26 replies to this topic

[Ameshairos]

Why do you continue to live?

What's your purpose? 
What's your deepest need?

 

I nearly died once; had I been operated minutes later I wouldn't be with you.

There are many things you feel at such a moment, if you're unlucky and my age... being really young...

You think that it hurts. You see the blood. But you really don't feel anything but peace and a crawling sense of eternal blindness.

It really doesn't hurt. Physically at least. 

But you are sorry. 

You'll lose whoever you love, your life and... 

Your future.

Our future, being alive just moments before we finally reach the next level of human evolution and revolution.

We are alive in a time of never seen progess... but many of us are not able to contribute to this.

In the near of far future this planet will die. It won't be habitable anymore.

So it's our battle, our goal, to make human life possible in space. Followed by cosmic human expansion.

That's my purpose.

The moment before I die I need to see a colony lead by a economical and political entity out there, that we can trust in.

We got the potential. Because we are gods.

 

So what's your purpose?

 

[Clavius]

Currently the only reason for me is my family. They would be deeply upset if I were to croak. But for myself, I look forward to the cold embrace of the black void.

[Mind]

Helping myself and others reverse aging and live unlimited lifespans.

[cocoonman]

My purpose in life is to send a call for aid across a gulf of time. I don't know by whom or by what will my message be intercepted and read. Will the future generations be "minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic", or will they be compassionate? I can't find a rational reason why would someone want to bring me (or anyone from my era) back to life. But maybe those minds of the future will be irrational and sentimental.

[VictorBjoerk]

Why does anyone have to "justify their existence"? Perhaps doing simple everyday stuff is enough reason to want to live!

[Kimer Med]

My purpose in life is to be happy!

 

I don't see any reason for a purpose more complex than that.

 

[forever freedom]

To constantly improve myself and my surroundings in order to be ever happier and make those i care about happier, and to try to beat aging for me and everyone.

[SteampunkScientist]

To Understand,

 

To attempt to Eff the "Ineffable" question why we are here in the first place.... Is it no more than a vast and rare cosmic accident? Just the random accumulation of chemicals that through almost impossible odds "learned" to self replicate and form via evolutionary processes over vast periods of time finally led to us here and now?

 

OR is there something more - something that "wants" to exist and we are merely the current "step" in that transition.

 

Whatever, I just want to know, and experience all that I can.

[Puppalupacus]

To crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

[Rocket]

My purpose to live is that there is no other choice. Only existence can exist and existenceless cannot. Therefore there was never a time when I did not exist. There will never be a time when I do not exist. I have seen things for which there are no words.

Its hard for the mind to fathom that you are already immortal and always have been.

Edited by Rocket, 13 October 2019 - 12:35 AM.

[sthira]

I nearly died once, too. Appendix ruptured at Marti Gras. My wasted friends thought I was just drunk, too, but I wasn’t. I’d only drunk one hurricane, it wasn’t alcohol.

Eventually I made it to the hospital, somehow. I remember nothing of the experience of how I got to ER, or how my life was saved. I woke up ten days later with a giant hole in my abdomen where they cut out the diseased appendix.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” was the first groggy comment I remember: “We thought we lost you.”

It sounds slightly hokey and stupid to admit this; but I did have out of body experiences.

I became everywhere, all at once. I was everything, immediately. No tunnels of light, though. As if I was light, and everything else, too: darkness. Makes no sense in words. Yet I’ve recreated those — feelings — through psychedelics. Shrooms are life-changing. Do them if you haven’t.

Anyway, I don’t think I have any purpose. And don’t think anyone else does, either. Seeking purpose is kinda something the human mind has been bred to do. Purpose-seeking is just more natural selection. Despite the near-death experiences, out of body, out of mind, I am everywhere all at once, immediately, I am still agnostic, though, teetering toward atheism — nihilistic. Nothing matters, even that: everywhere, all at once.

When we die where do we go? What happens? Fuck all no one knows. I’ve lost many, many beautiful people in my life to death, none of them have come back to give me signs of ghostly afterlives. Once I thought I knew: we rot in dirt like every other being. Now I’m not so sure — are out of body experience simply brains playing tricks — I am everywhere, all at once — how was that shit real?

[pamojja]

Now I’m not so sure — are out of body experience simply brains playing tricks — I am everywhere, all at once — how was that shit real?

 

As real as any other experience in daily life. Causing all the real bio-chemical changes any experiences produces in the body. As any experience with a body, they also don't last. However, being everywhere all at once, is a very familiar even seeked experience in the contemplative traditions. Being everywhere all at once doesn't alows for any others, of course, and therefore no 'I', 'me' or 'mine' neither. All one. Which on the other hand allows for real compassion, in a sense that without this experience can't really be understood.

 

Therefore really no difference in reality by being just a passing experience as well, the real question becomes: Does one want it? - Of course not! Otherwise everyone would flocking to the contemplatives, because in a sense it is like dying to one's former self. But the few who do, do loose fear of death.
 

Edited by pamojja, 13 October 2019 - 12:37 PM.

[Rocket]

"Where do we go when we die?" Who says that you will ever die? As I said, existence exists and existenceless does not. Something cannot be transformed into nothing, i.e. an existenceless death. And nothing can be transformed into something. But you'll say in a total vacuum particles are created and destroyed all the time. Yes, but the space itself is a thing and so particles are created by and from space.

What if we are all already immortal and there is no after life, just this life forever, and the passage of time is an illusion?

[sthira]

"Where do we go when we die?" Who says that you will ever die?

My question you highlighted was pretty stupid, honestly. Where do we go when we die? We go through well-known stages of decomposition, obviously. 24-72 hours after death my internal organs will begin to rot; in another 3-5 days the body will bloat, blood-containing foam will leak from mouth and nose, all orifices; 8-10 days after death my body will turn green as blood decomposes, abdominal organs accumulate gas, rupture; a few weeks later the nails and teeth will fall out; in a month or so, my corpse will liquify; eventually I’ll be bones; this process has been known and exhaustively studied for ages.

So my question is kinda dumb.

I had an out of body experience when I nearly died. But I believe now after years of thinking about it that those experiences were the result of my meaty brain beginning the orderly process of breakdown. I don’t think I am me beyond the physicality of me. I don’t think I have a mind that’s independent of my physical, operating brain. All of it is just electro-chemical responses, as repeated ad nauseum by scientists and philosophers for centuries. When body and brain poop out, that’s that. Bye bye sthira. And bye bye to you, too, which is why we’re bothering to post words on a human longevity site: to keep this sack of walking talking organs alive on earth as long as possible.

Of course my decomposing will attract other forms of life that’ll (eventually) feed off my body. Unless I’m cremated — then poof, I’m smoke to sky.

All I’m saying is in my out of body experience I was everywhere, all at once. I was everything and no me existed. But this was my physical brain’s last hurrah. The grand finale. The fireworks at the end of the show. Bowing at curtains. Psychedelics make me question death, existence, non-existence, even the science of human decomposition; but I think if there’s any illusion going on here it’s the illusion the mind-altering drugs or out of body experiences or near death phenomena are creating. Drugs, NDEs are producers of that illusion I fell into, namely that I’m anything beyond my material.

Fine if we want to temporarily deny the worldly reality of identity. I don’t exist. Whatever. But how the fuck are we supposed to live in the world (with all of its mundane chores and concerns, bills and dietary demands, exercise requirements and pressure to find a mate, a job, a place to live, peace and quiet...) how are we supposed to live in this world pretending as if “I” do not “exist” because the all particles in the universe were created in the Big Bang, and thus we’re all “one.” Or whatever you’re arguing.

Practically, this makes no sense. I cannot live a practical everyday life as if tripping on mescaline all hours of the day. Even within an ashram I can’t do this. Someone's gotta wash the dishes and sweep the floors and pay the utilities.

After years of searching down many lanes of spirituality, I’m now at the point of believing the spiritual search for meaning in life is simply a product of natural selection. To convinced materialists who’ve never blasted out of body and into the stars while tripping, this is like duh. I’m not declaring this is the end of my spiritual journey, this point is just where I am tonight, and like everything else in the universe it too shall change into something else.

Edited by sthira, 14 October 2019 - 02:34 AM.

[pamojja]

After years of searching down many lanes of spirituality, I’m now at the point of believing the spiritual search for meaning in life is simply a product of natural selection. .. I’m not declaring this is the end of my spiritual journey, this point is just where I am tonight, and like everything else in the universe it too shall change into something else.

 

Though a spriitual journey in search for meaning is usually where it starts, - at the end its always about coming grips, getting a handle on (also by creating meaning like artwork or a working hypothesis to get wanted results, but not being fooled about), and being at ease with whatever meaninglessness found.

 

Fine if we want to temporarily deny the worldly reality of identity. I don’t exist. Whatever. But how the fuck are we supposed to live in the world (with all of its mundane chores and concerns, bills and dietary demands, exercise requirements and pressure to find a mate, a job, a place to live, peace and quiet...) how are we supposed to live in this world pretending as if “I” do not “exist” because the all particles in the universe were created in the Big Bang, and thus we’re all “one.” Or whatever you’re arguing.

Practically, this makes no sense. I cannot live a practical everyday life as if tripping on mescaline all hours of the day. Even within an ashram I can’t do this. Someone's gotta wash the dishes and sweep the floors and pay the utilities.

 

It's the other way round. Practically from being born onward we learn and get sozialized how to pretend identity. No additional pretense of non-identity is asked for - one only realizes this is already an automatic adaptive bio-chemical process recreating pretention of identity, for being enabled to find a mate, job, paying bills, etc. Nothing more than any other automatic process based on causes and effects going on. Like the weather, your boss getting angry at you, you getting angry back at him, etc. .. and you continue to wash dishes, sweep floors just as usual.

 

With the tiny but crucial difference you're no more hang up on the weather, the angry boss, or your own anger. Freed from I, me, and mine, the weather still may be bad, the boss angry, and you back angry about him. Without pretention of anything, there now can be peace and quiet resting within all such storms in the knowledge of only faked identity. No need to pretend any other identity, than the fake already ongoing with an expiry date.

 

Even within an ashram I can’t do this. Someone's gotta wash the dishes and sweep the floors and pay the utilities.

 

Well, to get to grips usually some determined practice in renunciation and contemplation is needed. A mescaline trip or out-out-body experience usually can't develop the needed mental faculties to really profit from during daily living. It becomes a mere memory, not an ongoing and deepend insight into the nature of reality. Or as one could fear, just a further faked 'spiritual' identity.

 

Some start with 10 or 20 minutes a day, some do 1 or 2 hours. I personally plunged right in by doing a 10-day meditation retreat, where former meditators volunteer do the dishes and house-cleaning, and at the end of the retreat you're asked to donate as much as you want. If you would want to give, but have no money, you still could donate by doing the dishes and housework at the next retreat.

 

Then I even entered a Burmese forest meditation monastery, where one can practice as ordained monk or as layman to one's heard content from morning to evening, as long as one is able to. Which is run and financed by lay-followers, who maybe wrongly think they would never be able to do such rigorous practice themself. And by donating/serving hope to accumulate enough merit, to be enabled one day - maybe in a future life, so they believe - practice and get free themself. Or at least to get reborn in the west.

 

Or if you have cash, use the utilites of such meditation centers like IMS or Spirit Rock, to deepen practice some days, weeks or months of the year. Or just pack your rucksack and go off into the wild, found dry caves the best, for as long you've been able to pack.

 

But as already said:

 

 

Does one want it? - Of course not!

Edited by pamojja, 14 October 2019 - 10:52 AM.

[ceridwen]

@cocoonman Can't see any reason why people will be brought back? What about archeology?

[pamojja]

Fine if we want to temporarily deny the worldly reality of identity. I don’t exist. Whatever.

 

No need to deny anything. One just watches attentively how this ongoing process of identification is really out of your control - best with a mind stilled of all concepts (at one point even the concept of being all one), so you can experience underneath what is causing concepts and ideation - nothing to do with you. What conventionally is called 'You' does exist. Just not in a sense you ever would be able to think of. The language, concepts and grammar to describe are not existing. And if they did, again as a process outside of your control.

 

It takes tremendous energy and determination to give ideation up and still remain aware. Which very few have, and therefore it might not last even long. (comparing to that - giving up sex, mobiles, eye-contact, talking and writting during 10-day-retreats - is peanuts). You'll always be back to your usual self, doing your job, and paying the bills. But maybe you seen through enough, to no more be fooled by a process nothing to do with you. And are enabled to switch into awareness instead, despite puppet mode. Or you're just done with, and ordain as a monk.

 

 

However, one caveat: These retreats are still no peanuts. They are very powerful in uncovering deep psychic sufferings, and in my first year of practicing I sadly had to witness 3 cases going nuts: 2 of them tried unsuccesfully to suicide the day after, one ended up in psychiatry. Just as with bad trips gone wrong. For some the revelations are just too much to handle. However, interestingly I never witness it happening after one first successful retreat.

 

So do listen to the voice in you, which might say this's all BS. No thanks!

Edited by pamojja, 14 October 2019 - 12:35 PM.

[shp5]

As if I was light, and everything else, too: darkness. Makes no sense in words. Yet I’ve recreated those — feelings — through psychedelics. Shrooms are life-changing. Do them if you haven’t.

 

 

a rather high dose of psilacetin told me "the love we seek is inside of us" and then proceeded to show it to me. in another time I would have thought I thought I saw god, nowadays I'd say it was the internal bean-counter that dishes out the happy stuff when we get what we think is worthwhile. made a lasting impact in my life, though the mood effects now fade, a year later.

so yeah, dishes to be washed, bills to be paid, but basically you can do all that while still giggling to yourself like an idiot or connecting to the people you meet.

 

 

so, the purpose, be happy, help others.

Edited by shp5, 14 October 2019 - 07:16 PM.

[Fafner55]

To crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

 

In modern times it is "bankrupt one's competitors, see their homes repossessed, and listen to the lamentations of the women."

 

On a more serious note, striving to improve one's self and helping to better the lives of others goes a long way.

[Droplet]

To learn all that I can and to enjoy myself. There is also the issue that no one knows what is on the other side if anything at all. Therefore, I want to prolong my time in this realm for as long as possible, as I know what is here and that my pitifully short human lifespan will not allow me to enjoy everything that I want to.  The alternative to life on this plane may be worse, may even be better or simply be oblivion like how a machine is switched off and then nothing. I would like to exist long enough to learn as much about the universe around me as possible.

 

I also hope that I can help in the fight against ageing and live to see it cured once and for all - if I have to die, I don't want to die simply because nature put a time limit on me for what I see as no good reason. There are long lived and potentially ageless organisms out there so why should my species accept a really short lifespan when we can potentially alter it? 

[Keizo]

Why does anyone have to "justify their existence"? Perhaps doing simple everyday stuff is enough reason to want to live!

Which one is it? But sure I mean everyone doesn't need to have grand ideas about the future or their purpose, I agree with that.

 

---------

 

My answer: To experience life and to create life.

Edited by Keizo, 19 November 2019 - 05:25 PM.

[kurdishfella]

i dont think i have one, if it wasn't for my family i would have probably planned and killed myself. but I couldn't do that to them it's not fair even if I am in so much pain. Maybe, my purpose atm is to help my family that's my goal, with improving `their health then living in a nice place away out in the country away from cities (because there's so many crazy people in the world). After that, I think I wanna help and contribute to the world somehow, or something else that I dont wanna mention, depending on my mindset.

Edited by farshad, 19 November 2019 - 07:22 PM.

[Halftime]

At least in my case, it takes a near worldwide shutdown to bring about a greater appreciation for the beauty of life itself.

 

There is something poetic in the simplicity of taking a walk to appreciate the various sights and sounds the outside world has to offer.

 

Personally, I live for the relationships I have come to forge throughout my lifetime, as we humans as a species are social creatures.

 

Quarantine and seclusion have given me a greater appreciation for these forged relationships.

 

One thing is for certain, I know that I'd do horribly in solitary confinement. 

Edited by Halftime, 16 April 2020 - 05:01 PM.

[aribadabar]

One thing is for certain, I know that I'd do horribly in solitary confinement. 

 

I reached the opposite conclusion - my hermit-like lifestyle was barely changed due to the pandemic 

Edited by aribadabar, 18 April 2020 - 02:33 AM.

[A941]

To crush my enemies, to see them driven before me and to hear the lamentation of their waifus!

[Danail Bulgaria]

May I list more than one

 

- To see what the future will bring in the next century, millenium, era, etc.

- To see my grandchildren developed and secure

- To whitness the defeat of all possible causes of death and ensure the survival of the distant generations.

- To generate a loop of never ending happiness and enjoying the life.

- To fulfill all of my dreams.

- To whitness the answer of the question if the science is finite or infinite.

 

 

[Esoparagon]

To love and create and grow in both, I suppose.

Edited by Esoparagon, 01 June 2020 - 08:50 AM.