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This was a post i made sometime ago, and have always wanted it somehow related to me in a way that anyone could read it whenever they chanced upon me. I figure this new blog tool is the best way to go!
This was originally a response to a thread created by MTF regarding Death, and if it is scary or not. I replied that i was not scared but inspired by death - he further asked me to elaborate on my views. This was my attempt.
It is an absurdly long read, but my explanation of my perspectives cannot really be explained with less. I hope you have the patience to read what i have to say, and that if you do, that it will not be a waste of your time. My pre-emptive apologies if it turns out to be so.
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It started when i was 10 years old. My parents, while believeing in an after life, did not have any sort of faith. They never really passed their beliefs along since they didn't really know what they believed in themselves. So, while lying in bed on some insignificant day in March of that year, i was for some random reason thinking what it would be like to be dead - and my realization crippled me. It occured that i would not think, feel, or be me. It caused a terrible anxiety in me. I could not function unless i would escape into Final Fantasy 3, my RPG of choice during that period of my life.
My parents, baffled by and distraught at my turmoil tried to aid me in finding some answers that could be of comfort to me. My dad gave me a bible, and as well "A Book of Bible Stories" for a bit of an easier (and less grotesque) read. And my mom at this time was exploring her own spiritually, by which she had come across Sylve Browne - reknown pyschic and explorer of the spiritual realm. My mom gave me 'Adventures of a Pyschic', Sylvia Brownes first book about the paranormal.
At that age, the things Sylvia Browne elaborated on were fantastical and inspiring. I was so paralyzed by fear; i would and did cling to anything that could make some semblance of sense in order to quash my distress. Her ideas that God loves us, there is no Hell, that we write our lives before we live them (called 'blueprints', or 'charts' ), and that we live many many lives, as Earth is much like 'school' for our souls - these were comforting.
I was an avid fan of hers up until i was 16 years old or so. And, ironically, it was through her own writing that doubts started to stir about what she had to say. I was reading 'God, Creation, and the Universe' within where she said some extraordinary things. No longer was life about only about living through our choreographed trials, joys, and accomplishments, but that also and more-so, all our 'ideas' exist on another plane of reality. Gnomes, Pixies, Leprechauns - these are all very much real; there is no longer just one God, but two: a Mother and Father God; there are not just Spirit Guides (people on the Other Side who help guide us through our lives) but also Totems (spirit guide animals), gaurdian angels and lesser angels, and a legion of other 'entities' to help us along our path (such as the Goddess of the Night, i forget her name). These things were quite interesting to read, but they turned life so much into a fantasy that i couldn't help but start to view her books as nothing more than just that - an intricate, powerful, but completely fictional fantasy.
Despite my depreciation of her ideas, it never occurred to me to start to re-inquire about the fears that had debilitated my existance a 3rd of my life ago.
And then i was 19 years old, Mid-November, when my best friend and two others decided it would be a delightful idea to consume some Mushrooms. This was the true beginning into my very real plunge into the depths of what death 'is'. I don't know much about others' experience with shrooms, but of all the times i've done them (about 8?) i've never had a hallucination. I have done moderate to large doses everytime, and i've experienced auditory hallucinations, but never a visual. So typically i just escape to the recesses of my mind, catapluting myself into philosophical and pyschological voyages. This one was different from my others in that it sent me into a 4 month depression; or more so, Despair.
This part is very hard to describe. Anyone who has not experienced drugs will have no idea what it's like, and will not understand that any horror you can feel while sober is immensely dwarfed by the depth of it when you are not. Anyone who has experience with drugs will no better be able to know what i felt, other than knowing what i felt was immense, as my trip has not been any of theirs.
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I could hear myself thinking. I'm not talking about thoughts we 'hear' in our heads, i'm talking about the space between. When a person attempts to 'not think' they are (most likely) unable to do so. I was not trying to not-think, however, i was thinking about what it is to think. What is happening inside us that allows us to 'hear' our thoughts? And it was between these thoughts that i started to recognize an echo, or more, a silent gap. I could 'hear' that gap; I could hear the silence. My thoughts were no longer fluid. I would be aware and i would be thinking, and in the next moment i would simply be aware without any thinking at all. At first i found this sensation extremely intriguing, i let it dance with me for a significant amount of time. But then, for some forsaken reason, i present to myself: "Now what would it be like to neither think nor be aware?" I was filled with a very brief moment - less than a moment - of fear when my gut realized where this train of thought was going to take me. However, i ignored such a thing, and tried to catapult myself into a place where i was not thinking nor feeling. I proceded to close my eyes. I 'shut off' my ears to a point where i could not hear anything. I stopped breathing; stopped feeling the sensation of air filling my lungs. I turned off 'thought' as i had been successfully experimenting with previously.
I do not know how long this lasted. I do not know if i was able to truly 'turn off' anything in my body - it may have just been a crazy drug induced slowing-of of perception (or speeding-up-of, depending on how you look at it). I cannot judge the amount of time that passed in these moments, but only know i 'awoke'. My thought-silentness was not broken or shattered, for unlike the previous thought-less awareness, there was no silence to break. There was simply a gap in my existence. Time had passed when my senses and awareness had not given their permission to do so.
And within instants, the realization came crushing home that that was what death was. My eyes shot open, my heart tried to bust out of my body. I wanted to scream, and to cry, and to claw myself out of my skin. But i was paralyzed. I sat there staring out of a window that was across from me. After 10-30 minutes i decided that i couldn't bare to be in the company of my friends, and so left without a word and laid down in my bed.
I cannot accurately describe what i was like at this time. I could not stop moving. I wanted to cry more than anything else in the world - i wanted to feel something. But no tears were forthright. I was not physically paralyzed, but mentally i was debilitated. I could not stop rehearsing the moment after i had 'ceased' to exist; the 'waking up' or 'coming back' that it was. I could not sleep for hours. The horror i felt is unparalleled to anything i have ever experienced in my existence.
Over the next month my day consisted of me waking up, moving aimlessly throughout my house. I'd lie in my bed, i'd lie on the couch. I ate little. I did not leave my house. I was too scared/lost/crippled to watch TV, read, or play video games, i had no desire to play Starcraft despite my addiction. I had no desire to talk to anyone but my mother; and my attempts to do so only scared her. She would answer the phone and i would say Hello. I would be silent for the most part. She would ask me what is wrong; i would hesitate (for my lack of ability to articulate such an experience) and whisper to her that i was afraid; she would inquire why and of what - i would respond simply that it was impossible to explain. I worried her immensely.
My feelings ranged from horror, despair, loneliness, and insignificance. These would circulate for the 12 hours a day or less that i was awake, as i'd try to spend as much time sleeping as i possibly could. Exhaustion. I will not claim what it's like to be someone in a truly horrifying circumstance - such as war, torture, or dying from a malady like cancer - but i do know exactly how exhausting a circumstance can make you. I was spiritually and mentally exhausted. And after 2 months or so, i started to get sick of it (more like boreom, but a very disgusted boredom). At this point i was able to cry, and did so daily. I was able to watch spurts of TV until something tragic happened on screen - such as seeing an animal pass away, or even the glimpse of someone of old age - someone moving ever closer to the oblivion that is death. I started to read a little bit here and there. I started to shower more than once a week; i started to eat at least once every day, as opposed to the typical 3-4 days without food. I started to interact with my friends a bit, but they would scare me very easily and i would retreat to my loneliness.
Ironically - and most fortunately - i started to read Anne Rices 'Vampire Chronicles' upon suggestion from my boyfriend (ironic because vampires are immortal). I was infatuated with the idea of immortality, that our life and our existence does not have to disappear, does not have to lose its insignificance, that a world - even a fictional one! - existed where people do not have to Die. I was able to absorb myself in "Interview with the Vampire" from noon until morning, absorbing the words in a way that i had never read words before. And that is probably the moment i would pinpoint that things in my life started to Change.
I was reading a beautiful fantasy novel, filled with beautiful creatures and fantastical ideas, and i looked out of my window to see one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen in my life. A mirage of yellows and oranges cascaded into the fleeting blue of the darkness. And that's the first time it hit me. These things, My Life, the act of Experiencing, is Beautiful. Despite all the truth and despair and horror that reality is, there is still beauty. - That "Life in a Glass House" is a beautiful song! - That mothers with unconditional love look down on their children in their arms, and are beautiful - That two individuals sharing intimacy is profound and beautiful - That the reds, golds, purples that can be found in the blooms of flowers, and the seasons that turn the leaves on trees those same colours, are beautiful! And all these things exist in spite of their insignificance! Things are not beautiful because they are forever, they are beautiful because they are not!.
Since then, my life has never been a bad one. Even in struggling moments i have an immense and profound respect for life. I have an even more profoud and respect for Tragedy because tragedy only adds to our beauty. Life is harsh, and brutal, and savage. There is no justice, there is no forgivness, there is no inherant right or wrong. We amble along through life not knowing - often searching - for answers, and the truth is there are none. And how can all of this not be beautiful? How can all this feeling, and joy, and pain, and sorrow, and love, not be beautiful beyond imagining! When you watch someone lose a loved one - a child, lover, or parent - and they are utterly torn apart how can that obvious and declaration of love for that lost individual not inspire an insane respect for beauty? That such emotions are possible that losing them causes such rivals in emotion?
When we die, all of this ends. We no longer suffer tragedy, we no longer love, or be but admirers in the garden of Beauty. We lose our Awareness. It is not that this finality of it all that gives our life meaning, it's that our life was meaningful inspite of this finality. I'm in love with that finality because it's all apart of it. Beauty can't be what it is without it, and is all the more beautiful for it.
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I hope someone can get something out of this. It is My Life.
 
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It is still a subject which torments me, and I've no doubt you truly know how that feels, but I like the view you have all the same. It was well-writ and, like I've said, I've heard similar words before from someone I admire greatly. It's a (pardon the relative usage) beautiful view, one that shows a true treasuring of the simplest wonderful acts.
Thank you again for explaining such to that degree. Whether it changes anything personally for others or not isn't the measure of it's worth, simply that it is an amazing view on something so profound.
O, by the way: The thread.
I didn't start it, I was just the one who prompted you. :p
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I'm glad I opened and read it. Remarkeble, gave me chills.
I'd call it beautiful.
I view the world in very much the same way. I awknoledge(i knwo i spelled wrong) my insignificance, I accept my eventual termination, and I ask myself, "Hey now we got that out of the way, what can we do to make life better, so when the day comes I can say to myself, 'that was helluva life right there, good job!'"
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That was exceptionally written. I know how long it can take to try and explain situations like that, especially involving drugs, but I was very entertained by how familiar the general thought-processes are. Only people who have done them can kind of recognize the thoughts and ideas that play about in your mind when you\'re on something like that.
It\'s even more interesting because one of my buddies is majoring in Neuropsychology, so he always tells me cool stories about people with absolutely wacked brain disorders. Things so crazy as the right hemisphere doesn''t communicate with the left, for example a person will be able to look at an envelope or something, know what it is in their memory, but have no idea how to explain what they\'re looking at.
One of my friends told me of their experience from mushrooms, where they were on the couch, and became obsessed with the idea that the couch had no real reason to exist, no place of permanency, and would suddenly for no good reason cease to be. The rest of the world would then follow, sucked into a vacuum of nothingness. They became absolutely terrified and lost, and couldn\'t release their grip on the couch for hours! There are good trips and bad trips, I\'m guessing that was a bad trip! 
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wow. can't believe i missed this thread and this post. an amazing read, mora :O
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Great read indeed. I think somewhat the same way, but from different experiences and at a different intensity. Nonetheless, this was brilliant and eye opening. Thanks for sharing your experience.
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One of the best posts I've ever read. Saving this on my harddrive.
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Korea (South)11575 Posts
<3 Mora for writing this.
What I PM'd you a while back still is accountable for today
And I must say, I am a true admirer of what you have said. It really changed my view on life and death. I hope your live has changed for the better.
Good luck in the future in all you do.
-Chris
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good read, some more useful perspective gained on life for a teen like me 
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Her name was Lillith.
The goddess of the night. lol
just came back to me as i was re-reading the story.
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Awesome read. Psychedelics (mushrooms and salvia) opened up the doors to hell for me, too. I also weathered a profound depression as a result. I think I am stronger for having gone through it, and while I might disagree on a point or two in your post, or have a thing or two to add, I essentially feel I have reached a very similar place, and I feel I really get what you are talking about.
Nicely written.
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I haven't done anything constructive with my life for almost 6 years because I'm struggling with this issue. I'm just waiting for my grand realisation to come, even took some shrooms the other day in a desperate attempt at salvation. Sadly they did nothing for me other than alter my physical perceptions for about 4-5 hours. I don't like to say I'm "depressed" because to me that implies being sad, which I'm not. I'm glad to be alive, but at the same time don't see the point in living when I live in a world where the death of Whitney fucking Houston is bigger news than the suffering of millions of people world-wide. Not to mention mankind itself. Which is apparently going to the shitter either through war over oil, fresh water or perhaps a war over the remaining inhabitable places left after climate change takes a turn for the worse. The worst part is, it seems to me that all of this could be easily avoidable, if people were willing to give up some (perhaps alot idk) comforts in their lives. We just keep consuming and consuming in excess, so much so in fact that it has become the norm (at least in my part of the world, presumably true for other 1st world countries) and to take any of someone's consumption away would be viewed as outrageous!
I live in a city, I can look out my window and see hundreds of people walking with determination to jobs, schools etc. To look upon these people who look like they haven't a care in the world one could assume all must be well with the world and IF there was something fundamentally wrong with the world, surely all these people would be up in arms, yelling and screaming for change and justice. But no one seems to give a fuck, they care more about keeping up with the Joneses than saving us from ourselves.
Admittedly, I'm no saint either. I've done nothing to help our cause and I'm as guilty as the next guy of excess passivity and consumption. However it hasn't helped that whenever I try discussing the subject with anyone, (even close friends and family) I'm quickly dismissed as a pessimist and told that such things don't bare talking about.
WHY THE FUCK NOT? IT SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING IMPORTANT TO ME..
So now I'm basically giving the human race the middle finger, failing in school, taking full advantage of Socialistic Sweden, playing video games all day, smoking marijuana (putting taxpayers money to good use) basically refusing to join society. But all this is achieving is to hurt myself, my future life prospects, those who care about me and taxpayers.
So my question is, DAFUQ should I do?
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I’ve debated what message I want to convey and which words to use. I am not unsympathetic to your position (and I have been there, many a time), but I’m going to be forthright with my perspective and that perspective is a bit unkind.
My take is the following
* You are intelligent and aware, and you think that matters or counts for something. It doesn’t. It has no inherent value. Get over it.
* You are judgemental. You peer out from your eyes, seeing everything wrong with the world and faults in others (who are trying to cope in it every bit as much as you are!) and you think at least I’m not that. Here’s a secret: even if you are better than everyone else, that also has no value. Get over it.
* You are lazy. You know that life holds more potential than you’ve allowed it to realize, and you don’t do anything about it. Smoking weed and playing video games and being on welfare is not making you enjoy this world or this life (or, if you go to the tenets of my write-up, living the experience of being aware). Seriously, you waste your awareness on that kind of life? Get over it. Do something with yourself.
* You are a coward. You hide behind excuses like the world sucks and people are awful and greedy and blah blah blah. Here’s another secret: valid reasons have no more value than artificial excuses. Treat them the same. It’s cliché, but a good friend of mine broke his neck mountain biking. After the accident when he couldn’t walk or dance or do his passion of biking anymore, he decided that Rugby was his thing. I’ve never thrown a ball, and this hero took his new circumstances and decided he was going to kick life’s ass. He now plays at a very high level of wheelchair rugby, has a wife, and is a graduated civil engineer. Fuck. Yeah.
I’m being harsh with you partially because I’ve been thinking along similar lines as you. I wouldn’t consider myself in a rut, but life has reached a point where something is missing. I have a job I love, and friends that I love, and a social life that I couldn’t imagine 10 years ago. I’m “successful” and comfortable. But these things also don’t have any inherent value, and so if they lose their value to me, I need to go discover something else that makes me feel alive. Something else that makes me weep and shake and be in awe of this experience of existing.
But instead I do what I do every day. I’m complacent. My subconscious continues to win this battle where it revels in safety and fun.
I’m nearing a point where I’m going to snap.
But that’s enough about me, let’s get back to you.
I don’t know if you’ll agree with anything that I’ve said; it’s pretty harsh and its natural for your ego (or self, or whatever other word you want to use to describe the ‘inner you’) to get defensive and want to strike down an attack; but assuming enough of it is accurate, you may be left thinking ‘now what?’
My answers might not be your answers, but change your life. You don’t even need to know if the changes you are making are going to work. The key, and this is my personal absolute truth of life, is variance. Only through variance do things gain context to each other and everything else. Stop smoking weed for a week. Don’t turn on your video games for a month. Go do volunteer work somewhere for a while. Go for a run everyday. Leave home and go travelling (come to Canada and stay on my couch!). Go meet someone else from Teamliquid. Learn how to cook homemade sundried tomato pesto stuffed chicken with goat cheese. You might think that none of these things are things that will make you happy, and you’re probably right! But that’s not the point! Maybe on your trip to Canada you run into a beautiful woman in the airport and you end up marrying her. Maybe when you’re looking up the pesto recipe you’ll come across another that sounds even better. Who knows! But stop doing the same thing every day. It doesn’t work!
In the past, I’ve done the following to ‘change up my life’; an intention of finding more about the world - and more, its reflection inside myself.
* I cut off cable/the internet for 3 months (Seriously. This is fucked up. Can you imagine your life like this? Like, seriously?)
* I went to the gym twice a day for an hour each time, 6 days a week
* I stopped smoking weed for 3 months
* I stopped doing hard drugs for 3 months
* I stopped drinking for 6 days (my goal was to go 30 days. I’ve attempted to do this one like 5 times, and the longest I’ve ever made it is 6 days)
* My mom needed a place to stay, and so I let her move back in with me at the age of 24. My mom and I have a pretty unique relationship, so most people would think that that would be awful, but it was hilarious. We lived together for 9 months
* In the past year I’ve moved 3 times
* In the past year I’ve been to San Francisco twice, Thailand, Vietnam, Portland, Vancouver Island, Los Angeles, and Mexico
* I got rid of my cell phone for a month
* I joined a soccer league and became an organizer for the group of 160 people
* I work charity events
* For 60 days I planned and coordinated healthy eating. (like, literally measuring a half-cup of rice, writing down the calories of every ingredient of my meal, just to understand nutrition) I’ve never felt so proud and felt so great. It was a huge pain in the ass and I hated it and I’ll never do it again… But I learned something!
* For 30 days I made it a rule that I had to talk to 5 strangers every day. On the street, in the line-up at the grocery store, at the bar, at the bus stop, wherever. The rule expired, but I found out a few things about myself! 1) I LOVE awkwardness. It makes me giddy. 2) I love meeting people. I don’t need a rule to meet 5 people every day, but I do meet at least one person every day, and sometimes a lot more.
* For 60 days I set a budget for myself that I would spend no more than $8 a day. (food, entertainment, transit, etc.) This one was impossible to accomplish, but striving for $8 a day for that long was craziness
Some things I’m considering doing, but are a little more extreme:
* Live homeless for 30 days. Give my keys and all my stuff to a friend/family, hop on a bus and go to a different city, and make my way back in 30 days. This is one of my biggest dreams. I’ll be subjected to the treatment of people who look down on the homeless. I’ll be unsure if I’ll be able to eat everyday, or where I’m going to sleep. I may get assaulted or hurt. I will probably have to make friends with other people who are on the street. Fucking. Crazy.
* Move to another country where I don’t know the language; by myself. I’ll go with some money to keep myself afloat for ~2 months, but in that time I will need to have picked up enough of the language to get a job and converse and overcome loneliness. (or succumb to it and learn something about that instead!)
* Quit my job and go to school. I’ve not even graduated from highschool yet. I’m thinking about finishing that and then going into neuroscience or law or photography
So, a bit long winded, but that’s how I do it.
You are going to die. Your life will be over and your awareness will cease to exist and the universe will not even know you were here. You have no value and no meaning and no purpose and you don’t matter. All you have is the capacity to experience beauty. Go find it, because it’s not going to come looking for you. Good luck.
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did she write a 5 page essay or something?
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On February 17 2012 06:27 starplayer35 wrote:
did she write a 5 page essay or something?
*blink*
what?
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It's true, I have an ego the size of the Hindenburg blimp (I've always just assumed that everyone else has one too. True or False?). I realise that everyone has these very same thoughts as me, it's a shame people don't discuss them more openly though, so that everyone knows were all in the same boat. I want to thank you for being brutally honest in your remarks, it's something I think we need more of, transparency. Your statements regarding me are pretty accurate, however I also know that it's easy to fall into the trap of relating to things too easily because it's difficult to look at ourselves from the 3rd perspective. I'm also thinking you too can relate to those descriptions, with as little information one can discern through an internet forum anyway.
"You don’t even need to know if the changes you are making are going to work. The key, and this is my personal absolute truth of life, is variance."
This struck home with me.. but I'm scared. What if my routines are the only things keeping me alive? What if I cut off my internet, stop smoking weed, go out and try new things but nothing appeals to me? It seems unlikely, I know with certainty that there must be something out there on our grand Earth for me. But will I find it? I'm just so damn comfortable and secure in my hazy bubble. Excuse the cheesy film quote; "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" Even though I know that the answer is unequivocally YES for fuck sake. I can't seem to get the message through my thick headed skull.
Your adventure ideas are great (especially the travel somewhere with no money and make your way back one ^^, if you do decide to do it, I think you should have a journal and pen with you. Now that would be a story worth reading)
I've decided that come spring time, something has got to give. I'm planning to change my life drastically, but I feel like planning it isn't the right way to do it and saying "come spring time" sounds like procrastination to me but I'm justifying that decision via the 3ft of snow outside right now. I'm using what little savings I have left on a trip to Cali this summer, visit some friends in Santa Barbara. Drop the cigarettes like a bad turd and strap my running shoes on again. I'm going to fail high school though, that's irrefutable. The damage has been done. 3 months left until graduation and I'm fairly certain I can't cram in 3 years worth of curriculum into 3 months.
Sidenote: 100th post. Hurray! =P
You didn't finish high school but your successful? This is something I've always wondered, is it as vastly difficult to be successful in life without high school and university as the propaganda regarding the matter would have you believe? (propaganda may not be the entirely correct word, but it's at least ½ correct in my mind. Maybe "general consensus" is the correct term)
I can and will finish high school eventually. But do you think I should do it ASAP or can I wait?
Anyway yeah fuck it, I'm going to do something, I don't know what that thing is, but like you said it doesn't even matter what it is. Just want to thank you for taking the time out of your own daily struggle with what life is to read and respond to a complete stranger looking for some insight and say that it takes a unique kind of person to do that and I really really appreciate it. And in that, there is definitely some inherent value. (at least in my eyes)
sidenote: 100th post. Hurray! =P
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EPT
