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Realising your own mortality

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posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 09:27 AM
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Mortality is a state of being where you are subject to an inevitable death.

This is the one single certainty that any human being knows of from a very early age, the fact that at some point
in the future you will cease to exist regardless of how you live your life.

Many people turn to faith to answer what they believe is death, be it in the form of Jesus Christ dying for humanities sins, the belief that we are all a seperate part of a whole supreme being, the belief that we are part of a continuous reincarnation cycle and so on.

This thread is about the realisation of what death actually is, what it is not and it is an attempt through discussion, to get to the core of the lack of answers for what happens after life.

If I were to ask you, if you were to forget who you are tomorrow and had absolutely no recollection of who you were, yet you are still alive biologically, does this mean that who you are is actually a different person and in essence who you are right now would be dead?

Keep this question in mind as you read over the rest of this thread.

In so many belief systems there is the promise of eternal life, yet many of them tell you that you will be free from sin in this next life, therefore you cannot possibly be the same person because a part of you has been removed.

In other belief systems there is the promise of reincarnation, where you are reborn as a new person, animal or something else, this too is pretty self explanatory in that you as an individual will be a different person.

There is also another belief that we are part of a whole, a supreme being that is fragmented into our individual experiences, upon death you will re-connect to this supreme being. This still indicates that who you are individually will cease to exist.

With this in mind, back to the original question of memory loss even, I do not think that it is death that causes fear.

I believe that it is the loss of identity, memories, individual characteristics and essentially the loss of self that causes the fear upon realisation of ones own mortality.

Here is another thing to think about, if I told you something right now in this very statement here that was so profound it changed your life, does this make you a different person from what you were before I told you?

It appears that death itself might simply be a change in who you are as opposed to an end, quite literally a life changing moment when it comes to who we are.

So many people do not actually feel what mortality is, we spend so much time running from it, as a society we are taught to hate aging, look young etc. It is not a very well discussed topic as it does bring fear with it but at some point in life, everyone will get a sense of the gravity of that moment that will come at a point in your own individual life.

I am interested to see what the response to this will be if any, I am simply trying to put into words a realisation I have had about an important part of life that is repeatedly dodged, which is death.


edit on 17-6-2011 by XXXN3O because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 09:44 AM
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reply to post by XXXN3O
 


Nice post. I try to keep it simple. I realize that we are all born to die and that it is the journey in between that makes life a adventure. What happens after I die is no worry to me at this moment. Upon my death, that question will be answered. Looking for the answer now seems to be a waste of time.

I have found that accepting that I will die has freed my mind for other things and I have less stress because of it.
edit on 17-6-2011 by TDawgRex because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 09:49 AM
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This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
Embrace this moment. Remember; we are eternal,
all this pain is an illusion.

Parabola by Tool

I have given up my fear of death years ago, though my body still reacts to danger by releasing adrenaline, forcing me to preserve my living body. I have always felt that there is a bit more to our individual existence than the physical body. Some part must continue on after we die. But if there is no Spirit, and we merely cease to exist, it wont make a bit of difference to me when I die.



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 09:54 AM
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Living is for feeding the supreme (universe) of which we are part of with our living experiences, when a person dies he goes back to the supreme, and will be manifested after in something again in another part of the all but without the ego that stays in this plane so you become part of the all again, you go back to god as one with you, you will be all and will be everywhere at all times again as some say you go back to the source.

But of course that there is another way of keeping your conscience and keep going on the path of spiritual evolution after dying in this plane, but that is a path that must be started in this plane, in this life, in this very moment. We all have free will of choosing the way we go. Do we?



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 10:28 AM
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reply to post by XXXN3O
 


I think the great fear is simply the unknown. I dont subscribe to any one religion, yet i still wonder and fear to an extent that which i do not know.

But you do bring up interesting points. I would certainly fear a loss of identity, it would seem to make life pointless. Living a complete life, making acquaintences, loving and marrying, having children and family and growing older and wiser just to...............lose it all?

Frightening thought. I truely think that is why people have invented religions. It leaves you with an empty feeling knowing that we could live our lives only to die and never know anything again, in essence making our own existance pointless except perhaps to the people currently alive who may have benefited from our lives. Is this not reason alone to truely be kind to others?



posted on Jun, 17 2011 @ 03:09 PM
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reply to post by nightbringr
 


I think you get my point really well.

That was an interesting thing about making an impression on others, makes sense.




posted on May, 17 2020 @ 10:18 AM
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Apologies for resurfacing such an old thread but I thought it best to do a search rather than create a new one.

With all this lock-down imprisonment, the will to get out of bed in the mornings is torturous. as is the sense of despair with yet another day dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, along with dashed hopes, confusion and the desperate need to get back to the madness we call 'normality'.

I lay there and, as as happened before, the realisation that I will one day die and cease to exist, hit me hard...hard enough to raise panic and a sense of suffocation. I had to fight for my breath until the reasoning came back into play, the ability to tell myself that I have a lot of life yet to live. No need to panic, just put the fear back into its compartment.

I had my first attack at just nine years old. I remember it well, it was paralysing and dreadful, followed by a sense of utter despair and total loss of impetus and direction. In due course, the horror was repressed and the search for an alternative to the perceived dark oblivion led me through my teens and into adulthood, reading books on the afterlife, ghosts, even the metaphysical, in order to reassure myself that my energy [sense of self, identity or ego] would not evaporate but would evolve into something else with a consciousness.

In the brief moments after the dread there is a kind of epiphany, a sudden realisation that if I really wanted to, I could just leave my life, sell my house, travel the World, say what I want without the need to consider the reactions of others. Who would care? After all, my actions would not be remembered and leave no mark on society or the future safety and advancement of civilisation. I am nothing to the grand scheme, therefore I am free.

The epiphany soon dissolves back to the humdrum. I need a job to provide money to keep a roof over my head, my family need me to help keep a roof over our heads and to be there for them. The machinations of society bog us down in the treacle of normality. I wish it was possible to maintain the epiphany but I also think that if we knew for definite that another life of conscious existence awaited us after death, we would not function as a society and life or death moralities and decisions would go out the window.

I am not religious in any form, preferring to believe we are a creation with a purpose that we are not currently fulfilling. Maybe an experiment gone awry or an ongoing project that can be reset at any time. I have no doubt we are very complex machines with the ability to be so much more than we are.

Is the epiphany and clarity of thought just a brief glimpse into what we could really be?



posted on May, 24 2020 @ 04:24 PM
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Either we will never realize our own mortality or we always did.

If you would make the claim kids don't realize their own mortality I'd say they don't, they just don't realize yet what in the world is deadly.



posted on May, 24 2020 @ 04:41 PM
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a reply to: XXXN3O




If I were to ask you, if you were to forget who you are tomorrow and had absolutely no recollection of who you were, yet you are still alive biologically, does this mean that who you are is actually a different person and in essence who you are right now would be dead?


No way because I have soul that is the definition of who I am forever.



posted on May, 25 2020 @ 01:16 AM
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Christainity implication of resurrection is more or less a revival of an individual to a kingdom being brought from the dead. Some of them would say they eith Angel's or become one, but there nothing canon about it, an sounds like complementary.

Reincarnation premise is that the soul/individual goes through mulitple, and various forms, until they are out of the cycle of death an rebirth. Sounds like Dark Souls 1,2, 2.5, an 3, along with Bloodborne every time.

Ironically though, even if mythology the source of said delusions of ego mania, they do have their bitter morals of mortality. With that said, it like the analogy of a busted hammer, replace the head, an the handle with new parts, could it still be said that it is the same hammer? Same could be said about bodies cells.

I think the scary part is how time washes things away, like it was all for naught.
edit on 25-5-2020 by Specimen88 because: (no reason given)







 
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