You don’t need drugs. Religions talk about this - deities may or may not be involved, depending on your preference. Look at the way Japanese samurai warriors used Zen Buddhism to help them face death.
For the approximately 3,500,000,000 folks around the globe who live literally on the equivalent of $2 a day or less, subsistence is all they really have time for on most days. Death they leave to God and the ecclesiastics.
More than just a few no doubt yearn for nothing at all from time to time. But I already covered that.
I only know what the hard guys tell me on the Science Channel. All of the heavier elements that compose you and I exist only as a result of super nova explosions.
The death of stars somehow begets life. I wonder how that happens?
Zero as in “nothing at all”.
Well, there are some who believe anything is everything else. It is all supposedly a manifestation of the one reality that is seamlessly intertwined into some sort of, uh, transcendental Spinozan contraption.
Hell, I’d settle even for believing in that.
Good question. I also wonder why “star stuff” [or “star dust”] is thought so widely to be a sufficient description of our origin.
Ah, I get ya. Like the difference between “All is God” and “God is all”. The former suggests that God is in everything that exists, whereas the latter suggests that God is [limited to] the universe. So, for the former, “All is God”, death is inherently a “good” and necessary thing as it is the work of God. However, the problem is that people interpret “God” differently. Spinoza was a great example to use because his conception of God was widely misunderstood. His thinking was extremely deterministic, to be sure, but “God” was more of an indwelling and causal mechanism than any corporeal matter or deity.
I think where he and similar thinkers, like Schopenhauer with his conception of “The will”, find solace is in our relation to nature. We come from, and return to, the inorganic by the same driving force[s]. Thus, we do not cease to exist, but necessarily return to that which makes necessity of what constitutes us.
Well, I actually did qualify that as you can see from the above. Aside from that, turtle, not everyone feels this way. There are some who do realize that drugs ONLY postpone the inevitable and that the very actions they are taking to “sweep death under the carpet” may bring death more quickly.
Does life totally suck for you, turtle?
I don’t think that we CAN even handle death. And the more we try, the more death takes control of us. We can be aware of it by “seeing” it as a guide in the way we choose to live our lives. I don’t know if death is the ultimate final reality but if it is…I do agree with you on one level…and if it isn’t, well, the same holds true…
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
~Samuel Butler
It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
Carl Jung
for me life sucks 99%. my psychoanalyst says i am depressed. do you have serious doubts about heaven.
There was a time when I had serious doubts about heaven…and god for that matter. Now, I don’t concern myself about heaven or god. Perhaps I might about a god, but only insofar as not closing my mind about anything that might be possible…and of course, there is that possibility that there is SOMETHING to the god thing but I certainly do not feel it is anything that we can possibly touch on, except only insofar as our human thinking can take us.
As far as heaven, we can either wait to see if there is going to be one after death 
or we can create our heavens here on Earth for ourselves and for others, if they would let us try.
If, and that’s a BIG [size=200]if[/size], there is an afterlife, some kind of an afterlife that our consciousness somehow remains a part of, I personally feel that it is a good idea to at least try to learn to experience, in the here and now, not just the suffering, but also the happiness and bliss or at the very least, to attempt to experience some kind of interior calmness/stillness. Otherwise, how will we be able to experience it there? I think it would be a continuum of sorts…like everything is.
But of course, these are just my musings…they don’t have to be your thoughts.
do you think my psychoanalyst is right. you see my thoughts. am i depressed.
what do you fear mostly in your thinking about god and an afterlife.
by the way i pleasure myself plenty. and i like what i do. but having that joy makes it even harder when a loved one dies.
Does the idea that you might be depressed depress you?
I agree with this excellent advice:
I think if a person does this as a real discpline, and not just another idea to accept as a nice and reasonable one, that person will benefit psychologically and help make the world a better place. To some degree we have to learn to feel fulfilled while soberly understanding the world as it is. Our culture doesn’t promote that ability - on the contrary, it promotes the association of fulfillment with avoidance.
anon thanks. can you write more about that fufillment through avoidance thing.
i am depressed. my psychoanalyst is right. what i see in the world makes me sad. i think it is terrible out there. and the delusions we continue to hold on to sometimes causes so much trouble.
That we will die, that loved ones die, is something most people would like to ignore, in order to live a “fulfilling” life. We don’t think we ignore, but we do. We don’t really feel it. But I think avoiding certain truths, because they are uncomfortable, is in fact a recipe for anxiety and depression. The urge to avoid suffering, and the plans we make and pains we take to construct personal heavens for ourselves, are in fact the reason we suffer so much.
I’d blame advertising, and sometimes I do, but advertising is based on the real ignorance that most of us have with respect to suffering (i.e. angst) and fulfillment. Something isn’t right, and we grasp at the wrong things in the attempt to make it right.
A good way of accomplishing that is to start treating YOURSELF better. The world isn’t ugly in itself, just the image of the world can be ugly (or beautifull) - so change the image! Be fatalistic! -Only when you accept the good and the bad in the world as ONE will you aquire the power to seize control over your life and ENJOY in it…
-It’s not impossible that the universe is an ugly thing in itself, but even if it is - our thinking about it makes it far WORSE than it would normally be…
It will be just as it was before you had been born, you already experienced the lack of experience (so to speak) that wasn’t so bad was it?
How can I know if your psychoanalyst is correct? How can i know if you truly are depressed? Your thoughts don’t actually tell me, one way or the other, if you are depressed, turtle. I can’t read all of your words and I can’t “see” or “sense” you, except perhaps in a way in which I may be projecting. I don’t know you. To say the words doesn’t necessarily mean that you are depressed. What I do see about you is that you are intelligent - and have many questions that you would seemingly like answered. But it may be possible that you know the answers to these questions even more so than many of us do, at least more than I do. You need to have intelligence and knowledge in order to ask the kind of questions you ask. Aside from that, there is just not enough evidence to form even just an opinion as to your depression. That does not mean that you are not depressed - just that i am not able to see it.
Nothing actually, unless I allow my preconceived and catholic, up-bringing conditioned ‘beliefs’ to get in the way of my rational thinking.
You may have to elaborate on that. I’m not getting it.
I know this. There is absolutely no way in the world to prepare ourselves for and run from the pain and suffering that will happen to us when a loved one dies. The only real fruitful thing that we can do is to treasure them while they are alive…make them aware of how deeply we care about them, love them and value their presence in our lives. Even then, we will suffer a great loss. Aside from that, we need to learn to trust that no matter what happens to us, we will continue on, we will survive; that is, if we truly want to. It all comes down to willing. And ‘seeing’ what a great big beautiful world there is out there and that many of the people who inhabit it are beautiful too.
Perhaps what we can do is to try to imagine our lives without them and in that way, we will have a greater sense of what being without them would be like, and that at least can act as the guide that allows us to love them as we truly want to and not to allow meaningless nonsense to get in the way. And perhaps, we will not have many regrets…and we will have to remember that in order to have had the great gift of their love and presence in our lives, and the joy they brought us, we have to accept the pain that comes with that. That is, if we have to.
It all depends on ‘seeing’.
I don’t know, how could I. 
Same with death, it is not something that happens to us, only to others [they experience our death as an observation].
Huh? 
I was joking along with him with the first line ~ he said you already experienced the lack of experience, which I presumed he inferred as to the impossibility of such.
Same with death, it cannot be experienced. Other people will notice you die but you cannot.
Huh?
Well, if i were to die, i would certainly be aware of/have that experience and everything that it sent my way. I would experience death and in a matter of speaking, my loved ones who were there to ‘notice’ my death, would also experience my death though not in the same way.
Isn’t an experience, by its very nature felt and absorbed?
Well if there is nothing there to feel and absorb it? You would notice that you are dying or possibly going to, but you wouldn’t notice that you have died ~ there is no longer that which notices.
that’s the theory, I happen to disagree with it as I think the soul continues ~ in which case again I would not notice my death, as I would still exist. Naturally I would notice the demise of my physical form, but in no way would I experience death in either theory. 
see sig 
.
