I wasn't burdened by the curse that is awareness before I was born, and hence now as a result of this awareness, I am scared.

Because I forgot what it was like

I'm not afraid, I'm annoyed. I'll never get to finish my unfinished books. >:(

About 22 years ago or so, after not taking psilocybe mushrooms for a couple years, fasting for 24 hours, I took an uncounted tens of grams of dried, fine-powdered, strong psilocybe semilanceata, hot, in just lemon juice, and chugged that pint of thick mushroom super-lemony brew down as fast as i could. It started coming on FAST and STRONG. Ran the 3 strides to the bathroom sink with need to purge, which didn't last long nor purge much of it... clinging to the sink as I slumped down, with the trip immensity roaring at the doors bursting in at all the seams, I tried to steady myself, I meditatively focused on a drop of water, empathising with it likewise clinging to the underside of the sink. I empathised my way instantly to know where every molecule, and every atom, of the water in there, had ever been, and it was a short jump from there to realise I could do that with everything. My experience is that every atom, every subatomic particle, have omnidirectional infinite sense of the entire cosmos.... and this was only in the beginning seconds of the hours long trip, the ability to see behind things, to know from every perspective, everybody, all time, all times, all dimensions, all realms, all places, all interacting potentials... I cant speak to it really, only to say I remember I did experience it. Cannot take it all back with you.

First exchange with other people after I came out of the toilet, friends had come around, one asked "how was it?", and with it all still being fresh, the immensity of having experienced omniscience, sought to offer what I thought was the most beautiful thing of it all... I said, with all glowing reverie "I know death". The look of horror on the poor dear's face though. Ho ho ho.

But yeah, get that... we mere mortals, many, all around, can experience omniscience.

And many are, and ever have. Say hi.

This strangely made me feel a better about the concept of death.

Sometimes I think about it and fall in a few seconds of existential dread. But this kinda...makes it make sense?

I have never experienced unending nothingness, only noted the nothingness after it was over

I'm looking forward to the nothingness, the first 14billion years was nice enough. It's the time between everyday life and nothingness that worries me.

I'm not afraid of death. I'm afraid of dying

I had nothing to lose before I was born. There is the difference.

Idk, sounds kinda scary. Idk what it was like before, because I lacked consciousness to experience it. And the idea that it all ends, back to nothingness forever. We live a few years. Pretty much nothing, if we consider the forever before, and the forever after our existence.

It's something I recall fearing as a kid, due to the scary unknown. Glad to have enjoyed a decade of bliss. Too bad the fear has come back to haunt me. It's not constant, though. Sometimes it comes, outta nowhere. Real strong. Not fun. But I don't live day to day in fear.

I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of the part before that.

The previous billions of years of void was a grandiose buildup to the world's largest nothing-burger, followed by an eternity of void again.

Because it was terrifying to be in a state of nonexistence. Thinking about not having what i currently have or even the fact that I'm very much likely not even going to have a state of being where i can even remember the things i had done in my life is truly fucking terrifying to me.

We are genetically configured to survive at all costs. That fear is simply the wiring in your head ensuring you do what you can to survive.

You can safely compartmentalize it. store it up there with your irrational fear of clowns.

what about the cool bug fact?

fucking apostrophe abuse

Nothingless void is as believable as afterlife. From scientific point of view neither make sense, it's like we're giving ourseleves some metaphysical distinctiveness from the rest of universe but are merely physical bodies inside of it according to our scientific knowledge. And according to that we precisely know what's after death: we rot in grave, and that's it. But that answer is not satisfying for us, because what we call our consciousness will stop existing at some point, and we try to find logical state of us, when there is no longer us. I don't really think it's possible to describe how's that like at all.

It's not the death part that scares me. It's the transition between living and dead that's going to suck.

But then I had a really terrible November 2024 and am still suffering a high-suicidality psychotic break, so my opinion might be biased.

Because there is no coming back.

The After is not what we fear. It is the pain of the transition

apparently I literally tried to strangle myself on my umbilical cord in the womb but my take on that was that I knew what was coming.

You can't "experience" nothingness. Even if you could, you can fear things you've experienced before...

It's not the nothingness, it's how you get to the nothingness that sucks.

And I am not frightened of dying, 
any time will do, I don't mind
Why should I be frightened of dying?
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime

Unless the universe is truly infinite, then from the point of view of your continuity of consciousness, you will never die, because they will always be somewhere in infinity where you're exact current consciousness picks right up after you die without a blip.

It’s just that I kinda like being conscious…

The key is to accept that the end of consciousness is a feature of existence, and not a bug.

Afraid? Hardly. More like

We live and we die, but we don't start or stop existing. Everything that is us is still here. And in time, what was us becomes something new and different.

The miracle of life is a rare and magical opportunity for a bit of our grand panoply of matter to direct its own future. And, I believe, the horror of death is in that return to idleness and loss of control. We don't want to return to the sidelines, to be put back on the shelf. We don't want to become mere stuff again. We want to keep playing the game.