How do you feel about your approaching death?

Well, I'm a little sad about my coming death, but like all things, I must come to an end. I lost my mom back in Feb. 2013. She asked me if it was OK if she died. I said it was ok to let go even though it wasn't. I hate for my kids/wife to have to go through that kind of hurt. I don't know yet if death is just nothingness, or if we survive it. I mean, I've seen some pretty convincing stuff on reincarnation, ghosts,- but I still just don't know. I hope there's something more. I will find out. You will find out. Hopefully, we will all be very old when that moment comes.

cass1dy09
Jesus said the world endures but an hour. I will be ready for eternity. All though in the words of Steve Jobs, "Nobody wants to die".

edit on 3-1-2014 by cass1dy09 because: sp

That is fear off the unknown talking. Once you get past that fear or know to much then the change is not such a big deal. As Akragon said it is nice to go home. I get homesick after a while on earth.

reply to post by droid56


It's not death I'm afraid of, it's the manner of how it arrives. I've been around a number of people who died and unfortunately none was in a peaceful manner. In fact you could say most were horrible and some quite violent.

So going by what I've seen it's not death that's to be feared, it's how you get to it.

DEATH is a conspiracy!

Here is my truth, you can't die! Your body is not you!
You think your body is you, then you think you can die.

So, when you try different methods to escape your body
like (dmt) can. You will know that you are not your body.

So fearing death is a lack of knowledge. You fear what you don't know.
So try to learn and know so you don't fear death.

Start googling on "near death experiences" and see what everyone
has said. There seams to be something ells after "death"

See your body as a car. After a few 10.000 miles you need to
replace it. You never die.

I would say life on earth is more like a death state.
Because spirit is more what i call living, then this experience
we only can see in our brains.

Death is the beginning.

And im not going out in a nursing home old and decrepit. not for me.

I've read studies which say as we grow older our fear of death diminishes. Some people say this is dementia, others say it's religion, still others say wisdom or talk at senior meals. I'm not sure. I'm in my 30's and do have some fear of it, a lot of rooted in sadness how things die and become unremembered.

I guess it depends whether you think death is the end or it's only a partial ending or it's a new beginning or a continuation of what we had here.

I also think it depends on how much you enjoy your life right now. People who're having a tough time getting the hang of it might dwell somewhat more on things like death, just because they're not caught up in the current of life. But the moment they get caught up by it again, the fear subsides some.

Death will always be something we're skittish about I think, just because nobody knows exactly how they'll die and nobody likes to feel pain, and even if they do, there's probably something else they fear about death.

An indian proverb is go with the current, even as you reach for the riverbank.

Some random good and not so good thoughts below:

"See your body as a car"

If that's the case I need to talk to someone about the warranty!!
My transmission is shot and my tires need rotating.
I feel like like a used Ford Pinto.

I plan on having as much fun with Death as I can.
If I go out by old age I'm going to find a cave and have myself entombed like and Egyptian Pharaoh.
I'm going to put hieroglyphs on the wall with made up crap that makes me look like a god king.
If I can figure out how I'm going to preserve all the music and bad movies I like.
Imagine in 3,000 years and all our history has been wiped away and all they find is what I left behind I could single handily rewrite the 20th century.
Scary thought huh?

On more serious note I think everyone should be buried with something that preserves their history or who they were.
Think about it? Do you want to be dug up in a thousand years in a cheap suit?

And If I die suddenly, accident etc. I've told my sister they can play led Zepplin but don't want to hear any off key droning of depressing Southern Baptist hymnals at my funeral.
Her Church choir sounds like a bag pipe played by a hippopotamus.

As for the OP title, I'd answer "It depends on how near it actually IS."

Well, I had a childish fear of it and did the "this sucks we're all just gonna die anyway" thing with black and morbidity, etc.etc. See Harold in "Harold and Maude" for reference... I even looked a little like Budd Cort.

Now I have an adult fear of the lead-up... aging really sucks, especially if one lived a tad fast in their young years.

Either way, when one looks at the reports and scant scientific literature, even keeping in mind these people are terrified and looking for a nice ending, too, it does seem that we continue in some manner.

It's no stranger than winking out, when looked at in the big sense.

My father, a life long atheist, was brought back before he finally succumbed and said, "Wow, it's like waking up from a dream ... it's so much more real and this place recedes in importance. There seemed to be a torus shaped font of creation and totality with a personality that might be called 'God,' but it's like no God I heard of here..."

After his final death I had a very vivid dream where I saw him as a young man wearing a coat I later learned was an old favorite of his I had never seen, and he told me we were in a mental landscape of his and that he was fine and not to worry about anything.

I'd like to think it might be some shade of real, but if all the after-death experiences are wrong, and if we don't get scooped up as fodder for the moon as some suggest, heh, and the end is just a ceasing of the endless now... then I'm cool with it, too, but it seems such a grand waste.

Edit x3: And I wanted to add, for the scardy cats, that I've had more than a couple personal experiences with "ghosts"... beyond my experience with my father... and am personally convinced that things without visible bodies that act like the people they formerly were, exist... but that still leaves some unknowable stuff, however it makes living without a physical body much more likely.

I know I'm not the final word, but thought I'd add that so someone might take a smidge of comfort. I watched my whole extended family die (17 in 2008... bad year!) and have had many younger friends go during my "fast living" days. Some were peaceful, but most were humiliating and awful. Malfunctioning bodies and minds are ... quite unpleasant.

The subject of death is frantically avoided by Western society and many of us have never even seen a dead body. We are in a collective, selfish panic. I would suggest visiting a hospice and visiting a dying person who is alone. But if that's not going to happen, then I'd say that when the time comes for a loved one to go, don't avoid it and just talk about it to them.

It's true we all die alone, but it doesn't have to be the shunned, lonely experience we make it.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross invented "Thanotology" or the science of death. She went from being a hard nosed scientist to what many think of as a looney new ager. She had visits from recently deceased patients that seemed perfectly physical (even being hugged and having one dead woman write her name on paper).

Once she reported this, she was shunned and considered a kook, despite her solid former reputation. I'd suggest that she might still have been a fine, stable researcher who was simply convinced of the reality of life-after-death. But her first books on the seven stages of grief, etc, are worth reading... even for the hardened materialists.

We'll all find out... unless we learn to download consciousness, or one finds the Philosopher's Stone or is bitten by a vampire, that is.

See everyone there... or not.

The older I get the more Im resigned to the fact its the end of my story, and the beginning of another-yet unknown.

Ive heard it said that death is like "digging a hole, climbing in it, pulling the dirt over your head....and holding your breath...forever."

reply to post by droid56


IMHO the Universe is alive and we who are given human form to learn from and experience the physical world. Upon death, we return to the source of all life and add our knowledge and experiences from our brief existence to the Universal consciousness. I do not fear death and I am honored to have received the opportunity to experience the pain an pleasure of the physical world and learn life's lessons, bad or good to share with all.

droid56
I am at a point in my life where the hopes and dreams of my past are now clearly bullcrap. I now live in the clear light of reality.

The more you look the more you see.

Everybody gets to the same destinations/destination but we are all getting there at different speeds.

Like catching a stopping all stations train Vs an express

Why speculate too much on what we cant understand just have your ideas and when the time comes just experience it. The bitter truth to life and death is that nothing lasts.. not even death. Nothing is forever.

Please don't read this if you are squeamish in any way.

I've seen death. I've been present when people have passed on peacefully and I've been present when people have passed on violently. I've attended when people have recently died in horrible ways. I've also attended when people have been dead for a long time and have decomposed badly. And I mean very badly. I have also recovered bodies from the sea when they look more like a zombie from Michael Jacksons Thriller video only much worse. I have dealt with suicides where they have jumped off a cliff and their brains are spread across a very wide area. I have also dealt with deaths where the person has died very peacefully. There are many more and most are pretty horrific.

All of these have left an effect on me but I carry on.

I don't know what to expect of death but I just hope I go with little pain and a bit of dignity.

Sorry if I've depressed anyone.

reply to post by droid56


Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night



Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


Dylan Thomas



I am going to go kicking and screaming. The same way I came in.

On that fateful day. . . . . . Death is going to have to earn his damned paycheck!

I'll be looking at 70 in just a couple of years. What I can expect to have past that is a guess, but it won't be 50 years.

My mind's good... I read a lot, paint like a fool, take photographs and go out into the woods or city malls, depending on what I'm looking for. My body hasn't slowed me down much at all. So, basically, I feel and act like I'm still in my 20s even if my hair is gray and my face looks like a map of the Nile Delta.

But I know that the time's fast approaching. I think of myself as a realist that's not religious, but rather more spiritually-minded, if you can parse the difference between the two. I can anyways and that's all that matters.

I don't fear death at all. Not even if I suddenly took sick and faced a long downward slide... there's medication for that so pain and suffering are not an issue. Sure, I'd not be happy about it, losing mobility and capability, but what concerns me more about that inevitable slide is making those I'll be leaving behind comfortable with me going. That'll be the hardest part.

As far as the actual moment when I die, I'm looking forward to the experience. I've spent all my life thinking about death and what may or may not lie after that, especially since I had an out of body experience in my early 20's. That got me intrigued a whole lot and caused me to search out as much as I can about the spiritual aspect of human existence.

Will I be happy to start going? No.
Will I be excited to experience going? You bet!

The only thing that scares me is the likelihood of extreme physical pain in the time leading up to it.

Once, a few years ago, I suddenly became very ill and had very severe pain in my abdomen that sent sharp, stabbing pain radiating in all directions every time I breathed. I honestly thought that was the end of me. I was bedridden for several weeks. I barely had the strength to walk when it finally stopped.

Anyway, I wouldn't have really believed that kind of pain was possible. I have a high tolerance for pain but that was the kind that makes you wish you'd just die.

If/when I go, I hope I go easy. I don't care if I see it coming as long as it isn't very painful.

I dwell in the Communion from the Door placed many decades ago. I have long lost the ability to not believe or to doubt, which is a bit of a curse as I am no longer like others. There is no off switch, I cannot look away, there is no choice but evermore newness and expansion of consciousness ahead. Existing in 4D is the sea-anchor I drag through the chaotic oceans of this realm. Just like the other millions exactly like me.

I haven't read the entire thread but wanted to get the post in now.

As a young person I was terrified of the realization I must die. This was about 12 to late 20's. Then I saw a car coming at me at high speed and knew it would hit me broadside. I calmly and peacefully thought "so this is how i die". Course I am still here. I was a christian at the time and had just read Corrie Tenboom's story. I later remembered the part where she was about to get on a train alone and was repeatedly asking asking her Dad about her ticket...when would she get it. Her dad told her she would get the ticket when it was time to get on the train. Since that time I have always equated that with death. When the time comes, you will have what you need to make the transit.

I have never been afraid of death since and in fact will welcome it when it comes. I am no longer a christian and my peace regarding death remains.

Someone asked Akragon how old he was. He is young. I am 68 so I can count on death as being not that far away (tho I am healthy), I don't and will never fear death again.

Akragon
reply to post by droid56

 

You may...

Im 34... But age makes no difference...

If i were 104 i would be saying the same thing

WHAT?? You told me you were 88! Damn You... I had a chance with Betty White! Jokes aside. I don't fear death, or the upcoming wielder of it. I want to love life, and so... I DO! I'm always joking around on ATS (when I'm online). Life is short, but we can always make it the best possible life we have... by enjoying it!!

I've contemplated what happens when we die since I was a child. The idea that we become nothing, nonexistence frightens me. I enjoy living and learning about the mysteries of the world and have some hope that maybe we cross over to another dimension after our bodies expire, but fully aware that death may mean lights out forever.

I was brought up with an agnostic dad and Christian mom, while the idea of heaven sounds neat I've always rejected the notion that only people have souls and animals do not, my conscience and gut tells me that can not be right. When I first heard about the Hindu's belief of reincarnation as I child I thought that made much more sense then the Christian's belief of heaven and hell.

When I was 17 a childhood friend died in a car accident. It was traumatic event for me, shortly after I did have a strange dream where I thought maybe he was trying to say good bye. This and maybe a few other weird coincidences I've experienced has given me some hope that there is more to life after death.

I will tell you for I have seen...

There is life after death... There are spirits that look as real as you and I, but can pass into solid things..
There are saved beings whome I can only describe as angels...
There are dark things that eminate fear and dread...

There is a spirit world...and there is a Heaven which spreads backward from the future of our race...

There is a Messiah who will barter our future...

There is life after death...I have seen it.
But it cannot be shown with proof...for that would destroy faith...and this is most important for you...

You must have faith in God...it is your salvation...