"There is always a beginning and an end, unless you are talking about eternity in which case time is totally meaningless"

Being able to deliberate ahead of time on the subject of our own inevitable end can be seen either as one of the great tragedies of being human or a priceless luxury depending on a person's viewpoint. Other animals are inherently lacking in this ability. An animal if pushed by instinct will dive head-first into danger and if it doesn't work out -it dies-, but it will never spend time worrying what the outcome of its actions will be. But the human mind on the other hand has the the capacity to understand its own "finite" nature and this can be a source of unimaginable anxiety for most of humanity.

The birth of responsibility

Over the course of the evolution of human consciousness, we must have made a huge fall(or leap if you like) at some point. We developed Self-awareness, no longer driven solely by the raw force of our instincts, we developed the incredible ability to assess both ourselves and outside situations, This must have been of great aid to the early human society of hunter-gatherers. We could understand and make accurate predictions about the world around us, we thrived and were set to take our place over other animals and less evolved hominids as the head of nature.

But as empowering as our new superpower was, it also meant a great responsibility has fallen upon us, "We now had to worry" and at the center of this worry was our own mortality, a cosmic checkmate.

Anxious about death

The expansion of the human consciousness to include self-awareness meant the sudden realisation of our finite nature and with this came a great source of anxiety, we became obsessive worriers among the animals, afraid of death, drowning in the constant anticipation that death is simply lights out and will be curtains forever. We were faced all of a sudden with this incredibly uncomfortable idea.

The illusion of a separate "me"

We learn very early as babies to separate ourselves from the rest of the world around us, a newborn baby sees the world as it truly is, no sense of "me", unseparated from the world, Psychologists call this "The oceanic feeling".

But around age 1 to 2 the child suddenly understands that the name he has been hearing meant "me" or the person in this bag of skin and with this the child learns to separate himself from the world around him, an illusory separateness from where all our anxiety and fear towards death arises from. In other words our need for self-preservation is borne out of the idea of a separate "I","The ego" and death is only a serious threat to this idea we have of ourselves, what we are fundamentally knows that death is a big joke.

"I was no longer needing to be special because i was no longer caught in my illusion of separateness that had me keep trying to prove i was something, i was part of the universe like a tree is, like grass is or like water is"

-Ram Dass

A cosmic joke

And so a very great obstacle lies in the way of helping a person see beyond the seriousness with which we have learnt to view life and death, to suddenly recover from this terrible anxiety that arises from being thoroughly indoctrinated from the birth that we are faced with something serious instead of something playful.

"You are the universe looking at itself from Billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new."

-Alan watts

Change is the game....will you play?

Anxiety arises from a persons futile resistance to the changes of existence, we want highs without lows, light without dark etc. while ignoring the basic fact that all existence is a dance of opposites, like the wave has its crest and the trough without either there is no wave. Just like you won't encounter anything with front and no back or inside without an outside, So does everything manifest in the physical universe.

In just the same way, the light of life/consciousness and the darkness of death/unconsciousness is in a secret conspiracy and playing a cosmic game of hide and seek, And one now wins and the other now wins. Going on and on in endless cycles, each time it feels like the first time so it never gets boring.

Recovery from anxiety

To suddenly recover from our terrible anxiety is to come to the realisation of the true nature of the human experience, to learn to ride this wave of existence as it comes. To see all life as a weaving of smoke which can be very beautiful provided we don't try to hold it, 'cos we then destroy it.

Anxiety disappears with the realisation of the through nature of this cosmic game, "that the light of consciousness and darkness of unconsciousness go back and forth in the same way the wave is made of crests and troughs". without one there isn't the other.

Anxiety loses hold with the realisation that in exactly the same way we opened our eyes to the world suddenly without any memory of who or even what we were- we would one day dissolve again into this incomprehensible unknown so the joke can be made brand new again and again.

Thank you for reading through.