The Ease to be Found Past the Gateless Gate
Oct 8, 2023 10:32:16 GMT -5
andrew and siftingtothetruth like this
Post by laughter on Oct 8, 2023 10:32:16 GMT -5
Many people who write about realizing the existential truth often speak and write about it in ways that are quite varied. This reflects the incredibly vast possible breadth of human experience, despite the singular commonality of that truth. Now, the one common denominator I've ever read by folks who write about significant existential realization is an end to the fear of death. To be clear, this is not the end of the self-preservation instinct, nor is it the end of engagement with life. It's not that you don't care if you die, nor is it just an acceptance of the inevitability. It is also not the embrace of the promise of some sort of continuation, some sort of afterlife. It is, rather, a felt understanding that death is not the end of existence. I'll indulge myself in a personal anecdote to illustrate.
I once read something (author long ago forgotten) that went something like this:
"When I was young, like most young people, I never thought of my own death, I thought myself essentially immortal".
Now, I can relate to this to some extent, but just like Tucker Carlson's five-year-old, I remember bawling after learning that all of my family members would die when I was a child (tee hee
). But certainly, after the rush of young adulthood, for many years I never gave it a passing conscious thought. The author went on:
"Then came a day when I considered my own mortality".
While the forgotten author's writing wasn't the first time I had considered my own mortality, it is the first one that I specifically remember the details of now. I was 29 or 30, at the time, as I recall. He continued:
"After that day, I started to think about my death more often, until eventually the day came when I thought about it at least once from every day forward".
Now, perhaps this was a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion, but I found my experience mirroring this as time went on. I never got to the point of "every day", but the frequency increased.
As an atheist/agnostic/secularist, I had no affinity toward nor attraction to any notion of an afterlife or re-incarnation. I simply rejected and dismissed these ideas out-of-hand. What I did have was a naturally ingrained sort of stoic conditioning that involved simply rationally accepting the fact of the inevitable.
But every now and then, out of the blue, I'd consider the thought of it, and feel a deep sense of visceral panic. It was always quite fleeting, as the stoic conditioning would quickly catch into gear. And I came to understand (looking back, in particular), that it was the thought and non-conceptual contemplation of non-existence (always suddenly emerging unbidden from the subconscious) that was at the root of this.
My story of realizing the truth involves looking inward and becoming conscious of the content and dynamic of my own mind - and not in an objective, rational, psychiatric sense, but rather, in the sense of the witness as is described by Advaita sages such as Nisargadatta. Anyway, I went looking for that old sense of panic .. afterwards. No luck.
--------------------
The world today is going through a series of upheavals that are quite extraordinary by the standards of the relative peace of the America of my youth. True enough that we exported much of our conflict during those years, so this is not necessarily anything much more extreme at the moment for many groups of people around the world than usual. And, after all, humans have had the capacity for nuclear devastation since even before I was born, and we've come pretty close several times. But still, there are matters of degree of ongoing carnage wordwide today - and out of respect for the no-politics rule I'm going to refrain from specifics and respectfully request that anyone reading this do the same in this thread.
It's easy now though, to be present to this suffering without ignoring it or be carried away by it - although certainly, I have to admit to being quite physically remote from it. Not everyone who realizes the existential truth prays or intentionally tries to maintain an inner vibration to facilitate an attenuation of the suffering of those experiencing extreme violence. But, it is easy for those who have passed the gateless gate to do so. This is a melody not everyone has heard. There is no accomplishment to this, and it does not diminish those who have not yet heard. But those who have will understand what I mean by that ease.
And that's not to say that there might not be some sort of calling to fight. Can we fight, without becoming what we fight against? Regardless of this possibility, however, the suffering is needless. The pain is self-inflicted. There are no good guys, there are no bad guys. Only murderers. Some of them for a cause, some of them for profit. All of them the relative cause of mayhem, albeit that those causes are essentially arbitrary creations of mind.
To those of you on this site of the gate not previously so inclined to pray for those suffering so, not inclined to meditate on the issue, not previously inclined to deliberately extend a vibration of love to the combatants and collateral casualties .. I invite you to do so.
I once read something (author long ago forgotten) that went something like this:
"When I was young, like most young people, I never thought of my own death, I thought myself essentially immortal".
Now, I can relate to this to some extent, but just like Tucker Carlson's five-year-old, I remember bawling after learning that all of my family members would die when I was a child (tee hee
). But certainly, after the rush of young adulthood, for many years I never gave it a passing conscious thought. The author went on:"Then came a day when I considered my own mortality".
While the forgotten author's writing wasn't the first time I had considered my own mortality, it is the first one that I specifically remember the details of now. I was 29 or 30, at the time, as I recall. He continued:
"After that day, I started to think about my death more often, until eventually the day came when I thought about it at least once from every day forward".
Now, perhaps this was a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion, but I found my experience mirroring this as time went on. I never got to the point of "every day", but the frequency increased.
As an atheist/agnostic/secularist, I had no affinity toward nor attraction to any notion of an afterlife or re-incarnation. I simply rejected and dismissed these ideas out-of-hand. What I did have was a naturally ingrained sort of stoic conditioning that involved simply rationally accepting the fact of the inevitable.
But every now and then, out of the blue, I'd consider the thought of it, and feel a deep sense of visceral panic. It was always quite fleeting, as the stoic conditioning would quickly catch into gear. And I came to understand (looking back, in particular), that it was the thought and non-conceptual contemplation of non-existence (always suddenly emerging unbidden from the subconscious) that was at the root of this.
My story of realizing the truth involves looking inward and becoming conscious of the content and dynamic of my own mind - and not in an objective, rational, psychiatric sense, but rather, in the sense of the witness as is described by Advaita sages such as Nisargadatta. Anyway, I went looking for that old sense of panic .. afterwards. No luck.
--------------------
The world today is going through a series of upheavals that are quite extraordinary by the standards of the relative peace of the America of my youth. True enough that we exported much of our conflict during those years, so this is not necessarily anything much more extreme at the moment for many groups of people around the world than usual. And, after all, humans have had the capacity for nuclear devastation since even before I was born, and we've come pretty close several times. But still, there are matters of degree of ongoing carnage wordwide today - and out of respect for the no-politics rule I'm going to refrain from specifics and respectfully request that anyone reading this do the same in this thread.
It's easy now though, to be present to this suffering without ignoring it or be carried away by it - although certainly, I have to admit to being quite physically remote from it. Not everyone who realizes the existential truth prays or intentionally tries to maintain an inner vibration to facilitate an attenuation of the suffering of those experiencing extreme violence. But, it is easy for those who have passed the gateless gate to do so. This is a melody not everyone has heard. There is no accomplishment to this, and it does not diminish those who have not yet heard. But those who have will understand what I mean by that ease.
And that's not to say that there might not be some sort of calling to fight. Can we fight, without becoming what we fight against? Regardless of this possibility, however, the suffering is needless. The pain is self-inflicted. There are no good guys, there are no bad guys. Only murderers. Some of them for a cause, some of them for profit. All of them the relative cause of mayhem, albeit that those causes are essentially arbitrary creations of mind.
To those of you on this site of the gate not previously so inclined to pray for those suffering so, not inclined to meditate on the issue, not previously inclined to deliberately extend a vibration of love to the combatants and collateral casualties .. I invite you to do so.
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