Do You Fear Death?

I do not.
It is inevitable and impossible to change.
I came to terms with my own mortality a long time ago.
I do not wish it to come sooner than it should as there are things in this life that I would miss.
But I also have a deep personal belief that this life is just a momentary blink of an eye in the grand scheme.

I have been practicing death awareness for about two years now. I feel it has given me some insights into my beliefs about myself and reality as well. One of my reactions is fear.

Interestingly enough I have found that my fear of death is actually linked to a fear of life, or more accurately with living life fully. To me living fully is synonymous with relinquishing control, or the illusion of it depending on your view. It means dealing with or seeing aspects of reality or myself I dont want to. It means opening to whats here right now, painful or pleasant and for no other reason than it is legitimately all I have, it is the truth. I mean death at anytime questions many of the choices I make in life, diminishes the concepts of safety hope or ownership and can even question my very identity depending on how in touch with this truth I am. Sometimes it feels everything in me and the world we live in defies this natural law, so you might see how living from this place could be scary or intimidating.

With this said I would recommend it to those interested in finding out more about this aspect of reality or themselves. Jed Mckenna and AH Almaas have videos on youtube that can be helpful.

I only fear what death entails... pain. Oh yeah.

I am not afraid of death, rather the shame of being taken down with a life barely lived. If I breathed life into every day of a year then I'd be happy going, but on the other hand if I just existed till old age I'd be terrified. I'd hate to die and look back on my life and think it a waste. Whatever lies behind the veil I can accept, but leaving without doing whatever it is I feel I set out to do that would be something to be feared. That would make me never want to leave.

I do not fear death for it is inevitable. I do not embrace death for it is the antonym of life. The existence of my consciousness beyond the limits of the human vessel would be welcomed in some settings, although i fear immortality because of the possibility of mental degradation to the point where i begin to self observe myself repeating the same thought patterns over and over until i split into the observer and the observed; meanwhile this process takes place hundreds of times exponentially increasing the separation of my consciousness until i am nothing but a binary soup of self disgust.

I voted Yes.

I'm afraid of dying, and I'm afraid of going to heaven. Everything will be perfect and wonderful and ecstatic. I don't like surprises.

I'd like to say I don't fear it at all, but the few life or death "situations" I've been in have sparked an *innate* survival instinct (I'd imagine there's usually a bit of fear ~ unless you're a socio)... it feels very primal ~ beyond any normal understanding/ or cerebral implications.

I see life and consciousness as a gift, one that I cherish a great deal.. and one day it will no longer belong to me. That's okay though, I feel like I've loved and lived enough to be content with my end (whenever it should come).

This isn't really something I can answer until I'm actually faced with my own death. Right now I would probably say yes, but I think it would depend on what sort of death I was facing.

I'm not so keen on the idea of being tortured and violently murdered by a total stranger in the middle of the night, being mauled by a bear or dying in a nuclear blast, but I could probably handle passing on in my sleep or some sort of euthanasia deal no problem.

I think the worst thing would be to die knowing you have something important to do but it isn't finished.

I'm afraid of being some old man strapped to an oxygen tank. Thinking people who are long dead are still alive. Living with chronic pain in my hips and the inability to use the bathroom by myself. That is what I'm afraid of.

I think I fear time and the concept of getting older more than I fear death.

No. At least, not yet. I see so, so, so much death in my work. I cry, but most of the time, the patient hung on far longer than he wanted to, because he knew the hole he'd leave behind. So I cry for them, not the one whose suffering has ended.

I don't really believe in heaven, but everyone dies, and when I've held the patients' hands while the light in their eyes dimmed, they never looked scared, just peaceful, relieved.

I have young kids whose father is dead, estranged from his half of the family, and my family far away. If She comes for me now, I'd kick and scream, but once my life is my own again, I like to think I'd slide gracefully into Her arms.

I fear painful death, but I welcome eternity.

Here's my thoughts and this is kinda consistent in this thread. Death, nope. Dying, a little bit.
Death. Phfft. Nothing to be afraid of. It's non-existence. Death is the opposite of life. You know how you sleep without dreams? I've found, according to the Bible, that is what happens. It's quite clear about it. (I'm not going to list out any scriptures unless asked) There are many different religions and doctrines so you have every right to believe whatever you choose.
If you really think about it though...it's pretty reasonable. We know that when we die we rot away, decompose. Our personality, our memories, our emotions, our thoughts, our likes/dislikes, our perception of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, were all kept in one place. The brain. It rots away. The very essence of who you were is gone. So I guess that can be scary. *shrugs* So how can we retain our personality and memories and individual tastes in an afterlife? Or hold onto them in a prelife, for that matter? Also how can we hear, see, whatever other senses? Especially when the input of data for these things (skin, eyes, ears and inner ear components, etc and all the nerves connecting them to the brain) disintegrate too? *shrugs*

Now, dying...I'm not comfortable with. I don't want excessive pain, but, that's only natural. xD I mean, it will all be over soon enough and by that time, you will have no consciousness of it. So I suppose it all works out. xD

subwayrider said:

Consider yourself asked.

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Genesis 3:19 "In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were take. For dust you are and to dust you will return."
This is the point I made earlier about decomposition.We die, we rot away and we eventually return to the original carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and whatever other elements (looked it up and we're almost made completely out of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus) that we were made of.

Ecclesiastes (hope I spelled that right) 9:5 "The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all."
That's pretty direct. We're conscious of many things, including such as we will die (relating directly to the thread title). The dead, however, aren't conscious. And as the scripture brings out, conscious of "nothing at all." Along this note...
John 11:11-14 "Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.'...Jesus said to them outspokenly: 'Lazarus has died.'"
Jesus himself compared death to sleep-like state. And Jesus had performed resurrections before in his ministry, so he certainly could, and he did, "awaken" Lazarus from death. Go ahead and read further in the account, it's touching. He hadn't done it yet before Lazarus' sister, Mary, was there to go the grave and witness it.

Psalms 146:4 "His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish."
Any mental activity after death ceases. This includes any internal recognition of our environment and feelings and memories, at least I think it does, no? We do think to ourselves, "Oh, it's raining today. Better put on a jacket..." sometimes to the point where we just say it outright. (A little guilty of that.)
But...it did mention "His spirit goes out." Suggestion of an immortal something?
This scripture was originally in Hebrew. The word for "spirit" was derived from the Hebrew word ru'ach. Some translators render it as "breath". When that ru'ach, or life-force leaves the body, the person's thought's perish; they don't continue in another realm.
For further explanation, here's Luke 23:46. This is at the end of Jesus' life. This was originally written in Greek so the Greek word rendered "spirit" was pneu'ma.
"Jesus called with a load voice and said: 'Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.' When he had said this, he expired."
Jesus expired after his spirit went out - and it apparently wasn't on its way to heaven. Out of all humans, perfect, Jesus certainly deserved it. Not until the third day after death was Jesus resurrected. And back to life on Earth. Later on, in Acts 1:3,9 it was 40 more days before he ascended to heaven. Well...what did he mean with his words recorded in Luke chapter 23 there? He knew that, when he died, his future life prospects rested with God. "Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit." You'll see that in resurrection accounts, credit was given to God and I believe all of them directly prayed to him beforehand to perform that. So God was the one to resurrect Jesus.

If there's anything you would like further explaining on, just let me know. I hope I showed you a solid stand on this subject and maybe even overdone it a little. *shrugs*
Consider yourself answered. xD

It depends what mood I am in. Sometimes I think about how if I had a horrific accident and had a few minutes to live before death, how I would lament the missed opportunities, the days of procrastination and the things I didn't say.

When I think about how with my senses I can decode a very small part of reality and how there have been so many coincidences in my life, I feel there is something more for sure.

I fear the realisation that I am dying and that the thought of getting old and not knowing if I will wake up the next day.

I fear what will happen to my body, the decomposition or how it is disposed of.

I do fear death but ultimately its healthy because this keeps me alive.

I feel like I can never be happy for days on end, as the thought of death does pop into my head a lot.

Of all the thinking I have done, I feel like I have been brainwashed by my upbringing. The people who run the world seem to thrive on killing and death and obviously have no fear of the consequences. I feel like I am missing some huge part of the puzzle and that death is just stage in life and that I will move on to something more meaningful, than this world.

I am not afraid of this life ending. This is my 21st lifetime, so I am familiar with what will happen when I leave my existence here behind. As for where and when I come back, I have no control over that. What others consider "Death" is just a stepping stone to my next adventure and atoning for the karmic debt I have incurred in previous lifetimes.

Renegade Time Lord said:

I am not afraid of this life ending. This is my 21st lifetime, so I am familiar with what will happen when I leave my existence here behind. As for where and when I come back, I have no control over that. What others consider "Death" is just a stepping stone to my next adventure and atoning for the karmic debt I have incurred in previous lifetimes.

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You Hindu or New Age something (it's expanded so far it's hard to pin down anything anymore)?

Do I fear death?
Umm... no. I juggle that question around every once and a while and I always just come to the consensus that.... whatever there is after life, it's not going to be some terrifying pit made up by society to make people behave. I'm confident that there will either be: A- absolutely nothing and it'll just end / or B- there'll be some sort of tapestry of afterlife that was woven by some sort of higher life form for those who strayed away from an evil path.
If there is a hell... well then... that's rather unfair that it's that easy to end up there now isn't it?

Colt said:

I'm afraid of being some old man strapped to an oxygen tank. Thinking people who are long dead are still alive. Living with chronic pain in my hips and the inability to use the bathroom by myself. That is what I'm afraid of.

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At this point and time, that may scare you but.... something tells me you won't be thinking about it if you end up that way.