The philosophy of wanting to die

[20PrivacyIsOurRight21]

 

[finitelifeform]

I agree with and understand everything you've eloquently written so concisely. I have lived all over the world and I find that there is really no culture that I don't find limiting. My hometown culture may be more triggering because I have been more inculcated by it, but I haven't found a culture where I really feel like I belong. Part of it is the degree of human trauma I have suffered... it has made it difficult for me to interface with human beings in general. Part of it is that I am so advanced in certain areas (as described by others, not by myself) that I believe this creates an alienating effect and in turn social dysfunction. I find humans in general limited, even if I can see past my own traumas. The difference is that when I am even keel, I can show love and compassion for human limitations (including my own); but when I don't get the support I need from this life, it turns to bitterness and self-isolation pretty fast. It turns out that it doesn't matter what deep stuff you know or how enlightened you come across, if basic human needs aren't met then you are just as much in danger as some other fool. And for me, this causes a loss of faith because it turns out maybe I'm the fool, and not other people. I haven't played the human game to get myself ahead like others have. I don't scheme, plot, or misrepresent myself to impress others and gain their favour. It's like asking a deer to partake in a killing game. I'm not so helpless and docile, but I am of a different nature that often just wants the tide to take me out to sea rather than fight it all the time.



You're right, I am always okay, it's just the mental process that makes me seem not okay. But the mental process can cost me my life because the egoic level suffering of my mind gets so intense that I don't know how to silence it anymore. I have been both master and victim of culture. I speak 5 languages fairly fluently but I stopped pursuing each of them because their underlying cultures did not interest me, because I encounter the same human problems no matter where I go in the world, and I feel trapped by the "karma" of being human. I myself have the same needs and desires that drive the entire human problem. I'm not above it. Chop wood, carry water. I've realized a bunch of stuff and now I'm faced with the human game, with some serious personal disadvantages.

I agree that not letting the game be de facto reality is a good frame to get myself into... but without daily structure, meaning, connection to other humans and the environment around me, some sense of material security... what is the point of living? To me, this requires playing the game. It means at least temporarily tolerating cultural indoctrination while knowing full well you have already swallowed the red pill and can't go back. Some people do great at faking it to get the mark and others like myself just abandon. I can't enter the illusion without making myself ill.



Well, you've honed in on a major reason why I'm suicidal. I have nowhere to go. Canada is a culturally undeveloped wasteland. I don't care what other Canadians say, this is not a great country. There are 3 major cities, all in major decay right now, and outside of that are cultural backwaters masquerading as urban cultures. I'm disabled, low income. I was put out to pasture in my prime. Those years are ticking by now. The only agency I can think of is to maybe do more school and get a job that doesn't grate my soul to do, but that requires playing the game, doing the academic head trip again, trying to gain institutional approval of my existence, all for what? Like, what am I really doing?

My traumas have been environmental, but they have led to a severe existential trauma that is ongoing. I have nowhere to go that feels safe. I have no one to be with who won't eventually leave. I have no sense of family or home. I only have the cold comfort that this is all a temporary illusion.

My innate resources don't mesh with the M.O. of how this society operates. I have tried. I just get ill. This society is ill on every level and the only way to insulate oneself from it is to have privilege that lets you build a moat around yourself: with money, with human resources, with a cushy job, etc. There is so little sense of collectivity. It's all on you to build your moat and if you can't or won't do it, then you're subject to all the ills of this society and you become ill yourself. I have tried building an inner spiritual moat, which is a non-moat really... because in reality, nothing is actually wrong. It's just mind.

But then you stub your toe and it hurts like fuck and you're back in samsara.

Unlike almost everyone I know, I don't make up a story about suffering. I can't anymore. I can't pretend that chasing X Y or Z will "bring me happiness" and guard me against the world. I just saw a relative die of cancer, her vital life withered away to nothing. Everyone around her bed was telling jokes to laugh, or stories, or whatever. No one could sit in the silence of death. I understand. Why do that if you don't have to? But to me, there is nothing noble in the illusion. I can't be a magician who weaves his own illusion so strong that he believes it enough to get comfort from it. I feel like any path I chase is just leading to more samsara.

I looked at her dying body, and it reminded me of every other dying body I've seen. My pet dog, my pet hamster, my pet gecko, the cat that got hit by the car on my street one time, the little bugs on the ground. We are these complicated animals that are so convincingly advanced to one another, but seeing my relative dying really made me see clearly how humans are just complex animals. Death gets us all, and in the mean time we spend our lives running around doing I know not what, until the body stops, then we stop, and then what was it all for anyway?



My biggest achievements, my greatest gifts, are all unseen. I can't put them on a resume. I can't brag about them to an admission's committee at a university. I can't buy a house with them. But they are major. I have seen what lies between life and death. I have lived with a severe form of an illness for years that would've killed most right at the beginning. My wisdom is huge. But it doesn't give me practical access to the world. It doesn't make me feel more connected to people unless they are being totally real with me. Sitting around a dinner table with a group of people the other night, with all their small talk... I just said nothing. There's nothing to say. I can't conjure those small niceties anymore. I can't even hate them for it because they are all just being their sweet selves.

I feel not human anymore. I am otherly.

Thanks for being so open. It's refreshing and also inspiring that you're able to speak what is closest to the truth for you. I appreciate you taking the time to say what you said, especially when it's personal and means a lot to you. I think I get it. Maybe I'm wrong and if I'am don't take offense. You want to belong and want to feel connected but in order to do so you have to assume a role (of sorts) and the role IS the trap in that by doing that you don't feel aligned with yourself on a deep meaningful level and in return for compromising and doing what is expected, assuming this role etc you feel you get little to nothing out of it. The game in a sense, is not worth the candle. And so there is an emptiness there, a void (if you will) that presents itself which requires you to either corrupt yourself to fill, or to leave as void and therefore remain as you are, something that you're not wholly convinced is a representation of who you want to be, because of the underlying backstory.

What if who you are is fundamentally enough? Take everything else away and focus on the existence of you. You are fundamentally okay. While you might never reach superhuman status and transcend the innate suffering and vulnerability of humanity, you are fundamentally okay. Things are just as they are. I think when we wish to change things so much, when we want things to go a particular way, to play God and define how reality should be - we lose track of what is at the essence of what it means to alive. Beyond everything there is a deep meaningful connection to life, to this finite existence and when everything is stripped away and we are left with the raw material, what is left is what matters. People always say they thought everything else in life was important until they fell in love, and really fell in love, experienced what it means to truly love another. People always say material goods are what life is all about until they realize the disconnection from the beating and dancing and flowing of their finite organic lifeform, and that's when they pursue reconnection on deeper meaningful levels. It's the simple things albeit seemingly so complex because we often overcomplicate them and dress them up in different outfits and pretend they are something different. All the while, acknowledgment as reality as a game must be, well, acknowledged. To believe some things are real is what it means to be somebody in this world, and that's just how it is. To apply for a passport you have to assume a role, you must match criteria, you must have a certain picture on your passport and you cannot exhibit certain emotions nor wear certain things nor the background be a certain way. To walk through the city center you must again partake in social norms, at least to the extent that you can navigate the city without being alienated and also alienating others. Behind all these things there is really nothing but at the same time it's also everything too. We have to pay our bills and we have to assume we are what our credit rating says about us and subsequently how much we can lend is how good we are compared to others. It doesn't mean we really believe we are our credit ratings, we just acknowledge a credit rating is a part of what it means to access financial resources. We have to be friendly to others, acknowledge they deserve a right to be respected and treated equally etc. That's a difficult one because we often infer our specialness is more important than others and there lies much of society's issues, within the egocentric narcissistic view of individuals. When we take that game too far we begin to treat each other like mere animals as apposed to unique and valuable human beings. We have kings and queens of countries that while many of us don't really acknowledge as leaders anymore are essentially written into the very fabric of the social landscape of those respective countries. At one point those people, or at least their recent ancestors were very much in charge.

I can relate so much because I thought there was a substantial problem with how things were external to me until I realized what I perceived as external was really my internal perceptions of what I perceive as the external. I'd see problems everywhere and not fully aware I'd feel inadequate and out of place. I just wasn't happy, and not happy as if in the fake 'put on a smile for the world' happy, I mean deep down content, at peace, humble, accepting, open, appreciative, emotionally available etc. I didn't love myself. I felt like I wasn't good enough. It took me a long time to realize that much of my past was still defining my present and consequently the future. I had, in my mind at least, to be somebody and even while I thought that somebody was real and who I really was it was simply an echo of the trauma I had been through and the roles I had assumed throughout that trauma. Was it really me? No. Far from it. I could go anywhere and the problems would follow in all guises until I chose to take off the baggage and stop assuming that role and starting finding myself. It was surpising how much shit followed me up until reaching about 25, maybe a little later. I'm 30 now and I'm 99% free from shit. I still step in it from time to time, physically and figuratively, but for the most part I smashed those walls down a while ago. I just needed love. I just needed to feel I belonged. I got that from realizing that I didn't need anything in order to attain those things, they all existed from the very beginning. I had to undergo a transformation. That involved not adding to myself but taking away, stripping away at the facades, the roles, everything else, until I got the point where I was being me in the truest sense of the world. In many ways I went back to being a child, at least in the sense that I was closer to me before I was damaged than I ever have been since actually being that child. And that is where liberation is at. It's accepting that it's neither left, right, up or down. It's center. That's where you're at. And even if you're veering left you're still in the center because no change of direction makes a difference because it's illusory in comparison to the fundamental self realizing process. You don't change but the external might do. The only change that needs to be done is understanding that change often implies attempting to replace yourself with somebody or someone else. The wind blows and yet you remain firm and planted. But when there's something you need to do, something you need to be, somewhere you have to go then there's always something missing and you're always off center. And that's when who you are is not aligned with who you really are.

Perhaps it's time to simply go out and be you but instead of expecting the world to mould around you, see it as giving as a means to offer the world a part of you in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, you might get something back in return. Go out and simply be unapologetically you and neither expect others nor the world to change but for you to simply be present and be the change YOU want to see in the world. Instead of seeing the world as a foreign place whereby the rules and the games don't align with the foreigner in you, be the homebody this foreign world needs. Be the difference without expecting anything back. Try be more selfless, more compassionate, more accepting, understanding, empathic. See other peoples suffering as suffering that may be your suffering, and definetly is not beyond yours to suffer from. Understand the disconnect between your finite existence and that of the finite existence of the entire world, human and otherwise. Are they all the same? No. And so while you expect the world to be the same, that is reality you get. Reap what you sow, as they say. Maybe if reality was so much different to everybody else, and that this was okay, everything would be fine with difference being present and with the games everybody plays being present. Accept those games, accept the difference. Does it ultimately define you? No. You are not black and white, you are on a spectrum of colour and always will be. You have the power to be able to change your world and change your mind but upon a black and white canvas you simple have, well, black and white, on or off, fail or success, good or bad, right or wrong.

You may benefit from really going on a journey to get to the core of what makes up your inner world. What you may find is that perhaps among the intellectual understanding you may have forgot the basics of simply living and simply enjoying the process of living. I always look to Zen Buddhism when thinking about things like this. There is no ultimate secret to life and how to best live it. When the student asks the master how he becomes enlightened the master looks at his watch and says "It's quarter past 9".

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.
- Confucius

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
- Pema Chödrön

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
- Zhuangzi

When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.
- Dogen

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
- Alan Watts

The game is everything and at the same time nothing. It means so much and yet it is meaningless. It is the language by which we speak but does not do justice to what words restrict us to conveying. It is the foundations by which our society is made up and yet when we look below we see nothing but the ground. It is humanity in flux, playing a game and yet behind it all there is nothing and silence cannot explain it because silence itself is a word that implies more than the word itself. When you take it away there is nothing but equally when you bring it back there is nothing but at the same time there is something. In the thousands of people walking down the street is the face of God and at the same time the face of strangers with no connection except a long ancestral genetic ancestor to each other. We can know nothing about one another and yet we can feel each other when we cry. Aren't we all strangers to begin with? Aren't we all strangers anyway as islands unto ourselves living in our own realities? At the same time, we can connect and we can experience what it is like to experience another in their shoes. We get married and live together yet we die alone isolated within our own bodies.

That is the beauty of life and at the same time a trip and sometimes a mind fuck. But ah, isn't it just so. And that is okay. Right? Because we are okay, right? If we are talking to each other right now and platforms like this allow ourselves to express ourselves, what's the difference between this digital reality and physical reality? Can this reality not be extended and all the possibilities within be just as real offline? If we are at peace now, are we not at peace all the time only we are playing the game and pretending like we cannot be at peace under certain conditions? Why? Who says so? I wonder. Perhaps who says so is ourselves and as well as being the facilitators of our transformations, we are also the jailors too.

 

[ovenbakedskittles]

Or so I see it. Fear is stronger than love. Pain feels more than pleasure. We mistake the absence of pain or pleasure.

I'm a very devoted Zapffe-fan. He lays forth a theory regarding how we cope with this sensory overload.
Free to read here, just a few pages of excellent observations, really recommend it; you might get a better grasp than what I'm able to convey.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah

I am too stupid to understand the passage that you linked. But I will say this to your point about fear being stronger than love and pain being stronger than pleasure, fear and pain is only as strong as you make it to be. We live in a society that is habitually fearful so naturally we will adopt that mindset when we are born and brought up into life. But I think love in and of itself conquers fear and if we were to tap into that transcendental love and let it flow through our lives and through our social consciousness then we might be able to flip that on its head to the point where fear and pain is not such a strong factor in society or in people’s collective behaviors and make us see that suicide does nothing but repeat a cycle of suffering and gives the next person permission to think that their clinical diagnoses are solidified and that their life is worth taking.

See, you still connect suicide with fear. People kill themselves out of boredom of life; because of it's futility. You can only watch paint dry for so long and manipulate yourself into thinking it's exhilirating.
Suicide is devastating to those left behind. And people who condemn suiciders or call them cowards (not meaning you) simply haven't had the circumstanes in their lifes aligned so they been forced to contemplate dying for real.
I'd say it's more authentic bailing on a ride you don't like than stay because of peer-pressure and other peoples fragile egos.

See I don’t buy into that. Boredom and futility is the surface reason for people trying to cover up their vulnerabilities. Fear and insecurity is the root of most mental illnesses and suicidal ideation if not all of them. Even if you feel that you have reach that pivotal futile moment where you feel like there’s no reason to go on you still have fear that it will never get better and you won’t come out of that futility. And you fear that if you don’t kill yourself then you will just continue suffering or end up in a mental hospital or something.

And I would say there is different levels of authenticity which causes confusion. There’s what the ego self wants to authentically do and what the soul self wants to authentically do. But since we are so trained and programmed to focus on baser instinct and urges then we think that the ego is all there is and we feel like that is where authenticity stops. But there is a part of you that extends beyond your idea of who you are and that’s the self that society needs to tap into in order to resolve the problem of suicide if that’s what they really want to do.

Hahah, goddamn right we're are opposites. I love that, another perspective.

For me, it's not about making a choice or not; I don't care if you're Mr. Manhattan, we all compare ourselves to other peoole, in the darkness of our hearts or in the shameful light of day.
Or so I believe, and my observations has made me come to this conclusion aswell. I really don't give a shit about other peole's ambitions, their have or have nots.
I feel certain in myself in a way I've haven't before. And this has resultet after a long period of isolation, of contemplation - panic at times, bliss at others.
Isolation allows you to be comfortable with yourself. When you've accepted everything you are, first as good and bad traits, then simply traits - that's freedom brother.
You can't ever get to know yourself I think, but shutting out other inputs than your own thoughts I think is a good start.

Everybody has a secret room, an infite space in the minds, where we tuck away all that heinous shit we don't want anyone to see.

I'm not an outcast. Far from it. I have more friends than I'd like to have. When I isolate, I isolate. Off the grid. Books, not computer. Pen and pad, not cellphone.
Would you say all those monks are potential school shooters? You don't think a man who meditates almost every waking hour benefits more than from what we do?
Our sin is gluttony and the meal is information. Co-dependence.

Of course, isolation that is involuntarly, yes, definately homicidal potential there. But I wouldn't blame society. That's the easy way out man.
The problem is us, every single one. Each of us are as guilty - we watched them peel the earth and carve it hollow? Do we give a shit?
No, we keep buying appliances that is the rot-cause of this mess, as patches on a gash within that will always bleed.

Exactly, but there are degrees to everything. When you talk of isolation you’re talking about a break from life. That’s not isolation to me that’s why our perspectives are so different. Periodical intermissions or breaks can definitely be beneficial. But you obviously are aware that too much of anything can cause serious problems within the psyche.

I wasn’t referring to the monks because most people are not monks and most people do not see the shithole that they are truly in and the suicidal maniacs and serial killers do not have the motivation or even the opportunity to live a spiritual life like that even if they wanted to. Which I doubt most of them do. And monks have a different way of going about it than the average person. So in a way you do kind of have to blame society for giving us the environment and the circumstances and the brainwash to kill ourselves and to not be spiritual and then acting like they are saving us by giving us pills and making us think that we are just victims to our own mental disturbances and our fears and anxieties and insecurities. But you are also right that the responsibility lies on us because we as individuals are part of society. we are all one. so it really comes down to how much you are willing to be aware of that fact and be aware of yourself and being aware of how much power you truly have to conquer that fear and programming inside of you that’s holding you back and causing suicidal thoughts.

Intelligent is the wrong word, my mistake, again. I'm working on my english skills. There are many types of intelligence. Some intelligence you can measure; logical, mensa-tests etc.
What I mean is those who lacks any divine anchoring, any solid surface in a world that's constantly decomposing. I mean people who can view life and somehow detach themselves from it;
and when you do, it's a shitty fucking deal.

Looking "behind" the veil may not be an option, but something that is forced upon you. And that shit rusts into the dust of your bones.
Godless, in a ecological system that is a glorified slaughterhouse. Born to spew forth more of us wrecking havoc on everything.
I see a lot of anti-natal tendencies in younger generations - that encourages me. It is in my opinion worse to create a life, too rip something from the perfection of oblivion into a meat-suit.

There is many different levels to what you perceive as the disillusioned reality that you’re describing and may not be what objective reality truly entails.

If you were truly detach from life then you wouldn’t be able to function and be in a mental hospital. But there is different levels and different degrees to which one can be disconnected from the programming. But on any one of those levels it still goes through the filter of what you are able to perceive and what you are willing to believe. In other words you cannot grasp the totality of life and reality and human experience enough to genuinely say that one can be disconnected from life in that fashion. No one can. At least not in our day and age. It doesn’t really validate suicide because all it is is focusing on the negative so much that the negative is all you see and the negative is what you think reality is. So if someone commits suicide because they THOUGHT they pulled the veil back and uncovered the realness of reality, that’s something that’s worth considering and worth putting thought into. I’m not saying that they are bad people for doing it I’m just saying they might be misinformed or misguided and making such a big decision like that out of ignorance is really disheartening to me personally.

And disconnecting yourself from life itself is a form of resistance like I said earlier. Most people are just operating off of childhood traumas. And then they hear of all the other people committing suicide and so they think it’s not such a bad thing to do. That’s why they call it an epidemic. It takes the form of a virus that travels pathologically throughout our society.

 

[Foreigner]

Thanks for being so open. It's refreshing and also inspiring that you're able to speak what is closest to the truth for you. I appreciate you taking the time to say what you said, especially when it's personal and means a lot to you. I think I get it. Maybe I'm wrong and if I'am don't take offense. You want to belong and want to feel connected but in order to do so you have to assume a role (of sorts) and the role IS the trap in that by doing that you don't feel aligned with yourself on a deep meaningful level and in return for compromising and doing what is expected, assuming this role etc you feel you get little to nothing out of it. The game in a sense, is not worth the candle. And so there is an emptiness there, a void (if you will) that presents itself which requires you to either corrupt yourself to fill, or to leave as void and therefore remain as you are, something that you're not wholly convinced is a representation of who you want to be, because of the underlying backstory.

I'm having difficulty finding the words to describe here I'm coming from with accuracy. There are two parts to this. One is that my trauma self has created a false sense of separateness and alienation from every thing and every one. I have been through so much that it's hard to relate to people in "normal" ways". I know that I'm not the only person on this planet who has been through something, but my traumas have been so extreme that I feel almost dissociated from the human reality. A day job? Having dinner with friends? Playing board games? Traveling? It all seems so shockingly mundane and not a reflection of anything I've been through. The only literature I can find relatable is soldiers who have served in war conditions and then try to return home to a normal life after. Nothing looks the same anymore... not after the hell they just witnessed. It's too displaced, too disparate. Nothing in their mundane world reflects what they just went through.

When covid19 hit, society became isolated, and people went into apocalyptic mode, you know what? I actually felt better... because the world now looked like my inner world. People isolated, grieving, miserable, futureless, uncertain -- traumatized. I wasn't happy about people actually suffering. I just mean, the world actually made sense. That's how traumatized and screwed up I am. An apocalypse is oddly comforting.

The second part of this, is that my traumatic experiences actually drove me into spiritual realization. I saw reality for the first time. I saw what I am, and what I am not, clearly. It all came into focus. And so, it's also hard to take on a human role for this reason. Any role feels like a lie. Most humans are pursuing roles to either avoid their fear of death, or to avoid the existential question of who/what they are and what they think they're really doing. On a much deeper level, I feel that most humans are pursuing activities that mimic their reunification with divinity, their origin, which is already inside of them. So their whole world is a misattribution. It's kind of like trying to look for heaven on earth, which is impossible. The world of form is imperfect and will never match up with divine perfection, even though it's all part and parcel. But still... people look for the ideal relationship, job, travel plan, physical activity, whatever. They look for that momentary bliss that feels like their origin, but it inevitably dissolves before them. See, I don't need all that crap to feel the bliss. I already know where it comes from.

So I'm kind of fucked both ways. I'm too traumatized to feel like I belong, and I'm too realized to subscribe to falsity. Where this leaves me, is that I am alone.

What if who you are is fundamentally enough? Take everything else away and focus on the existence of you. You are fundamentally okay. While you might never reach superhuman status and transcend the innate suffering and vulnerability of humanity, you are fundamentally okay. Things are just as they are. I think when we wish to change things so much, when we want things to go a particular way, to play God and define how reality should be - we lose track of what is at the essence of what it means to alive.

That's just it... I have no need to play God. I don't even want to participate because it seems like taking on another fake role. I'll never be superhuman and don't want to be. This present moment is all there is.

You're right though, I just need to focus on myself and stop comparing myself to other people who are running around doing they know not what. I'm not better or worse than them. I am so caught up in the appearance of Samsara that I'm forgetting my spiritual core.

I can relate so much because I thought there was a substantial problem with how things were external to me until I realized what I perceived as external was really my internal perceptions of what I perceive as the external. I'd see problems everywhere and not fully aware I'd feel inadequate and out of place. I just wasn't happy, and not happy as if in the fake 'put on a smile for the world' happy, I mean deep down content, at peace, humble, accepting, open, appreciative, emotionally available etc. I didn't love myself. I felt like I wasn't good enough. It took me a long time to realize that much of my past was still defining my present and consequently the future. I had, in my mind at least, to be somebody and even while I thought that somebody was real and who I really was it was simply an echo of the trauma I had been through and the roles I had assumed throughout that trauma. Was it really me? No. Far from it. I could go anywhere and the problems would follow in all guises until I chose to take off the baggage and stop assuming that role and starting finding myself. It was surpising how much shit followed me up until reaching about 25, maybe a little later. I'm 30 now and I'm 99% free from shit. I still step in it from time to time, physically and figuratively, but for the most part I smashed those walls down a while ago. I just needed love. I just needed to feel I belonged. I got that from realizing that I didn't need anything in order to attain those things, they all existed from the very beginning. I had to undergo a transformation. That involved not adding to myself but taking away, stripping away at the facades, the roles, everything else, until I got the point where I was being me in the truest sense of the world. In many ways I went back to being a child, at least in the sense that I was closer to me before I was damaged than I ever have been since actually being that child. And that is where liberation is at. It's accepting that it's neither left, right, up or down. It's center. That's where you're at. And even if you're veering left you're still in the center because no change of direction makes a difference because it's illusory in comparison to the fundamental self realizing process. You don't change but the external might do. The only change that needs to be done is understanding that change often implies attempting to replace yourself with somebody or someone else. The wind blows and yet you remain firm and planted. But when there's something you need to do, something you need to be, somewhere you have to go then there's always something missing and you're always off center. And that's when who you are is not aligned with who you really are.

Yes, I resonate with this. I've come to the conclusion that trauma is actually distracting me from reality, and I don't mean every-day reality of getting a job, having friends, etc. I already see through all that. I'm talking about the reality of being that is the answer to all ontological questions. It has ended my seeking, I don't need to seek anymore. But I think my mind-body trauma really needs to be resolved on a mundane level, and then I can just bask in the peace of what I've realized because of the trauma.

Isn't that ironic? The very trauma that showed me the truth about reality is now lingering which obfuscates the truth.

I'm stuck on how to heal the trauma in a way that I can actually believe that isn't just more psychobabble trickery that I'll see right through. I need some kind of trauma therapy that cuts right to the core of reality. I don't want to just replace one story with another "better" story. It doesn't work.

Perhaps it's time to simply go out and be you but instead of expecting the world to mould around you, see it as giving as a means to offer the world a part of you in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, you might get something back in return. Go out and simply be unapologetically you and neither expect others nor the world to change but for you to simply be present and be the change YOU want to see in the world. Instead of seeing the world as a foreign place whereby the rules and the games don't align with the foreigner in you, be the homebody this foreign world needs. Be the difference without expecting anything back. Try be more selfless, more compassionate, more accepting, understanding, empathic. See other peoples suffering as suffering that may be your suffering, and definetly is not beyond yours to suffer from. Understand the disconnect between your finite existence and that of the finite existence of the entire world, human and otherwise. Are they all the same? No. And so while you expect the world to be the same, that is reality you get. Reap what you sow, as they say. Maybe if reality was so much different to everybody else, and that this was okay, everything would be fine with difference being present and with the games everybody plays being present. Accept those games, accept the difference. Does it ultimately define you? No. You are not black and white, you are on a spectrum of colour and always will be. You have the power to be able to change your world and change your mind but upon a black and white canvas you simple have, well, black and white, on or off, fail or success, good or bad, right or wrong.

I'm too damaged to be just me. I don't know how to fix that or if I'll ever be better. The trauma is still ongoing.

How do you live with a disabling condition that routinely tries to kill you in horrific ways, and be okay in your day to day? The two don't seem compatible.

Also... the sudden loss of human relationships. I'm not above human needs just because I realized some shit. Enlightened gets you nothing, there's no prize. You still have to be human. And that's my dilemma. I need to do all the human things while not subscribing to BS and also not duping myself into more illusions. I just replied in another thread with all of the tools I've learned about grief over separation. On a spiritual level, I get it. My mind-body ego attachments still don't get it. There is a crying ego fragment that thinks he's going to be alone, tormented, an separated from God forever. It won't go away. It screams so loudly some days that I become attached to it and forget it's just a holographic memory. I don't see the Presence at the core of it. I forget there's even a core. I become abandoned and want to die.

You may benefit from really going on a journey to get to the core of what makes up your inner world. What you may find is that perhaps among the intellectual understanding you may have forgot the basics of simply living and simply enjoying the process of living. I always look to Zen Buddhism when thinking about things like this. There is no ultimate secret to life and how to best live it. When the student asks the master how he becomes enlightened the master looks at his watch and says "It's quarter past 9".

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.
- Confucius

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
- Pema Chödrön

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
- Zhuangzi

When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.
- Dogen

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
- Alan Watts

I've already found the source. What I haven't found is a way to end the ongoing trauma. On the spiritual level, everything is OK. On the physical level, I am in constant pain and experiencing tormented separateness. I don't know how to integrate my traumatized self with core reality.

You know the saying... thoughts are like clouds in the sky. The sky is the true self, untainted by clouds. The clouds are temporary forms, like thoughts and feelings. Well, my trauma is like a huge black cloud that covers most the sky, raining hail, lighting, tornados, and hell on earth. Hard to see the blue sky sometimes when you have the image of an apocalypse in your face. That image drives all my separateness, isolation, unworthiness, etc.

When you see other people going about their lives without a care in the world, yet feel you like you have to find stability in an apocalypse every day, you start to feel like you're at a real disadvantage and that you shouldn't bother living anymore.

It's just a story like any other. It's just a dream. But it's a real dream. It feels real.

The game is everything and at the same time nothing. It means so much and yet it is meaningless. It is the language by which we speak but does not do justice to what words restrict us to conveying. It is the foundations by which our society is made up and yet when we look below we see nothing but the ground. It is humanity in flux, playing a game and yet behind it all there is nothing and silence cannot explain it because silence itself is a word that implies more than the word itself. When you take it away there is nothing but equally when you bring it back there is nothing but at the same time there is something. In the thousands of people walking down the street is the face of God and at the same time the face of strangers with no connection except a long ancestral genetic ancestor to each other. We can know nothing about one another and yet we can feel each other when we cry. Aren't we all strangers to begin with? Aren't we all strangers anyway as islands unto ourselves living in our own realities? At the same time, we can connect and we can experience what it is like to experience another in their shoes. We get married and live together yet we die alone isolated within our own bodies.

That is the beauty of life and at the same time a trip and sometimes a mind fuck. But ah, isn't it just so. And that is okay. Right? Because we are okay, right? If we are talking to each other right now and platforms like this allow ourselves to express ourselves, what's the difference between this digital reality and physical reality? Can this reality not be extended and all the possibilities within be just as real offline? If we are at peace now, are we not at peace all the time only we are playing the game and pretending like we cannot be at peace under certain conditions? Why? Who says so? I wonder. Perhaps who says so is ourselves and as well as being the facilitators of our transformations, we are also the jailors too.

I get what you are saying. I see the dynamics at work. But I don't want to play the game if it just traumatizes me more, and I don't want to deal with mundane people and pretend that their fake story about life is the real story. I don't want to subscribe to culture or any other historical non-sense because that's not real either. I don't want to chase fantasies. I just want the trauma to stop. I will do anything.

 

[relex_author]

The philosphy of wanting to die is quite vague, - the philosophy of wanting to die because you think it will make something end, or because you dont want a life as bad as this - sounds perfectly legit - I believe that it exists.

 

[finitelifeform]

I'm having difficulty finding the words to describe here I'm coming from with accuracy. There are two parts to this. One is that my trauma self has created a false sense of separateness and alienation from every thing and every one. I have been through so much that it's hard to relate to people in "normal" ways". I know that I'm not the only person on this planet who has been through something, but my traumas have been so extreme that I feel almost dissociated from the human reality. A day job? Having dinner with friends? Playing board games? Traveling? It all seems so shockingly mundane and not a reflection of anything I've been through. The only literature I can find relatable is soldiers who have served in war conditions and then try to return home to a normal life after. Nothing looks the same anymore... not after the hell they just witnessed. It's too displaced, too disparate. Nothing in their mundane world reflects what they just went through.

When covid19 hit, society became isolated, and people went into apocalyptic mode, you know what? I actually felt better... because the world now looked like my inner world. People isolated, grieving, miserable, futureless, uncertain -- traumatized. I wasn't happy about people actually suffering. I just mean, the world actually made sense. That's how traumatized and screwed up I am. An apocalypse is oddly comforting.

The second part of this, is that my traumatic experiences actually drove me into spiritual realization. I saw reality for the first time. I saw what I am, and what I am not, clearly. It all came into focus. And so, it's also hard to take on a human role for this reason. Any role feels like a lie. Most humans are pursuing roles to either avoid their fear of death, or to avoid the existential question of who/what they are and what they think they're really doing. On a much deeper level, I feel that most humans are pursuing activities that mimic their reunification with divinity, their origin, which is already inside of them. So their whole world is a misattribution. It's kind of like trying to look for heaven on earth, which is impossible. The world of form is imperfect and will never match up with divine perfection, even though it's all part and parcel. But still... people look for the ideal relationship, job, travel plan, physical activity, whatever. They look for that momentary bliss that feels like their origin, but it inevitably dissolves before them. See, I don't need all that crap to feel the bliss. I already know where it comes from.

So I'm kind of fucked both ways. I'm too traumatized to feel like I belong, and I'm too realized to subscribe to falsity. Where this leaves me, is that I am alone.



That's just it... I have no need to play God. I don't even want to participate because it seems like taking on another fake role. I'll never be superhuman and don't want to be. This present moment is all there is.

You're right though, I just need to focus on myself and stop comparing myself to other people who are running around doing they know not what. I'm not better or worse than them. I am so caught up in the appearance of Samsara that I'm forgetting my spiritual core.



Yes, I resonate with this. I've come to the conclusion that trauma is actually distracting me from reality, and I don't mean every-day reality of getting a job, having friends, etc. I already see through all that. I'm talking about the reality of being that is the answer to all ontological questions. It has ended my seeking, I don't need to seek anymore. But I think my mind-body trauma really needs to be resolved on a mundane level, and then I can just bask in the peace of what I've realized because of the trauma.

Isn't that ironic? The very trauma that showed me the truth about reality is now lingering which obfuscates the truth.

I'm stuck on how to heal the trauma in a way that I can actually believe that isn't just more psychobabble trickery that I'll see right through. I need some kind of trauma therapy that cuts right to the core of reality. I don't want to just replace one story with another "better" story. It doesn't work.



I'm too damaged to be just me. I don't know how to fix that or if I'll ever be better. The trauma is still ongoing.

How do you live with a disabling condition that routinely tries to kill you in horrific ways, and be okay in your day to day? The two don't seem compatible.

Also... the sudden loss of human relationships. I'm not above human needs just because I realized some shit. Enlightened gets you nothing, there's no prize. You still have to be human. And that's my dilemma. I need to do all the human things while not subscribing to BS and also not duping myself into more illusions. I just replied in another thread with all of the tools I've learned about grief over separation. On a spiritual level, I get it. My mind-body ego attachments still don't get it. There is a crying ego fragment that thinks he's going to be alone, tormented, an separated from God forever. It won't go away. It screams so loudly some days that I become attached to it and forget it's just a holographic memory. I don't see the Presence at the core of it. I forget there's even a core. I become abandoned and want to die.



I've already found the source. What I haven't found is a way to end the ongoing trauma. On the spiritual level, everything is OK. On the physical level, I am in constant pain and experiencing tormented separateness. I don't know how to integrate my traumatized self with core reality.

You know the saying... thoughts are like clouds in the sky. The sky is the true self, untainted by clouds. The clouds are temporary forms, like thoughts and feelings. Well, my trauma is like a huge black cloud that covers most the sky, raining hail, lighting, tornados, and hell on earth. Hard to see the blue sky sometimes when you have the image of an apocalypse in your face. That image drives all my separateness, isolation, unworthiness, etc.

When you see other people going about their lives without a care in the world, yet feel you like you have to find stability in an apocalypse every day, you start to feel like you're at a real disadvantage and that you shouldn't bother living anymore.

It's just a story like any other. It's just a dream. But it's a real dream. It feels real.



I get what you are saying. I see the dynamics at work. But I don't want to play the game if it just traumatizes me more, and I don't want to deal with mundane people and pretend that their fake story about life is the real story. I don't want to subscribe to culture or any other historical non-sense because that's not real either. I don't want to chase fantasies. I just want the trauma to stop. I will do anything.

Can you not try to balance what seems like a double edged sword? It's interesting because what you state really does describe all that can possibly be known about so many different layers to reality itself, much of them, like you say that act more like mirages/facades that cover other realities. You mention many things that I've read, heard and even realized myself through many years of self discovery and journeys into educating myself and learning about this existence we call human life. Maybe I'm wrong but that is where the core of this 'issue' (if we want to call it that? Perhaps not?) can be found? Between becoming, being and have been. Between now, then and what is. And all the while acknowledging the little games at work distracting you from what exists beyond. It is indeed a difficult road to traverse being torn between here and there and intelligence can sometimes (in my experience) only amplify your ability to reveal the raw truth behind things which can potentially make things even worse. You are incredibly intelligent, there's no doubt about that and your wisdom seems infinite. What you have described in your posts many people who have lived to the end of life throughout generations could never condense into what you have written. There is a gift there for sure. But at the same time, the gift is also the curse? You being as aware as you are, as in tune with things also keeps you stationary in that you have a very very very (emphasis deliberate) good level of understanding, experience and knowledge about the conditions that form the basis for you moving on and I don't doubt for a second all of what you know and have experienced will indeed be true and perhaps be realized should you decide to do something. In other words, what you envisioned would likely come true and what you judged using your powerful abilities would like turn out to be very similiar, if not identical, to what materializes.

There HAS to be a way to move forward, right? Because from my knowledge of trauma the main stumbling block is actually not being able to do exactly that - move forward. Trauma is the reliving of past experiences, correct? And PTSD is the prolonged experience of this trauma beyond the actual date of the original trauma simply being lived on as if it was that very day (or days) it occured. But there is progress that can be made should the trauma be integrated. Trauma can be experienced in a way that helps to integrate it so that it no longer holds so much weight over your life. I have to say and maybe you don't agree here, I did notice you were not keen on psychedelics from a previous post you made referring to another member who mentioned them as potential for therapeutic benefits, psychedelics DID work for me BIG TIME. I had tonnes of trauma that stretched back to early childhood and I went through all this trauma like a child for several hours and while I wasn't actually processing at the time (because I was tripping balls) I had begun to process of purging it by actually triggering the trauma to be relived in a way where it wasn't being repressed, denied or dilluted. Essentially I WAS the child experiencing the day only physically I was a grown man. That was so powerful for me man, so powerful. In other ways and beyond that key experience, falling in love broke down barriers I had in regards to trauma and holding on to baggage I had held for a long time. While psychedelics broke down that barrier, they did not rid me completely of my defense mechanisms underlying the trauma. I struggled with relationships for such a long time until I fell in love with an amazing woman who taught me how to love and be loved. There are ways, as I mentioned above, to balance that sword. Ultimately I think you have to be cut by the sword itself in order to know what it's like to feel pain, to potentially lose something or someone you care about, to see how you are to other people, to be with the suffering you have experienced in a way that is lived and real, if that makes sense? No way do I imply people cut themselves with swords but I'm sure you get my point! Sometimes the fire needs to be touched in order to know what it's like to get burned. Sometimes you need to know what you have by potentially experiencing losing it all.

Trauma can also become very selfish and while I do not undermine anybody when it comes to trauma, the world can all of a sudden revolve around you and your misery when there is a world of suffering out there. I mean, the Buddha knew this long before modern society ever did. Sometimes opening up and being vulnerable and stop dragging your body around like life is a chore can really help and if that means reaching out to others, opening yourself up, sharing your story, listening to other people, giving back to others and learning to be selfless sometimes in the pursuit of embracing others and loving others that can make a huge difference too.

Either way, yeah, I would agree that some work on the trauma is a good shout. I really feel like you could benefit from it because you have such a vast amount of potential and if anybody should benefit from being able to live as fully as possible it should be someone like you. Why? The world needs more people like you man. We need more people that see things like you, that have been to places like you have, that know what it's like to go there, to know what it's like to having thought about so much stuff that revolves around existence itself and human experience thereof. Historically people like yourself were guides, shamans, mystics. The role people like yourself play has pivotal importance in the whole big picture of society. What's not to like and respect about someone whose been there done that and got the t-shirt, particularly when it comes to miles travelled within your mind? Harnessing the potential to realize what you have is a gift and what you can offer is also a gift could really give you a sense of meaning and purpose, even if it's to simply be the complicated self that you are and to offer this in the form of everything you are, warts and all. That's a powerful person. And that's what you are. Most people like you say are simply doing their thing while at the same time unaware of what they are actually doing. They are animals and they live in a primitive existence. You could argue when they are born they are counting down the seconds until death and 99% of that time is about playing the game they are not running from the truth. Here you are on this forum with the HUGE amounts of wisdom, knowledge and experience you have and there is so much you can do with that. It would simply be about applying yourself and being able to integrate the underlying trauma so your will to simply carry on doesn't become the crux of your storyline. Because how long does a survivor remain the survivor for? Not very long. Soon the audience gets bored and the whole trauma survivor role gets old. But if you came at things having utilized all your potential to then sculpt that into something that fits the nuanced presence that is yourself, you've made it. You are set.

You have to work on the demons because behind that is everything. And I wouldn't say it's about becoming somebody. It's moreover becoming yourself. About grounding yourself in a way that you feel at home within your body and at home within this lifetime as you are. That shit takes time though but I speak from experience it's well worth it. I'm 30 years old and I started this journey at 14-15 years old and I'm only starting to bear the fruits of my work but I've put a lot of stuff behind me, confronted a lot of stuff, faced my demons, faced the challenges, asserted myself to whomever and whatever, etched out my path and defined myself in a way that I feel resonates deeply with the person I am beyond all of this. I didn't know who I was or whether being myself was okay. I spent much of my life pretending to be somebody else in order to please others and it took me a long time to figure out I was going nowhere doing that. I finally realized I will only ever be okay by being me and that's what you have to rediscover and what exists beyond everything, trauma included. And that's where home is. Thats where the potential is. You must align yourself with whatever makes you feel better and whatever needs to be done to bring yourself closer to who you want to be, and we all want to be somebody, even those who know being somebody might also be an illusion. Alan Watts knew Alan Watts was an illusion but he still played Alan Watts! The Buddha knew the Buddha was an illusion but he still was the Buddha. Balance the sword. After meditation chop wood. Life continues, a semblence of normality must be found, a connection to this realm must be found. Sure we can always go to and fro as we please but after meditation chop wood. We return to our families, our friends, loved ones, workplaces, return to our normal lives otherwise we cease to exist. Ram Dass once mentioned about his guru who talked about an enlightened being who was dying. The man requested a pack of cigarettes and it shocked onlookers because they saw this man as strictly pure and perfection. What they didn't realize is this man needed a connection to this world otherwise he would simply disappear, he would cease to exist. Everybody needs a connection to this reality, everybody needs a vice of sorts, everybody needs something to cling onto to the everyday reality because that's also just as real as any other plane of reality. Discarding one for another is escapism and you lose yourself. We are here in this world and that's how it is. That's everything that is good, bad, evil and pure, right and wrong, up and down, left and right. And it simply is. The question is - how do you navigate that world and how you are going to define yourself within it? What game are YOU going to play? Either way you are still playing a game. Someone who sees through all the illusions is still playing a game he sees through all the illusions because, of course, that's his game! Someone who drives trucks for a living is playing the game of driving trucks for a living. Behind the trauma there is this realization that the game exists and that the only way back to a life that is closer to being full of everything you want is to accept that this game is part of existence itself, it is everything and nothing but either way it is BOTH those things and not just ONE of them.

You are okay being you, I want you to know that. Right now who you are is okay. You ARE okay. You ARE allowed to be you and that doing so is perfectly acceptable and perfectly okay.
Whatever has happened home is right here where you are. And being at home right here where you are is more than enough and that is where you will find everything. Also again thanks for being so open. This is a very powerful conversation and I appreciate having it with you.

 

[iridescentblack]

Gilgamesh became something of a war-hero after he went through the loss of his brother. I suppose by going to war he was somehow overcoming his fear of death, so the legends suggest.

I understand that Buddhists will either meditate about death or spend time with a corpse in order to get the idea down, so to speak.

I've been meaning to spend some more time gathering and reading various books about Japanese history and culture. It fascinates me that if a ronin met dishonor he or she would willingly take their own life in an attempt to regain that lost honor. Whether it's a form of brainwashing or some manner of physical attainment, I suppose I'm fascinated nonetheless and part of that fascination is due to coming close to suicide.

Simple times they lived in. Honestly, honor is meaningless to pop culture because the idea of retaining anything after you die (at least in the physical world) is ludicrous. I mean, sure, energy carries over, upon passing, in the form of experience, but the afterlife is heady. I would need to gather and research more in order to assess whether that experience can be retained somehow. Still, I'm convinced belief in an afterlife is primarily a liver problem. More than likely if there is any legitimate reason to die it seems that it leaves its place in history, making the need to explore death in primal youth a paltry one. Basically death is a way of imprinting some of what we gain onto future generations and inhabitants.

 

[Gormur]

Some people though, we just feel death and experience it mildly everyday. I'm mainly talking about visual concepts but some may also hear death or morbid ideas. This doesn't necessarily mean a person wants to die. The urge/feeling of dying may be completely absent while the urge to live may be offset by the former, so that the person experiences a feeling that they're constantly living and dying in a sort of cycle

At least that's how it is for me