As I said in the other thread, I think psychedelics are a useful way to confront this existential terror, personally at least. Terence McKenna talked about this a lot through the lens of psychedelic experiences. Here are a few relevant quotes that might be useful to you.
"Here’s a hard psychedelic truth actually if you want to boil it down to the bottom line. This is the one thing I’ve learned, maybe, from psychedelics which is - and this is the message of the Time Wave and this is the message of your life and my life - it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it, Panta Rei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts. To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It’s literally psychological nomadism is what it is."
"Well what I’ve learned from life, vegetables, travels and books can be summed up in two Greek words. It’s the central message of the philosopher Heraclites. He was always my favorite philosopher but whenever I would read about him, he was called the crying philosopher. I had to live to be 44 years old to understand the poignancy of Heraclites’ message. He said in a nutshell, Panta rhei. All flows. Nothing lasts. Nothing is permanent. This is the hardest message life has to teach because what is says is: your joy is transient, your anguish is transient, your fortune, your home, your dream, your moments of great ecstasy, your moments of great insight and your moments of great empowerment. Everything is flowing through your hands at the moment that you are aware of it."
"The one thing that seems secure is a truth that is hard to hear in the context of a dominator culture with an obsession with the material world. And that truth is that nothing lasts. nothing lasts.
You know, your enemies will fade. Your friends will fade. Your fortune, your poverty, your disappointments, your dreams - everything is in the process of changing into something else. So, your agony is about to be assuaged. On the other hand, your happiness is about to be destroyed."
"But I think it’s not simply taking psychedelics but it’s also to decondition oneself to the notion of ego and all the concepts which constellate around that, such as place, property, ownership, and stability. You see, the idea that we have inherited from Western religion and science is the idea that things should be stable. This is a very male dominant notion, the wish for stability, eternity, when in fact the message life hands you over and over again is “nothing lasts”. nothing lasts. Not what you love, not what you hate, not your enemies, your friends, not even your dear, dear self. nothing lasts. And the ego goes mad in the presence of that truth; it, it, it can’t swallow it. And so we have anxiety of death, need to dominate people, need to possess property, terror of illness, resentment of fate, because we are not in the flow."
As I said in the other thread, I think psychedelics are a useful way to confront this existential terror, personally at least. Terence McKenna talked about this a lot through the lens of psychedelic experiences. Here are a few relevant quotes that might be useful to you.
"Here’s a hard psychedelic truth actually if you want to boil it down to the bottom line. This is the one thing I’ve learned, maybe, from psychedelics which is - and this is the message of the Time Wave and this is the message of your life and my life - it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it, Panta Rei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts. To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It’s literally psychological nomadism is what it is."
"Well what I’ve learned from life, vegetables, travels and books can be summed up in two Greek words. It’s the central message of the philosopher Heraclites. He was always my favorite philosopher but whenever I would read about him, he was called the crying philosopher. I had to live to be 44 years old to understand the poignancy of Heraclites’ message. He said in a nutshell, Panta rhei. All flows. Nothing lasts. Nothing is permanent. This is the hardest message life has to teach because what is says is: your joy is transient, your anguish is transient, your fortune, your home, your dream, your moments of great ecstasy, your moments of great insight and your moments of great empowerment. Everything is flowing through your hands at the moment that you are aware of it."
"The one thing that seems secure is a truth that is hard to hear in the context of a dominator culture with an obsession with the material world. And that truth is that nothing lasts. nothing lasts.
You know, your enemies will fade. Your friends will fade. Your fortune, your poverty, your disappointments, your dreams - everything is in the process of changing into something else. So, your agony is about to be assuaged. On the other hand, your happiness is about to be destroyed."
"But I think it’s not simply taking psychedelics but it’s also to decondition oneself to the notion of ego and all the concepts which constellate around that, such as place, property, ownership, and stability. You see, the idea that we have inherited from Western religion and science is the idea that things should be stable. This is a very male dominant notion, the wish for stability, eternity, when in fact the message life hands you over and over again is “nothing lasts”. nothing lasts. Not what you love, not what you hate, not your enemies, your friends, not even your dear, dear self. nothing lasts. And the ego goes mad in the presence of that truth; it, it, it can’t swallow it. And so we have anxiety of death, need to dominate people, need to possess property, terror of illness, resentment of fate, because we are not in the flow."