Discussion How do you let go and not be afraid? (Trigger warning - Existential/religious topics)

[broken_stoic]

I won't go over my whole story here, but after trying soooo much for so long, I'm getting close to just calling it again.

The problem is, I keep getting to the place where I'm just terrified to die. Mostly I'm terrified of the possibility that there could be something after. Logically, I don't see any reason whatsoever to think that there is something after. I grew up religious; that lead me to look very deeply into such questions and eventually completely reject religion as a whole. I did grow up in a particular brand of a particular religion that focused alot on how horrible the afterlife could be for certain people.

So I don't think that is true or likely to be the case. But I could be wrong.

What I'm really afraid of is just the unknown, the fact that we just can't know for sure that there is nothing after. Logically I think this is just a biologically programmed fear of death evolution gives us all. But, what if there is something that we just don't understand about the nature of reality and there is some kind of something "after". And what if it's unbelievably horrible?

Maybe the chance that there is something is .0000000000000000000001%. Maybe the chance that it's bad is even lower. No matter how low you can make that chance it still terrifies me to my core. Maybe some of that is natural. Maybe I'm just overthinking things. Maybe some of it is religious trauma.

Does anyone else struggle with this, and if so have you found something to make it better?

 

[Mr. Snrub]

I have stuggled with it and I reckon it's fair to call it religious trauma. At the very least it's trauma that's partly related to a religious upbringing. It's also your natural fear of death manifesting in whatever way is convenient to it.

I don't really have an answer for you. I think this kind of fear will always be in the back of your mind even if you aren't actively suicidal. It "helps" to keep in mind that things are already unbelievably horrible. That's no guarantee they can't get worse but hey -- you can only focus on one realm of existence at a time.

 

[Lycoris]

I agree with Cosmophobic on pretty much everything they said. I personally want to believe it's like a long, long dream that'll never end but none of us will find out in this lifetime sadly. I'm scared of passing away painfully and not knowing what comes next is one of the few reasons keeping me here as well. I'd like to hope when I finally come to terms with CTB i'll have made peace with the uncertainty since the only certainty I know in life is that it'll be cruel and it'll be hard and that suffering is inevitable.

 

[TheHolySword]

It's the one truth humanity will never know. For all our knowledge and wisdom and power. We will never conquer the final unknown. If you want to die, you must either accept this fact and look blindly past it.

 

[kmao2004]

If you're Catholic ctb does not mean auto hell. I plan to go to confession, drink SN, confess my normal stuff along with what I just did that will end my life. The priest can't do anything to help except make your penance to call 911 which is fine because he probably won't say what to tell them and you have enough time to leave so they dont track you correctly. Is it foolproof? Maybe. Chatgpt seemed to be optimistic about it.

 

[Sunset Limited]

I'm using Google Translate. Sorry for the English.

Imagine a god who, as if he hadn't created them, argues with humanity, becomes its enemy, and vows revenge. While decrying discord, he categorizes all of humanity into believers and non-believers, turning them into enemies. He makes the small, helpless creatures he created fight for him and watch them kill each other, deriving romantic pleasure from it. As if that weren't enough, he massacres them en masse because they don't live as he wishes, punishes them with various disasters and inflicts pain. And as if that weren't enough, he plans to torture them in fantastical ways for eternity in a place he calls hell. The same god encourages people to be good and to do good, speaking of his infinite mercy and how good he is.

One would only kneel before such a god in fear. What if he were real and hell existed? There's no need to test the logic of Abrahamic religions. There's no morally acceptable basis for them anyway. Let's put aside its rationality, if I saw him in front of me, I would spit in his face.

Religions are terrorism. In the Middle Ages, they were used to hijack human minds, enslave them, and militarize them. A manipulative doctrine filled with pornographic material that terrorized the human mind. In the Middle Ages, people were inclined to believe in it because life itself was worse than the idea of hell. They preferred fearing the afterlife to waking up in the morning and colliding with the cold wall of reality. It's simply a divine way of rejecting a reality that can never be accepted by a higher awareness. Man is a machine that denies his own existence. There is no God. We need God to justify suffering and existence. It's an instrument whose emergence is inevitable.

If there's a continuation of this shit, it's not the BS god of the Abrahamic religions.

 

[_Gollum_]

This sometimes bothers me too. As you said, even if the chance is infinitesimally small, it's still a chance, and when we're talking about eternal suffering, that's not a gamble I ever want to take.

However, my decision to CTB is not affected by this because the way I see it, the gamble was already taken the moment I was born: regardless of how I die, what is certain is that I will die, and I will have to find out what comes after in any case.

I guess you could say that suicide might be especially punished, but I figure, if it's a God that punishes suicide, then it's a God that will probably have punished me for other things (ex. disbelief) anyway, so I would've ended up in hell anyway. And when we're talking about eternity, an additional 60 years of suffering in hell makes no difference.

 

[eggsausagerice]

f you're Catholic ctb does not mean auto hell. I plan to go to confession, drink SN, confess my normal stuff along with what I just did that will end my life. The priest can't do anything to help except make your penance to call 911 which is fine because he probably won't say what to tell them and you have enough time to leave so they dont track you correctly. Is it foolproof? Maybe. Chatgpt seemed to be optimistic about it.

??? why did you confer with chatgpt about your suicide method?
the priest would call 911 on you if you told him you just took a substance that would kill you

 

[kmao2004]

??? why did you confer with chatgpt about your suicide method?
the priest would call 911 on you if you told him you just took a substance that would kill you

The priest would be excommunicated for breaking the seal of confession. He would be more likely to make my penance to call 911.

 

[Leaving1970]

I won't go over my whole story here, but after trying soooo much for so long, I'm getting close to just calling it again.

The problem is, I keep getting to the place where I'm just terrified to die. Mostly I'm terrified of the possibility that there could be something after. Logically, I don't see any reason whatsoever to think that there is something after. I grew up religious; that lead me to look very deeply into such questions and eventually completely reject religion as a whole. I did grow up in a particular brand of a particular religion that focused alot on how horrible the afterlife could be for certain people.

So I don't think that is true or likely to be the case. But I could be wrong.

What I'm really afraid of is just the unknown, the fact that we just can't know for sure that there is nothing after. Logically I think this is just a biologically programmed fear of death evolution gives us all. But, what if there is something that we just don't understand about the nature of reality and there is some kind of something "after". And what if it's unbelievably horrible?

Maybe the chance that there is something is .0000000000000000000001%. Maybe the chance that it's bad is even lower. No matter how low you can make that chance it still terrifies me to my core. Maybe some of that is natural. Maybe I'm just overthinking things. Maybe some of it is religious trauma.

Does anyone else struggle with this, and if so have you found something to make it better?

Well . . . the religious trauma someone coined it is the only thing keeping me here currently, so I understand what you're saying. Just my two cents here, but I do think there is a God, now where I have issue is all the suffering and punishment of the 100 Billion (google estimates) before us for the failure of mankind right out of the gate. But I also do not think we are by chance and crawled out of a pool of slime. So I don't know, and nobody knows, and that is troubling. I can't at current figure out how to get past it. But it's not an option to die, so it's going to happen to me in say 20 years, or now. But nevertheless it will happen, so what is the difference between now and 20 years. I suppose one could say in 20 years you may learn more . . .I don't know, as I haven't yet, and I'm old. I would not discount there being God and life after this. Most on here will probably disagree. I don't think its rubbish, but I also can't come to terms with the Bible.

 

[broken_stoic]

Thank you everyone for your input. I didn't imagine anyone had come across a quick or easy fix, but I guess it's at least nice to know some other people feel the same way. Thanks all.

 

[BoulderSoWhat]

For me, my mentality has become a kind of "I'll just deal with whatever it is, if it is anything."

Ultimately, I have no control over what's fundamentally true or false about existence. Hey weird quantum mechinics shit and who knows what else that we don't know about or will never know about happened, and made a universe place thing expand from something really small to something really big, stuff coalesced into big balls of glowing gas. Other balls of gas and rocks orbit those. And those big balls of glowing gas orbit black holes where reality just gives up making sense and collapses in on itself. And space is still expanding, not outward from any particular center point, but from all points everywhere going in all directions. And depending on how fast you are moving in the universe or how close you are to a massive object, time itself fucking changes and is not static.

We have no idea if there is a "wall", an "edge" to this so called universe at which point, sorry, there is arbitrarily no more universe beyond this point, turn back. Are there multiple universes? Multiple multi-verses? Multiple ensembles of multiple-multiverses?

For me, it's just been continually going down the rabbit holes of "what-ifs", to the point of breaking my mind and realizing...it is what it is, no matter what it is.

And just like I'm dealing with being alive now until I stop being alive, if I'm ever alive again, I'll just have to deal with it. And if I'm never alive again, then I won't have any sense of mind or cognitive processing to care about that.

So for now, lots of sleeps, drink the coffee, work my job, maybe go for walks, eat food as needed, try to do what I can for myself, because my autonomy is all I have control over, to some limit. And until I find out for sure where my control over my life stops, I'll keep trying to make the changes I want to see for myself, even if right now it's a glacially slow process.

I don't know, hugs to all though

 

[badatparties]

We'll never figure out the true nature of reality as long as we're here. No man ever has, and no man ever will. Unless some religion's tenants make sense to you, try not to freak out, everyone dies. We'll find out sooner or later.

With all that being said, it's still normal to be scared. It's the unknown after all. Life's a huge gamble and so is death.

 

[broken_stoic]

I think at the end of the day you are both right. I wish I could come to terms with those answers and find them reassuring. I think I'm just coming to accept that I'm terrified of death and I will continue to be so. I wish I could find it peaceful, but I just probably won't.

 

[itsgone2]

The priest would be excommunicated for breaking the seal of confession. He would be more likely to make my penance to call 911.

This is a myth. They're 100% going to take action.

 

[WeDontKnowTheFuture]

I understand your fear of a possible after-death, that's something that scary me a little bit also because if there is something it could possibly be something uncomfortable or scary. Like your soul or spirit could travel in another realm without understanding what's going on and it could be a terrible experience, not understanding what is happening and where you're going to, that's what scare me the most but i guess if there is an afterlife you would probably enter trough it in a smooth process like when you fall asleep and enter a dream.

 

[broken_stoic]

I understand your fear of a possible after-death, that's something that scary me a little bit also because if there is something it could possibly be something uncomfortable or scary. Like your soul or spirit could travel in another realm without understanding what's going on and it could be a terrible experience, not understanding what is happening and where you're going to, that's what scare me the most but i guess if there is an afterlife you would probably enter trough it in a smooth process like when you fall asleep and enter a dream.

Yeah, and that's the thing for me I don't even logically believe it's likely there is an after-life (or actually I like your phrase - after-death - better). But it's that what if?

 

[itsgone2]

Yeah, and that's the thing for me I don't even logically believe it's likely there is an after-life (or actually I like your phrase - after-death - better). But it's that what if?

It just occurred to me but I wonder if logically the answer is, we don't know. I mean we can't. Reincarnation, heaven, nothingness, we can't prove any of them. They all have frightening aspects tbh.

Great user name. My life turned around when I discovered stoicism. But it didn't matter. Too late and other circumstances will end me anyway.

 

[broken_stoic]

It just occurred to me but I wonder if logically the answer is, we don't know. I mean we can't. Reincarnation, heaven, nothingness, we can't prove any of them. They all have frightening aspects tbh.

Great user name. My life turned around when I discovered stoicism. But it didn't matter. Too late and other circumstances will end me anyway.

Yeah, I think ultimately that's probably right. Almost by definition I don't think we can be 100% sure. I feel like we could be pretty sure though. But the human mind doesn't do probability well . . . Stupid monkey brain.

Heh, thanks. Yeah I have mixed feelings about stoicism, I've toyed with it off and on for 10-15 years. At this point I reject some parts and embrace some aspects. Personal stance, I can definitely see it straight up being useful to just adopt . . . but I'm a bit . . . anal?

 

[WeDontKnowTheFuture]

in any case, if there is one we will have to deal with and we will probably understand the nature of the life we went trough wich will be interesting, best case scenario would be that we'll find ourselves in a space where we can heal from all our ailments. I just sincerely hope we don't get into a new dimension with all our unsolvable problems that make us suicidal still there without the healing possibility thing.

 

[bitterToad]

I sincerely agree with Sunset Limited, various philosophers and scientists have argued soundly — and I think successfully — against the existence of the beings humanity has imagined to be their gods. Religious mythos is far more likely the coping mechanism of highly creative, traumatised minds — when it's not a political strategy.

I know what unconsciousness feels like, I have been unconscious for many operations and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). There is nothing. I pass out and then I wake up again, there is nothing in between.

I really like this one podcast episode about how consciousness is potentially fundamental to matter, and that awareness depends of the complex organisation of that matter. [ ]

 

[broken_stoic]

I sincerely agree with Sunset Limited, various philosophers and scientists have argued soundly — and I think successfully — against the existence of the beings humanity has imagined to be their gods. Religious mythos is far more likely the coping mechanism of highly creative, traumatised minds — when it's not a political strategy.

I know what unconsciousness feels like, I have been unconscious for many operations and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). There is nothing. I pass out and then I wake up again, there is nothing in between.

I really like this one podcast episode about how consciousness is potentially fundamental to matter, and that awareness depends of the complex organisation of that matter. [ ]

Oh I agree, I don't currently see any logical reason to believe in any god/afterlife that has thus far been proposed. But there is still so much we don't know, and we could be wrong. It's that small possibility of being catastrophically wrong paired with the possibility that there is still so much we don't know.

I've listened to/read a little bit on panpsychism. I find it vaguely interesting, but at the moment it doesn't seem super-well developed, and there doesn't seem to be even a solid set of theories or even definitions yet in many cases. I do file that under one of those "what-ifs" though, glad you brought it up.

 

[OnMyLast Legs]

If you're Catholic ctb does not mean auto hell. I plan to go to confession, drink SN, confess my normal stuff along with what I just did that will end my life. The priest can't do anything to help except make your penance to call 911 which is fine because he probably won't say what to tell them and you have enough time to leave so they dont track you correctly. Is it foolproof? Maybe. Chatgpt seemed to be optimistic about it.

If God is real, he's not gonna be fooled by that. I have a Catholic history and all these thoughts have crossed my mind. Also they could probably get you on methylene blue in time.