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Death

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18:45 / 02.04.02

Everyone is going to die at some point.
Ever since I was little, the thought of death has worried me a great deal.
I was wondering what other barbe-ers thought about death; wheteher anyone has any theories or ways of dealing with death?
I shall aim to come into this thread often; but usually thoughst of death give me huge panic attacks and so i may not be able to reply as often.

18:53 / 02.04.02

meditation, eastern religion, and psychedelic journeys on dmt or auyahuasca can help get you used to the idea of "not being" and prepare you for the experience and terror of death.

focussing on what you want to do with your life and trying hard to achieve it can help take away the anxiety based on the idea that you will not always exist.

sex and true love balance your state of mind so that you can enjoy the moments and not fear their passing.

19:54 / 02.04.02

well, i'm ready to go. maybe not, but if i saw it coming i would throw on my best bravado bullshit face and "take it like a man..."

i was raised catholic but switched to atheism in my teen years. to me, the thought of just dying, and not existing on any other plane isn't so depressing. i hate to quote "death" but, "you get what everybody gets, you get a lifetime."

my junior year of college i took an intro to philosophy course where my professor, a devout atheist, logically disproved any theory of the afterlife. maybe i'm just the eternal devil's advocate, but at this point i began to question his ideas and my atheism and beliefs about death.

at this point i look foward to death being a transition, for good or bad, but i won't be disappointed if i just rot in the ground.

20:03 / 02.04.02

I have just been reading How To Practice by the Dalai Lama, and I just got to a part that talks about death in a way that I've never heard before. I will probably not do it justice, but will share anyway. See, I've mostly always thought about death and dealing with death as the moment when you don't get to be alive anymore. But this book is presenting death as the moment when you get to do the thing that life is all about, and that is to experience "the clear light of mind."

Called the fundamental innate mind of clear light, this is the most subtle, profound, and powerful level of consciousness. It is like the sky's natural state at dawn (not sunrise)--without moonlight, sunlight, or darkness

Anyway this has turned my head upside down a little.

Horus lord of force and fire

20:23 / 02.04.02

At the precise moment when you know you're gonna a die everything loses relevance - it merges into one, utterly pointless thing - and no-one is as important as you at that moment. You'll never feel as powerful as when you are, to the outside world, at your most powerless.

Death is really interesting man. Its the fuel of fear and fear is what the powers that be use to regulate us - we all have anxieties based around the fear of our well-being or the fear of other peoples well-being, because ultimately their pain would inadvertently cause us pain.

But you can't avoid it can you? So fearing death is pointless.

21:26 / 02.04.02

There's this guy, former PM, and his last words were "I am not afraid", I think that's cool. Death is where you get it all explained to you. Death is where you get to leave hell and go to heaven.

22:22 / 02.04.02

your replies have really been enlightening! i'm serious. ok, it's 3 in the morning and i'm half asleep but i mean it.
mystery gyt, have you tried these meditatons? do you anyone who has? they sound interesting.
i have been reading the tibetan book of living and dying and i like it a lot. and then i'll start thinking, all the religions in the world tell us there is an afterlife just to calm everyone down. the non-religious of this world are *generally* in western countries where shopping is in and enlightenment is out. i can't help but think of it as brainwashing.
which is stupid for two reasons.
one: i taught tibetans in india for a while and ended up learning a lot from them about life. they are all very relaxed about death because they really don't see it as the end. they told me that western culture totally ignores death, and when it does face it, sees it as an ending.
two: i almost died. i had a high temperature (this was in india too, believe it or not) and i was told later that if it had rised one more degree, i would have died.
i wasn't panicking. all i could feel was green light, and my body floating up to the sky. it sounds corny as fuck, but it's true.

why i am facing death anxiety now, i have no clue.

02:12 / 03.04.02

maybe now that you're once again faced with western culture it's seeping into your head like so much toxic jello. go east, young being.

04:38 / 03.04.02

i am not afraid of death.

i've nearly died a couple of times, once when i was young, once a few years back, i was also very ill about 10 years ago - when my crohn's condition rather asserted itself - and i was in utter agony for three months. i feel like i've been through worse things than dying. also - and this is hugely important to me - the grandmother i really loved died about 3 years ago. she'd lived a very full and happy life, had outlived her sister and husband and was not afraid to die. i see people putting things off that they really want to do and i don't think that's a good way to live - surely, at the end of it all, you don't want to look back with regret, at all the things you could've done, could've been. i say go for it now, really live the way you want to live, and that will take the fear away. death, after all, is a natural process. it's life that is the tricky part.

gozer the destructor

06:40 / 03.04.02

I read somewhere that an explanation for the 'outer body experiences' people have on operating tables is because when the body is getting ready to die it produces enough of the pain killing endorphines that you calm right down and begin to trip, that's why there are cases of children having these experiences and seeing teachers who are still alive rather than the cliched 'dead loved ones' at the end of the tunnel trip...I've always found some comfort in the fact that when my body starts to shut down i'm just gonna be peacefully tripping and seeing things to calm me down...

The Return Of Rothkoid

07:52 / 03.04.02

Am I afraid of death? Fuck yes. Probably because I haven't read enough to come to terms with it yet. I desperately want to know more about the whole lucid dreaming/out of body thing, and have got some stuff to read on that, purely because I figure that it's as near as I'll get (well, save for a near-death experience, obviously) that I'll get in a controlled form in my lifetime. But I don't feel like I've read or experienced enough to make any sort of call on it; if I ever will.

I guess I'm in a lazily questioning mode at the moment. I know that I need to come to some decision, or to make some discoveries about what I think about death, and what I think about The Big Questions, but something keeps pushing it out of the way, though I can't say that I try too hard to pursue it. Frightened? I don't know. Possibly.

It also helps that I've never really been face-to-face with it as far as my immediate family are concerned. My paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were both dead before I was born, and though I've had uncles die in my lifetime, they've not really impacted upon me purely because my family was either living in a different country at the time, or because my father didn't visit them much because he didn't want to see their degeneration up-close; Alzheimer's runs in my family, and my dad is paranoid that he'll get it. (As an aside; tests seem to indicate he's unlikely to, though it skips generations. Which means I may get it. Which fills me with joy.)

Actually, that Alzheimer's thing probably is responsible for some of the fear that I feel about death. It's the fact that (from the several relatives I've got who've had the illness) the identity just seems to be shed; that scares me. That all I've done, or that I know could be vaporised by this condition. I don't know - maybe my natural vagueness makes me think I'm destined for it. Who knows? Perhaps my uncles experienced the enlightenment that we're all seeking right when their identities went walkabout for increasingly longer stretches of time? I just know that it worries me, and though I've thought about death a lot since childhood (I'm pretty sure it started after a trip to an old prison where bushrangers were hung, when I was five or six) I still don't know what to think about it.

Morlock - groupie for hire

09:58 / 03.04.02

Not too sure what the big deal is about death. Dying, yes, the process can be bloody awful. But the moment of death never really bothers me. Either my soul/personality/whatever will cease to be, in which case I won't need to worry about anything anymore, or the story goes on somewhere, somehow. Can't prepare for it, so why worry? Wing it, everybody else does.

Don't concern yourself too much with your own death, spend that time dealing with life. It's at least as complicated, and probably more important.

The thought of my friends dying scares me much, much more...

pointless and uncalled for

12:22 / 03.04.02

I'm not really scared of death. I used to be and still have my moments from time to time but that's usually an indicator that I really could use more of a life than I have at the moment. Not that i really plan to lament how sad, pathetic and lonely I am. After all it is my own fault. I've considered death and come to terms with the fact that sooner or later I will cease to exist. When I tie that in with my own theories of inevitability then it seems to fit with my theories of balance.

Isn't it handy how the human mind will do all kinds of shit to stop you from totally fucking losing it. Like a self cleaning oven.

A couple of unconnected thoughts on this matter.

Death is the greatest motivator that I can think of, more so than money. A healthy dose of fear and respect for the Grim Reaper is always good to keep the mind working and the heart pumping. I consider my own inevitable demise and it almost always leads me to thoughts of how I should live my life and how to get there.

It's been posited that a man doesn't really die intil the ripples that he causes in his life are forgotten. Thus you should start splashing immediately and never stop.

Dennis Leary's words of help have been of great comfort in times of despair. "SHUT THE FUCK UP"

12:47 / 03.04.02

The thing that bothers me about death is that it'll probably come at the most inconvenient time. And I won't have done all the things I wanted to get done. And I'll probably need a wee and incommode passers by by micturating all over them at the point when I pass over.

I worry more about the aforementioned alzheimers and a smelly chair in an old people's home. Yuk.

Tell you what though. I'm going to be bloody annoyed if there isn't an afterlife [very very briefly, I suppose]. All that time studying mysticism and Schopenhauer... If nothing else though, it'll stop the bloody Christians being so fucking smug. Almost worth it, in fact.

Do they have Barbelith when you get to be one with the universe, I wonder?

12:50 / 03.04.02

There'll come a time when all of us must leave here
Then nothing sister Mary can do
Will keep me here with you
As nothing in this life that I've been trying
Could equal or surpass the art of dying
Do you believe me?

There'll come a time when all your hopes are fading
When things that seemed so very plain
Become an awful pain
Searching for the truth among the lying
And answered when you've learned the art of dying

But you're still with me
But if you want it
Then you must find it
But when you have it
There'll be no need for it

There'll come a time when most of us return here
Brought back by our desire to be
A perfect entity
Living through a million years of crying
Until you've realized the Art of Dying
Do you believe me?
Song: Art Of Dying
Duration: 3.36
Track No.: 2-2
Composer: Harrison
Vocals: George Harrison
Year: 1970

pointless and uncalled for

12:52 / 03.04.02

Good point there mr y. bearing in mind the possibility of an after life, we should kill cal now so that he can set up a barbelith in time for our arrival there.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:04 / 03.04.02

I hope that if there is an afterlife I won't be sharing it with George Harrison.

SMatthewStolte - care to elaborate, or was that a misplaced "Lyrics of Your Life" post thatjust ended up in the Head Shop by accident?

13:25 / 03.04.02

I don't recall being scared of being born, so I'm not going to be scared of dying.

Haus - considering that one of the points of the thread was to alleviate fears of dying, I'm not sure SMStolte needs to elaborate.

Zoom.

13:25 / 03.04.02

I wish I could remember who said that death was "the closest anyone will ever get to a truly magical experience". I think that there is really a trace of real magic in the act of dying.
Even if you are afraid, the Process/Path/Tao will take you by the hand and pull you through it, kicking and screaming as you might be at the moment.
I'm not a spiritual person, so whenever I think about what it will be after I'm dead, I always compare it to how it was before I was born. I don't remember a thing about that time simply because I wasn't anywhere yet. So when I die, I think it will be the same.

Dying it's a big adventure. (And this last one was said, I believe, by Peter Pan).

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:04 / 03.04.02

Zoom - This is the Head Shop. It is a space for discussion. If quoting pop lyrics were considered a viable substitute for discussion, then I would be heading up the Late Review as we speak. It is not and I am not.

If you want to alleviate the fear of dying, I would suggest you do it in the Conversation with a thread entitled "But Jesus will embrace me in Heaven, Mama?" If you want to alleviate the fear of dying with the magic of cut and paste, I suggest you do likewise. If you want to *discuss* death and dying, with the possible side-effect of alleviating the fear of it, then the place to do it is the Head Shop.

Note that I am not planning to moderate the post above. But I do think that, as it stands, it is not a terribly useful or helpful addition to the Head Shop.

14:45 / 03.04.02

Anyone else think SMatthewStolte's post doesn't belong here?
Or do we all perhaps need to conform to Haus' idea of what discussion is, and leave our own personal definitions aside?

Zoom.

p.s. Originally posted by Haus:

"If quoting pop lyrics were considered a viable substitute for discussion, then I would be heading up the Late Review as we speak. It is not and I am not."

Ah, I must have missed that memo.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:50 / 03.04.02

Don't feed the echidnas, sweethearts. If anyone feels strongly about the defence of fatuity, they are advised to go the the Policy section and start a thread.

pointless and uncalled for

15:02 / 03.04.02

The opening post queries, in part, the methods by which we deal with the death and the prospect of the event.

If the post made by Stolte is in any part related to the way that Stolte deals with death then is has a place here because of the personal nature of the query. That's my personal opinion.

If I am wrong then my posts should be deleted as they relate to the manner in which I deal with death and the prospect of dying. These are my own personal ways and probably not suitable for others.

There's no shame in using someone else's words to express you feelings if you feel that they say it better than you.

15:05 / 03.04.02

echidna:an oviparous spiny-coated toothless burrowing nocturnal monotreme mammal (Tachyglossus aculeatus) of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea that has a long extensile tongue and long heavy claws and that feeds chiefly on ants; also : a related mammal (Zaglossus bruijni) of New Guinea having a longer snout and shorter spines

fatuity: something foolish or stupid

Hmmm, a moderator who resorts to personal insults. How cute.

Zoom.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

15:14 / 03.04.02

"If death comes near me, I'll rip his tits off."

Being a late developer I entered my teenage wearing black/listening to depressing music/being moody and 'deep' phase around 18. I hung around and indeed still do, on a suicide newsgroup (though my reasons for being there have changed). I was quite happy to say things about wanting to die around 60, not wanting to grow old and end up in a home, but probably that was the usual teenage 'I'm not going to get old' bravado. In the middle of the night, if I happen to think about it, the fear of dying makes me go foetal with terror. It's only during the day when I can bare to think about the subject. It's the rational/irrational mind dichotomy, knowing all the stuff about how it's not the end/we're part of a greater consciousness/we don't know what's going to happen/we cannot know what oblivion feels like doesn't help at 2:00 am with the night terrors.

Anyway, I'm now going to sit back and watch Zoom and Haus fight. I'm sure it'll be as entertaining as 'Godzilla Versus Mothra' or 'Ganesh Versus the Greenland Posse'.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:24 / 03.04.02

At the risk of further muddying the waters...

As I mentioned, this is not me with moderator's hat on. I see my job as moderator as attending to moderator tasks, starting topics and encouraging discussion.

My job as non-moderating Haus is to mine own self be true. Which involves, among other things, suggesting that quoting, unvarnished, a George Harrison lyric, without any attempt to respond to it intelligently, is not, IMH and non-moderator O, a useful thing to do in the Head Shop, and is in fact a bit of a slap in the face to people attempting to express their thoughts and feelings - "Never mind that ratiocination crap, check out the riffs on this!".

And now you, Zoom, have decided to turn this thread into Zoom - Champion of the Oppressed, which in a thread about death is...well, fatuous. I will happily admit that my original post, intended to stop the thread disintegrating into a pile of tangential utterances, has in fact encouraged its decay. My bad. I might, as Haus, decide to delete that comment, and hope that a moderator smiles upon the request. If you kittens feel like submitting modify delete requests, then wearing my moderator hat I will consider them and probably agree as they are currently rotting the thread. Would that be a sensible action to take.

Oh, and:

Hmmm, a moderator who resorts to personal insults. How cute

a) I rather like echidnas, b) as explained above, this has nothing to do with moderation (in either sense) and c) stop fucking snivelling.

15:24 / 03.04.02

I'm not sure echidna's are violent creatures, so I don't know if there will be a fight. 'Scuse me, got some burrowing to do.

Zoom.

15:35 / 03.04.02

i won't be disappointed if i just rot in the ground.

No, you won't be disappointed while rotting in the ground. You won't be experiencing any emotion or feeling at all. You'll be DEAD!

Thanks to Vodkaboy aka Nihlo for the inspiration for this post.

15:35 / 03.04.02

Haus, rather than accepting the lyrics into the discussion, or commenting on them in a way that might have actually furthered the discussion, or accepting that not everyone is going to talk about things the way that you do, you did derail the thread. Pointlessly. As did I. For which I apologize to those who were genuinely interested in the discussion at hand. I will go away now.

Zoom.

15:40 / 03.04.02

... and, Zoom, as an Aussie who has encountered a number of echidnas, I can assure you they are peaceful and (if not for the spines) rather cute creatures. If they were fluffy instead of spikey, you'd quickly pick the little thing up and cuddle it before it managed to burrow and disappear into the ground. Have no fear!

(Excuse me for continuing the thread rot. Please return to enjoying the original topic, DEATH.)

15:40 / 03.04.02

Im not afraid of dying. Id rather not die, because Im having quite a bit of fun and I have that whole self-preservation thing going on. however, when I was 16 I came to the conclusion (right or wrong, this is what I believe) that death is the final bit, and really - what is there about ceasing to exist worth being afraid of? I have no ambitions to become immortalized in some way, large or small. I guess I worry a bit about dying in a painful or particularly frightening way, but its more of a distant anxiety, of the potential for any disaster. it can happen, but why let it eat at your fun time?

that said, Im quite afraid of something happening to my loved ones. Id do near anything to keep that from happening

.....and I thought an echidna was a fish. must have my spellings wrong

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:43 / 03.04.02

Well, quite. Hang on - I wrote something about this elsewhere only today...one moment:
Now, personally, I don't want to be dead, because I enjoy the sensations and ideas available to me through the status of being alive, and have no guarantee I will be able to continue these post mortem. I don't want people I care about to be dead, because I miss being able to enjoy their company, and feel bad that they are probably also being deprived of the opportunity to do things they previously enjoyed.

Then again, am aware that, if I am right and death is oblivion, then ipso facto I am not going to miss being alive, or not enjoy being dead, because I there won't be a me to do either. And, unless we all agree n ot to breed, we have to die. Besides, the molecules that make up my body and brain won't be obliterated - they will just change, and become a part of a greater system. Perhaps consciousness is a necessary sacrifice, and our prioritising of the sense of self a blind alley or vanity.

So, it makes perfect sense to mourn. It makes perfect sense to admit that, in the night (when men cry, cheers Martin), timor mortis conturbat me, and it makes perfect sense to avoid dying for as long as it is profitable to do so. But, since you and everybody you love are going to die, it might be best to get a handle on it that doesn't let it mess up your life too much.

16:29 / 03.04.02

holy shit, haus and I agree!

this bit is interesting, though:
"And, unless we all agree n ot to breed, we have to die"

do you mean that in having children, its a sort of continuation of our own personal existence (beyond the mere passing of genes and all that goes with it)? this idea isnt new to me, just that its considered a viable means of maintaining our personal existence

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

16:29 / 03.04.02

mmmmMMMMMMmmmmm....I've thought about it, and I don't buy the "what if death is lying in the grave and hating it like in 'Our Town'?" angle. Non-existence doesn't worry me, because I know it would never bother me ('cause, y'know, I wouldn't be there to be bothered). Eternal life doesn't interest me, but just on the grounds that all my friends would be somewhere else (dead) and I wouldn't, and that would suck. It's a pretty weak argument, so it may change at any moment. But as it stands, I want to die sometime, so worrying about it is pretty silly.

I have no idea what happens after death, and it will be kinda neat to find out (when I have to. I have no plans to take that trip just now). I'm not sure I think anything happens (wouldn't that be hilarious? God jumping out behind a tree and yelling "Gotcha!"). I mean, if re-birth or reincarnation is what's really going on, then we've all done it plenty of times before, and probably in much worse situations. No worries here.

This view doesn't keep me from missing a lot of people who have died. They are somewhere I am not, and I haven't found out how to feel like they never left. Until then, I will grieve for everyone I care about. Which kinda sucks, but what the hell.

Hello, Aussie. How long have you been here?

Matthew Fluxington

16:39 / 03.04.02

I'm not nearly as afraid of death as I am of having horrible things happen to my body and mind while still living - I would much rather die than, say, lose my ability to hear, see, or have full control over my body. I've always thought of death as just being the end, and when it comes, the mind/'soul' of whatever it is that is dying ceases to exist. This does not scare me. I'm not to excited about the concept of eternal life.

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