I can't seem to overcome my fear of death

[Mandy]

4 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@Mandy do you have evidence that consciousness survives physical death ?

"When consciousness leaves, there is no self-consciousness. You say the Knower of consciousness also vanishes, but who is there to witness the absence of Knower? If you say, after consciousness nothing remains, then who will ask this question? What will you achieve by rejecting these words? Your fear of death will remain intact." - Nisargadatta

 

Asking for evidence is asking "this question". 

 

You identify with being physical, you identify with being the body, so when you say after physical death you assume that you are the body. You are not the physical body. This is a mistaken identification. 

[Phil]

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@Phil

I'm not sure what to do with your posts .they are kinda ambiguous and hard for me to understand you correctly. So I will just go on my own here and describe what I'm experiencing as of late...

Understandable & totally not a problem. 😅  Flip your script… notice the underlying discord is the topic, and notice that seems to be of, related to or coming from a “Phil”, and continue to scrutinize direct experience in that respect. 

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

To answer your opening question: no I'm not doing the panic attacks.  They happen to me. 

In the same fashion, happen… yet maybe not ‘to a me’… and maybe that is the underlying insight to be seen. 

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

A big component of them is that they happen unexpectedly and completely out of the blue .and they actually make you feel you've lost control over yourself and reality (your surroundings) permanently and you are not getting it back. Of course that comes just with the fear and its not true. After about half an hour you calm down and you re-gain your control over reality .

I’m proposing seeing panic attacks are less out of the blue, and that there is momentum which can be ‘seen’ in terms of discord & alignment with thoughts… followed by the body, and all of experience / appearance. Furthermore, that “the body” is a thought, and what the thought points to is infinite intelligence, unconditional well being… and some thoughts and substances resonate, and some do not. Ambition & manipulation therein (collectively) can be sneaky, sneaky mofo’s. The difference, is the intention(s) behind, prior to. 

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

It’s actually completely understandable to have anxiety around death, even though it is inevitable.  But I notice my fear of death increases whenever I experience a panic attack. What im trying to do to not let death anxiety hinder my day to day life.

I say you’re not allowing love into your body, relationships, dreams and life, and you’re feeling that not allowing / asserting / adhering to beliefs / putting what you believe you know / being right, above how you feel. But no worries, God don’t listen to nobody & All is Well. 

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

For some of us, contemplating death can cause intense anxiety and fear. It’s why death anxiety is a recognized mental health disorder with its own name: Thanatophobia.

Direct experience is the key. There is not direct experience of “for some of us”. The relevance is spotting the very conceptualizations which are the aversion. 

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

It’s considered a phobia if the fear arises virtually every time you think about death or the death of a loved one.

“Phobia” is another conceptualization. Much easier (and feels great) to align thought with feeling, vs believing the thought / conceptualization. 

Similarly, there is not an actual experience of “every time you think”.  Appearing thoughts are experienced directly. 

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

if the fear persists for more than six months..or if the fear prevents you from functioning in everyday life or relationships. If this describes your anxiety, then you've got a huge problem. It becomes difficult to function In everyday life.

When one is triggered it is as if one can go one of two ways - inspect the discord - or ‘it’s a problem’ /  ‘we have a problem’ / ‘you’re the problem’.  We’ve tried building missiles big enough to resolve the discord... …

43 minutes ago, Someone here said:

The lesson im trying to learn is that there is a danger of missing out on so much if we don’t appreciate even the most ordinary of days. we do not notice each passing moment, perhaps take others for granted and we do not appreciate the value of this precious human life. But if we live with our mortality as a daily experience, then we will live a happier and healthier life. So that might be a benefit of remembering death. 

In gaining a better appreciation of all the cruel twists and unknowns, i become more skilled at the art of living .making the most of what i have, making each moment count. In facing death, in accepting that it comes to us all one day, we not only have the opportunity to shift our perspective but to also expand our awareness around life itself. I'm trying to see the bright side of the situation. And the benefits of my panic attacks and death anxiety. 

… …Doesn’t seem to work, seems to extrapolate suffering via conceptualization of meaning, purpose & value. 

 

Comparison is sometimes used as a tool of confusion. 

Expression is the key. 

Intention matters, and intuition tells us so.

So to speak. 

 

I once knew a guy who also believed in evidence. He took 1 gram of mushrooms at it was the funniest darnedest ‘thing’. 

[Someone here]

20 minutes ago, Mandy said:

"When consciousness leaves, there is no self-consciousness. You say the Knower of consciousness also vanishes, but who is there to witness the absence of Knower? If you say, after consciousness nothing remains, then who will ask this question? What will you achieve by rejecting these words? Your fear of death will remain intact." - Nisargadatta

 

Asking for evidence is asking "this question". 

 

You identify with being physical, you identify with being the body, so when you say after physical death you assume that you are the body. You are not the physical body. This is a mistaken identification. 

If something is physical, if it’s a body, it’s extended in space, it’s located in space, it’s publicly observable, it’s quantifiable and measurable.

But if we think of the mind as a thing, going back to the former idea of the soul, then the soul does not seem to take up space, or at least not in the same way. It doesn’t exclude other physical objects from space. It has no definite location in space, and it’s not the sort of thing that can be publicly observed as we expect in science, where we’re acquainted with our mind or our soul most directly through introspection.

So I'm not aware of any identity other than the physical body .I mean what else could I be?  Isn't that aligned with direct experience? 

[Mandy]

2 minutes ago, Someone here said:

So I'm not aware of any identity other than the physical body .I mean what else could I be?  Isn't that aligned with direct experience? 

 

[Mandy]

Directly the horror of death, is the horror inflicted upon the body in the entertainment of that very discordant thought. That's how direct it is. Directly, there is no fear of death, because fear of death is always fear of a future by a self that would no longer exist, a future that cannot possibly be feared. The fear, (the negative emotion) that accompanies the interpretation of death is guidance that the thought is the equivalent of putting your hand on a hot stove in the attempt to cool yourself off. You are directly contacting the supposed "source" of your discord, harming yourself, while deluded that you are somehow preventing, managing or investigating this "source" of future harm. 

 

Imagine that I read an article that stress is stressful, and I get stressed out by the article. The realization that what I've just done to myself is both very funny and also the result (the letting go of the stress itself) that I desired from reading of the article. I did not need more knowledge to attack my problem with, I only needed to realize that I did not have a problem to begin with. 

 

Make your investigations true investigations, don't go in with a bunch of presumed knowledge and assume to know before hand that you're screwed before you begin. 

[Someone here]

@Mandy Help me out because I’m not an expert in the field, but it seems to me that we only have empirical evidence of the differentiation of the mind and the body recently through so-called near-death experiences. Right now we have the ability to raise people who have been clinically dead and they talk about their minds separating from their body. So, I think this is empirical evidence that the mind and the body are not the same or that there’s part of the mind which is not part of the body. Do you think this near-death experience is compelling evidence for the difference between the mind and the body?

[Mandy]

@Someone here Interesting avatar pic you have there. 

[Mandy]

@Someone here Why did you choose it? 

[Someone here]

@Mandy thanks.  For not much other than I like Stephen hawking 

[Mandy]

17 hours ago, Someone here said:

@Mandy thanks.  For not much other than I like Stephen hawking 

What do you like about him?

20 hours ago, Someone here said:

Do you think this near-death experience is compelling evidence for the difference between the mind and the body?

Evidence is what is evident, what is seen. Seen by whom though? Can we see the mind, or can we see the body? 

[Someone here]

16 hours ago, DMT Elf said:

You don’t fear death. You fear what you think death is, which isn’t actually what death is. Like you said, you have no idea what death actually is. No one does. That’s why they say stuff like “it’s imaginary”, or “it’s a shift in consciousness”. None of that explains what death is. It makes perfect sense why people talk about it as “reuniting with the all”, and “infinite love”, and stuff like that, but that doesn’t explain it either.

 

Mentally put yourself through the death process. Question all your beliefs about it and ultimately realize truly that you have no idea what it is. You say you don’t know what it is, but as long as you fear it, you’re not really accepting that. You still have mental constructs surrounding death. When you realize you have no idea what death is, you can make peace with it. In a really weird way, that frees up your mind.

 

I’ll never forget the first time I realized that I have no idea what death is. Anybody can say they don’t know what it is, or that death isn’t real or whatever, but when you really get it, it’ll be the most profound moment of your life. You won’t feel fear about anything at all. You’ll laugh in the face of death and say, “come get me motherfucker, I dare you!”. Really oddly, that does totally feel like infinite love..

 

In my opinion, the wrong approach is to try to conceptualize further about death. Don’t try to understand what it is. Try to break your current understanding of what it is by disproving everything you think you know and revealing what you don’t know. At least, that would be my preferred way.

 

The problem isn’t that you fear death, the problem is that you think you know what death is and you’re wrong.

 

Hope that helps in some way.

-Ben

Nice perspective and a new way of looking at it .I hadn't thought about it like this before.  Thanks friend 🙏

[Someone here]

5 hours ago, Mandy said:

What do you like about him?

 It is hard to accept that a loving God would destroy your entire life and leave you paralyzed from head to toe. He did good actually coping with  his situation, many people would ended thier lives or become depressed and unfunctional if this happened to them. It is a tragedy but it seems God loves tragedies too. We all pay the price of existence, some of us pay it more than others. The price is suffering. Yet despite his suffering he was one of the greatest scientists to ever exist. Mad respect to him .

 

5 hours ago, Mandy said:

Evidence is what is evident, what is seen. Seen by whom though? Can we see the mind, or can we see the body? 

Yes we can see the body obviously.

With the mind it gets a little bit tricky .because what is the mind ? Its not like there is an entity into itself called "the mind ". Its just a bundle of thoughts.  But when I say the mind I mean consciousness or spirit .or whatever you wanna call it .basically our true Nature. Which is divine nature .that's what separate us from animals.  If we are talking about that then no we cannot see it because it is the seer itself .the eye can't see itself. The knife can't cut itself. The tongue can't taste itself etc .

[Indisguise]

@Someone here Hey look, Rupert just uploaded a video just for you! 

 

 

 

[Someone here]

@Indisguise what a coincidence 😂

[Forza21]

For me, this is kinda funny. I've had many suicidal thoughts, and i think i'm more scared of living than dying. Furthermore, i have never experienced "non-being" all i ever know is "being" so i can't really believe, that death means "non-existence" like materialists say.  

Like, you are here, right?  If you were born once, why not a second time? And then third time? Why not infinite time? 🙂

[Mandy]

18 hours ago, Someone here said:

 It is hard to accept that a loving God would destroy your entire life and leave you paralyzed from head to toe.

Is love a quality that someone has? If the imagined entity of god has "love" as a quality, is it imagined to be male too, so then god also "has" a penis and a body?  So if God doesn't in fact have a body, but is the creator without the necessity of prior creation of such thing as a body to be, and God does not have love, but IS loving, how can the functionality of someone's body have anything to do with God being love? Isn't God/Love prior to the body? Does God move? Does not a thing first have to have the limitation of location, in order to move. Doesn't a thing have to be forever condemned to a body in order to move at all??? 😂😂😂 

 

Doesn't Stephen Hawking's example sort of show how unconditionally loved we are, without having to prove it or overcome anything? 

 

 

 

[Silver]

Detach yourself from yourself and you will stop fearing. attachment is the whole problem. what are you afraid of? to lose what? you will lose everything. there is nothing you can keep from a dream, since it is nothing. become aware that at this very moment everything can disappear. It is not easy to lose attachment since it is something primary. but it is necessary if you want to stop torturing yourself. we are all in that, in freeing ourselves. there are many degrees, the freer, life is more fluid, richer, more colorful. the more attached, the more miserable

[Silver]

On 6/6/2022 at 3:49 PM, Phil said:

Understandable & totally not a problem. 😅  Flip your script… notice the underlying discord is the topic, and notice that seems to be of, related to or coming from a “Phil”, and continue to scrutinize direct experience in that respect. 

In the same fashion, happen… yet maybe not ‘to a me’… and maybe that is the underlying insight to be seen. 

I’m proposing seeing panic attacks are less out of the blue, and that there is momentum which can be ‘seen’ in terms of discord & alignment with thoughts… followed by the body, and all of experience / appearance. Furthermore, that “the body” is a thought, and what the thought points to is infinite intelligence, unconditional well being… and some thoughts and substances resonate, and some do not. Ambition & manipulation therein (collectively) can be sneaky, sneaky mofo’s. The difference, is the intention(s) behind, prior to. 

I say you’re not allowing love into your body, relationships, dreams and life, and you’re feeling that not allowing / asserting / adhering to beliefs / putting what you believe you know / being right, above how you feel. But no worries, God don’t listen to nobody & All is Well. 

Direct experience is the key. There is not direct experience of “for some of us”. The relevance is spotting the very conceptualizations which are the aversion. 

“Phobia” is another conceptualization. Much easier (and feels great) to align thought with feeling, vs believing the thought / conceptualization. 

Similarly, there is not an actual experience of “every time you think”.  Appearing thoughts are experienced directly. 

When one is triggered it is as if one can go one of two ways - inspect the discord - or ‘it’s a problem’ /  ‘we have a problem’ / ‘you’re the problem’.  We’ve tried building missiles big enough to resolve the discord... …

… …Doesn’t seem to work, seems to extrapolate suffering via conceptualization of meaning, purpose & value. 

 

Comparison is sometimes used as a tool of confusion. 

Expression is the key. 

Intention matters, and intuition tells us so.

So to speak. 

 

I once knew a guy who also believed in evidence. He took 1 gram of mushrooms at it was the funniest darnedest ‘thing’. 

Reading you gives me a strange feeling. like trying to navigate in a wrinkled paper smeared with glue. weakens me, makes me feel stuck. I tried to read the text 3 times but i couldn't. Why? Maybe it's something with my understanding? Or it's impossible to understand? 

[Indisguise]

@Someone here

Death, life, impermanence, change, appearance and disappearance.

All these imply each other, i.e. they always come together. Life implies death, appearance implies disappearance. 

Existence is not subject to change, to life, death, appearance and disappearance. All these occur within existence, but existence itself is the fundament, the unchangeable, untouchable ground of everything. 

You are existence itself. Existence doesn't die. 

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Silver said:

Reading you gives me a strange feeling. like trying to navigate in a wrinkled paper smeared with glue. weakens me, makes me feel stuck. I tried to read the text 3 times but i couldn't. Why? Maybe it's something with my understanding? Or it's impossible to understand? 

Hard to say or know. There might be some discord coming up and the terminology of reading you vs reading what you wrote might be an indication. Idk. If you have any questions about anything specific that was said feel free to ask.