Sol's Inner Vault

In the Holy Quran, the term for the hereafter appears over a hundred times. A certain realm is described for both heaven and hell, paradise or eternal fire, based on one's deeds. In the earliest Sanskrit Hindu Vedas there is no reference at all to afterlife. Yet, later scripture adds the concept, along with cause and affect Karma, literal reincarnation, the transfigured soul. Many Buddhist beliefs are most similar. Christian tradition believes in both the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, there is no clear cut view of the afterlife. The New Testament, created within Christianity, teaches that, depending on a person’s belief in Jesus as the Savior of humanity, one would be consigned to heaven or hell. All of these belief systems deal with the hereafter differently, and all require blind faith in the sanctity of scriptures.   It is hardly unusual for any beings to wish their own existence to continue in some eternal form or manifestation. There is nothing...

Gender First thing to say is, I'm not influenced by personal experience. This is a topic- current and virally debated in our culture- that I look at only as an observer. I have no close transgender friends, family, or neighbors. So, not directly informed here beyond my own reading, conversation with others, my thoughts. The core of the issue: I'm not persuaded that actually changing gender is even possible. It's like asking or expecting x and y chromosomes to switch seats. Can't happen in science. You can change hormones, physical structures, and psychological or attitudinal beliefs. The merits of doing so are endlessly discussed pro and con.  Yet, there's no doubt the suffering of feeling disconnected, wrongly oriented or misaligned in ones own life and body, it must be excruciating. The motivation for drastically ending this suffering is readily understandable. But, could it be the wrong remedy for the wrong problem? Misdiagnosis via yet incomplete psychological i...