The fear of death is innate.

What a delightful suggestion Meno.

Emotions are personal … ergo: emotions are like family.

Here’s a fictitious conversation with St Francis of Assisi:

St Francis: Hello brother fear … nice of you to visit me again. Stay as long as you want because I know you are here to help me.

Brother Fear: I keep coming back because you hear me but never listen to me.

St Francis: I’ll try harder to listen to you today … tell me why you’ve come today.

Brother Fear: I want to help you make the right choice at the next fork in the road along your journey through life.

St Francis: OK … how will I know which path to take?

Brother Fear: It will be the path you don’t want to take. The path will be strewn with briars that will cause unspeakable pain and suffering.

St Francis: So your saying sister pain and sister suffering want to visit with me too.

Brother Fear: Yup!

And look at what happened to him.

Do you mean HERE or ILP?

As I had stated there are the conscious rational, unconscious and instinctual elements re fear of death.

DNA wise all humans are born [evolved] with an innate fear of death, i.e. babies are born with fear of darkness, absence of mother, certain sound, then snakes, spiders, height and all dangerous elements which likely can lead to death. Thus these instincts are ultimately related to the fear of death.

I agree there are many elements that are learned from subsequent evidences as from experiences, informed, learned etc. But these are merely stimuli that trigger the inherent fear of death circuits in the brain.
People also learn of death from observations of the death of other humans as no humans has lived an average more than 100 years old and max at 150 years. Thus the maxim, all humans are mortal.

Therefore DNA wise all humans are “programmed” [btw no programmers] via evolution with an innate fear of death but fortunately it is inhibited and suppressed at the conscious level most [not all] of the time.

Pilgrim & Phyllo,

The power of the fear used to advantage is very strong, it’s like the use of kundalini fire, be careful HOW its used, it can burn, or, it can purify.

HERE but I cannot be certain

Meno … about kundalini fire … are you speaking from personal experience or personal knowledge?

I had my first kundalini awakening symptom more than 20 years ago. Yes … since that experience … on more occasions than I care to remember, I almost lost it … lost it as in free room and board in a “padded cell” somewhere.

Anyone who knows me … including my parents, siblings and children … believe I “lost it” more than 20 years ago and have never recovered. :smiley:

IMO … if kundalini fire knocks on your door … the worst thing you can do is refuse to open the door. If you open the door on the first visit the worst thing you can do is try to close the door to subsequent visits.

surreptitious,

I was speaking of death ~~ your demise ~~when I said HERE.
Is that what you meant?


Yes I know you were and that is what I meant too

Hi: I learned it first from knowledge and then from experience.Ibtried it years ago without proper preparatopn, and it did nearly drive me out of my mind, and after I was married I used the previous knowledge and practiced it , and it has helped me a great deal.

That is is dangerous to prematurely to the uninitiated , I have no doibt.

I have had other dosciines which I practiced concurrently, namely Zen, which to me works as a backup system, when there is danger ahead with Kundalini

The most tempting shortcut is when at first the energy bypasses the soul and goes into the head, and that is when things can go haywire, maybe You had a similar experience along the way.

For me, naming conventions like ‘soul’ … ‘kundalini fire’ … ‘holy spirit’ are obstacles in the search for truth. The concepts/notions these terms attempt to proscribe are simply unknowable … always have been.

I share your view that one needs to be ‘tethered’ … how is irrelevant … there are many ways to wake up. :smiley:

This reliance I to switch in my case Zen

Meno … should we read your comment as follows:

This reliance on “I” … as in ego … as in self … is switched to Zen … as in body politic known as Zen.

If yes … perhaps you could explain your decision … your decision process.

Well, then that explains a lot.

Sure, if I had nothing to lose I’d probably not fear death either.

Or, if I ever reach the point where the things that I want to lose [all the pain] come to outweigh the things that I don’t want to lose [all the pleasure], it will certainly make dying more bearable.

It’s just that some folks here seem to be speculating more about the idea of death than the actual flesh and blood oblivion.

When one accepts death on a philosophical level it can make it easier to accept it on a physical one when the time comes

Maybe.

But here I am getting closer and closer and closer to the abyss. And if my own understanding of it is correct this means that for all of eternity I will be utterly detached from…

1] the folks I love
2] the music I love
3] the films I love
4] the books I love
5] the art I love
6] the food I love
7] the programs on PBS that I love
8] the discussions I love
9] the emotions I love
10] everything else that I love

So, I ask myself, in that context how on earth can I learn to accept death on a philosophical level.

And I presume that, for all of eternity, you in turn will become utterly detached from all of the things that you love.

How then do you manage to put that into perspective philosophically?

From my frame of mind it all comes down to this: That [sooner or later] even all of the things that I love will be no match for all of the accumulating pain and suffering that comes attached to a body getting older and older and older.

Indeed, it can even become so lopsided that you literally beg to die.

Unless of course you’ve got one of another religious narrative to fall back on.

The critical factor here is the “I.”
Therefore when we are able to manage the idea of “I” [illusory in one perspective] then the problem is managed and modulated.

The “I” is dualistic, i.e. it-is and it-is-not.
One need to develop the ability* to toggle and switch to the proper perspective to optimize the situation this issue of mortality.

  • abilty - there the possibility to develop this ability [without side effects] but it is not easy but need consistent attention to work on it just like any other skills.

This is why the Buddhists exercise to ‘attach’ and ‘detach’ optimally within the respective conditions.

Comparing which alternative is worse off is not effectively and the root of the problem is not addressed.

I can just imagine you approaching folks on their deathbed who 1] don’t believe in God [immortality, salvation] and 2] are embedded in an existential context in which losing all that they love far, far, far outweighs all of the pain that goes with it.

You note this to them.

And, sure, for some it might be enough.

And, again, if, in the shadow of oblivion, this “frame of mind” actually works to sustain some level of comfort and consolation for you then, well, what can I say: good for you.

And I don’t deny it: I wish that I could figure out a way to “think” myself into believing it again myself.

But I’m still rather convinced that this sort of religious or spiritual perspective is rooted more in dasein – in the manner in which your own personal experiences, relationships, sources of knowledge etc., predisposed you to view life and death as you do. An “existential contraption” given my own frame of mind.

That, in other words, there does not appear to be either a theological or a philosophical argument able to convince all reasonable men and women that they are obligated to believe the same.

Just one more existential leap of faith as it were.

Yet there you are: able to subsume “I” in the comfort and consolation it provides you.

If of course that is how it actually “works” for you “in your head”.

How close to death have you actually come? How close to it are you now?

Be prepared.
If a person had not prepared for it, then it is too late and pointless to tell or teach them anything on their deathbed. It is like a person who is in terrible state nervousness during the early stages of making a public speech or certain competition. There is no way one can control such nervousness. The solution is to prepare for it through practice. Even then there are those who cannot control their nervous impulses after years of public speaking if they did not focus on training to control their nerves.

Being prepared for it meant developing the necessary skills to manage and modulate the terrible existential dilemma from as early on as possible.
Achieving a reasonable level of the skill meant programming the necessary neurons to deal and modulate the existential dilemma. This require the correct techniques, theories and practice.

This is where the spiritually minded people spend years meditating, mindfulness, reflecting, seeking necessary knowledge, and whatever that is necessary to develop such skills to modulate the impulses of the existential dilemma effectively. The intellectual approach alone [dassein, etc.] will not work effectively. There is no natural quick fix. The artificial way is morphine and other drugs.

Yes, somehow “in your head” and “here and now” you have managed to prepare yourself for death. And that you have accomplished this is clearly in your own best interest.

But to compare death [“I” obliterated] with public speaking just doesn’t work for me.

Again, how close to death – to an actual existential death – are you here and now?

How intimately intertwined is your preparation embedded in the actual event itself?

Sure, that makes sense. At least to the extent you can ever really properly prepare for the loss of everything and everyone that you love for all of eternity.

Or you can just skip that part and figure out a way to believe in God – in immortality, salvation and divine justice.

Or you can reach a point in your life where the pain so far outweighs the pleasure you will beg to die.

Yes, but in being “spiritually minded” they tend to connect this dot to the one beyond the grave.

Their own rendition of a “soul” somehow continues on. So it then becomes entirely more problematic whether they will lose “for all of eternity” everyone and everything that they love and hold dear.

And if you construe the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein as an intellectual contraption, well, “what we have here is failure to communicate”.

But that doesn’t surprise me. In fact, I have more or less come to expect it regarding these frames of mind.