Lots to unpack and chew on here, thank you for this. I do feel like I want to relate my own "story" around death, for some reason, so here goes:
When I was just 6 or 7, not sure exactly, I remember having a conversation with my parents, asking them what happens when you die. As they were both agnostic, they said, well, some people believe there is an afterlife, and some people believe that nothing happens, you just no longer exist, you are no longer conscious. I fully understood what that meant at the time. I didn't think that my consciousness would continue on but it would be devoid of content. But the mere idea of there being an ending to consciousness and that it would never resumed terrified and depressed me. My mom tried to comfort me in saying whatever happens wouldn't happen for a very long time, but this didn't mollify me. But then I guess, something distracted me and I went on and kind of forgot about it.
I wasn't agnostic myself at the time, didn't think to question the existance of God, as at the time I was going to Hebrew School, but when I got to high school, something finally clicked and I decided that I was an atheist. I didn't want to contemplate death, however, so I used coping mechanisms of fantasy to pretend it wasn't going to happen to me. One was that I would become a "genetic engineer" and find the gene for aging that we could then change in living people so that death was no longer inevitable. Another came after watching some sci-fi show, or a piece of one, that planted this idea in my head: a future version of humanity that has advanced to an incredible level such that they both have "concurred" mortality as well as developed time travel. This far future version of humanity decides to take on the project of reviving the history of the human race, first by going back in time and grabbing the people who have most recently died at their dying moment (replacing them with a dead copy of their body so as not to give anything away), bring them back to the "present" and saving their life and making them immortal. This would happen generation by generation, and previous generations obviously would have more and more need for a kind of "reeducation" to remove old, deluded thinking, and of course it brings up questions regarding at what point this project would end. What "cave man" would be the cutoff and at what point would it be impossible to "reeducate" a person so removed from this advanced civilization as to almost be a different species? Perhaps this is already a book or part of one, who knows.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that in between the conversation and high school, my dad died (when I was 9), which had lasting effects on me and my relationship with death.
Aging and a chronic disease has made me much more accepting about it, along with witnessing my father-in-law's (who lived with us) dying of pancreatic cancer, and I've accepted it to a much greater degree than I did in the past. But I still feel fear or at least anxiety every time I get some kind of pain that makes me think it is something more serious than just a sign of aging, etc.
I would say if there is one driver that is probably stronger than others (aside from sheer curiosity) in terms of "waking up" it is the "promise" I intuit, or heard directly stated, that after awakening, this primal fear or dread about dying is no longer there, or at least the edge of it is seriously dulled?
Thank you for sharing! I really don't have more to say that what is written above, which may or may not resonate with any given individual. The fear of death is its own phenomenon; addressing it can be an independent effort from the question of "awakening" (for lack of a better word)...
Going by anecdotes there are plenty of people that have overcome their fear of death without addressing the question of "awakening." Offhand Coelho and Roland Griffiths are the only two that leap to my mind, but there are countless others. I was in that boat myself, midway along my journey...
Is it possible to "awaken" as I'm using the term and STILL have a fear of death? I don't think so, but I'm not certain. The main reasons for thinking so is in that realization it dawns on you: that-which-dies is NOT what you fundamentally are. I can't think of a simpler formulation. The body dies, the person dies... but, per your comment on the "awareness/attention" essay, awareness isn't personal. The Fundamental reality isn't personal. Even if a person dies, the fact of awareness/experience is eternal and indestructable. This is the gist of Clark's essay above, and I feel it hits the nail pretty well on the head. If it doesn't resonate with you, that's okay. I just don't know what else to say at this point :)
Lots to unpack and chew on here, thank you for this. I do feel like I want to relate my own "story" around death, for some reason, so here goes:
When I was just 6 or 7, not sure exactly, I remember having a conversation with my parents, asking them what happens when you die. As they were both agnostic, they said, well, some people believe there is an afterlife, and some people believe that nothing happens, you just no longer exist, you are no longer conscious. I fully understood what that meant at the time. I didn't think that my consciousness would continue on but it would be devoid of content. But the mere idea of there being an ending to consciousness and that it would never resumed terrified and depressed me. My mom tried to comfort me in saying whatever happens wouldn't happen for a very long time, but this didn't mollify me. But then I guess, something distracted me and I went on and kind of forgot about it.
I wasn't agnostic myself at the time, didn't think to question the existance of God, as at the time I was going to Hebrew School, but when I got to high school, something finally clicked and I decided that I was an atheist. I didn't want to contemplate death, however, so I used coping mechanisms of fantasy to pretend it wasn't going to happen to me. One was that I would become a "genetic engineer" and find the gene for aging that we could then change in living people so that death was no longer inevitable. Another came after watching some sci-fi show, or a piece of one, that planted this idea in my head: a future version of humanity that has advanced to an incredible level such that they both have "concurred" mortality as well as developed time travel. This far future version of humanity decides to take on the project of reviving the history of the human race, first by going back in time and grabbing the people who have most recently died at their dying moment (replacing them with a dead copy of their body so as not to give anything away), bring them back to the "present" and saving their life and making them immortal. This would happen generation by generation, and previous generations obviously would have more and more need for a kind of "reeducation" to remove old, deluded thinking, and of course it brings up questions regarding at what point this project would end. What "cave man" would be the cutoff and at what point would it be impossible to "reeducate" a person so removed from this advanced civilization as to almost be a different species? Perhaps this is already a book or part of one, who knows.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that in between the conversation and high school, my dad died (when I was 9), which had lasting effects on me and my relationship with death.
Aging and a chronic disease has made me much more accepting about it, along with witnessing my father-in-law's (who lived with us) dying of pancreatic cancer, and I've accepted it to a much greater degree than I did in the past. But I still feel fear or at least anxiety every time I get some kind of pain that makes me think it is something more serious than just a sign of aging, etc.
I would say if there is one driver that is probably stronger than others (aside from sheer curiosity) in terms of "waking up" it is the "promise" I intuit, or heard directly stated, that after awakening, this primal fear or dread about dying is no longer there, or at least the edge of it is seriously dulled?
Thank you for sharing! I really don't have more to say that what is written above, which may or may not resonate with any given individual. The fear of death is its own phenomenon; addressing it can be an independent effort from the question of "awakening" (for lack of a better word)...
Going by anecdotes there are plenty of people that have overcome their fear of death without addressing the question of "awakening." Offhand Coelho and Roland Griffiths are the only two that leap to my mind, but there are countless others. I was in that boat myself, midway along my journey...
Is it possible to "awaken" as I'm using the term and STILL have a fear of death? I don't think so, but I'm not certain. The main reasons for thinking so is in that realization it dawns on you: that-which-dies is NOT what you fundamentally are. I can't think of a simpler formulation. The body dies, the person dies... but, per your comment on the "awareness/attention" essay, awareness isn't personal. The Fundamental reality isn't personal. Even if a person dies, the fact of awareness/experience is eternal and indestructable. This is the gist of Clark's essay above, and I feel it hits the nail pretty well on the head. If it doesn't resonate with you, that's okay. I just don't know what else to say at this point :)