THE REALITY
You will die!
Meanwhile you will live!
That's simply what is so!
(It's ok with me. I'll take the deal, as it is a heckuva good one!)
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"You are given a gift that might have never happened. The gift is the awareness of the experiences you get to have - including the miracle and wonders inherent in life and just being human. It does have an expiration, but I get to have it until then. I
am so delighted!"
The BuddhaKahuna
When you are here, you are here.
When you are gone, you are gone.
It isn't a problem to be gone,
so long as you are really here
when you're here.
Kent Nerburn
American Author, Sculptor and Educator
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WHAT NOT TO DO ABOUT IT
You can worry about it and experience pain around it over and over, but it will do you no good - and in fact will harm you! It will waste your time and diminish the life you are worrying about losing - ironic, huh?!! (You'll still die, but have lived less.)
THE CONSEQUENCES OF DYING - WHAT, ME WORRY?
The alternatives:
1. You will go to heaven or some after life - and you'll be ok.
2. You will go out of existence - and you'll not feel a thing, have no sadness or
regret or anything.
Either one seems to have no actual pain.
It just ends something that is predestined to end: this mortal life.
We had a human experience, which we would like to go on longer, but we simply had what we had while we had it, in each moment, until the moments end. (There are only moments, that is where we live. There is no past and there is no future except in our imagination...)
It is simply a good experience, like going to the movies, except we are blessed with it being a lot longer. (Over 72 years, it's 37, 843,200 minutes!!!)
(Because of evolution, your primitive mind will still do what it can to have you survive, including jolting out some uncomfortable chemicals to get you into gear. Those will just be "uncomfortable". And we don't need to add any reactions to it, other than heeding the signal and doing what is necessary, period. In his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and his actual studies, stress expert Robert Sapolsky notes that (paraphrased): "The zebra runs from the tiger. Then it's over. The fear is no longer active. And he grazes calmly..."
The "operant question" is "am I OK right now, this moment, with no immediate life or limb danger...?")
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
At this point, you already know what to do about it. Understand it, accept reality and stop resisting it or worrying about it. Read the recommended sections above.
That's it. No big deal. We are simply blessed to have been given this life and to be a miracle machine far above that of any other in existence anywhere (known)!
FOLLOW THIS ADVICE
"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
So if everyone is destined to power-down like computers at the end of their lives, what should humans do to lend meaning to their experience?
"We should seek the greatest value of our action," Stephen Hawking told the paper.
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NOW IF YOU LET GO OF ALL OF THE "RELATED" FEARS...
If you read the fear section, you will soon arrive at the conclusion that alot of our fears are around things that we vaguely, but emotionally, think will cause us to not survive. For instance, we react to being "rejected" as if we were still in a tribe worrying about being kicked out to die on our own in the jungle.
MISCELLANEOUS MUSINGS...
But what about the possible pain near the end of life?
It may or may not happen that way, but if it does, if we actually know how the human body operates, we would know that there are natural "pain killers" that are produced that lower the effective "feeling" of pain, plus actually medicines can be added - and then you'll be in a semi-unaware state, floating - or as they say in rock and roll land "man, I ain't feelin' no pain!"
And then I thought about the lady who jumped off the bridge and died fairly quickly from the cold water. Yes, the feeling was there for a bit, but then the whole computer was erased, as if nothing ever really happened. A few minutes and then nothing. No big deal! (And, because of this realization, I never project any agony in my mind, as I know that it soon turns to nothing. I will have simply lived a life of much joy and fulfillment, with bits of not-so-good 'stuff' as a natural part of it, but overall a pretty damned good deal. I'll take it anytime! You might wish to read Will You Accept The Whole Life Package Deal? and try this one on for size: Acceptance Of Reality And All Of Life - A Profound Viewpoint.)
