Toxinebulaic
winter is coming
- Aug 2, 2023
- 38
I wish I could become a watcher
Through the process of a completed ego death I could wonder what distant universes I could explore and what unrestrained limits my cognitive functions could reach for. I wonder how peaceful it would feel. A complete separation from who I am as a person. To watch my emotions knock at the door and leave them waiting at the doorstep. To abandon language and think without structure. Take a vow of silence and lose all that makes me human.
What a wonderful world it would be. I'd be at the mercy of nature, just as every other creature is. Like the turtle. Like the ant. Like the eagle. Like the peaceful oak tree. I couldn't be scarred, I couldn't be bothered. There's a dangerous aspect to nature, but at the same time it's calming. As nothing more than a disassociated animal I wouldn't even need to contemplate the meaning of nature I could just enjoy it. Life wouldn't be so difficult all the time.
My mental model of ego death is impossible to describe because it is a world without description. Language has limits which people must come to terms with and clarify every time they speak. Language, or at least our languages, are imperfect ways of communicating. I want a world where I don't need to share anything, where I can simply exist and that is enough. Human consciousness is a continuous misadventure on the evolutionary chain, we are too intelligent for our own good. Our acute understanding of the world and what it is makes us want to escape it, but we never can. Not until we've gone through enough suffering that the indifferent universe decides it will finally allow us to leave.
Most humans remain convinced that this is a gift. It's not a gift, it's a statistical inevitability. It's an experiment on behalf of the empty galaxies of this infinite space we call home. Life can be perceived as a gift. Life can be perceived in any way we want. Maybe it would be better and happier for somebody like me to accept life as a gift and just be grateful for the experiences I have, but even as a child I would so often become disassociated. I have these vivid memories of being nothing, I still have these occasional odd experiences of not existing, and then I start to walk again and realize with a sense of dread how difficult and painful this life is. These lapses in my sense of self are almost teasing me with the prospect of death, these brief moments of ego death are tantalizing
My mental model of ego death is impossible to describe because it is a world without description. Language has limits which people must come to terms with and clarify every time they speak. Language, or at least our languages, are imperfect ways of communicating. I want a world where I don't need to share anything, where I can simply exist and that is enough. Human consciousness is a continuous misadventure on the evolutionary chain, we are too intelligent for our own good. Our acute understanding of the world and what it is makes us want to escape it, but we never can. Not until we've gone through enough suffering that the indifferent universe decides it will finally allow us to leave.
Most humans remain convinced that this is a gift. It's not a gift, it's a statistical inevitability. It's an experiment on behalf of the empty galaxies of this infinite space we call home. Life can be perceived as a gift. Life can be perceived in any way we want. Maybe it would be better and happier for somebody like me to accept life as a gift and just be grateful for the experiences I have, but even as a child I would so often become disassociated. I have these vivid memories of being nothing, I still have these occasional odd experiences of not existing, and then I start to walk again and realize with a sense of dread how difficult and painful this life is. These lapses in my sense of self are almost teasing me with the prospect of death, these brief moments of ego death are tantalizing
Those two words are words that I have never seen as terrifying or difficult to cope with. The words are reassuring. I know I will die, and I accept that fact. It's comforting. No matter what happens in life, I can always fall back on the objective fact that I will die. Everything ends, and there is something so fascinatingly comfortable about that. I imagine my final moments as me sitting, bundled up in front of a fireplace in a house I own, finally drifting off and fading away after so much work and struggle to make myself and others happy. That thought of dying does not scare me, it makes me happy. That I can look forward to such a thing so long as I remain healthy in this world is the true gift of life.
It does get difficult sometimes. When life gets rough, I begin to see cracks in that positive demeanor and outlook on life. Why does it have to be so far away? I would be comfortable with 30 or 40 years of good hard work before I decide to pass on, but thanks to the miracle of modern medicine I am expected to live twice as long! How incredible. I am watching my grandfather, in the final act of his life, miserable and bored. He tries to act happy but I see it in his eyes. He's ready for it to end, but it just won't because we expect these people to live as long as they possibly can. It's unreasonable.
My grandfather has dementia. It's a terrifying illness. Knowing the dread that will befall him as he loses touch with who he is and all those who once meant anything to him, it tears me apart. He was a good man when I was younger. I have memories in childhood of him being the happiest guy you'd ever meet. Old age has transformed him. He has lost everything. He has lost his house, his wife, his memory, his job, his drivers license. My grandfather is a shell of his old self, slowly waiting out his death in a retirement home. I look into his eyes and see the future of us all. I look into his eyes and see a future where I am living in a retirement home, old and yearning for the good old days, slowly realizing that my grandfather had passed the dementia onto me.
There's a fear to forgetting, but sometimes, I think it might be incredible. If I have the right mindset going into it, I will slowly cease to care about everything, I'll disassociate from the world and forget everything as I go. An ego death. A separation of body and mind as the mind slowly destroys itself. What a way to go. Terrifying if you look at it the wrong way, but just like death, comforting if you accept it in another way.
I feel no shame admitting that even though I agree with death and would prefer non-existence at almost every turn, I am still scared. Death is scary, that's why people have tried to avoid and postpone it. We're like children about to get an essential vaccine. We're terrified by the pain that may come with it. Painless deaths are hard to come by, if there was a quick, painless, self destruct button available to us at all times, many of us would press it. Unfortunately, there's not. I think that's by design. It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be scary, because biologically we're not supposed to want to die. Our bodily autonomy is fighting with our evolutionary purpose. Most of the time, our evolutionary purpose wins because it wields a tool more powerful than any other; pain.
Pain is terrifying and everyone has experiences of it burned into their memory. But if I may, if I might, look past all that pain tonight, what would become of my rotting corpse? What would be numb where humanity ignores? I can think of a million reasons to die, and I can think of a million reasons to live, but ultimately, humans will alway choose the path of least resistance. It's much easier to just keep on living than it is to go through the pain and effort of dying. Perhaps nothing is more difficult. Regardless, I continue to dream of a complete ego death so that I may take comfort and yearn for nonexistence, not for philosophical reasons, but because there would be no reason not to. An empty soul has no reason to believe in anything, and so I would not believe in life. That would leave death as the path of least resistance, as I lie down, not even needing to accept the fact that nothing matters.
A perfect world without pain.
It does get difficult sometimes. When life gets rough, I begin to see cracks in that positive demeanor and outlook on life. Why does it have to be so far away? I would be comfortable with 30 or 40 years of good hard work before I decide to pass on, but thanks to the miracle of modern medicine I am expected to live twice as long! How incredible. I am watching my grandfather, in the final act of his life, miserable and bored. He tries to act happy but I see it in his eyes. He's ready for it to end, but it just won't because we expect these people to live as long as they possibly can. It's unreasonable.
My grandfather has dementia. It's a terrifying illness. Knowing the dread that will befall him as he loses touch with who he is and all those who once meant anything to him, it tears me apart. He was a good man when I was younger. I have memories in childhood of him being the happiest guy you'd ever meet. Old age has transformed him. He has lost everything. He has lost his house, his wife, his memory, his job, his drivers license. My grandfather is a shell of his old self, slowly waiting out his death in a retirement home. I look into his eyes and see the future of us all. I look into his eyes and see a future where I am living in a retirement home, old and yearning for the good old days, slowly realizing that my grandfather had passed the dementia onto me.
There's a fear to forgetting, but sometimes, I think it might be incredible. If I have the right mindset going into it, I will slowly cease to care about everything, I'll disassociate from the world and forget everything as I go. An ego death. A separation of body and mind as the mind slowly destroys itself. What a way to go. Terrifying if you look at it the wrong way, but just like death, comforting if you accept it in another way.
I feel no shame admitting that even though I agree with death and would prefer non-existence at almost every turn, I am still scared. Death is scary, that's why people have tried to avoid and postpone it. We're like children about to get an essential vaccine. We're terrified by the pain that may come with it. Painless deaths are hard to come by, if there was a quick, painless, self destruct button available to us at all times, many of us would press it. Unfortunately, there's not. I think that's by design. It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be scary, because biologically we're not supposed to want to die. Our bodily autonomy is fighting with our evolutionary purpose. Most of the time, our evolutionary purpose wins because it wields a tool more powerful than any other; pain.
Pain is terrifying and everyone has experiences of it burned into their memory. But if I may, if I might, look past all that pain tonight, what would become of my rotting corpse? What would be numb where humanity ignores? I can think of a million reasons to die, and I can think of a million reasons to live, but ultimately, humans will alway choose the path of least resistance. It's much easier to just keep on living than it is to go through the pain and effort of dying. Perhaps nothing is more difficult. Regardless, I continue to dream of a complete ego death so that I may take comfort and yearn for nonexistence, not for philosophical reasons, but because there would be no reason not to. An empty soul has no reason to believe in anything, and so I would not believe in life. That would leave death as the path of least resistance, as I lie down, not even needing to accept the fact that nothing matters.
A perfect world without pain.
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