Your experience sounds extremely similar to one I had about a month ago. Please listen to my story, I really think it will help you. Mine happened while I was tripping shrooms. I had been studying the Tao a lot in the preceding days. I found myself alone in my apartment, and I laid down on my bed. I had a sensation of complete peace. It was also a sensation of complete hopelessness. I felt like I had died. I questioned whether I had passed into the afterlife, as I saw all of the circle of life revolving around me. I saw just how tiny of a piece of existence I am. This is why I relate to the way you talk about the inevitability of suffering. I said to myself, if death will always follow life, then why bother living? After I came down from the effects, I was out of it for two weeks. My will to live with vigor had dwindled. Then one day, I ate two pot brownies that were very strong. I passed into a deep sleep and neglected to check on my three pet rats. When I woke up, one of them was dying. She may have poisoned herself on something I left out, but to this day I still don't know the cause of her death. I ran to the car with my girlfriend. I got in and carried my little rattie on my lap, tears dropping from my eyes. I saw she wanted to live, but was unable. Before we could make it to the vet, she died on my lap while I stroked her fur. I pulled over to the side of the road, as we happened to be passing a forest park in the middle of the city. It was a rainy spring day, and the water and the green life budding made me feel like I was as much in nature as I ever had been. I dug a hole in the dirt, and buried her under a tombstone, topped with a prayer and flower. Returning home, I pulled over in a supermarket parking lot and again the tears slowly and silently dripped down my face...I could not help staring into space. Something in me had changed. I told my girlfriend that I had changed my mind, and that I wanted to live more strongly than I ever had before. If this tiny rat was struggling to keep her last breaths and steps in my lap after being poisoned by my neglect, how could I not try at least as hard as her to live? I was shocked at how special this little life felt to me, and that I could only recognize it fully at her death. This is when I realized that although death is inevitable, the purposeful suffering I had induced on myself with my drugs was not. On that day I vowed to stoke the fire of my life force, not snuff it. I quit my 3 year addiction because I had finally learned my lesson: Conscious life is an amazing gift in a seemingly mechanical universe. If you cherish it in every moment you have it, you will not suffer, but you will certainly die. I believe this is the greater meaning you are looking for. It is a beautiful thing that you also have been moved by a pet you love, and not wanting it to lose it's life prematurely. I love animals. I paid for this site just to respond to you.
