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What do you mean by existing as nothing?

I understand that you are coming at this from emotional perspective . But if you dared to contemplate it for a few minutes,you will immediately understand it . Here is A little thought experiment: You don't experience time when you are sleeping. Hours pass and to you it feels like nothing. What If you slept for 5000 years or died during that time and then woke up.. From your pov it will be as a blink of an eye. No time have passed from our pov. Yet 5000 years have passed on earth. Even an eternity can pass on earth and the entire world might end.. Yet from your pov it will be as a blink of an eye. This means time has no existence and no relevance without you. Without an observer that feels time. That's why when you die the whole world will die with you. Because the whole of eternity will happen in a blink of an eye.

@Galyna Do you deny your own ever-presence? Do you deny your own existence? Who is typing these words and thinks in highly abstract concepts like what you are doing here ? One conclusion Descartes argued for is that beings cannot rationally deny their own existence. We may question the reality of almost anything as potentially being figments of our imagination. However, to be able to ask the question "do I exist?", logically you must indeed exist. You might be wrong about the nature of your existence, but the existence itself is a logical prerequisite of self-analyzing thought. I can say that Descartes is not real, or that you are not real, but I think, therefore I must exist The question that leads to this kind of philosophy is some variant of the brain-in-a-jar problem. How do you know that anything is real? You have to appreciate the depth of this problem. Are you actually sitting on a chair, or are you being deceived? Are you just a brain in a jar, being fed electrical impulses that make you think all these things are real? Basically, are you Neo in the first part of The Matrix? Descartes figured out that at the very least, here's what I know: I am a being that can think. Maybe I am just a brain in a jar, maybe nobody else exists in the whole world, maybe the cake is a lie, but I, as a thinking being, do exist. And this self-evident and undeniable.

When you die ,the whole world will die with you .

Are you falling into the neo-advaita trap or it seems like it ?? Because this whole emphasis on the illusion of self. The self is an illusion as a separate self .but all that exists (all of reality basically ) is the Self with Capital S. I like to distinguish between the false ego self and the true Self. The ego self is a construction of mind. Even the tree you see is a construction of mind so it is not so far fetched that this elaborate mind construction of a self is nothing more than delusion. It is however very necessary and useful . Without a sense of self you wouldn't know who's shoes to put on in the morning, as Alan Watts puts it lol. Descartes' reasoning is that if he is doubting his own existence, then he must exist in order to do the doubting, therefore he exists.

@Yarco thanks for the info. @Alta In answering your question..flow state happens when you engage in something you deeply enjoy or passionate about .so pick a hobby that inspires you and just keep practicing it night and day until you become good at it .

@Leo Gura @Galyna guys..you misunderstood the post. I'm not talking about thoughts in terms of mind activities. Or the content of any particular thought like the "i" thought. I'm talking about the mere fact that thoughts arise .whether there is a thinker or not . Descartes in his work, he goes about destroying the assumptions that most people had in philosophy before him. Many people would say, "ah well I see the sun, or I feel the grass, so therefore it exists". Descartes basically said, "ok, but what if your brain is in a jar, and you are just dreaming all of this?" Philosophy is based on axioms. Axioms are self-evident facets of reason that allow you to construct the rest of philosophy on them. Descartes basically argued that all of the axioms that had previously been used were wrong because they were not self-evident. In the same sense that you don't know you are in a dream when you are dreaming, how do you know that anything around you is as it truly is? So he started his philosophy with doubting EVERYTHING. At first, he couldn't figure out where to go from there. How are you supposed to know anything if you doubt everything? Eventually, he discovers his first axiom: I think therefore I am. In order for him to doubt everything, HE must exist. He can't assume anything about who or what he really is but he can safely assume that he exists, otherwise, he would not be thinking about the fact that he exists.

@NoSelfSelf thats a good idea ?.

If a tree falls in the woods .....

@Alta I just googled it. Its paid . Is there anything similar for free ?

@Alta how do you create music? What apps do you use ?

You are anthropomorphizing God with this question. As if God is some Father figure living up in the clouds somewhere. Actually..God IS every creature. So he cares about the suffering of them to the point he Actually lives it and experience it.

I just got rid of 5 packs of marlboro white cigarettes. Along with my vape . This was emotionally difficult to do .I've been smoking for a decade now .and I realized I can't continue like this .I'm raping my health..smoking half a pack a day is insane and suicidal. I have made the decision to stop cold turkey and never ever again put a cigarette in my mouth. Please guys wish me luck and share any piece of advice that can help me in my quest. I'm making a bold life decision that is gonna change the trajectory of my life. Especially when it comes to health and well-being. I tried to quit several times in the past but I always fail .May God give me the strength to finally quit for good this time .

Not necessarily . When you have a dream at night..it is you who is creating the entire dream world..and you also have fooled yourself that you can't alter how the dream unfolds . Unless you become lucid in the dream .which is analogous to awakening in real life .

@BipolarGrowth thanks brother. And congrats for the gains ?

@TheOneReborn try this meditation technique that I discovered. You wil feel better so quickly after practicing it .it's super simple and effective at the same time .

Do you meditate daily ?

@Thought Art @Shiva99 thank you guys for the support . unfortunately though . I just bought a new pack but I didn't smoke yet .I should just get rid of it immediately, right?

For me, this is kinda funny. I've had many suicidal thoughts, and i think i'm more scared of living than dying. Furthermore, i have never experienced "non-being" all i ever know is "being" so i can't really believe, that death means "non-existence" like materialists say. Like, you are here, right? If you were born once, why not a second time? And then third time? Why not infinite times?

When we are born or we are children, we are happy, engaged in ourselves, away from any bond that binds us now. Have you wondered why? Because we don't know much and all we have is us and world to play. As we grow, we get boundaries, limits, dejection because we have accepted the worldly way. So why keep something which depresses you? Why accept the bustle and hazy life when you can call the inner child. When you avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose, expectations, fears, worries and largely the whole world simply disappears because all you see is you and now the magic begins.... because you have no one to answer to, all you do is right, hence ultimately what you do gets right for the people around you. We mustn't treat the problem, rather treat the cause. You have held something for so long that you fear losing it. Let go of everything right away. It's not that hard. I have faced such circumstances many times before. All I ask myself is WHY? Always the answer has been something external and quite feeble(often the fear of failure). What I do is that I don't do anything about it. No thinking about something which makes me feel bad and unhealthy. I wasn't born to be afraid or dejected rather I was born to enjoy life and if failure or any such thing of my own creation blocks my path, I shall not bow. The dimensions we think and observe have no meaning to the universe. You are a physical body and you are dimensionless compared to universe let alone your depression and mood. Break out from your boundaries and do not give a damn to anything. When there seems no hope at all just leave what's outside. If something that haunts me never existed in me and it has no real existence then it is of my imaginative creation and you can always improve on that. Your mood, depression and everything else is just a thought. Think about it as you meditate. Results will come. You will feel better and most importantly you will feel alive.

@CuriousityIsKey why do you want to die ? Can you be more specific?

I see. I think it's a hard question to answer, because we have to really define our terms here. We all know what death is, but I think we don't have a great idea about who we are. Now, part of me is a personal identity. "Hi, I'm akshay." Akshay is going to die. All of my opinions and likes and dislikes and habits and memories, they are going to die and never be seen again. But what if there is something about me that is deeper than that? The part of me that is observing all of those things. The part of me that isn't the object of awareness like "table" or "emotion" but the awareness itself. I can conceive of a believable universe in which this awareness is more fundamental to reality than matter is. This awareness is currently inhabiting a body, but it will continue it's journey after the body dies. So in conclusion..this current human self that you are living right now will die and disappear forever and its never going back .and either it's completely blank after that or you will reincarnate as a different creature (not necessarily human ). But who knows.

I've had Tons of awakening in the past .all of them while sober. Without using any chemicals. Awakening to me is simply shedding the false beliefs about reality and hunting the Truth . And it's actually super easy to do . The truth is simply the totality of your direct experience right freaking now. There is nothing else .the past and the future are beliefs .so I guess I'm getting close to grasping Leo's point .if death exists only in the future..and the future is a belief..therefore death is also a belief.

I guess I understand you now . The concept of existence is dependent on the concept of the present. In normal English, once something is "destroyed" it no longer "exists", and nothing "exists" until it has been "created". You can't say something like "the future exists" because it hasn't been created yet and by the definition of existence, it doesn't exist. I was reading comments somewhere and someone said "all of time is actually happening now". That phrase doesn't make sense. The word "now" has already been defined as a reference to our current position in time. You can't use words with a time-based definition to explain concepts contrary to the concept of a "present" that progresses through time.

Maybe! Who knows? The only thing you can say for sure is that if there is even one world where it's physically possible for you to exist, that's where you will find yourself. And that only applies to you and your subjective experience. nobody else. Subjectivity is qualitatively special and for that reason, speculating about anyone who is not you is kind of meaningless. So I'm not concerned about what Leo said because that's his own direct experience. It contradicts mine . Death of the body is a biological fact .I don't understand how "its never going to happen ".