Since I seem to have been getting extremely off topic as of late...
Here's my reconcile.
Who's to say there is or is not an afterlife, really? I mean, for all we know, there is many. That's where my theories come out to play...
I guess this is going to be a little about religion as well. It may as well have been expected, considering the topic. What if there is one god? Maybe he created every other religion to give people choices, and in turn, whatever afterlife your religion holds, that's where you go when you die. Is it so hard to believe that there could be multiple afterlives? There was a story I heard a long time ago, and it sunk in deep. The gist of it was that when you died, you'd be given a choice-- you could choose where you thought you should go. Ahead of you would be light, behind would be dark. The light would be split off into two paths: Heaven and reincarnation. Likewise, dark would be split: Hell and Limbo. In some versions, it involves flipping a coin, and while that coin is flipping, you choose. And once you've chosen, the coin would stop and you'd go exactly where you want to go.
One of my personal theories is that life on earth IS Hell, due to all the pain and suffering. And when we died, that was heaven. We'd be free from any earthbound forces of said pain and suffering.
In all honesty, I had the biggest fear of the afterlife, that is, until I came across the story of Xibalba...Xibalba is the Mayan underworld. The place where dead souls go to be reborn. Xibalba is generally depicted as a dark place, much like Hell. But there are different versions of it, just as there are different versions of any afterlife. The version that cured, not only my fear of the afterlife, but also my fear of death-- is bascially describing Xibalba as a Heaven world, opposed to a Hell. This also brings me to mention a Mayan creation myth in which, means so much more to me that I can easily describe. The first human (First Father) sacrificed himself to make the world, using death as an act of creation. When he did this, his body parts were spread about, creating the world and all the life on it, his torso became the Tree of Life, and all that was left was First Father's head, which was hung in the heaven creating Xibalba...the physical road to Xibalba is said to be the Dark Rift in the Milky Way...and the physical REALM is said to be the gold center of the Orion Nebula. At the bottom of Orion's Belt, you'll see two stars which form a triangle from the outer star of the belt. In the very center, there are two stars, right between those two stars is the nebula. I look for these starts everynight.
This leads me to my plans for when I die...I want to be buried in a classic coffin, the coffin will be black with beige trimming, made from the wood of a weeping willow. I intend to be buried in a field, far from anyone, living or dead. I then want a specific tree seed planted over my grave: the seed of the Guatemalan Cebia tree, which the Mayans believed to be the Tree of Life.
Discuss.
