… to be continued, with more.
Things feel a bit askew, a little discombobulated, these daze. “Existential despair is a feeling of deep hopelessness and negativity that arises from reflecting on the fundamental questions of life, such as meaning, purpose, and the nature of existence.” And, in the immortal words of Charlie Brown when Lucy asked him about Pantophobia: “THAT’S IT!”
“It’s tragic, know you,” Jake piercing the silence with his deep crackling voice, “the reason they broke up.” She stops and pauses. “Sad really,” Jake continues, “if you think about it.” She thinks about it, and wonders what he means. Everything seemed so neat and clean, all skeletons nicely placed in a closet, next to his silly leather clothes to wear and happy cigarettes.
And then what? What next? What after? More drinks? Good times?
Have you ever tried to convince yourself that you were dead? So you would know what it would be like to be dead? To lay in bed in the dark eyes closed concentrating with all your might to experience death? To wanna know whether you can experience consciousness outside of your physical body? To wanna know whether there’s life after physical death?
It takes a lot of practice to meditate and focus in this manner. There are stages of struggle you need to work through to align your physical and mental states to have such an experience. At that point, some testify that they become overwhelmed with fear and darkness; and that their bodies begin to convulse in response to the pain of awareness of nonexistence.
Jake was a young teenager his first time attempting a death meditation. Thinking back now, he thinks it was ’round the time of having an out-of-body experience while on a very intense acid trip. “I remember being drenched with sweat, my heart beating so hard, my head burning; I remember wondering if I was having a stroke, pain on a cellular level.”
If you can push through the pain, set aside the pain so you can remain focused on nonexistence, most testify that they ultimately experience the most terrifying part of all – that is to actually realize and experience one’s pending death; that what is you will cease to exist at death; and that there really wasn’t a lot of purpose and meaning to it all.
Having such an experience, confronted with his inevitable demise, Jake constantly struggles to find purpose and meaning in life, knowing it’s all ultimately a bunch of bullshit. “The only cure for grief is action,” Jake likes to say, “and you’re never gonna take that action until you decide to live in this world, until you’re able to cast away any suicidal tendencies.”
To be continued…