7-3-I-Search-Dionisios

= __The Path of The Souls__ = by Dionisis media type="custom" key="799407"

__**//Introduction://**__ Death. what happens to you after that. many people have wondered about it and have come up with many different beliefs. It all started on Easter and I was in the church. I was listening to the priest talking about Resurrection, when it hit me. What actually does happen when you die? Where do you go (and a bunch of other questions) ? I had been wondering about this for a long time. One day as I went to tech class the teacher asked us to write a blog on what we were wondering about. Since I have lost two grandparents and an uncle, I wanted to find out what really happened to them.

__//**Body:**//__
I learned before a long time that there are many different beliefs in this world and that most have to do with heaven or hell. I also learned more recently that the biggest one is Christianity. But there are also other religions that state all kinds of different things. As I was thinking about different beliefs I realized that other religions have different beliefs also. I was curious about this so I did some research online about other religions' beliefs. On a website called [|Everything2] I found a lot of information about what different beliefs tell us about what happens to our souls. In that website I found seven different things that people believe in!

There are several different beliefs about what happens to your soul after you die. One of these beliefs is Resurrection. Resurrection is one thing Christians believe that is also believed in, in other religions. Resurrection to the Christian religion has two meanings: a general/basic one and a specific one. The specific meaning is: when (sometimes) a Christian talks about Resurrection they mean the Resurrection of Jesus after He died. But when anybody talks generally about Resurrection the word means: when a person dies and he goes to heaven. But not only does the soul go to heaven but the body of the same person becomes a spirit. Then on Judgment Day the body with the soul become one and together go to either Heaven or Hell.

After researching about Resurrection, I found another belief. The second belief I found out about is called "the Afterlife". One of the many definitions of the Afterlife is that people never die but they go to a specific place. the specific place depends on what kind of person they are and how they have lived their life (here on earth). Some people believe that the Afterlife also prepares the soul to make it ready to be transferred from the body in which it is in to another body, which is called Reincarnation. This word seemed to me as a belief, so I looked up this word to.

The word Reincarnation also has several different meanings. One of the many meanings of Reincarnation is: when the body in which a soul is occupying dies, the soul stays without a body for some period of time. After this "period of time" goes by, the soul goes through a specific stage. This specific stage is when the soul without a body is born into the world in another body. Some religions are even more specific with their statement. These religions tell us that the the soul may be born into may be worse or better than the previous body the soul was in.

Other beliefs that certain people believe in include the statement that the soul dies with the body. To different people this means something different and sometimes more than one different thing. To me the statement that the soul dies with the body means only one thing. When I hear that the soul dies with the body I think that it means that: when we die and our body decomposes, the soul that lives in us also decomposes with our body. This belief seems as if not many people believe in it. This is probably true because I got this as a comment to something I posted.

Another belief that some people believe in is that there is nothing after death. To me this phrase has two different meanings. The first meaning that comes to my mind when I think about this phrase is that after death we go into a kind of trance/sleep. Also when I mean sleep, I mean a blank, dreamless kind of dream. The second meaning that I think of is that when we die we just stay where we are, not able to do anything. Also our body just becomes limp and we can't feel any part of our body either.

Yet another statement that I got from a comment is that when you die you don't really notice that you **//are//** dead and that you just keep on living your life. What I think this means is that: when you die you wake up the next day feeling unharmed and convinced that all of what you went through (death) was just a bad dream. This belief connects to another belief that I came across while researching. This belief states that when you die you (your soul probably) just disappear. these two beliefs connect because to the "alive" people you are probably invisible.

After researching all of this I decided to interview the priest of my church. I also decided to talk with him at the end of the first liturgy on sunday Apr. 13th.When I finally got the chance to talk to the priest he told me something very important. He said: When you die, the moment you close your eyes, the soul gets separated from the body. After that, depending on how good or bad you are, either the Angels come and take you with them or the Demons come and take you. The moment this happens, if the Angels have gotten you, you start to feel //"good"// and your soul starts feeling a peice of Heaven. But when Demons get you your soul starts feeling //"very bad"// and you start to feel part of Hell. The "place" (unlike the dictionary meaning) where the Angels or Demons take you is called the "Middle Stage". Later, in the Second Coming of Christ, if the soul goes to Heaven it will feel the full version of Heaven. But if the soul goes to Hell, then it will feel the full version of Hell.

**//__Conclusion:__//**
In my journey to find out about what happens to your soul when you die I have found out about many things. Things that I didn't even know were beliefs, or that they were believed in! So now when my time comes to exit this world I will have an idea about what might happen to my soul. At least now I will be sort of prepared for what I might have to go through when the time comes and I hope that what I learned is actually true(or at least one part of it). Unlike, before when the only thing I knew was about how your soul goes to either Heaven or Hell.

__//Works Cited://__

 * 1) "I'M Okay, You'Re Okay, That's Okay, Okay?@Everything2.Com." __Everything2__. 8 Nov. 2001. 9 Apr. 2008 http://everything2.com/e2node/I%2527m%2520ok%252C%2520you%2527re%2520ok%252C%2520that%2527s%2520ok%252C%2520ok%253F.
 * 2) Father George. Personal interview. 13 Apr. 2008.
 * 3) Hammer, Frank L. __Life and Its Mysteries__. 1945. 14 July 2008.