velvetechos | (no subject)

I don’t think it’s possible for the human mind to fully understand the concept of death. To grasp the idea of no longer existing. To see a point to life, when all the “Changes” they work towards, all the goals they wish to accomplish, are all in vain. There is no future, the cycles just keep repeating themselves. The actions are the same, the same basic problems are at the root of it all. Only the faces change.

I remember walking down a long dusty road, between my own home, and a friend of mine’s home, with two guys. There was a small bird, a magpie, hopping around in some bushes. It wouldn’t have taken a scientist to tell us that the bird was wounded, and being the animal lover that I am, I decided to stop and pick the bird up. The bird was on the other side of a fence, out by a river, and in my clunky heels I couldn’t climb the fence, so it was up to Tyler and Martin to retrieve animal. The bird was screeching, and hopping about, beating it’s wings, but unable to fly away. Finally they caught him, and brought him back to me. I started talking about how we needed to get him to a veterinarian. I carried the bird carefully, yet firmly enough to where he couldn’t get away, and watched him, to make sure he was alright, and we continued on to my friend’s house.

After about five minutes, the bird started gulping for air. He gave one last twitch, and then his little body went stiff in my hands. It was the most frightening feeling in the world. I felt a cold wave pass through my palms, and I started screaming for Tyler to take the bird. All I could say was “The bird! The bird died! I don’t like to touch dead things!”

Now the weird part about this, is that I had held my dead friend’s hand, I had held deceased pets, I had even held my father’s hand after he passed away. There was just something different, something about feeling the life exit this bird’s body, that was like nothing I’d ever felt before. At that moment, had I believed in spirits, and in the afterlife, I would have sworn that the strange cold feeling was his spirit leaving his body.

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This is something I have a hard time explaining and just usually don't, so bear with me.

A few years ago I was in my Mom's bedroom sitting on her bed in the dark, watching a Robbie Williams video on MTV. It was "Millenium." All of a sudden I got a big lump in my throat and I panicked. I started having an anxiety attack.

These attacks were nothing new to me, I've had them before. But this time was different.

As I was sitting there I started crying. No reason. I looked at everything in my life and was so happy with it all. I loved the people in my life dearly and they loved me back, I had treasured everything I had and gone through. And I was proud of who I became.

But that wasn't why I was crying.

I felt sick like I wanted to throw up or something, but I couldn't. I felt a little paralyzed and then crying turned into balling. I felt like the video was making me sick in a weird way but I coudn't turn away from it, and it seemed to go on forever.

I thought about death. And not suicide, but what happens to us after we die. I've always wanted to believe in certain things, but nothing helped here. I mean, I've thought of death a million and a half times before, but this was different. It was like all my beliefs went out the window. Like I was wrong. Like I now knew how it really was. But more than anything, I was really scared.

I just had all these thoughts on how death would be without life. I was sickened and couldn't stop crying. It seemed painful.

Ever since that night I've had more experiences like this. Jim and I had run to Starbuck's one day and I waited in the car. All these feelings came over me again and I started crying. It's happened a few times now. But maybe they're just a different type of panic attack. Maybe that's what it feels like to be afraid of death. I forget the term, but maybe that's what it is. XOXO

Usually random bouts of crying, and confusion, and not knowing why you are so upset, come from a chemical depression, or a hormonal imbalance. I get that a lot. I'm not one that puts much faith into spirituality, but if you want me to look at it from that point of view, my mother's culture believes any chemical depression, hormonal imbalances, or even flat out insanity, to be the work of "spiritual possessions", "demons", and "poltergeists". If you put any stock in that, it would explain the whole "Afterlife/Death" aspect of what you were feeling.

Yeah I understand that, I had actually thought of that myself. XOXO

This is all very sad :( I don't really have any notions about death at this time (I am going through my confused stage of life still). I do know that the only person I would ever want to see after death is my grandma (that is when they have an open casket). She's the only person I wouldn't be grossed out to see after death...

I've gone through a lot of religious stages, not really beliefs, because I'm not going to spend my time "believing" in something that has not been shown to me. I know that to some that is terrible, because "religion is so important", and "how dare you challenge the creator to show himself to you." Well fuck it. I don't see any reason to believe. I have religious interests, in studying the psychology behind faith, etc. But, no, no spirituality.

It's funny you bring this up since I just went through about all of my life inside some boxes that I've been meaning to clean up and throw out the junk I don't care about anymore. I see myself from when I was a child, and I don't remember those days. If it weren't for the pictures I probably wouldn't have believed that some of those situations didn't exist. Then I see pictures from 10 years ago and it's the same thing. The pictures are the only thing I remember from those things that happened from a long time ago. Now that I'm turning 27 on Tuesday I look back at what at what I've done with myself, the things I've done for people, and the wrongs I've done to people. Then I put it away for later because I don't tend to dwell on things for a long time.

And it doesn't help that soon I'll see myself at 30 and still single trying to get a career started, and then my brain races from there as I try to see myself at 40, 50, 60, etc. Then my mind hits death and it's just impossible to fathom not existing anymore. It's scary to think that this is it and there's no afterlife, but then even our basic science says that you can't destroy energy, which is what we're made of. So when the body ceases to be, the energy has to go somewhere. Our consciousness and our energy go somewhere else. Whether we have a choice on where it goes is still another matter to figure out.

And I babbled. :)

Grasping the idea of no longer exsisting is a hard one to process. Especially since the older you get, the more quickly time passes. I feel like I just got out of high school, but in reality, I'm part way through college, and closer to 25 than I am to 18.

As far as the science thing goes, and I could be way off here, but from what I can fathom, when our energy changes form (through death), our conscious ceases to be. It doesn't have to retain the same shape, or the same form. Everything is really the same thing at the core, atoms, nuclei, protons, electrons, whatever. Some of those make contain the same memories, but it's no longer the same thing, the same conscious being, with the same trains of thought, etc. We die, we go into the ground, we become worm food, soon we're grass/flowers/dirt/whatever. No spiritual afterlife, just mulch.

And I think I babbled more than you.

Part of the problem is is that we don't know what consciousness is. I know that I'm here in this moment, but I'd be damned if I could tell you why that is. If life is just a pointless then consciousness shouldn't exist and we should all be just mindless robots or not have any morals because that's pointless too.

There's scientific proof that we can move our arms and legs before the brain even registers that we've done so. I forget if they had a reason for it, but I think that's pretty interesting since we've always thought that our brain is the one sending the impulses.

I'll always be undecided though, unless one day I can figure out (and actually believe, based on what I see) how to do astral projection or something.