their name.

It's very simple to see how this is wrong, you just have to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself, “How would you like it if all of a sudden everyone started using your name as an insult?” You probably would not like it one bit. So if you are someone who has been using the name “Karen” like this, you may want to reconsider what you are doing and realize how it is affecting other people with that name.

Hinge App Review - First Impressions of the Dating App

I have tried several dating sites and apps over the years without much success. Recently took some time off from them which actually felt good, but one of my goals for the new year is to give it another go, I decided to sign up for one of the newer apps I have not tried yet.

The Hinge app seems to be one of the more popular options at the moment and has decent ratings so I figured I would try it out. The sign up was pretty easy, you just enter in some basic information, answer a few questions, and upload some pictures.

They let you pick 3 prompts to answer and that is about all you get in terms of giving the other person an idea of who you are. Personally I do not think this is enough especially when many of the questions seem kind of irrelevant. I tried to pick the ones that allow you to explain a bit about who you are and what you like.

For the pictures, they want you to add at least 6 pictures. I actually found this to be hard because I don't tend to take a lot of pictures of myself and I don't have many pictures with others on my phone. So I ended up having to dig through pictures on my computer to try to find some to transfer over to the phone to upload.

Upon trying out the app itself, it is pretty straight forward but they don't really give you much guidance or instruction on the features. It shows you one profile at a time and you pretty much have to make a decision if you like or dislike them based on the pictures and a few statements they filled out. It also gives you some basic information such as age and location. A lot of the basics are optional though so you may or may not see them.

One big issue I found was the location. It has you select your location on a map, but for some reason it does not go by the town, but instead somehow goes by neighborhood names. So for example, I was not even able to select the name of the town where I live. It would only give these odd neighborhood names that no one would even know. I mean I live here and I have not even heard of half these names. I ended up selecting the next town over since at least it was a recognizable town which was near by. They really need to fix this issue.

Also they have another option to enter your hometown but it is not clear if that is where you live now or where you grew up, so the whole location thing is very confusing in this app.

Another thing I don''t really like is they want you to add captions to your pictures, but you can't add your own caption, instead you have to pick from their list of preset captions. So when you are going through the profiles you keep seeing the same repetitive captions on all the pictures. It doesn't really make sense.

The app lets you choose a few parameters to help narrow down the search for example age range and distance, but I found that these don't seem to work very well. For example I had an age range set but it kept sending me profiles outside the range. Same for the distance, I had a distance of 20 miles set but it kept sending me matches that were definitely further away than that.

When you are shown a profile, you have the option to “like” a picture or statement, or you can “X” it to pass. Personally I don't like the concrete “Yes or No” method. I wish there was a “Maybe” option or at least an option to save or skip without having to commit to a like or pass. They also have an option to give a “rose” which is more special since it is limited to 1 per week.

So far I am still new to the app so I'm still testing it out and learning it, but for first impression, honestly I don't like it too much. I think it does not really give you enough opportunity to explain who you are in your profile since you pretty much just get your pictures and 3 statements. Also it is buggy as some of the features do not seem to work like they should.

I will give it a little time and try to use if for a while to see if anything materializes but honestly I do not have high expectations for this one. They describe this app as being designed to be deleted, like they want you to find a match and then delete the app, but I have a feeling I may end up just deleting the app.