Fear of Nothingness

Another good post by Jim at Divine Nobodies and my response:

You're tackling a tough topic here. In our culture two topics are usually off the table: sex and death. This post may touch both.

What I'll say are just my opinions and experiences. Not trying to challenge anybody or any beliefs. This is just my journey in stripping away the BS to try to find the truth. Forgive me if this is long. It’s a deep topic that I’m still trying to put into words.

Early man must have looked up at the stars and saw the sky that never changed, and seemed to exist forever, and felt so small and insignificant....watching loved ones die after 20, 10, 5 years....and the ego desiring to last forever like the moonless night sky....suffering.

We have an ego that wants to survive at all costs. We have a strong desire to be remembered. Hence, tombstones, crosses along the highway, monuments, striving to accomplish things that will "last" etc. If we are interested in truth however, we will eventually have to admit that all of this is futile. The fact is that in a couple of generations we will be all but forgotten (How much do you really know about your great-great-Grandfather and his hopes, dreams, personality etc.?). Or perhaps one of your accomplishments will make it to the history books, but someone else will use just use it as a springboard for something "new and improved" making it just another step in our evolution. The truth is that our whole world could be wiped out in an instant by an asteroid that rubbed up against another one a few years ago. One way or another, the ego loses the battle of Nothingness.

Nothingness, No-self, Emptiness. What do we know? We know the Universe is expanding and reversing the process seems to have come from Nothingness. We know that evolution on the earth is not so neat and clean as some scientists would have us believe. It appears likely that new species appeared "out of nowhere" in waves of creativeness. We know that when we close our eyes for a length of time without falling asleep (now that's a trick!) the Nothingness within is expansive and vast and scary and, if you get there, perhaps, beautiful.

The truth is we don't know where we come from and we don't know where we are going. There are all kinds of theories and stories, both scientific and religious. But we don't KNOW. That's a problem for us. We want security. We want to be certain about everything, especially the most important things. But we can't. So, even in the midst of religion and spirituality we experience a mostly present low level of anxiety.

Most of our fears and anxieties come down to a fear of death, fear of no-Self, and/or a fear of Nothingness. When I choose to attach my identity to a particular teacher, philosophy, religion etc. what happens when that teacher, philosophy, belief system or religion is questioned or criticized? I take it personal, as if someone was directly attacking ME, and because my ego wants to survive I react with anger, which is usually caused by fear. Fear of what? Nothingness. Fear that if what I have attached my identity to is nothing, than “I” will be nothing.

Questions like: Why am I here? Who am I? What am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go? These are the questions that religion tries to answer with elaborate stories to ease our fears. Speaking for myself, the pat answers religion offered just didn’t cut it. In my darkest, most honest moments, I still found it there, gnawing away at my peace.

For me honesty has been the answer. What do I REALLY know after all the stories and myths are stripped away? That I was born. I will die. I don’t know what happened before I was born and I don’t know what will happen after I die. I have clues, or hunches based on what I know about the Universe and about my interior life, and anything more than that quickly delves into the realm of BS. This short glimpse of consciousness that I have been given is a temporary, beautiful gift, making each person and each situation priceless.

When I began to dabble in meditation (still really dabbling I guess) one of my first experiences was the Nothingness within. It was like I was falling into a void that would never end and for awhile I would snap myself out of it because it was scary. But one time I let go….and found myself “floating” in this beautiful, creative void. Peaceful and serene with nothing to fear. And I thought, “If this is what death is like I have no fear of it.” Life has been a little bit different since then.