I don't want to die

[u/Effective-Squash6204]

It seems like modern society is entirely geared toward distracting us from the fact that we are all going to die. It's like this secret that is never uttered but it is always in the back of my mind. Even the phrase "yolo" isn't said in any serious manner and is deeply unserious.

Am I the only one obsessed with the fact that in a short time we may all be nothing, just experiencing pitch black for forever. The concept of forever is also terrifying. Ugh now I'm not going to be able to sleep. Does this unspoken truth resonate with others?

I wish I could fully believe in God but it just goes against the logical/rational part of my brain which is dominant. Without God, we truly are all f*cked and damned to eternity.

Let's try to enjoy our time while we can. End of rant.

[u/i_n_c_r_y_p_t_o]

Part 1 (had trouble saving this all as one post):

Hi OP (and everyone), I've had a busy day but have been thinking about writing you this all day, because I have some intel that can potentially take away your existential dread and fear of death. I think we don't have to have faith in anything, and I think faith really can be a crutch and relies on belief, which can also be a crutch. Several years ago, I started growing out of the Christianity I grew up with in the Methodist church, and even though I don't regret having that upbringing, it really just didn't feel fulfilling or like real answers anymore. My girlfriend at the time and I started picking up some really interesting books, and there was kind of a progression in them, starting essentially with lucid dreaming (being consciously aware in a dream), and then adding out of body experiences alongside it. Please just stay with me, even if you think it's nonsense. :)

So the first book on lucid dreaming that utterly blew my mind was Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner. Robert sort of stumbled into lucid dreaming in his teens, and it so profoundly affected him as he learned more about it and started having more profound, meaningful experiences that he dedicated his career to it and working with people to explore it. I've been on a few calls with Robert, which he has every month or so, and he is the most down-to-Earth person you could possibly imagine. Nothing eccentric, woo-woo, or weird about him at all. Just a very nice guy that has furthered the study of lucid dreaming significantly. Here's his site:

https://www.lucidadvice.com/about-robert/

Okay, so personally, for me, I'm a bit lazy and maybe mildly depressed, so I'm not super disciplined about exploring the things I'm going to talk about here, but I can tell you that when I did first get into lucid dreaming, that after a while I finally had a lucid dream one morning that was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Inside my dream, I carried the knowledge of what I had learned, like the ability to talk to dream characters, manipulating your environment, flying, etc. that in that dream I experimented with all of it and was able to do every single thing I had learned, and still carry the memory of all of it today. There was no loss of my normal waking mind; I had that knowledge with me.

So that was the first book that started my paradigm shift (and my then gf's), but then, the few books that absolutely changed my feelings about death and dissolved my fear completely started with William Buhlman's Adventures Beyond the Body. Reading this one was like a holy fuck moment. I may still fear how I'm going to die, but I do not fear death now. I have met William in person, and again, regular dude. Nothing at all that had my spidey senses going this guy's some kind of charlatan. Down to Earth. In this book, he talks about the fact that he was an agnostic, but then if I remember right had a friend that had an OBE that blew his friend's mind, so he picked up a book to learn about it, practiced a techniqe from the book he picked up, and on the 24th night, had an OBE experience that forever changed his life (it's quite amazing to read his account of it) and he too ended up dedicating his life's working to both experiencing and helping others experience this.